Free The Lawless West by Louis L’Amour

habitation of man in this direction, for he had reached not the slightest sign of a trail in all the distance he had covered. Therefore, he determined to turn back toward the tracks. Only madness could have given him that determination, for he was long past the point where he had sufficient strength to bring him to the spot from which he started during the night. Moreover, even if he wished to get back, that was now becoming increasingly difficult, for whirls of snow began to appear on the wind, blowing through the branches above him softly, and spotting the solid black of theevergreens with white. This fall of snow was quickly transformed into such a downpouring as he had never dreamed of in his southland. It was like the descent of a myriad of gigantic moths flying down on noiseless wings and piling up on the ground.
    Before an hour passed he was staggering through drifts knee high, where the wind had whipped and piled them on the edges of the open places. The air in front of him was filled with white. His senses began to reel; long since, he had lost all sense of direction. In fact, he had reached that point at which many a man would have given up, but pride kept him going. He could not admit defeat, no matter to what extreme he were pushed, and, just as he would have fought a human enemy to the bitter end, so he fought on mutely against weariness, cold, and devastating hunger.
    Once he stumbled. He roused himself later to find that he had fallen into a profound sleep. And he was numb to the elbows and the knees. He got up and beat the circulation back in a frenzy, and then rushed blindly ahead, for he knew that, if he paused once again to rest in that fashion, the exhaustion of nearly three days without sleep would, combined with the cold, destroy him.
    But now he found that his senses were swimming. He could not distinguish the way that he kept. Sometimes, he crashed into the trunks of trees. Sometimes, when he hooked an arm across his face to protect himself from the thicket that he seemed about to plunge into, he found that there was nothing but empty air and the rushing of the snow before him.
    Every step he was taking now was straight away from the railroad. Indeed, ever since he started, savefor a brief half hour, he had been working on a line due north from the tracks. And now a mere chance floored him, so greatly was he reduced. He slipped on a stone under the lee of a great tree, struck his head violently against the trunk, and collapsed to the ground. Had he possessed a tithe of his ordinary strength, he would not have minded that fall and blow on the head at all, but in his present condition of exhaustion it was enough to throw him into the deep oblivion of senselessness.
    He was roused from that senselessness as from a profound sleep by a huge voice that called to him out of an immense distance. He smiled and shook his head. It seemed to him that someone was calling to him to get up and start a day’s work in the pitiless cold of the world—someone was asking him to leave a cozy bed.
    But the voice thundered over him again. He felt himself being shaken. Cruelly he was wrenched to his feet. He was beaten and thumped, and ever that immense voice roared at him. Then suddenly the veil dropped from his eyes, and he beheld himself standing in the midst of a forest full of blowing snow with a monstrous man looming above him, pommeling him with one fist while with the other arm he held him erect, and all the while shouting to him to make him regain his senses.
    That glimpse of the startling truth ended in a mist of blackness again, and he crumpled into a deep sleep once more. But, just before the sleep came on, he felt himself lifted and pitched over the shoulder of the stranger.
    It seemed to him that a nightmare journey began. Sometimes, he was enduring another of those beatings. Again, he was being carried on by the giant, althoughthis was obviously folly. What man was large enough to carry him through such a