living man understood either.

The darkness flowed down over the land and hid the farther hills; the
sky-line crept closer until White Divide seemed the boundary of the world,
and all beyond its tumbled shade was untried mystery. Frosty, a shadowy
figure rising and falling regularly beside me, turned his face and spoke
again:

"We ought to make Pochette's Crossing by daylight, or a little after--with
luck," he said. "We'll have to get horses from him to go on with; these
will be all in, when we get that far."

"We'll try and sneak through the pass," I answered, putting unpleasant
thoughts resolutely behind me. "We can't take time to argue the point out
with old King."

"Sneak nothing," Frosty retorted grimly. "You don't know King, if you're
counting on that."

I came near asking how he expected to get through, then; when I remembered
my own spectacular flight, on a certain occasion, I felt that Frosty was
calmly disowning our only hope.

We rode quietly into the mouth of King's Highway, our horses stepping
softly in the deep sand of the trail as if they, too, realized the
exigencies of the situation. We crossed the little stream that is the
first baby beginning of Honey Creek--which flows through our ranch--with
scarce a splash to betray our passing, and stopped before the closed gate.
Frosty got down to swing it open, and his fingers touched a padlock doing
business with bulldog pertinacity. Clearly, King was minded to protect