Herring and caplin had long since
drifted away into unknown depths, where the tides flowed endlessly over
them and brought never a one ashore. Hares and ptarmigans turned white
to hide on the snow, so that wolf and fox would pass close by without
seeing them. Wood-mice pushed their winding tunnels and made their
vaulted play rooms deep under the drifts, where none might molest nor
make them afraid; and all game grew wary and wild, learning from
experience, as it always does, that only the keen can survive the fall
hunting. So the long winter, with its snow and ice and its bitter cold
and its grim threat of famine, settled heavily over Harbor Weal and the
Long Range where Wayeeses must find his living.
_The White Wolf's Hunting_
Threatening as the northern winter was, with its stern order to the
birds to depart, and to the beasts to put on their thick furs, and to
the little folk of the snow to hide themselves in white coats, and to
all living things to watch well the ways that they took, it could bring
no terror to Wayeeses and her powerful young cubs. The gladness of life
was upon them, with none of its pains or anxieties or fears, as we know
them; and they rolled and tumbled about in the first deep snow with the
abandon of young foxes, filled with wonder at the strange blanket that
covered the rough places of earth so softly and made their light
footsteps more noiseless than before.
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