“All right. I’ll take these here things in to the missus.”
From the doorway Mrs. Cameron shouted an invitation, but Swickey and her father were firm. Once in the house, they knew that she would not accept their refusal to stay for the night.
Curious Jim returned to the sleigh in a few minutes and they creaked along toward Lost Farm. The early winter night, which surrounded them with muffling cold, pierced the heavy blankets round Swickey and nipped the cheeks and fingers of the two men. The trail found its way through the stark trees, a winding white path of uniform width that gleamed dimly ahead through the dusk of the overhanging branches. Slowly they topped the knoll on which the three cabins stood, banked window-high with snow. The camp looked cheerless in the frosty glimmer of its unlighted windows.
As the traces clacked, Smoke heard and barked his welcome.
“’T warn’t as heavy goin’ as I thought it would be,” remarked Cameron, as he swung the sleigh close to the cabin, his head nearly level with the snow-filled eaves. “Hear thet dog whoopin’ to git out. Guess he smells you, Swickey.”
Avery clambered down, broke through the drift to his door, and entered. Smoke jumped to his shoulder with a joyous whine and then darted past him toward the sleigh.
“Smoke! Smoke!”
As she handed the bundles to Cameron, the terrier sprang up to her, only to fall back in the smothering snow, in which he struggled sturdily, finally clambering into the sleigh with such vigor that he rolled over the side and on his back in the straw, where Swickey playfully held him, a kicking, struggling, open-mouthed grotesque of restrained affection.
Light glowed in the windows as Avery built the fire and lighted the lamps. It wavered through the frosted panes and settled on the horses, who stood, nostrils rimmed with frost and flanks steaming, like two Olympian stallions carved from mist.
“Why, Pop!” exclaimed Swickey, “you haven’t been using the front of the house at all. It’s just the same as I left it when I was here last.”