“No! No!” shouted the guide above the howling of the wind. “No do that; get um legs all stiffened up. Bye an’ bye can’t move. Mebbe we better go slower, but no sit down.”
“I’ll try to go on,” declared Sandy bravely, “but you fellows better stop now and then to give me a chance to breathe. I tell you I’m all in.”
And so they went on, bracing themselves against the fury of the wind, shuffling forward through mounting drifts, in places piled waist high, as if to block their progress. On several occasions, so violent was the storm that it was impossible to see anything. Once, fighting their way through a smothering fog of white, Toma shouted out a warning.
They were traveling down a sharp incline at the time, attempting to reach a river bottom, where towering cliffs would protect them somewhat from the force of the wind. Toma shouted to them. His keen ears had detected a sound other than that made by the blizzard. It was a different sound, and he had heard it before—a queer rumbling, followed by a mighty roar.
With a quickness born of desperation, the guide seized Dick and Sandy by the arms and pulled them out of the path of an almost certain death.
As the boys stood trembling and appalled at the deafening tumult about them, what seemed at first a vast mountain of snow, went shooting past, carrying everything before it. The snowslide left in its wake nothing but a wide belt of barren ground—even huge rocks had been torn away from the earth and hurtled on into the storm.
“That was close enough to suit me,” declared Sandy in a tragic whisper, as the boys continued their descent. “I’ve never seen a snowslide before, and I don’t wish to see another one. Do you feel shaky, Dick?”
“Yes, I do,” admitted Dick, his cheeks slightly pale. “I thought the entire upper part of the valley wall was falling in on us.” He turned to Toma. “Do you suppose,” he inquired, “that it’ll be safe to go down?”
The Indian lad shook his head thoughtfully.
“Me no can tell. Mebbe more snowslide after while. We take chance—that’s all.”