e goes."

"Better take a horse."

"No: I guess not. The snow is driftin' purty bad, an' he couldn't git
through the drifts, anyway."

"Well, lookout f'r y'rself, ol' man. It looks purty owly off in the
west. Don't waste any time. I'd hate like thunder to be left alone on a
Dakota prairie f'r the rest o' the winter."

Anson laughed back through the mist of snow that blew in the open door,
his great-coat and cap allowing only a glimpse of his cheeks.

The sky was bright overhead, but low down around the horizon it looked
wild. The air was frightfully cold--far below zero--and the wind had
been blowing almost every day for a week, and was still strong. The
snow was sliding fitfully along the sod with a stealthy, menacing
motion, and far off in the west and north a dense, shining cloud of
frost was hanging.

The plain was almost as lone and level and bare as a polar ocean, where
death and silence reign undisputedly. There was not a tree in sight,
the grass was mainly burned, or buried by the snow, and the little
shanties of the three or four settlers could hardly be said to be in
sight, half sunk, as they were, in drifts. A large white owl seated on
a section stake was the only living thing to be seen.

The boom had not yet struck Buster County. Indeed, it did not seem to
Bert Gearheart at this moment that it would ever strike Buster County.
It was as cold, dreary, and unprofitable an outlook as a man could face
and not go utterly mad. If any of these pioneers could have forecast
the winter, they would not have dared to pass it on the plains.

Bert watched his partner as he strode rapidly across the prairie, now
lost to sight as a racing troop of snow-waves, running shoulder-high,
shot between, now reappearing as the wind lulled.

"This is gittin' pretty monotonous, to tell the honest truth," he
muttered as he turned from the little window. "If that railroad don't
show up by March, in some shape or other, I'm goin' to give it up.
Gittin' free land like this is a little too costly for me. I'll go back
to Wiscons', an' rent land on shares."

Bert was a younger-looking man than his bachelor companion; perhaps
because his face was clean-shaven and his frame much slighter. He was a
silent, moody young fellow, hard to get along with, though of great
good heart. Anson Wood succeeded in winning and holding his love even
through the trials of masculine housekeeping. As Bert kept on with the
dinner, he went often to the l