"But, we must be upon the trail. There is no room here for thee and for me." The Master-Girl was speaking with quick decision; her husband listened, guessing wildly—they had picked up the marks, had found the snow-camp, she was refolding the bear-skin; he gathered his own affairs and followed her.
"Whither?—thou hast never been this way before, and even I am unsure of our road in this thickness and mirk."
"Anywhere is good—it is sheer death to loiter. We must risk everything upon speed and the chance of a farther snowfall. Run thy best now, I will tell thee more to-morrow."
Hours later in the first grey of a wintry dawn they had halted and dug themselves a second cave. This time they both snuggled within it, and sat panting and weak, listening for sounds of pursuit, and hearing only the ghost-like cackle of the mountain choughs at play amid cloud and falling snow overhead. They had got to their farthest; if followed up and found now they must die. Rest and sleep and food were imperative claims which would take no denials. Snow was falling, they had still a chance. They ate and slept and were not interrupted.
They awoke in an unknown world, small flakes fell steadily and straight, no wind breathed, there was no sun or sign of sun, it was one whiteness of diffused light in which the sense of direction was defeated.
They sate close as snow-bound hares and munched bear-meat, Dêh-Yān telling her story between the mouthfuls.
"After I mounted guard it came to me that my people—I mean the Little Moons—would never have come up so high so early in the season for game. It is no winter-hunting that we saw below us at the edge of the cloud, it is a war-party, and they mean scalps. Also, it seemed to me, even at that distance, I could make out Good Wolf with them."
"Good eyes thou must have!—but, go on."
"Now it came to me that with Good Wolf they could not very well lose our trail, and being on the war-path, all braves too, and marching light, we should not be able to outmarch them, burdened as we are, and—and—"