Lady Ebony settled down to wait. She expected Sam with his lumps of sugar and she expected Tex and the boys from the ranch. These thoughts were rather vague, but they were strong enough to keep her in the meadow and to overcome her uneasiness as her nose warned her of coming storms. A week of Indian summer passed with warm hazy days and snapping cold nights. Both Lady Ebony and Midnight had grown thick, warm coats and the nights did not bother them. Frost carpeted the meadow with white jewels every night, and every day the sun melted the frost. Sam did not come and Tex did not come galloping out of the timber at the head of his roundup crew. The crew had finished its work in the high country the week before Lady Ebony’s arrival, and had left the brown grass and the everlasting green spruce to the blizzards and the deep snows. The horses and the white-faced cattle were all accounted for.
One afternoon a change came in the weather. The air had been snapping cold for days with the sun’s rays softening it but little. It became softer and warmer. Gray clouds raced over the timbered slopes, rolling low, touching the tops of the highest spruce. The gray wall swept down over the spruce and over the meadow. Snow began falling, big, soft flakes that sailed down like loosened leaves. The snow settled through a deep silence which filled the woods and lay heavy on the meadow. The chickaree squirrels in the tall spruce worked frantically, cutting cones from the branches, dropping them to the ground with steady, thumping sounds. They chattered and scolded as they worked. The old yellowbelly left his perch and romped to his den under the castle rock. The calico chips and the chipmunks and the fat-bellied brownies retired for the long night which was to last until spring came. The mesa was deserted, leaving only Lady Ebony, Midnight, and the big flakes of snow.
The wind rose and came roaring down. The great spruces swayed and moaned as the wind rushed through their branches and tore at their needles. The big flakes were powdered to fine dust and eddied in and out among the brown grass stems. The aspen leaves danced and swirled as they floated from the white branches. In less than an hour the uplifted arms of the silver trees were naked. But where each leaf had loosened its hold a brown bud peeped down, wrapped up in a warm little muffler and hood. The round leaves whirled along the ground and piled deep on the lee side of big trunks and in deep hollows on the slope. Under the bed of leaves the columbine and the paint weed and the lupine felt safer and warmer.
Lady Ebony led Midnight to the lee of the cabin where they stood with heads down, backs to the sifting snow. All afternoon the white wall pressed close around them. Darkness came early, a black, solid darkness which blotted out every object, even the cabin wall close to their noses. In the morning the blizzard was still raging furiously. The snow was deep on the meadow, as deep as the knees of the black colt.
Lady Ebony fought her way out to the edge of the mesa and began pawing for grass. Midnight went with her and helped. They dug down and found a mat of rich, cured grass. With their tails to the lashing wind they fed. When they had eaten their fill they returned to the lee side of the cabin and Midnight had a scant but warm meal. Then he lay down. The snow melted around his body and froze into ice at the edges of the curves.
For three days the storm raged. When it cleared and the last of the gray clouds scurried away over the tops of the green spruce on the wings of the dying wind three feet of snow lay on the level mesa and four or five feet in the hollows and drifts. In places the wind had swept the dry snow away from the grass and feeding was easy for the horses. But snapping, biting cold followed the storm, making their breath plume out in wreaths of white fog and causing icicles to form on their nose hair and chins. Their faces were covered with white frost from their breathing.
Midnight showed keen interest in this new world. It was a white world, a silent world of snow and green spruce. The biting cold made him plunge through the deep drifts and snort eagerly. One other dweller of the high country, who could not sleep through the cold months, came to the meadow. An old timber-line buck had chosen to stay in the high mesa country defying the cold and the snow. The does and the fawns and the spike bucks had drifted downcountry before the storm. The two-points had gone with them and most of the four-points. The timber-line monarch stayed because he was wary and shunned the ranch-dotted valleys below the storm belt. He preferred the savage cold and the stalking killers to the rifles and dogs of the men who lived in the low country.
He dug down into the snow seeking herbs and twigs. He did not care for the dry, rich grass, and he watched the mare and her colt without interest, staring at them, then shaking his heavy antlers and returning to his feeding. The old fellow knew the dangers he faced, he had met them before and expected to meet them again.
The clear, cold weather held for a week. The days were sparkling and crisp, the nights blue and bitterly cold, with white stars reflecting their countless points of light upon the gleaming snow fields. In the aspen groves trees snapped and popped as the frost sought their hearts. Lady Ebony left the lee of the cabin and found a sheltered spot beside one of the big castle rocks at a point near the edge of the deep canyon. A narrow ledge trail led up to the shelter and an outthrust layer of rock furnished a roof so that the earth under the shelter was free from snow. A shoulder of the wall shut off the wind, making the retreat really a barn.
A crevice in the roof of the shelter harbored a nest of pack rats. Sticks, pine cones, bright rocks, and other things dear to the heart of a trade rat had been crammed into the crevice until they spilled out on the floor. The whole cave was tainted with rat smell, pungent and musty.