Snow-Bound at Eagles | Page 7

head 'em off in case they scent us, and try to double back on the North
Ridge. They'll fight shy of the trail if they see anybody on it, and one
man's as good as a dozen."
Hale could not help thinking that he might have been that one man, and
had his opportunity for independent action but for his rash proposal, but
it was too late to withdraw now. He hastily scribbled a few lines to his
wife on a sheet of the station paper, handed it to the man, and took his
place in the little cavalcade as it filed silently down the road.
They had ridden in silence for nearly an hour, and had passed the scene
of the robbery by a higher track. Morning had long ago advanced its
colors on the cold white peaks to their right, and was taking possession
of the spur where they rode.
"It looks like snow," said Rawlins quietly.
Hale turned towards him in astonishment. Nothing on earth or sky
looked less likely. It had been cold, but that might have been only a
current from the frozen peaks beyond, reaching the lower valley. The
ridge on which they had halted was still thick with yellowish-green
summer foliage, mingled with the darker evergreen of pine and fir.
Oven-like canyons in the long flanks of the mountain seemed still to
glow with the heat of yesterday's noon; the breathless air yet trembled
and quivered over stifling gorges and passes in the granite rocks, while
far at their feet sixty miles of perpetual summer stretched away over the
winding American River, now and then lost in a gossamer haze. It was

scarcely ripe October where they stood; they could see the plenitude of
August still lingering in the valleys.
"I've seen Thomson's Pass choked up with fifteen feet o' snow earlier
than this," said Rawlins, answering Hale's gaze; "and last September
the passengers sledded over the road we came last night, and all the
time Thomson, a mile lower down over the ridge in the hollow,
smoking his pipes under roses in his piazzy! Mountains is mighty
uncertain; they make their own weather ez they want it. I reckon you
ain't wintered here yet."
Hale was obliged to admit that he had only taken Eagle's Court in the
early spring.
"Oh, you're all right at Eagle's--when you're there! But it's like
Thomson's--it's the gettin' there that-- Hallo! What's that?"
A shot, distant but distinct, had rung through the keen air. It was
followed by another so alike as to seem an echo.
"That's over yon, on the North Ridge," said the ostler, "about two miles
as the crow flies and five by the trail. Somebody's shootin' b'ar."
"Not with a shot gun," said Clinch, quickly wheeling his horse with a
gesture that electrified them. "It's THEM, and the've doubled on us! To
the North Ridge, gentlemen, and ride all you know!"
It needed no second challenge to completely transform that quiet
cavalcade. The wild man-hunting instinct, inseparable to most
humanity, rose at their leader's look and word. With an incoherent and
unintelligible cry, giving voice to the chase like the commonest hound
of their fields, the order-loving Hale and the philosophical Rawlins
wheeled with the others, and in another instant the little band swept out
of sight in the forest.
An immense and immeasurable quiet succeeded. The sunlight glistened
silently on cliff and scar, the vast distance below seemed to stretch out
and broaden into repose. It might have been fancy, but over the sharp

line of the North Ridge a light smoke lifted as of an escaping soul.

CHAPTER II
Eagle's Court, one of the highest canyons of the Sierras, was in reality a
plateau of table-land, embayed like a green lake in a semi-circular
sweep of granite, that, lifting itself three thousand feet higher, became a
foundation for the eternal snows. The mountain genii of space and
atmosphere jealously guarded its seclusion and surrounded it with
illusions; it never looked to be exactly what it was: the traveller who
saw it from the North Ridge apparently at his feet in descending found
himself separated from it by a mile-long abyss and a rushing river;
those who sought it by a seeming direct trail at the end of an hour lost
sight of it completely, or, abandoning the quest and retracing their steps,
suddenly came upon the gap through which it was entered. That which
from the Ridge appeared to be a copse of bushes beside the tiny
dwelling were trees three hundred feet high; the cultivated lawn before
it, which might have been covered by the traveller's handkerchief, was
a field of a thousand acres.
The house itself was a long, low, irregular structure, chiefly of roof and
veranda, picturesquely upheld