Lady Ebony led Midnight to the lee of the cabin where they stood with heads down, backs to the sifting snow. All afternoon the white wall pressed close around them. Darkness came early, a black, solid darkness which blotted out every object, even the cabin wall close to their noses. In the morning the blizzard was still raging furiously. The snow was deep on the meadow, as deep as the knees of the black colt. Lady Ebony fought her way out to the edge of the mesa and began pawing for grass. Midnight went with her and helped. They dug down and found a mat of rich, cured grass. With their tails to the lashing wind they fed. When they had eaten their fill they returned to the lee side of the cabin and Midnight had a scant but warm meal. Then he lay down. The snow melted around his body and froze into ice at the edges of the curves. For three days the storm raged. When it cleared and the last of the gray clouds scurried away over the tops of the green spruce on the wings of the dying wind three feet of snow lay on the level mesa and four or five feet in the hollows and drifts. In places the wind had swept the dry snow away from the grass and feeding was easy for the horses. But snapping, biting cold followed the storm, making their breath plume out in wreaths of white fog and causing icicles to form on their nose hair and chins. Their faces were covered with white frost from their breathing. Midnight showed keen interest in this new world. It was a white world, a silent world of snow and green spruce. The biting cold made him plunge through the deep drifts and snort eagerly. One other dweller of the high country, who could not sleep through the cold months, came to the meadow. An old timber-line buck had chosen to stay in the high mesa country defying the cold and the snow. The does and the fawns and the spike bucks had drifted downcountry before the storm. The two-points had gone with them and most of the four-points. The timber-line monarch stayed because he was wary and shunned the ranch-dotted valleys below the storm belt. He preferred the savage cold and the stalking killers to the rifles and dogs of the men who lived in the low country. He dug down into the snow seeking herbs and twigs. He did not care for the dry, rich grass, and he watched the mare and her colt without interest, staring at them, then shaking his heavy antlers and returning to his feeding. The old fellow knew the dangers he faced, he had met them before and expected to meet them again.