held Stephanie represented to him the whole of the
country they had left behind them. He felt that he could never face
the Collinsons, could never endure the humiliation of a return to
civilised life, could never endure the thought that his dreams had led
him astray. "I will go on by myself if you are afraid," he said in a
fury of suddenly aroused stubbornness. "I don't care what happens. I
may freeze or starve or anything, but turn back I will not."

Peter Many-Names shrugged his shoulders uneasily. "So," he said, "you
go on if you will, I come with you. You my brother now, and I cannot
leave you. But it is for true we go into death." And the ponies hung
their heads and shivered restlessly before that steady, unceasing wind
as they proceeded. But Dick kept his face turned obstinately
northward, resolved that he would never yield.

It is written that "the stars in their courses fought against Sisera."
And now the spirit of the wide prairies was to fight against Dick.

That night they found no game. And, by the morning, fine particles of
icy snow gave an edge of steel to that steady, unceasing wind. By
midday the sky was overcast, the wind increased, and the snow became
thicker and thicker.

CHAPTER X.

In the Grip of the Storm.

A world of small, whirling, white flakes, rushing, eddying, drifting
before a wind that continually shifted from one quarter to another; a
cold, grey light filtering through this haze of stinging snow; a
continuous, angry murmur, as the icy particles struck the tall, stiff,
prairie grasses, sometimes deepening to a roar as the wind momentarily
increased; and, in the midst of this unresting, resistless tumult, two
dark figures staggering uncertainly northward, leading between them an
almost exhausted pony, laden with the last remnants of their food.

For three days, the snow, and the wind, and the great cold had scourged
the prairies, and the storm was almost an early blizzard in its wild
fury, in the confusion of air-currents and always-falling,
never-resting white flakes, tipped with ice, and stinging like fire.
And for these three days Dick and Peter Many-Names had gone blindly on
their painful way, trusting to the Indian's sense of direction, yet not
knowing where they were going. An Indian's bump of locality is a
marvellously developed organ; but it is of little use in a blizzard.
And now the two lads were staggering forward, with no hope that they
were keeping to t