The Post resumed its journey at once, with
the rescued traveller squeezed into the little
carriage. Mr. Möllhausen watched the departure
of the vehicle till it was out of sight, till he was
left alone, the one living being in the white
waste—the Crusoe of the snowy desert. He
had three chances, not of life, but of death.
Death by cold; death by the murderous treachery
of savages; death by the teeth of the wolves
which prowled the wilderness by night. But he
was a brave man, and he faced his imminent
perils and his awful loneliness with a stout
heart.

He was well supplied with arms and ammunition;
and the first thing he did when the Post
left him was to look to these. His next
proceeding was to make use of the snow on the
earth to keep out the snow from the heavens by
raising a white wall, firmly stamped, all round
his little tent. He then dragged up a supply of
wood from the river near at hand, and piled it
before his door. His fire-place was a hollow in
the ground, in front of his bed of blankets and
buffalo hides. The food he possessed to cook at
it consisted of buffalo meat and rice. He had
also some coffee. These provisions, on which
his feeble chance of life depended, he carefully
divided into fourteen days' rations, having first
calculated that, in fourteen days at the furthest,
he might look for help from the Mission. The
sum of his preparations was now complete. He
fed his fire, set on his food to cook, and crept
into his blankets to wait for the coming of night
—the first night alone in the desert.

After a time, the silence and the solitude
weighed upon him so heavily, that he sought
some kind of comfort and companionship in
trying to talk to himself; but, in that forlorn
situation, even the sound of his own voice made
him shudder. The sun sank to its setting behind
snow clouds; its last rays were trembling redly
over the wilderness of white ground, when the
howl of the wolves came down upon him on the
icy wind. They were assembled in a ravine
where the travellers' last horse had fallen dead,
some days before. Nothing was left of the
animal but his polished bones and the rings of
his harness; and over these bare relics of their
feast the ravenous creatures wrangled and yelled
all night long. The deserted man, listening to
them in his tent, tried to while away the
unspeakable oppression of the dark hours by
calculating their varying numbers from the
greater or lesser volume of the howling sounds
that reached him. Exhaustion overpowered his
faculties, while he was still at this melancholy
work. He slept, till hunger woke him the next
day, when the sun was high again in the heavens.

He cut a notch in the pole of his tent to mark
that one day was passed. It was then the
sixteenth or eighteenth of November; and by
Christmas he vainly believed that he would be
safe at the Mission. That second day was very
weary; and his strength was failing him already.
When he dragged up the wood and water to his
tent, his feet were lame, and he staggered like a
drunken man.

Hopeless and hungry, he sat down on his bed,
filled his pipe with willow-leaves, the best
substitute for tobacco that he possessed, and smoked
in the warmth of the fire, with his eyes on the
boiling kettle into which he had thrown a little
maize. He was still thus occupied, when the
dreary view through the opening of his tent was
suddenly changed by the appearance of living
beings. Some horsemen were approaching him,
driving laden horses before them. His weapons
were at hand, and, with these ready, he awaited
their advance. As they came nearer, he saw
that they were Indians of a friendly tribe,
returning from a beaver hunt. Within gun-shot
they stopped; and one of them addressed him
in English. They accepted his invitation to
enter the tent; and, sitting there by his side,
they entreated him, long and earnestly, to
abandon the goods, to give up the vain hope of
help from the Mission, and to save his life by
casting his lot with theirs.

"The wolves," said the man who had first
spoken in English—a Delaware Indian—"the
wolves will give you no rest, day or night; and
if the men of the Pawnee tribe find you out, you
will be robbed, murdered, and scalped. You
have no hope of rescue. Bad horses would not
live to get to you; and the whites of the Mission
will not risk good horses and their own lives to
save one man whom they will give up for lost.
Come with us."

But Mr. Möllhausen, unfortunately for
himself, put faith in the Mission. He was, moreover
bravely and honourably anxious to preserve
the goods, only the smaller share of which
happened to be his own property. Firmly persuaded
that his fellow white men would not desert him,
and that they would bring him easier means of
travelling, in his disabled condition, than those
which the Delawares could offer, he still held to
his first resolution, and still said, "No."

The Indian rose to leave him.

"The word of a white," said the savage, "is
more to you than the will and deed of a Red
Skin. You have had your choice—may you not
deceive yourself!"

With these words he shook Mr. Möllhausen
by the hand, and he and his companions departed.
They never once looked back at the traveller or
his tent; but kept on their way rapidly towards
the south, and left him a doomed man.

For the next eight days snow-storms raged
incessantly, and threatened to bury him alive in
his tent. Although he was, as yet, spared the
pangs of hunger (the friendly Indians having
increased his small stock of provisions by the
leg of an antelope), his sufferings of other kinds
were indescribable. He was so lame that he had
to crawl on his hands and knees when he fetched
his supply of water; his head swam; his
memory failed him; and he dared not close his
eyes by night for fear of the wolves. Maddened
by hunger, they came nearer and nearer to him.
Howling and yelling they circled round and
round the tent, closer and closer, at the close of
every day. One night he heard the snow
outside crackling under their feet; the next, he