He was right; it was an awful night—more so than any of them had anticipated. After a hot supper they retired to their bunks to sleep, only to be aroused about midnight by the roar of the wind as it tore through the woods and along the gulch with the force of a hurricane. The snow was coming down "in chunks," as Randy put it, and mingled with it were tree branches, small brush, and dried tundra. In one corner of the cabin the wind had found a crack about six inches long and less than a sixteenth of an inch wide, and through this crack the snow had sifted over the entire floor.
"Jerusalem! the roof is coming down!" cried Earl, when they had been up a few minutes, and while his uncle was stuffing a piece of cloth in the crack mentioned. There was a great noise overhead as the hurricane tore away the top joint of the stovepipe. Through the opening poured a lot of snow, which, falling on the hot stove, sent up a cloud of steam. To stop the snow from coming in, Foster Portney climbed up on the top of the table and nailed a bit of a board over the hole.
"We can't have that stovepipe up there, that's certain," he said. "We'll have to stick it out of the side window. It won't look very elegant, but I reckon we're not keeping house on looks up here." And by their united efforts the stove was swung around in front of the little window, and the upper end of what was left of the pipe was twisted around and pointed outside, after one of the small window panes had been taken out. Around the pipe Mr. Portney fitted a square sheet of tin, obtained from an empty tomato can. Then the floor was cleared of snow and the fire started up afresh.
The hurricane, or blizzard, lasted until six o'clock in the morning, and during that time nobody thought of going to sleep again. The cabin shook and rocked, and had it not been for the shelter of the cliff would have gone to pieces. The snow kept piling higher and higher until it threatened to cut off the smokepipe again.
"Perhaps we'll have to swing the stove around to the front," said Foster Portney. "We can let the pipe out near the roof, and build a little hood over it, so that the snow from the cliff can blow right over into the gulch." And later on this was done.
"This will stop work in the gulch," said Randy. "It's too bad! What on earth are we going to do with ourselves from now until next spring?"
"We'll try to keep alive and well, Randy," returned Mr. Portney, seriously. "Remember, from now on comes the tug-of-war, as the old saying goes."
But work was not over, as Randy had surmised. To be sure, when the storm ceased at noon it was found the snow was nearly three feet deep on the level. But a day's labor sufficed to beat down a path to the bank in the gulch, and once again the fires were started and the work of getting the dirt to the sluice boxes resumed. The clearing of the storm had left it stinging cold, and all were glad enough to hustle lively in order to keep warm. They worked with their overcoats on and with their feet encased in several pairs of woollen socks, and even then spent much time around the fire, "thawing out," to use Randy's words.
The work in the bank, however, paid them well. Four days after the fall of snow, Foster Portney struck several rocks to one side of the rise and located another pocket of nuggets. They were all small fellows, the largest about the size of a hickory nut, but the nuggets numbered nearly half a hundred and caused a good deal of excitement.
"It's another fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars to our credit," said Mr. Portney. "And not only that, but this dirt is as rich as that taken from the pocket over yonder. We haven't struck a million, but we are doing remarkably well."