Nothing on earth or sky looked less likely.

It had been cold, but that might have been only a current from the frozen peaks beyond, reaching the lower valley.

The ridge on which they had halted was still thick with yellowish-green summer foliage, mingled with the darker evergreen of pine and fir.

Oven-like canyons in the long flanks of the mountain seemed still to glow with the heat of yesterday's noon; the breathless air yet trembled and quivered over stifling gorges and passes in the granite rocks, while far at their feet sixty miles of perpetual summer stretched away over the winding American River, now and then lost in a gossamer haze.

It was scarcely ripe October where they stood; they could see the plenitude of August still lingering in the valleys.
"I've seen Thomson's Pass choked up with fifteen feet o' snow earlier than this," said Rawlins, answering Hale's gaze; "and last September the passengers sledded over the road we came last night, and all the time Thomson, a mile lower down over the ridge in the hollow, smoking his pipes under roses in his piazzy! Mountains is mighty uncertain; they make their own weather ez they want it.