"Jump in, son," he said quickly, "I have been waiting for thee. I want to get on the way. I'm afraid from the looks of the sky we are going to have a change in the weather."
They drove fast, and reached Lancaster by about six o'clock in the evening, by which time it had grown much colder. They awoke the next morning to find a grey sky and a high northwest wind blowing.
His father had bought an ear-cap and a pair of warm mittens for him in Omaha, and these he was glad to put on, and he noticed when he took his place in the wagon that hot bricks had been tucked away in the bottom under the buffalo robes.
As they drove he noticed that his father was unusually quiet and kept casting glances at the sky. He urged the team forward as fast as they could go, even using the whip, a thing he would never do except in extremities.
By ten o'clock the wind had risen and scattering snowflakes had begun to fall. By noon the sky had changed to a deeper grey and the wind had increased to a biting gale.
It was shortly after one o'clock, and they were clattering fast across the prairies, when a sudden blackness, almost as of night, seemed to fall upon them. For a moment the wind died down and a hush fell over all the earth that was like the hush of death. All about them over the vast, lonesome prairies came a tense, ominous silence, as if all nature were holding its breath. Then, with a whoop and a shriek that was like all the demons of the Inferno let loose, the blizzard was down upon them.
Its onslaught was so fierce and sudden that it staggered the horses and almost upset the wagon. The snow that came on the breath of the terrific gale did not fall in flakes, but in solid whirling sheets, which blinded, smothered, and utterly bewildered them. It stopped their breath, it stung their eyes, it slashed and beat in their faces like the beating of nettles.
All about them was a blackness almost like that of midnight, and the eddying wall of swirling, blinding snow, driven by a ninety-mile gale, caught them in its embrace, drove the breath from their lungs, froze on their mouths and nostrils, and buffeted them with a fury that almost left them senseless.
The horses, covered with snow almost as solidly as if it had been spread over them with a trowel, stood with drooped tails and heads, dazed and shivering, not knowing which way to go.
Through the demoniac shrieking of the wind Sam heard his father's voice.