Where Oberon of unimagined size
Might in the silver silence wind his horn.
—Duncan Campbell Scott.
DAN RICE’S NEW YEAR FROLIC
by M.G. McClelland.
Among the mountain fastnesses the snow lay fifteen inches deep in the open, a thing without precedent in the memory of the oldest hunter in the Humpback region. The cowled peaks uplifted themselves, wanly, and lay against a hard distance in mysterious, alien solitude.
In the midst rose Humpback, his indented crest losing outline for days together by reason of the snow clouds that coifed it. In the hollows, where many of the mountaineers lived, the snow was much deeper, wind-drifted in swaths, fit to bury a man to the middle. Many of the trails were blocked and, when the wind changed and a slight thaw set in, followed by a freeze, the snow packed and crusted, which made travel bad for people who had never even heard of snow-shoes. The wild creatures suffered most, and whole covies of game birds perished in the drifts from cold or starvation. On the other hand, minks, otters, foxes, and nature’s other carnivorous children fattened apace, slipping about the white frozen world, like demons of the inner circle, and feasting upon the bodies of the dead.
As the cold increased, big game was driven from inaccessible haunts and wandered afield in search of food, even venturing, by night, close to the cabins and fodder-stacks of the people. Deer trails grew plentiful, and the big cushioned track of bear could be seen in many of the hollows.