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invisible to the eye, began to land on Preacher’s face and the backs of his hands. Cold and wet, they did not remain for long. Their bigger brothers and sisters would be along soon enough for that, Preacher reasoned. He began to take closer note of his surroundings. One of these northers could blow up in a matter of minutes, and a man caught in the open would soon be buzzard meat. Temperatures could, and often did, drop forty degrees in less than ten minutes.
    Given that this late in August, the high for the day hovered around forty-eight to fifty, that could have fatal results. Memory played its map pages in his mind. A ways farther south, he knew, there was an old cabin, part of a failed mining attempt. Beyond that, in a rocky gorge, another small cabin fronted a natural cave. Preacher had often wanted to poke around in there, only to have circumstances get in the way. He would put his trust in his own instincts and see how far he got.
    For, no matter what he hoped for, he knew dang well it was going to snow. “Best eat some ground, Cougar,” he advised his trustworthy mount.
    The invisible flakes changed to freezing rain half a mile along the trail toward Trout Creek Pass. Preacher broke out a sheepskin jacket and bundled up, the collar pulled high. His breath came in frosty plumes. Cougar snorted regular clouds of white. No question, this one would be a heller.
    * * *
    Fat, wet flakes drifted downward, twirled by the flukey breeze that sent them skyward again, or into spirals that danced vertically across the ground. Little cold pinpricks where they lighted on the exposed skin of Preacher, they grew steadily in number. Before he could account the time, Preacher observed that the horizon ahead of him had been curtained off by a swirling wall of gray-white.
    In a place where visibility usually stretched on forever, unless impeded by a mountain peak, Preacher could not see even half a mile off. And, dang it, he’d been caught out away from any of the shelters he knew of. Better than two miles to the cave, about three-quarters of a mile to the mine. He took time to wrap a bandana around his head, tied it under the chin, to protect his ears, plopped his hat on his head again and turned up his collar.
    â€œCougar,” he advised his roan horse, “we’re deep in the buffalo chips if we don’t find shelter. Just keep a-movin’, boy.”
    Over the next half hour, the snowstorm turned into a regular, full-blown blizzard. Preacher remained silent through the ordeal, batting his eyelashes rapidly to blink away the clinging flakes that settled after icily caressing his face. Only the largest tree trunks stood out as black slashes in the thick, wild gyration of white. So dense was the downfall that he almost missed the cabin over the mineshaft when he at last came to it.
    Preacher saw the reason for that soon enough. Over the years, the abandoned place had sagged to a ruin that more resembled a raw outcrop of rock than a man-made structure. No relief from the storm here, right enough, Preacher regretfully realized. He must push on for the cave, and hope that last year’s thunderstorms and resulting fires had not destroyed the cabin there.
    Numbness had crept into Preacher’s fingers and toes a quarter hour later when he stopped to pull a thick pair of wool socks over his feet and return them to the suddenly chilled boots. Fool, he chided himself. He should have thought to bring along gloves. Or those rabbit-fur mittens, a leftover from the previous winter.
    His world had become a wall of white now. To rely on dead reckoning to navigate from one place to another was to lead oneself astray, Preacher reminded himself. And to stay where he was invited a slow death by freezing. He had heard most of his life that it was peaceful, going that way. Then he snorted with derision. Who in hell had ever come back to tell about how easy it was?
    Just keep Mount Elbert on my right shoulder, Preacher