CHAPTER I.
THE BIG SNOW.
"We're going to have snow to-night!"
Ted Strong, leader of the broncho boys, was sitting on the back of Sultan, his noble little black stallion, on the ridge of a prairie swell, looking at a lowering sky.
Out of the northwest a chilling wind, damp and raw, was sweeping dull-gray clouds before it.
Ted had addressed his remark to Bud Morgan, his chum and able lieutenant, who threw a glance at the clouds and grunted.
"I reckon we be," he muttered, "an' I'm free ter say I'm dern sorry ter hear it."
"It's hard luck," resumed Ted. "If we had got away a week earlier, or hadn't been held up by the high water at Poplar Fork, we would have been at the ranch now, and settled for the winter."
"Thar's no telling whar an 'if' won't land yer sometimes. If we hadn't started we wouldn't hev been here at all. But here we aire, an' we'll hev ter git out o' it."