"Wait!" cried Franklin. "I know this hole! I've been here before.
The team's come here for shelter—"
"Oh, it's the White Woman breaks—why, sure!" cried Sam in return.
"Yes, that's where it is. We're less than half a mile from the house.
Wait, now, and let me think. I've got to figure this out a while."
"It's off there," said Sam, pointing across the coulee; "but we can't get there."
"Yes, we can, old man; yes, we can!" insisted Franklin. "I'll tell you. Let me think. Good God! why can't I think? Yes—see here, you go down the bottom of this gully to the mouth of the coulee, and then we turn to the left—no, it's to the right—and you bear up along the side of the draw till you get to the ridge, and then the house is right in front of you. Listen, now! The wind's north-west, and the house is west of the head of the coulee; so the mouth is east of us, and that brings the wind on the left cheek at the mouth of the coulee, and it comes more and more on the right cheek as we turn up the ridge; and it's on the front half of the right 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'—"