Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/98



if there were grizzlies up the gorge where it came from. At best, it had but a sorry time, even before the miners came. It had to wedge itself in between the foot-hills, and elbow its way for every inch of room. It was kicked and cudgelled from this foot hill to that ; it ran from side to side, and worked, and wound, and curved, and cork-screwed on in a way that had made an angler sorry. Maybe, after all, it was glad to fold its little icy hands across its fretted breast, and rest, and rest, and rest, stiff and still, beneath the snow, below the pines and yew and cedar trees that bent their heads in silence by the sleeper.

The Kanaka sugar-mat was empty ; the strip of bacon that had hung in the corner against the wall was gone, and the flour-sack grew low and sugges tive.

Miners are great eaters in the winter. Snuff the fierce frost weather of the Sierras, run in the snow, or delve in the mine through the day, and roast by a great pine fire through the evening, and you will eat like an Englishman.

The snow had fallen very fast ; then the weather settled cold and clear as a bell. The largest arid the brightest stars, it seemed to me, hang about and above Mount Shasta in those cold, bright winter nights of the north. They seem as large as Cali fornia lilies ; they flash and flare, and sparkle and dart their little spangles ; they lessen and enlarge, and seem to make signs, and talk and und