Camp Venture: A Story of the Virginia Mountains

by George Cary Eggleston

"No, certainly not," answered the Doctor. "We're caught in a snowdrift, that's all. You see with the fearful gale that has been blowing all night the snow has drifted greatly and now that I think of it, our house is peculiarly well situated to be caught in a drift."

"How so, Doctor?"

"Why, the wind has been from the north, northwest, or very nearly north. Our house stands on a plateau on the northerly side of the mountain. Less than a hundred feet south of it, rises a high cliff. That, of course, catches all the snow that comes on a north, northwest wind. Then again the house itself is an obstruction, catching and holding all the snow that strikes it. The snow storm has been a tremendous one, probably a three-foot fall, and we are caught under all of it that ought to have been scattered over several miles of mountainside."

"Let's postpone the explanations, fellows," broke in Tom, who always devoted himself to the practical, "and give our attention for the present to the problem of What to Do Now. That is after all the thing to think about in every case of emergency, and this is a case of emergency if ever there was one."

"How do you mean, Tom?" asked Jim Chenowith.

"Why, in the first place, we have less than a quarter of a cord of wood in the cabin, and, after such a storm, it is likely to turn very cold. So we must first of all dig a passageway to one of our wood piles, or else we must freeze to death. We can't get to the spring, of course, and if we did, it would be frozen up. But we can get all the water we need by melting snow. The worst of our problems is that of a food supply."

"That's so," said Jack, in something like consternation. "We haven't a pound of fresh meat on hand and I remember that you, Tom, intended to go out with your gun to-day to get some. We have eaten up all our hams and bacon, and we haven't anything left except the coffee, two small pieces of salt pork, some corn meal and the beans."

"That means," said Tom, "that we've got to dig our way out of here in a hurry, and we haven't a shovel in the camp."

"No," said Jack, "but we've got a pile of leftover clapboards over there in the corner, and we can soon make some snow shovels. Let's get to work at that."

After a breakfast on corn pones—for the pork must be saved for use with the beans—the boys set to work to manufacture rude shovels that would do as implements with which to handle snow. For handles they used such round sticks as they found in their meagre supply of fire wood.