text: 9
  
  Grit led the way as the horses shoved their way through the 18-inch snow. He rode around the large drifts, some of them eight feet high. Fortunately, the snow had not yet developed much of a crust, and the horses blundered along, sometimes high-stepping, but all-in-all moving steadily forward. After an hour and a half of all-out effort, they could see the lump in the snow that was the home of the Knudsens.
  
  "Something's wrong," Paulie said.
  
  "Yeah, no smoke coming from the stovepipe," Grit said.
  
  As they rode up, Grit shouted, "Hello, the house! Anybody home?"
  
  They sat their horses and watched as skiffs of snow blew across the prairie in the silence of the frigid morning. Paulie looked at Grit and both men knew that something bad had happened to the Knudsen family.
  
  Paulie jumped down and ran to the front door of the house, which was drifted over with snow.
  
  "Let's see if there's a shovel with the mules," Grit said. They both moved back toward the sod stable. "Why didn't we think to bring shovels?"
  
  "We'll have to try and kick the snow aside with our boots," Paulie said as he began to shove the snow aside. After a few minutes, they managed to get one of the doors to the stable open and found the mules, weak and shaking from the cold with no food in their feed boxes.
  
  "Shove some oats in those feed boxes, Paulie, and we'll try to get in the front door of the house."
  
  Once he'd put out scoops of oats for the mules, Paulie grabbed a short-handled shovel and rushed to the front of the house to help Grit, who was shoveling away with a long-handled pointed shovel. In a few short minutes, they had cleared the snow and opened the front door.
  
  "Hello in here," Grit yelled. "Anybody home?"
  
  In the hush, Grit and Paulie heard a rustle from the corner before a tiny voice said, "Papa?"
  
  "Oh my God," Paulie said. "Astrid is the only one here." He rushed to the corner and there underneath two buffalo robes were little Astrid's eyes peeking out at Paulie.
  
  "Hello there, Astrid. Are you okay?" She shook her head. "I'll bet you're hungry, aren't you?"
  
  Astrid nodded her head, "Uh huh!"
  
  "Paulie, you take care of her," Grit said. "Get her something to eat and drink. I'm going to look around and see if I can find Leif and Inga."
  
  Grit walked out and gazed at the blinding snow across the prairie. He walked over to the outhouse and kicked the snow away from the door. He jerked open the door and found nothing. Not in the house, not in the stable, not anywhere around.
  
  He walked over and swung onto his horse and began to ride, fear mounting that he was going to find Leif and Inga frozen to death. Far off in the western quarter of the land, maybe a mile from the house, he encountered a lump in the snow, which could have been anything. When he got to it, he dismounted as anxiety and trepidation churned his gut. He knelt and pushed the snow away with his hand and saw the icy face of Inga Knudsen. Staring down at the visage, he tried to comprehend it. Why did she leave the house and her baby?
  
  Grit stood and looked across the prairie but could see nothing but the flat snowy plains. He mounted his horse once more and began to scout. He worked at it for more than an hour. Finally, about a half mile east of the house he saw a slight mound in the snow and feared he'd found Leif. He dismounted and knelt to push away the snow and found the Norwegian's body frozen stiff.
  
  He could only surmise that Leif had gone out for some reason, to the outhouse, to feed the animals or something, and when he hadn't returned, Inga had gone out to look for him, and they'd both lost their way and had no idea how to find the house in the blizzard. Grit's shoulders slumped. He could not dig a grave in the frozen soil, and now little Astrid was bereft of parents.
  
  Walking slowly back to the house and trailing his horse, he could see from the smoke that Paulie had a fire going in the heat stove. Before going inside, he gathered two large buckets of snow, which he set beside the stove.
  
  Paulie looked at him and asked, "You were gone a long time. Find anything?"
  
  "Yeah," Grit said quietly, "found their bodies."
  
  "But why?" Paulie asked plaintively.
  
  "I don't know," Grit said. "Maybe Leif went out in the blizzard and got lost, and she went after him and also got lost. It's all I can figure. Remember you said you couldn't see six feet in front of your face. I think they got confused and walked the wrong way until they were exhausted. "
  
  Turning to Astrid still cuddled in the buffalo robes, Paulie said, "She seems to be okay, but she'd eaten. I opened a can of peaches for her and fried some meat and potatoes. While she's been alone, she's been eating the cinnamon rolls that Colleen brought over, and until yesterday when it froze, she drank from a bucket of water her mother had brought into the house."
  
  Grit grabbed two of the blankets they'd brought over for the family earlier and said, "I'm going out and put these blankets on the mules. I think they've been without food for two or three days. I doubt they'll live. They're awful weak."
  
  "Maybe if we break trail with the horses, they can follow along," Paulie said.
  
  "I'm hoping so," Grit said. "Lemme know when that snow melts, and I'll start to water 'em. Before we head back, they'll need lots of water."