uld foretell the winter. "By food on shrub
and tree," he said, "heap plenty; the heavy coat of the animals; the
bear and squirrel storing heap much for eat, and the bear he get ready
go sleep early." And so the winter came on us.

The dams froze over and the Strip was a great white expanse which
appeared level at first sight but was beautifully undulating. Now there
was a shack on every quarter-section, which appeared black in relief
against the white. The atmosphere did curious things to them. Sometimes
they looked like small dry-goods boxes in the distance, sometimes they
seemed to have moved up to the very door. A coyote off a mile or two, or
a bunch of antelope running along a ridge in the distance, appeared to
be just across the trail.

In the mornings we cut a hole in the ice of our dam to dip out the water
for household use, and then led the livestock down to drink. And at
night we went skating on the larger dams, with the stars so large and
near it seemed one could reach up and touch them, and no sound on the
sleeping prairie but the howling of a pack of wolves down in the next
draw.

But there were tracks on the white floor of earth, tracks of the living
things which inhabit the silent areas and which had stealthily traveled
across the plains, sometimes tracks of the larger wild beasts, and
everywhere jack rabbits squatted deep in the snow.

The majority of the settlers wintered in little paper-shell hovels, of
single thin board walls, the boards often sprung apart and cracked by
the dry winds; a thin layer of tar paper outside and a layer of building
paper on the inside, which as a rule was stretched across the studding
to provide insulation between the wall and lining. Some of these paper
linings were thin and light, the average settler having to buy the
cheapest grade he could find.

We got along fairly well unless the wind blew the tar paper off. There
was not a tree, not a weather-break of any kind for protection.
Sometimes the wind, coming in a clean sweep, would riddle the tar paper
and take it in great sheets across the prairie so fast no one could
catch up with it. The covering on our shack had seen its best days and
went ripping off at the least provocation. With plenty of fuel one could
get along fairly well unless the tar paper was torn off in strips,
leaving the cracks and knotholes open. Then we had to stop up the holes
with anything we had, and patch the paper as best we could.

We had our