“Aw, you go fish!  I could carry you a mile and not feel it.  Gee!  What’s this coming?”

Far down the snow-covered road they first heard shouts, then a cloud of snow-dust spurted into the air and hid whatever it was coming along the way toward them.  Bob immediately drew Betty and Ida to one side of the road and Tommy urged Bobby to follow.

Suddenly out of the cloud of flying snow appeared a horse’s head and plunging fore feet.  Then another and another!  They came along the road at a plunging, blundering pace, snorting and neighing.  Behind them were men, evidently trying to stop the runaways.

“Colts!” shouted Bob.  “Yearlings.  All young horses.  And just about wild.  Remember that bunch we saw in Oklahoma, Betty, that was being driven to the shipping station?  They are wild as bears.”

Ida Bellethorne did not seem to be much disturbed by the possibility of the horses doing them any harm.  She stood out before her companions and stared at the coming herd eagerly.  The black mare she loved so, however, was not in this bunch of runaways.

The young stock swept past the watching party from Mountain Camp, their pace rapid in spite of the hard going.  They kept to the snow-covered road, however.  Behind them came half a dozen men, wind-spent already and not a little angry.

“Why didn’t you stop ’em?” bawled one red-faced fellow.  “If they spread out in some open pasture we’ll be all day gathering them.”

“Easy to stop ’em, I guess,” returned Tommy.  “They’d have trampled us down.”

“Could stop a snowslide easier, I guess,” Bob suggested.  “But I tell you:  We’ll give you a hand collecting them.  How did they get away?”

“Went over the paddock fence like a flock of sheep.  Snow is so deep, you know,” said the red-faced man.  “Come on, you boys, if you will.  The girls can go on to the house and Mrs. Candace will let ’em warm up.  It’s only a little way.”

The “little way” proved to be a good two miles; but the three girls did not falter.  They saw the big farmhouse and the great barns and snow-filled paddocks a long way ahead.

“I’ll be glad of that ’warm’,” confessed Betty, as they turned in at the entrance to the lane.  “And maybe Mrs. Candace will give us a cup of tea.”

At that moment Bobby clutched her arm and pointed up the lane.  “See there!  He’ll fall!  Oh, look!”

Betty was as startled as her chum when she spied what Bobby had first seen.  A little, crooked man was crawling out above the hay door of the main barn upon a timber that was here thrust out from the framework and to which was attached a block and fall.  The rope had evidently fouled in the block and he was trying to detach it.

“That’s Hunchie Slattery!” gasped Betty, “What a chance he is taking!”

For everything was sheathed in ice from the effect of the rain and frost of the night before.  That timber was as slippery as glass.