"All set?" cried Dick; and, "All set!" I shouted in reply. There was a violent jerk upon the coat, and the next thing, there was Dick himself kneeling beside me.
"Well done, old chap!" cried he. "That was a great idea. Now, then, let's be off. I'll carry the two rifles. It's plain sailing now. Straight up the Ridge for those two great rocks that stand up there like a gateway to the pass. I know the place. Only a couple of thousand feet to climb and then we begin to go down-hill. We shall make it now. Come on!"
The trees were thin just here, and as we started to ascend the pass we obtained one more glimpse of Mescalero—the last one we were to get that day. The bank of cloud had advanced about half a mile since we first caught sight of it, while it had become so much thicker as the wind rolled it up from the other side of the range, that now only the very tip of the mountain showed above it. Even as we watched it, a great fold of the cloud passed over the summit, hiding it altogether.
"See that, Dick?" said I.
"Yes," he replied. "A very big snow, I expect. Hark! Do you hear that faint humming? The wind in the pines. We shall be getting it soon. Come on, now; stick close to my heels; if I go too fast, call out."
Away we went up the pass, pressing forward at the utmost speed I could stand, desperately anxious to get as far ahead as possible before the storm should overtake us. The ascent, though very steep on this side, presented no other special difficulty, and at the end of an hour we had come close to the two great rocks for which we had been making.
All this time the sun continued to shine down upon us, though with diminishing power as the hurrying snowflakes passing above our heads became thicker and thicker; while, as to the storm-cloud itself, we could not see how near it had come, for the pine-clad mountain, rising high on our left hand, obstructed our view in that direction. That it was not far off, though, we were pretty sure, for the humming of the wind in the woods—the only thing by which we could judge—though faint at first, had by this time increased to a roar.
The storm was, in fact, much nearer than we imagined, and just as we passed between the "gateway" rocks it burst upon us with a fury and a suddenness that, to me at least, were appalling.
Almost as though a door had been slammed in our faces, the light of the sun was cut off, leaving us in twilight gloom, and with a roar like a stampede of cattle across a wooden bridge, a swirling, blinding smother of snow, driven by a furious wind, rushed through the "gateway," taking us full in the face, with such violence that Dick was thrown back against me, nearly knocking us both from our feet. Instinctively, we crouched for shelter behind the rock, and there we waited a minute or two to recover breath and collect our senses.