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both lodges were busily butchering out the animal, each trying to maintain claim to the choicest cuts and most desirable organs.
    Soon the two captives found themselves working side by side, up to the elbows in entrails in the body cavity. Owl grasped the girl’s hand, deeply out of sight, and she returned the quick squeeze.
    The jealous Many Wives, however, riding past at the moment, struck Willow across the back with his quirt. He scolded her for malingering, then sent her back to the lodge with a load of meat. He turned to Owl in a quiet rage.

    â€œAnd you, son of a snake, will be killed very slowly if you do not stay away from my wives!”
    Owl dropped his eyes submissively and continued his work. It had been a foolhardy thing to do, and now they had aroused suspicion. They would now have to be more cautious than ever. He silently cursed himself for a fool, at the same time smarting under the blow that the girl had received.
    If the truth were known, Many Wives had seen nothing at all. Only his resentment against anyone who appeared happy at his work had brought forth the surly reaction. Nevertheless, the incident further fanned the smoldering enmity between the two. Many Wives would cheerfully have killed or maimed the prisoner at any opportunity.
    Owl, for his part, could hardly stand the thoughts of the ugly, sadistic Head Splitter taking Willow to his sleeping robes as a wife. He could think of innumerable variations of torture for the man. Owl realized that this was inconsistent with his general attitude toward the practice of torture, but this was a special case. Many Wives, he felt, had forfeited any right to consideration. He devoutly hoped that when the time came for their escape, he would somehow be able to kill the surly Many Wives. This became almost an obsession with Owl during the course of the winter. Only in this way, he felt, could he avenge the mistreatment of the captive girl. Owl had already begun to think of Willow as his own.
    The Head Splitters established winter quarters, and life became a little easier for Owl. There was not quite so much menial work, since hunting had slowed considerably. He was still expected to carry firewood and water.
    On very cold nights Owl was permitted to crouch just inside the skin doorway of the lodge. Grudgingly, of course. The first time he tried it he was whacked and
berated, and was expecting to be turned back out into the sleeting rain. Just as he began to despair the possibility of surviving without shelter, Bull’s Tail intervened.
    â€œLet him stay,” he ordered casually, without looking up from the bone he was gnawing.
    Owl was careful not to tempt his good fortune too far. On any night when it was at all possible, he was outside with the dogs. Without thinking the matter out completely, he still had escape in the back of his mind. That escape would be easier if he were not encumbered with such things as tie thongs on the lodge doorway in case of a hasty exit.
    One shocking incident occurred during the Moon of Long Nights. A group of young men, hunting in the area near the winter camp, had discovered a cave. In the course of the exploration, they had roused a hibernating she-bear and her two cubs. In the melee, one of the hunters had been horribly mauled, and they had killed the bear and one cub. The other cub had escaped.
    The hunting party returned in triumph, and to Owl’s horror, a feast of bear meat was planned. Among the People, the bear was a forbidden animal. After all, did not bears walk upright like a man? To kill a bear, except in self-defense, was very bad medicine. To actually eat the flesh was, in the mind of the young man, the equivalent of cannibalism.
    Equally revolting was the spectacle of one of the hunters, he who claimed the kill. The man walked around the camp, flauntingly wearing the skin of the cub around his shoulders as a cape.
    Owl was completely repulsed by this defiance of decency. Nothing in his captivity had