It seemed an endless fight against the tempest, but the rope held, and step by step they fought their way back by its aid, until suddenly out of the impalpable shroud that wrapped them in its icy embrace they fairly bunted into the walls of the dugout.
"The dugout!" gasped Joe, "thank God, oh, thank God! I began to fear we would none of us live to get home!"
Seizing Jim's bridle he led him up to the wall and lifted his father down in his strong young arms. Lige was already lifting Sam from Charley's back, so weak, so numb and exhausted that he could neither move nor speak.
As Joe was staggering toward the house with his father in his arms the door was burst open and Mrs. Peniman rushed out into the storm.
"Thank God, thank God!" she sobbed over and over, as together they lifted the wayfarers into the house, rubbed snow on their frozen faces and ears, got them into hot blankets, poured hot drinks and nourishment into them, and worked over them until life began to revive. Then they got them into bed with hot irons about them, and with a gratitude and thankfulness too great for words saw them gradually fall into a natural and healthy sleep.
Sam had a badly frozen ear, two frost-bitten toes, and a frosted finger, and Mr. Peniman's left foot was so badly frozen that it was many weeks before he could walk again. But these injuries were as nothing compared to the fact that they had come out of the most terrible blizzard ever known in the territory alive, and the thought that the lost was found, the dear ones given up as dead restored to life again, was joy enough to overbalance any amount of pain.
CHAPTER XXIII
CHRISTMAS ON THE PRAIRIES
The blizzard which so nearly cost Joshua Peniman and Sam their lives raged unabated for three days. When it was over the prairies lay a vast wilderness of unbroken white from horizon to horizon, the snow lying five feet deep on the level.
For several days Mr. Peniman was compelled to remain in bed, completely prostrated by the experience he had been through. But Sam, though somewhat frost-bitten in places, awoke the next morning as well as ever, and greatly exalted by the sense of being a hero.