It was long since he had seen Ches--and there had been a time when one bed held the two of them through many a long, weary night; when one frying-pan cooked the scanty food they shared between them.

And there had been a season of grinding days and anxious, black nights between, when the one problem, to Ford, consisted of getting Ches Mason out of the wild land where they wandered, and getting him out alive.

The problem Ford solved and at the solution men wondered.

Afterward they had drifted apart, but the memory of those months would hold them together with a bond which not even time could break--a bond which would pull taut whenever they met.
Ford set down the frying-pan and went to the door and looked out.

A chinook had blown up in the night, and although the wind was chill, the snow had disappeared, save where drifts clung to the hollows, shrinking and turning black beneath the sweeping gusts; sodden masses which gave to the prairie a dreary aspect of bleak discomfort.