“I—I dunno!” Tom said. “I haven’t had time to find out!”
The Ranger was red with rage.
“It had no business to start there!” he exclaimed. “We ought to have been in a safe place. Teaches me a lesson—you can’t bank on slides any time o’ year. That drift above where we stood is always anchored till spring.”
“Well, I guess it’s lucky we’re alive!” Joe exclaimed. “Wow! that was some ride! I never was kept so busy in my life!”
“And I never want to be again,” Mills said. “Boys, had enough slides for to-day? Seen how they work?”
“I sure have!” both exclaimed, in one breath.
“Let’s go home. What I’d like to see now is a Chinook wind, to take some of this snow away. There’s too much of it.”
“Do Chinook winds come before spring?” Joe asked. He had heard of the dry, warm wind which comes over the ranges, from the warm Pacific current, raising the temperature sometimes sixty degrees in as many minutes, and evaporating the snow like magic.
“Sometimes,” Mills said. “And we need it now, or all the animals will starve.”
They were all too weary and even a bit shaky after that terrific ride, to do much more that day. Mills did go over to try his telephone, which he found the storm had put out of commission again, and then they sat around the cabin and talked over the two minute excitement, which had seemed, while it lasted, nearer two hours.