team on and the four horses drew the
creaking, cumbrous vehicle spouting down the road. Water gushed in fans
from the openings on either side and beneath; and in streams from two
holes behind. Not for an instant as long as the flow continued dared
the teamsters breathe their horses, for a pause would freeze the runners
tight to the ground. A tongue at either end obviated the necessity of
turning around.

While the other men hewed at the required beam for the broken V plow,
Heath, Stratton, and Green went over the cleared road-length once. To do
so required three sprinklerfuls. When the road should be quite free,
and both sprinklers running, they would have to keep at it until after
midnight.

And then silently the wilderness stretched forth her hand and pushed
these struggling atoms back to their place.

That night it turned warmer. The change was heralded by a shift of wind.
Then some blue jays appeared from nowhere and began to scream at their
more silent brothers, the whisky jacks.

"She's goin' to rain," said old Jackson. "The air is kind o' holler."

"Hollow?" said Thorpe, laughing. "How is that?"

"I don' no," confessed Hines, "but she is. She jest feels that way."

In the morning the icicles dripped from the roof, and although the snow
did not appreciably melt, it shrank into itself and became pock-marked
on the surface.

Radway was down looking at the road.

"She's holdin' her own," said he, "but there ain't any use putting more
water on her. She ain't freezing a mite. We'll plow her out."

So they finished the job, and plowed her out, leaving exposed the wet,
marshy surface of the creek-bottom, on which at night a thin crust
formed. Across the marsh the old tramped road held up the horses, and
the plow swept clear a little wider swath.

"She'll freeze a little to-night," said Radway hopefully. "You sprinkler
boys get at her and wet her down."

Until two o'clock in the morning the four teams and the six men creaked
back and forth spilling hardly-gathered water--weird, unearthly, in the
flickering light of their torches. Then they crept in and ate sleepily
the food that a sleepy cookee set out for them.

By morning the mere surface of this sprinkled water had frozen, the
remainder beneath had drained away, and so Radway found in his road
considerable patches of shell ice, useless, crumbling. He looked in
despair at the sky. Dimly through the gray he caught the tint of blue.

The sun came out. Nu