Lady Ebony settled down to wait. She expected Sam with his lumps of sugar and she expected Tex and the boys from the ranch. These thoughts were rather vague, but they were strong enough to keep her in the meadow and to overcome her uneasiness as her nose warned her of coming storms. A week of Indian summer passed with warm hazy days and snapping cold nights. Both Lady Ebony and Midnight had grown thick, warm coats and the nights did not bother them. Frost carpeted the meadow with white jewels every night, and every day the sun melted the frost. Sam did not come and Tex did not come galloping out of the timber at the head of his roundup crew. The crew had finished its work in the high country the week before Lady Ebony’s arrival, and had left the brown grass and the everlasting green spruce to the blizzards and the deep snows. The horses and the white-faced cattle were all accounted for. One afternoon a change came in the weather. The air had been snapping cold for days with the sun’s rays softening it but little. It became softer and warmer. Gray clouds raced over the timbered slopes, rolling low, touching the tops of the highest spruce. The gray wall swept down over the spruce and over the meadow. Snow began falling, big, soft flakes that sailed down like loosened leaves. The snow settled through a deep silence which filled the woods and lay heavy on the meadow. The chickaree squirrels in the tall spruce worked frantically, cutting cones from the branches, dropping them to the ground with steady, thumping sounds. They chattered and scolded as they worked. The old yellowbelly left his perch and romped to his den under the castle rock. The calico chips and the chipmunks and the fat-bellied brownies retired for the long night which was to last until spring came. The mesa was deserted, leaving only Lady Ebony, Midnight, and the big flakes of snow. The wind rose and came roaring down. The great spruces swayed and moaned as the wind rushed through their branches and tore at their needles. The big flakes were powdered to fine dust and eddied in and out among the brown grass stems. The aspen leaves danced and swirled as they floated from the white branches. In less than an hour the uplifted arms of the silver trees were naked. But where each leaf had loosened its hold a brown bud peeped down, wrapped up in a warm little muffler and hood. The round leaves whirled along the ground and piled deep on the lee side of big trunks and in deep hollows on the slope. Under the bed of leaves the columbine and the paint weed and the lupine felt safer and warmer.