The herd of famished cattle crowded bellowing about the cabin. I opened the door and saw them pushing and struggling; mad with hunger, fences could not stop them; to hold them at the ranch, they must be fed with hay that night. When I went outside, the dry snow crackled and made a grinding sound underfoot. After the violent “low” of the blizzard, the barometer was now high; the temperature had fallen to fifty degrees below zero. But the air was dry and the sky cloudless. On a rude ladder I climbed to the ridge of the haystack and cleared away the deep covering of snow and ice. With an axe I chopped the top hay frozen into a mass. Then cut it into chunks and fed it to the starving cattle. This heavy work made me sweat freely in spite of the cold. But, when I loosened my skin cap, hair and eyelashes were quickly covered with ice; and I had the strange sensation of my eyelids freezing so tight I had to pull them apart. The night was strangely clear. A moon nearly full rose over the plains, flooding that vast whiteness with its cold light. I saw clearly the snow-banked cabin and low-lying sheds and the struggling cattle. The heavens were of a marvelous purity and depth, with many wondrous stars. Venus, like a great light in the west, was sinking over the snow-covered mountains. East was the burning Sirius, in the constellation of Orion with belt and sword, Gemini with its twins, Auriga made beautiful by Capella, and Taurus with the Pleiades and Hyades. Even after the lapse of so many years, I remember that winter night as yesterday—the air, the moon, and the evening star over the shining mountains, like the vision of another world—the realm of the spirit. CHAPTER XIX THE MAD INDIAN Next morning there was a below-zero temperature inside the cabin. The stove was as cold as ice; and the kettle, which was boiling when I went to bed, was frozen solid. I built a fire and cooked breakfast—bacon, potatoes, and rutabagas. The wounded Yellow Bird lay gloomily in bed. Then I fed the cows and calves in the sheds. Many of the chickens were frozen in their snug house underground. The cats, which lived in the cattle-sheds, were like savage beasts. When I drew off my gloves to feed them, a cat sprang at my hand and fastened its teeth in my thumb. They fought over the meat and tore it with snarls. I found our two dogs in a deep hole under the haystack. One named Red Rover showed his fangs and slunk away. He was wild and suspicious by nature; his father was a coyote and while young he ran with a coyote pack. But after I fed him, he watched for my coming. He was no longer afraid and became my faithful friend. Kutenai, my saddle horse, I kept in the cattle-shed. Every day he liked to play in the corral, trying to escape me by running, until I swung myself on his bare back and we went for a swift gallop in the pasture, where the snow had been trampled by the cattle.