A Waif of the Mountains

It had been snowing hard for twenty-four hours at Dead Man's Gulch. Beginning with a few feathery particles, they had steadily increased in number until the biting air was filled with billions of snowflakes, which whirled and eddied in the gale that howled through the gorges and cañons of the Sierras. It was still snowing with no sign of cessation, and the blizzard blanketed the earth to the depth of several feet, filling up the treacherous hollows, caverns and abysses and making travel almost impossible for man or animal.
Edward Sylvester Ellis (April 11, 1840 – June 20, 1916) was an American author who was born in Ohio and died at Cliff Island, Maine.

Ellis was a teacher, school administrator, journalist, and the author of hundreds of publications that he produced by his name and by a number of noms de plume. Notable fiction stories by Ellis include The Huge Hunter, or the Steam Man of the Prairies and Seth Jones, or the Captives of the Frontier. Internationally, Edward S. Ellis is probably known best for his Deerhunter novels read widely by young boys until the 1950s.