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.
"Of course," said Mills, when he was ready to set out, "these slides now
are just top snow, the latest fall sliding off the very steep places,
and doing little or no harm. In spring the bad ones come, when the whole
winter mass, and all the ice and rocks it has gathered up, come down.
Then, once in a great while, a third kind will descend--the accumulated
snow and ice and rock dust of maybe half a century or more. That kind
always chooses a place where there hasn't been a slide before, wipes out
forests as it comes, and sometimes houses and people in the valleys. The
slides to-day all follow regular channels. I know where there'll
probably be a good one."
He led the way up toward the Divide, by a side tributary of the Swift
Current. They climbed steadily a long way up toward the steep head wall,
leaving the deep brook bed at the danger point, and working on the side
slope above it. Finally they reached a point where they were almost
under the steep wall, and separated from the brook channel by a mass of
rock. Here they waited. They had not long to wait. Suddenly, without any
warning, the snow almost above them started slipping, and in a few
seconds was coming down the brook bed at a tremendous rate, pushing all
the last snowfall and some of the old ahead of it as it came. By the
time it reached the point just below Mills and the two scouts, it was
apparently going thirty miles an hour, with a head about forty feet
high, the whole mass maybe fifty or a hundred feet wide and two hundred
feet long, and churning, foaming, falling over and over itself with a
great, booming roar and sending out a perfect gale of snow-dust.
As it rushed past, the noise was so great that no one heard a lesser
roar behind him. Without any warning, a smaller slide had started just
above the three observers, no doubt caused by the jar and shock of the
first, and suddenly the snow boiled up under their feet, they were
launched downward on this second slide, and found themselves on the tail
end of the big one.
Then followed the wildest ride any of them had ever had, or ever wanted
to have.
Of course, it was only their wide western snow-shoes that saved their
lives. In a second, they were on the tail of the big slide, riding on
top of fifty feet of boiling, churning, racing snow, that was by this
time going down-hill at close to a mile a minute. If you have ever run
logs on a river, you know what a slippery job that is. But imagine the
logs leaping up and down as well as rolling around, and traveling a mile
a minute down-hill into the bargain, and finally casting up a deluge of
powdered snow-dust into your face, and you will have some idea of the
job that confronted Mills and Tom and Joe.
No one dared look at the others. No one could speak, or make himself
heard six inches from his mouth if he did open it. Each of them looked
at his own feet, or tried to through the blinding snow powder, and just
trod snow desperately, to keep upright. To fall down meant to be churned
in under the boiling mass, and probably suffocated, or crushed to death.
After about one minute that seemed like an hour, the slide had descended
to less steep ground. Here it hit a little pine wood, and Joe just could
see, through the flying snow, the trees go crashing down in front, and
those on either side (their tops level with his feet!) bow and bend in
the wind made by the rushing slide. A second later a tree came boiling
up out of the snow right under his feet--or a log, rather, for all its
branches were stripped off. He jumped madly to avoid it, and it missed
him only by a hair's breadth.
Beyond the wood, the slide ran out into an open park, went up the
incline on the further side by its own momentum, and there spread itself
out and came to rest.
Joe wiped the snow-dust from his eyes and looked to see what had become
of Tom and the Ranger. He was still on his feet, but they were not. The
final slump of the slide, with the tail end on which they rode
telescoping over the centre, had flung them down and half buried them.
For some reason Joe had been able to keep his feet. He sprang to help
them up, crying, "Are you hurt?"
They both rose, dazed, and wiped their faces.
"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.
For supper that night Joe got out a can of lobster he found in the
storeroom. He thought it would be a special treat, and it was to Mills,
but Tom didn't like lobster, and Joe himself didn't care much for it,
either, when he came to taste it. So Mills ate it all.
"Came near death this morning--might as well risk my life again
to-night," he laughed.