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Again she began to urge her mother to get up. She pushed the rock-like side with her little nose, but she stopped very soon with the conviction that it was useless and that she had better keep her eyes on the coyote. She centred her attention now upon the form that moved about in the dark grey gloom and discovered a second form behind the first. In an effort to move nearer to her mother, she stepped on the hard side, tripped and fell; and as she got up to her feet again, there came out of the boundless horror of the wind-swept night a blood-curdling howl. Leaping clearly over her mother’s body she fled from it, and loped away in the direction of the bowl-like valley and the lake.

Some of the horses were still grazing near the lake, as if they realised that a blizzard was coming and desired to store away in their bodies all the food they could gather. They cropped the grass most rapidly as the wind tore at their tails and manes. Most of the mares were lying down with their colts and one horse was drinking at a hole in the ice; while the old sorrel work-horse stood near him patiently waiting for his turn at the water. With an anxious whimper she sidled up to the old sorrel who replied at once with his soft, tremulous whinny of good will. When at last he drank, she cautiously lowered her head too, and seeing that he had no objections, she drank as if there were fires in her little heart that she would quench. When he raised his head and started away, she pulled her head out of the water and ran after him as if it had been her mother that had started away and was about to leave her behind.