ully as serious.
The provisions were dwindling, the seed-sacks shrinking fast, and,
estranged from Lounsbury, they had nowhere to ask credit but at the
Fort.

When Dallas spoke of it to her father, he chuckled. "Wal, we got Simon,
ain't we?" he said.

That same night, Marylyn put down her fork and stared across the table
at her sister. "Why, Dallas, you don't eat!" she complained.

Dallas laughed. "I don't work, honey," she answered.

The question of fuel entered next, and became a grave one. So far, the
weather had been fairly mild for the place and the season. Now, it took
a more rigorous turn. The bitter cold was intensified by a stiff wind.
Snow began to fall, and the wind, growing, drove the flakes level, so
that they cut the face like filings of steel. Charley's trips became
uncertain, then impossible. The work of getting out hay for the stock
was a desperate tax. It was so difficult that Dallas dared not spare a
straw for the fireplace, and Ben and Betty's manger had to be drawn upon
for wood. When this source of supply failed, the benches were sacrificed
one by one, the cupboard was torn down, and the bunk and part of the
table were split into kindling.

The family slept shoulder to shoulder before the hearth, with the
brave-coloured blankets of the partition for extra covering. Lancaster
and the younger girl stayed in bed all of the twenty-four hours. Dallas
got up only long enough to tend the animals and prepare food. But a day
came when she could not make her way to the lean-to, and when the warped
door could not be opened in the teeth of the raging storm. Toward noon,
she cooked some food, however. The seed sacks were empty; there was no
rice and no flour. While the blizzard howled without, and Simon and the
mules called pitifully for their fodder and drink, she broke up what was
left of the table. Over its blaze the last smitch of bacon went to
savour the last pint of beans.

After the meal Dallas read aloud. Lying down, she held her book in one
hand until her fingers were blue with cold, then changed to the other.
Father and sister drowsed, and she put the story aside to study over the
predicament in which she felt herself at fault. Counting on blizzards,
but knowing nothing of their duration, she had determined to say little
about their needs until those needs pressed. When, she knew, her father
would see their extremity. The extremity had come. Yet, willing or
unwilling, Lancaster was cut off from