cheek when we face the house, I'm
sure that's right--wait, I'll mark it out here in the snow. God! how
cold it is! It must be right. Come on; come! We must try it, anyway."

"We may hit the house, Cap," said Sam calmly, "but if we miss it we'll
go God knows where! Anyhow, I'm with you, an' if we don't turn up, we
can't help it, an' we done our best."

"Come," cried Franklin once more. "Let's get to the mouth of the
_coulee_. I know this place perfectly."

And so, advancing and calling, and waiting while Sam fought the
stubborn horses with lash and rein out of the shelter which they
coveted. Franklin led out of the flat coulee, into the wider draw, and
edged up and up to the right, agonizedly repeating to himself, over and
over again, the instructions he had laid down, and which the dizzy
whirl of the snow mingled ever confusedly in his mind. At last they
had the full gale again in their faces as they reached the level of the
prairies, and cast loose for what they thought was west, fearfully,
tremblingly, the voyage a quarter of a mile, the danger infinitely
great; for beyond lay only the cruel plains and the bitter storm--this
double norther of a woeful Christmastide.

Once again Providence aided them, by agency of brute instinct. One of
the horses threw up its head and neighed, and then both pressed forward
eagerly. The low moan of penned cattle came down the wind. They
crashed into a fence of lath. They passed its end--a broken, rattling
end, that trailed and swept back and forth in the wind.

"It's the chicken corral," cried Sam, "an' it's down! They've been
burnin'--"

"Go on! go on--hurry!" shouted Franklin, bending down his head so that
the gale might not quite rob him of his breath, and Sam urged on the
now willing horses.

They came to the sod barn, and here they left the team that had saved
them, not pausing to take them from the harness. They crept to the low
and white-banked wall in which showed two windows, glazed with frost.
They could not see the chimney plainly, but it carried no smell of
smoke. The stairway leading down to the door of the dugout was
missing, the excavation which held it was drifted full of snow, and the
snow bore no track of human foot. All was white and silent. It might
have been a vault far in the frozen northern sea.

Franklin burst open the door, and they both went in, half pausing.
There was that which might well give them pause. The icy breath of the
o