against us. We
galloped to the edge of a deep wash-out, scrambled into it
at the risk of our necks, and huddled up with our horses
underneath the windward bank. Here we remained pretty well
sheltered until the storm was over. Although it was August,
the air became very cold. The wagon was fairly caught, and
would have been blown over if the top had been on; the
driver and horses escaped without injury, pressing under the
leeward side, the storm coming so level that they did not
need a roof to protect them from the hail. Where the center
of the whirlwind struck, it did great damage, sheets of
hailstones as large as pigeons' eggs striking the earth with
the velocity of bullets; next day the hailstones could have
been gathered up by the bushel from the heaps that lay in
the bottom of the gullies and ravines.

They made camp that night at the edge of the creek whose banks had
given them what little shelter there was on the plateau where the
storm had struck them. All night the rain continued in a drizzle
punctuated at intervals by sharp showers. Next morning the weather was
no better, and after a morning's struggle with the wagon along the
slippery trail of gumbo mud, they made what would under other
circumstances have been a "dry camp." They caught the rain in their
slickers and made their coffee of it, and spent another more or less
uncomfortable night coiling themselves over and around a
cracker-barrel which seemed to take up the whole interior of the
wagon.

The weather cleared at last, and they pushed on southwestward, between
Box Elder Creek and Powder River. It was dreary country through which
Lebo and his prairie schooner made their slow and creaking way, and
Roosevelt and Merrifield, to whom the pace was torture, varied the
monotony with hunting expeditions on one-side or the other of the
parallel ruts that were the Keogh trail. It was on one of these trips
that Roosevelt learned a lesson which he remembered.

They had seen a flock of prairie chickens and Roosevelt had started
off with his shot-gun to bring in a meal of them. Suddenly Merrifield
called to him. Roosevelt took no heed.

"Don't you shoot!" cried Merrifield.

Roosevelt, with his eyes on the chickens, proceeded on his way
undeterred. Suddenly, a little beyond where he had seen the prairie
fowl go to covert, a mountain lion sprang out of the brush and bounded
away. Roosevelt r