low ridges and dodging into hollows, and when the snow spread a white veil
over the land, I looked at Frosty out of the tail of my eye, wondering if
he did not wish he had kept to the road--trail, it is called in the
rangeland.

If he did, he certainly kept it to himself; he went on climbing hills and
setting the brake at the top, to slide into a hollow, and his face kept
its inscrutable calm; whatever he thought was beyond guessing at.

When he had watered the horses at a little creek that was already skimmed
with ice, and unwrapped a package of sandwiches on his knee and offered
me one, I broke loose. Silence may be golden, but even old King Midas got
too big a dose of gold, once upon a time, if one may believe tradition.

"I hate to butt into a man's meditations," I said, looking him straight in
the eye, "but there's a limit to everything, and you've played right up to
it. You've had time, my friend, to remember all your sins and plan enough
more to keep you hustling the allotted span; you've been given an
opportunity to reconstruct the universe and breed a new philosophy of
life. For Heaven's sake, _say_ something!"

Frosty eyed me for a minute, and the muscles at the corners of his mouth
twitched. "Sure," he responded cheerfully. "I'm something like you; I hate
to break into a man's meditations. It looks like snow."

"Do you think it's going to storm?" I retorted in the same tone; it had
been snowing great guns for the last three hours. We both laughed, and
Frosty unbent and told me a lot about Bay State Ranch and the country
around it.