"Keep the wind on your right cheek--we're over the Sand Run now, I think, and on the long ridge, back of the White Woman. It can't be over two mile more.--Git along, boys. Whoa! What's the matter there?" The horses had stopped, plunging at something which they could not pass. "Good God!" cried Franklin, "whose fence is that? Are we at Buford's?" "No," said Sam, "this must be at old man Hancock's. He fenced across the old road, and we had to make a jog around his d----d broom-corn field. It's only a couple o' miles now to Buford's." "Shall I tear down the fence?" asked Franklin. "No, it's no use; it'd only let us in his field, an' maybe we couldn't hit the trail on the fur side. We got to follow the fence a way. May God everlastingly damn any man that'll fence up the free range!--Whoa, Jack! Whoa, Bill! Git out o' here! Git up!" They tried to parallel the fence, but the horses edged away from the wind continually, so that it was difficult to keep eye upon the infrequent posts of the meagre, straggling fence that this man had put upon the "public lands." "Hold on, Sam!" cried Franklin. "Let me out." "That's right, Cap," said Sam. "Git out an' go on ahead a way, then holler to me, so'st I kin come up to you. When we git around the corner we'll be all right." But when they got around the corner they were not all right. At such times the mind of man is thrown off its balance, so that it does strange and irregular things. Both these men had agreed a moment ago that the wind should be on the right; now they disagreed, one thinking that Hancock's house was to the left, the other to the right, their ideas as to the direction of the Buford ranch being equally at variance. The horses decided it, breaking once again down wind, and striking a low-headed, sullen trot, as though they would out-march the storm. And so the two argued, and so they rode, until at last there was a lurch and a crash, and they found themselves in rough going, the sled half overturned, with no fence, no house, no landmark of any sort visible, and the snow drifting thicker than before. They sprang out and righted the sled, but the horses doggedly pulled on, plunging down and down; and they followed, clinging to reins and sled as best they might. Either accident or the instinct of the animals had in some way taken them into rough, broken country, where they would find some shelter from the bitter level blast. They were soon at the bottom of a flat and narrow valley, and above them the wind roared and drove ever on a white blanket that sought to cover them in and under. "We've lost the trail, but we done the best we could," said Sam doggedly, going to the heads of the horses, which looked questioningly back at him, their heads drooping, their breath freezing upon their coats in spiculae of white. "Wait!" cried Franklin. "I know this hole! I've been here before. The team's come here for shelter--"