y cans of lard and molasses, and propped it with
their weight. We watched anxiously for a time, but the heavy boxes
seemed to provide sufficient support. There were no further signs of the
wall collapsing.

By evening the storm had gripped the plains like a demon of wrath. We
had been rather enjoying this seclusion--no Indians. And--we chuckled
like a victim of persecution whose persecutor had been overtaken--there
would be no mail carrier in the morning. No mail to be taken care of.
Exultant, we tried to figure how many days Dave would be blockaded and
we would be spared that morning penance of handing the mail sack out
from the icy shack.

On the second morning the storm was still raging, with the snow two feet
deep between the store and the barn. The west wall still held, and
between glances at it we stoked the monkey-stove. Stoked it while the
coal dwindled. When the last chunk had been swallowed up we hunted
around for something else to burn. Newspapers, cartons, wooden
boxes--everything we could find went into the voracious maw of the
stove.

We tended it as religiously as priestesses at an altar, or as primitive
men building up a fire to keep off wild animals. Only under such
conditions does one fully experience that elemental worship of fire. It
literally meant life to us.

Searching for something else we could burn, something else to keep that
flame going even a little while longer, that pleasant glow which had
come with our sense of protection gradually disappeared. The blizzard
was not merely a gigantic spectacle put on by nature for our
entertainment, it was a menace, to be kept at bay only by constant
alertness on our part.

Now there was nothing left in the store that we could burn!

"The Indians brought some fence posts," Ida Mary recalled. "They are
back of the barn where they unloaded them. We'll have to get them."

We put on our coats, pulled fur caps close down around our faces and
ears, wrapped gunny sacks around our feet and legs over high arctics to
serve as snowshoes. It took our combined strength to push the door open
against the storm. Before we could close it behind us, snow had swept
into the store and was making little mounds. Clinging to each other we
plowed our way through the loose snow to the fence posts and dragged in
a few, making two trips, breaking a trail with them as we went. The
wind-blown snow cut our faces like points of steel. Hearing the restless
whinny of the horses,