And below, a hundred yards away, perhaps--it was hard to judge through that smother--the bare limbs of several stunted cottonwoods waved dismally against the gray sky.

Hesitating, his eyes searching the barrenness above to where the stream bent northward and disappeared, he turned at last and tramped downward along the edge of the stream.

Across stretched the level, white prairie, beaten and obscured by the storm, while to his left arose the steep, bare bluff, swept clear by the wind, revealing its ugliness through the haze of snow.

Not in all the expanse was there visible a moving object nor track of any kind.

He was alone, in the midst of indescribable desolation--a cold, dead, dreary landscape.
He came to the little patch of forest growth, a dozen gaunt, naked trees at the river's edge, stunted, two of them already toppling over the bank, apparently undermined by the water, threatening to fall before each blast that smote them.