CHAPTER XXVIII. THE KING OF THE BIG-HORNS.
"This here's the last day's huntin' as you'll get for quite a while, and don't you forget it."
The speaker was Rampike, and he spoke with the emphasis of conviction. Ned Corbett, who stood beside him at the door of the dug-out, seemed inclined to argue with him, but Rampike did not wait to hear what he had to say.
"You think," said the old man, "as it ain't partickler cold jest because the air is dry and there's plenty of sunshine. Wait until you get out of the sunshine and you'll know more about it. Why, look there at the old river—she don't close up for nothing."
Ned looked in the direction indicated by Rampike's outstretched hand, and noticed for the first time that on the yellow flood of the Frazer a strange white scum had risen, which seemed to gather as it drifted by so as to almost impede the river's progress in places. This was the beginning of the ice.
"There'll be a bridge to-morrow, I shouldn't wonder, as you mout drive cattle over. If you want any more huntin' you'd better get it to-day. We could do with another sheep or two." And so saying the old man went back into the cabin.
The air of British Columbia is so dry and the sunlight so bright, that until the shadows begin to fall or the wind begins to blow, it never occurs to anybody that the thermometer may have fallen to "ten below." To Ned Corbett, as he shouldered his rifle and climbed the first hill, it seemed that the weather was about what you would expect in England in October, but he changed his mind after he had been for five minutes in a narrow gully with a northern aspect into which no sunlight came. There indeed he began to wonder why, in spite of his toil, he earned no healthy glow such as exercise should bring, and even when he emerged upon the top of the bench he was almost afraid to open his mouth lest the bitter cold should creep down his throat and freeze his vitals.
But there was that upon the glittering snow-covered table-land which diverted his attention from the cold. At first he thought that the herds of some distant rancher had wandered to the Frazer, and were now feeding before him in little mobs and bunches of from ten to twenty head. There were so many beasts in sight, and in the wonderfully clear atmosphere they looked so large, their dark coats contrasting with the snow upon which they stood, that it never occurred to Ned that they were sheep.