Sometime in the night I awoke.  A fine rain was pattering on the tent.  It grew stronger.  After a while I went to sleep again.  Upon awakening I found that the storm had struck with a vengeance.  It was dull gray daylight, foggy, cold, windy, with rain and snow.

I got up, built a fire, puttered around the tents to loosen the ground ropes, and found that it was nipping cold.  My fingers ached.  The storm increased, and then we fully appreciated the tent with stove.  The rain roared on the tent roof, and all morning the wind increased, and the air grew colder.  I hoped it would turn to snow.

Soon indeed we were storm bound.  On the third day the wind reached a very high velocity.  The roar in the pines was stupendous.  Many times I heard the dull crash of a falling tree.  With the ground saturated by the copious rain, and the fury of the storm blast, a great many trees were felled.  That night it rained all night, not so hard, but steadily, now low, now vigorously.  After morning snow began to fall.  But it did not lay long.  After a while it changed to sleet.  At times the dark, lowering, scurrying clouds broke to emit a flare of sunshine and to show a patch of blue.  These last however were soon obscured by the scudding gray pall.  Every now and then a little shower of rain or sleet pattered on the tents.  We looked for a clearing up.

That night about eight o’clock the clouds vanished and stars shone.  In the night the wind rose and roared.  In the morning all was dark, cloudy, raw, cold.  But the wind had died out, and there were spots of blue showing.  These spots enlarged as the morning advanced, and about nine the sun, golden and dazzling, beautified the forest.  “Bright sunny days will soon come again!”

It was good to have hope and belief in that.

All the horses but Don Carlos weathered the storm in good shape.  Don lost considerable weight.  He had never before been left with hobbled feet to shift for himself in a prolonged storm of rain, sleet and snow.  He had cut himself upon brush, and altogether had fared poorly.  He showed plainly that he had been neglected.  Don was the only horse I had ever known of that did not welcome the wilderness and companionship with his kind.

We rested the following day, and on the next we packed and started back to Dude Creek.  It was a cold, raw, bitter day, with a gale from the north, such a day as I could never have endured had I not become hardened.  As it was I almost enjoyed wind and cold.  What a transformation in the woods!  The little lakes were all frozen over; pines, moss, grass were white with frost.  The sear days had come.  Not a leaf showed in the aspen and maple thickets.  The scrub oaks were shaggy and ragged, gray as the rocks.  From the rim the slopes looked steely and dark, thinned out, showing the rocks and slides.