Killing antelopes, and various kinds of deer and elks, following the wild buffalo on the plains, hunting up the silent haunts of the turkeys, fishing and grouse shooting—all helped to make the time fly fast away, and the summer seemed to pass all too quickly by. Not that it was always fine weather in these vast solitudes. No, far from it. Out on the plains, more than once they were overtaken by terrible sandstorms, while often and often a thunderstorm broke over the mountains of such awful sublimity, that even Captain Blunt was forced to own he had never heard such sounds before, never witnessed such blinding lightning.
Anon a wind of hurricane force would arise suddenly and go tearing through the woods, breaking off branches and hurling them high in air, and snapping the largest trees off in their centres, or rending them up by the roots; and if this storm was accompanied, as it often was, by rains, then the torrents that came roaring down from the mountain sides, bringing boulders and broken wood with them, would have appalled the stoutest heart to look upon them.
Then came on the sweet, soft Indian summer, the woods arrayed in all the glorious tints of the autumn, the sunsets mysterious in their very beauty, the air soft and balmy and bracing.
It was on one of these delightful days that the whole party, with the exception of Leonard—who was busy curing bird-skins—set out for a hunt for wild sheep across the plains.
The Blizzard. A Race for Life.
Towards evening they were quietly returning after a successful day, and were still on the plains, when, with an alarming suddenness, the sun and sky became obscured, and a cold, cutting wind began to blow. Both the trapper and Indians knew what was coming. The buffalo meat was cast away, left on the plain to feed the wolves, and on they dashed to reach the shelter of the canon ere the blizzard came down on them in all its terrible and blinding force. It got rapidly darker, and the snow was driven and whirled around them with the force of a hurricane. Both Douglas and Blunt fell many times, and but for the Indians could never have reached the shelter. They got to the cañon at last, however, and by good luck into the very cave where Leonard had killed the bear. Meanwhile all was darkness, and storm, and chaos without. Here they were, and here they must remain till morning.
Indians.
But how fared it with Leonard? His work being finished, towards evening he took his gun, and accompanied by a dog set out to meet his friends. As usual with this student of nature, he was looking more at the ground than around him, till the quick, sharp ringing bark of his dog fell on his ear. Then he glanced upwards, and found himself face to face with Indians in their war-paint. They were Ojibbeways. On levelling his gun they retreated to a bush, and he made his way back towards the fort, a shower of arrows falling around him, and some piercing his clothes as he did so.
He speedily got up the drawbridge, and none too soon, for on came the savages.
But on came the blizzard. Down swept the storm, and the boldest Indian that ever trod could not face that fearful snow-gale.