A RACE WITH AN AVALANCHE.
THE little party had encamped in a hollow in the prairie, where, after
eating their sparse lunch, they lolled on the ground, the men smoking
their pipes, while their animals cropped the grass before lying down
for the rest which they needed as much as their owners.
“Yes,” said Eph Bozeman, after the conversation had lasted a half
hour, and took the form of reminiscences on the part of the adults, “I
war eighteen years old when I went on my first trappin’ hunt with my
old friend Kit Carson, and there war three trappers beside us. I war
younger in them days than now, and I don’t quite understand how Kit
come to let me do one of the foolishest things a younker of my age ever
tried.
“It war in the fall of the year that we five went away up in the Wild
River Mountain, meanin’ to stay thar till spring. Kit had been in the
same region a few years before, but he said no trap had ever been set
in the place, and we was sure of makin’ a good haul before the winter
war over. It was November, and we went to work at once. We were purty
well north, and so high up that I don’t think warm weather ever strikes
the place.
“We had good luck from the start, and by the time snow began to fly
had stowed away in the cave we fixed up for our winter quarters more
peltries than Kit had took the whole season before. That was good;
but when we begun to figure up how much money we war going to have to
divide down at Bent’s Fort, after the winter war over, from the sale of
the furs, Kit shook his head and said the season warn’t ended yet.
“Since we war sure of having ugly weather we had got ready for it. The
luggage that war strapped to the back of our pack mules had a pair of
snow-shoes for each of us, and we all knowed how to use ‘em.
“The first snow-fall come in the beginnin’ of December, but it didn’t
amount to much. Howsumever, we catched it the next week, heavy. It
begun comin’ down one afternoon just as it war growin’ dark. It war
thin and sand-like, and when it hit our faces stung like needle p’ints.
Carson went outside, and after studyin’ the sky as best he could, when
he couldn’t see it at all, said it war goin’ to be the storm of the
winter.
“He war right, as he generally war in such matters. When mornin’ come
it war snowin’ harder than ever, and it never let up for four days and
nights. Then when it stopped the fall war mor’n a dozen feet in the
mountains. This settled like, and a crust formed on top, which war just
the thing for our snow-shoes. On the steep inclines you’ve only to
brace yourself and let the law of gravertation, as I b’lieve they call
it, do the rest.
“It war powerful lonely in our cave day after day, with nothing to do
but to talk and smoke and sleep, and now and then steal out to see if
the mules war safely housed. It got so bad after a while that we all
put on our snow-shoes and started out for a little fun.
“About a mile off we struck a gulch which we had all seen many times.
It war the steepest that we knowed of within fifty miles. From the top
to whar it broadened out into a valley war three-quarters of a mile,
and all the way war like the roof of a house. I s’pose it war a little
more than a hundred yards wide at the top, whar the upper part of the
biggest kind of an avalanche had formed. There the wind and odd shape
of the rocks and ground had filled the place with snow that war deeper
than the tallest meetin’-house you ever laid eyes on. It had drifted
and piled, reachin’ far back till it war a snow mountain of itself.
Don’t you forget, too,” added the trapper impressively, “that this snow
warn’t loose drift stuff, but a solid mass that, when it once started,
would go down that gulch like so much rock, if you can think of a rock
as big as that.
“We war standin’ and lookin’ at this mountain of snow, wonderin’ how
long it would be before it would swing loose and plunge into the valley
below, when a fool feelin’ come over me. I turned to Kit and the other
fellers and offered to bet a beaver skin that I could start even with
the avalanche and beat it down into the valley. Carson wouldn’t take
the bet, for he saw what rashness it war. Yet he didn’t try to dissuade
me, and the other chaps took me up right off. The idea got into my head
that Carson thought I war afraid, and then nothin’ could have held me
back.
“It didn’t take us long to get things ready. One of the trappers went
with me to see that the start war all right, while Kit and the other
picked thar way to the valley below, so as to have a sight of the home
stretch.
“It took us a good while, and we had to work hard to make our way to
the foot of the avalanche. When we got thar at last and I looked up at
that mountain of snow ready to tumble right over onto me, I don’t mind
sayin’ I did feel weak in the knees; but I wouldn’t have backed out if
I knowed thar war only one chance in a million of my ever livin’ to
tell it.
