About midnight
The clouds that were rolling up from the east at sundown piled thick and black overhead , and when dark was fairly upon me I was , for all practical purposes , like a blind man in an unfamiliar room . It did n't take me long to comprehend that I was merely wasting the strength of my horse in bootless wandering ; with moonlight I could have made it , but in that murk I could not hope to find the post . So I had no choice but to make camp in the first coulée that offered , and an exceeding lean camp I found it -- no grub , no fire , no rest , for though I hobbled my horse I did n't dare let his rope out of my hands . About midnight the combination of sultry heat and banked clouds produced the usual results . Lightning first , lightning that ripped the sky open from top to bottom in great blazing slits , and thunder that cracked and boomed and rumbled in sharps and flats and naturals till a man could scarcely hear himself think ; then rain in flat chunks , as if some malignant agency had yanked the bottom out of the sky and let the accumulated moisture of centuries drop on that particular portion of the Northwest . In fifteen minutes the only dry part of me was the crown of my head -- thanks be to a good Stetson hat . And my arms ached from the strain of hanging onto my horse , for , hobbled as he was , he did his best to get up and quit Canada in a gallop when the fireworks began .