Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/210

 At first I could see nothing but Tom himself,—plastered with yellow mud from head to foot, features hidden and hair decorated with it.

A bright thought struck me. “Tom, get the wooden trough out of the milk-house, and that pole by the alder, and see if you can’t shove yourself around a little. I might fancy you a tall and shadowy gondolier, and half believe ourselves in Venice,—especially if you would first wash your face.”

“Yes, and we’ll be in Venice indeed when I make such an idiot of myself as that!”

I’ve always been sorry that he declined to embark. The current of the lagoon was surprisingly swift, and would have carried his craft into the spring-run, which a little lower down in the yard has a fall of five or six feet. To see Mr. Thomas Graham shooting the rapids in the milk-trough would have made glad my day, dark as the skies were then.

During this flood-time we often heard the dull roar of the ocean; the wind blew straight from it with the force almost of a hurricane. The house shook in the fierce gusts; great branches of the alders snapped off and came tumbling down in the yard. Occasionally a big tree, uprooted by wind and water, fell with a tremendous crash.

It was fine to hear the rush of wind through the forest, to see the tall firs tossing their plumy heads, wrestling so fiercely with one another that many came