d he could snatch a hasty kiss, now and then, and when
the chaperonage was too unremitting she could slip into his hands a
hurriedly penciled note, filled with important nothings. Which made a
bright spot in his life and kept Flora from thinking altogether of her
father and fretting for some news of him.

Still, there were other things to worry him and to keep him from
forgetting that the law of nature, which he had before defined to his
own satisfaction, still governed the game. Storm followed storm with
a monotonous regularity that was, to say the least, depressing, though
to be sure there had been other winters like this, and not even Billy
could claim that Nature was especially malignant.

But with Brown's new fence stretching for miles to the south and east
of the open range near home, the drifting cattle brought up against it
during the blinding blizzards and huddled there, freezing in the open,
or else plodded stolidly along beside it until some washout or coulee
too deep for crossing barred their way, so that the huddling and
freezing was at best merely postponed. Billy, being quite alive to the
exigencies of the matter, rode and rode, and with him rode Dill and
the other two men when they had the leisure--which was not often,
since the storms made much "shoveling" of hay necessary if they would
keep the calves from dying by the dozen. They pushed the cattle away
from the fences--to speak figuratively and colloquially--and drove
them back to the open range until the next storm or cold north wind
came and compelled them to repeat the process.

If Billy had had unlimited opportunity for lovemaking, he would not
have had the time, for he spent hours in the saddle every day, unless
the storm was too bitter for even him to face. There was the line-camp
with which to keep in touch; he must ride often to the Bridger
place--or he thought he must--to see how they were getting on. It
worried him to see how large the "hospital bunch" was growing, and
to see how many dark little mounds dotted the hollows, except when
a new-fallen blanket of snow made them white--the carcasses of the
calves that had "laid 'em down" already.

"Yuh ain't feeding heavy enough, boys," he told them once, before he
quite realized how hard the weather was for stock.

"Yuh better ride around the hill and take a look at the stacks,"
suggested Jim Bleeker. "We're feeding heavy as we dare, Bill. If we
don't get a let-up early we're going to be plu