ONCE more the nights were very cold, and darkness fell early. The wranglers headed homeward blowing on their stiffened fingers, and guided by the oil lamps in the bunk house. The mountains were powdered softly white, and the leaves of the aspens and the cottonwoods were giving up their last feeble clutch at life and drifting helplessly, tiny gold and brown corpses, before the cold winds that whistled down their slopes.
In the mornings the pools along the creek were covered with a delicate coating of ice, and at dawn the deer, coming down from their frozen pastures to the still green grass below, broke through with dainty feet to drink.
Mrs. Mallory had already moved into Ursula, taking a small house and hoping to rent a room or two. Nellie had gone with her, and Jake was sleeping in the bunk house. It was understood that the sale was practically consummated, but while Jake was despondent and silent those days, nothing could daunt the spirit of the men. Soon they would be on their way before the winter storms, some heading South to the cow country in Arizona or New Mexico, others merely drifting. It was all in the game. Their hard lives had taught them philosophy.
"Bad luck's followed me so close," said Bill, "that if ever I'd turned round I'd a bumped into it."
They sorted out their gear, ready for their war bags, and the stove gave out queer odors sometimes. And up in the barn there was many a feed of surreptitious oats to the horses which had carried them long and well.
Gus the Swede was staying. He had filed on a homestead near the Reservation, and Bill had a chance as freight brakeman on the railroad. One or two of the others were joining up with other outfits, to ride out in the winter snows from line camps; raw-hiding, with an iron ring on their
