“Don’t you fellers stray off the road we’re goin’ to follow,” advised the old woodsman. “This is a humdinger of a storm, and it’s goin’ to get worse and worse from now on.”
“Those poor kids will be buried in it,” Luke shouted in Neale’s ear.
“We’ll dig ’em out, then,” returned Neale, confidently. “Don’t give up the ship before we’ve even started.”
But there was not much talk after getting into the road up which they knew Sammy and the little girls had started with the sled. In fact, they could not talk. By this time the blizzard was at its height, and it was blowing directly in their faces as they advanced.
Over boot-tops, over knees, even leg-deep where the drifts were, the searchers pressed on. Hedden overtook the backwoodsman and shouted:
“Hadn’t we better separate, Mr. M’Graw, and beat the bushes on either side of this road?”
“No. Don’t believe it’s safe. And I don’t think them little shavers separated. They’ve holed-in together somewhere by this time, or—”
He did not finish his remark, but plowed on. He did not pass a hummock or snow-covered stump beside the road that he did not kick into and quite thoroughly examine. Every time Neale O’Neil saw one of these drifts he felt suddenly ill. Suppose the little folks should be under that heap of snow? Nor did Luke bear the uncertainty in lighter vein. There were tears frozen on his cheeks as they pressed on.
The falling snow and sleet, driven by the wind, seemed like a solid wall ahead of them. This buffeted the searchers with tremendous power. It took all their individual force to stand against the storm.
When they finally reached the summit of the road, where the young people had started the bobsled for the long slide that forenoon, they had found no sign of Sammy and the little girls.