In affright the horse jerked madly backward. The bridle was
broken. It held for a second, then tore away from the animal's head
and fell in a heap in the snow.
"Whoa, boy!--whoa!" said the miner, in a quiet way, but the horse, in
his terror, snorted at the brush and galloped away, to be lost from
sight on the instant.
For a moment the miner, with his bundled little burden in his arms,
started in pursuit of the bronco. But even the animal's tracks in the
snow were being already effaced by the sweep of the powdery gale. The
utter futility of searching for anything was harshly thrust upon the
miner's senses.
They were lost in that valley of snow, cold, and blizzard.
"We'll have to make a shelter the best we can," he said, "and wait
here, maybe half an hour, till the storm has quit."
He kicked the snow from a cluster of sagebrush shrubs, and behind this
flimsy barrier presently crouched, with the shivering pup, and with the
silent little foundling in his arms.
What hours that merciless blizzard raged, no annals of Nevada tell.
What struggles the gray old miner made to find his way homeward before
its wrath, what a fight it was he waged against the elements till night
came on and the worst of the storm had ceased, could never be known in
Borealis.
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