When Bettie Saw Pete
Go Down, She Whirled Like A Flash And With Two Or Three Bounds Was On
Top Of The Hill Again.
She was awfully frightened and stood close to
Bryant's horse, trembling all over.
Poor Bryant did not know what to
do or which one to assist, so I told him to go down and get the
lieutenant up on the bank and I would follow. Just how Faye got out of
his difficulty I did not see, for I was too busy attending to my own
affairs. Bettie acted as though she was bewitched, and go down to the
bridge she would not. Finally, when I was about tired out, Faye said
we must not waste more time there and that I had better ride Pete.
So I dismounted and the saddles were changed, and then there was more
trouble. Pete had never been ridden by a woman before, and thinking,
perhaps, that his sudden one-sidedness was a part of the bridge
performance, at once protested by jumps and lunges, but he soon
quieted down and we started on again. Bettie danced a little with
Faye, but that was all. She evidently remembered her lost battle with
him at Camp Baker.
It was almost dark when we reached the saw-mill, and as soon as it
became known that I was with the "lieutenant" every man sprang up from
some place underneath the snow to look at me, and two or three ran
over to assist Bryant with our things. It was awfully nice to know
that I was a person of importance, even if it was out in a camp in the
mountains where probably a woman had never been before. The little log
cabin built for officers had only the one long room, with large,
comfortable bunk, two tables, chairs, a "settle" of pine boards, and
near one end of the room was a box stove large enough to heat two
rooms of that size. By the time my stiffened body could get inside,
the stove had been filled to the top with pine wood that roared and
crackled in a most cheerful and inviting manner.
But the snow out there! I do not consider it advisable to tell the
exact truth, so I will simply say that it was higher than the cabin,
but that for some reason it had left an open space of about three feet
all around the logs, and that gave us air and light through windows
which had been thoughtfully placed unusually high. The long stable,
built against a bank, where the horses and mules were kept, was
entirely buried underneath the snow, and you would never have dreamed
that there was anything whatever there unless you had seen the path
that had been shoveled down to the door. The cabin the men lived in, I
did not see at all. We were in a ravine where the pine forest was
magnificent, but one could see that the trees were shortened many feet
by the great depth of snow.
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