slide!" said the prospector with whom I was 

 having supper. "A sHde hit my -cabin in the 

 Sawtooth Mountains. No more sleeping for 

 me in the possible right-of-way of a slide! I 

 sized up the territory before building this cabin 

 and I 've put it out of the range of slides." 



All this was encouraging, as I was to spend 

 the night in the cabin and had arrived after 

 the surrounding mountains were hidden in 

 darkness. A record-breaking snow of eight days 

 and nights had just ended a few hours before. 

 During the afternoon, as I came down from 

 Alpine Pass on snowshoes, the visible peaks and 

 slopes loomed white and were threateningly 

 overladen with snow. Avalanches would run riot 

 during the next few hours, and the sliding might 

 begin at any minute. Gorges and old slide- 

 ways would hold most of these in the beaten 

 slide-tracks, but there was the possibility of 

 an overladen mountain sending off a shoot- 

 ing star of a slide which might raise havoc by 

 smashing open a new orbit. 



The large spruces around the cabin showed 

 that if ever a slide had swept this site it was 



80 



