“Hark!” he cried. “Do you hear that booming noise? The wind in the pines. It will be down on us directly. Come in, and help me fasten the waggon-sheet over the doorway.”
Such a storm as that which burst upon us five minutes later I never saw before; and I shall be well content if I never see such another. The wind leaped upon us like a wild beast, and instantly the whole atmosphere seemed to go crazy. Our little, creaking cabin shook and trembled so that the mud “chinking” fell out upon the floor; several of the stones composing our chimney came tumbling into the fireplace; three or four times our door was dashed from its fastenings—when the room was filled with snow in an instant—and hard work we had to get it back again.
The fierceness of the wind, and the whirling, stifling, never-ceasing rush of the snow were enough to frighten the boldest. It was one of those storms which drive the range-cattle headlong before them for miles and miles, until the poor beasts give in, exhausted, and fall to the ground, never to get up again; one of those storms which, catching the solitary immigrant-waggon unprepared, pass on and leave it with its occupants—men, women, and children, perhaps—and the horses which pulled it, all stiff and dead together.
“This is a bad one, and no mistake,” said Jack, after one of our periodical struggles to replace our door. “It is fortunate for us that we have four stout walls and a roof to shelter us. If it was Squeaky who upset that rock into the passage up above, he did us a good turn in my opinion. If it had not been there to stop us, we should have been caught half-way down the mountain; and that, I expect, would have been the end of us. I don’t believe a man could live half an hour in this storm if he were exposed to its full force.”
All the rest of that day we sat still or walked restlessly up and down listening to the commotion outside, and all through the night we slept in fitful snatches, roused now and then when a blast of extra power burst in our door or sent crashing to the ground one of the trees on the slope close behind the cabin. It was an anxious night; nor did we get relief until midday next day, when the wind stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
Jack stepped to the doorway and removed the waggon-sheet.
The sky was clearing rapidly, the snow had ceased to fall. Except for a few drifts, the valley was swept clean, the mountain-tops were bare, and the branches of the trees, which before had bent under the weight of snow, had now shaken themselves free of their burden.
For a minute Jack stood in the doorway, silent, and frowning to himself, and then, “Come over and look at the pass,” said he, and set off across the valley.
The pass was gone—vanished! We could not tell even where it ought to be, so completely was it filled up, and such a maze of drifts of all shapes and sizes was there among the woods which bordered it. The entrance—supposing we had found the right place—was buried under fifty feet of snow.
I glanced at Jack, expecting to see him overwhelmed by this crowning misfortune. But not a bit of it. He merely nodded his head in the direction of the pass, and said: “No getting out that way seemingly. Let us go and look at the ladder.”