A Prairie-Schooner Princess

by Mary K. Maule

"It's them—it's Father—it's Sam!" the boys shouted in chorus.

"It's them, it's them! They're alive! They're out there somewhere. Oh, Joe, let's go after them!" panted Lige.

For a moment Joe hesitated. All his heart was urging him to rush on into the blinding tempest toward the point from whence the faint calls came. But the judgment with which nature had gifted him, that judgment that was to mean so much to so many people in his after life, restrained him.

"No, we'd better stay here," he answered. "If we get away from the rope we might get lost ourselves, and make things worse. We'll do them more good by staying right here and shouting to them so we will guide them to us. I believe by the sound they're coming nearer. Listen!"

Again they sent forth a great shout.

For a moment there was no sound other than the roaring of the blizzard, then more distinctly than before came the answer.

"There!" shouted Joe, "it is nearer! They are coming this way. Listen! That's Spotty barking! I believe he sees them! All we've got to do now is to keep shouting."

With hope renewed they redoubled their shouts and yells. Nearer, and yet nearer came the answer, and at last, staggering out of the wall of white they could make out two huge shapeless bulks, which as they came nearer gradually developed into two floundering, staggering horses, with heads down and nostrils clogged and caked with ice and snow, and on their backs two shapeless creatures, which they at last saw, with a joy too great for expression, were their father and Sam, wrapped up in the buffalo robes and blankets.

Behind them, before them, around and about them leaped Spotty, barking and leaping upon them as if he could not express his joy. He it was who had reached them in their bewilderment and guided them back to the rope. They were hopelessly lost, had neither sense of location nor direction left, and had been wandering about for hours in circles when they heard, faint and far away, the sound of shouts. They answered, with all the strength that was left in them, but even then so paralyzed and bewildered had they become by cold and exhaustion that they should never have been able to follow it, but that Spotty came bursting through the storm like a guiding angel and barking and leaping about them had guided them on.

With the blizzard at its height the worn and weakened party would never have reached home but for the rope that anchored them to safety. Holding tight to it and leading the way Joe and Lige beat their way forward leading the almost dying horses, whose knees were fairly giving way beneath them from exhaustion, while the man and boy upon their backs were almost insensible from numbness and cold.