“That’s so,” Joe answered. And as he realized that the slope would guide them, so they couldn’t go in a circle, he suddenly felt warmer. He realized how important it is to keep your head.
Once on the Swift Current trail, which, though snow covered, showed plainly, they descended rapidly on their snow-shoes, which gripped well. There was not yet snow enough here to start a slide, but they weren’t sure there might not be, and they kept an anxious eye above them all the way down. Once in the woods at the bottom, they hurried on to the cabin, not even stopping to make tea.
“Say, you poor boobs,” Mills exclaimed, “I was just coming after you. Why don’t you pick a wild, windy, stormy day to go climbing Wilbur? What are you trying to do, commit suicide?”
“No,” said Tom, “to see why the timber-line trees are so dwarfed.”
“Yes, and we found out,” Joe added.
CHAPTER XXV—Protecting the Deer Yards—The Scouts Wait in the Moonlight and Bag a Mountain Lion
That storm lasted two days, and it brought the snow to the valley, laid at least sixteen inches of it on the level in the woods, and swept it across Lake McDermott against the hotel, till the drift reached the top of the first story. As soon as it stopped, the scouts and Mills were out on their snow-shoes, tracking through the woods.
“I want to find out where the deer yards are going to be this winter,” the Ranger said. “We’ll want to know, so we can keep an eye on them, for lions or wolves, and protect the herds if we can.”
“What’s a deer yard?” the boys asked.
“Big game, especially in winter, don’t travel very much,” the Ranger answered. “They pick out some place where the feeding is good, and learn to know it well, not only where to get food, but where to turn quick and hide from enemies. When winter and deep snow come, they begin packing down the snow with their hoofs in a sort of yard—moose, deer, and sometimes even sheep do this—and as the snow grows deeper, their packing raises them higher and higher up, so they can feed on taller and taller bushes, and even finally get up to the limbs of trees.”