So Wayeeses
would lie close and warm while the snow piled deep around him and the
gale raged over the sea and mountains, but passed unfelt and unheeded
over his head. Then, when the storm was over, he pawed his way up
through the drift and came out in a new, bright world, where the game,
with appetites sharpened by the long fast, was already stirring briskly
in every covert.
When March came, the bitterest month of all for the Wood Folk, even
Wayeeses was often hard pressed to find a living. Small game grew scarce
and very wild; the caribou had wandered far away to other ranges; and
the cubs would dig for hours after a mouse, or stalk a snowbird, or wait
with endless patience for a red squirrel to stop his chatter and come
down to search under the snow for a fir cone that he had hidden there in
the good autumn days. And once, when the hunger within was more nipping
than the eager cold without, one of the cubs found a bear sleeping in
his winter den among the rocks. With a sharp hunting cry, that sang like
a bullet over the frozen wastes, he called the whole pack about him.
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