And in their shacks
and tepees the forest people sniffed the air of frosty mornings,
and soaked their traps in fish-oil and beaver-grease, and made
their moccasins, and mended snow-shoe and sledge, for the cry of
the loon said that winter was creeping down out of the North. And
the swamps grew silent. The cow moose no longer mooed to her
young. In place of it, from the open plain and "burn" rose the
defiant challenge of bull to bull and the deadly clash of horn
against horn under the stars of night. The wolf no longer howled
to hear his voice. In the travel of padded feet there came to be a
slinking, hunting caution. In all the forest world blood was
running red again.
And then--November.
Perhaps Miki would never forget that first day when the snow came.
At first he thought all the winged things in the world were
shedding their white feathers. Then he felt the fine, soft touch
of it under his feet, and the chill. It sent the blood rushing
like a new kind of fire through his body; a wild and thrilling
joy--the exultation that leaps through the veins of the wolf when
the winter comes.
With Neewa its effect was different--so different that even Miki
felt the oppression of it, and waited vaguely and anxiously for
what was to come.
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