In good hunting days they would have gone on and wandered under the moon and the stars.

But long days and nights of starvation had taught them something different now.
On that clear and stormless night following the days of plague and famine, a hundred thousand hungry creatures came out from their retreats to hunt for food.

For eighteen hundred miles east and west and a thousand miles north and south, slim gaunt-bellied creatures hunted under the moon and the stars.

Something told Kazan and Gray Wolf that this hunt was on, and never for an instant did they cease their vigilance.

At last they lay down at the edge of the spruce thicket, and waited.