Sidford Hamp - The Trail of The Badger - A Story of the Colorado Border Thirty Years Ago

To this I made no objection, and early though it was, I was asleep in five minutes, too tired to be disturbed even by the insistent banging and howling of the storm outside.

Meanwhile, Uncle Tom, down in the town, was, as I had suspected, fretting and fuming and worrying himself in his uncertainty as to whether I was safe under cover or not.

The storm had taken the town by surprise, for the morning had opened gloriously, clear and sharp and still, as it had done every day for a month past, and most people naturally supposed there was to be another day as fine as those which had gone before; little suspecting that the north wind, up there among the icebound peaks and gorges of the mother range, was at that moment marshaling its forces for a mad rush down into the valley.

And how should they suspect? Of the three hundred people comprising the population, not one, not even old Jeff Andrews himself, the patriarch of the district, had spent more than two winters in the camp. In the year of its founding there were about a dozen men and no women who had braved the hardships of the first winter, but as the fame of the new camp extended to the outer world, other people began to come in, slowly at first and then in larger numbers, so that by this time the population numbered, as I said, about three hundred souls, including twenty-one women and two babies; while at a rough guess I should say there was about two-thirds of a dog to each citizen, counting in the twelve children of school age and the two babies as well.

These dogs, by the way, were the chief source of entertainment in the town, for during the hours of daylight there was always a fight going on somewhere, while at night most of them, especially the younger ones, used to sit out in the middle of the street barking defiance at the coyotes, which, from the hills all round, howled back at them in unceasing chorus. This part of the programme was changed, however, later in the winter, for one half-cloudy night the blacksmith's long-legged shepherd pup, seated in front of the forge door, was barking himself hoarse at the moon when a big timber-wolf came slipping down out of the woods and finished the puppy's song and his existence with one snap. After this the other dogs were more careful about the hours they kept.

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