“Ho,” said Tom, “I feel fine!”
But he was the first to propose bed—although it must be admitted nobody quarreled with his suggestion.
CHAPTER XXVII—The Ranger and the Boys Get a Ride Down the Mountain on a Snow Avalanche, and Don’t Look for Another
The following day the storm was still raging, and it kept it up till night, too. The drifts were piled half-way up the windows, shutting out their light, the rear door, leading to the stable, was completely barricaded by a drift, and they had to make periodic sallies with a shovel out of the front door, which opened on a veranda four feet above ground level, to keep that clear. It was too bitter cold, the wind too penetrating, to invite further expeditions. Even clearing the veranda in front of the door was a job they quarreled over, and finally had to assign at intervals of one hour, each person taking his turn while the other two peered out of the window to see if he did a thorough job.
But they had plenty of dry wood inside, and the accumulated newspapers of two months to read, so the day didn’t drag, after all.
“And,” said the Ranger, “about to-morrow, or next day, the slides will start, the real slides, this time. That’ll be something worth coming out here for. There is so much of this snow that the steep places can’t hold it all, and the first sun will send it down.”
That night, toward morning, Joe was awakened by a sound like thunder, and sat up in his sleeping-bag, astonished.
“What’s a thunder-storm doing in December?” he thought.
There was no lightning, however, and he could see outside the brilliant starlight.
“Slides!” he suddenly remembered. And as soon as it was light, he was up, getting breakfast. Breakfast over, he and Tom lost no time in getting on their snow-shoes and hurrying out, free of the woods, on the white surface of the frozen lake, with no less than eight feet of snow under them. The sun was now up over the prairie, and sending its rays up the Swift Current Valley and hitting the snow-covered peaks till they glistened rosy. And all around, from the steep walls of Gould, six miles away, to the upper precipices of the two mountains hemming in the lake over their heads, the snowslides were leaping and booming with a noise like soft thunder. It was a wonderful sight. You had no idea where or when one was going to start. A steep precipice, covered with snow, would suddenly show signs of life, the snow high up would start slipping, and as the mass descended it would grow in volume, sweeping the slope beneath it and sending up a comet’s tail of snow-dust, till it ran out with a boom and a roar upon the less steep slopes below. All around the slides were running, and the steep places seemed fairly to smoke with the comet tails of snow-dust.