It had been Mr. Wheeler's intention to stay at home until spring,
but Ralph wrote that he was having trouble with his foreman, so
his father went out to the ranch in February. A few days after
his departure there was a storm which gave people something to
talk about for a year to come.
The snow began to fall about noon on St. Valentine's day, a soft,
thick, wet snow that came down in billows and stuck to
everything. Later in the afternoon the wind rose, and wherever
there was a shed, a tree, a hedge, or even a clump of tall weeds,
drifts began to pile up. Mrs. Wheeler, looking anxiously out from
the sitting-room windows, could see nothing but driving waves of
soft white, which cut the tall house off from the rest of the
world.
Claude and Dan, down in the corral, where they were provisioning
the cattle against bad weather, found the air so thick that they
could scarcely breathe; their ears and mouths and nostrils were
full of snow, their faces plastered with it. It melted constantly
upon their clothing, and yet they were white from their boots to
their caps as they worked,--there was no shaking it off. The air
was not cold, only a little below freezing. When they came in for
supper, the drifts had piled against the house until they covered
the lower sashes of the kitchen windows, and as they opened the
door, a frail wall of snow fell in behind them. Mahailey came
running with her broom and pail to sweep it up.
"Ain't it a turrible storm, Mr. Claude? I reckon poor Mr. Ernest
won't git over tonight, will he? You never mind, honey; I'll wipe
up that water. Run along and git dry clothes on you, an' take a
bath, or you'll ketch cold. Th' ole tank's full of hot water for
you." Exceptional weather of any kind always delighted Mahailey.
Mrs. Wheeler met Claude at the head of the stairs. "There's no
danger of the steers getting snowed under along the creek, is
there?" she asked anxiously.
"No, I thought of that. We've driven them all into the little
corral on the level, and shut the gates. It's over my head down
in the creek bottom now. I haven't a dry stitch on me. I guess
I'll follow Mahailey's advice and get in the tub, if you can wait
supper for me."
"Put your clothes outside the bathroom door, and I'll see to
drying them for you."
"Yes, please. I'll need them tomorrow. I don't want to spoil my
new corduroys. And, Mother, see if you can make Dan change. He's
too wet and steamy to sit at the table with. Tell him if anybody
has to go out after supper, I'll go."
Mrs. Wheeler hurried down stairs. Dan, she knew, would rather sit
all evening in wet clothes than take the trouble to put on dry
ones. He tried to sneak past her to his own quarters behind the
wash-room, and looked aggrieved when he heard her message.
"I ain't got no other outside clothes, except my Sunday ones," he
objected.
"Well, Claude says he'll go out if anybody has to. I guess you'll
have to change for once, Dan, or go to bed without your supper."
She laughed quietly at his dejected expression as he slunk away.
"Mrs. Wheeler," Mahailey whispered, "can't I run down to the
cellar an' git some of them nice strawberry preserves? Mr.
Claude, he loves 'em on his hot biscuit. He don't eat the honey
no more; he's got tired of it."
"Very well. I'll make the coffee good and strong; that will
please him more than anything."
Claude came down feeling clean and warm and hungry. As he opened
the stair door he sniffed the coffee and frying ham, and when
Mahailey bent over the oven the warm smell of browning biscuit
rushed out with the heat. These combined odours somewhat
dispersed Dan's gloom when he came back in squeaky Sunday shoes
and a bunglesome cut-away coat. The latter was not required of
him, but he wore it for revenge.
During supper Mrs. Wheeler told them once again how, long ago
when she was first married, there were no roads or fences west of
Frankfort. One winter night she sat on the roof of their first
dugout nearly all night, holding up a lantern tied to a pole to
guide Mr. Wheeler home through a snowstorm like this.
Mahailey, moving about the stove, watched over the group at the
table. She liked to see the men fill themselves with food-though
she did not count Dan a man, by any means, and she looked out to
see that Mrs. Wheeler did not forget to eat altogether, as she
was apt to do when she fell to remembering things that had
happened long ago. Mahailey was in a happy frame of mind because
her weather predictions had come true; only yesterday she had
told Mrs. Wheeler there would be snow, because she had seen
snowbirds. She regarded supper as more than usually important
when Claude put on his "velvet close," as she called his brown
corduroys.
After supper Claude lay on the couch in the sitting room, while
his mother read aloud to him from "Bleak House,"--one of the few
novels she loved. Poor Jo was drawing toward his end when Claude
suddenly sat up. "Mother, I believe I'm too sleepy. I'll have to
turn in. Do you suppose it's still snowing?"
He rose and went to look out, but the west windows were so
plastered with snow that they were opaque. Even from the one on
the south he could see nothing for a moment; then Mahailey must
have carried her lamp to the kitchen window beneath, for all at
once a broad yellow beam shone out into the choked air, and down
it millions of snowflakes hurried like armies, an unceasing
progression, moving as close as they could without forming a
solid mass. Claude struck the frozen window-frame with his fist,
lifted the lower sash, and thrusting out his head tried to look
abroad into the engulfed night. There was a solemnity about a
storm of such magnitude; it gave one a feeling of infinity. The
myriads of white particles that crossed the rays of lamplight
seemed to have a quiet purpose, to be hurrying toward a definite
end. A faint purity, like a fragrance almost too fine for human
senses, exhaled from them as they clustered about his head and
shoulders. His mother, looking under his lifted arm, strained her
eyes to see out into that swarming movement, and murmured softly
in her quavering voice:
"Ever thicker, thicker, thicker, Froze the ice on lake and river;
Ever deeper, deeper, deeper, Fell the snow o'er all the
landscape."