The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1874-12-10
THE SNOW.SHRIEK,

When the snow-shriek rings across
the plains and prairies of the great
West folks who have a love for their
life don't care to camp out. The In
dians strike their lodges at the sound,
and make the best of their way to
shelter among the bluffs, or in wooded
tract, IS for the settlers, they take
wagons and hurry off to the nearest
town, leaving everything behind to its
fate
My sto:y is of the far West
Albert, Parnell was a tall, manly
young fellow, with bronzed face and
dark hair, strong, indeed, and of
dauntleef courage, as was reported I;
but not, Ike Caryl Winthrop, a musi-
clan, aizetcher and a poet, to whom
foreign Languages and art.talk were
familiar.
Both loved. and, as is often the case
with young men, both loved the same
person--handsome, lovely Metella
Stewart.
There vas this advantage on the part
of young Winthrop-he had loved not
in vain. An intimate friend of the
parents of the young lady, it was be-
lleved by all that he was engaged to
her, and would make her happy.
Alberto finding that his suit was in
vain had prepared to leave the village,
and we 6nd him one evening bidding
adieu to Metella, preparatory to his
going.
An old friend Of hers, she wishes to
part with him kindly; but he, heart
sore and jealous, is not in the best of
humor, aud his parting is as full of
bitterness as such parting might ex-
pect to be.
AS Alberto bade adieu and rode off
the loud vail of the snow-shriek was
beard meaning bitterly over the prairies.
Thirty-siX hours later the sad, mo-
notonous sound of the snow-shriek had
swelled into menacing roar, as Of
angry fiends let loose to ravage and
destroy, and flmy veil drawn over the
western sky had darkened from white
to orange, and from orange to sable,
and then, borne on the mighty wings
of an icy wind, there broke upon the
Territory the force of such a snow
storm as the hardest farmer there had
never pi ,ured Down came the
whirling flakes, thick, heavy, pitiless !;
accompanied by cruel cold like
deaths own touch, that pierced through
furs and buffalo robes, and numbed the
limbs and chilled the marrow, while
still the binding snow fell and fell, and
swept along before the furious gale,
like so many white billows, over the
country. And still the wind blew from
the cold northwest, and still the snow
fell. The deep piled drifts soon began
to blot out every sign of mans domin-
ion from the lately subjugated land that
had been SO recently won from the
wilderness. Dismal stories were
brought IN, ere long, of the disasters
by food and field. Rivers had swollen
and overfowed their banks, washing
down, along with a pack of floating
ice, the debris of ruined homesteads
and the carcases of drowned oxen. In
the pastures, herdsman and herd lay
overwhelmed beneath the white waves
of snow. In the drifts that blocked
the roads, wagoners and their teams
were walled in, to perish of frostbite
or exhaustion, unless aid came speedily;
while many bewildered wayfarer
wandered from the track, and strayed
across the desolate prairie until he
found grave in the deepening snow.
1t was with difficulty that Caryl could
force his horse through the drifts that
environed Colonel Stewards house, and
when he arrived there two of the hired
men We're missing, and a third had
come in, haif-frozen, from vain attempt
to save the affrighted cattle.
Then did Metella realize the truth of
the old hunters words. She, and
those about her, had found out, for the
first time, what snow lneant-pitiless,
inexhausiible whiteness, borne in upon
them by the rush of the resistless wind,
that howjed and raved, with a sound
like the cry of ravening wolves, about
the house, and heaped up such masses
as cumber the ground, even in those
]atitudes, but once or twice in gen
Grafton. Colonel Stewart, at first in
credulous of peril, as it was in his
sanguine nature to be, presently began
to admit that the calamity was worse
than the mere damage to his property.
The sheep, hogs and cattle that he had
lost repres ented but money sacrifice
an affair of dollars and cents. But
when all communications between
Stewards Flat and the outer world were
cut off, and it was too late to fly, and
the gathering snow was loading the
roof, and darkening the lower windows,
and rising, rising ever, he recognized
the imprudence of his selection of such
a site for his residence, and would have
been thankful for escape, even at the
cost of half his substance. This, how
ever, was impossible. The road by
which Winthrop had reached the house
was now barred by wall of snow. The
fast-fallipg flakes threatened to fill
up the dol to the level of the hills
that commanded it, and all the out
buildings we're hidden or unroofed by
the weight of the snowfall. And still
that horrl snow-shriek, loud and wild
now as the war-cry of exulting demons,
filled the startled air, as though re-
joicing over its prey.
The pangs of impending famine were
soon added to the terrors of the situa-
tion. Those shut up in the once hos
pitable mansion at Stewards Flat had
but scanty supplies of food or fuel. 1t
was as much as mans life was worth
to try to reach the great woodpile. 1t
took severe exertion to bring in, from
time to time, few logs and some
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