The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound Part 26

Alice induced Ruth to pay a visit to the barn, to watch the preparations for providing for the stock. Even the animals seemed uneasy, as though they sensed some impending disaster. The horses, always nervous, were doubly so, and moved restlessly about, with p.r.i.c.ked-up ears, and startled neighs. The cows, too, lowed plaintively.

"Well, we've done all we can," announced Mr. Macksey, as night came on.

"Now all we can do is to wait. There's plenty of fuel in the cellar, and we'll not freeze, at any rate."

There was a sense of gloom over all, as they sat in the big living room of Elk Lodge that night, and looked at the blazing logs. Everyone listened apprehensively, as though to hear the first message of the impending storm.

The sighing of the wind, if wind it was that made that curious sound, was more p.r.o.nounced now, and as the blast came down the chimney it scattered ashes and embers about, and at times rose to an uncanny wail.

"Oh, but that gives me the s.h.i.+vers!" exclaimed Miss Pennington, tossing aside the novel in which she had tried to become interested. "This is positively awful! I wish I were back in New York."

"So do I!" added her chum.

"Oh, but a good snow storm is glorious!" cried Alice. "I am just wild to see it."

"That's right," exclaimed her father, with a smile. "Take a cheerful view of it, anyhow."

Some one proposed a guessing game, and with that under way the spirits of all revived somewhat. Then came another simple game, and the time pa.s.sed pleasantly.

Mr. Macksey, coming back from a trip to the side door, startled them all by announcing:

"She's here!"

"Who?" asked his wife, looking up from her sewing.

"The storm! It's snowing like cotton batting!"

Alice rushed to the window. She shaded her eyes with her hands at the side of her head and peered out. It seemed as though the lamplights shone on a solid wall of white, so thickly was the snow falling.

The wind had now risen to a blast of hurricane-like velocity and it fairly shook Elk Lodge, low and substantial as the house was.

By ones and twos the picture players went to their rooms, and soon silence and darkness settled down over the Lodge. That is, silence within the house, but outside there was the riot of the storm.

Two or three times during the night Alice awakened and, going to the window, looked out. She could make out a dim whiteness, but that was all. Around the window there was a little drift of snow on the sill, where it had been blown through a crack.

And in the morning they were s...o...b..und. So heavy was the fall of snow, and so high had it drifted, that some of the lower windows were completely covered, from the ground up. And before each door was such a drift that it would be necessary to tunnel if they were to get out.

"The worst storm I ever see!" declared Mr. Macksey, as he closed the door against the blast. "It would be death to go out in it now. We are s...o...b..und, by hickory!"

CHAPTER XIX

ON SHORT RATIONS

Apprehensive as all had been of the coming of the big storm, and fully warned by the hunter, none of the picture players was quite prepared for what they saw--or, rather, for what they could not see. For not a window on the lower floor of the Lodge but was blocked by a bank of snow, so that only the tops of the upper panes were clear of it. And through those bits of gla.s.s all that could be seen was a whirling, swirling ma.s.s, for the white flakes were still falling.

Not an outer door of the house but was blocked by a drift, and it was useless to open the portals at present, as the snow fell into the room.

"But what are we to do?" asked Mr. Pertell, when the situation had been made plain to him. "We can't take any moving pictures; can we?"

"Not in this storm," Mr. Macksey declared. "It would be as much as your life is worth to go out. It is bitter cold and the wind cuts like a knife!"

"I wish I could get some views," spoke Russ. "It would give New York audiences something to talk about, to see moving pictures of a storm like this."

"You might go up in the cupola on the roof," suggested Mr. Macksey. "You could stand your camera up there and possibly get some views."

"I'll do it!" cried Russ.

"And may I come?" asked Alice, always ready for an adventure of that sort.

"Come along!" he cried, gaily.

The cupola was more for ornament than use, but it was large enough for the purpose of Russ. After breakfast he took his moving picture camera up there, and managed through the windows, to get some fairly good pictures. The trouble was, however, that the snow was falling so thickly that it obscured the view. At times there would come a lull in the storm, and then Russ was able to get scenes showing the great black woods, and the white banks of snow.

"Oh, but it's cold work!" he cried, as he stopped to warm his hands, for the little room on the roof was draughty, and the snow blew in.

"It's a wonderful storm," cried Alice. "I wouldn't have missed it for worlds!"

All that day the storm raged, and all that night. There was nothing which could be done out of doors, and so the players and the men of the Lodge were forced to remain within. Great fires were kept up, for the temperature was very low.

The wise forethought of Mr. Macksey in providing for the stock prevented the animals from starving, as they would have done had not a supply of fodder been left for them. For it was out of the question to get to the barns.

After two days the storm ceased, the skies cleared and the sun shone.

But on what a totally different scene than before the coming of the great blizzard!

There had been plenty of snow in Deerfield before, but now there was so much that one old man, who worked for Mr. Macksey, said he never recalled the like, and he had seen many bad storms.

"Well, now to tunnel out!" exclaimed Mr. Macksey when it had been ascertained, by an observation from the cupola, that the fall of snow was over. "We'll see if we can't raise the embargo."

But it was no easy matter. All the doors were blocked by drifts, and in making a tunnel through snow it is just as necessary to have some place to put the removed material as it is in tunneling through the side of a hill.

"We can't start in and dig from the door, for we'd have to pile the snow in the room back of us," said the hunter. "So the only other plan is to get outside, somehow, and work up to the house, tossing the snow to one side. I may have to dig a trench instead of a tunnel. I'll soon find out."

Finally it was decided that the men should go to the second story, out on a balcony that opened from Mr. DeVere's room, and get down into the snow that way. They would use snowshoes so as to have some support, and thus they could attack the drifts.

This plan was followed. Fortunately Mr. Macksey had thought to bring in snow shovels before the storm came, and with these the men attacked the big white piles.

It was hard work, but they labored with a will, and there were enough of them to make an effective attack. Mr. Macksey, in spite of the fact that he had food and water for his stock, was anxious to see how the animals were doing. So he directed that first paths, tunnels or trenches be made to the various barns.

In some places, around the lee of a building, the ground was bare of snow, and in other places the drifts were fully fifteen feet high.

Russ, who had not gone out to shovel snow, was observed to be nailing some light broad boards together in a peculiar way.

"What are you making?" Ruth asked him.

"Snowshoes for my camera," was his surprising answer.