or nearly so, and there was no passage for steel
runners, while our poor wagon, which would have carried us much more
snugly swathed in wrappings, had broken down, as when wanted it usually
did. So, shivering to the backbone, I swung myself into the saddle and
hardened my heart to face the bitter ride.

CHAPTER VIII

HELD UP

It was very dark. The wind had the coldness of death in it, and when the
lights of Lone Hollow had faded behind the obscurity closed round me like
a thick curtain. Still, trusting to an instinctive sense of direction men
acquire in that land, I pushed on for the big coulee--one of those deep
ravines that fissure the prairie and much resemble a railway cutting. This
one was larger than the rest, and Carrington Manor stood near one end of
it. The horse evidently had little liking for the journey, and did his
best to shorten it, while I had hard work to keep my mittened hands from
freezing as we swept onward through the night.

In places a thin carpet of snow-dust muffled the beat of hoofs, and there
was no sound but the mournful shrilling of the wind, which emphasized the
great emptiness and sense of desolation until I almost felt that I had
ridden out of our busy life into primeval chaos. We are inclined to be
superstitious on the prairie, which is not greatly to be wondered at.
Fifty yards from the lighted homestead in wintertime there is only an
overpowering loneliness, where Death with his ally the Frost King reigns
supreme; while, living closer to nature, we learn that there are even yet
many mysteries, and man plays but a small part in the business of the
universe. Still, for a time the warmth within me kept out the frost; for
Grace Carrington's hand had rested in mine, and I understood how the
thought of service sustains the Northwest troopers in their lonely vigil.
They served the nation, but I was serving Grace.

Presently even this consolation grew fainter, and the spell of the white
wilderness oppressed my spirits; for the air was filled with warning, and
I knew that heavy snow was not far off. Sometimes very silently a dim
shadow flitted past, and the horse started, snorting as he quickened his
pace with the white steam whirling behind him. It may have been a coyote,
or perhaps a timber wolf; for though the antelope had departed south, the
settlers said that both from the bush of the Saskatchewan and beyond the
Cypress hills the lean and grizzled beasts had come down into the