illing to face the risk I'll go with you. You can put back
most of your money; but, because we're poor men you'll be responsible
for the horses."

Millicent felt the cold strike through her with the keenness of steel
when the went out into the night. Somebody lifted her to the back of a
snorting horse, and a man already mounted seized its bridle. There was
a shout of "Good luck!" and they had started on their adventurous
journey. Loose floury snow muffled the beat of hoofs, the lights of
the settlement faded behind and the two were alone in a wilderness of
awful white beauty, wherein it seemed no living thing had broken the
frozen silence since the world was made. Staring vacantly before her
Millicent saw the shoulders of the mighty peaks looming far above her
through a haze of driving snow, which did not reach the lower slopes,
where even the wind was still. The steam of the horses hung in white
clouds about them as they climbed, apparently for hours, past scattered
vedettes of dwindling pines. After a long pull on a steep trail the
man checked the horses on the brink of a chasm filled with eddying mist.

"That should have been our way, but the whole blame trail slipped down
into the valley," the man said. "Let me take hold of your bridle and
trust to me. We're going straight over the spur yonder until we strike
the trail again."

It was no longer a ride but a scramble. Even those sure-footed horses
stumbled continually, and where the wind had swept the thin snow away,
the iron on the sliding hoofs clanged on ice-streaked rock, or
hundredweights of loose gravel rattled down the incline. Then there
was juniper to be struggled through. They came to slopes almost
precipitous up which the panting guide somehow dragged the horses, but,
one strong with muscular vigor and the other sustained by sheer force
of will, the two riders held stubbornly on. Millicent had risen
superior to physical weakness that night.

"Four hours to the big divide! We've pretty well equaled Thurston's
record," said the guide, striking a match inside his hollowed palm to
consult his watch. "It's all down grade now, but we'll meet the wind
in the long pass and maybe the snow."

Millicent's heart almost failed her when, as the match went out, she
gazed down into the gulf of darkness that opened at her feet, but she
answered steadily: "Press on. I must reach the camp by daylight,
whatever happens."

They went on. The pace, instea