A few fitful gusts now came from the obscurity; one of them was accompanied by what seemed a flight of small startled birds crossing the road ahead of them.  A second larger and more sustained flight showed his astonished eyes that they were white, and each bird an enormous flake of snow!  For an instant the air was filled with these disks, shreds, patches,—­two or three clinging together,—­like the downfall shaken from a tree, striking the leather roof and sides with a dull thud, spattering the road into which they descended with large rosettes that melted away only to be followed by hundreds more that stuck and stayed. In five minutes the ground was white with it, the long road gleaming out ahead in the darkness; the roof and sides of the wagon were overlaid with it as with a coating of plaster of Paris; the harness of the horses, and even the reins, stood out over their steaming backs like white trappings.  In five minutes more the steaming backs themselves were blanketed with it; the arms and legs of the outside passengers pinioned to the seats with it, and the arms of the driver kept free only by incessant motion.  It was no longer snowing; it was “snowballing;” it was an avalanche out of the slopes of the sky.  The exhausted horses floundered in it; the clogging wheels dragged in it; the vehicle at last plunged into a billow of it—­and stopped.

The bewildered and half blinded passengers hurried out into the road to assist the driver to unship the wheels and fit the steel runners in their axles.  But it was too late!  By the time the heavy wagon was converted into a sledge, it was deeply imbedded in wet and clinging snow.  The narrow, long-handled shovels borrowed from the prospectors’ kits were powerless before this heavy, half liquid impediment.  At last the driver, with an oath, relinquished the attempt, and, unhitching his horses, collected the passengers and led them forward by a narrower and more sheltered trail toward the next stations now scarce a mile away.  The led horses broke a path before them, the snow fell less heavily, but it was nearly an hour before the straggling procession reached the house, and the snow-coated and exhausted passengers huddled and steamed round the red-hot stove in the bar-room.  The driver had vanished with his team into the shed; Masterton’s fellow passenger on the box-seat, after a few whispered words to the landlord, also disappeared.

“I see you’ve got Jake Poole with you,” said one of the bar-room loungers to Masterton, indicating the passenger who had just left.  “I reckon he’s here on the same fool business.”

Masterton looked his surprise and mystification.

“Jake Poole, the deputy sheriff,” repeated the other.  “I reckon he’s here pretendin’ to hunt for Montagu Trixit like the San Francisco detectives that kem up yesterday.”

Masterton with difficulty repressed a start.  He had heard of Poole, but did not know him by sight.  “I don’t think I understand,” he said coolly.