“Yes, I saw it start. I happened to be looking up there, thinking it looked pretty dangerous, when a great mass of snow which was overhanging that little cliff up there near the saddle, fell and started the whole thing. It seemed to begin slowly. I could see three or four big patches of snow fall from the precipice above Peter’s cabin as though pushed over, and then the whole great mass, fifteen feet thick, I should think, three hundred yards wide and four or five times as long, came down with a rush, pouring over the cliff with a roar like thunder. I wonder you didn’t hear it.”
“I did,”I replied, remembering the noise I had taken for a wind-storm, “but being under the bluff, and the waterfall making so much noise, I couldn’t hear distinctly, and so thought nothing of it. Why!”I cried, as I looked again. “There used to be a belt of trees running diagonally across the slope. They’re all gone!”
“Yes, every one of them. There were some biggish ones, too, you remember; but the slide snapped them off like so many carrots. It cut a clean swath right through them, as you see.”
“Where were you, Joe, when you saw it come down?”I asked.
“More than half way to Sulphide. I came back in fifteen minutes—four miles.”
“Poor little Pinto! No wonder he was used up!”
We had been riding at a smart lope, side by side, while this conversation was going on, and in due time we reached the foot-hills. Here our pace was necessarily much reduced, but we continued on up Peter’s creek as rapidly as possible until the gulch became so narrow and rocky, and so encumbered with great patches of snow, that we thought we could make better time on foot.
Leaving our ponies, therefore, we went scrambling forward, until, about half a mile from our destination, Joe suddenly stopped, and holding up his hand, cried eagerly:
“Hark! Keep quiet! Listen!”
“Bow, wow, wow! Bow, wow, wow, wow, wow!”came faintly to our ears from far up the mountain.