Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1888-10-15
Sally's HerOisnl.

from the hardships and suffering at
tendant upon pioneer life.
But Milton Bruce was naturally
determined, and, once decided upon
a course of action, he was not easily
turned from his purpose; and, urged
on by the fiattering reports from that
section, he had in due time settled
with his wife and only child, Sally,
then nine years of age, in the mining
country of Colorado and midway
down the side of one of those spurs
(they branch out at regular intervals
all along the Rocky Mountain range)
over the bare summit of which ran a
rough trail toward mining town
beyond. He built his primitive cabin
of rough logs taken from the belt of
timber near by.
Into it Sally, now a girl of four
teen, and her mother were moved
from little mining town or scamp
in the valley on the other side of the
mountain, seven miles away, where
they had been staying, waiting for
the establishment of their home.
The way over the mountain trail
had been wearisome and full of peril ,
the road rough, winding up and on
above the timber into the region of
ice and snow crooked line, treach-
erous with many. a chasm, growing
fainter and fainter till lost in the
perils of the pass at the summit,
trailing sinuously along the height,
and gradually dropping on the other
side. From it zigzag trail led
away and down the long broken
slope toward the miners cabin.
The pass could scarcely be called
such in the accepted meaning of the
term, as it is scarcely more than a
shelf in the crest of the mountain,
flanked by giddy precipices of ice
and rock, where the snow lies all
the year and the winds are never
still.
Over this way even the bravest
miners dread to cross in winter save
in calm weather.
The cabin, staunch, but small ,
contained two rooms, with great
rude chimney and fireplace of stones
and mud at one end, over which the
miners wife and daughter cooked
the frugal meals and sat around it
on winter nights, listening to the
wild winds which swept across the
slope, driving the snow like white
mist-clouds before it, or hissed and
roared down its throat.
The long trail zigzagging up the
slope possessed a fascination for
Sally's adventurous spirit, and it was
gazed at with keen eyes in all its
tortuous winding with wistful long
ing, till she knew every turn of the
way.
After while she sometimes ac-
companied her father over to the
town, and once in summer even made
the journey alone, so much confidence
did Milton Bruce place in his daugh-
ter's ability to take care of herself.
And this self-dependence and deter
mined character stood him in very
good stead later on.
The Bruces had been at the cabin
two summers, filled with
bright, cloudless days and cool, dew
less nights-and now a second win
ter had crept down upon the bleak
mountain side, with wind and storm
and dark, lowering skies.
Mrs. Bruce had taken the last
long journey, and was laid in the
shadow of a great gray boulder, up
on which she had sat with Sally and
kitted and planned wonderful schemes
or woven bright day-dreams of fu
ture prosperity and a happy meeting
with the dear ones away beyond the
sunrise.
Now Sally was left alone to keep
the hearth warm and cheer the lonely
man who still delved persistently at
the rocky ''drift," believing he would
some time 'sstrike ore
But, as the months had dragged
on, and no fortune had come of his
labor, the people of the town had
given him well-meant advice to aban-
don his place and try another and
more promising locality.
It had been mild November, but
toward the last of December there
came heavy SHOWS and Milton Bruce,
plodding about prospecting, as was
his wont, in sheltered ravines out of
the reach of storms, at length threw
down his pick in the gathering dusk
of the short day, his usually detected
face overspread with an expression
hard to describe, and with anxious
eyes peered into the snow-cloud far
up the long slope.
ssHeaven forbid that anything
should happen tonight p he mutter-
ed and, long after Sally had gone
to bed in the curtained corner of the
kitchen that night, her fathers rest
less footsteps sounded upon the rough
floor of the next room.
Wearied at length, Sally fell asleep,
while upon the mountain a mvster-
ious, weird movement was going on
under the murky snow-cloud, as if
some giant hand were moving the
whole vast field of snow and ice
slowly and silently downward toward
the valley, gathering force each mo-