Butler's Ford

On, on, hotfoot through the rain along the smoking trail; twilight by day, depthless darkness by night, where we lay panting in starless obscurity, listening to the giant winds of the wilderness--vast, resistless, illimitable winds flowing steadily through the unseen and naked crests of forests, colder and ever colder they blew, heralding the trampling blasts of winter, charging us from the north.

On the fifth day it began to snow at dawn. Little ragged flakes winnowed through the clusters of scarlet maple-leaves, sifted among the black pines, coming faster and thicker, driving in slanting, whirling flight across the trail. In an hour the moss was white; crimson sprays of moose-bush bent, weighted with snow and scarlet berries; the hurrying streams ran dark and somber in their channels between dead-white banks; swamps turned blacker for the silvery setting; the flakes grew larger, pelting in steady, thickening torrents from the clouds as we came into a clearing called Jerseyfield, on the north side of Canada Creek; and here at last we were met by a crackling roar from a hundred rifles.

The Red Beast was at bay!

Up and down, through the dense snowy veil descending, the orange-tinted rifle-flames flashed and sparkled and flickered; all around us a shower of twigs and branches descended in a steady rain. Then our brown rifles blazed their deadly answer. Splash! spatter! splash! their dead dropped into the stream; and, following, dying and living took to the dark water, thrashing across through snowy obscurity. I heard their horses wallowing through the fords, iron hoofs frantically battering the rocky, shelving banks for foothold; I heard them shriek when the Oneida tigers leaped upon them; I heard their wounded battling and screaming as they drowned in the swollen waters!