Almost at the same instant, just as a picture might be blotted from a screen by cutting off the light, both figures had vanished! Then, like steam shot from a geyser, there ascended high into mid-air a great cloud of powdered snow, and to the watchers’ ears came a deep boom resembling the prolonged and muffled roar of thunder or big artillery.
“Good God! A snow slide!” gasped Buell Hampton.
Roderick was stricken dumb. He stood rigid, frozen with horror. He needed no one to tell him that Grant Jones had gone over the rim of the canyon, down a thousand feet, smothered under a million tons of snow.
CHAPTER XXXIV—THE PASSING OF GRANT JONES
EARLY the following morning several hundred searchers were at the scene of the snow slide in Cow Creek Canyon. Every precaution was taken not to have anyone walk along near the rim of the gorge a thousand feet above. There were still hundreds of thousands of tons of snow on the narrow plateau at the top, which any disturbance, even no greater than a stone thrown by the hands of a child, might start moving. If another slide should occur it would overwhelm and crush the intrepid searchers below.
A systematic probing of the snow with long iron rods had been begun at once and kept up perseveringly until three o’clock in the afternoon. Then one of the searchers touched clothing or something with his rod. The snow was quickly shoveled aside, and at a depth of about seven feet the body of Grant Jones was found lying flat upon his back with his right arm stretched out above his head, the left doubled under him. The face was quite natural—it wore a peaceful smile. None of his clothing had been disturbed or tom—even his cap and his skis were in place. The poor fellow had simply been crushed to death or smothered by the many tons of snow.
Immediately a makeshift sled was constructed by strapping two skis together sideways. On this the body was taken up the steep hills by a cautiously selected route to Battle, three and a half miles away, and thence on to Encampment, twelve miles farther, the improvised sled being drawn all the way by strong and willing men of the hills. Accompanying the remains were Roderick Warfield, Jim Rankin, Boney Earnest, and other faithful friends, while following came a great cortege of miners, mill hands, and mountaineers.
It was midnight before the mournful procession reached town. And awaiting it even at that late hour was a dense crowd, standing with bared heads and tear-stained faces. For in all the hill country the name of Grant Jones was a household word. His buoyant good-nature was recognized by everyone, and probably he did not have an enemy in all southern Wyoming where his brief manhood life had been spent. Fully a thousand people, of both sexes, of all classes and all ages, formed the escort of the little funeral sled on its last stage to the undertaker’s establishment. Here the body was received by Major Buell Hampton and the Reverend Stephen Grannon. It had been the Major’s duty that day to seek out the clergyman and bring him down in a sledge from the hills to administer the last sad rites for their dear dead friend.