I looked for the light of the shack on Fourteen, but it was nowhere to be seen; evidently its faint rays could not beat their way through the hundred yards of swirling tempest that intervened. So, taking careful note of my directions, I started out, my head bowed to save my face from the lashing of the storm; my legs wallowing uncertainly through the varying depths of drifts.
At length I knew I had come to the edge of the gully; although I could see nothing I was aware that I was going sharply down a steep slope. Here at points the snow was already piled in great drifts and I plunged through it waist deep, only to come suddenly upon a bare, icy spot where I lost my balance and fell. I was now at the bottom of the coulee, and the ascent proved even more difficult than coming down. I had to plow through deep drifts and scramble up icy ledges, and I could only suppose that I had reached the top by the greater violence of the storm. Nothing was to be seen but a grey mist; my eyes were almost completely closed with snow and ice. I was not cold; indeed, I was warm, but I began to realize that my exertions and the strangling sensation I felt in breathing were quickly exhausting me. However, there could not be much farther to go, and I pressed on.
It is wonderful how little sense of distance the average man has when deprived of the service of his eyes. He may walk a road every day in the year and yet have but a faint idea of the number of paces it represents. He probably could not tell you how many steps there are in the stairs of his house. As to direction he is even more hopelessly at sea, and when, in addition to these difficulties, he is plunging waist-deep through snow drifts and buffeted by a fifty-mile gale he is in imminent danger of becoming hopelessly lost. Just how near to that state I had come I began to realize, and it was with more relief than I would have cared to admit that I at length discerned a faint glow of yellow light battling against the storm and throwing fantastic spectres into the night. I was soon at the shack, and, groping my way along the wall, I reached the door and burst in.
Jean was sitting by the stove, her wonderful hair down about her back and neck, her face resting in her hands, her feet on the rail of the stove and her dainty ankles peeping out from under her woolen skirt. But for the moment my appreciation of her charms was buried in amazement.
"Jean! What are you doing here?"
"Frank! You've come back! What is the matter?"
I threw off my mitts and rubbed the snow from my eyes while Jean took my cap and shook it and then stood by, eagerness and apprehension in her face. Then, when I was quite sure I was not in a dream or a mirage, "I guess I'm back on Twenty-two, am I?" I said, as one who, suddenly awakened from sleep, finds it impossible to recall his surroundings.
"You're on Twenty-two all right, but why did you come back? Not that I'm not glad to see you—you know I am, Frank, dear, always—but, why did you come back?"
"I guess it's because my time hasn't come," I answered, soberly. "I've heard of getting turned around in a storm, but I didn't know it could happen so easily. I suppose it was when I fell at the bottom of the gully."
"Well, you're here, and we're not going to take any more chances," said Jean, slipping her arms about my neck when I had told her. "We're going to have a little supper, and if Jack doesn't come you will stay until he does."