Because we were so busy preparing for winter there had been no time to see Fawn. I begged Papa to take me along with him on his next trip to the Indian village. Papa was helping the Indians petition the United States Government to allow them to become citizens of America. They wished to vote and to have the protection of the law. Papa and Chief Ke che oh caw were going to ask other chiefs to join the La Croix tribe in their petition.

“Do you think our government will listen to you and let the Indians vote, Papa?” I asked.

“Not this year, Libby but surely one day it must come about.”

Mama had a sly smile on her face. “When it does, Rob, you must also ask them to let women vote.”

Papa shook his head. “You can’t be serious, Vinnie. That day will never come.”

When we arrived at the Indian village, I ran to find Fawn. She was standing at the entrance of her wigwam wearing the snow-shoes we had made. “I am going to find some wood for the fire,” Fawn said. “Winter has come so early this year. Our wood may not last.”

“I’ll come with you,” I said.

Fawn went to borrow snowshoes for me. When she returned, she helped me strap them onto my boots. At first I stumbled with every step. But Fawn showed me how to lift one snowshoe over the other, and soon I was stepping lightly over the snowdrifts. It was a strange feeling, for I was walking over the tops of grasses and shrubs buried under the snow. We each carried a basket on our backs to hold the wood.

There was so much snow on the ground that the only wood we could find was dead branches in the trees. Looking for branches we could reach, we kept walking farther into the woods. At last our baskets were full and we turned back toward the village.

We had been so busy that we had not noticed the sun disappearing and the snow starting up. Now the sky was a whirlwind of white. The snow got in my mouth and nose and eyes. My eyelashes were so fringed with flakes I could hardly see. Because the snow was wet, it formed clods and crusts on our snowshoes, making them heavy to lift. The snow covered our tracks as soon as we made them. We thought we were going in the direction of the village, but nothing looked as we remembered.

I turned to Fawn. She was so much at home in the woods, I was sure she would know the direction to the Indian village. But Fawn only looked puzzled. “The snow has changed everything,” she said. In the few minutes we had been standing still, the snow had nearly covered us. I was warmly dressed, but Fawn had only a blanket wrapped over her thin calico shift to keep her warm. Her thick black hair was coated with snow. It looked as if she was wearing a white cap. Her hands were thrust inside the blanket to keep them warm. I wanted to give her my scarf and one of my mittens, but she would not take them.

We thought someone might be within calling distance. Together we shouted into the storm. Only the wind answered. “If I could see the sun, I could find my way,” said Fawn. But the sky was tumbled with dark clouds. And the farther we went, the more uncertain we became.

Just ahead, a gray shadow moved across the snow. It looked like the figure of a wolf! Papa said wolves did not attack human beings. Still, Papa might be wrong. I was relieved to see the shadow turn and lope away in the opposite direction. But when we hurried away, the wolf ran back toward us. It had a limp.

“Fawn!” I exclaimed. “It’s our wolf! Why is it running back and forth?”

“I think it wants us to follow,” Fawn said. And indeed the wolf kept running toward us and turning back in the other direction. It seemed to be telling us to come with it. “I think we should do as the wolf wishes,” Fawn said.

“What if it is the wrong way?” I asked. “We will go deeper and deeper into the woods and no one will ever find us.”

“We must trust the wolf,” Fawn said.

“You wanted to kill it,” I could not help reminding her, “and now you want to risk our lives by following it.”

“The wolf is grateful,” Fawn said. “We must go where it wants to take us.”

Reluctantly, I turned around and we began to follow the wolf. It now limped ahead, no longer looking back at us.

“What if it’s just leading us to its pack and they eat us up?” I asked. Yet as we hurried after the wolf, the woods began to look more familiar. At last we saw smoke rising from the village campfires in the distance. We could hear Papa calling to us. He and Sanatua had come to look for us. The wolf turned and disappeared, its gray shadow vanishing into the white of the storm.

Papa hugged me. Sanatua took Fawn’s hand and led us toward his wigwam and the warm fire inside. Fawn had warned me to say nothing of how we had rescued the wolf from her father’s trap. Now it was she who told the story. Sanatua listened carefully. When Fawn had finished, he spoke. “It was the body of the wolf I caught in my trap, but it was the spirit of the wolf you released. Perhaps it was its spirit who guided you home.”

I was sure it was just a wolf we had seen, but I could not forget Sanatua’s words.