it?--here, there, everywhere? Everything is strange."

"I feel a chill that is not of cold," Smoke answered. "Nor is it of
hunger."

"It is in your head, your heart," she agreed excitedly. "That is the way
I feel it."

"It is not of my senses," Smoke diagnosed. "I sense something, from
without, that is tingling me with ice; it is a chill of my nerves."

A quarter of an hour later they paused for breath.

"I can no longer see the far peaks," Smoke said.

"The air is getting thick and heavy," said Labiskwee. "It is hard to
breathe."

"There be three suns," McCan muttered hoarsely, reeling as he clung to
his staff for support.

There was a mock sun on either side of the real sun.

"There are five," said Labiskwee; and as they looked, new suns formed
and flashed before their eyes.

"By Heaven, the sky is filled with suns beyant all countin'," McCan
cried in fear.

Which was true, for look where they would, half the circle of the sky
dazzled and blazed with new suns forming.

McCan yelped sharply with surprise and pain. "I'm stung!" he cried out,
then yelped again.

Then Labiskwee cried out, and Smoke felt a prickling stab on his cheek
so cold that it burned like acid. It reminded him of swimming in the
salt sea and being stung by the poisonous filaments of Portuguese
men-of-war. The sensations were so similar that he automatically brushed
his cheek to rid it of the stinging substance that was not there.

And then a shot rang out, strangely muffled. Down the slope were the
young men, standing on their skees, and one after another opened fire.

"Spread out!" Smoke commanded. "And climb for it! We're almost to the
top. They're a quarter of a mile below, and that means a couple of miles
the start of them on the down-going of the other side."

With faces prickling and stinging from invisible atmospheric stabs,
the three scattered widely on the snow surface and toiled upward. The
muffled reports of the rifles were weird to their ears.

"Thank the Lord," Smoke panted to Labiskwee, "that four of them are
muskets, and only one a Winchester. Besides, all these suns spoil their
aim. They are fooled. They haven't come within a hundred feet of us."

"It shows my father's temper," she said. "They have orders to kill."

"How strange you talk," Smoke said. "Your voice sounds far away."

"Cover your mouth," Labiskwee cried suddenly. "And do not talk. I know
what it is. Cover your mouth with your sleeve, thus, and do