“The chap with me said if I wanted to give it up it would be all
right—he told me afterward that he war sorry he had took my bet—but I
laughed, and told him it war a go.
“He helped me fix my snow-shoes, and wouldn’t let me start till he
seen everything war right. Then I stood on the edge of the gulch and
held myself still by graspin’ the corner of the rock behind me. He
climbed above, so he could peep over and see me. He said I war so far
below that I looked like a fly, and I know that he didn’t look much
bigger than that to me. It took him so long to climb to the perch that
my hand was beginnin’ to grow numb, when I heard his voice, faint and
distant-like:
“‘Hello, Eph, down thar! Are you ready?’
“‘Yes, and tired of waitin’,’ I answered.
“‘_One—two—three!_’
“As he said the last word, and it was so faint that I could hardly hear
him, him and me fired our pistols at the same time, as you sometimes
see at a foot race, though thar they ginerally have but the one pistol.
“You understand how it was,” added the trapper for the benefit of
Herbert Watrous: “them shots war fur the avalanche. Bein’ as we
war startin’ on a foot race, it war right that we should have a
fair start, and the only way of doin’ that was by settin’ off some
gunpowder. If the avalanche was hangin’, as it seemed to be, the
shakin’ of the air made by our pistols would set it loose and start it
down the valley after me. But onless it war balanced just that way the
broadside of a frigate wouldn’t budge it.
“Howsumever, that war the lookout of the avalanche and not mine, but,
bein’ as I meant it should be fair and square, I waited after firin’ my
pistol, lookin’ and listenin’. I didn’t mean to start in ahead of the
thing, nor did I mean it should get the best of me. As like as not it
wouldn’t budge, and then of course the race war off.
“For a second or two I couldn’t hear nothin’ but the moanin’ of the
wind away up where the other feller had climbed. Then I heard a sound
like the risin’ of a big storm. It war low and faint at first, but it
quickly growed into the most awful roar mortal man ever heard. Just
then my friend shouted:
“‘_Here she comes! Off with you!_’
“I give myself a shove out over the top of the snow, curvin’ about, so
that when I reached the middle of the gulch I started downward. In that
second or two I seen the whole avalanche under way, hardly a hundred
yards off, and it war comin’ for me like a railroad train, and goin’
faster every second.
“You can make up your mind that I war doin’ some tall travellin’ myself.
“Whew! boys, I can’t tell you much about that race. The avalanche
didn’t flatten out and shoot down the gorge in loose masses, as I’ve
seen ‘em do, but just stuck together and come like one solid half of
the mountain itself.
“If it catched me I was a goner just as sure as if run down by a
steam-engine. But you would think thar couldn’t be any chance of it
catchin’ me, ’cause it war gravertation that was pullin’ us both, and
one oughter go as fast as t’other. The only thing I had to do was to
keep my feet and stay in the middle of the gorge. If I catched one
of my toes in the snow crust I would tumble, and before I could help
myself the avalanche would squelch me.
“I can never forget, but I can’t tell how I felt goin’ down that
three-quarters of a mile like a cannon ball. The wind cut my face as
if it war a harrycane, and everything was so misty like I couldn’t
see anything plain, and so I war in mortal fear of turnin’ out of the
course and hittin’ the side of the gulch.
“I don’t know how it war, but once I felt myself goin’ over. I s’pose I
must have got out of line and tried to get back without exactly knowin’
what I war doin’. Kit Carson, who war watchin’ me, said I went two
hundred feet balanced on one snow-shoe. He then give me up, for he war
sure thar warn’t a shadder of a chance for me.
“But I swung back agin, and, keepin’ to the middle of the gulch, soon
struck the level, and went skimmin’ away as fast as ever till I begun
goin’ up the incline on t’other side. I war doin’ that in fine style
when the p’int of one of my shoes dipped under the snow crust, and I
know I turned a round dozen summersets before I stopped. It sort of
mixed things in my brain, but the snow saved me from gettin’ hurt, and
though the avalanche come powerful close, it didn’t quite reach me, and
I won my beaver skin.”