“Us clim’ saddles, stick gedder an’ must get away!” shouted Tally, trying to be heard above the soughing of the wind, that was now blowing from behind the crag.
Even as the riders tried to get into the saddles and start after Tally, a chill filled the air. It crept into bones and marrow, and in a few minutes the full fury of the blizzard was felt. In less than five minutes after the first snow fell, everything was drifted under white blankets. The cold bit into human flesh like sharp points of steel, and it was certain that every one must get down from that altitude immediately or be frozen to death.
The Indians led the way, although they trusted their safety on these mountains entirely to the horses and their wonderful sense. The other riders tried to follow as closely as they could in the tracks made by the first two horses. Then as they descended further from the plateau, the storm abated and the temperature felt warmer, until they reached the place where dripping snow from all the tree branches and rocks thoroughly soaked the unfortunates.
The mountainside was cut up by ravines and gulches, or “draws” as they are called, made by erosion of mountain streams that came from the glacier on top of Flat Top.
From one of these draws the scouts could look down for miles to a place where it widened out through the velocity of the roaring waters and unearthed everything in its floods.
Here and there great pines had fallen across and formed natural bridges over the chasms. At other spots the roots or branches of a tree washed down, would catch in the débris of the sides of a draw, obstructing the way and holding up great masses of waste that accumulated rapidly about the twisted limbs, when the torrent washed everything against this comb, that caught the larger objects.
So the file of riders went carefully downward, on the watch for a favorable trail that might lead them to the valley. But every draw they found was so forbidding that they were repulsed from trying it. Some showed great rocks that might roll down at the slightest motion of the ground, and crush everything in their plunge. Even as they pondered the chance of going down one of these, the water caused by the melting snow loosened the grip of a great fragment of rock held up in the gorge, and down it crashed! Other draws displayed century-old snags, and down-timber that lay half-sunken in slimy ooze which trickled down from the mossy sides of the gully; these would suck in any horse or rider that was daring enough to try and go over them.
Finally, Tally came to a draw which was not nearly so forbidding as the others, but it was a very deep chasm, and sent up echoes of roaring water in its bottom.
“Wad yuh tink, Omney—do we try him?” asked Tally.
“Tally, it looks terrifying!” gasped Mrs. Vernon.