Читать книгу Tomboy Bride, 50th Anniversary Edition - Harriet Fish Backus - Страница 18

CHAPTER 8

In the high alps of the world, winds become gales. Clouds of every shape and size scuttle overhead just out of reach and are swirled every-which-way by blasts of wind that rapidly gather force. On one such day of gathering fury our unprotected shack shook violently and creaked. I watched George coming up the hill tightly gripping our daily can of water and struggling to make headway. Slowly, planting his feet carefully, he finally reached a packing box and two planks near the house just as the can fell from his shoulder.

My greeting to him was “Do we dare stay in this rickety shack tonight?”

“Oh yes,” he said mildly. “We’ll be all right. It just seems worse up here than down on the flat.”

When we were in bed we could not sleep. All night long in that jittering hovel we listened to the fury and howling of the wind. What kept the cracker box standing I’ll never know.

Crash! What sounded like pounds of glass breaking into bits was only an old cigar box filled with nails that had fallen from a shelf. Even the rats laid low that night, at least we did not hear them. My chattering teeth kept time to the rattling of the old stovepipe fastened by wires to the rafters. The denim “carpet” rose and fell like ocean billows and wind crackled the newspaper padding.

“Please, George, let’s get out of here,” I pleaded.

“Where do you want to go?” he asked me.

“Anywhere down on the flat. Beth will take us in.”

“We can’t wake them up at this time of night.” As if anyone could sleep on such a night.

“What difference does the time make when we may be crushed to death any minute?” I screeched to be heard above the racket. Toward daybreak, George, seeing me so exhausted, said, “Probably Beth and Jim will be up early, so we’ll go down now. You can stay with Beth while Jim and I go to work.”

We dressed hurriedly in the bitter cold. In the corners of the front room, blown through cracks by the screeching winds, snow was heaped halfway to the ceiling. We stepped out clinging tightly to each other. The packing box and two large planks, which George had spilled our water on the night before, had been blown far up the hill. Around the Basin, stovepipes and an endless variety of articles were strewn. The sheet-iron roof on Lee Galter’s house had been lifted and tossed aside. George held me tighter as we braced ourselves against the lash of the wild wind.

We found that Beth and Jim were up and dressed as they had been all night, ready for any emergency. Their welcome and Beth’s hot breakfast made the storm less terrifying. Jim and George then left for the mill.

By afternoon the wind had eased, the temperature rose, and snow began to fall in big blinding flakes. When George’s shift was over and we climbed our hill, he set long stakes beside the path protruding three feet above the snowbank as there was every indication we were to have a heavy fall and he must outline the trail. He wired the stovepipes securely again, shoveled the snow out of the house, and made up the fires, and after the fury of the night before we settled down to enjoy the silence and beauty of softly falling snow.