of rain, sleet and hail. The hunters stretched a piece of canvas
over the wheels of the north side of the wagon, and wet and
shivering, crawled under it to their blankets. During the night
the storm raged with unabated strength.

Dawn, forbidding and raw, lightened to the whistle of the sleety
gusts. Fire was out of the question. Chary of weight, the hunters
had carried no wood, and the buffalo chips they used for fuel
were lumps of ice. Grumbling, Adams and Rude ate a cold
breakfast, while Jones, munching a biscuit, faced the biting
blast from the crest of the ridge. The middle of the plain below
held a ragged, circular mass, as still as stone. It was the
buffalo herd, with every shaggy head to the storm. So they would
stand, never budging from their tracks, till the blizzard of
sleet was over.

Jones, though eager and impatient, restrained himself, for it was
unwise to begin operations in the storm. There was nothing to do
but wait. Ill fared the hunters that day. Food had to be eaten
uncooked. The long hours dragged by with the little group huddled
under icy blankets. When darkness fell, the sleet changed to
drizzling rain. This blew over at midnight, and a colder wind,
penetrating to the very marrow of the sleepless men, made their
condition worse. In the after part of the night, the wolves
howled mournfully.

With a gray, misty light appearing in the east, Jones threw off
his stiff, ice-incased blanket, and crawled out. A gaunt gray
wolf, the color of the day and the sand and the lake, sneaked
away, looking back. While moving and threshing about to warm his