“Day come quick, Wagalexa Conka!” The voice of Annie-Many-Ponies urged him from without, like the voice of Opportunity calling from the storm.

“All right.  You run now and have breakfast ready.  We come quick.”  He held the door open another half minute, and he heard Annie-Many-Ponies laugh as she fought her way back to the house through the blinding blizzard.  He saw a faint glow through the snow-whirl when she opened the kitchen door, and he shut out the storm with a certain vague reluctance, as though he half feared it might somehow escape into a warm, sunny morning and prove itself no more than a maddeningly vivid dream.

“Hey!  Wake up!” he shouted while he groped for a match and the lamp.  “Roll into your sourdoughs, you sons-uh-guns—­”

“Say, Applehead,” came a plaintive voice from Pink’s hunk, “make Luck turn over on the other side, can’t yuh?  Darn a man that talks in his sleep!”

“By cripes, Luck’s got to sleep in the hay loft—­er I will,” Big Medicine growled, making the boards of his bunk squeak with the flop of his disturbed body.

Then Luck found the lamp and struck a match, and it was seen that he was very wide awake, and that his face had the look of a man intent upon accomplishment.

The Native Son sat up in one of the top bunks and looked down at Luck with a queer solemnity in his eyes.  “What is this, amigo?” he asked with a stifled yawn.  “Another one of your Big Minutes?”

“Quien sabe?” Luck retorted, reaching for his clothes as his small ebullition subsided to a misleading composure.  “Storm’s here at last, and we’ll have to be moving.  Roll out and saddle your ridge-runners; Annie’s got breakfast all ready for us.”

“Aw, gwan!” grumbled Happy Jack from sheer force of habit, and made haste to hit the floor with his feet before Luck replied to that apparent doubt of his authority.

“Dress warm as you can, boys,” Luck advised curtly, lacing his own heavy buckskin moccasins over thick German socks, which formed his cold-weather footgear.  “She’s worse than that other one, if anything.”

“Mamma!” Weary murmured, in a tone of thanksgiving.  “She didn’t come any too soon, did she?”

Luck did not reply.  He pulled his hat down low over his forehead, opened the door and went out, and it was as though the wind and snow and darkness swallowed him bodily.  The horses must first be fed, and he fought his way to the stables, where Applehead’s precious hay was dwindling rapidly under Luck’s system of keeping mounts and a four-horse team up and ready for just such an emergency.  He labored through the darkness to the stable door, lighted the lantern which hung just inside, and went into the first stall.  The manger was full, and the feed-box still moist from the lapping tongue of the gray horse that stood there munching industriously.  Annie-Many-Ponies had evidently fed the horses before she called Luck, and he felt a warm glow of gratitude for her thoughtfulness.