Sure enough, Big Thompson returned just before noon (it was a little after daylight when he took leave of his employer), covered with snow from head to foot, and as nearly exhausted as a man like him could be.
The snow was so deep and soft that he had gone scarcely five miles up the gorge before he was glad to turn back.
It was a fortunate thing for him that he did so, for on the very next day the weather suddenly changed, and a “blizzard,” such as Big Thompson himself had not often seen, and which continued for thirty-six hours, roared through the hills.
If the guide had gone on toward the fort the storm would have overtaken him on the prairie; and Oscar might have been left to pass the rest of the winter alone, and to find his own way out of the hills in the spring.
On the fourth day the skies cleared, and the guide, who had made a pair of snow shoes, was ready to set out again as soon as he saw indications of settled weather.
The snow in the valley was too deep for hunting on horseback, and Oscar and his companion were obliged to go on foot.
The first day on which the weather permitted them to go out of doors they spent in making the rounds of their traps, one going up and the other down the valley, and the next they passed in company, hunting for nothing in particular, but ready to knock over any animal that came in their way, provided he was worth a charge of powder and lead.
It was on the afternoon of this day that our hero saw a sight he did not soon forget.
He and his companion, after taking lunch on the bank of the brook, set out to beat a thick grove in the upper end of the valley, in which the herds of elk always sought concealment when pressed by the hunters.
Oscar had been instructed to follow the stream, which here ran through a wide but shallow gorge, while the guide made a circuit of a mile or two, crossed the gorge at the upper edge of the timbers, and came down on the other side, hoping to drive something within reach of the boy’s breech loader.