The
drifting of the snow makes it impossible to see what course they are to
take; they have only to sit down and let the snow fall upon them. It is
a relief when they are quite covered with it, for it shelters them from
the keenness of the blast!
Alas! for the children; the cry of those who can speak is, Give me
food! while the dying infant clings to its mother's breast, seeking to
draw, with its parting breath, the means of life.
But the storm is over; the piercing cold seizes upon the exhausted
frames of the sufferers.
The children have hardly strength to stand; the father places one upon
his back and goes forward; the mother wraps her dead child in her
blanket, and lays it in the snow; another is clinging to her, she has no
time to weep for the dead; nature calls upon her to make an effort for
the living. She takes her child and follows the rest. It would be a
comfort to her, could she hope to find her infant's body when summer
returns to bury it. She shudders, and remembers that the wolves of the
prairie are starving too!
Food is found at last; the strength of the buffalo yields to the arrow
of the Sioux.
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