McCan yelped sharply with surprise and pain.  “I’m stung!” he cried out, then yelped again.

Then Labiskwee cried out, and Smoke felt a prickling stab on his cheek so cold that it burned like acid.  It reminded him of swimming in the salt sea and being stung by the poisonous filaments of Portuguese men-of-war.  The sensations were so similar that he automatically brushed his cheek to rid it of the stinging substance that was not there.

And then a shot rang out, strangely muffled.  Down the slope were the young men, standing on their skees, and one after another opened fire.

“Spread out!” Smoke commanded.  “And climb for it!  We’re almost to the top.  They’re a quarter of a mile below, and that means a couple of miles the start of them on the down-going of the other side.”

With faces prickling and stinging from invisible atmospheric stabs, the three scattered widely on the snow surface and toiled upward.  The muffled reports of the rifles were weird to their ears.

“Thank the Lord,” Smoke panted to Labiskwee, “that four of them are muskets, and only one a Winchester.  Besides, all these suns spoil their aim.  They are fooled.  They haven’t come within a hundred feet of us.”

“It shows my father’s temper,” she said.  “They have orders to kill.”

“How strange you talk,” Smoke said.  “Your voice sounds far away.”

“Cover your mouth,” Labiskwee cried suddenly.  “And do not talk.  I know what it is.  Cover your mouth with your sleeve, thus, and do not talk.”

McCan fell first, and struggled wearily to his feet.  And after that all fell repeatedly ere they reached the summit.  Their wills exceeded their muscles, they knew not why, save that their bodies were oppressed by a numbness and heaviness of movement.  From the crest, looking back, they saw the young men stumbling and falling on the upward climb.

“They will never get here,” Labiskwee said.  “It is the white death.  I know it, though I have never seen it.  I have heard the old men talk.  Soon will come a mist—­unlike any mist or fog or frost-smoke you ever saw.  Few have seen it and lived.”

McCan gasped and strangled.

“Keep your mouth covered,” Smoke commanded.

A pervasive flashing of light from all about them drew Smoke’s eyes upward to the many suns.  They were shimmering and veiling.  The air was filled with microscopic fire-glints.  The near peaks were being blotted out by the weird mist; the young men, resolutely struggling nearer, were being engulfed in it.  McCan had sunk down, squatting, on his skees, his mouth and eyes covered by his arms.

“Come on, make a start,” Smoke ordered.

“I can’t move,” McCan moaned.

His doubled body set up a swaying motion.  Smoke went toward him slowly, scarcely able to will movement through the lethargy that weighed his flesh.  He noted that his brain was clear.  It was only the body that was afflicted.