But speedily another unforeseen complication arose. Before I'd gone five
miles the hoodoo that had been working overtime on my behalf got busy
again. The clouds that were rolling up from the east at sundown piled
thick and black overhead, and when dark was fairly upon me I was, for
all practical purposes, like a blind man in an unfamiliar room. It
didn't take me long to comprehend that I was merely wasting the strength
of my horse in bootless wandering; with moonlight I could have made it,
but in that murk I could not hope to find the post. So I had no choice
but to make camp in the first coulée that offered, and an exceeding lean
camp I found it--no grub, no fire, no rest, for though I hobbled my
horse I didn't dare let his rope out of my hands.

About midnight the combination of sultry heat and banked clouds produced
the usual results. Lightning first, lightning that ripped the sky open
from top to bottom in great blazing slits, and thunder that cracked and
boomed and rumbled in sharps and flats and naturals till a man could
scarcely hear himself think; then rain in flat chunks, as if some
malignant agency had yanked the bottom out of the sky and let the
accumulated moisture of centuries drop on that particular portion of the
Northwest. In fifteen minutes the only dry part of me was the crown of
my head--thanks be to a good Stetson hat. And my arms ached from the
strain of hanging onto my horse, for, hobbled as he was, he did his best
to get up and quit Canada in a gallop when the fireworks began. To make
it even more pleasant, when the clouds fell apart and the little stars
came blinking out one by one, a chill wind whistled up on the heels of
the storm, and I spent the rest of that night shivering forlornly in my
clammy clothes.

Still a-shiver at dawn, I saddled up and loped for the crest of the