Dan watched the northern sky-line restlessly.  “It won’t be snow.  Look like a blizzard to you, Hillas?”

The traveller sat up.  “Blizzard?”

“Yes,” Dan drawled in willing contribution to his uneasiness, “the real Dakota article where blizzards are made.  None of your eastern imitations, but a ninety-mile wind that whets slivers of ice off the frozen drifts all the way down from the North Pole.  Only one good thing about a blizzard—­it’s over in a hurry.  You get to shelter or you freeze to death.”

A gust of wind flung a powder of snow stingingly against their faces.  The traveller withdrew his head turtlewise within the handsome collar in final condemnation.  “No man in his senses would ever have deliberately come here to live.”

Dan turned.  “Wouldn’t, eh?”

“No.”

“You’re American?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I was born here.  It’s my country.”

“Ever read about your Pilgrim Fathers?”

“Why, of course.”

“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—­”

“West-bound freight, coal, feed, seed-grain, work, and more neighbours.”

“One-sided bargain.  Road that hauls empties one way doesn’t pay.  No company would risk a line through here.”

The angles of Dan’s jaw showed white.  “Maybe.  Ever get a chance to pay your debt to those Pilgrim pioneers?  Ever take it?  Think the stock was worth saving?”

He lifted his whip-handle toward a pin-point of light across the stretch of snow.  “Donovan lives over there and Mis’ Donovan.  We call them ’old folks’ now; their hair has turned white as these drifts in two years.  All they’ve got is here.  He’s a real farmer and a lot of help to the country, but they won’t last long like this.”

Dan swung his arm toward a glimmer nor’ by nor’east.  “Mis’ Clark lives there, a mile back from the stage road.  Clark’s down in Yankton earning money to keep them going.  She’s alone with her baby holding down the claim.”  Dan’s arm sagged.  “We’ve had women go crazy out here.”

The whip-stock followed the empty horizon half round the compass to a lighted red square not more than two miles away.  “Mis’ Carson died in the spring.  Carson stayed until he was too poor to get away.  There’s three children—­oldest’s Katy, just eleven.”  Dan’s words failed, but his eyes told.  “Somebody will brag of them as ancestors some day.  They’ll deserve it if they live through this.”

Dan’s jaw squared as he leveled his whip-handle straight at the traveller.  “I’ve answered your questions, now you answer mine!  We know your opinion of the country—­you’re not travelling for pleasure or your health.  What are you here for?”