Spring came early that year at White Slides Ranch.

The snow melted off the valleys, and the wild flowers peeped from the greening grass while yet the mountain domes were white.

The long stone slides were glistening wet, and the brooks ran full-banked, noisy and turbulent and roily.
Soft and fresh of color the gray old sage slopes came out from under their winter mantle; the bleached tufts of grass waved in the wind and showed tiny blades of green at the roots; the aspens and oaks, and the vines on fences and cliffs, and the round-clumped, brook-bordering willows took on a hue of spring.
The mustangs and colts in the pastures snorted and ran and kicked and cavorted; and on the hillsides the cows began to climb higher, searching for the tender greens, bawling for the new-born calves.

Eagles shrieked the release of the snow-bound peaks, and the elks bugled their piercing calls.

The grouse-cocks spread their gorgeous brown plumage in parade before their twittering mates, and the jays screeched in the woods, and the sage-hens sailed along the bosom of the gray slopes.
Black bears, and browns, and grizzlies came out of their winter's sleep, and left huge, muddy tracks on the trails; the timber wolves at dusk mourned their hungry calls for life, for meat, for the wildness that was passing; the coyotes yelped at sunset, joyous and sharp and impudent.
But winter yielded reluctantly its hold on the mountains.