y beak of a nose, the down-curving,
tender mouth. His face was covered with a mask of frost.

Gray Cloud.

How could she have forgotten that when he walked out of the camp
yesterday he had worn a black bear's skin draped over his arms and
shoulders? Snow and frost had turned the fur white. The night and her
terror had tricked her into thinking she saw a white bear spirit. Wolf
Paw, the seasoned warrior, had been tricked and terrified, too.

Gray Cloud was alive!

A scream tried to force its way out of her chest, but her windpipe was
so tight that all she managed was a gasp.

Joy blazed up in her like a summer campfire.

But no--he could not be alive and look like that. What she was seeing
must be the ghost of Gray Cloud, or his dead body walking. The cold and
snow had killed him there in the sacred cave, and this shuffling, frozen
husk was all that was left of him.

"Gray Cloud," she whispered, unable to speak aloud, "talk to me."

If he walked right past her without seeing her, he must be still on his
spirit journey. She had always heard that the bodies of men on a spirit
journey remained motionless, sitting or lying down. But she was certain
that Gray Cloud was not fully awake.

She stood staring at him, her mouth open, as he shambled on past her.

She slowly turned to follow him, and now she was facing into the
moonlight and seeing the shadows of the snow-covered wickiups. He was
walking in that frighteningly slow, measured way toward the village.
Wolf Paw was nowhere to be seen.

The feeling came to her again of other eyes upon her. Besides Wolf Paw,
besides the strange creature Gray Cloud had become, someone else seemed
to be out here in the snow-covered field with her. She shuddered.

She looked around to see if she could guess where the secret watcher
might be hiding. Someone might be crouching behind one of the long
snowdrifts that rippled across the prairie like waves on a lake. Or in
the trees by the river.

She must not let herself be caught out here. She picked up the blanket
roll and water skin that Wolf Paw had thrown into the snow and padded on
her snowshoes after the lumbering white figure. She must hurry and try
to get to a place where her presence would be unnoticed, or if noticed,
not questioned.

Her legs ached. She did not have the strength to run. Gray Cloud had
left a trail of two shallow furrows in the snow where he had pushed his
legs through and the snow had fallen in behind hi