Wagors covered up in bed. They had been in bed two
days and three nights. The fuel had given out, as we had feared--cow
chips and all. They had burned hay until the drifts became so high and
the stack so deeply covered that the poor old man could no longer get to
it. The cow and the blind horse had barely enough feed left to keep
alive.

Not daring to burn the last bit of hay or newspaper--which would not
have warmed the house anyhow--the old couple had gone to bed, piling
over them everything that could conceivably shut out that penetrating
dead cold, getting up just long enough to boil coffee, fry a little
bacon and thaw out the bread. They dipped up snow at the door and melted
it for water. The bread had run out, and the last scrap of fuel. They
tore down the kitchen shelf, chopped it up, and the last piece of it had
gone for a flame to make the morning coffee. The little snugly built
shack was freezing cold. A glass jar of milk in the kitchen had frozen
so hard that it broke the jar.

When Sourdough walked in and learned the situation he bellowed,
"Sufferin' sinners!" and tore out like a mad steer. He cut into the
haystack, cut up a few posts from the corral fence and made a fire--and
when a range rider makes a fire it burns like a conflagration.

He fed the two dumb animals (meaning the cow and horse, he explained,
though they weren't half as dumb as anyone who would go homesteading)
while Ma stirred up some corn cakes and made coffee for them all. Milk
the cow? What the hell did they think he was, a calf? Sourdough, like
most cowboys, had never milked a cow. The only milk he ever used came
out of a can.

Mid-afternoon he reported. When we wondered what could be done next, he
said carelessly, "Godamighty! Let 'em stay in bed. If they freeze to
death it will serve 'em right for comin' out here."

Grumbling, ranting on, he slammed the door and strode out to the barn,
saddled Bill--the stronger horse of the brown team--and led him to the
door.

"What are you going to do?" I demanded.

"Ride this no-count plug of yourn to hunt them critters. You never saw a
bunch goin' that way," he accused Ida Mary. She smiled at the ruse she
had used to start him out.

He jumped on Bill, leading his cow pony behind--a range rider knows how
to conserve a horse's strength--and followed the trail he had broken,
straight back toward the Wagor shack. Now we knew. He was going after Ma
and Pa. They would be warm and nourished, w