eralded and hard. The cattle and horses
had not yet been moved down to the lower ranges when one day, in
mid-afternoon, the air thickened, bursting black clouds drove up from
the southwest, the forests rocked moaning and shuddering under the
smashing impact of the sudden storm, the sun was lost in a darkness
that grew impenetrable toward the time of dusk, and the skies opened to
a downpour of rain. For upwards of an hour the great drops drove
unceasingly into the dry ground while giant daggers of lightning
stabbed at the earth that seemed to bellow its torment in reverberating
roars. Then the slanting rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun, the
wind went howling through the forests and was gone, and in the
stillness which ushered in the true night the snow began.

All night it snowed, steadily, without cease. The morning dawned wanly
on a white world; distant peaks and ridges were blotted out in the
grey, snow filled air. Men who were careless yesterday became to-day
filled with an activity which was swift and tireless. In candlelight
and lamplight they dressed hurriedly and made speedy breakfasts. This
storm might be nothing but a warning of winter; it might be the first
day of a snowfall that would continue for two weeks. In any event it
was high time to have the cattle on the run to the lower valleys.

"Two days of this," grunted Big Bill as he kicked his way viciously
through the snow already over ankle deep on the way to the stable, "an'
the passes'll be so choked up we can't whoop the cow brutes through
'em. An' me, I ain't hankerin' after totin' a bawlin' calf under each
arm, nuther."

All day long, upon the Bar L-M and the Echo Creek, men were riding deep
into the sheltered ravines, bringing out the stock, heading the
stragglers westward down the valleys, gathering the different herds
into one on each ranch to crowd them out of the belt of hard winter.
Many men rode many miles that day, changing their horses at noon,
making a hasty meal when they could, riding again.

Always before this year the herds of the Bar L-M had been pushed across
the bridge or made to swim the river where it was wide and shallow, and
driven across a corner of the Echo Creek ranch by the most direct route
out. But this year Wayne Shandon briefly gave new orders, telling his
men to keep on the Bar L-M property as long as they could, then to
throw the herds across the ridge to the south and along a harder,
longer trail to t