Peter snarled something inarticulate, and peered about the fire with a frowning face. "White man," he grunted uneasily at last.
"How do you know?" asked Dick; and then, not waiting for an answer, "I should have liked to have spoken to him. I wish we had met him."
"Company's man," grunted Peter, still restless and uneasy. "They bad people. Not like us here." But Dick was full of his own thoughts, and scarcely heeded. There was some reason for Peter's uneasiness, for they were then almost within the vast territories ruled over by the Hudson Bay Company. And at no time did the great Company prove friendly to strangers. The Indian had probably, at some crisis in his chequered career, come in contact with the authority of the said Company, which thereafter he regarded with superstitious awe and veneration.
As they went stealthily on their way, and the miles dropped behind with the vanishing summer, Peter Many-Names became strangely eager and excited. Dick did not understand the cause of this excitement or of the haste that accompanied it. But had he possessed the key to that savage nature, he would have guessed that it was the nearness of the prairies which so moved the impassive Indian. As the sea to a coast-bred man, as the mountains to a hillman, so were the prairies to Peter Many-Names. They had called him north with a voice that, to his wild fancy, was almost articulate—insistent, not to be mistaken. He had been born and bred upon the plains, and now he was returning to them as a tired child runs to its mother, asking only the presence of that which he loved.
And by the time that the woods about the distant homestead were lighted with the purple of the tall wild asters, Dick had had his first sight of the open prairie. In after days he never found words to describe that sight. Once having reached the goal of his desire, Peter's hurry seemed in great measure to evaporate. He was content to see the vast arch of the pale autumn skies above his head, to feel the keen air in his face, to travel over those limitless earthen billows, interrupted only by some bluff of aspens or other soft-wood trees, or by the forest-growth which fringed the courses of the larger rivers. To him, life offered nothing better.
Two days after they had definitely left the last of the wooded country behind them, Dick camped in the shelter of a poplar bluff, while Peter Many-Names went off a day's journey to the east with the intention of procuring a couple of ponies. "Saw fire-smoke dark when sun rose," he declared, "and when fires, there wigwams; where wigwams, there Indians; where Indians, there ponies. You keep close, and I come back soon."
"But you can't buy ponies, for we 've nothing to give in exchange for them," Dick protested. However, Peter took no notice of him, and presently departed, leaving Dick to loneliness, and wonder unsatisfied.
He had leisure to wonder as much as he liked. Peter departed stealthily, leaving him in charge of all their little stores, with only the slim poplars and his blanket to shield him from the winds that had now begun to blow very coldly. He had, as has already been written, leisure to spare, for it was four days before Peter appeared from the southwest, riding one pony and leading another. They were sturdy little brown beasts, very shy of Dick, and practically wild. There was nothing remarkable about them in any way except that they were very muddy. It was not for some time that Dick discovered that this dried mud concealed some very conspicuous white spots. Thereupon he wondered more and more, noticing that there was nothing lacking in the equipment or among the possessions of the triumphant but always taciturn Peter.
"How did you get them?" he asked. "Did you find friends, or what? However did you manage to get them?" But Peter only grinned, as he occasionally condescended to do when much amused, and Dick got no further answer. There the ponies were, and there Peter evidently intended they should stay.
To Dick, the beginning of their wanderings across the prairie was as the beginning of a new world. The sense of vast space was almost terrifying. Vision was obstructed by nothing, and the great skies rounded down to the utmost edge of the great undulating plain. They were now travelling quite slowly, but after a few days—nay, a few hours—the prairies seemed to close in upon them, to swallow them up in vastness and silence. Dick, dreamy and impressionable, felt a little lonely and bewildered, troubled by the mighty width and apparently limitless expanse surrounding him. But to Peter Many-Names the prairies were as home-like and familiar as a meadow.