st, arrived
in the valley. He was taken into the lodge of Xingudan and he departed
the next morning with five of the young warriors of the village, the
best men they had. When Will referred to their absence he received
either no answer or an ambiguous one. Inmutanka himself would say
nothing about them, but Will made a shrewd surmise that the runner had
come for help in the great war and that the last and uttermost village
would be stripped in the attempt to turn back the white tide.

His growing appreciation of wild life caused him to have an increasing
feeling of sympathy for the Sioux. The white flood would engulf them
some day. He knew that just as well as he knew that he was in the
valley, but as for himself, he had no wish to see the buffalo disappear
from the plains. If his own personal desires were consulted the west
would remain a wilderness and a land of romance. It was pleasant to
think that there was an immense region in which one could always
discover a towering peak, a noble river or a splendid lake.

Adopted now into the tribe, and far from the battle line, he might have
drifted on indefinitely with the Indians, but there was the memory of
his white comrades, whom he could not believe dead, and also the mission
upon which he had started, the hunt for the great mine which his father
had found. The reasons why he should continue the search were
overwhelming, and despite the kindness of Inmutanka and the others he
meant to escape from them whenever he could.

The winter shut down fierce and hard. Will had never before known cold
so intense and continuous. In the valley itself the snow lay deep and
its surface was frozen hard, but the Indians moved over it easily on
their snowshoes, the use of which Will learned with much pain and
tribulation. The river was covered with ice of great thickness, but the
Indians cut holes in it and caught many excellent fish, which added a
pleasant variety to their diet.

One of their hardest struggles was to keep alive the herd of ponies. At
the suggestion of Will and of Xingudan, who was a wise man beyond his
race, much forage had been cut for them before the winter fell, and in
the alcoves of the mountains where the snow was thin they were
continually seeking grass, which grew despite everything. Will led in
the work of saving the herd, and gradually he directed almost his whole
time to it. He insisted upon gathering anything they could eat, even
twigs, and Indian ponies