Yet there seemed nothing to do but keep on through the snow--as long as they could press forward. Tess was quite as plucky as he made believe to be. And they could haul Dot a little way at a time on the sled.
"But we're going on, Sammy, without getting anywhere," was Tess' very wise observation. "I think we ought to scrouge down under something until the snow stops."
"Just like the Babes in the Woods," wailed Dot, who knew all the nursery stories.
"Do be still!" cried her sister, quite tartly. "Sammy and I are going to find you a nice place to stop, Dot."
"Well, I hope it's a place with a fire in it, 'cause I'm cold," complained the smallest Corner House girl.
They all wished for a fire and shelter, but the older ones feared with reason that both comforts would not be immediately found. Sammy had not ventured forth this time prepared for all emergencies, as he had the time that Dot and he ran away to sail piratically the canal. He had no means of making a fire, even if he could find fuel.
Sammy was not without fertility of ideas, however; and these to a practical end. It must never be said of him, when the lost party got back to Red Deer Lodge, that he had not done his duty toward his companions.
He saw that the lower branches of some of the big spruce trees swept the snow--indeed, their ends were drifted over in places. Under those trees were shelters that would break both the wind and the snow. He said this to Tess, and she agreed.
"But we must keep a hole open to look out of," she said. "Otherwise we won't see the folks when they come hunting for us."
"Je-ru-sa-_lem_! If they come along this road while it's snowing like this lookin' for us, we'd never see 'em," muttered the boy.
But he kept this opinion to himself. Vigorous action claimed Sammy Pinkney almost immediately. While Dot "sniffled," as he called it, on the half-buried sled, Sammy started to dig under the boughs of a tree near at hand.
The wind seemed to be less boisterous here, but the snow was drifting rapidly. Back of the tree the steep hillside rose abruptly, somewhat sheltering the spot.
Sammy burrowed through the drift like a dog seeking a rabbit. He found a way between two branches of the spruce, over which the snow had packed hard at a previous fall. He had to break away fronds of the tough branches to open a hole into the dark interior.