But the wave passed over us at last, and on December 10th we set out again, really none the worse for the touch of Arctic weather. Following the line of the Santa Fé Railway we crossed into Arizona, and, from a point due north of it, we cut down to the Petrified Forest and on down to a Mormon settlement called Woodruff on the Little Colorado River. It was two days’ march thence to another Mormon settlement, Heber by name, among the Mogollon Mountains. All this time Indian summer had utterly failed us, and had been succeeded by a season of lowering days wherein light snow-falls were frequent. Price hated snow as he hated nothing else in nature. It got upon his nerves and drove him to a species of madness. Frequently in the course of the journey from Gallup to Heber snow fell at night. Price was usually the first to stir in the morning. We had knowledge of a snow-fall in the added weight upon us when we woke, and it was something memorable to see Price throw back the blankets and the heavy tarpaulin which were drawn over our heads, and lift himself on his elbow in the gray dawn, and gaze about with fierce anger in his black eyes upon a pure, white, flawless world, with soft snow clinging to every twig in the still morning air, and delicate crystal prisms beginning to form in the warmth of the coming sun, and hear him growl, in deep disgust, “This is hell!” But Heber marked nearly the last stage of that phase of our journey. We spent Sunday, the 18th December, there with an old Mormon elder and his son; worked for them on Monday for our keep and then renewed the march on Tuesday morning. It was a long, hard day’s pull up the northern side of the mountain to the “rimrock,” in deep snow through a vast primeval forest of spruce and pine. Then a wonderful thing happened, for we made a sharp descent on the south side and, in the space of a little more than a day, reached a country where there was no snow, and the sun shone warm, and the cotton-wood was in full bloom along the water-courses, and the cedar and live-oak stood green against the winter brown of the grass-grown hills. We had Indian summer once more, and the softest, balmiest Indian summer has accompanied us thence all the way to Phœnix. We had hardships to endure, for the way was long and our provisions sometimes ran out. Once we lost our way for a time in a maze of “box cañons” and had nothing to eat for twenty-four hours, until, late on Christmas afternoon, we came out upon the ranch of a Virginian settler, whom Price knew well, and whose wife gave us a royal dinner of “hog and hominy,” which I have heard lightly spoken of as a dish, but which I shall always remember as a most satisfying delicacy.