got to Bothwell. Kate told him this. But
all the reply she got was a stolid, "Want dollar. No make fire without
dollar."

We were getting cold and it was getting dark, so finally Kate, under
the law of necessity, paid him his dollar. Then he carried out our
orders at his own sweet leisure. In course of time he got a fire
lighted, and while we cooked supper he set up the tent and prepared
our beds, by cutting piles of brush and covering them with rugs.

Kate and I had a hilarious time cooking that supper. It was my first
experience of camping out and, as I had become pretty well convinced
that Peter Crow was not the typical Indian of old romance, I enjoyed
it all hugely. But we were both very tired, and as soon as we had
finished eating we betook ourselves to our tent and found our brush
beds much more comfortable than I had expected. Old Peter coiled up on
his blanket outside by the fire, and the great silence of a windless
prairie enwrapped us. In a few minutes we were sound asleep and never
wakened until seven o'clock.

* * * * *

When we arose and lifted the flap of the tent we saw a peculiar sight.
The little elevation on which we had pitched our camp seemed to be an
island in a vast sea of white mist, dotted here and there with other
islands. On every hand to the far horizon stretched that strange,
phantasmal ocean, and a hazy sun looked over the shifting billows. I
had never seen a western mist before and I thought it extremely
beautiful; but Kate, to whom it was no novelty, was more cumbered with
breakfast cares.

"I'm ravenous," she said, as she bustled about among our stores.
"Camping out always does give one such an appetite. Aren't you hungry,
Phil?"

"Comfortably so," I admitted. "But where are our ponies? And where is
Peter Crow?"

"Probably the ponies have strayed away looking for pea vines. They
love and adore pea vines," said Kate, stirring up the fire from under
its blanket of grey ashes. "And Peter Crow has gone to look for them,
good old fellow. When you do get a conscientious Indian there is no
better guide in the world, but they are rare. Now, Philippa-girl, just
pry out the sergeant's ham and shave a few slices off it for our
breakfast. Some savoury fried ham always goes well on the prairie."

I went for the ham but could not find it. A thorough search among our
effects revealed it not.

"Kate, I can't find the ham," I called out. "It must have fallen out