Frances usually accompanied me to the outer door, where I tied my
snow-shoes and took a farewell unobserved by the father; but when I
opened the door, such a blast of wind and snow drove in, I instantly
clapped it shut again and began tying the racquets on inside.

"O Rufus!" exclaimed Frances, "you can't go back to Fort Douglas in that
storm!"

Then we both noticed for the first time that a hurricane of wind was
rocking the little house to its foundations.

"Did that spring up all of a sudden?" I cried. "I never saw a blizzard
do that before."

"I'm afraid, Rufus, we were not noticing."

"No, we were otherwise interested," said I, innocently enough; but she
laughed.

"You can't go," she declared.

"The wind will be on my back," I assured her. "I'll be all right," and I
went on lacing the snow-shoe thongs about my ankle.

The book of sermons shut with a snap and the father turned towards us.

"Let no one say any man left the Sutherland hearth on such a night! Put
by those senseless things," and he pointed to the snow-shoes.

"But those ladders," I interposed. "Let no one say when the enemy came
Rufus Gillespie was absent from his citadel!"

The wind roared round the house corners like a storm at sea; and the
father looked down at me with a strange, quizzical expression.

"Ye're a headstrong young man, Rufus Gillespie," said the hard-set
mouth. "Ye maun knock a hole in the head, or the wall! Will ye go?"

"Knock the hole in the wall," I laughed back. "Of course I go."

"Then, tak' the dogs," said he, with a sparkle of kindliness in the cold
eyes. So it came that I set out in the Sutherlands' dog-sled with a
supply of robes to defy biting frost.

And I needed them every one. Old settlers, describing winter storms,
have been accused of an imagination as expansive as the prairie; but I
affirm no man could exaggerate the fury of a blizzard on the unbroken
prairie. To one thing only may it be likened--a hurricane at sea. People
in lands boxed off at short compass by mountain ridges forget with what
violence a wind sweeping half a continent can disport itself. In the
boisterous roar of the gale, my shouts to the dogs were a feeble whisper
caught from my lips and lost in the shrieking wind. The fine snowy
particles were a powdered ice that drove through seams of clothing and
cut one's skin like a whip lash. Without the fringe of woods along the
river bank to guide me, it would have been madness to set out by d