One piece of good news I received before leaving. While
I was getting into my robes and the hostler hooked up,
he told me that no fewer than twenty-two teams had that
very morning come in with cordwood from the northern
correction line. They had made a farm halfways to town
by nightfall of the day before; the rest they had gone
that very day. So there would be an unmistakable trail
all the way, and there was no need to worry over the
snow.
I walked the horses for a while; then, when we were
swinging round the turn to the north, on that long,
twenty-mile grade, I speeded them up. The trail was good:
that just about summarizes what I remember of the road.
All details were submerged in one now, and that one was
speed. The horses, which were in prime condition, gave
me their best. Sometimes we went over long stretches that
were sandy under that inch or so of new snow--with sand
blown over the older drifts from the fields--stretches
where under ordinary circumstances I should have walked
my horses--at a gallop. Once or twice we crossed bad
drifts with deep holes in them, made by horses that were
being wintered outside and that had broken in before the
snow had hardened down sufficiently to carry them.
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