ad that
was tricky--and try to catch him loose on the prairie with a bucket of
oats as a coaxer! There were times on the trail when one could not see
him moving except at close range. When he took such a spell, one of us
drove while the other walked alongside, "persuading" him to keep ahead
of the buggy. As there wasn't a tree or shrub in that part of the
country, we were reduced to waving a hat in front of him like a cowboy
taunting a bucking horse in the ring, or waving a dry cornstalk at
him--but all with the same effect.

A little brown-and-white spotted animal with long brown mane and tail,
he was the most noticeable as well as notorious piece of horseflesh in
that region, and according to a few who "knew him when--," he had a
past; a reputation as an outlaw and a dislike for the white man as a
result of his part in an Indian skirmish against a band of white
settlers. Now, like the Indian, he had become subdued with age and
conquest; but like the Indian, too, stubborn and resentful. From him we
learned much about how to deal with the Indian.

One evening when I had stopped at the school for Ida Mary we saw a
snowstorm coming like a white smoke. We were only half a mile from home,
but in blizzards, we had been warned, one can easily become lost within
a few feet of his own door. Many plainsmen have walked all night in a
circle trying to find a familiar shack or barn and perished within a few
yards of shelter. Even in daytime one did not dare, in some of those
blinding furies, to go from house to barn without holding on to a rope
or clothesline kept stretched from one building to the other for that
purpose.

We could not take a chance on Pinto's slow pace, so we got out of the
buggy and ran as fast as we could, leaving him to follow. We were barely
inside when the storm broke over the shack. As the snow came in blinding
sheets we became anxious about the pony, but there was nothing we could
do that night. We opened the door a crack and looked out. We could not
see our hands before us, and the howling of the wind and beating of snow
against the shack made it impossible to hear any other sound.

Cowering in that tiny shack, where thin building-paper took the place of
plaster, the wind screaming across the plains, hurling the snow against
that frail protection, defenseless against the elemental fury of the
storm, was like drifting in a small boat at sea, tossed and buffeted by
waves, each one threatening to engulf y