At midday I stopped to eat beside a small stream about twenty miles from the ranch, letting my horse, Kutenai, graze in a meadow. While stretched on the grass, I saw a great halo unusually bright, of orange tinged with blue, appear around the sun; with large sun dogs showing on both sides; and dull gray clouds, like a leaden roof, spread over the entire sky. These were bad weather signs. So I saddled my horse and started for home at a gallop. The sky in the north became as black as ink, with bands of mist hanging low. I felt a blast of cold air and drops of rain, and saw dark clouds coming down from the north. They had a strange and ominous look, rolling over and over, spreading out and trailing along the plain and reaching upwards toward the zenith. Then the blizzard came, straight from the north, with wind and cold and snow. In the blinding storm I lost all sense of direction. In vain I looked for landmarks—ridges, coulees, buttes, or streams—something familiar to mark my course. My heart sank and I felt in a panic. In the thickness of the storm, everything looked strange. I lost my way, going eastward toward the open plains instead of south. Then I recognized a familiar rock pile on a butte; and came finally to a broad table-land, an exposed plateau, which I knew was ten miles north of the ranch. It stretched from the foot of the mountains to the open plains, and south to Mad Wolf’s home in the valley. Across its level surface the wind had an unbroken sweep from the north. Through deep snow my horse climbed to the summit of the plateau. And all the time the wind was blowing a gale from the north with squalls of hurricane force, bearing stinging sleet and snow in blinding clouds. By this time Kutenai looked like a snow horse. He was covered with white hoar-frost from head to foot, having holes for his eyes and nose. Long icicles hung from his muzzle and from his sides and matted his tail. He struggled through the deepening snow, losing courage and going more and more slowly. He belonged to a mild country across the mountains, and was a stranger to the plains and blizzards. Then to save his strength and to warm my chilled hands and feet, I dismounted and tried leading him. But he acted strangely, as if blind. He reared and plunged and lay down in the snow. So I mounted again; with whip and spurs I forced him to move forward. Night came on, with the snow above the knees of my horse. The sky was banked in darkness and the pitiless snow pelted me fiercely with every blast. People who have not felt a winter blizzard on the northern plains can never know what that struggle was.