So far, the cutter and team of which I had robbed Buck Gowdy, had been a
benefit to us. They gave us transportation, and the warm sleigh in which
to nest down. I began to wonder, now, as it began to grow dark, as the
tempest greatened, as my horses disappeared in the smother, and as the
frost began to penetrate to our bodies, whether I should not have done
better to have stayed in the schoolhouse, and burned up the partitions
for fuel; but the thought came too late; though it troubled me much. Two
or three times, one of the mares fell in the drifts, and nothing but the
courage bred into them in the blue-grass fields of Kentucky saved us
from stalling out in that fearful moving flood of wind and frost and
snow. Two or three times we narrowly escaped being thrown out into it by
the overturn of the sleigh; and then I foresaw a struggle, in which
there would be no hope; for in a storm in which a strong man is
helpless, how could he expect to come out safe with a weak girl on
his hands?
At last, the inevitable happened: the off mare dove into a great drift;
the nigh one pulled on: and they came to a staggering halt, one of them
was kept from falling partly by her own efforts, and partly by the snow
about her legs against which she braced herself. As they stood there,
they turned their heads and looked back as if to say that so far as they
were concerned, the fight was over. They had done all they could.
I sat a moment thinking.
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