Bert watched his partner as he strode rapidly across the prairie, now lost to sight as a racing troop of snow-waves, running shoulder-high, shot between, now reappearing as the wind lulled. "This is gittin' pretty monotonous, to tell the honest truth," he muttered as he turned from the little window. "If that railroad don't show up by March, in some shape or other, I'm goin' to give it up. Gittin' free land like this is a little too costly for me. I'll go back to Wiscons', an' rent land on shares." Bert was a younger-looking man than his bachelor companion; perhaps because his face was clean-shaven and his frame much slighter. He was a silent, moody young fellow, hard to get along with, though of great good heart. Anson Wood succeeded in winning and holding his love even through the trials of masculine housekeeping. As Bert kept on with the dinner, he went often to the little window facing the east and looked out, each time thawing a hole in the frost on the window-panes. The wind was rising again, and the night promised to be wild, as the two preceding nights had been. As he moved back and forth setting out their scanty meal, he was thinking of the old life back in Wisconsin in the deeps of the little coulée; of the sleigh-rides with the boys and girls; of the Christmas doings; of the damp, thick-falling snow among the pines, where the wind had no terrors; of musical bells on swift horses in the fragrant deeps, where the snowflakes fell like caresses through the tossing branches of the trees. By the side of such a life the plain, with its sliding snow and ferocious wind, was appalling--a treeless expanse and a racing-ground for snow and wind. The man's mood grew darker while he mused. He served the meal on the rude box which took the place of table, and still his companion did not come. He looked at his watch. It was nearly one o'clock, and yet there was no sign of the sturdy figure of Anson. The house of the poor Norwegian was about two miles away, and out of sight, being built in a gully; but now the eye could distinguish a house only when less than a mile away. A man could not at times be seen at a distance of ten rods, though occasional lulls in the wind permitted Bert to see nearly to the "First Moccasin." "He may be in the swale," muttered the watcher as he stood with his eye to the loop-hole. But the next time he looked the plain was as wild and lone as before, save under the rising blast the snow was beginning to ramp and race across the level sod till it looked at times like a sea running white with foam and misty with spray. At two o'clock he said: "Well, I s'pose Ans has concluded to stay over there to dinner, though what the Norsk can offer as inducement I swear I don't know. I'll eat, anyhow; he can have what's left."