The crisp snow whined beneath his step and the wolf whined beside him. At last the form stopped before a lodge and with a trembling hand drew away the covering at the entrance. It was the lodge of Gunthai. Two forms lay within, huddled in their blankets, and the snows had drifted about them. The man pulled the blankets from their faces. One was Gunthai and the other Tabea. Each was pinched with the pinch of death and winter, and the mystery of the last long, lonesome trail was about them both. With a moan the form tottered and fell upon its face in the snow. And over all the valley there were but two sounds—the wail of the winter wind and the howl of a lone wolf. Days passed, and the people who had fled from home with the pitiless scourge at their heels grew faint and weary with their wandering, and at last the homeache drove them back upon their trail. Footsore, famished, racked with the now dead terror, they toiled in silence homeward, where they could die with the sound of their own fires in their ears. At last one morning a lone rider cautiously peered from under the brow of the hill upon the village. Nothing moved below. He urged his emaciated pony to the summit of the hill and stopping, gazed again, shading his eyes with a hand grown weak and thin. There seemed nothing in the valley to fear. Turning about upon his pony, he raised his arms in the light of dawn and cried back into the valley beyond to the waiting remnant of his people—a long, exultant cry, for he had looked upon his home. Slowly the returning tribe, now dwindled to half its former numbers, toiled up the hill. Only the strong were left, and now the strong were weak. The straggling band of men, women and ponies reached the summit, a pitiful, ragged multitude, and gazed for a moment into the valley. Then a great shout arose above the silent spaces, scintillant under the dawn, as the halting, famished band swooped down the hill to be again at home. Again the fires roared upward from the lodges, and the voices of a happy people drove away the silence of the winter. There was no longer any disease; the winter and the flight had purged the tribe. Who had saved them from the black spirits? Could a tribe run faster than the things which are not good? The sun was at the centre of its short path when the answer to this question of the tribe broke into the lodges where the people sat about their steaming kettles. For it was then that one ran through the village waving a tuft of long, grey hair and startling the ears of his people with a shout: “See! The tuft of hair from the head of the white bison! It has saved us; for do you not remember the words of Washkahee?” The people rushed from their lodges and thronged about the man who held the tuft of hair. “Who has found the white bison?” they cried. And the answer of him who held the tuft of hair struck the people silent with wonder: “It was Nu Zhinga, the squaw-hearted; even he who could not dream a dream!” XI