reet market.

We struggled through sharp wintry squalls to the stage line with the
laden sacks of mail, and realized that when the winter really set in we
would never be able to make it. So Dave Dykstra was appointed
mail-carrier. He was a homesteader who taught the McClure school that
winter, a slim, round-shouldered chap, rather frail in physique. Dave
would never set the world on fire, but he would keep it going around
regularly. Blizzard, rain or sun, he came to the post office every
morning those short winter days before it was light. At night Ida Mary,
as postmistress, would lock the mail sack and carry it into the cabin.
In the morning we would hear Dave's sharp-shod horse striking the
hard-frozen ground, and one of us would leap to the icy floor, wrap up
in a heavy blanket, stick our feet into sheep-lined moccasins (some
nights we slept in them), open the door a foot or so, and hold out the
mail bag. Dave would grab it on the run.

One who has never tried it has no idea what that feat meant in a shell
of a hut with the temperature ten or twenty degrees below zero, freezing
one's breath in the performance. We used to hope Dave would oversleep,
or that his coffee would fail to boil so that we might have a few more
moments to sleep.

The Indians were always underfoot. The great cold did not keep them
away. Men sauntered around, trading, loafing. Women sat on the floor,
papooses on their backs, beadwork in hand. Our trade was extended to
Indian shawls, blankets, moccasins and furs, for which the post found
ready and profitable markets. Ida Mary became an adept at Indian
trading. By that time we had a smattering of the Sioux language,
although we were never really expert at it. It did not require much to
trade with the Indians.

Often they turned their horses loose, built campfires and spent the day.
They rolled a prairie dog in the wet earth, roasted it in the fire, and
invited us to eat. They brought us _shanka_, dog meat. There was a time
when we actually swallowed it because we were afraid to refuse. But now
we shook our heads.

It was wood-hauling season, and women came sitting flat on the back end
of loads. Among the Indian women were a few with primitive intelligence
and wisdom. Others were morose and taciturn.

Even during the enforced lull of the deep winter there seemed to be much
to do, and the routine duties of the post office and _The Wand_ appeared
to require most of our time. The opportunity to