It had taken the better part of three days to cross above the wreckage of snows and forest.  They had camped for two nights within a stone’s throw of the upper glaciers.  Wayland could see the reflection of the stars in the ice at night, and count the layers of the century’s snow-fall that harked back, each layer a year’s fall, to the eras before Christ.

“The little snow flake has been on the job a long time,” he said to the old preacher.

Matthews didn’t understand.  “Can’t make out why it’s so hot when we’re high up!”

“The wind is off the Desert,” said Wayland.

“Mountains in a desert?”

“That’s the same as asking if you ever have summer in Saskatchewan.”

The frontiersman looked more puzzled than ever.

Wild longings to seize the day’s joy came to the Ranger.  If the snow flake typified law sculpturing the centuries, law was a process not of a life time, not of a century, but aeons of centuries; and flesh, spirit, humanity’s brevity cried out for the trancing joys of the present.  If law took billions of years to sculpture its purpose, grinding down the transient lives in its way?—­When Wayland came to that impasse, he used to get off and walk.  He did not know, and it was well he did not know, she was pacing her room two hundred miles back on the other side of the Divide, praying that he might succeed in one breath, that he might come back in another, and praying always that they might both be strong.

Every mile was a mile deeper into the eternity of her love . . . he knew that; but he also knew that the fulfilment of duty meant renunciation.  Was it the cry of the flesh?  Wayland scoffed the thought.  Flesh in the frontier West doesn’t take the trouble to wear fig-leaf signs.  It is blazoning, bold, unashamed, known for what it is; but there is no confusion of values.  He who wills takes what he wills and wears the mark.  Wayland had been long enough away from the confused values of more civilized lands to know belladonna eyes from starlight; and he knew what his being craved was not carrion.  It was what harmonizes both flesh and spirit, and lifts the temporal to eternity.  Eternity . . . he laughed again.  Eternity was too short; and that was what renunciation meant, giving up a citadel against all the harking cares and hells of hate in life.

Where they had picked up the fugitives’ trail again on the fourth day from the snow slide, the Ranger had taken stock of provisions.  We none of us know just how long the Trail is to be when we set out.  Flour and tea enough for a month’s travel:  of bacon and canned beans, only a day’s supply remained.

“Yes, on your life, forward, long as there’s a mouthful left . . . push on,” Matthews had urged.

Wayland expostulated:  “Do you know what Desert travel means?”

“No, an’ care less!  If y’ want to get anywhere, ye don’t set out to turn back!  Dante’s inner circle was ice!  A’ve had that!  Now, A’ll take a nip of his outer circle and try your blue blazing Desert.”