A bitter wind searched the poplar bluff where George and his hired man, Grierson, were cutting fuel. Except in the river valleys, trees of any size are scarce on the prairie, but the slender trunks and leafless branches were closely massed and afforded a little shelter. Outside on the open waste, the cold was almost too severe to face, and George once or twice glanced anxiously across the snowy levels, looking for some sign of Edgar, who should have joined them with the team and sledge. It was, however, difficult to see far, because a gray dimness narrowed in the horizon. George stood, dressed in snow-flecked furs, in the center of a little clearing strewn with rows of fallen trunks from which he was hewing off the branches. The work was hard; his whole body strained with each stroke of the heavy ax, but it failed to keep him warm, and the wind was growing more bitter with the approach of night.
"I don\'t know what can be keeping West," he said after a while. "We haven\'t seen the mail-carrier either, and he\'s two hours late; but he must have had a heavy trail all the way from the settlement. I expect he\'ll cut out our place and make straight for Grant\'s. We\'ll have snow before long."
There was an empty shack not far away where, by George\'s consent, the mail-carrier left letters when bad weather made it desirable to shorten his round.
Grierson nodded as he glanced about. The stretch of desolate white prairie had contracted since he had last noticed it, the surrounding dimness was creeping nearer in, and the ranks of poplar trunks were losing their sharpness of form. Now that the men had ceased chopping, they could hear the eerie moaning of the wind and the sharp patter of icy snow-dust among the withered brush.
"It will take him all his time to fetch Grant\'s; I wish Mr. West would come before it gets dark," Grierson said with a shiver, and fell to work again.
Several minutes passed. George was thinking more about the mail-carrier\'s movements than about Edgar\'s. The English letters should have arrived, and he was anxiously wondering if there were any for him. Then, as he stopped for breath, a dim moving blur grew out of the prairie, and he flung down his ax.
"Here\'s West; we\'ll have light enough to put up the load," he said.
A little later Edgar led two powerful horses up the narrow trail, and for a while the men worked hard, stacking the logs upon the sledge. Then they set off at the best pace the team could make, and the cold struck through them when they left the bluff.
"Stinging, isn\'t it?" Edgar remarked. "I couldn\'t get over earlier; Flett turned up, half frozen, and he kept me. Seems to have some business in this neighborhood, though he didn\'t say what it is."
George, walking through the snow to leeward of the loaded sledge, where it was a little warmer, betrayed no interest in the news. Temperance reform was languishing at Sage Butte and its leaders had received a severe rebuff from the authorities. The police, who had arrested an Indian suspected of conveying liquor to the reservation, had been no more successful, for the man had been promptly acquitted. They had afterward been kept busy investigating the matter of the shooting of George\'s bull, which had recovered; but they had found no clue to the offender, and nothing of importance had happened for some time.
It had grown dark and the wind was rapidly increasing. Powdery snow drove along before it, obscuring the men\'s sight and lashing their tingling faces. At times the icy white haze whirled about them so thick that they could scarcely see the blurred dark shape of the sledge, but as they had hauled a good many loads of stovewood home, the trail was plainly marked. It would be difficult to lose it unless deep snow fell. With lowered heads and fur caps pulled well down, they plodded on, until at length George stopped where the shadowy mass of a bluff loomed up close in front of them.
"I\'ll leave you here and make for the shack," he said. "I want to see if there are any letters."
"It\'s far too risky," Edgar pointed out. "You\'ll get lost as soon as you leave the beaten trail."
"I\'ll have the bluff for a guide, and it isn\'t far from the end of it to the small ravine. After that I shouldn\'t have much trouble in striking the fallow."
"It\'s doubtful," Edgar persisted. "Let the letters wait until to-morrow."
"No," said George, resolutely. "I\'ve waited a week already; the mail is late. Besides, we\'ll have worse snow before morning."
Seeing that he had made up his mind, Edgar raised no more objections, and in another few moments George disappeared into a haze of driving snow. When he left the trail he found walking more difficult than he had expected, but though it was hard to see beyond a few yards, he had the bluff to guide him and he kept along the edge of it until the trees vanished suddenly. Then he stopped, buffeted by the wind, to gather breath and fix clearly in his mind the salient features of the open space that he must cross.
If he could walk straight for half a mile, he would strike a small hollow and by following it he would reach a tract of cultivated ground. This, he thought, should be marked by the absence of the taller clumps of grass and the short willow scrub which here and there broke through the snow. There would then be a stretch of about two hundred acres to cross before he found the little shack, whose owner had gone away to work on the railroad during the winter. He expected to have some trouble in reaching it, but he must get the letters, and he set off again, breaking through the snow-crust in places, and trying to estimate the time he took.
A quarter of an hour passed and, as there was no sign of the ravine, he began to wonder whether he had deviated much from his chosen line. In another few minutes he was getting anxious; and then suddenly he plunged knee-deep into yielding snow. It got deeper at the next step and he knew that he had reached the shallow depression, which had been almost filled up by the drifts. He must cross it, and the effort this entailed left him gasping when he stopped again on the farther side.
It was still possible to retrace his steps, because he could hardly fail to strike the bluff he had left, but there was no doubt that to go on would be perilous. If he missed the shack, he might wander about the prairie until he sank down, exhausted; and after a day of fatiguing labor he knew that he could not long face the wind and frost. There was, however, every sign of a wild storm brewing; it might be several days before he could secure the letters if he turned back, and such a delay was not to be thought of.
He went on, following the ravine where he could trace its course, which was not always possible, until he decided that he must have reached the neighborhood of the farm. There was, however, nothing to indicate that he had done so. He could see only a few yards; the snow had all been smooth and unbroken near the hollow, he could distinguish no difference between any one part of it and the rest; and he recognized the risk he took when he turned his back on his last guide and struggled forward into the waste.
Walking became more difficult, the wind was getting stronger, and there was no sign of the shack. Perhaps he had gone too far to the south. He inclined to the right, but that brought him to nothing that might serve as a guide; there was only smooth snow and the white haze whirling round him. He turned more to the right, growing desperately afraid, stopped once or twice to ascertain by the way the snow drove past whether he was wandering from his course, and plodded on again savagely. At last something began to crackle beneath his feet. Stooping down, he saw that it was stubble, and he became sensible of a vast relief. He could not be more than a few minutes walk from the shack.
It was only three or four yards off when he saw it, and on entering he had difficulty in closing the rickety door. Then, when he had taken off his heavy mittens, it cost him some trouble to find and strike a match with his half-frozen hands. Holding up the light, he glanced eagerly at a shelf and saw the two letters he had expected; there was no mistaking the writing and the English stamps. He thrust them safely into a pocket beneath his furs when the match went out and struck another, for his next step required consideration.
The feeble radiance traveled round the little room, showing the rent, board walls and the beams rough from the saw that supported the cedar roofing shingles. A little snow had sifted in and lay on the floor; there was a rusty stov............