“I wonder if we couldn’t get some game?” inquired Ollie.

“Snow-birds, maybe,” said Jack.  “Or perhaps an owl.  I’ve heard b’iled owl spoken of.”

After all, the prospect was not so bad.  Besides, it was so early in the season that it did not seem at all likely that we should be snowbound a week.  Still, we knew little about the mountain climate.

We got on our overcoats and went out and gave the horses their breakfast.  Old Blacky was still cross, but Jack contented himself by calling him a few names.  We also got up what wood we could and piled it against the wagon, for use in case our kerosene became exhausted, though we decided to cook in the wagon for the present.  The snow was seven or eight inches deep, and still falling rapidly.  After breakfast we took the pony down to a little open fiat and turned her loose.  The old instinct of her wild days came back to her, and she began to paw away the snow and gnaw at the scanty grass beneath.

After giving the other horses a little hay we returned to the wagon, where we stayed most of the day.  I’m afraid we were a little frightened by the prospect.  Of course, we knew that if it came to the worst we could leave the wagon and make our way back along the trail on foot, but we did not want to do that.  But as for getting the wagon back along the narrow road, now blotted out by the snow, we knew it would be foolish to attempt it.  It was not very cold in the wagon, and Jack played the banjo, and we were fairly cheerful.  The snow kept coming down all day, and by night it was a foot deep.  The pony came in from the flat as it began to grow dark, and we gave the horses their supper and left them in the shelter of the rocks.  Then we brushed the snow off the top of the cover, as we had done several times before, and went in to spend the evening by the light of the lantern.  When bedtime came, Jack looked up and said: 

“The cover doesn’t seem to sag down.  It must have stopped snowing.”

We looked out, and found that it was so.  We could even see the stars; and, better yet, it did not seem to be growing colder.  We went to bed feeling encouraged.

The next morning the sun peeped in at us through the long trunks of the pines, and Ollie soon discovered that the wind was from the south.

“Unless it turns cold again, this will fix the snow,” said Jack.

He was right, and it soon began to thaw.  By noon the little stream in the gulch was a torrent, and before night patches of bare ground began to appear.  We decided not to attempt to leave camp that day, but the next morning saw us headed back along the tortuous road.  In two hours we were again on the main trail.  Just as we turned in, Eugene Brooks came along, having also been delayed by the snow, though the fall where he was had not been nearly so great.  ’Gene laughed at us, and told us that we had been following a trail to some lead mines which had been abandoned several months before.