"I've heard it in the Green Mountains," said Warner, "but not under such conditions as we have here. I'm glad I have so much company. I think it would give me the creeps to be in the cove alone, with that storm howling over my head."
"Not to mention Slade and Skelly hunting through the snowdrifts for you," said Pennington. "They'd take a good long look for you, George, knowing what a tremendous fellow you are, and then Dick and I would be compelled to take the trouble and danger of rescuing you."
"I hold you to that," said Warner. "You do hereby promise and solemnly pledge yourselves in case of my capture by Slade, Skelly or anybody else, to come at once through any hardship and danger to my rescue."
"We do," they said together, and they meant it.
Their situation was uncommon, and their pleasure in it deepened. The snow still fell, but the lean-tos, built with so much skill by soldiers and mountaineers, protected them, and the fires before them sank to great beds of gleaming coals that gave out a grateful warmth. Far overhead the wind still shrieked and howled, as if in anger because it could not get at them in the deep cleft. But for Dick all these shrieks and howls were transformed into a soothing song by his feeling of comfort, even of luxury. The cove was full of warmth and light and he basked in it.
Pennington and Warner fell asleep, but Dick lay a while in a happy, dreaming state. He felt as he looked up at the cloudy sky and driving snow that, after all, there was something wild in every man that no amount of civilization could drive out. An ordinary bed and an ordinary roof would be just as warm and better sheltered, but they seldom gave him the same sense of physical pleasure that he felt as he lay there with the storm driving by.
His dreamy state deepened, and with it the wilderness effect which the little valley, the high mountains around it and the raging winter made. His mind traveled far back once more and he easily imagined himself his great ancestor, Paul Cotter, sleeping in the woods with his comrades and hidden from Indian attack. While the feeling was still strong upon him he too fell asleep, and he did not awaken until it was time for him to take the watch with Pennington and Warner.
It was then about two o'clock in the morning, and the snow had ceased to fall, but it lay deep in all places not sheltered, while the wind had heaped it up many feet in all the gorges and ravines of the mountains. Dick thought he had never beheld a more majestic world. All the clouds were gone and hosts of stars glittered in a sky of brilliant blue. On every side of them rose the lofty peaks and ridges, clothed in gleaming white, the forests themselves a vast, white tracery. The air was cold but pure and stimulating. The wind had ceased to blow, but from far points came the faint swish of sliding snow.
Dick folded his blankets, laid them away carefully, put on his heavy overcoat and gloves, and was ready. Colonel Winchester maintained a heavy watch, knowing its need, fully fifty men, rifle on shoulder and pistol at belt, patrolling all the ways by which a foe could come.
Dick and his comrades were with a picket at the farther end of the valley, where the creek made its exit, rushing through a narrow and winding gorge. There was a level space on either side of the creek, but it was too narrow for horsemen, and, clogged as it was with snow, it looked dangerous now for those on foot too. Nevertheless, the picket kept a close watch. Dick and his friends were aware that guerrillas knew much of the craft and lore of the wilderness, else they could never have maintained themselves, and they did not cease for an instant to watch the watery pass.