A Little Norsk | Page 2

snow that blew in the open
door, his great-coat and cap allowing only a glimpse of his cheeks.
The sky was bright overhead, but low down around the horizon it
looked wild. The air was frightfully cold--far below zero--and the wind
had been blowing almost every day for a week, and was still strong.
The snow was sliding fitfully along the sod with a stealthy, menacing
motion, and far off in the west and north a dense, shining cloud of frost
was hanging.
The plain was almost as lone and level and bare as a polar ocean, where
death and silence reign undisputedly. There was not a tree in sight, the
grass was mainly burned, or buried by the snow, and the little shanties
of the three or four settlers could hardly be said to be in sight, half sunk,
as they were, in drifts. A large white owl seated on a section stake was
the only living thing to be seen.
The boom had not yet struck Buster County. Indeed, it did not seem to
Bert Gearheart at this moment that it would ever strike Buster County.
It was as cold, dreary, and unprofitable an outlook as a man could face
and not go utterly mad. If any of these pioneers could have forecast the
winter, they would not have dared to pass it on the plains.
Bert watched his partner as he strode rapidly across the prairie, now
lost to sight as a racing troop of snow-waves, running shoulder-high,
shot between, now reappearing as the wind lulled.
"This is gittin' pretty monotonous, to tell the honest truth," he muttered
as he turned from the little window. "If that railroad don't show up by
March, in some shape or other, I'm goin' to give it up. Gittin' free land
like this is a little too costly for me. I'll go back to Wiscons', an' rent
land on shares."
Bert was a younger-looking man than his bachelor companion; perhaps

because his face was clean-shaven and his frame much slighter. He was
a silent, moody young fellow, hard to get along with, though of great
good heart. Anson Wood succeeded in winning and holding his love
even through the trials of masculine housekeeping. As Bert kept on
with the dinner, he went often to the little window facing the east and
looked out, each time thawing a hole in the frost on the window-panes.
The wind was rising again, and the night promised to be wild, as the
two preceding nights had been. As he moved back and forth setting out
their scanty meal, he was thinking of the old life back in Wisconsin in
the deeps of the little coulée; of the sleigh-rides with the boys and girls;
of the Christmas doings; of the damp, thick-falling snow among the
pines, where the wind had no terrors; of musical bells on swift horses in
the fragrant deeps, where the snowflakes fell like caresses through the
tossing branches of the trees.
By the side of such a life the plain, with its sliding snow and ferocious
wind, was appalling--a treeless expanse and a racing-ground for snow
and wind. The man's mood grew darker while he mused. He served the
meal on the rude box which took the place of table, and still his
companion did not come. Ho looked at his watch. It was nearly one
o'clock, and yet there was no sign of the sturdy figure of Anson.
The house of the poor Norwegian was about two miles away, and out
of sight, being built in a gully; but now the eye could distinguish a
house only when less than a mile away. A man could not at times be
seen at a distance of ten rods, though occasional lulls in the wind
permitted Bert to see nearly to the "First Moccasin."
"He may be in the swale," muttered the watcher as he stood with his
eye to the loop-hole. But the next time he looked the plain was as wild
and lone as before, save under the rising blast the snow was beginning
to ramp and race across the level sod till it looked at times like a sea
running white with foam and misty with spray.
At two o'clock he said: "Well, I s'pose Ans has concluded to stay over
there to dinner, though what the Norsk can offer as inducement I swear
I don't know. I'll eat, anyhow; he can have what's left."

He sat down to his lonely meal, and ate slowly, getting up two or three
times from his candle-box in a growing anxiety for Ans, using the
heated poker now to clear a spot on the pane. He expressed his growing
apprehension, manlike, by getting angry.
"I don't see what the darn fool means by stayin' so