Light snow was driving across the waste before a savage wind when the party sat at breakfast one morning. Day had broken, but there was little light, and Blake, looking out from behind a slab of rock in the shelter of which a few junipers clung, thought that three or four miles would be the longest distance that he could see. This was peculiarly unfortunate, because an Indian trapper whom they had met two days before had told them that their course led across a wide untimbered stretch, on the opposite side of which one or two isolated bluffs would indicate the neighborhood of the factory. Disastrous consequences might follow the missing of these woods.
A pannikin of weak tea made from leaves which already had been twice infused stood among the embers; and Benson was leaning over a log, di
