it shifted. From the Pass they dropped down into a pit between the
ranges, where, long before they came to it, they could hear the wind
beating about like a trapped creature. Here great mountain-heads had run
together like bucks in autumn, digging with shining granite hooves deep
into the floor of the Canon. Into this the winds would drop from the
high places like broken-winged birds, dashing themselves against the
polished walls of the Pyweack, dashing and falling back and crying
woundedly. There was no other way into this Wind Trap than the way
Howkawanda and Younger Brother had come. If there was any way out only
the Four-Footed People knew it.

"But over all their trails snow lay, deepening daily, and great rivers
of water that fell into the Trap in summer stood frozen stiff like ice
vines climbing the Pyweack.

"The two travelers made them a hut in broad branches of a great fir, for
the snow was more than man-deep already, and crusted over. They laid
sticks on the five-branched whorl and cut away the boughs above them
until they could stand. Here they nested, with the snow on the upper
branches like thatch to keep them safe against the wind. They ran on the
surface of the snow, which was packed firm in the bottom of the Trap,
and caught birds and small game wintering in runways under the snow
where the stiff brush arched and upheld it. When the wind, worn out with
its struggles, would lie still in the bottom of the Trap, the two would
race over the snow-crust whose whiteness cut the eye like a knife,
working into every winding of the Canon for some clue to the Dead
Man's Journey.

[Illustration: "Shot downward to the ledge where Howkawanda and Younger
Brother hugged themselves"]