“The brave west winds” again were blowing. Across the continent from the Gulf of Alaska to the Atlantic, the linked storms closed their front against the north. As yet the eastward-moving current was weak, and its course was sinuous. Here it ran far to the north; here swinging to the south, it even eddied back westward. But still the final movement was from west to east. No longer did the polar air reach out deep toward the tropic. The forces of the south had restored their line of battle.

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During six days and nights the Canadian plains had been an extension of the Arctic—ever since the morning when the blizzard had swept down from the north.

The blizzard had ceased after a few hours; then the clouds vanished, and the air grew still. But that stillness lay like death upon the land. Day by day, a brassy sun swung in a long arc through the southern sky, but it gave little warmth; at noon the stretched-out shadows lay blue across the snow. Night by night, a waxing moon rode bright in the sky; not even a wisp of high cirrus blanketed the earth; the heat radiated off far toward the cold stars.

In the dawn, steam rose visibly from the stables where the blanketed horses huddled. From the chimneys of lonely ranch-houses smoke rose straight and high until at last it bulged out like some great unnatural mushroom. On the range, cattle pawed and nuzzled through the crusty snow to reach the dried grass; their legs were scraped and bleeding; bloody icicles hung at their nostrils. They must keep to their feet; for, if they lay down, they froze to the ground. As, moaning, they huddled together for warmth, mist from the moisture and warmth of their breathing hung over them in the still air as mist hangs over a pool. (But far over the Pacific the air was moving.)

By mid-week, people had only one thought and one salutation: “Will the chinook never come!”

Then, late Thursday afternoon, there was a change. The temperature rose somewhat, and the Weather Bureau at Edmonton reported only seventeen below zero. At sunset, men looking southwest saw a long, unbroken bank of cloud, low-hanging over the mountains. Its lower edge resting on the ridges was dark and heavy, and straight as a line drawn with a ruler; the upper edge was broken and wind-whipped, and cast up the sunset in red-gold. “She’s coming!” men said, and were loosed from fear.

Just after midnight the mild, dry southwester—the chinook wind—swept across the plains. At the Weather Bureau the thermograph showed a rise of thirty-three degrees—from thirteen below zero to twenty above—in ten minutes. To people waking in the night the air was soft and warm like a breeze of springtime. “The chinook!” they said. “Thank God!”

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