“It’s over,” Little Bear exclaimed. “Now we can get back on the trail.”
“It’s only a lull,” Great Bear warned without stopping work. “It will be worse in a few minutes.”
Great Bear was proved right almost at once. The wind came up again, driving icy snow into their faces. The trees with their low branches offered some protection, but even here the swirling snow made it difficult for Little Bear and his grandfather to see. They worked as rapidly as possible. They drove two large poles into the ground and lashed a third pole to those two. Great Bear laid smaller poles with one end against the cross pole and the other on the ground. Little Bear helped pile branches against the poles until the shelter was completed. The finished shelter was a lean-to, closed to the north and open to the south.
Grandfather started a fire on the south side of the lean-to where some of the heat would reflect back into the shelter. Little Bear went to a near-by pine tree and broke off great armfuls of small branches. He shook the snow from these and piled them in the lean-to. He spread the buffalo robes over the branches. With a fire in front the lean-to made a comfortable shelter.
Great Bear took enough meat from one of the packs for a couple of meals. He rerolled the pack and hung it and the other pack of meat in a tree.
“Animals can’t get our food there,” he said.
Little Bear shivered as he thought of the kind of camp they would have had to make if the snow had caught them on the prairie. Out on the plains with no protection from the wind, it would have been almost impossible to make a camp and find fuel. Still Little Bear knew that if he hadn’t coaxed Grandfather to continue in pursuit of the Crow, the two of them might now be safe in the main Sioux camp.
“It is my fault Old-Man-of-the-North caught us here with his snow,” Little Bear admitted.
“It doesn’t matter whether we are here or far to the north,” Great Bear answered. “Old-Man-of-the-North would have found us with his snow. The Crow has strong medicine. The spirits are protecting him.”
“Yet we are nearer to him than we have been before,” Little Bear pointed out. “He can’t run from us until the storm stops and then he will leave a plain trail.”