In all those weeks they had seen and spoken with no one but the solitary trapper to whom Dick had consigned the letter, and the absolute loneliness had become as natural to Dick as the splendid clearness of air was natural. So when one morning in September he came upon the ashes of a fire that were still warm, it gave him a curious feeling of wistful excitement. "Look, Peter," he said, "feel here. The ground is not cold yet under the ashes. Someone was here only a little while ago!" Peter snarled something inarticulate, and peered about the fire with a frowning face. "White man," he grunted uneasily at last. "How do you know?" asked Dick; and then, not waiting for an answer, "I should have liked to have spoken to him. I wish we had met him." "Company's man," grunted Peter, still restless and uneasy. "They bad people. Not like us here." But Dick was full of his own thoughts, and scarcely heeded. There was some reason for Peter's uneasiness, for they were then almost within the vast territories ruled over by the Hudson Bay Company. And at no time did the great Company prove friendly to strangers. The Indian had probably, at some crisis in his chequered career, come in contact with the authority of the said Company, which thereafter he regarded with superstitious awe and veneration. As they went stealthily on their way, and the miles dropped behind with the vanishing summer, Peter Many-Names became strangely eager and excited. Dick did not understand the cause of this excitement or of the haste that accompanied it. But had he possessed the key to that savage nature, he would have guessed that it was the nearness of the prairies which so moved the impassive Indian. As the sea to a coast-bred man, as the mountains to a hillman, so were the prairies to Peter Many-Names. They had called him north with a voice that, to his wild fancy, was almost articulate--insistent, not to be mistaken. He had been born and bred upon the plains, and now he was returning to them as a tired child runs to its mother, asking only the presence of that which he loved. And by the time that the woods about the distant homestead were lighted with the purple of the tall wild asters, Dick had had his first sight of the open prairie. In after days he never found words to describe that sight. Once having reached the goal of his desire, Peter's hurry seemed in great measure to evaporate. He was content to see the vast arch of the pale autumn skies above his head, to feel the keen air in his face, to travel over those limitless earthen billows, interrupted only by some bluff of aspens or other soft-wood trees, or by the forest-growth which fringed the courses of the larger rivers. To him, life offered nothing better.