"Well," he replied, stoutly, "they may look kinder tame alongside of
your Arizona lies, but--"

"Oh, Mr. Lightfoot, _do_ tell me all about it!" broke in Kitty, with
an alluring smile. "Colorado is an awfully wild country, isn't it? And
did you ever have any adventures with bears?"

"Bears!" exclaimed Bill contemptuously. "Bears! Huh, we don't take no
more account of ordinary bears up in Coloraydo than they do of coons
down here. But them big silver-tips--ump-um--excuse _me_!" He paused
and swaggered a little on the precarious support of his cracker box.
"And yet, Miss Bunnair," he said, lowering his voice to a confidential
key, "I slept a whole night with one of them big fellers and never
turned a hair. I could've killed him the next day, too, but I was so
grateful to him I spared his life."

This was the regular "come-on" for Lightfoot's snow-storm story, and
Creede showed his white teeth scornfully as Bill leaned back and began
the yarn.

"You see, Miss Bunnair," began the Colorado cowboy, rolling his eyes
about the circle to quell any tendency to give him away, "Coloraydo is
an altogether different country from this here. The mountains is
mighty steep and brushy, with snow on the peaks, and the cactus ain't
more 'n a inch high out on the perairie. But they's plenty of feed and
water--you betcher life I wisht I was back there now instead of
fightin' sheep down here! The only thing aginst that country up there
is the blizzards. Them storms is very destructive to life. Yes, ma'am.
They's never any notice given but suddenly the wind will begin to blow
and the cattle will begin to drift, and then about the time your horse
is give out and your ears frozen it'll begin to snow!

"Well, this time I'm tellin' about I was up on the Canadian River west
of the Medicine Bow Mountains and she came on to snow--and snow, I
thought it would bury me alive! I was lost in a big park--a kind of
plain or perairie among the mountains. Yes'm, they have'm there--big
level places--and it was thirty miles across this here level perairie.
The wind was blowin' something awful and the snow just piled up on my
hat like somebody was shovellin' it off a roof, but I kept strugglin'
on and tryin' to git to the other side, or maybe find some sheltered
place, until it was like walkin' in your sleep. And that light fluffy
snow jest closed in over me until I was covered up ten feet deep. Of
course my horse had give out long ago, and I was jest begin