Tied to a hitching-post outside the assayer's door that afternoon were two ponies, and about two o'clock Mr. Warren, himself, and Uncle Tom, issued from the house, prepared for their ride up on Cape Horn—a big, bare mountain lying southeast of town. As they stepped down from the porch, however, Warren happened to notice old Jeff Andrews walking up the street, carrying over his shoulder a great buffalo-skin overcoat, which, considering the warmth of the day, seemed rather out of place.
"Hallo, Jeff!" the assayer called out. "What are you carrying that thing for? Are we going to have a change?"
Jeff, a gray-bearded, round-shouldered man of sixty, with a face burnt all of one color by years of life in the open, paused for a moment before replying, and then, knowing that the assayer was not one of those "guying tenderfeet," for whom, as he expressed it, "he had no manner of use," he answered genially:
"Well, gents, I ain't no weather prophet—I'll leave that business to the latest arrival—but I have my suspicions. Just look up overhead."
The old man had detected the hurrying snowflakes passing across the face of the sun, and though to Uncle Tom there was nothing unusual to be seen, the assayer understood the signs.
"Wind, Jeff?" said he.
"And snow," replied the old prospector. "Was you going to ride up on Cape Horn this evening, Mr. Warren? Well, if I was you, I wouldn't. Cape Horn lies south o' here, and if a storm from the north catches you up there on that bare mountain you may not be able to work your way back again. If I was you, I'd put the ponies back in the stable and lay low for a spell."
"Thank you, Jeff," responded the assayer. "I believe that's a good idea. I think we shall do well, Tom, to postpone our trip. No use running the risk of being caught out in a blizzard: it's a bit too dangerous to suit me."
The ponies, therefore, were taken back to the stable and the two men, returning to the house, sat down on the sunny porch to await developments.
The snow-cloud was already half way down the range and it was not long ere the murmur of the wind among the distant trees began to make itself heard, giving warning of what was coming to a few of the more observant people.