alone in that tar-paper
shack, what chance would she have? Was she cold and frightened? With the
snow piled in mountainous drifts she would be as inexorably cut off from
help as though she were alone on the plains. The things that happen to
the people one loves are so much worse than the ones that happen to
ourselves--but the things that may happen are a nightmare. As the hours
dragged on I paced up and down the print shop, partly because being
hemmed in made me restless, partly to keep warm, wondering whether the
neighbors would remember that Ida Mary was alone--fearing that they
might think she was in McClure with me.

On Sunday, a passage was dug from the print shop so that I could get
out--not a path so much as a canyon between the walls of snow, and a
neighbor with a covered wagon offered to take me home--or to try to.

He drove a big, heavy draft team. The horses floundered and stuck and
fell; plunged out of one drift into another. Galen got out and shoveled
ahead while I drove, resting the horses after each plunge. The ravines
we skirted and finally got up onto the ridge.

It was mid-afternoon when we arrived, and already the skies were closing
in, gray upon the white plains. The grayish-white canvas of the wagon,
and the team almost the same color blended into the drab picture, darker
shadows against the gray curtain of earth and sky, until we came to the
shack.

The Dunns had remembered, as they so often did, that Ida Mary was alone,
and they had shoveled a path to the door for her. And she was safe,
waiting tranquilly until it would be possible to return to the school
again. In such weather the school remained closed, as there was no way
for the children to reach it, through the deep drifts, without the risk
of freezing to death.

With Ida Mary safe in the covered wagon, we started back at once to
McClure. Having broken the drifts on the first trip, it was not hard
going, but it was midnight when we reached the print shop.

On cold, bad days the Dunns, getting their own children home from
school, would see to it that Ida Mary got back safely, and Mrs. Dunn
would insist that she stay with them on such nights. "Now you go, Huey,
and bring Teacher back. Tell her the trapdoor is down so the attic will
be warm for her and the children to sleep." And when she came, Mrs. Dunn
would say, with that clear, jolly laugh of hers, "Now, if you're
expecting Imbert Miller, he can come right on over," which he did.

Im