"The only woman I know of is ol' Mrs. Cap Burdon, down on the Third Moccasin, full fifteen miles away."
[CHAPTER IV.]
FLAXEN ADOPTS ANSON AS "PAP."
For nearly two weeks they waited, while the wind alternately raved and whispered over them as it scurried the snow south or east, or shifted to the south in the night, bringing "the north end of a south wind," the most intolerable and cutting of winds. Day after day the restless snow sifted or leaped across the waste of glittering crust; day after day the sun shone in dazzling splendor, but so white and cold that the thermometer still kept down among the thirties. They were absolutely alone on the plain, except that now and then a desperate wolf or inquisitive owl came by.
These were long days for the settlers. They would have been longer had it not been for little Elga, or "Flaxen," as they took to calling her. They racked their brains to amuse her, and in the intervals of tending the cattle and of cooking, or of washing dishes, rummaged through all their books and pictures, taught her "cat's cradle," played "jack-straws" with her, and with all their resources of song and pantomime strove to fill up the little one's lonely days, happy when they succeeded in making her laugh.
"That settles it!" said Bert one day, whanging the basin back into the empty flour-barrel.
"What's the matter?"
"Matter is, we've reached the bottom o' the flour-barrel, an' it's got to be filled; no two ways about that. We can get along on biscuit an' pancakes in place o' meat, but we can't put anythin' in the place o' bread. If it looks favorable to-morrow, we've got to make a break for Summit an' see if we can't stock up."
Early the next morning they brought out the shivering team and piled into the box all the quilts and robes they had, and bundling little Flaxen in, started across the trackless plain toward the low line of hills to the east, twenty-five or thirty miles. From four o'clock in the morning till nearly noon they toiled across the sod, now ploughing through the deep snow where the unburned grass had held it, now scraping across the bare, burned earth, now wandering up or down the swales, seeking the shallowest places, now shovelling a pathway through.