Once they were caught in a
hailstorm, when it turned bitterly cold, but he endured it as well as
the best of them, and made not a single complaint.
They came at last to their village, a great distance west of the
Mississippi, a hundred lodges perhaps, pitched in a warm and sheltered
valley and the boy, under the fostering care of Black Cloud, was
formally adopted into the tribe, taking up at once the thread of his new
life, and finding in it the same keen interest that had marked all the
stages of the great journey.
The climate here was colder than that from which he had come, and
winter, with fierce winds from the Great Plains was soon upon them. But
the camp which was to remain there until spring was well chosen and the
steep hills about them fended off the worst of the blast. Yet the snow
came soon in great, whirling flakes and fell all one night. The next
morning the boy saw the world in white and he found it singularly
beautiful. The snow he did not mind as clothing of dressed skins had
been given to him and he had a warm buffalo robe for a blanket. Now,
young as he was, he became one of the best hunters for the village and
with the others he roamed far over the snowy hills in search of game.
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