CHAPTER XXVII--The Ranger and the Boys Get a Ride Down the Mountain

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.