United States or Honduras ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
When first the crocus thrusts its point of gold Up through the still snow-drifted garden mould, And folded green things in dim woods unclose Their crinkled spears, a sudden tremor goes Into my veins and makes me kith and kin To every wild-born thing that thrills and blows. My feast of flowers began before I entered Colorado.
On December 9 the blizzard was really over; we completed the digging out of sledges and stores and wallowed sometimes thigh-deep whilst getting the ponies out of their snow-drifted shelters. Then we faced probably the hardest physical test we had had since the bailing out in the great gale a year ago. We had breakfast and got away somewhere about 8 a.m.
No more for the old guard were there to be the exciting bustle of the start, the glorious rush out of the smoky town into the bright country; the crash through hamlet and village; the wayside changings; the rough crossing of snow-drifted moorlands; the occasional breakdowns; the difficulties and dangers; the hospitable inns; the fireside gossipings.
"That was your child, then?" Fred Thayer was silent. Barry Houston repeated the question commandingly. There could be no secrecy now; events had gone too far. For a third time the accusation came and the man beside him turned angrily. "Whose would you think it was?" Houston did not answer. They stumbled on through the snow-drifted woods, finally to reach the open space leading to the sleigh.
I might have done so, but I had a vision, just then, of a boy who had lived on the Western prairies, in a big box of a house, and had gone to bed in a room that was about the temperature of the snow-drifted yard.
Wheeler reluctantly took up her workbasket, and the boys talked with their old, easy friendliness. When Ernest left, Claude walked as far as the Yoeders' place with him, and came back across the snow-drifted fields, under the frosty brilliance of the winter stars.
Before the last grain fell we seven were out, led by M. Radisson, speeding over the snow-drifted marsh through the thick frosty darkness that lies like a blanket over that northland at dawn. The air hung heavy, gray, gritty to the touch with ice-frost. The hard-packed drifts crisped to our tread with little noises which I can call by no other name than frost-shots.
What went on outside the limits of the camp's snow-drifted horizon its dwellers knew not nor for the moment cared. Work was the only thought. With hastily constructed snow-plows roads had been broken among the tents and shacks as soon as the weather allowed, and afterward broad paths made to the working ground. The section of undug canal was now scraped bare.
Early in the spring a grisly came out of its den, and he found its tracks in many places, as it roamed restlessly about, evidently very hungry. Finding little to eat in the bleak, snow-drifted woods, it soon began to depredate on the moose, and killed two or three, generally by lying in wait and dashing out on them as they passed near its lurking-place.
Once they quarreled, and he raged that she was as "bossy" as his wife and far more whining when he was inattentive. But that passed safely. Their high hour was a tramp on a ringing December afternoon, through snow-drifted meadows down to the icy Chaloosa River.
Word Of The Day