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.

Here, where Dick would see the far skyline broken by the irregular
black mass of a herd of bison, the wheat waves now, mile after mile,
about the countless farms and homesteads. These fertile lands, known
then to few but the Indian and the hunter, have been claimed by
civilisation, and their produce goes to the feeding of the nations.
Agriculture has taken the prairies, and their nomad life is surely
slipping into the past.

To the Indian, these prairies were dear above all things. But they
impressed Dick more with awe than admiration, and he grew to long for
the friendly trees left behind them, and to regard the limitless plain
and the skies arching from the horizon almost as hostile things, with
something menacing in their very splendour. Now also for the first
time he began troubling about