Ted Strong in Montana / Or, With Lariat and Spur

E-text prepared by Steven desJardins, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/)
We're going to have snow to-night!
Ted Strong, leader of the broncho boys, was sitting on the back of Sultan, his noble little black stallion, on the ridge of a prairie swell, looking at a lowering sky.
Out of the northwest a chilling wind, damp and raw, was sweeping dull-gray clouds before it.
Ted had addressed his remark to Bud Morgan, his chum and able lieutenant, who threw a glance at the clouds and grunted.
I reckon we be, he muttered, an' I'm free ter say I'm dern sorry ter hear it.
It's hard luck, resumed Ted. If we had got away a week earlier, or hadn't been held up by the high water at Poplar Fork, we would have been at the ranch now, and settled for the winter.
Thar's no telling whar an 'if' won't land yer sometimes. If we hadn't started we wouldn't hev been here at all. But here we aire, an' we'll hev ter git out o' it.
Think we better push on, or make camp? asked Ted.
Got ter make camp fer ther night somewhere, answered Bud. But I wisht ther storm hed held off till ter-morrer this time; we'd hev been within hootin' distance o' ther Long Tom Ranch.
Suppose we push on a few hours more. We can camp down in the dark if we must. If the snow gets deep before ye reach the high ground you know what it means.
I shore do. I wuz all through a big snow in this yere man's country a few years back, an' it wuz some fierce.