She understood now. He was going to offer to spare her life, if she would marry him and give up Gray Cloud. He did not understand that she would rather be dead twice over than spend her life mourning Gray Cloud and married to Wolf Paw.
She was about to tell him so when she heard a rumble, almost like thunder, from the trees nearer the camp. With much whinnying and cracking of shrubbery, all the band's horses burst out of the woods and ran, floundering and kicking up clouds of snow, out on the prairie.
"Be still," Wolf Paw cautioned in a low voice, "until we see what frightened them." He stood with his head high, listening.
Whatever it was, she was grateful that it had taken Wolf Paw's mind off her.
She heard a crashing in the forest, branches breaking, snow crunching. Something large was coming toward them.
She turned. Through the trees she saw a bulky, hunched figure. It seemed to be a large animal, but it was walking on its hind legs. It came forward slowly, a step at a time. Its forelimbs swung at its sides. It was a little taller than a man.
It looked very much like a bear. A new fear, greater than the fear of what Wolf Paw might do, assailed her.
A bear in coldest winter, when all of that people withdrew to their dens and slept? Once in a while, she had heard, a very hungry bear would awaken and forage for food and then go back to sleep again. Such a bear would kill anything it met. She tensed herself to run, though she knew she could never outrun a hungry bear.
The shambling tread of the bear, or whatever it was, had brought it closer, and she saw that it was all white, glittering in the moonlight like a snowdrift.
She glanced at Wolf Paw and saw his eyes glisten as they widened. The look on his shadowed face was one she never thought to see on him—fear.