Letters of a Woman Homesteader | Page 8

to the "show." I went to sleep with a powerfully
self-satisfied feeling, but I awoke to realize that pride goeth before a

fall.
I could hardly remember where I was when I awoke, and I could almost
hear the silence. Not a tree moaned, not a branch seemed to stir. I arose
and my head came in violent contact with a snag that was not there
when I went to bed. I thought either I must have grown taller or the tree
shorter during the night. As soon as I peered out, the mystery was
explained.
Such a snowstorm I never saw! The snow had pressed the branches
down lower, hence my bumped head. Our fire was burning merrily and
the heat kept the snow from in front. I scrambled out and poked up the
fire; then, as it was only five o'clock, I went back to bed. And then I
began to think how many kinds of idiot I was. Here I was thirty or forty
miles from home, in the mountains where no one goes in the winter and
where I knew the snow got to be ten or fifteen feet deep. But I could
never see the good of moping, so I got up and got breakfast while Baby
put her shoes on. We had our squirrels and more baked potatoes and I
had delicious black coffee.
After I had eaten I felt more hopeful. I knew Mr. Stewart would hunt
for me if he knew I was lost. It was true, he wouldn't know which way
to start, but I determined to rig up "Jeems" and turn him loose, for I
knew he would go home and that he would leave a trail so that I could
be found. I hated to do so, for I knew I should always have to be
powerfully humble afterwards. Anyway it was still snowing, great,
heavy flakes; they looked as large as dollars. I didn't want to start
"Jeems" until the snow stopped because I wanted him to leave a clear
trail. I had sixteen loads for my gun and I reasoned that I could likely
kill enough food to last twice that many days by being careful what I
shot at. It just kept snowing, so at last I decided to take a little hunt and
provide for the day. I left Jerrine happy with the towel rolled into a
baby, and went along the brow of the mountain for almost a mile, but
the snow fell so thickly that I couldn't see far. Then I happened to look
down into the cañon that lay east of us and saw smoke. I looked toward
it a long time, but could make out nothing but smoke, but presently I
heard a dog bark and I knew I was near a camp of some kind. I resolved

to join them, so went back to break my own camp.
At last everything was ready and Jerrine and I both mounted. Of all the
times! If you think there is much comfort, or even security, in riding a
pack-horse in a snowstorm over mountains where there is no road, you
are plumb wrong. Every once in a while a tree would unload its snow
down our backs. "Jeems" kept stumbling and threatening to break our
necks. At last we got down the mountain-side, where new danger
confronted us,--we might lose sight of the smoke or ride into a bog. But
at last, after what seemed hours, we came into a "clearing" with a small
log house and, what is rare in Wyoming, a fireplace. Three or four
hounds set up their deep baying, and I knew by the chimney and the
hounds that it was the home of a Southerner. A little old man came
bustling out, chewing his tobacco so fast, and almost frantic about his
suspenders, which it seemed he couldn't get adjusted.
As I rode up, he said, "Whither, friend?" I said "Hither." Then he asked,
"Air you spying around for one of them dinged game wardens arter that
deer I killed yisteddy?" I told him I had never even seen a game warden
and that I didn't know he had killed a deer. "Wall," he said, "air you
spying around arter that gold mine I diskivered over on the west side of
Baldy?" But after a while I convinced him that I was no more nor less
than a foolish woman lost in the snow. Then he said, "Light, stranger,
and look at your saddle." So I "lit" and looked, and then I asked him
what part of the South he was from. He answered, "Yell County, by
gum! The best place in the United States, or in the world, either." That
was my introduction to Zebulon Pike Parker.
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