I'm walkin' along all comfortable, a-holdin' of his tail,
when "swish" he goes plumb outen sight. I peers into the orifice
which ketches him, an' finds he's done slumped off that four-foot
bank into Red River, kerslop! Which he's at once swept from view;
the river runnin' in ondcr the snow like a tunnel.
"That settles it; I goes pirootin' back. I lives in that canyon two
months. It snows a heap after I gets back, an' makes things deeper'n
ever. I has my deer to eat, not loadin' my pony with it when I
starts, an' I peels some sugar-pines, like I sees Injuns, an'
scrapes off the white skin next the trees, an' makes a pasty kind of
bread of it, an' I'm all right.
"'One mornin', jest before I gets out of meat, I sees trouble out in
the snow. Them eighteen deer--thar's nineteen, but I c'llects one,
as I says--comes sa'nterin' down my canyon while I'm asleep, an'
goes out an' gets stuck in the snow. I allows mebby they dresses
about sixty pounds each, an' wallers after 'em with my knife an'
kills six.
"'This yere gives me meat for seventy-two days--five pounds a day,
which with the pine bark is shore enough, The other twelve I turns
'round an' he'ps out into the canyon ag'in, an' do you know, them
deer's that grateful they won't leave none? It's a fact, they simply
hangs 'round all the time I'm snowed in.
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