w that my life had hung by a thread
while I had been their involuntary host. Only my friendship with the
children of old Rain-in-the-Face had saved me.

But, even with the Indians gone, I was in a desperate situation. As
they had taken all my matches I had to keep the fire going
continuously. This meant that I could not sleep long at a time, the
lack of rest soon began to tell on me. I would cut slices from the deer
carcass with my knife, and holding it over the fire with a long stick,
cook it, eating it without salt. Coffee I must do without altogether.

The second day after the departure of the Indians a great snow fell.
The drifts blocked the doorway and covered the windows. It lay to a
depth of several feet on the roof over my head. My woodpile was covered
by the snow that drifted in and it was with great difficulty that I
could get enough wood to keep my little fire going. And on that fire
depended my life. Worse than all these troubles was the knowledge that
the heavy snow would be sure to delay Harrington.

I would lie there, day after day, a prey to all sorts of dark
imaginings. I fancied him killed by Indians on the trail, or snowbound
and starving on the Plains. Each morning my notches on my calendar
stick were made. Gradually their number grew till at last the twentieth
was duly cut. But no Harrington came.

The wolves, smelling meat within, had now begun to gather round in
increasing numbers. They made the night hideous with their howlings,
and pawed and scratched and dug at the snow by the doorway, determined
to come in and make a meal of everything the dugout contained, myself
included.

How I endured it I do not know. But the Plains teach men and boys
fortitude. Many and many a time as I lay there I resolved that if I
should ever be spared to go back to my home and friends, the frontier
should know me no more.

It was on the twenty-ninth day, as marked on stick, when I had about
given up hope, that I heard a cheerful voice shouting "Whoa!" and
recognized it as the voice of Harrington. A criminal on the scafford
with the noose about his neck and the trap sagging underneath his feet
could not have welcomed a pardon more eagerly than I welcomed my
deliverance out of this torture-chamber.

I could make no effort to open the door for him. But I found voice to
answer him when he cried "Hello, Billy!" and in response to his
question assured him that I was all right. He soon cleared a passageway
through