Then at last, for to all things there is an end, came spring. Long before it arrived the Indian knew it was coming, read incontestably its advance signs. No longer, as the mouse-coloured cayuse bore him over the range, was there the mellow crunch of snow underfoot. Instead the sound was crisp and sharp: the crackling of ice where the snow had melted and frozen again. Distinct upon the record of the bleak prairie page appeared another sign infallible. Here and there, singly and _en masse_, wherever the herds had grazed, appeared oblong brown blots the size of an animal's body. The cattle were becoming weak under the influence of prolonged winter, and lay down frequently to rest, their warm bodies branding the evidence with melted snow. The jack rabbits, ubiquitous on the ranges, that sprang daily almost from beneath the pony's feet, were changing their winter's dress, were becoming darker; almost as though soiled by a muddy hand. Here and there on the high places the sparkling white was giving way to a dull, lustreless brown. Gradually, day by day, as though they were a pestilence, they expanded, augmented until they, and not the white, became the dominant tone. The sun was high in the sky now. At noontime the man's shadow was short, scarcely extended back of his pony's feet. Mid-afternoons, in the low places when he passed through, there was a spattering of snow water collected in tiny puddles. After that there was no need of signs. Realities were everywhere. Dips in the rolling land, mere dry runs save at this season, became creeks; flushed to their capacity and beyond, sang softly all the day long. Not only the high spots, but even the north slopes lost their white blankets, surrendered to the conquering brown. Migratory life, long absent, returned to its own. Prairie kites soared far overhead on motionless wings. Meadow larks, cheeriest of heralds, practised their five-toned lay. Here and there, to the north of prairie boulders, appeared tufts of green; tufts that, like the preceding brown, grew and grew and grew until they dominated the whole landscape. Then at last, the climax, the _finale_ of the play, came life, animal and vegetable, with a rush. Again at daylight and at dusk swarms of black dots on whistling wings floated here and there, descended to earth; and, following, indefinite as to location, weird, lonely, boomed forth in their mating songs. Transient, shallow, miniature lakes swarmed with their new-come denizens. Last of all, final assurance of a new season's advent, by day and by night, swelling, diminishing, unfailingly musical as distant chiming bells, came the sound of all most typical of prairie and of spring. From high overhead in the blue it came, often so high that the eye could not distinguish its makers; yet alway distinctive, alway hauntingly mysterious. "Honk! honk! honk!" sounded and echoed and re-echoed that heraldry over the awakened land. "Honk! honk! honk!" it