"Not much," Joe answered huskily. "I don't believe anybody could live long in this."
"I wonder if we shouted——"
"They'd never hear us through this blizzard."
"Let's try it anyhow. The wind is blowing that way. They might hear—and if they were lost——"
Presently the two young voices were joined in a shout as loud as they could force from their aching chests. Spotty hearing it seemed to get some inkling that there was trouble and set up a loud barking. He ran round and round them in circles, nosing in the snow, and when Joe pointed off ahead into the reeling wall of the blizzard and cried "Go get Sam, Spotty, go get Father!" he looked up in his face, whined, barked, ran forward into the snow, then back to leap and bark about them.
Again and again they shouted, calling upon their father's name, upon Sam's, with all the strength that was in them.
After each shout they listened, straining their ears for a reply. But all that came to them was the wild roaring of the blizzard, the shrieking of the wind as it whipped up the snow and tossed it in blinding clouds over the plains.
For long they stood, the cold eating into their very vitals.
At last Lige spoke. "I can't stand it any longer, Joe, I'm freezing to death. Let's go on. They can't be very far——"
"If we ever get away from the rope we'll never get back home," answered Joe. "And you know we've got to think of Mother and the girls. If Father never comes back——"