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"You know we were notorious as poor feeders," Bella laughed lightly enough. "It was many a mile on either side from Nahala to the next roof. Belated travellers, or storm-bound ones, would, on occasion, stop with us overnight. And you know the lavishness of the big ranches, then and now. How we were the laughing-stock! 'What do we care! George would say. 'They live to-day and now.
But they're still building; and besides, what if the Hobo does break down? There's plenty to eat and drink, I hope. Nobody would suffer much." "No," said Billoo, "it would be no suffering for a business man to be storm-bound here during a probable panic in Wall Street! "I'm tired," I said, "of hearing you refer to yourself or any of these gentlemen as business men.
Once as I lay storm-bound on the upper edge of the timber line on Mount Shasta, the thermometer nearly at zero and the sky thick with driving snow, a Douglas came bravely out several times from one of the lower hollows of a Dwarf Pine near my camp, faced the wind without seeming to feel it much, frisked lightly about over the mealy snow, and dug his way down to some hidden seeds with wonderful precision, as if to his eyes the thick snow-covering were glass.
The brave woodpeckers were clinging to the snowless sides of the larger boles and overarching branches of the camp trees, making short nights from side to side of the grove, pecking now and then at the acorns they had stored in the bark, and chattering aimlessly as if unable to keep still, yet evidently putting in the time in a very dull way, like storm-bound travelers at a country tavern.
We slept at O'Cahan's Hotel, and well, one must sleep; and wherever we attend to that necessary function without due preparation, we generally make a mistake in the selection of the particular spot. There were no special privileges at O'Cahan's for maids, and Benella, therefore, had a delightful evening in the coffee-room with a storm-bound commercial traveller.
The plumes are exceedingly beautiful; no waving fern-frond in shady dell is more unreservedly beautiful in form and texture, or half so inspiring in color and spicy fragrance. In its prime, the whole tree is thatched with them, so that they shed off rain and snow like a roof, making fine mansions for storm-bound birds and mountaineers.
Before they gained Lake Le Barge, the land was sheeted with snow that would not melt for half a year. Nor could they lay their boat at will against the bank, for the rim-ice was already forming. Inside the mouth of the river, just ere it entered Lake Le Barge, they found a hundred storm-bound boats of the argonauts.
Dead horses marked the trail across two continents. The Cossack soldiers deserted and joined the banditti that scoured the Tartar plains; and for three winters the travellers were storm-bound in the mountains of Siberia. But at length they reached Avacha Bay on the eastern shore of Kamchatka, and the waters of the Pacific gladdened the eyes of the weary travellers.
He told of a wild ride down the icy slope of the Lyell Glacier; of a night, storm-bound, in the Hetchy-Hetchy, where he slept under the shelter of a limb drooping beneath the snow, with a group of frightened mountain birds for bedfellows.
Holders of small farms lived in the vicinity of this tavern, but the post-office was at Frederica, five miles inland. Embarking the next day, I felt sure of ending my cruise on Delaware Bay before night, as the quiet morning exhibited no signs of rising winds. The little pilot town of Lewes, near Cape Delaware, and behind the Breakwater, is a port of refuge for storm-bound vessels.
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