It screamed above him.

It dropped away in sudden lulls of more appalling silence.

Then, far off, he would hear a wave of the storm begin, wash across a crest, thunder in a canyon, and then break on the timberline with a prolonged and mighty roaring.

Those giant approaches made him hold his breath, and when the wave of confusion passed, he found himself often breathless.
Day came.

He was on the very verge of the line with a dense fence of stunted trees just before him and the wilderness of snow beyond, sloping up to the crest, outlined in white against the solid gray sky.
The Spartans of the forest were around him--fir, pine, spruce, birch, and trembling little aspens up there among the stoutest.