Thus passed the months.  Winter, dead and relentless, held its sway.  It was a normal winter; but ever in this unprotected land the period was one of inevitable decimation, of a weeding out of the unfit.  Here and there upon the range, dark against the now background of universal white, stared forth the carcass of a weakling.  Over it for a few nights the coyotes and grey wolves howled and fought; then would come a fresh layer of white, and the spot where it had been would merge once more into the universal colour scheme.  Even the prairie chickens vanished, migrated to southern lands where corn was king.  No more at daylight or at dusk could one hear the whistle of their passing wings, or the booming of their rallying call.  Magnificent in any season, this impression of the wild was even more pronounced now.  The thought of God is synonymous with immensity; and so being, Deity was here eternally manifest, ubiquitous.  The human mind could not conceive a more infinite bigness than this gleaming frost-bound waste stretched to the horizon beneath the blazing winter sun.  Magnificent it was beyond the power of words to describe; but lonely, lonely.  Within the tiny cottage, the girl, Bess, drew the curtains tight over the single window and for days at a time did not glance without.

Then at last, for to all things there is an end, came spring.  Long before it arrived the Indian knew it was coming, read incontestably its advance signs.  No longer, as the mouse-coloured cayuse bore him over the range, was there the mellow crunch of snow underfoot.  Instead the sound was crisp and sharp:  the crackling of ice where the snow had melted and frozen again.  Distinct upon the record of the bleak prairie page appeared another sign infallible.  Here and there, singly and en masse, wherever the herds had grazed, appeared oblong brown blots the size of an animal’s body.  The cattle were becoming weak under the influence of prolonged winter, and lay down frequently to rest, their warm bodies branding the evidence with melted snow.  The jack rabbits, ubiquitous on the ranges, that sprang daily almost from beneath the pony’s feet, were changing their winter’s dress, were becoming darker; almost as though soiled by a muddy hand.  Here and there on the high places the sparkling white was giving way to a dull, lustreless brown.  Gradually, day by day, as though they were a pestilence, they expanded, augmented until they, and not the white, became the dominant tone.  The sun was high in the sky now.  At noontime the man’s shadow was short, scarcely extended back of his pony’s feet.  Mid-afternoons, in the low places when he passed through, there was a spattering of snow water collected in tiny puddles.  After that there was no need of signs.  Realities were everywhere.  Dips in the rolling land, mere dry runs save at this season, became creeks; flushed to their capacity and beyond, sang softly all the day long.  Not only the high spots, but even the north