Carroll shrank back like a whipped child, his lips muttering something indistinguishable.  The Sergeant, satisfied, turned and floundered through the drifts to the bank of the stream.  He was alert and fearful, yet determined.  No matter what danger of discovery might threaten, he must build a fire to save Carroll’s life.  The raging storm was not over with; there was no apparent cessation of violence in the blasts of the icy wind, and the snow swept about him in blinding sheets.  It would continue all day, all another night, perhaps, and they could never live through without food and warmth.  He realized the risk fully, his gloved hand gripping the butt of his revolver, as he stared up and down the snow-draped bluffs.  He wished he had picked up Wasson’s rifle.  Who was it that had shot them up, anyhow?  The very mystery added to the dread.  Could it have been Dupont?  There was no other conception possible, yet it seemed like a miracle that they could have kept so close on the fellow’s trail all night long through the storm.  Yet who else would open fire at sight?  Who else, indeed, would be in this God-forsaken country?  And whoever it was, where had he gone?  How had he disappeared so suddenly and completely?  He could not be far away, that was a certainty.  No plainsman would attempt to ford that icy stream, nor desert the shelter of these bluffs in face of the storm.  It would be suicidal.  And if Dupont and his Indians were close at hand, Miss McDonald would be with them.  He had had no time in which to reason this out before, but now the swift realization of the close proximity of the girl came to him like an electric shock.  Whatever the immediate danger he must thaw out Carroll, and thus be free himself.

He could look back to where the weary horses huddled beneath the bank, grouped about the man so helplessly swaddled in blankets on the ground.  They were dim, pitiable objects, barely discernible through the flying scud, yet Hamlin was quick to perceive the advantage of their position—­the overhanging bluff was complete protection from any attack except along the open bank of the river.  Two armed men could defend the spot against odds.  And below, a hundred yards away, perhaps—­it was hard to judge through that smother—­the bare limbs of several stunted cottonwoods waved dismally against the gray sky.  Hesitating, his eyes searching the barrenness above to where the stream bent northward and disappeared, he turned at last and tramped downward along the edge of the stream.  Across stretched the level, white prairie, beaten and obscured by the storm, while to his left arose the steep, bare bluff, swept clear by the wind, revealing its ugliness through the haze of snow.  Not in all the expanse was there visible a moving object nor track of any kind.  He was alone, in the midst of indescribable desolation—­a cold, dead, dreary landscape.