I looked back several times,
as long as I could see the building, which was for at
least another twenty minutes; but school did not close.
Still the man sat there, humped over, patiently waiting.
It is this circumstance, I believe, which fixed in my
memory the exact hour at which I reached the correction
line.
Beyond, on the first mile of the last road east there
was no possibility of going fast. This piece was blown
in badly. There was, however, always a trail over this
mile-long drift. The school, of course, had something to
do with that. But when you drive four feet above the
ground, with nothing but uncertain drifts on both sides
of the trail, you want to be chary of speeding your horses
along. One wrong step, and a horse might wallow in snow
up to his belly, and you would lose more time than you
could make up for in an hour's breathless career. A horse
is afraid, too, of trotting there, and it takes a great
deal of urging to make him do it.
So we lost a little time here; but when a mile or so
farther on we reached the bush, we made up for it. This
last run of five or six miles along the correction line
consisted of one single, soft, smooth bed of snow.
Pages:
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213