None of the watching People had ever heard anything like the ear shattering "Craaack!" from the
tubular thing the two-leg carried, but the charging death fang had suddenly somersaulted end-for-
end, crashed to the ground, and lain still, with a bloody hole blown clear through it.
Once they got over their immediate shock, the watching scouts had taken a fierce delight in
the death fang's fate, but anything that could kill a death fang with a single bark could certainly
do the same to one of the People, and so the decision had been made to avoid the two-legs until
the watchers learned more about them. Unfortunately, the scouts were still watching from hiding
when, after perhaps a quarter turning, they dismantled the strange, square living places in which
they had dwelt, went back into their egg, and disappeared once more into the sky.
All of that had been long, long ago, and Climbs Quickly regretted that no more had been
learned of them before they left. He understood the need for caution, yet he wished the Blue
Mountain Dancing scouts had been just a little less careful. Perhaps then the People might have
been able to decide what the two-legs wanted—or what the People should do about them—
between their first arrival and their reappearance.
Personally, Climbs Quickly thought those first two-legs had been scouts, as he himself was.
Certainly it would have made sense for the two-legs to send scouts ahead; any clan did the same
when expanding or changing its range. Yet if that was the case, why had the rest of their clan
delayed so long before following them? And why did the two-legs spread themselves so thinly?
The living place in the clearing he'd come to watch had required great labor by over a dozen two-
legs to create, even with their clever tools, and it was large enough for a full clan. Yet its builders
had simply gone away when they finished. It had stood completely empty for over ten days, and
even now it housed only three of the two-legs, one of them—unless Climbs Quickly was
mistaken—but a youngling. He sometimes wondered what had happened to the youngling's litter
mates, but the important point was that the way in which the two-legs dispersed their living
places must surely deprive them of any communication with their fellows.
That was one reason many of the watchers believed two-legs were unlike People in all ways,
not just their size and shape and tools. It was the ability to communicate with their fellows which
made People people, after all. Only unthinking creatures—like the death fangs, or the snow
hunters, or those upon whom the People themselves preyed—lived sealed within themselves, so
if the two-legs were not only mind-blind but chose to avoid even their own kind, they could not
be people. But Climbs Quickly disagreed. He couldn't fully explain why, even to himself, yet he
was convinced the two-legs were, in fact, people—of a sort, at least. They fascinated him, and
he'd listened again and again to the song of the first two-legs and their egg, both in an effort to
understand what it was they'd wanted and because even now that song carried overtones of
something he thought he had tasted from the two-legs he spied upon.
Unfortunately, the song had been worn smooth by too many singers before Sings Truly first
sang it for Bright Water Clan. That often happened to older songs or those which had been
relayed for great distances, and this song was both ancient and from far away. Though its images
remained clear and sharp, they had been subtly shaped and shadowed by all the singers who had
come before Sings Truly. Climbs Quickly knew what the two-legs of the song had done, but he
knew nothing about why they'd done it, and the interplay of so many singers' minds had blurred
any mind glow the long ago watchers might have tasted.
Climbs Quickly had shared what he thought he'd picked up from "his" two-legs only with
Sings Truly. It was his duty to report to the memory singers, of course, and so he had. But he'd
implored Sings Truly to keep his suspicions only in her own song for now, for some of the other