On all
sides of him stretched the blinding white, snow-covered prairie. Not a
tree, not an object to mark the trail. The wind blew straight and level
directly down from the Arctic zone, icy, cutting, numbing. It whistled
past his ears, pricking and stinging his face like a whiplash. The cold,
yellow sunlight on the snow blinded him, like a light flashed from a
mirror. Not a human habitation, not a living thing, lay in his path.
Night came, with countless stars and a joyous crescent of Northern
Lights hanging low in the sky, and the intense, still cold that
haunts the prairie country. He grudged the hours of rest he must give
his horse, pitying the poor beast for its lack of food and water,
but compelled to urge it on and on. After what seemed a lifetime
of hardship, both boy and beast began to weaken. The irresistible
sleepiness that forebodes freezing began to overcome Little Wolf-Willow.
Utter exhaustion was sapping the strength of the cayuse. But they
blundered on, mile after mile, both with the pluck of the prairies in
their red blood; colder, slower, wearier, they became.
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