At the ford of the river a swift current overflowed the ice. The steers in the lead balked; they stood and smelled the ice. The cattle in the rear crowded forward. They ran along the shore, bellowing and with clouds of steam rising from their nostrils. A big steer led the way and the others followed. [[142]]They broke through the ice and struggled in a mass. Some were carried down-stream by the swift current and lodged against an ice-jam; but all got safely across.
Then came an accident to Yellow Bird. At our cabin he jumped from his horse and landed on the sharp edge of an axe unturned in the snow. To stop his foot from bleeding, I used a compress made tight with a stick; I dressed it with an antiseptic and bandaged the wound. Yellow Bird was now helpless and took to his bed.
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 [[143]]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. [[144]]