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bloody snow at its base. Jenkins fell back and tried to free his hand. The pain caught up with him. He turned to Beatrice and growled through clenched teeth, “I’ll kill you for this! I swear to God I will kill you!”
    The commotion emptied the chapel, adding to the confusion. Children ran screaming. Some stood in shock.
    â€œWhat is this?” Brother Thomas yelled, as bewildered as the children. “What is this?”
    Jenkins pulled the shears from his hand and tried to kick at Beatrice, who scrambled backward out of his reach. Lumpkin and the other soldiers struggled to grab her, but then, in the midst of the uncertainty, there was suddenly a horse. The men fell back as the horse barreled through them toward Beatrice.
    Lionel’s hands were wound through Ulysses’s mane. He rode without regret at the men, and they scattered. Lionel moved toward Beatrice, who lay in the snow trying to catch her breath. As he approached, Beatrice jumped, and in a single fluid motion, threw her arm around Ulysses’s neck and swung up behind her brother onto the horse’s back.

    The addition of Beatrice seemed to propel Ulysses forward, and soon the three of them were nearing the edge of the tiny outpost. Lionel looked back at the chaos that churned around the trough. He saw the priest, Brother Finn, Brother Thomas, and the soldiers. He saw Delores and the other children. He saw the Frozen Man.
    Lionel turned back to the never-ending sea of snow that stretched before them. He buried his head in Ulysses’s mane and held on as best he could.

Chapter Five
    T HE C OTTONWOODS • S NOW • T HE L ONG N IGHT • M ORNING • A S MALL F ARM
    BEATRICE AND Lionel rode hard through the day and into the night. They barely spoke, choosing instead to ride in silence, the events of the morning running feverishly through their heads. The snow started back up around dark, and they stopped at a small stream under a cluster of cottonwood trees.
    â€œI guess we best lay up here” was all Beatrice said. She slipped down from Ulysses’s back at the water’s edge and started to gather the fallen pieces of cottonwood that lay scattered under the snow. Lionel did the same. Then Beatrice produced some matches from her tobacco pouch and lit a small fire.
    They huddled next to each other for warmth for most of the night, the cold haunting them into the earliest hours of morning. Lionel stared into the fire, falling in and out of a shivering sleep on Beatrice’s shoulder and listening to Ulysses, who stood over them in the darkness. Hunger gnawed at Lionel’s stomach, and he thought about the meals they had missed by running away from the school. Lionel knew that Beatrice must be hungry too, but she hadn’t said anything, so Lionel didn’t say anything either.
    The snow continued to fall, wet on their clothes, and Beatrice pointed out that this was a good sign, as the army men would have trouble following their tracks.
    â€œWhere are we going?” Lionel asked.
    â€œI figured we’d head to Grandpa’s, if I can find it.”
    Lionel thought about the three hawks and the eagle that he and Beatrice had seen the only time he had ever been to his grandfather’s house, near the northwest border of the reservation. Lionel could still see the great birds circling overhead, but had trouble picturing his grandfather’s face.
    â€œDo you remember going to Grandpa’s?” Beatrice asked. She got up, found a rock, and cracked the ice on the small creek.
    â€œSort of,” Lionel answered.
    Beatrice lay down in the snow and cupped water by the handful into her mouth. Lionel watched as she washed the dried blood that lined her face from her temple to her neck. Her forehead was cut, and Lionel wished that he had cracked the ice on the trough with his rock before Jenkins had had the chance to do so with Beatrice’s head.
    Beatrice smashed more ice, then led Ulysses to