darkness. It might be a distant hill, or it might be the outline of the
wished-for wood.

"But if I succeed in reaching it and climbing a tree, will not the delay
enable the Indians to overtake me?" I thought. "I will keep outside
the wood till the near approach of the brutes compels me to climb a tree
to get out of their way." I kept to this resolution. It proved to be a
wood that I had seen. I skirted it as I continued my course. All the
time I kept listening with a feeling of horror to the hideous chorus of
the wolves.

Suddenly I was conscious that the sounds were growing fainter. In
another twenty minutes I was certain of it. They were in pursuit of
some wild beast or other, perhaps of some unfortunate Indian traversing
the prairie. How thankful I felt when the sounds altogether ceased.
This circumstance gave me fresh courage. I pursued my course steadily
onward. I stopped even five minutes to rest and take a little food.
The sun rose, still I was going on, but I began to feel that nature
would not hold out much longer. I felt a dizziness in my eyes, and my
knees began to tremble, and I drew my breath with difficulty. I was
again in a vast plain. The sun was behind me; I followed my own shadow.
Sometimes I could distinguish nothing before me, then the giddiness
went away.

Suddenly, as I looked up, I saw before me eight or ten figures moving in
a line across my path. Could they be the Pawnees who had lost my track,
and were thus making a circuit in the expectation of coming on it? If
they were, I would defend myself to the last. I felt for my rifle, and
tried to get it ready to fire, but I had miscalculated my strength. The
agitation was too much for me; I stumbled blindly forward a few paces,
and then sank down helplessly in the snow. I tried to rise--to move--I
could not, so I gave myself up for lost, and prepared for death. I was
not afraid, I was not unhappy; indeed, I had no very acute feelings
whatever, and very soon lost all consciousness. I was aroused by a
human voice.

"Why, stranger, where have you dropped from? You seem to be in a sad
plight!"

I looked up to discover whence the voice came, and there, instead of a
white face, as I expected, I saw a tall Indian, as he seemed by his
dress, though perhaps he was rather fairer than his people usually are,
bending over me. I could not reply, but, with a sort of hysterical
laugh, I made signs that I had come from the eastward, a