The Argosy — page 336: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Across the Plains. 317 ~ A sudden rush, and plunge, and shock that sent us all off our seats! —a shaking and quivering that threatened dislocation and compound fractures of the whole framework of the old stage! It nghted itself before we had time to call out ; not, however, until every occupant had been more or less seriously bruised. _We gathered ourselves up as best we could, and looked out. The dawn and the snow struggled together in the air outside; one glaring white pall seemed to be spread over the earth. The driver was screaming to his mules and pulling the reins in a frantic sort of fashion. ‘What is the matter?” we shouted, simultaneously. “Matter enough,” he answered. ‘The mules have got down in this gully, four feet deep in the snow, ahd we’ll never get ’em out. And that’s not the worst on’t. I have lost the way.” Do you know the horror of hearing those words out on that vast, silent plain, with the snow placid as sunshine, cruel as treacherous wa- ters, hiding away every sign and mark by which we might have regained our lost track? We were out of the vehicle ina moment. The driver dismounted, and we all stared around us and at each other. The coach seemed hopelessly lodged in the deep gully, which was choked with drifts of snow that had fallen before we left Denver City ; the patient mules stood half buried in the drifts, inflexibly obstinate under the cruel rain of blows with which the driver vainly attempted to impel them forward. It was impossible for the animals to advance through the choked-up hollows in which the stage had lodged itself. We were tired, worn out, hungry men, for we had not tasted food since we left the last ranch, twenty hours before ; but the hope of life was sweet, and we bent to work with all the might of our will, and all the strength of our inured frames. How we tugged, and grappled, and strained together to extricate the stage! While before us the patient mules stood still, with their heads drooped forward and their flanks deep buried in the snow. : And the drops gathered on our foreheads, as though we were toiling in harvest fields, or in the mines we had left: still, shoulder to shoulder, we worked and wrestled on, but it was in vain. What could we do without shovel or spade or implement of any sort to clear away those dreadful drifts of snow? And at last we stood still, and looked in each others’ faces, and read there the awful fear we dared not speak. Was death to come to us hereP It passed before us all in awful visions : visions of freezing; of starvation; of murder by the Indians, who haunt those wastes for their prey, and who would be likely to swoop down upon us with war whoop and scalping-knife when they should discover our helpless condition. Or would it come to us by some pack of hungry beasts, scenting us from afar off? I looked at the wan sky above; I looked at the white earth beneath, at the far GOMNGOOO <S (S©)