When the sun rose, half an hour later, it found them still in the small clearing on the side of the ridge, with a deep fringe of forest under them, and beyond that a wide, timbered plain which looked like a ghostly shroud in its mantle of frost.  Up over this came the first red glow of the day, filling the clearing with a warmth that grew more and more comfortable as the sun crept higher.

Neither Baree nor Maheegun were inclined to move for a while, and for an hour or two they lay basking in a cup of the slope, looking down with questing and wide-awake eyes upon the wooded plain that stretched away under them like a great sea.

Maheegun, too, had sought the hunt pack, and like Baree had failed to catch it.  They were tired, a little discouraged for the time, and hungry—­but still alive with the fine thrill of anticipation, and restlessly sensitive to the new and mysterious consciousness of companionship.  Half a dozen times Baree got up and nosed about Maheegun as she lay in the sun, whining to her softly and touching her soft coat with his muzzle, but for a long time she paid little attention to him.  At last she followed him.  All that day they wandered and rested together.  Once more the night came.

It was without moon or stars.  Gray masses of clouds swept slowly down out of the north and east, and in the treetops there was scarcely a whisper of wind as night gathered in.  The snow began to fall at dusk, thickly, heavily, without a breath of sound.  It was not cold, but it was still—­so still that Baree and Maheegun traveled only a few yards at a time, and then stopped to listen.  In this way all the night prowlers of the forest were traveling, if they were moving at all.  It was the first of the Big Snow.

To the flesh-eating wild things of the forests, clawed and winged, the Big Snow was the beginning of the winter carnival of slaughter and feasting, of wild adventure in the long nights, of merciless warfare on the frozen trails.  The days of breeding, of motherhood—­the peace of spring and summer—­were over.  Out of the sky came the wakening of the Northland, the call of all flesh-eating creatures to the long hunt, and in the first thrill of it living things were moving but little this night, and that watchfully and with suspicion.  Youth made it all new to Baree and Maheegun.  Their blood ran swiftly; their feet fell softly; their ears were attuned to catch the slightest sounds.

In this first of the Big Snow they felt the exciting pulse of a new life.  It lured them on.  It invited them to adventure into the white mystery of the silent storm; and inspired by that restlessness of youth and its desires, they went on.

The snow grew deeper under their feet.  In the open spaces they waded through it to their knees, and it continued to fall in a vast white cloud that descended steadily out of the sky.  It was near midnight when it stopped.  The clouds drifted away from under the stars and the moon, and for a long time Baree and Maheegun stood without moving, looking down from the bald crest of a ridge upon a wonderful world.