to give trouble. Not that I minded my part of it, but
I did not mean to kill my horses. I had sized them up in their behaviour
towards snow. Peter, as I had expected, was excitable. It was hard to
recognize in him just now, as he walked quietly along, the uproar of
playing muscle and rearing limbs that he had been when we first struck
the snow. That was well and good for a short, supreme effort; but not
even for Peter would it do in the long, endless drifts which I had to
expect. Dan was quieter, but he did not have Peter's staying power, in
fact, he was not really a horse for the road. Strange, in spite of his
usual keenness on the level road, he seemed to show more snow sense in
the drift. This was to be amply confirmed in the future. Whenever an
accident happened, it was Peter's fault. As you will see if you read on,
Dan once lay quiet when Peter stood right on top of him.

On this road north I found the same "promontories" that had been such
a feature of the first one, flung across from the northwest to the
southeast. Since the clumps of shrubs to the left were larger here, and
more numerous, too, the drifts occasionally also were larger and higher;
but not one of them was such that the horses could not clear it with one
or two leaps. The sun was climbing, the air was winter-clear and still.
None of the farms which I passed showed the slightest sign of life.
I had wrapped up again and sat in comparative comfort and at ease,
enjoying the clear sparkle and glitter of the virgin snow. It was not
till considerably later that the real significance of the landscape
dawned upon my consciousness. Still there was even now in my thoughts a
speculative undertone. Subconsciously I wondered what might be ahead of
me.

We made Bell's corner in good time. The mile to the west proved easy.
There were drifts, it is true, and the going was heavy, but at no place
did the snow for any length of time reach higher than the horses' hocks.
We turned to the north again, and here, for a while, the road was very
good indeed; the underbrush to the left, on those expanses of wild
land, had fettered, as it were, the feet of the wind. The snow was held
everywhere, and very little of it had drifted. Only one spot I remember
where a clump of Russian willow close to the trail had offered shelter
enough to allow the wind to fill in the narrow road-gap to a depth of
maybe eight or nine feet; but here it was easy to go around to the west.
Without any