Sam took the bits and his father climbed into the wagon. He rubbed his face and ears with snow, took off his boots and rubbed his feet, then warmed them against the hot bricks, put on his boots and wrapped his feet in pieces torn from the blanket. With another strip of the blanket he wrapped his head about, leaving only his eyes exposed. He knew that the one hope of their getting through this storm alive was for him to keep from freezing and able to direct their movements. When he had protected himself as well as he was able he again sprang to the heads of the floundering horses and sent Sam back into the wagon to rest and get warm.
In this way they kept their blood circulating, and relieved one another. He thanked his precaution of bringing the hot bricks many times. Under the buffalo robes in the straw in the bottom of the wagon they could escape the fury of the freezing gale, and by taking refuge there at short intervals they were able to keep from freezing.
Every moment the blizzard seemed to increase. They could scarcely see the struggling horses from the wagon now, and the snow, drifting on the biting wind, was growing deeper and deeper all about them.
Sam, protected like his father with strips of the blanket tied around his feet and wound about his head up to his eyes, was struggling at the horses' heads when suddenly the wagon gave a lurch, tilted perilously, then stopped.
The horses, up to their middles in snow, plunged and struggled, and Joshua Peniman leaped out, looked, and uttered a deep groan. One of the front wheels was broken at the hub.
For a single terrible moment the father and son stood gazing at the damage, and hope almost vanished from their breasts. Then Joshua Peniman set to work to liberate the plunging horses.
"We'll have to leave it," he shouted, struggling with his half-frozen fingers at the traces. "We'll have to trust to the horses."
"But our wagon—the supplies—our Christmas presents——" Sam shouted back, trying to raise his voice above the howling and shrieking of the storm.
"Can't think of them now," gasped Joshua Peniman; "we'll be lucky if we save ourselves!" And having got poor Charley loose from the disabled wagon he lifted Sam up on his back, and wrapped him about with blankets and one of the buffalo robes. Then taking the other robe from the wagon he mounted Jim, and wrapping himself up as best he could led the way straight into the teeth of the roaring, stinging vortex, that hissed and shrieked like ten thousand demons about their heads.
"Keep close!" he shouted to the boy, "keep Charley's head right up against Jim's tail! Don't lag, don't get out of my tracks or we're lost!"