ay 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. For to be noiseless and
inconspicuous, and so in harmony with his surroundings, is the first
desire of every creature of the vast solitudes.

Meeting the wolves now, as they roamed wild and free over the great
range, one would hardly have recognized the little brown creatures that
he saw playing about the den where the trail began. The cubs were
already noble-looking brutes, larger than the largest husky dog; and the
parents were taller, with longer legs and more massive heads and
powerful jaws, than any great timber-wolf. A tremendous vitality
thrilled in them from nose to paw tips. Their great bodies, as they lay
quiet in the snow with heads raised and hind legs bent under them, were
like powerful engines, tranquil under enormous pressure; and when they
rose the movement was like the quick snap of a steel spring. Indeed,
half the ordinary movements of Wayeeses are so quick that the eye cannot
follow them. One instant a wolf would be lying flat on his side, his
long legs outstretched on the moss, his eyes closed in the sleepy
sunshine, his body limp as a hound's after a fox chase; the next
instant, like the click and blink of a camera shutter, he would be
standing alert on all four feet, questioning the passing breeze or
looking intently into your eyes; and you could not imagine, much less
follow, the recoil of twenty big electric muscles that at s