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Page 44
When the sun rose, half an hour later, it found them still in the small
clearing on the side of the ridge, with a deep fringe of forest under
them, and beyond that a wide, timbered plain which looked like a
ghostly shroud in its mantle of frost. Up over this came the first red
glow of the day, filling the clearing with a warmth that grew more and
more comfortable as the sun crept higher.
Neither Baree nor Maheegun were inclined to move for a while, and for
an hour or two they lay basking in a cup of the slope, looking down
with questing and wide-awake eyes upon the wooded plain that stretched
away under them like a great sea.
Maheegun, too, had sought the hunt pack, and like Baree had failed to
catch it. They were tired, a little discouraged for the time, and
hungry--but still alive with the fine thrill of anticipation, and
restlessly sensitive to the new and mysterious consciousness of
companionship. Half a dozen times Baree got up and nosed about Maheegun
as she lay in the sun, whining to her softly and touching her soft coat
with his muzzle, but for a long time she paid little attention to him.
At last she followed him. All that day they wandered and rested
together. Once more the night came.
It was without moon or stars. Gray masses of clouds swept slowly down
out of the north and east, and in the treetops there was scarcely a
whisper of wind as night gathered in. The snow began to fall at dusk,
thickly, heavily, without a breath of sound. It was not cold, but it
was still--so still that Baree and Maheegun traveled only a few yards
at a time, and then stopped to listen. In this way all the night
prowlers of the forest were traveling, if they were moving at all. It
was the first of the Big Snow.
To the flesh-eating wild things of the forests, clawed and winged, the
Big Snow was the beginning of the winter carnival of slaughter and
feasting, of wild adventure in the long nights, of merciless warfare on
the frozen trails. The days of breeding, of motherhood--the peace of
spring and summer--were over. Out of the sky came the wakening of the
Northland, the call of all flesh-eating creatures to the long hunt, and
in the first thrill of it living things were moving but little this
night, and that watchfully and with suspicion. Youth made it all new to
Baree and Maheegun. Their blood ran swiftly; their feet fell softly;
their ears were attuned to catch the slightest sounds.
In this first of the Big Snow they felt the exciting pulse of a new
life. It lured them on. It invited them to adventure into the white
mystery of the silent storm; and inspired by that restlessness of youth
and its desires, they went on.
The snow grew deeper under their feet. In the open spaces they waded
through it to their knees, and it continued to fall in a vast white
cloud that descended steadily out of the sky. It was near midnight when
it stopped. The clouds drifted away from under the stars and the moon,
and for a long time Baree and Maheegun stood without moving, looking
down from the bald crest of a ridge upon a wonderful world.
Never had they been able to see so far, except in the light of day.
Under them was a plain. They could make out forests, lone trees that
stood up like shadows out of the snow, a stream--still
unfrozen--shimmering like glass with the flicker of firelight on it.
Toward this stream Baree led the way. He no longer thought of Nepeese,
and he whined with pent-up happiness as he stopped halfway down and
turned to muzzle Maheegun. He wanted to roll in the snow and frisk
about with his companion; he wanted to bark, to put up his head and
howl as he had howled at the Red Moon back at the cabin.
Something held him from doing any of these things. Perhaps it was
Maheegun's demeanor. She accepted his attentions rigidly. Once or twice
she had seemed almost frightened; twice Baree had heard the sharp
clicking of her teeth. The previous night, and all through tonight's
storm, their companionship had grown more intimate, but now there was
taking its place a mysterious aloofness on the part of Maheegun.
Pierrot could have explained. With moon and stars above him, Baree,
like the night, had undergone a transformation which even the sunlight
of day had not made in him before. His coat was like polished jet.
Every hair in his body glistened black. BLACK! That was it. And Nature
was trying to tell Maheegun that of all the creatures hated by her
kind, the creature which they feared and hated most was black. With her
it was not experience, but instinct--telling her of the age-old feud
between the gray wolf and the black bear. And Baree's coat, in the
moonlight and the snow, was blacker than Wakayoo's had ever been in the
fish-fattening days of May. Until they struck the broad openings of the
plain, the young she-wolf had followed Baree without hesitation; now
there was a gathering strangeness and indecision in her manner, and
twice she stopped and would have let Baree go on without her.
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