Chapter 21: Friends

I had heard of the great winter storms of the plains and I knew their dangers. To stand there would mean freezing to death, I turned to Onomo, and I was so horrified at what he had told me that my first thought was to finish him where he lay. But I could not do that. Besides he was dying fast. So I said:

“Onomo, I ought to put another bullet through you, but I will not do it. I may perish as you say, but I do not think I will deserve my fate as you have deserved yours.”

I took one look at him and his face was as ferocious as ever. Then I plunged blindly forward through the snow. It was driving so furiously that I could not tell anything about my course, and I could not have returned to the spot where Onomo lay had I wished to do so.

The storm increased in vigor. The wind howled and screamed and lashed me across the face like a whip. The snow was picked up in whirlwinds which scuttled across the plain in white, conical, revolving masses. A numbing deadly cold crept through my clothing and into the very marrow of my bones.

I thought no longer of the direction in which I was going. My sole object now was to keep life in my body. I strapped my rifle to my back, rubbed my hands vigorously together and ran about, always seeking to keep my back to the wind. This helped me somewhat, but the violence of the storm remained unabated. The wind shrieked as if it were some live thing. Even when I dared to raise my eyes and face the beating snow which was whirled at me from every point of the compass I could not see twenty feet away.

Hour after hour passed, and still I plunged on in the wind and the snow. If I could only live that storm through I felt that I could face anything afterwards. Staggering forward, I stumbled and fell to my knees. I sprang up again and with joy recognized the cause of my fall. I had come unexpectedly upon the steep side of a hillock. Broken ground would mean some protection from the storm. I sought about and presently stumbled into a kind of ravine. I crouched down in it, and the screaming wind which dashed and tore over my head failed to reach me there. But I kept up the vigorous rubbing of my hands and slapping of my thighs and ankles to keep from freezing and moved about as much as I could in the narrow ravine without exposing myself again to the full force of the storm.

I was busy tramping up and down and having no thought of anything but to keep warm, when distinctly above the howling of the storm I heard the sharp report of a rifle, and a bullet whizzed past my cheek and flattened itself against a stone in the side of the ravine.

I looked up and saw the vengeful face of Onomo glaring at me, and even as I looked the tense muscles of his figure relaxed. His still smoking rifle slid from his hands. The eyes grew dull and vacant. His head dropped over and he rolled to the bottom of the ravine and lay at my feet. I put my hand upon his pulse and found he was stone dead. He had died in the last effort to take my life.

How Onomo, when gasping out his life, was able to regain his feet, reload his rifle and follow me in that fearful storm I do not know. Only an Indian seeking blood could show such tenacity.

I thoroughly assured myself Onomo was dead and then I took away his store of powder and bullets, thinking I would need them hereafter. Even when dead he inspired me with such horror that I turned my face away in order not to see his body. But when next I looked that way the sifting snow had covered it up and concealed it from my view.

All day the storm swept the plain and, shrieked in my ears. Soon after nightfall it ceased with an abruptness that astonished me. The last pyramid of snow had gone whirling out of sight. The air was still, and all the tumult which the storm had created was succeeded by complete silence.

I crept from the ravine and looked around me. The plain was a vast sheet, broken here and there by mounds and long windrows of snow, which the hurricane had heaped up. Then I looked back in the ravine and saw the white shape that was Onomo in his burial robe of snow.

Without any particular object in mind I set out again over the plain. The night was bright, the snow and the moon together making it almost like day. I trudged steadily on all through the night I think my only reflection was that if I kept going I must in the end come to something.

Constant movement kept me fairly warm, but hunger began to gnaw at me. I sucked balls of snow, and these refreshed me a little, but I would have given a fortune if I had had it to give for a big piece of jerked buffalo meat or venison.

Now that I look back at it my situation should have appeared very hopeless to me, but I had escaped so much that I did not give up. I suppose there is a certain amount of reserve strength in us that nature provides for just such emergencies.

Daylight came again and found me still plodding through the snow. I began to look around me in the hope of finding game, but saw instead some upright objects on the horizon line. I shouted aloud in joy, for they were trees. Trees meant the presence of water, and water meant the presence of game.

It might be that our cabin lay over there and I might succeed in rejoining my brother and the others.

I hurried on with all speed, and before I was half way to the trees I saw a thin blue column of smoke rising above them. I was sure now that I had come back to the starting point and that the smoke I saw came from the Indian encampment. I determined to approach and take the risk of being captured again. I was eager to know whether Pike and the boys still held the cabin.

The grove appeared to be rather broad, and as the smoke rose from the far side I thought I could approach its edge without great danger. In a half hour I had reached the nearest tree. I stood behind it a few minutes listening. But, hearing nothing, I stole further on to another tree. I peeped from behind it and beheld a scene that contained no familiar aspect.

Before me was a little valley, and around its sides were a dozen or more of cabins resembling ours. Smoke rose from all of them.

As I peered into the valley trying to make out the character of what it contained, a strong hand fell upon my collar and a loud voice exclaimed:

“Wa’al, what under the ‘tarnal sun hev we got here?”

I looked up and saw a face, bearded and rough, but white and kindly. I suppose I was already on the point of exhaustion, for when I started to reply the words stuck in my throat, I felt a curious catching of the breath and I tumbled over in the snow in a dead faint.

When my senses returned I found I was lying upon a pile of soft furs, and a half dozen big-boned men dressed in deerskins and carrying rifles in their hands, were standing around me. But they were white and were regarding me with great interest. When I opened my eyes one of them asked: