nguage was spoken, where no woman was, and where no mention
of her mother, father, or native land was ever made before her. The
little waif was at first utterly bewildered, then reconciled, and by
the time spring came over the prairie was almost happy in the touching
way of a child deprived of childish things.

Oh, how sweet spring seemed to those snow-weary people! Day after day
the sun crept higher up in the sky; day after day the snow gave way a
little on the swells, and streams of water began to trickle down under
the huge banks of snow, filling the ravines; and then at last came a
day when a strange, warm wind blew from the northwest. Soft and sweet
and sensuous it was, as if it swept some tropic bay filled with a
thousand isles--a wind like a vast warm breath blown upon the land.
Under its touch the snow did not melt; it vanished. It fled in a single
day from the plain to the gullies. Another day, and the gullies were
rivers.

It was the "chinook," which old Lambert, the trapper and surveyor, said
came from the Pacific Ocean.

The second morning after the chinook began to blow, Anson sprang to his
feet from his bunk, and standing erect in the early morning light,
yelled: "Hear that?"

"What is it?" asked Bert.

"There! Hear it?" Anson smiled, holding up his hand joyfully as a
mellow "Boom--boom--boom" broke through the silent air.
"Prairie-chickens! Hurrah! Spring has come! That breaks the back o'
winter short off."

"Hurrah! de 'pring ees come!" cried little Flaxen, gleefully clapping
her hands in imitation.

No man can know what a warm breeze and the note of a bird can mean to
him till he is released, as these men were released, from the bondage
of a horrible winter. Perhaps still more moving was the thought that
with the spring the loneliness of the prairie would be broken, never
again to be so dread and drear; for with the coming of spring came the
tide of land-seekers pouring in: teams scurried here and there on the
wide prairie, carrying surveyors, land agents, and settlers. At Summit
trains came rumbling in by the first of April, emptying thousands of
men, women, and children upon the sod, together with cattle, machinery,
and household articles, to lie there roofed only by the blue sky.
Summit, from being a half-buried store and a blacksmith's shop, bloomed
out into a town with saloons, lumber-yards, hotels, and restaurants;
the sound of hammer and anvil was incessant, and trains clanged and
whist