Post 00004
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Cold and snow took possession of the ranges on one occasion while I was making a stay in the winter quarters of a Montana cattle company. There was a quiet, heavy snow, a blizzard, and at last a sleet storm. At first the cattle collected with drooping heads and waited for the storm to end, but long before the sky cleared, they milled and trampled confusedly about. With the clearing sky came still and extreme cold. Stock water changed to ice, and the short, crisp grass of the plains was hopelessly cemented over with ice and snow. The suffering of the cattle was beyond description. For a time they wandered about, apparently without an aim. There were thousands of other herds in this appalling condition. At last, widely scattered, they stood humped up, awaiting death. But one morning the foreman burst in excitedly with the news, “The Chinook is coming!” Out in the snow the herds were aroused, and each “critter” was looking westward as though good news had been scented afar. Across the mountain-tops toward which the stock were looking, great wind-blown clouds were flying toward the plains. In less than an hour the rescuing Chinook rushed upon the scene. The temperature rose forty degrees in less than half as many minutes; then it steadied and rose more slowly. The warm, dry wind quickly increased to a gale. By noon both the sleet and the snow were gone, and thousands of cattle were eagerly feeding in the brown and curly grass of the wide, bleached plain.
This experience enabled me to understand the “Waiting for a Chinook” picture of the “Cowboy Artist.” This picture was originally intended to be the spring report, after a stormy Montana winter, to the eastern stockholders of a big cattle company. It showed a spotted solitary cow standing humped in a snowy plain. One horn is broken and her tail is frozen off. Near are three hungry coyotes in different waiting attitudes. The picture bore the legend “The Last of Five Thousand, Waiting for a Chinook.”
It is “Presto! Change!” when the warm Chinook wind appears. Wintry landscapes vanish in the balmy, spring-like breath of this strange, hospitable, though inconstant Gulf Stream of the air. This wind is extra dry and warm; occasionally it is almost hot. Many times in Montana I have experienced the forcing, transforming effectiveness of this hale, eccentric wind.