“But sich a blanket as that wur then—ay, sich a blanket! I never seed sich a blanket! Thur wunt a square foot o’ it that wan’t torn to raggles. Ah, strangers, you don’t know what it are to lose a five-point Mackinaw; no, that you don’t. Cuss the bar!”
Chapter Twenty Six.
A Battle with Grizzly Bears.
As adventure with grizzly bears which had befallen the “captain” was next related. He had been travelling with a strange party—the “scalp-hunters,”—in the mountains near Santa Fé, when they were overtaken by a sudden and heavy fall of snow that rendered farther progress impossible. The “canon,” a deep valley in which they had encamped, was difficult to get through at any time, but now the path, on account of the deep soft snow, was rendered impassable. When morning broke they found themselves fairly “in the trap.”
“Above and below, the valley was choked up with snow five fathoms deep. Vast fissures—barrancas—were filled with the drift; and it was perilous to attempt penetrating in either direction. Two men had already disappeared.
“On each side of our camp rose the walls of the canon, almost vertical, to the height of a hundred feet. These we might have climbed had the weather been soft, for the rock was a trap formation, and offered numerous seams and ledges; but now there was a coating of ice and snow upon them that rendered the ascent impossible. The ground had been frozen hard before the storm came on, although it was now freezing no longer, and the snow would not bear our weight. All our efforts to get out of the valley proved idle; and we gave them over, yielding ourselves, in a kind of reckless despair, to wait for—we scarce knew what.
“For three days we sat shivering around the fires, now and then casting looks of gloomy inquiry around the sky. The same dull grey for an answer, mottled with flakes slanting earthward, for it still continued to know. Not a bright spot cheered the aching eye.
“The little platform on which we rested—a space of two or three acres—was still free from the snow-drift, on account of its exposure to the wind. Straggling pines, stunted and leafless, grew over its surface, in all about fifty or sixty trees. From these we obtained our fires; but what were fires when we had no meat to cook upon them!