Heading Sultan toward it, Ted rushed on through the stimulating air of a Northern winter, and soon came in sight of the chuck wagon, and several of the boys standing around a fire. As he dashed forward he raised the long yell, which was gleefully answered, and soon he was at the camp. This was where he and Stella had started from the night before. Turning his eyes back in the direction he had come, Ted could see the smoke rising from the chimney of the ranch house, although the house itself was hidden behind a swell in the surface of the prairie. Had he only known it, he might have driven the herd right up to the ranch house during the night. As it was, he saw now that he and Stella, with the carriage, had ridden for almost two hours in the night, traveling in a circle, and by the merest chance had stumbled upon the ranch house. "Hello, fellows!" he shouted as he rode up. "Where are the dogies?" "Oh, to blazes and gone!" exclaimed big Ben, who was trying to thaw out his boots at the fire. "Where?" asked Ted anxiously. "Away off yonder." Ben pointed disconsolately toward the south. "Are they all right?" "All right, nothing. They're up to their bellies in snow in a coulee, and won't stir. They're the sickest-looking lot of beef critters you ever saw. We've been working with them ever since daylight, then Bud sent us along to thaw out and get some chuck into us, and hurry back so that the other fellows could get limbered up some. Find the house?" "Yes, accidentally stumbled on to it. Bully place, and the womenfolks are comfortably settled." "Looks like it," grunted Ben, pointing to the north. Ted looked in that direction and saw a spotted pony leaping toward them, and above it a dash of scarlet. It was Stella, riding like the wind on Magpie. "Have any trouble with the critters in the night?" asked Ted. "Did we? Well, I should howl. After you got under way they began to drift before the wind. We fought them all night, and if we'd let them go they'd been plumb into Colorado by this time. I don't want any more such nights in mine." "That was only a starter, my friend. That was a picnic compared to what you may have to go up against before the daisies bloom again." "Chuck!" yelled McCall, beating on the bottom of a griddle with a big iron spoon. The fellows left the fire in a hurry and, squatting in the snow with a tin cup full of steaming coffee and a plate heaped with fried bacon and griddle cakes, were soon too busy to remember their weariness. Stella had ridden up, her cheeks glowing, and her eyes sparkling with the frost and the exercise. "Why didn't you wait for me?" she cried to Ted. "You're a mean thing. Thought you'd leave me behind, but here I am." She made a little face at Ted. "I thought you'd rather stay indoors to-day on account of the cold," stammered Ted.