For winter, tenacious, grim, hateful winter, had returned for a last fling, a final outburst of frigid viciousness that was destined to wrap the whole range country in a grip of terror.
They tried the bobsled, Ba'tiste and Houston, only to give it up.

All night had the snow fallen, in a thick, curtain-like shield which blotted out even the silhouettes of the heaviest pines at the brow of the hill, which piled high upon the ridges, and with great sweeps of the wind drifted every cut of the road to almost unfathomable depths.
The horses floundered and plowed about in vain efforts at locomotion, at last to plunge in the terror of a bottomless road.

They whinnied and snorted, as though in appeal to the men on the sled behind,--a sled that worked on its runners no longer, but that sunk with every fresh drift to the main-boards themselves.

Wadded with clothing, shouting in a mixture of French and English and his own peculiar form of slang, Ba'tiste tried in vain to force the laboring animals onward.

But they only churned uselessly in the drift; their hoofs could find no footing, save the yielding masses of snow.