"And again it mightn't," said George, and went back to his stove.
After we had eaten, he came in and gathered the emptied dishes.He stood for a moment, while his spurious frown deepened.
"It might stop any minute," he said, "or it might keep up for days."At the farther end of the cook room I saw George pour hot water into his dishpan, light his pipe, and put the tableware through its required lavation.He then carefully unwrapped from a piece of old saddle blanket a paperback book, and settled himself to read by his dim oil lamp.
And then the ranchman threw tobacco on the cleared table and set forth again the bottles and glasses; and I saw that I stood in a deep channel through which the long dammed flood of his discourse would soon be booming.But I was half content, comparing my fate with that of the late Thomas Tucker, who had to sing for his supper, thus doubling the burdens of both himself and his host.
"Snow is a hell of a thing," said Ross, by way of a foreword."It ain't, somehow, it seems to me, salubrious.I can stand water and mud and two inches below zero and a hundred and ten in the shade and medium-sized cyclones, but this here fuzzy white stuff naturally gets me all locoed.I reckon the reason it rattles you is because it changes the look of things so much.It's like you had a wife and left her in the morning with the same old blue cotton wrapper on, and rides in of a night and runs across her all outfitted in a white silk evening frock, waving an ostrich-feather fan, and monkeying with a posy of lily flowers.Wouldn't it make you look for your pocket compass? You'd be liable to kiss her before you collected your presence of mind."By and by, the flood of Ross's talk was drawn up into the clouds (so it pleased me to fancy) and there condensed into the finer snowflakes of thought; and we sat silent about the stove, as good friends and bitter enemies will do.I thought of Boss's preamble about the mysterious influence upon man exerted by that ermine-lined monster that now covered our little world, and knew he was right.
Of all the curious knickknacks, mysteries, puzzles, Indian gifts, rat-traps, and well-disguised blessings that the gods chuck down to us from the Olympian peaks, the most disquieting and evil-bringing is the snow.By scientific analysis it is absolute beauty and purity --so, at the beginning we look doubtfully at chemistry.
It falls upon the world, and lo! we live in another.It hides in a night the old scars and familiar places with which we have grown heart-sick or enamored.So, as quietly as we can, we hustle on our embroidered robes and hie us on Prince Camaralzaman's horse or in the reindeer sleigh into the white country where the seven colors converge.
This is when our fancy can overcome the bane of it.
But in certain spots of the earth comes the snow-madness, made known by people turned wild and distracted by the bewildering veil that has obscured the only world they know.In the cities, the white fairy who sets the brains of her dupes whirling by a wave of her wand is cast for the comedy role.Her diamond shoe buckles glitter like frost;with a pirouette she invites the spotless carnival.
But in the waste places the snow is sardonic.Sponging out the world of the outliers, it gives no foothold on another sphere in return.
It makes of the earth a firmament under foot; it leaves us clawing and stumbling in space in an inimical fifth element whose evil outdoes its strangeness and beauty, There Nature, low comedienne, plays her tricks on man.Though she has put him forth as her highest product, it appears that she has fashioned him with what seems almost incredible carelessness and indexterity.One-sided and without balance, with his two halves unequally fashioned and joined, must he ever jog his eccentric way.The snow falls, the darkness caps it, and the ridiculous man-biped strays in accurate circles until he succumbs in the ruins of his defective architecture.
In the throat of the thirsty the snow is vitriol.In appearance as plausible as the breakfast food of the angels, it is as hot in the mouth as ginger, increasing the pangs of the water-famished.It is a derivative from water, air, and some cold, uncanny fire from which the caloric has been extracted.Good has been said of it; even the poets, crazed by its spell and shivering in their attics under its touch, have indited permanent melodies commemorative of its beauty.
Still, to the saddest overcoated optimist it is a plague--a corroding plague that Pharaoh successfully side-stepped.It beneficently covers the wheat fields, swelling the crop--and the Flour Trust gets us by the throat like a sudden quinsy.It spreads the tail of its white kirtle over the red seams of the rugged north--and the Alaskan short story is born.Etiolated perfidy, it shelters the mountain traveler burrowing from the icy air--and, melting to-morrow, drowns his brother in the valley below.
At its worst it is lock and key and crucible, and the wand of Circe.
When it corrals man in lonely ranches, mountain cabins, and forest huts, the snow makes apes and tigers of the hardiest.It turns the bosoms of weaker ones to glass, their tongues to infants' rattles, their hearts to lawlessness and spleen.It is not all from the isolation; the snow is not merely a blockader; it is a Chemical Test.
It is a good man who can show a reaction that is not chiefly composed of a drachm or two of potash and magnesia, with traces of Adam, Ananias, Nebuchadnezzar, and the fretful porcupine.
This is no story, you say; well, let it begin.
There was a knock at the door (is the opening not full of context and reminiscence oh, best buyers of best sellers?).
We drew the latch, and in stumbled Etienne Girod (as he afterward named himself).But just then he was no more than a worm struggling for life, enveloped in a killing white chrysalis.
