CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
THE EXPECTED BLIZZARD
The threatening blizzard broke over the Sierra Nevadas about sundown, and for three days it raged. Ken seemed to be hilariously excited, and Dixie, Carol, and Sylvia wondered about it. The snow, which had commenced falling the first night, did not cease, and had it not been that the lad worked untiringly with a shovel, the animals and hens would have been without food.
At last Dixie suggested that the lean-to shed, which was back of the kitchen, should be occupied by the three hens, the small pig, and the goat.
“Topsy and the two kittens can come in with us. I always make her a bed back of the stove when the winter storms come,” the little mother explained to Sylvia.
“But what shall you do with Pegasus?” that small maiden asked.
That was indeed a problem. “We didn’t have our burro last winter,” Dix said. Then she added, “What shall we do with him, Ken? When the snow piles up half-way to the top of the house, you can’t keep a path shoveled out to the barn. We’ll just have to bring Pegasus in somewhere.”
The lad rubbed his ear, which was stinging with the cold, for he had but recently come in from the storm. “I dunno,” he finally conceded, “unless we put him in the lean-to shed and tie him up in one corner. Then we can sort of fence off the three other corners and put the goat in one and the hens in the other, and Blessing in the last.”
How Sylvia laughed. “I never had so much fun before in all my life,” she confessed. Monday came and although the storm was not raging quite as furiously as it had been, still the four children could not attempt to go to school, nor did Miss Bayley expect them. Ken was very restless, and kept listening, as though he expected to hear some sound besides the moaning and whistling of the wind. Too, he would stand for fifteen minutes at a time straining his eyes through the dusk, watching, watching up the trail.
“Ken Martin, you act so queer!” Carol said at last. “Whatever are you looking out of the window for? You’ve seen the ground covered with snow lots of times before, haven’t you? Come on over here and help us tease Dixie to let us make some popcorn balls.”
The boy turned reluctantly back into the room, and, at the suggestion of his older sister, he brought forth a few ears of corn, which the laughing “twins,” as they now called Sylvia and Carol, began to shell. Then he procured the old-fashioned, long-handled popper, and five minutes later he was shaking this over a bed of red coals in the stove. The little town girl, who had never seen corn popped, stood with an arm about her best friend, watching with great interest. The kernels were bursting merrily into downy white puffs when Ken suddenly stopped shaking and listened intently. There was a prolonged dismal whistle of the wind down the chimney. That was all the girls heard, but Ken was sure that he had heard something else. “Here, Dix,” he said, as he held the handle of the popper toward her, “you take this. I want to go outside and listen.” The oldest girl complied, and the lad, putting on his heavy cap and coat, and lighting his lantern, opened the door. A gust of cold wind and sleet swept into the kitchen. Carol and Sylvia sprang to push the door shut, and, as they did so, the wide flame in the kerosene lamp flickered as though it would go out, but a moment later it steadied and shone on the puzzled faces of the three little girls.