The snow fell thick and fast.  It covered the prairie for miles in every direction.  In some places it was deeper than Timid Hare was tall.  A thick crust formed over the top.

Young Antelope set to work to make himself new snowshoes.  As he bent the hoops for the frames and crossed them with networks of leather strings.  Timid Hare looked on with longing.  She had had snowshoes of her own before, and she had enjoyed skimming over the snow fields on them, but they were far away—­very far away.

“I will help you make some shoes,” Young Antelope told her, when he caught the look.  “You can do the easy part, and I will do the hard.”

Timid Hare was pleased because Young Antelope did not notice her very often.  The snowshoes were soon made and the little girl longed to try them.

The very next day Young Antelope went out with the men on a winter hunt.  There were large stores of meat in the village, but the cold was bitter and more warm buffalo robes were needed for beds and coverlets.  Moreover, at this time of the year the fur of the animals was heaviest.

“It will be easy to get our prey,” Bent Horn said to his son the night before the hunt.  “There is little snow on the south slopes of the hills, where the buffaloes will be feeding.  We can take them by surprise and drive them down into the ice-crusted fields.  They are so heavy that their feet will fall through.  Then the hunter can draw near on his swift snowshoes, and will pierce the heart of his prey with his spear without trouble.”

“I will be such a hunter on the morrow,” the youth had replied.  “My spear is already sharpened.  It shall bring death to more than one of the creatures that provide us with comfort through the moon of difficulty,” as he had been taught to call the month of January.

As Young Antelope skimmed along over the snow fields next morning, he thought more than once of the little captive at home.

“She behaves well,” he said to himself, “and she will be a good homekeeper when she is older.  It may be—­it may be—­that I will yet choose her for my wife.”

Young Antelope was only sixteen years old, but he was already thinking of getting married!  It was the way of his people.  The girls married even younger than the boys—­sometimes when only twelve or thirteen years had passed over their heads.  It was therefore not strange that the chief’s son should be considering what wife he would choose.

With many of the braves away on the hunt, the village was quiet, and the squaws took a little vacation from their work, as on the morrow they must be very busy caring for the supplies brought home by the hunters.

In the afternoon Sweet Grass said kindly:  “Timid Hare, you have been a good girl and worked hard of late.  You may have the rest of the day for play.  Try your new snowshoes, if you like.”

The rest of the day—­two whole hours before sunset!  It seemed too good to be true.  Never had such a thing happened to the child since she left the home of the Mandans.