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Perhaps because she still harbored illusions about the perishable quality of her complexion, which gave every evidence of having borne the brunt of merciless desert suns, snows, blizzards, and the ubiquitous alkali dust of all seasons, she wore a pink sun-bonnet, though the hour was one past sundown, and though she sat beneath her own roof-tree, even if lacking the protection of four walls.
So it happened that all-night journeys in freight-cars, engines, and cabooses were casual commonplaces, while thirty and forty mile drives across the country in blizzards and bitter cold were equally inevitable. Usually these things did not trouble me. They were high adventures which I enjoyed at the time and afterward loved to recall. But there was an occasional hiatus in my optimism.
The pale sun was still in the heavens, but a gray dimness crept up from the grass-land's verge toward it, against which the patches of snow gleamed lividly. However, I thought little about the cold, for with careless stupidity I had allowed a swindler to rob my partner, and a succession of blizzards would not have stopped me then.
I can only think of that wild heroic soul going up to God from the broad white wilderness of the stormy South, and leaving his body under heaving hummocks of snow with blizzards blowing a requiem over his grave. Far off may that glorious ending be, but shall my poor failing heart make it impossible? Never, never, never! Moral I'm going to get up every day whatever my nurse may say.
Don't you see how I'll have to flex my muscles like this to show you how strong I am? I may even have to beat you, eventually. Why, child, I've chummed with lions, and bears, and wolves, and everything, because of you, you little devil in the red cap! I've climbed unclimbable mountains. I've frozen my feet in blizzards.
Fogs wreathe the island three-quarters of the time; and though snow lies five feet deep in winter, and such blizzards riot in from the north as would tear trees up by the roots, and drive all human beings to their underground dwellings, it is never cold, never below zero, and the harbors are always open. Whaling, fishing, fur hunting those were the occupations of the islanders then, as now.
"Number, please." Automatically he hung the receiver on the hook. Dazed though he was, the rough rider knew that the police were the last people in the world he wanted to see just now. All his life he had lived the adventure of the outdoors. For twelve months he had served at the front, part of the time with the forces in the Argonne. He had ridden stampedes and fought through blizzards.
Gold draws men anywhere. Through blizzards, over mountains, across deserts, right into the face of the warlike Indian tribes, and the danger of death can't break the spell. Haven't I seen 'em going to California, men, women and children pressing on in the face of every peril that any army ever faced, and it's not likely, Will, that you and me will turn back, when women and children wouldn't."
Following this we had to cross the main axis of the Himalaya in January, to pass the winter at an altitude of 15,000 feet above sea-level, and face blizzards which cut through heavy fur coats and left us as if we were standing before it in our bare bones. We had also had to battle with the Tibetans not only in actual fighting, but in diplomacy as well.
During the working season, April to November, my time was mostly spent with the round-up or on the trail, with occasional visits to our head office in Las Vegas, and also to Amarillo on business matters. I nearly always camped out on the prairie, of course cooked my own meals, was out in all kinds of weather sun, rain, heat and drought, blizzards and frightful lightning storms.
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