For the first day hope had been left to them, for they could judge their direction from the steady, cutting wind. But, after that, the wind began to shift constantly, and thus their only guide failed them. A prairie is not as bare of all landmarks as a lawn, but one buffalo-wallow is much like another, one poplar-bluff is not distinguishable from the next, and most sloughs have a family likeness to each other, especially when one's circle of vision is limited to a couple of yards' radius, and everything beyond is blotted out with pitiless, hurrying, scurrying clouds of white flakes. Dick was utterly lost. "Where are we? Where are we?" he kept saying. "Is the whole world turning to snow?" And sometimes, angrily, "I know you are going the wrong way, Peter. I know you are." Whereupon he would stumble off by himself, and the Indian would follow and drag him back again.
"No right, no wrong, no anything," Peter exclaimed angrily in answer; "but you must not go round, round, round in circles. That what you doing, an' if you do so, you die pretty quick. You come on with me." And actually they had kept a straighter course than they knew, or than they would have dared to hope, thanks to the Indian's sense of direction.
The first night they passed in the shelter of a large bluff of aspens, and were not very much the worse for it. It was then that they somehow lost one of their ponies through inexcusable carelessness in securing it, and it was after that also that they began to lose hope.
Their food as well as their strength was failing them, and on this third day they were in a very bad case. Dick had, of course, suffered more than the Indian, and plodded forward in a sort of stupor, which threatened to end in fatal unconsciousness at any moment. But even Peter's keen senses were dulled by the cold, and his movements, though little less agile, were more mechanical. His face was grey and pinched, and his hard, grey eyes were very weary also. He seemed leaner and more shrunken than ever. But his mouth was set in grim determination to meet whatever fate might be in store for him with fitting dignity.
At first, Dick's remorse had been passionate. "It's my wretched obstinacy has led us into this, Peter," he said repeatedly; "but sorrow can't do any good now. Nothing can do any good. Oh, what a fool, what a silly, self-willed fool I was! And all my regret is useless! Everything's useless! There's nothing to help us."
"Except Great Spirit," the Indian replied austerely, though Dick, in his despairing mood, scarcely noticed the words, and went on with his vain regrets and repentance.
But now the stealthy hand of the frost was lulling all his hopes and fears and regrets to sleep. As he plodded on beside the staggering pony, he thought only of his previous life, and that without any pain or grief. He vaguely remembered one May morning long ago, before his mother had died, when Stephanie had crowned herself with all the first frail blossoms of the year, and had then danced over the miserable log-hut, brightening it with the spirit of grace and childhood, and sweetening it with the shy fragrance of spring flowers. He had forgotten the little incident entirely, but now he remembered it clearly enough, and idly wondered over it. He suddenly seemed to remember so many things, pleasant little happenings of past years. And his mind dwelt upon them more and more dreamily. More and more slowly he walked, half-forgetting the benumbing ache of cold, the rush and whirl of the surrounding snow.
He was roughly roused from his dangerous dreams. The restless, dancing drifts and eddies of snow seemed to vanish from beneath his feet, and he fell head foremost down a steep bank, some three feet deep, into a little depression of the soil between two high ridges. In spring this was doubtless a slough, haunted by wild-fowl, but now it was dry, and covered with grass, thin and poor, but much relished by the trembling, famished pony. It was sheltered on all sides by the three-foot banks, crested with little straggling bushes, against which the snow had drifted. So cosy did this desolate little valley seem after the roaring tempest without, that Dick grew quite comfortable and drowsy, and would have gone to sleep where he fell. But this Peter would by no means allow. "You wake up," he commanded; "even little child know better than go sleep in snow an' cold. You wake up."
"For pity's sake, let me alone!" Dick pleaded. "Go on if you like and leave me here. I 'm so comfortable."