Closing the door, I hopped back to the jolly, roaring fire of logs which Romero had started an hour before, and there finished my dressing. While I was thus engaged, the professor came out of the back room, where it was his custom to sleep—a queer choice—with a couple of thousand dead insects for company.
"Well, Frank," said he, cheerily. "Here's King Winter in all his glory. Rather a rough-and-tumble monarch, isn't he? When his majesty makes his royal progress, we, his humble subjects, do well to get out of his way and leave the course clear for him."
"That's true, sir," said I, laughing; and falling into the professor's humor, I added: "I never met a king before, and if King Winter is an example of the race I think we Americans were wise to get rid of them when we did."
"Oh," replied the professor, "you must not judge a whole order by one specimen: there are kings and kings, and some of them are very fine fellows. King Winter, though, is rather too boisterous and inconsiderate; and to tell you the truth, Frank, you had rather a narrow escape from him yesterday. I did not like to make too much of it before Dick; I did not want him to think I blamed him for what was, after all, merely an oversight; but as a matter of fact you ran a pretty big risk, as you may easily understand when you see the amount of snow that fell in about twelve hours; for the storm ceased and the sky cleared again about three o'clock this morning."
"It was nip and tuck for us, sure enough," said I; "but if our getting caught in the storm was any fault of Dick's, there is one thing certain, sir: he got us out of it in great style. I wouldn't ask for a better guide. I was pretty badly scared myself, I don't mind owning"—the professor nodded, as much as to say, "I don't wonder,"—"but Dick," I continued, "did not seem to be flustered for a moment; he knew just what to do and pitched right in and did it. It seems to me, sir—though of course I don't set up to be a judge—that the most experienced mountaineer couldn't have done any better."
"Dick is a good boy," said the professor, evidently pleased at my standing up for his young friend; "and he seems to have a faculty for keeping his wits about him in an emergency. It has always been so, ever since he was a little boy. I suppose he has never told you, has he, how he once saved his donkey from a mountain-lion?"
"No, sir," I replied. "How was it?"
"He was about nine years old at the time, and as his little legs were too short to enable him to keep up with me, I had given him a young burro to ride. We were camped one night on the Trinchera, not far from Fort Garland, when we were awakened by a great squealing on the part of the donkey, which was tethered a few feet away, and sitting up in our beds, which were on the ground under the open sky, we were just in time to see some big, cat-like animal spring upon the poor little beast and knock it over. Instead of crying and crawling under the blankets, as he might well have been excused for doing, little Dick sprang out of his bed—as did I also. But the youngster was twice as quick as I was, and without an instant's hesitation he seized a burning stick from the fire, ran right up to the mountain-lion—for that was what it was—and as the snarling creature raised its head, the plucky little chap thrust the hot end of his stick into its mouth, when, with a yell of pain and astonishment, the beast let go its hold and fled like a yellow streak into the woods again."
"Bully for Dick!" I cried. "That was pretty good, wasn't it? And was the donkey killed?"
"No; rather badly scratched; but Dick's promptness and courage saved it from anything more serious."