I could make no answer, save to vow silently that if I lived she must be returned safely to her home, unhurt body and soul.  I dared not ponder on conventions in a case so desperate as I knew ours yet might be.  Silently I unsaddled the horse and hobbled it securely as I might with the bridle rein.  Then I spread the saddle blanket for her to sit upon, and hurried about for Plains fuel.  Water we drank from my hat, and were somewhat refreshed.  Now we had food and water.  We needed fire.  But this, when I came to fumble in my pockets, seemed at first impossible, for I found not a match.

“I was afraid of that,” she said, catching the meaning of my look.  “What shall we do?  We shall starve!”

“Not in the least,” said I, stoutly.  “We are good Indians enough to make a fire, I hope.”

In my sheath was a heavy hunting knife; and now, searching about us on the side of the coulee bank, I found several flints, hard and white.  Then I tore out a bit of my coat lining and moistened it a trifle, and saturated it with powder from my flask, rubbed in until it all was dry.  This niter-soaked fabric I thought might serve as tinder for the spark.  So then I struck flint and steel, and got the strange spark, hidden in the cold stone ages and ages there on the Plains; and presently the spark was a little flame, and then a good fire, and so we were more comfortable.

We roasted meat now, flat on the coals, the best we might, and so we ate, with no salt to aid us.  The girl became a trifle more cheerful, though still distant and quiet.  If I rose to leave the fire for an instant, I saw her eyes following me all the time.  I knew her fears, though she did not complain.

Man is the most needful of all the animals, albeit the most resourceful.  We needed shelter, and we had none.  Night came on.  The great gray wolves, haunters of the buffalo herds, roared their wild salute to us, savage enough to strike terror to any woman’s soul.  The girl edged close to me as the dark came down.  We spoke but little.  Our dangers had not yet made us other than conventional.

Now, worst of all, the dark bank of cloud arose and blotted out all the map of the stars.  The sun scarce had sunk before a cold breath, silent, with no motion in its coming, swept across or settled down upon the Plains.  The little grasses no longer stirred in the wind.  The temperature mysteriously fell more and more, until it was cold, very cold.  And those pale, heatless flames, icy as serpent tongues played along the darkening heavens, and mocked at us who craved warmth and shelter.  I felt my own body shiver.  She looked at me startled.

“You are cold,” said she.

“No,” I answered, “only angry because I am so weak.”  We sat silent for very long intervals.  At length she raised her hand and pointed.

Even as dusk sank upon us, all the lower sky went black.  An advancing roar came upon our ears.  And then a blinding wave of rain drove across the surface of the earth, wiping out the day, beating down with remorseless strength and volume as though it would smother and drown us twain in its deluge—­us, the last two human creatures of the world!