There couldn't be
a man out there, and it wasn't a rifle we heard. It is the wind--
with the devil himself behind it!"
With a few sweeps of his hands and arms he scooped out the loose
snow from the hole. The opening was on the sheltered side of the
drift, and only the whirling eddies of the storm swept about him
as he thrust out his head and shoulders. But over him it was
rushing like an avalanche. He could hear nothing but the moaning
advance of it. And he could see nothing. He held out his hand
before his face, and blackness swallowed it.
"We have been chased so much that we're what you might call super-
sensitive," he said, pulling himself back and nodding at Peter in
the gray light of the alcohol lamp. "Guess we'd better turn in,
boy. This is a good place to sleep--plenty of fresh air, no
mosquitoes or black flies, and the police so far away that we will
soon forget how they look. If you say so we will have a nip of
cold tea and a bite--"
He did not finish. For a moment the wind had lessened in fury, as
if gathering a deeper breath. And what he heard drew a cry from
him this time, and a sharper whine from Peter. Out of the
blackness of the night had come a woman's voice! In that first
instant of shock and amazement he would have staked his life that
what he heard was not a mad outcry of the night or an illusion of
his brain.
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