"When they came back over the same trail a year later, they were
frightened to see what steeps and crevices they had covered. But for
that first trip the snow-crust held firm while they made straight for
the gap in the peaks through which the wild goose had disappeared. They
traveled as long as the light lasted, though their hearts sobbed and
shook with the thin air and the cold.

"The drifts were thinner, and the rocks came through with clusters of
wind-slanted cedars. By nightfall snow began again, and they moved,
touching, for they could not see an arm's length and dared not stop lest
the snow cover them. And the hair along the back of Younger Brother
began to prick.

"'Here I die, indeed,' said Howkawanda at last, for he suffered most
because of his naked skin. He sank down in the soft snow at Younger
Brother's shoulder.

"'Up, Master,' said Younger Brother, 'I hear something.'

"'It is the Storm Spirit singing my death song,' said Howkawanda. But
the coyote took him by the neck of his deerskin shirt and dragged him
a little.

"'Now,' he said, 'I smell something.'

"Presently they stumbled into brush and knew it for red cedar. Patches
of it grew thick on the high ridges, matted close for cover. As the
travelers crept under it they heard the rustle of shoulder against
shoulder, the moving click of horns, and the bleat of yearlings for
their mothers. They had stumbled in the dark on the bedding-place of a