Two thousand feet below in the town of Crested Butte it was spring. The snow was gone the ?owers were nodding along the roadways. Even the mountain peaks, that stood thirteen and four teen thousand feet high, were snowless. At those skyscraping heights the alpine sun was like a torch that burned the ice away. Nevertheless, the peaks were cold, and the icy air that surrounded them poured into the valley and held the snow there until early June. The month of May in Gothic town would have looked like Christmas were it not for the tumbling pillows of rain clouds that were bringing the thaw to the valley of the high country. Whispering Bill Smith was the only living man in the snow bound ghost town. The old prospector had wintered in to run his t'rap line and for eight long months he had listened to no voices other than those of the trumpeting winds and the hardy Canada jays.