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.”

Dan turned toward the stranger’s voice.

“We’re going ’round to the blizzard-line tied from shed to shack.  Take hold of it and don’t let go.  If you do you’ll freeze before we can find you.  When the wind comes, turn your back and wait.  Go on when it dies down and never let go the rope.  Ready?  The wind’s dropped.  Here, Hillas, next to me.”

Three blurs hugged the sod walls around to the north-east corner.  The forward shadow reached upward to a swaying rope, lifted the hand of the second who guided the third.

“Hang on to my belt, too, Hillas.  Ready—­Smith?  Got the rope?”

They crawled forward, three barely visible figures, six, eight, ten steps.  With a shriek the wind tore at them, beat the breath from their bodies, cut them with stinging needle-points and threw them aside.  Dan reached back to make sure of Hillas who fumbled through the darkness for the stranger.

Slowly they struggled ahead, the cold growing more intense; two steps, four, and the mounting fury of the blizzard reached its zenith.  The blurs swayed like battered leaves on a vine that the wind tore in two at last and flung the living beings wide.  Dan, clinging to the broken rope, rolled over and found Hillas with the frayed end of the line in his hand, reaching about through the black drifts for the stranger.  Dan crept closer, his mouth at Hillas’s ear, shouting, “Quick!  Right behind me if we’re to live through it!”

The next moment Hillas let go the rope.  Dan reached madly.  “Boy, you can’t find him—­it’ll only be two instead of one!  Hillas!  Hillas!”

The storm screamed louder than the plainsman and began heaping the snow over three obstructions in its path, two that groped slowly and one that lay still.  Dan fumbled at his belt, unfastened it, slipped the rope through the buckle, knotted it and crept its full length back toward the boy.  A snow-covered something moved forward guiding another, one arm groping in blind search, reached and touched the man clinging to the belt.

Beaten and buffeted by the ceaseless fury that no longer gave quarter, they slowly fought their way hand-over-hand along the rope, Dan now crawling last.  After a frozen eternity they reached the end of the line fastened man-high against a second haven of wall.  Hillas pushed open the unlocked door, the three men staggered in and fell panting against the side of the room.

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.