A BLIZZARD A bitter wind searched the poplar bluff where George and his hired man, Grierson, were cutting fuel.

Except in the river valleys, trees of any size are scarce on the prairie, but the slender trunks and leafless branches were closely massed and afforded a little shelter.

Outside on the open waste, the cold was almost too severe to face, and George once or twice glanced anxiously across the snowy levels, looking for some sign of Edgar, who should have joined them with the team and sledge.
It was, however, difficult to see far, because a gray dimness narrowed in the horizon.

George stood, dressed in snow-flecked furs, in the center of a little clearing strewn with rows of fallen trunks from which he was hewing off the branches.

The work was hard; his whole body strained with each stroke of the heavy ax, but it failed to keep him warm, and the wind was growing more bitter with the approach of night.
"I don't know what can be keeping West," he said after a while.