like a light flashed from a mirror.  Not a human habitation, not a living thing, lay in his path.  Night came, with countless stars and a joyous crescent of Northern Lights hanging low in the sky, and the intense, still cold that haunts the prairie country.  He grudged the hours of rest he must give his horse, pitying the poor beast for its lack of food and water, but compelled to urge it on and on.  After what seemed a lifetime of hardship, both boy and beast began to weaken.  The irresistible sleepiness that forebodes freezing began to overcome Little Wolf-Willow.  Utter exhaustion was sapping the strength of the cayuse.  But they blundered on, mile after mile, both with the pluck of the prairies in their red blood; colder, slower, wearier, they became.  Little Wolf-Willow’s head was whirling, his brain thickening, his fingers clutching aimlessly.  The bridle reins slipped from his hands.  Hunger, thirst, cold, exhaustion, overpowered both horse and rider.  The animal stumbled once, twice, then fell like a dead weight.

* * * * * * * *

At daybreak, Corporal Manan, hot on the pursuit of the supposed young cattle thief, rode up the freezing trail, headed for the north-east.  A mile ahead of him he saw what he thought was a dead steer which the coyotes had probably killed and were eating.  As he galloped nearer he saw it was a horse.  An exclamation escaped his lips.  Then, slipping from his own mount, stiff and half frozen himself, he bent pityingly above the dead animal that lay with the slender body of an Indian hugging up to it for warmth.

“Poor little chap!” choked the Corporal.  “Poor Little Wolf-Willow!  Death’s got him now, I’m afraid, and that’s worse than the Mounted Police.”

Then the soldier knelt down, and for two long hours rubbed with snow and his own fur cap the thin, frozen face and hands of the almost lifeless boy.  He rolled the lithe young body about, pounding it and beating it, until consciousness returned, and the boy opened his eyes dully.

“That’s better,” said the Corporal.  “Now, my lad, it’s for home!” Then he stripped himself of his own great-coat, wrapped it snugly about the young Indian, and, placing the boy on his own horse, he trudged ahead on foot—­five, ten, fifteen miles of it, the boy but half conscious and freezing, the man tramping ahead, footsore, chilled through, and troubled, the horse with hanging head and lagging step—­a strange trio to enter the Indian camp.

From far off old Beaver-Tail had seen the approaching bit of hated scarlet—­the tunic worn by the North-West Mounted Police—­but he made no comment as Corporal Manan lifted in his strong arms the still figure from the saddle, and, carrying it into the tepee, laid it beside the fire on the warm wolf skins and buffalo hides.  It took much heat and nourishment before Little Wolf-Willow was able to interpret the story from the Cree tongue into English, then back again into Cree, and so be the go-between