"This will make the trails heavy going, won't it?"
"It looks to me," replied the other, "as though it would make all travel impossible. If this storm had struck a few days earlier, or had we been a few days later in getting here, the chances are that the delay would have been considerable."
"How much, do you suppose?" asked the boy.
The leader of the party shrugged his shoulders.
"If it should prove a heavy snowfall," he said, "and had it struck us on the Sushitna, it might have gone far to spoil the entire season's work. You see a snowfall of four or five inches on the level can be whipped up into drifts fifteen and twenty feet in height, not only hiding the trail, but making conditions through which the dogs cannot flounder until a crust is formed.
"Then you see, Doughty, it's getting late for a good snow-crust, and we might have had to wait down there until the break-up. Then, instead of going on down the Jack River as we shall be able to do now, we would have had to track our way up Indian Creek against all the force of the spring floods, portage across the pass with the ground in bad condition, and then find little water in the Jack River instead of reaching here comfortably by 'mushing.'"
"It's lucky then," said Roger, "that we're not later in getting here."
"It's not," objected Rivers. "It may be lucky that the storm didn't strike earlier, but it isn't luck that brought us to this place in so much shorter time than had been allotted. That wasn't luck, that was work. I've noticed, too, that luck and labor go together oftener than luck and loafing."
On reaching the tent they found everything snuggled down for winter quarters, and Roger was subjected to some mild chaffing over what Magee called his "one round bout with a gale," but the lad took it good-naturedly enough, knowing from previous experience that his turn might come. He promised himself, however, that before the trip was over he would notice some slight misadventure on the part of others which would enable him to return the compliment of banter.
But while Roger had been out when the snow started and had seen the dense clouds and felt the weight behind them, he was not prepared to see, the following morning, a sheet of snow several inches deep over the entire landscape. Other members of the party had been up during the night, but the boy had not wakened, and when, stepping outside the tent, his foot sank in soft snow halfway to his knee, his amaze was great. Twelve and a half inches of snow had fallen in the single night, and the bright May sun shining over the glittering expanse made necessary the snow glasses with which each member of the party was hastily equipped.