a crew an’ got here fast as we could. Stationed a man to watch the mountain and at the sight or sound of a crack in the snow, he was to fire a warnin’ shot.” He continued, “Men from all the mines was there and we dug like crazy. We dug a few fellas out alive when the lookout fired. He’d heard a crack but a damn avalanche from the other side had broke loose. I don’t know how any of us got out alive—some didn’t, that’s fer sure. You never know jus’ when them dern things is comin’ or where they come from or what they’re gonna do. I’m scared as hell of em!” With increasing vehemence he finished his story and left me also “scared as hell.” I squeezed closer to George, imagining the horror of suffocation in the deathly embrace of the beautiful white fluff. Historians have told that near this very range John C. Fremont, the “Pathfinder,” in 1848 lost nearly all his men and every one of his mules froze to death.
The struggle to get supplies up to the Tomboy after the trail had been partially dug out.
A faint tinkling sound of bells penetrated my fearsome thoughts. Bill grabbed the reins and urged the horses deeper into the snowbank on the inner side of the road.
“She’s open,” he said, “but we better stay here. Too risky to pass mules in a storm. Too big a chance of them fallin’ into each other and some being knocked over the drop. Mules always have to take the dangerous side. They learn by experience how to avoid the edge by feel of the trail.”
A horse and rider, half-buried in snow, wallowed toward us within inches of the sled—so near that I dodged. Roped behind the horse was a huge animal, the lead mule, his head down, loaded with a pack that would have been too ponderous on a smooth road in good weather. He was followed by others, equally overburdened and linked by ropes from their halters to the saddle of the mule ahead. Lunging, pulling back, struggling forward, snorting from the effort to keep up with the mule ahead, the poor brutes inched onward until the last of a string of fifteen passed us and the tinkling of their bells was muffled in the deadening silence of the snow.
Through the path that had been shoveled for the mules the snow was still belly-deep on the horses and the Big Elephant loomed ahead of us. Fighting the uphill pull the tired horses tottered against each other, obediently lunging as Bill shouted at them, tugging valiantly until finally we had passed the danger and could see a dim but welcome light ahead.
“That’s the only store,” said George. “It’s run by a fellow named Fyfe, known as Scotty. All he carries is supplies for miners: shirts, cords, overalls, gloves, overshoes, stamps, and a little writing paper. But everyone depends on him because he rides down to Smuggler every day he can get through to bring up the mail.”
As we passed the store a dull, heavy, continuous “thud” was growing louder.
“That’s the voice of sixty stamps in the Tomboy Mill,” George explained. “And it’s a noise mining people like to hear. It never stops unless there is trouble.”
We slipped past the brilliantly lighted buildings of the mill and began the last half mile of our trip, climbing past scattered huts to stop in front of a tiny shack peeping above the surrounding white expanse without a visible path leading to it.
“Home,” said George with a happy smile. I forced my stiff legs out of the sled and sank up to my waist in snow. It was a frightening surprise to step suddenly into what seemed like a bottomless hole of white down.
“You’ll get use’ t’ that,” Bill said, grinning.
George rescued me and we ponderously made our way to the door of the shack.
“It was a wonderful ride,” I called to Bill Langley. “I’ll never forget it.”
“G’bye,” came his reply. “Fer a tenderfoot you’ been mighty brave.” And he headed his horses toward the barn.
George opened the door of our first home. The square entry was barely large enough to get inside and manage to close the door behind us.
We entered a room ten feet square which was the living room and bedroom combined. Beyond it was the kitchen, same size. That was all!
From a woodpile in a corner of the kitchen George started a fire in the cooking range. We made toast and hot chocolate with a few cooking utensils already there. After satisfying our stomachs with this small repast, we eagerly fell into bed, utterly exhausted. Our bed consisted of a mattress supported by springs with legs attached, and our blankets were borrowed from the bunkhouse of the Japan Flora Mine. This unpretentious setting was the beginning of my housekeeping duties.
CHAPTER 3
Fifty feet from our “mansion” was the schoolhouse, closed during the long winter, in session only from May through September when the teacher occupied the house. George had been fortunate in renting it for five dollars a month through the winter with the stipulation that we vacate in time for the opening of the school. No other shack on the hill had been available.
The first morning George began what was to become his foremost daily task—to tunnel a trail to the indispensable “outhouse” which belonged to the school. It was one hundred feet from our back door. A rendezvous of winds from all directions built drifts as high as our heads. Often falling snow filled in the trail as fast as George could shovel it out. Frequently by evening the task began again. Aching with sympathy I could look out the window and tell where my husband was only by the scoops of snow flying over the banks from a source invisible as he neared his goal.
What a transformation had taken place in my dapper young college grad, impeccable in his tailored suits, modern hats, stylish ties, and polished shoes! My snowman wore cumbersome clothes, a black skullcap pulled tightly over his head under a visored felt hat, much too large and hiding his ears, a heavy jacket with turned up collar and sleeves dangling below his leather, fleece-lined gloves, his feet in awkward arctics, drops perpetually dripping from his cold red nose, shoveling a path to the privy.
While eating our first breakfast in our first home, George explained, “The companies object to people on the hill having supplies delivered often because the mules have all they can do to supply the mines with necessities to keep them running. And besides, if they deliver only a loaf of bread it costs seventy-five cents when an entire mule-load costs only a dollar-fifty. Most of the women order only once a month. You’d better make a list of everything you think we will need for a while. Then go across the trail to the stable, just a short distance away, and telephone. Fred Diener has charge of the stable and his phone is the only one on the hill except those in the mine offices. Tell the store you live in the teacher’s house and they will send the order to Ed Lavender’s depot. His pack trains start from there.”
George left for work at the Japan Flora Mine on the slope a quarter mile away. Already longing for his return I sized up our domicile.
The floors of the two rooms were clean but bare. The front room contained a heating stove, the bed, a small table, and one straight chair. The wardrobe was a curtain stretched along one wall hiding the nails on which to hang garments. There was no door between the two rooms. The kitchen contained a cooking range, a small table, two roughly made chairs, and one shelf for dishes. On a small bench in a corner was a tin basin. This was evidently for both dishwashing and bathing. I immediately put a second basin on my list of necessities. Beneath the bench was the “slop jar,” a five-gallon oil can.
One small window in front and back let in a little light in the daytime. One bare electric bulb dangled from the ceiling in each room.
The bed made and dishes washed, I hung our clothes on the wall and my housework was done.
I knew almost nothing about ordering food but we had to eat. We could have nothing fresh sent up, not even milk. That list! How I dreaded to make it! How many cans and of what foods? What sizes? Would I ever learn? My beloved husband was a glutton for meat. I must get plenty of that, and chocolate, which he enjoyed so much. I thought of what my mother used to send me to the store to buy—coffee, salt, butter, and, oh yes, a sack of sugar which