The coyotes howled o' nights; now and then Houston, as he worked, saw the tracks of a bear, or the bloody imprints of a mountain lion, its paws cut by the icy crust of the snow as it trailed the elk or deer.

The world was a quiet thing, a white thing, a cold, unrelenting thing, to be fought only by thick garments and snowshoes.

But with it all, it gave Houston and Ba'tiste a new enthusiasm.

They at least could get their logs to the mill now swiftly and with comparative ease.
Short, awkward-appearing sleds creaked and sang along the icy, hard-packed road of snow, to approach the piles of logs snaked out of the timber, to be loaded high beyond all seeming regard for gravitation or consideration for the broad-backed, patient horses, to be secured at one end by heavy chains leading to a patent binder which cinched them to the sled, and started down the precipitous road toward the mill.

Once in a while Houston rode the sleds, merely for the thrill of it; for the singing and crunching of the logs against the snow, the grinding of bark against bark, the quick surge as the horses struck a sharp decline and galloped down it, the driver shouting, the logs kicking up the snow behind the sled in a swirling, feathery wake.
At times he stayed at the bunk house with the lumberjacks, silent as they were silent, or talking of trivial things which were mighty to them,--the quality of the food, the depth of the snow, the fact that the little gray squirrels were more plentiful in one part of the woods than another, or that they chattered more in the morning than in the afternoon.