ow fall.

Wentz asked sullenly, as he paced the floor: "How about the sheep, if
this keeps up?"

"I got herders that know what to do--that's what I pay 'em for."

"Knowing what to do won't help much, with the snow too deep for the
sheep to paw, and a two-days' drive from hay, even if you could get
through." There was the maximum of exasperation in the president's
voice.

Neifkins replied stubbornly: "I've pulled through fifty storms like this
and never had no big loss yet."

"But you've never had so much at stake. You've got us to consider--"

"Don't you fret!" Neifkins interrupted impatiently. "You've worried
until you're all worked up over somethin' that hasn't happened and ain't
goin' to."

With this assurance, which left no comfort in its wake, Neifkins went
out where the first icy blast of the predicted blizzard lifted his hat
and whisked it down the street.

The wind completed what the heavy snow had failed to do. Telephone and
telegraph poles lay prone for a quarter of a mile at a stretch. It piled
in drifts the snow already fallen and brought more. The blizzard
enveloped Prouty until it required something more than normal courage to
venture out of doors. It was the courage of desperation which ultimately
sent Neifkins out in an attempt to get hay to his sheep. There was small
resemblance between the optimist who had assured Wentz so confidently
that everything would be all right and the perspiring and all but
exhausted Neifkins who wallowed in snow to his arm-pits in an effort to
break trail for the four-horse team whose driver was displaying
increasing reluctance to go on with the load of baled hay stalled some
mile and a half from town.

"We might as well quit," the driver called with a kind of desperate
decision in his tone as he made to lay down the reins. "I can't afford
to pull the life out of my horses like I got to do to make even a third
of the way to-day."

Dismayed by his threat to go back, Neifkins begged:

"Don't quit me like this. I got six thousand sheep that'll starve if we
don't git this hay through."

The driver hesitated. Reluctantly he picked up the lines:

"I'll give it another go, but I'm sure it's no use. The horses have
pulled every pound that's in 'em, and now this wheeler's discouraged and
startin' to balk. Besides, if anybody asks you, the road is gettin' no
better fast."

The latter prediction in particular was correct, and their progress
during the next hour could