Bitterroot Valley silver loon

cat in the glacier, the musky scent stretched into the ice flats. yikaas did not stray close. he gave the cold world its berth and hunted down into the valley.

the caribou man had grown sinewy with hunger. summer hares and frequent ptarmigan were his meals, fatty but brief.

he had taught sulukinak the language of the cousin river and drawn her a map in icy mud. if she wished to leave, here was the way.

"sun clan. red raven moiety. tell them."

today, and now, yikaas hunted voles and crunched them among the grass, mind scheming always how to regain what had been captured from him.

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Guille is about a hundred meters away from the man who flits around to search for something. Obscured, he looks more like half a man.

another bite, another rush of blood to quench a parched throat. he was fixed in his eating, in his single-minded pursuit of enough jaw-snapping to fill a belly taut with frequent hunger.

yikaas had grown ragged; had grown sharp-edged and more hateful than before; he muttered on mouthfuls of dirt, spitting them aside to leap in another direction, to yank another small body from another burrow in a spray of dirt clods.

to crush. to swallow, a beast rooting in a field.

when he looked up, the single slate eye narrowed. a boarish snort followed. "why do you stare?" yikaas grunted in lanzadoii. there was no need to use common.