ountains.
We built a fire in a huge stone fireplace and sat around in the
flickering light telling ghost-stories to one another. The place was
rudely furnished, with only a hard earthen floor, and chairs hewn by
the axe. Rifles, spurs, bits, revolvers, branding-irons in turn caught
the light and vanished in the shadow. The skin of a bear looked at us
from hollow eye-sockets in which there were no eyes. We talked of the
Long Trail. Outside the wind, rising, howled through the shakes of the
roof.

[1] Camp-lingo for any kind of syrup.

XV

ON THE WIND AT NIGHT

The winds were indeed abroad that night. They rattled our cabin, they
shrieked in our eaves, they puffed down our chimney, scattering the
ashes and leaving in the room a balloon of smoke as though a shell had
burst. When we opened the door and stepped out, after our good-nights
had been said, it caught at our hats and garments as though it had been
lying in wait for us.

To our eyes, fire-dazzled, the night seemed very dark. There would be
a moon later, but at present even the stars seemed only so many
pinpoints of dull metal, lustreless, without illumination. We felt our
way to camp, conscious of the softness of grasses, the uncertainty of
stones.

At camp the remains of the fire crouched beneath the rating of the
storm. Its embers glowed sullen and red, alternately glaring with a
half-formed resolution to rebel, and dying to a sulky resignation.
Once a feeble flame sprang up for an instant, but was immediately
pounced on and beaten flat as though by a vigilant antagonist.

We, stumbling, gathered again our tumbled blankets. Across the brow of
the knoll lay a huge pine trunk. In its shelter we respread our
bedding, and there, standing, dressed for the night. The power of the
wind tugged at our loose garments, hoping for spoil. A towel, shaken
by accident from the interior of a sweater, departed white-winged, like
a bird, into the outer blackness. We found it next day caught in the
bushes several hundred yards distant. Our voices as we shouted were
snatched from our lips and hurled lavishly into space. The very breath
of our bodies seemed driven back, so that as we faced the elements, we
breathed in gasps, with difficulty.

Then we dropped down into our blankets.

At once the prostrate tree-trunk gave us its protection. We lay in a
little back-wash of the racing winds, still as a night in June. Over
us roared the battle. We fel