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bed. Even if Give Spear’s wife saw Aqamdax sitting outside his ulax, there should be no trouble.
    Aqamdax squatted on her haunches and pulled Little Bird close to her. They sat, leaning against one another, and ate. Little Bird chatted in half-formed baby words that Aqamdax could not understand, but the girl did not seem to mind if Aqamdax did not answer her.
    Aqamdax let her thoughts go back to the night before. She had not been surprised to hear someone scratch at the curtain of her sleeping place. Many hunters came to her in the night, though only a few had courage to enter He Sings’s ulax when the man was home from one of his many hunting trips.
    Salmon, Aqamdax had thought. He visited her often. But when she pulled back the curtain, Day Breaker, He Sings’s oldest son, was there. Her breath caught so suddenly in her throat that she had not been able to say anything to him, only to open her arms, welcome him into the warmth of her fur seal sleeping robes.
    He had taken her quickly, thrusting hard into her body, and she had been glad to feel the power of his need, but that was not what she remembered as she sat with Little Bird.
    She remembered what he told her when he left her sleeping place: “Give me a son,” he had whispered, “then I will take you as my wife.”
    THE NEAR RIVER VILLAGE
    That day, their hunt had been to stand and look, to watch out over open hills, away from thickets of willow and alder that crowded the riverbanks.
    “You will see steam rise, as if from water boiling,” Tsaani told Chakliux. “On a day of fog or snow you will not see it, but on a still, cold morning like this, it will be there, coming from the ground, and you will know a bear is waiting, warm in his den.”
    This kind of hunting needed different songs, different prayers than what Chakliux knew, but during the moon that he had lived with his brother, Sok, Chakliux had learned much. His grandfather had even given him two of his bear hunting songs, a gift as precious as anything Chakliux ever hoped to receive.
    But for all their looking, they saw nothing, and finally decided to return to the village. The men quarreled, snapping at one another like unfed dogs, all with eyes averted from Chakliux, ashamed that he had seen their defeat, yet angry also, muttering under their tongues that he had broken their luck.
    A good way to bring peace, Chakliux thought bitterly. A good way to turn young hunters from dreams of battle. Then suddenly, Tsaani stopped. Chakliux looked at Tsaani, and Tsaani pointed with his chin toward his dog Black Nose.
    Her paws pranced a nervous rhythm against the ground, and she whined high in her throat. Tsaani knelt beside her, and Chakliux saw her tremble.
    Tsaani was old, but still he hunted, mostly because of his dogs, Black Nose and Long Tail and the newest one that he had never really given a name, except Dog—as good a name as any, Chakliux thought. All three animals now stood stiff-legged, the fur on their necks bristling.
    To Chakliux, it seemed the two males were always at each other’s throats, trying to steal food from one another or competing to mount Black Nose, but when Tsaani took them hunting, they worked together, as though each dog knew the other’s thoughts. Tsaani told him they had taken down black bears larger than a man.
    Tsaani motioned to the hunters behind him, moved his head in a jerk toward a mound of snow-covered earth that bulged from a hill to their left. The men crept up on bent legs, moving their feet in quietness. Long Tail began to dig into the frozen earth near the edge of the mound, flinging chunks of snow and dirt back between his legs as he dug.
    A low growl rolled into Black Nose’s throat. Tsaani laid his hand against the top of her head and tightened his fingers over the dome of her skull. He had trained her to remain quiet on hunts until the men moved in to kill, but she was pregnant with a litter and more difficult to control.
    Sok, a short-bladed knife in his