He went to the mouth of the cave and stared out at the falling snow. In the push to reach this cave he had lost one of his fellow trackers, who had fallen over an unexpected ravine and broken his neck. Several of the hired guns had come down with frostbite and had been left to make their own way back through the snow. They would be dead, by now, most likely to. All that sacrifice to attain the prize and it wasn't to be had! It was somewhere out there in the drifting whiteness.
There were no other shelters for miles around, which meant that his queries were most likely frozen to death to, but somehow he doubted it. They could be anywhere out there and now he had completely lost the trail. His own life could be on the line now, as his superiors didn't take failure lightly.