"
"So do I," I seconded. "We're not doing much good that I can see. And I
think I could play the game with a heap more enthusiasm if I had some
coffee and white bread under my belt once or twice a day. We'll go
hungry, and likewise get a devilish good soaking to-night, or I'm badly
mistaken."
We had checked our horses on the summit of the divide that ran down to
Lost River on one side and on the other sloped away to the southeast.
The wind that was merely a breath at sundown had gathered strength to
itself and now swept across the hill-tops with a resonant roar, piling
layer on layer of murky low-flying clouds into a dense mass overhead.
Night, black as the bottomless pit, walled us in. A fifty-mile breeze
lashed us spitefully, tugging at our shirt-sleeves and drowning our
voices, while we halted on that pinnacle. By the dank breath of the
wind, the ominous overcasting of the sky, all the little signs that a
prairie-wise man learns to read, we knew that a storm was close at hand.
Shelter there was none, nor food, and we stood in need of both.
"You're right," MacRae admitted. "But how are we going to help it?
We'll just have to grin and tough it out."
"I'll tell you how we'll help it," I proposed recklessly, shouting to
make myself heard above the noisy wind.
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