d 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?"

Luck did not reply. He pulled his hat down low over his forehead, opened
the door and went out, and it was as though the wind and snow and
darkness swallowed him bodily. The horses must first be fed, and he
fought his way to the stables, where Applehead's precious hay was
dwindling rapidly under Luck's system of keeping mounts and a four-horse
team up and ready for just such an emergency. He labored through the
darkness to the stable door, lighted the lantern which hung just inside,
and went into the first stall. The manger was full, and the feed-box
still moist from the lapping tongue of the gray horse that stood there
munching industriously. Annie-Many-Ponies had evidently fed the horses
before she called Luck, and he felt a warm glow of gratitude for her
thoughtfulness.

He stopped at the bunk-house to tell the boys that they