Franklin groaned as he listened to this calm inventory of resources in a case so desperate. He sank into a chair, his face between his hands. Then he sprang up. "We must go!" he cried.
"I know it," said Sam simply.
"Get ready," exclaimed Franklin, reaching for his coat.
"What do you mean, Cap — now?"
"Yes, to-night — at once."
"You d——d fool!" said Sam.
"You coward!" cried Franklin. "What! Are you afraid to go out when people are freezing — when — "
Sam rose to his feet, his slow features working. "That ain't right, Cap," said he. "I know I'm scared to do some things, but I — I don't believe I'm no coward. I ain't afraid to go down there, but I won't go to-night, ner let you go, fer it's the same as death to start now. We couldn't maybe make it in the daytime, but I'm willin' to try it then. Don't you call no coward to me. It ain't right."
Franklin again cast himself into his chair, his hand and arm smiting on the table. "I beg your pardon, Sam," said he presently. "I know you're not a coward. We'll start together in the morning. But it's killing me to wait. Good God! they may be freezing now, while we're here, warm and safe!"
"That's so," said Sam sententiously. "We can't help it. We all got to go some day." His words drove Franklin again to his feet, and he walked up and down, his face gone pinched and old.
"I 'low we won't sleep much to-night, Cap," said Sam quietly. "Come on; let's go git some coffee, an' see if anybody here in town is needin' help. We'll pull out soon as we kin see in the mornin'."
They went out into the cold, staggering as the icy sheet drove full against them. Ellisville was blotted out. There was no street, but only a howling lane of white. Not half a dozen lights were visible. The tank at the railway, the big hotel, the station-house, were gone — wiped quite away. The Plains were back again!
"Don't git off the main street," gasped Sam as they turned their faces down wind to catch their breath. "Touch the houses all along. Lord! ain't it cold!"
Ellisville was safe, or all of it that they could stumblingly discover. The town did not sleep. People sat up, greeting joyously any who came to them, eating, drinking, shivering in a cold whose edge could not be turned. It was an age till morning — until that morning of deceit.
At dawn the wind lulled. The clouds swept by and the sun shone for an hour over a vast landscape buried under white. Sam was ready to start, having worked half the night making runners for a sled at which his wild team snorted in the terror of unacquaintedness. The sled box was piled full of robes and coal and food and liquor — all things that seemed needful and which could hurriedly be secured. The breath of the horses was white steam, and ice hung on the faces of the men before they had cleared the town and swung out into the reaches of the open prairies which lay cold and empty all about them. They counted the smokes — Peterson, Johnson, Clark, McGill, Townsend, one after another; and where they saw smoke they rejoiced, and where they saw none they stopped. Often it was but to nail fast the door.
With perfect horsemanship Sam drove his team rapidly on to the south, five miles, ten miles, fifteen, the horses now warming up, but still restless and nervous, even on the way so familiar to them from their frequent journeyings. The steam of their breath enveloped the travellers in a wide, white cloud. The rude runners crushed into and over the packed drifts, or along the sandy grime where the wind had swept the earth bare of snow. In less than an hour they would see the Halfway House. They would know whether or not there was smoke.
But in less than two hours on that morning of deceit the sun was lost again. The winds piped up, the cold continued, and again there came the blinding snow, wrapping all things in its dancing, dizzy mist.
In spite of the falling of the storm, Franklin and his companion pushed on, trusting to the instinct of the plains horses, which should lead them over a trail that they had travelled so often before. Soon the robes and coats were driven full of snow; the horses were anxious, restless, and excited. But always the runners creaked on, and always the two felt sure they were nearing the place they sought. Exposed so long in this bitter air, they were cut through with the chill, in spite of all the clothing they could wear, for the norther of the plains has quality of its own to make its victims helpless. The presence of the storm was awful, colossal, terrifying. Sometimes they were confused, seeing dark, looming bulks in the vague air, though a moment later they noted it to be but the packing of the drift in the atmosphere. Sometimes they were gloomy, not hoping for escape, though still the horses went gallantly on, driven for the most part down a wind which they never would have faced.
"The wind's just on my right cheek," said Sam, putting up a mitten.
"But where's it gone?"
"You're frozen, man!" cried Franklin. "Pull up, and let me rub your face."
"No, no, we can't stop," said Sam, catching up some snow and rubbing his white cheek as he drove.
"Keep the wind on your right cheek — we're over the Sand Run now, I think, and on the long ridge, back of the White Woman. It can't be over two mile more. — Git along, boys. Whoa! What's the matter there?"
The horses had stopped, plunging at something which they could not pass. "Good God!" cried Franklin, "whose fence is that? Are we at Buford's?"
"No," said Sam, "this must be at old man Hancock's. He fenced across the old road, and we had to make a jog around his d——d broom-corn field. It's only a couple o' miles now to Buford's."
"Shall I tear down the fence?" asked Franklin.
"No, it's no use; it'd only let us in his field, an' maybe we couldn't
hit the trail on the fur side. We got to follow the fence a way. May
God everlastingly damn any man that'll fence up the free range! — Whoa,
Jack! Whoa, Bill! Git out o' here! Git up!"
They tried to parallel the fence, but the horses edged away from the wind continually, so that it was difficult to keep eye upon the infrequent posts of the meagre, straggling fence that this man had put upon the "public lands."
"Hold on, Sam!" cried Franklin. "Let me out."
"That's right, Cap," said Sam. "Git out an' go on ahead a way, then holler to me, so'st I kin come up to you. When we git around the corner we'll be all right."
But when they got around the corner they were not all right. At such times the mind of man is thrown off its balance, so that it does strange and irregular things. Both these men had agreed a moment ago that the wind should be on the right; now they disagreed, one thinking that Hancock's house was to the left, the other to the right, their ideas as to the direction of the Buford ranch being equally at variance. The horses decided it, breaking once again down wind, and striking a low-headed, sullen trot, as though they would out-march the storm. And so the two argued, and so they rode, until at last there was a lurch and a crash, and they found themselves in rough going, the sled half overturned, with no fence, no house, no landmark of any sort visible, and the snow drifting thicker than before. They sprang out and righted the sled, but the horses doggedly pulled on, plunging down and down; and they followed, clinging to reins and sled as best they might.
Either accident or the instinct of the animals had in some way taken them into rough, broken country, where they would find some shelter from the bitter level blast. They were soon at the bottom of a flat and narrow valley, and above them the wind roared and drove ever on a white blanket that sought to cover them in and under.
"We've lost the trail, but we done the best we could," said Sam doggedly, going to the heads of the horses, which looked questioningly back at him, their heads drooping, their breath freezing upon their coats in spiculae of white.
"Wait!" cried Franklin.