There was no thought or fear for herself in her mind as she ran—she thought only of the sheep that were drifting rapidly before the storm, now they were well started, and she could tell by the rocks rolling from above her that they were making their way out of the gulch to the flat open country.
If only she could get ahead and turn them before they split up and scattered she could perhaps hold them until morning. Was it long until morning, she wondered? Breathless, exhausted from climbing and floundering and stumbling, the full fury of the blizzard struck her when she reached the top. The driving ice particles stung her skin and eyeballs when she turned to face it, the wind carried her soothing calls from her lips as she uttered them, her skirt whipped about her as though it would soon be in ribbons, and then with a leap and a flicker the flame went out in the smoke-blackened chimney, leaving her in darkness.
There was a panic-stricken second as she stood, a single human atom in the howling white death about her but it passed quickly. She dreaded the physical suffering which experience told her would come when her body cooled and the wind penetrated her garments, yet there was no feeling of self-pity. It was all a part of the business and would come to any herder. The sheep were the chief consideration, and she never doubted but that she could endure it somehow until daylight.
“I’ve got to keep moving or I’ll freeze solid,” she told herself practically, and added between her set teeth with a grim whimsicality:
“Be a man, Kate Prentice! It’s part of the price of success and you’ve got to pay it!”
Kate knew that hourly she was getting farther from the wagon as the sheep drifted and she followed. But daylight would bring surcease of suffering—she had only to endure and keep moving. So she stamped her feet and swung her arms, tied her handkerchief over her ears, rubbed her face with snow when absence of feeling told her it was freezing, and prayed for morning. Surely the storm was too severe to be a long one—it would slacken when daylight came, very likely, and then she could quickly get her bearings. She thought this over and over, and over and over again monotonously, while somehow the interminable hours of dumb misery passed.
Daylight! Daylight! And when the first leaden light came she was afraid to believe it. It was faint, just enough to show that somewhere the sun was shining, yet her chilled blood stirred hopefully. But there was no warmth in the dawn, the storm did not abate, and at an hour which she judged to be around nine o’clock she was able to make out only the sheep in her immediate vicinity, snow encrusted, huddled together with heads lowered, and drifting, always drifting. She had no notion where she was, and to leave the sheep was to lose them. No, she must have patience and patience and more patience. At noon it would lighten surely—it nearly always did—and she had only to hold out a little longer.
The top of the sagebrush made black dots on the white surface, and there were comparatively bare places where she dared sit down and rest a few moments, but mostly it was drifts now—drifts where she floundered and the sheep sunk down and stood stupidly until pushed forward by those behind them.
Twelve o’clock came and there was no change save that the drifts were higher and she could see a little farther into the white wilderness.
“What if—what if—” she gulped, for the thought brought a contraction of the throat muscles that made swallowing difficult. “What if there were twenty-four more of it!” Could she stand it? She was tired to exhaustion with walking, with the strain of resisting the cold, and the all-night vigil—weak, too, with hunger.