In the Heart of the Rockies: A Story of Adventure in Colorado by G. A. Henty (read a book TXT) 📗

The Indian shook his head and pointed to the clouds again. "See," he said; "storm come very soon."

Even in the last two or three minutes a change was perceptible. The upper edge of the clouds seemed to be suddenly broken up. Long streamers spread out like signal flags of danger. Masses of clouds seemed to be wrenched off and to fly with great rapidity for a short distance; some of them sinking a little, floated back until they again formed a part of the mountain cap, while others sped onwards towards the south.

"No time," the chief repeated earnestly; "must look for camp quick." He spoke in the Indian tongue to Hunting Dog, and the two stood on a point where the ground jutted out, and closely examined the ravine up whose side they had climbed. The chief pointed farther along, and Hunting Dog started at a run along the Indian trail. A few hundred yards farther he paused and looked down, moved a few steps farther, and then disappeared from sight. In three or four minutes he returned and held up his arms.

"Come," the chief said, and taking his horse's rein led it along the path. The others followed his example, glad, indeed, to be in motion. Five minutes before they had been bathed in perspiration from their climb up the cliff; now they were conscious of the extraordinary change of temperature that had suddenly set in, and each had snatched a blanket from behind his saddle and wrapped it round him. They soon reached the spot where Hunting Dog was standing, and looked down. Some thirty feet below there was a sort of split in the face of the cliff, a wall of rock rising to within four or five feet of the level of the edge of the ravine. At one end it touched the face of the rock, at the other it was ten or twelve feet from it, the space between being in the form of a long wedge, which was completely filled up with trees and brushwood. A ledge ran down from the point where Hunting Dog was standing to the mouth of the fissure.

"Jee-rusalem, chief!" Ben exclaimed. "That air just made for us—we could not have found a better, not if we had sarched for a year. But I reckon we shall have to clear the place a bit before we take the critters down."

Two axes were taken from one of the pack-horses.

"Don't cut away the bigger stuff, Ben," Harry said as his two mates proceeded down the ledge, "their heads will shelter us from the snow a bit; and only clear away the bushes enough to give room for the horses and us, and leave those standing across the entrance to make a screen. While you are doing it we will fetch in as much more wood and grass as we can get hold of before the snow begins to fall."

The horses were left standing while the men scattered along the top of the ravine, and by the time Ben shouted that they were ready, a considerable pile of brushwood and a heap of coarse grass had been collected. The horses were then led down one by one, unsaddled, and packed together in two lines, having beyond them a great pile of the bushes that had been cut away.

"I am dog-goned if this ain't the best shelter I ever struck upon," Jerry said. "We could not have fixed upon a better if we had had it built special," the others cordially agreed.

The place they occupied was of some twelve feet square. On either side was a perpendicular wall of rock; beyond were the horses; while at the entrance the bush, from three to four feet high, had been left standing; above them stretched a canopy of foliage. Enough dry wood had been collected to start a fire.

"Don't make it too big. Jerry, we don't want to scorch up our roof," Harry Wade said. "Well, I reckon we have got enough fuel here for a week, for there is what you cut down and what we brought, and all that is left standing beyond the horses; and with the leaves and the grass the ponies should be able to hold out as long as the fuel lasts. We are short of meat, but we have plenty of flour; and as for water, we can melt snow."

Buffalo rugs were laid down on each side by the rock walls, and on these they took their seats and lighted their pipes.

"I have been wanting a smoke pretty bad," Jerry said; "I ain't had one since we halted in that there ca�on. Hello, here it comes!"

As he spoke a fierce gust of wind swayed the foliage overhead and sent the smoke, that had before risen quietly upwards, whirling round the recess; then for a moment all was quiet again; then came another and a stronger gust, rising and gathering in power and laden with fine particles of snow. A thick darkness fell, and Harry threw some more wood on the fire to make a blaze. But loud as was the gale outside, the air in the shelter was hardly moved, and there was but a slight rustling of the leaves overhead. Thicker and thicker flew the snow flakes in the air outside, and yet none seemed to fall through the leaves.

"I am dog-goned if I can make this out," Sam Hicks said. "We are as quiet here as if we were in a stone house, and one would think there was a copper-plated roof overhead. It don't seem nat'ral."

The others were also looking up with an air of puzzled surprise, not unmingled with uneasiness. Harry went to the entrance and looked out over the breastwork of bushes. "Look here, Sam," he said.

"Why, Harry, it looks to me as if it were snowing up instead of down," the miner said as he joined him.

"That is just it. You see, we are in the elbow of the valley and are looking straight down it, into the eye of the wind. It comes rushing up the valley and meets this steep wall on its way, and pushed on by the wind behind has to go somewhere, and so it is driven almost straight up here and over the hilltops behind us. So you see the snow is carried up instead of falling, and this rock outside us shoots it clear up over the path we were following above. As long as the wind keeps north, I reckon we sha'n't be troubled by the snow in here."

The explanation seemed satisfactory, and there was a general feeling of relief.

"I remember reading," Tom said, as the others took their seats again, "that people can stand on the edge of a cliff, facing a gale, without feeling any wind. For the wind that strikes the cliff rushes up with such force that it forms a sort of wall. Of course, it soon beats down again, and not many yards back you can feel the gale as strongly as anywhere else. But just at the edge the air is perfectly still."

The miners looked at Tom as if they thought that he was making a joke at their expense. But his uncle said:

"Yes, I can quite believe that. You see, it is something like a waterfall; you can stand right under that, for the force shoots it outwards, and I reckon it is the same sort of thing here." The chief nodded gravely. He too had been surprised at the lull in their shelter when the storm was raging so furiously outside, but Harry's illustration of the action of