Chapter 17: Winter in the Canyon

They would have departed now, but at least a week was required to make new skin bags for the gold, and other preparations, and meanwhile winter suddenly rushed down upon them. All had foreseen it in a way. The nights, always chill on the mountains, had shown an increasing coldness. The hot sunshine of the clay was tempered by a sharp, raw breath; the foliage, save that of the evergreens, visibly turned browner, and the Professor thought of the day when great storms of snow and sleet would rage through the canyons and over the peaks and ridges.

About this time the dispossessed mountain lion began to grow angry. He had been in an unhappy humor all the autumn, and when the chillier breath came into the air he thought often of his snug winter home in the cliff village. For months he had nursed his rage, because he was driven forth from what had been his by long prescription, and if anywhere in his animal brain he could feel revenge he cultivated it as a precious flower, and watched it grow. He would have gone long since to claim his own, but the deadly human odor repelled him and made him afraid.

He would come sometimes to the edge of the plateau, resolved to right his wrongs, but then, when he smelled the trail, where those terrible human beings had passed, his legs would totter and his heart become weak. Yet the desire grew within him in the same ratio that the air grew colder, and he longed for the lost flesh pots of the cliff village which he had regarded as his own. It may be that his winter life there in a place, made so tight and so warm, had unfitted him for the selection of a den of his own on the mountain, but his instinctive knowledge that winter and bitter cold would soon come began to fill him with a certain mingled rage and need that perhaps took the place of courage.

He slipped through the pine trees one day to the edge of the plateau, where he sniffed at the path leading down to the cliff village. He smelt the human odor, but he knew that only one of the terrible human beings had passed there, and, though he shivered with dread, he did not turn as usual and go back. He crawled down the slope, going a few feet at a time, feeling often the desire to run, but always inciting himself to go on with the mingling of rage and need that was his substitute for courage.

He stopped at last where he could get a good view of the shelf, and lay back against the rocks, his tawny coat blending with the tawny tints that had come lately into the scanty foliage. Thence he peered with red eyes at the shelf, where he saw the boy. Herbert’s back was turned to him. If he approached carefully he might spring upon him, slaying him and ridding the place forever of his presence. Then the other beings would perhaps go away of their own accord, and the lion once more would be sole lord of the village. The mingling of rage and need swelled, and now it became something really like courage. Intent on his purpose and resolved, the dangers became less, just as they do with men.

The lion resumed his careful creeping down the path, seeking to keep his own colors blended with those of rock and shrub, nor to send a single pebble rolling from its place. He was nearing the shelf when he saw the boy turn, glance about him, down at the gorge, up at the slope and afar at the peaks. Then he walked toward a cliff house, near to the one in which he had often sheltered, and the lion was assailed again with a dreadful fear; every nerve in him quivered and he was wild with a desire to rush away and hide. But he conquered it, and when he saw the boy emerge from the house he reached the shelf with one bound, and then sprang at him.

In the last moment of the lion’s life he saw the boy raise to his face something which to his dim mind may have resembled a club. But a club it was not, because a dazzling burst of flame leaped from the end of it, hot lightning flashed through his brain, and when his leap ended he lay upon the shelf, dead, a mountain lion who had paid for his rage, want and curiosity with his life.

When the others came home Herbert pointed out to them with very little concern the body of the lion.

“I caught a glimpse of him crawling down the slope,” he said, “and I was just in time to get the rifle.”

“Lucky the gun was handy,” said Jed, “He must have been hard pressed to come down here an’ attack a human bein’. See how lank he is. I guess the old fellow was hungry, an’ perhaps, too, he wanted a winter home. Thar are signs that he has used this place fur a den.”

They had put their food supplies in one of the cliff houses, where they made it secure from any interloping wild animal that might not be awed by the fate of the lion, and meanwhile they devoted attention to other needs of housekeeping. The Professor, patterning after the cliff dwellers, made rude needles, punches and awls of the smaller bones of the wild turkey, and of the larger, knives, chisels, scrapers and even rude spoons. With such crude needles and the tendons of the deer and other animals, and coarse cords, made from dry yucca leaves, they were able to achieve great progress in the construction of clothing.

While they were working the tint of brown on the mountain was deepening fast and the chill in the air remained long after the dawn. It might be hot in the gray loom of the south where the desert lay, but here at their great elevation they were in another world. The fire, kept burning all the time now, they had lighted in a large round chamber, one of the best preserved of all the older houses. A narrow stone bench ran around the wall, and in the center was a pit in which the fire burned. The dome-shaped roof was made of logs hard and black with time, the ends resting upon stone piers which projected into the room. A flue of good size built into the wall led to the open air. All was in a fine state of preservation, and, considering the rudeness of the materials, showed an ingenuity which the modern man might do well to imitate.

