"On one of these occasions, caught by a sudden storm, they hugged
themselves for three days and ate what food they had, mouthful by
mouthful, while the snow slid past them straight and sodden. It closed
smooth over the tree where their house was, to the middle branches. Two
days more they waited until the sun by day and the cold at night had
made a crust over the fresh fall. On the second day they saw something
moving in the middle of the Canon. Half a dozen wild geese had been
caught in one of the wind currents that race like rivers about the High
Places of the World, and dropped exhausted into the Trap. Now they rose
heavily; but, starved and blinded, they could not pitch their flight to
that great height. Round and round they beat, and back they dropped from
the huge mountain-heads, bewildered. Finally, the leader rose alone
higher and higher in that thin atmosphere until the watchers almost lost
him, and then, exhausted, shot downward to the ledge where Howkawanda
and Younger Brother hugged themselves in the shelter of a wind-driven
drift. They could see the gander's body shaken all over with the pumping
of his heart as Younger Brother took him hungrily by the neck.

"'Nay, Brother,' said Howkawanda, 'but I also have been counted dead,
and it is in my heart that this one shall serve us better living than
dead.' He nursed the great white bird in his bosom and fed it with the
last of their food and a little snow-water melted in his palm. In an
hour, rested and strengthened, the bird rose again, beating a wide
circle slowly and steadily upward, until, with one faint honk of
farewell, it sailed slowly out of sight between the peaks, sure of its
direction.

"'That way,' said Howkawanda, 'lies Dead Man's Journey.'