e of
the snow, became short and unsteady, and he felt a dizziness of
the brain. Things seemed to dance about, but his will was so
strong that he could still reason clearly, and he knew that he
was in desperate case. It was his will that resisted the impulse
of his flesh to throw his rifle away as a useless burden, but he
laughed aloud when he thought of the map of the United States in
the inside pocket of his coat.

"They'll find me, if they ever find me, with that upon me," he
said aloud, "and they, too, will laugh."

He stumbled against something and doubled his fist angrily as if
he would strike a man who had maliciously got in his way. It was
the solid bark of a big cottonwood that had stopped him, and his
anger vanished in joy. Where one cottonwood was, others were
likely to be, and their presence betokened a stream, a valley,
and a shelter of some kind.

He was still dazed, suffering partially from snow blindness, but
now he saw a line of sturdy cottonwoods and beyond it another
line. The stream, he knew, flowed between. He went down the
line a few hundred yards and came, as he had hoped, into more
broken ground.

The creek ran between banks six or seven feet high, with a margin
between stream and bank, and the cottonwoods on these banks
were reinforced by some thick clumps of willows. Between the
largest clump and the line of cottonwoods, with the bank as a
shelter for the third side, was a comparatively clear space.
The snow was only a few inches deep there, and Dick believed
that he could make a shelter. He had, of course, brought his
blanket with him in a tight roll on his back, and he was hopeful
enough to have some thought of building a fire.

He stooped down to feel in the snow at a likely spot, and the act
saved his life. A bullet, intended for his head, was buried in
the snow beyond him, and a body falling down the bank lay quite
still at his feet. It was the long Sioux. Wounded mortally, he
had followed Dick, nevertheless, with mortal intent, crawling,
perhaps most of the time, and with his last breath he had fired
what he intended to be the fatal shot.

He was quite dead now, his power for evil gone forever. There
could be no doubt about it. Dick at length forced himself to
touch the face. It had grown cold and the pulse in the wrist was
still. It yet gave him a feeling of horror to touch the Sioux,
but his own struggle for life would be bitter and he could spare
nothing. The