Great clouds were massing to the south and rolling up into the sky, their fleecy whiteness shadowed by heavy, rain-filled masses. The _mayordomo_ rode forward from the rear to consult with the colonel. They decided that, with so heavy a storm brewing, it would be well to halt and have supper over before the rain began. The cry went down along the line of the small army that stretched out for a mile in the rear, “Catch up, ca-aa-atch uu-up!” The colonel ordered his outfit to make a halt immediately and the cook went about making a fire of caked buffalo dung, which he lit with the dried grasses of the prairie. Soon coffee was steaming in enormous pots, salt pork and beans were warming in huge iron kettles, and flapjacks were mounting on a hot iron griddle. There were many individual parties in the caravan who cooked and ate by themselves, but the colonel’s outfit had a cook. The colonel carried with him a small tent, which was not always set up, a camp table and folding chairs, so that upon occasion he could eat with comfort and style. But tonight he and Steven, the _mayordomo_ and Pierre, squatted about the camp fire, and in the queer half-light that hung below the clouds, now rumbling and thundering ominously, they quickly dispatched their food. The colonel at once set about making his wagon shipshape for the night, and the _arrieros_ ran about, covering their cargoes and _aparejos_. The mules and oxen were turned into the improvised corral of the caravan train; the wagons were driven into a circle and locked together by running the long tongues under the beds of the wagons ahead. This had scarcely been accomplished when with a great drive of wind that set loose rope and canvas a-slapping and whipping, the storm was upon them. As he could not reach his own wagon, Steven ducked for the colonel’s tent, which was pitched just outside the circle of wagons and in a little depression against a hill. He found the colonel sitting in the center of his bed, a pipe in his mouth, a lantern already lit, and a huge limp map spread out upon his knees. It was a buffalo hide upon which was drawn in charcoal and in colored rock a plan of the Rockies and of certain passes that lay beyond. While the thunder cracked over their heads and the little tent rocked and swayed in the gale till Steven thought it must surely collapse, St. Vrain unconcernedly examined his map, shouting to Steve, “We’re takin’ a new trail over the mountains this side Santa Fe; old buffalo and mountain-sheep trail. _Les animals sylvestres_, wild critters, knew it was the easiest way, but no one on two legs had sense to find it out till by accident recently.”