above him
was as innocent and bright as a baby's smile.

Where, then, was the storm? He moved his head painfully, and searched
the horizon; and yonder, around the icy parapets of Silver Tip, with
roll on roll of reverberations in its wake, the black storm was in
full flight. His eyes followed it with a curious and exaggerated
interest; for he had seen its birth, and tested its power, and it had
given him a new experience.

Presently he tried to rise, and found that his limbs were numb. His
right arm ached to the tips of his fingers. His head swam, and he had
difficulty in arranging his impressions in any sort of orderly
succession, especially those in which Sunnysides participated.

"I wonder how much of it really happened!" he mused.

Unexpectedly his eyes lighted on his revolver, where it lay among the
stones at his side. Ah! It had burned his fingers. He picked it up,
and examined it curiously. But none of the cartridges had been
exploded. The gun, then, had been knocked out of his hand before he
could lift and aim it; and the storm had taunted him with Sunnysides,
and cheated him. No matter! The game was not yet up.

He struggled to his feet, and stretched himself, and pounded his
chest, which ached from his heavy breathing. Then his eyes sought the
trail ahead, scanning the level spaces and the heaped-up masses of
granite; and an instant later a cry escaped his lips. For there,
perhaps half a mile away, and mounting rapidly a gray ridge of rock,
his body outlined against the blue sky, was Sunnysides. It had been no
vision, then, no figment of his tortured brain. But where had the
horse been all this time, to have been caught in the same storm with
his pursuer, despite his half-hour start, his greater speed, and the
night that came between them? True, there had been a storm in the
night; that might have delayed, but it should not have kept him. True,
too, he might have lost the trail, and wandered over the plateau; but
Haig could not have missed him, if he had been anywhere in sight
before the storm revealed him. No, nothing could explain it; and there
remained only one hypothesis, which was untenable, preposterous and
mad. And yet it fascinated and held him. He had once said jocularly
that Sunnysides was not a real horse at all; that he was a demon--a
spirit. Well, it was a real horse, right enough, that had crushed him,
and thrown him again, and broken Bill Craven's leg, and fled; and that
was a real horse y