The brief gale with which the storm had leaped down from its headquarters in the heights of the Sierra had wholly subsided now, or only reappeared in occasional momentary squalls. The snow continued falling steadily, nevertheless, and already the ground, tops of the bushes, and all the protruding rocks were white. The stars of course were blotted out, but there was a pale, unearthly luminosity in the air which showed that somewhere the moon was shining.
“How splendid a sight it would be,” thought the plucky young traveler as he pushed steadily on, “to be above this storm, and able to look down upon the wide sea of heaving, billowy snow-clouds, a sea of wan, soft vapor, gleaming in the moonlight here and there as rounded masses are rolled upward, and showing shadowy hollows or curving wrinkles, coming and going, forming and changing before one’s eyes.”
Len had no great difficulty in keeping upon the trail, though he often felt himself in very delicate places where a wrong step might mean a bad fall, if not death.
In the wooded district lying between the Panther Creek gorge and the village side of the mountain, he got bewildered once or twice, but by keeping his wits about him passed safely beyond the forest, and felt thereafter in no great danger of going astray. Yet he was not prepared for the way the storm had quickly disguised all the landmarks, so that he found the trail unexpectedly hard to follow.
This latter half of the journey was the strangest part of all. Now that he had got out of the gorge and past the woods upon the ridge, he could see abroad for the most part; but the whole wide and beautiful landscape with which he had grown familiar was so lost and transformed that it was hard to recognize its most familiar features. Where in the summer daylight, of that wonderfully crystal-clear daylight of the alpine air, he had been confronted by bold bluffs and clearly cut, prominent peaks, only the vaguest outlines of a few of the nearest headlands now appeared. Everything else was hidden under a veil of snowflakes. To his left, as he reached the opening, half-way down, which allowed the broadest view, a misty expanse took the place of a well-known rank of towering peaks; in front, an undefined, Titanic shadow against the sky showed dimly the wall of guardian cliffs enclosing the valley; while at the right, clusters of rugged and spruce-grown foot-hills were merged and invisible under the graceful arch of a mighty dome, faintly outlined in the tumult of the storm, which was wrapping its mantle so swiftly round every mountain.
In spite of his haste, and of the cold wind which hurled the powdered snow against his face and drove it into the crevices of his clothing, Lennox stood still here to gaze upon this shadowy picture of a new world, this ghostly Walpurgis Night, which formed the most impressive scene he had ever beheld. And as he gazed, there came faintly to his ear, from far up the mountain behind him, a long, shrill scream as of some one in deadly distress.
Len knew it was the cry of the mountain lion, but in that palely-lighted dance of the snow-spirits among these awful rocks, it might well have been taken for the last cry of some forlorn and freezing witch.
Shaking off these fancies and the snow together, our hero turned his steps downward, and an hour later aroused the astonished landlord and went to bed at the hotel, thoroughly tired, but safe and far ahead of his adversaries.