up. "Chinook struck us in the
night. Didn't yuh hear it?"

Thurston pulled open the door and stood face to face with the miracle of
the West. He had seen Mother Nature in many a changeful mood, but never
like this. The wind blew warm from the southwest and carried hints of
green things growing and the song of birds; he breathed it gratefully
into his lungs and let it riot in his hair. The sky was purplish and
soft, with heavy, drifting clouds high-piled like a summer storm. It
looked like rain, he thought.

The bare hills were sodden with snow-water, and the drifts in the
coulees were dirt-grimed and forbidding. The great river lay, a gray
stretch of water-soaked snow over the ice, with little, clear pools
reflecting the drab clouds above. A crow flapped lazily across the
foreground and perched like a blot of fresh-spilled ink on the top of a
dead cottonwood and cawed raucous greeting to the spring.

The wonder of it dazed Thurston and made him do unusual things that
morning. All winter he had been puffed with pride over his cooking, but
now he scorched the oatmeal, let the coffee boil over, and blackened the
bacon, and committed divers other grievous sins against Gene's clamoring
appetite. Nor did he feel the shame that he should have felt. He simply
could not stay in the cabin five minutes at a time, and for it he had no
apology.

After breakfast he left the dishes un-washed upon the table and went out
and made merry with nature. He could scarce believe that yesterday he
had frosted his left ear while he brought a bucket of water up from the
river, and that it had made his lungs ache to breathe the chill air. Now
the path to the river was black and dry and steamed with warmth. Across
the water cattle were feeding greedily upon the brown grasses that only
a few hours before had been locked away under a crust of frozen snow.

"They won't starve now," he exulted, pointing them out to Gene.

"No, you bet not!" Gene answered. "If this don't freeze up on us the
wagons 'll be starting in a month or so. I guess we can be thinking
about hitting the trail for home pretty soon now. The river'll break up
if this keeps going a week. Say, this is out uh sight! It's warmer out
uh doors than it is in the house. Darn the old shack, anyway! I'm plumb
sick uh the sight of it. It looked all right to me in a blizzard, but
now--it's me for the range, m'son." He went off to the stable with long,
swinging strides that matched all natur