hand wrenched my shoulder and took the meat from me! I stopped
struggling to run. A deafening whir filled my head. The moon and stars
began to move. Now the white prairie was sky, and the stars lay under my
feet. Now again they were turning. At last the starry blue rose up into
place. The noise in my ears was still. A great quiet filled the air. In
my hand I found my long knife dripping with blood. At my feet a man's
figure lay prone in blood-red snow. The horrible scene about me seemed a
trick of my senses, for I could not understand it was real. Looking
long upon the blood-stained snow, the load of meat for my starving
father reached my recognition at last. Quickly I tossed it over my
shoulder and started again homeward.

Tired and haunted I reached the door of the wigwam. Carrying the food
before me, I entered with it into the tepee.

"Father, here is food!" I cried, as I dropped the meat near my mother.
No answer came. Turning about, I beheld my gray-haired father dead! I
saw by the unsteady firelight an old gray-haired skeleton lying rigid
and stiff.

Out into the open I started, but the snow at my feet became bloody.




V.


On the day after my father's death, having led my mother to the camp of
the medicineman, I gave myself up to those who were searching for the