est one or
other of his enemies might take advantage of Kiopo's absence to return
to the attack; but when he saw the wolf come bounding back through the
trees, he knew that he was safe. He was overcome with joy at Kiopo's
reappearance. As for Kiopo himself, he was utterly at a loss how to
express his wild delight; but though he gave vent to it in strange
wolfish ways, Dusty Star understood. And when they each had expressed
their happiness after their own fashion, they turned their faces
westward, and took the homeward trail.

It was sunset when they reached the valley. As the familiar landmarks
rose to view, Dusty Star felt a great joy surge up in his heart. Once
more back out of the world! Once more to be hidden out of sight and mind
in the vast shadowy silences that were older than the beasts; older even
than the ancient footways of the cariboo, which, as everybody knows,
began before geography, because the Cariboo have gone on walking since
the beginning of the world.

After this wonderful re-union the two settled down again to the old life
in the valley, and the moons went quickly by. Summer passed into Fall,
Fall into Winter, and Dusty Star for the first time learned the real
meaning of cold. If it had not been for Kiopo and Kiopo's constant
activities, he must surely have perished. But Kiopo was food and warmth
and protection rolled into one. It was a great hunting which Kiopo had
in the nights when even the moon seemed to break her way through a
frozen sky, and the trees cracked in the black frost. But though the
hunting was great, the game was often small; and as the season advanced,
the wild kin took the trails with less and less flesh upon its bones.
With the last geese and the first snow, Dusty Star piled fresh branches
round the tepee, so that it swelled visibly to double its outer size.
And for reasons of warmth, the doorway became nothing but a hole in and
out of which he, like Kiopo, went on all fours. When the snow came and
buried them, Kiopo dug themselves out. And in the blizzard that lasted
three days and nights, Kiopo's body was a central-heating arrangement
that kept the Little Brother from freezing to death.

In the snow darkness, and snow silence, Dusty Star listened to the
muffled roar of a giant wind that wrenched the forest till it seemed as
if not a tree would be left to stand. And he wondered How Baltook and
Boola did, and wished he could have persuaded Goshmeelee to take up her
winter qua