he needles began to creep in an' I grew numb as a
stone, while my flesh seemed shook loose from my bones, an' it hurt me
to breathe. Oh, Lord, but it was cold! If it hadn't 'a' been for the
kid I'd have gotten down an' walked alongside the pony, but as it was,
he was out o' the wind an' sleepin' peaceful, so I just sat an' took it.

At last I sort o' drowsed off myself. I didn't sleep, but I wasn't
awake; I seemed to be back at the Diamond Dot an' playin' in a little
sheltered dell with Barbie. She had made up a game called Fairy
Princess; sometimes she was the Fairy Princess an' sometimes I was, an'
it was a mighty amusin' sort of a game, but different from most o' the
games I was familiar with.

Well, that night out in the Texas blizzard I was playin' that game with
little Barbie, an' all of a sudden--smash! Before I knowed what had
happened we had been run into an' knocked down a ravine an' both the
kid an' the pony was lyin' on top o' me. The kid got up an' begun to
cuss as usual, but the pony never moved. I'd a heap sight rather had
the conditions reversed, 'cause the pony was on my right leg an' my
right leg was on a sharp stone.

"Shut up, kid," sez I, "this ain't no time for such talk. Here, you
curl up alongside the pony an' I'll spread part o' my coat over you."

That kid was a home-maker all right; nothin' ever surprised him, an'
wherever he lit he made himself comfortable. In two minutes he was
asleep, while I began to puzzle it out. We were in a sheltered spot an'
the wind swept above us; but it was so dark that you couldn't see ten
inches. The wind was from the no'th, an' I went over every bit o'
landscape in the country until at last I figgered out the' was only one
place in Texas that filled the bill. A path swung around a crag an'
the' was a shelf of stone ten feet below it an' eight feet wide, then
it cut off sheer, fifty feet to the rocky bank of a creek. I reached
out with my hand an' felt the edge of it, an' it give me an awful
chill. I don't like to come quite so close.

After a time the wind veered around a little more to the east an' then
it sucked up through the cut an' I began to freeze. I didn't care a
great deal 'cause it stopped the horrid hurtin' in my leg; but the dead
pony began to cool, an' I knew it was only a question o' minutes.
Finally I awoke the kid. "Where is your gun, kid?" I sez.

"I shot all my catridges tryin' to bring some one out on a pony," sez
the kid, drowsily, an'