"Yes."
"Why, stay there, I guess, if it snows any more. One more fall of heavy snow will block Eagle Pass as sure as fire's hot!"
I shrugged my shoulders. Though I had been expecting this, it was not pleasant to have the prospect of spending a whole winter mewed up in the mountains, so close before me.
"Does it get very cold here?" I asked at length, when I had reflected for a while.
He nodded sardonically.
"Does it get cold? Is it cold now?"
I drew closer to the fire for an answer.
"Then this is nothin'—nothin' at all. It would freeze the tail off a brass monkey up here. It goes more than forty below zero often and often; and it's a worse kind of cold than the cold back east, for it's damper here, and not so steady. Bah! I wish I was a bear, so as to hole up till spring."
All of which was very encouraging to a man who had mostly sailed in warm latitudes, and hated a frost worse than poison. And it didn't please me to see that so good-tempered a man as Mac was really put out and in a vile humor, for he knew what I could only imagine.
The conversation—if conversation it could be called—flagged very soon, and we got out our blankets, scraping away the snow from a place, where we lay close to each other in order to preserve what warmth we could. We lay in the position commonly called in America "spooning," like two spoons fitting one into another, so that there had to be common consent for changing sides, one of which grew damp while the other grew cold. Just as we were settling down to sleep we heard the sudden crack of a rifle from the other shore, and against the wind came a "halloa" across the water, Mac sat up very unconcernedly; but, as for me, I jumped as if I had been shot, thinking of course at first that the shot had been fired by Indians, though I knew there were no hostile tribes in that part of British Columbia, where, indeed, most of the Indians are very peaceable.