Old Ugly-Face by Talbot Mundy

The thaw had set in seriously. The going wasn't any too good; it was particularly bad for the remnant of loaded sheep that had to be carried through soft drifts. Andrew pressed forward because at that altitude the wind gets up at about ten o'clock and it's worse than war fighting against it. First, though, the corpse had to be disposed of, although that was no great problem. In Tibet there is no respect for a corpse; it is something that the dead man has no further use for. It belongs now to nature. The wild animals may have it, the sooner the better. The mortal remains of Ugly-face's dead companion were left sitting upright in a snowdrift, naked. Less than five minutes after the start, wolves could be heard fighting one another and the vultures.

The three days' march after that was a torment, that left no energy for conversation. The only thought was of the distance made, and of fatigue and how to carry on. But the luck held. They reached the wind-swept ledges before the thaw made the plain impassable, and it was the thaw that saved them from being overtaken by some cavalry from Lhasa. The phony lama, who hadn't condescended to tell Andrew his worshipful name, borrowed his binoculars and confirmed his guess they were from Lhasa. They had modern rifles and were well mounted. They were the pursuing party that Ambrose St. Malo had expected, that he had lied about, saying they were his friends. They got stuck in the mud that overlay frozen clay. Not long after that the mud became an ocean of roaring water hurrying down the watershed. So the cavalry turned back, to re-cross the river. Probably their bodies reached the Bay of Bengal.