"You bet it's poor Pedro," said the sheriff grimly. "Why, you know as
well as I do, Seagreave, that there ain't no way on God's green earth
for that boy to make a getaway. Of course, he's given us a lot of
bother, what with that damned snow falling again last night and covering
up any tracks he might make, but we're bound to get him. Why, a little
army, if it had enough ammunition, could hold Colina against the world.
When you got a camp that's surrounded by cañons about a thousand foot
deep, how you going to get into it, if the folks inside don't want you?
Now, take that, boy! How's he going to strike the main roads and the
bridges in the dead of night, especially when the bridges is all so
covered over with drifts that you can't see 'em by day? And, anyway, the
crust of the snow won't hold him in lots of places. 'Course he may
flounder 'round some, but there's no possible chance for him, and I'm
thinking that the coyotes'll get him before we do."

To this Seagreave agreed, and after the sheriff had further relieved his
feelings by some vitriolic comments upon Hanson, he granted him
permission to look after the two cabins, and indifferently ordered the
deputy in charge to go down the hill and get his breakfast at the hotel,
remarking with rough humor that he'd leave Seagreave the prisoner of the
mountain peaks and he guessed they'd keep him safe all right.

So the two men, their appetites sharpened by a night spent in searching
for the fugitive, took their way down toward the village, and it was not
long thereafter that Pearl, having secured permission to go up to the
cabin and make some changes in her clothing, wearily climbed the hill.
The lacks in her costume had been temporarily supplied by the
inn-keeper's wife, but these makeshifts irked her fastidious spirit.