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Updated: June 7, 2025
Dan stepped over the dashboard, groped his way along the tongue between the wheel-horses and reached the leeway of a shadowy square. "It's the shed, Hillas. Help get the team in." The exhausted animals crowded into the narrow space without protest. "Find the guide-rope to the house, Dan?" "On the other side, toward the shack. Where's Smith?" "Here, by the shed."
Hadn't you better break toward it?" "Got to keep the track 'til we see light!" The wind tore the words from his mouth as it struck them in lashing fury. The leaders had disappeared in a wall of snow, but Dan's lash whistled forward in reminding authority. There was a moment's lull. "See it, Hillas?" "No, Dan." Tiger-like the storm leaped again, bandying them about in its paws like captive mice.
The horses swerved before the punishing blows, bunched, backed, tangled. Dan stood up shouting his orders of menacing appeal above the storm. Again a breathing space before the next deadly impact. As it came Hillas shouted, "I see it there, Dan! It's a red light. She's in trouble."
Hadn't you better break toward it?" "Got to keep the track 'til we see light!" The wind tore the words from his mouth as it struck them in lashing fury. The leaders had disappeared in a wall of snow but Dan's lash whistled forward in reminding authority. There was a moment's lull. "See it, Hillas?" "No, Dan." Tiger-like the storm leaped again, bandying them about in its paws like captive mice.
"Frontiersmen, same as us. You're living on what they did. We're getting this frontier ready for those who come after. Want our children to have a better chance than we had. Our reason's same as theirs. Hillas told you the truth. Country's all right if we had a railroad." "Humph!" With a contemptuous look across the desert. "Where's your freight, your grain, cattle "
There were three men in the sled; Dan, the mail-carrier, crusty, belligerently Western, the self-elected guardian of every one on his route; Hillas, a younger man, hardly more than a boy, living on his pre-emption claim near the upper reaches of the stage line; the third a stranger from that part of the country vaguely defined as "the East."
He slowly withdrew his right hand holding a parcel wrapped in brown paper. He tore a three-cornered flap in the cover, looked at the brightly coloured contents, replaced the flap and returned the parcel, his chin a little higher. Dan watched the northern sky-line restlessly. "It won't be snow. Look like a blizzard to you, Hillas?" The traveller sat up. "Blizzard?"
The stage-driver recovered first, pulled off his mittens, examined his fingers and felt quickly of nose, ears, and chin. He looked sharply at Hillas and nodded. Unceremoniously they stripped off the stranger's gloves; reached for a pan, opened the door, dipped it into the drift and plunged Smith's fingers down in the snow. "Your nose is white, too. Thaw it out."
"Dan, you blind old mole, can you see the headlight of the Overland Freight blazing and thundering down that draw over the Great Missouri and Eastern?" Dan stared. "I knew you couldn't!" Hillas thumped him with furry fist. "Dan," the wind might easily have drowned the unsteady voice, "I've told Mr. Smith about the coal for freight.
It's all I can do to stay here." Smith regarded him irritably. "Why should any sane man ever have chosen this frozen wilderness?" Hillas closed his eyes wearily. "We came in the spring." "I see!" The edged voice snapped, "Visionaries!" Hillas's eyes opened again, wide, and then the boy was looking beyond the man with the far-seeing eyes of the plainsman.
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