Near the pit and on the earth outside they found fire-sticks, their charred ends still showing, and once or twice they picked up bunches of cedar-bark strips, bound about with the threads of the yucca. These the Professor used as tinder.

“Our predecessors were forced to resort to many clever devices,” said he, “but so long as we have the matches left we can risk our fire going out once or twice.”

But all were so sedulous that the fire never died a single time, and now as the mornings grew colder they began to cook in the house at the fire-pit. The Professor, four or five days after the discovery of the gold, looking up the canyon toward the row of white peaks in the north, predicted that they would have winter in a week, but he reckoned without the spirit of the wilderness which is capricious at best and which decided to send the great cold upon the four in the canyon much ahead of time. When they arose the very next morning thereafter, they looked upon a changed world. The sun had come, but there was no sunlight, only a dull, sodden, gray veil that hung between earth and sky; the white peaks, that usually looked down upon them in silent majesty, were hidden now, but from their crests a raw wind moaned through the canyons and gorges. While they watched, the brown clouds thickened, and spread from horizon to horizon. The gray loom of the desert to the south was hidden as well as the peaks to the north, and the wind grew damp. Charles, who was looking, was conscious of a step beside him, and he saw Herbert, wrapped in a new skin cloak.

“Winter is coming down upon us,” said Charles, “and its edge is snow. See, Herbert, it is here now.”

A large brown cloud opened a little, and dropped down a small white flake that settled upon his pointing finger. Then came its fellows, at first slow, then fast, and they lay where they fell, unmelting. Crests and cliffs sank away behind the floating veil, and the earth turned white.

“Winter is here,” said the Professor solemnly, “and we are snowed in. No one can come until spring.”

“All of which is mighty cur’ous an’ interestin’,” said Jedediah Simpson o’ Lexin’ton, K—y, “but we can stand it.”

“Yes, we’ll go into winter quarters,” said the Professor.

All walked back together to the common room—estufa it is called—and built up the fire in the pit, until it glowed red. Jed had been able to improve the flue somewhat, and they were troubled little by smoke. The fire was very cheerful and very glorious on that first morning of winter. Jed cooked their breakfast, and he chose the choicest of the venison steaks, filling the room with a pleasant aroma. They no longer had any bread, and they missed it greatly at times, but they had gathered a store of nuts on the mountain slopes, on which they would draw whenever they celebrated what they called one of their little festivals. This was such a time, and they added a small supply to the venison and turkey.

“I’m sorry I can’t give you fellows coffee any longer,” said Jed.

“So am I,” said Herbert, “I’d be willing to pay a doubloon for a cup, and I’d do it every morning—if I remember right a doubloon is about sixteen dollars, but I’d think it cheap at that price. Look how the snow thickens.”

From the tiny window, not much more than a peep hole, they could glance down upon the canyon, and now they saw but little, except an almost solid fall of white. The heavens had certainly opened and they knew what it portended. The snow would lie many feet deep in every canyon, gulch and crevice, undisturbed until the spring. There was no possibility, the cliff trails being gone, that any wandering footstep would come their way through the long winter months. Yet all turned cheerful faces back to the cheerful fire. In the whole time that they had been in the canyon they had not eaten a gayer breakfast than the one that followed, and they sat a long while after appetite was satisfied.

“It is still coming down,” said Herbert, going once to the door, “and it comes as if it intended to fill up our canyon, and that you know is a matter of two thousand feet anyway.”

“I think we’re safe on the shelf,” said the Professor, “but even here we shall have to make roads.”

“No doubt of it,” said Charles, and after a while they went forth upon this important task. They used now the bone scrapers that the cliff dwellers had left behind, as well as their own shovels, cleaning paths between the houses that they used. The snow poured down and covered up the paths again, but at any rate it was much thinner there, and their task would be easier when the fall ceased. They were light of heart at the work, now and then casting a little snow upon one another, the two boys throwing an occasional snowball.

When they were tired they rested, going back to the estufa, and there they again watched the snow coming down. All that day it fell and all the following night, and the next morning it ceased abruptly. The clouds suddenly fled away, leaving the skies a solid sheet of dazzling blue. A wintry sunlight, silver rather than gold, came out, and tinted the mountains which now lay under a deep robe of white. No wind blew, all around were the peaks and slopes, still and pure. The white cover extended down to the edge of the gray desert, but in the mountains it lay very deep.