It was just noon when I got off. We went to the station and started down the track. It was impossible to see more than a few rods, but the wind, which all along had been in the northeast, had now shifted to the northwest, so it was partly in my back. It was both snowing and blowing, and we waded through the damp, heavy, new snow, and slipped and stumbled over the old drifts. I soon saw that there was a big job before us; and I had not expected any pleasure excursion.
The first accident was when I fell through between the ties over a culvert up to my chin. It was too high to get back that way, so I went on down and floundered out at the end and so fought my way back up. We soon got used to these, and generally I told where they were by the lay of the land, and either we went round them or walked carefully over on the ties. But before I had gone three miles I saw that my only hope of reaching the siding that night was in the wind going down; but it was all the time coming up.
But we plodded on, in some places making 223 pretty good time; but on the other hand we often had to stop to rest. Kaiser seemed not the least discouraged, and when we stopped even tried to wag his tail, but it was too bushy a tail to wag well in such a wind. After a while the blizzard became so blinding and the track so deep with snow that we had to leave it and follow the telegraph poles on the edge of the right of way, stopping and clinging to one pole till a little swirl in the snow gave me a glimpse of the next one; then we would plunge ahead for it, and by not once stopping or thinking I would usually bump up against it all right; though when I had gone fifty steps if I did not find it I would stop and stand still till a little lull made it so I could see the pole, and then sometimes I would find that I had passed it a few feet to one side.
At last (but too soon) I thought I noticed that the light was beginning to fail; and it was certainly all the time growing colder. A little farther on we came to a deep cut through a coteau. The cut was so filled with new snow that we could not wade through, and the side of the hill was covered with the old snow and so slippery that we could not scramble 224 over. The only thing to do was to go around it. This I thought we could do and not get lost by keeping close to its foot all the way around.
We started and plowed on till I thought it time to see the telegraph poles again. We went on, but I saw the hill was not leading us right, and turned a little the other way. Another coteau was in our path and I turned to avoid it. For another five minutes we went on. I turned where I was sure the railroad must be, when suddenly it seemed as if the wind had changed and was coming out of the south. I knew it undoubtedly had not, but by this sign I understood that I was lost. I felt dazed and bewildered and was not sure if I were north or south of the track. But for another fifteen minutes we struggled on. I had lost all sense of direction. I stopped and tried to think. Every minute it was growing colder; how long I stood there I don’t know, but I remember that I heard Kaiser whine, and started at it, and realized that I was growing sleepy. I knew what the sleepiness which comes on at such times means, and I turned around square to the wind and started on. 225
A dozen steps away we came face to face with a big new snow-drift, its top blown over like a great white hood. I guessed that there was an old bank under this one. I took a stake from the sled, dropped on my hands and knees and began to poke about for it. I soon found it, broke through the frozen crust with the stake and began pawing out a burrow with my hands. I dug like a scared badger and in a few minutes had a place big enough. I wriggled out, pushed Kaiser in, took the blanket from the sled, backed into my snow cave again and rolled up as best I could in the blanket. In five minutes the mouth of the burrow was drifted over and we were in total darkness.
I was not afraid to sleep now, as I knew, what with the snow, my big coat, and the blanket, not to mention Kaiser, I would be safe enough from freezing; so that is what I did till morning, scarce waking once. When I did wake, though I knew no more than anything if it were morning, I could no longer hear the wind roaring, so I burrowed out; which was no small job, either, since I had to dig through a wall of snow, packed solid as a cheese. 226
But when Kaiser and I burst out, like whales, I guess, coming up to breathe, we found it clear and calm, with the sun just peeping up above a coteau and the frost dancing in the air. And we were not five rods from the railroad, though in that blizzard we could no more see it than we could Jericho. It took half an hour to dig out the sled and get started, with Kaiser barking, and his breath like a puff of a locomotive at every bark, it was so cold. I put on the skees now (which I had had tied on the sled) and off we went over the drifts, now packed hard, at a good rate.
It was no more than ten o’clock when I saw a white cloud of smoke far ahead and knew we were coming to the siding; and Kaiser saw it too, I think, and we both started to run and couldn’t help it. And half a mile farther we saw a man coming slowly; and who was it but dear old Tom Carr!
I think I never was so glad to see anybody in my life. The poor fellow was so weak that he could hardly stand, but he was making a start for Track’s End.