About mid-day Nighthawk danced back out of the storm ahead and dropped
in beside Cameron's pony.
"A chinook coming," said Raven. "Getting warmer, don't you notice?"
"No, I didn't notice, but now that you call attention to it I do feel a
little more comfortable," replied Cameron.
"Sure thing. Rain in an hour."
"An hour? In six perhaps."
"In less than an hour," replied Raven, "the chinook will be here. We're
riding into it. It blows down through the pass before us and it will
lick up this snow in no time. You'll see the grass all about you before
three hours are passed."
The event proved the truth of Raven's prediction. With incredible
rapidity the temperature continued to rise. In half an hour Cameron
discarded his mitts and unbuttoned his skin-lined jacket. The wind
dropped to a gentle breeze, swinging more and more into the southwest,
and before the hour was gone the sun was shining fitfully again and the
snow had changed into a drizzling rain.
The extraordinary suddenness of these atmospheric changes only increased
the sense of phantasmic unreality with which Cameron had been struggling
during the past thirty-six hours. As the afternoon wore on the air
became sensibly warmer. The moisture rose in steaming clouds from
the mountainsides, the snow ran everywhere in gurgling rivulets, the
rivulets became streams, the streams rivers, and the mountain torrents
which they had easily forded earlier in the day threatened to sweep them
away.
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