“All day and all night.” Nan leaned closely over to hear the curt question and answer. Neither man spoke again for a moment.
“We’ll have to have help,” said de Spain after a pause.
“Help?” echoed Morgan scornfully. “Where’s help coming from?”
De Spain’s answer was not hurried. “One of us must go after it.” Nan looked at him intently.
Duke set his hard jaw against the hurtling stream of ice that showered on the forlorn party. “I’ll go for it,” he snapped.
“No,” returned de Spain. “Better for me to go.”
“Go together,” said Nan.
De Spain shook his head. Duke Morgan, too, said that only one should go; the other must stay. De Spain, while the storm rattled and 414 shook at the two men, told why he should go himself. “It’s not claiming you are not entitled to say who should go, Duke,” he said evenly. “Nor that our men, anywhere you reach, wouldn’t give you the same attention they would me. And it isn’t saying that you’re not the better man for the job––you’ve travelled the Sinks longer than I have. But between you and me, Duke, it’s twenty-eight years against fifty. I ought to hold out a while the longer, that’s all. Let’s work farther to the east.”
Quartering against the mad hurricane, they drove and rode on until the team could hardly be urged to further effort against the infuriated elements––de Spain riding at intervals as far to the right and the left as he dared in vain quest of a landmark. When he halted beside the wagon for the last time he was a mass of snow and ice; horse and rider were frozen to each other. He got down to the ground with a visible effort, and in the singing wind told Duke his plan and purpose.
He had chosen on the open desert a hollow falling somewhat abruptly from the north, and beneath its shoulder, while Morgan loosened the horses, he scooped and kicked away a mass of snow. The wagon had been drawn just above the point of refuge, and the two men, with the aid of the wind, dumped it over sidewise, making of 415 the body a windbreak over the hollow, a sort of roof, around which the snow, driven by the gale, would heap itself in hard waves. Within this shelter the men stowed Nan. The horses were driven down behind it, and from one of them de Spain took the collar, the tugs, and the whiffletree. He stuck a hitching-strap in his pocket, and while Morgan steadied the Lady’s head, de Spain buckled the collar on her, doubled the tugs around the whiffletree, and fastened the roll at her side in front of the saddle.