fore I froze to the saddle ; but I grimly 

 kept Blondey's nose overlapping his 

 mate's back and said nothing — not even 

 when I discovered that my cherished rid- 

 ing whip had left me. It probably was not 

 fifty feet away, on that toboggan slide, 

 but it seemed quite hopeless to find any- 

 thing in the freezing misty grayness that 

 surrounded us. 



We continued our perilous passage. 

 Then I was rewarded by a sight seldom 

 accorded to humans. It was worth all 

 the fatigue, cold, and bruises, for that 

 appallingly illogical cloud cap took a 

 new vagary. It split and lifted a little, 

 and there, not three hundred yards away, 

 in the twilight of that cold wet cloud, 

 on that mountain in the sky, were two 

 bull elk in deadly combat. Their far 

 branching horns were locked together, 

 and they swayed now this way, now 



