He walked on after the smoke, sniffing his way like a dog on an open scent. A little later he stood before a low Hallingdal cottage with a tall chimney. He touched the doorhandle; Bjönn stole in in front of him, and in a moment was chasing a cat, as red as a fox. But cats made Bjönn mad. He threw one paw over the animal, pinning her to the floor, and then bit twice across her back. There was the sound of crunching as when Bjönn ate bones, and then a cat died in Hallingdal.
They gave him matches and food, and he walked uphill again. He released Bjönn, who soon returned. Rauten was too far in front of them.
Dusk met Gaupa in a bare valley without summer farms where he could spend the night. His axe resounded in the silence as he cut down dry pines. He slept in the shelter of a rock, Bjönn clasped tightly to his breast.
A few hundred yards from Gaupa’s night lair something dark showed up on a ridge. Was it a rock? No, the rocks were not black then, they were white with snow.
That dark thing did not move.
After a while it did move. Two eyes gleamed wet in the moonlight, a tined antler crossed the harvest moon behind it. Rauten was lying there.
He thought he heard some strange sounds in the evening, but there was little wind and he could not make sure.
He was waiting for daylight.
The snow was glittering, the crystals of snow were like innumerable stars which were for ever being lit and extinguished. The mountains were softly moving clouds, cradling the tired body of Rauten, while a few isolated mountain spruces, from which the sun had thawed the snow, were like darkly dressed dwarfs in the hollows.
It was nearly two days and two nights since Rauten left Owl Glen in Lower Valley.