As a soldier springs from sleep when calls the bugle, Luck jumped out into the icy darkness of the room. With one jerk he had the door open and stood glorying in the wild gust of snow that broke over him like a wave. In his bare feet he stood there, and felt the snow beat in his face, and said never a word, since big emotions never quite reached the surface of Luck's manner. "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?"