I looked about, and saw, between gusts, that we
were almost against a huge straw-pile, where some neighbor had threshed
a setting of wheat. This might mean that we were close to a house, or it
might not. I handed the lines to Virginia under the robes, got out, and
struggled forward to look at my team. Their bloodshot eyes and quivering
flanks told me that they could help us no longer; so I unhitched them,
so as to keep the cutter as a possible shelter, and turned them loose.
They floundered off into the drifts, and left us alone. Cuffed and
mauled by the storm, I made a circuit of the stack, and stumbled over
the tumbling-rod of the threshing-machine, which was still standing
where it had been used. Leaning against the wheel was a shovel, carried
for use in setting the separator. This I took with me, with some notion
of building a snow-house for us; for I somehow felt that if there was
any hope for us, it lay in the shelter of that straw. As I passed the
side of the stack, just where the ground was scraped bare by the wind, I
saw what seemed to be a hole under and into the great loose pile of dry
straw. It looked exactly like one of those burrows which the children
used to make in play in such places.
Virginia was safe for the moment, sitting covered up snugly with her
hands warmed by the little dog; but the cold was beginning to penetrate
the robes. I could leave her for the moment while I investigated the
burrow with the shovel.
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