But presently the insidious hand of the frost fell heavily upon them again. Peter's long, savage step became shorter and less sure, and he fell to crooning little snatches of some wild chant under his breath--a brave's death-song, if Dick had known. The pony lagged more and more, and Dick noticed nothing, felt nothing any longer. He was benumbed, mind and body, with the cold. Peter's song blew past his ears on the irregular gusts of wind, but he did not hear. He was back again in those long ago days, and his mother was standing at the door of the cabin, calling, "Stephanie, Stephanie!" The name was on his blue lips as strength failed, and he fell full length in the snow, while the whirling haze of white, the pony, and Peter Many-Names, slid away to nothingness, and only that voice remained--"Stephanie, Stephanie!" Peter, partly roused from the lethargy which was creeping over him, tried to lift Dick from the drifts, but was too weak. So he quietly pulled off his own blanket, laid it over the English boy, and then crouched down with his back to the worst of the wind, and waited stoically--waited for death, which was all he looked for. He thought of it quite calmly; but then through all his stormy life the gates of the Happy Hunting-Grounds had never been far away. There was something very pathetic in that little crouching brown figure waiting so gravely and patiently for the end. The wind blew the snow into little ridges on his long black hair, and then blew it off again. The pony came close to him with drooping head, as if for company; but by then the Indian was too far gone to heed anything, though still he crooned little snatches of his desolate song, as was right and fitting. Presently he too fell softly sideways into the snow as a tired child falls. His last distinct thought was of the great broad woods through which they had passed, and of the warm summer sun upon the fair, green world. Just then the pony lifted its lean head, fringed over with the long ragged mane, and pointing its nose to the blast, neighed shrilly, piercingly, as only an Indian pony can neigh. But neither Dick nor Peter Many-Names heard it. That neigh was answered by a dozen or more. But so strongly blew the irregular winds that only faint echoes of the shrill clamour were to be heard. It proceeded from the very heart of an unusually large bluff of willows upon the bank of a river. There was an open space in the middle of this thick growth of stunted trees, which was occupied by several horses and a cluster of tepees. A band of Indians were very comfortably weathering the unexpected storm in this manner, little more than a few yards distant from the spot where Dick and Peter Many-Names had been overcome.