Kallik padded up to Toklo’s side and pressed her muzzle into his shoulder. “I know the forest isn’t as good as you remembered,” she said. “But what if we got rid of the wolves?”

Toklo looked at her like she had gone crazy. “We can’t kill them all!”

“I don’t mean kill them,” Kallik explained. “Actually, it was Lusa’s idea.” She turned to Lusa. “I’ve been thinking about what you said, and there could be a way to do it. The prey is coming back to the ridge as the snow melts, so the wolves don’t need to be down here in the forest anymore.”

Toklo gave a contemptuous snort. “So what are you going to do?” he snapped. “Ask them to just go away?”

Kallik looked at Yakone. “You remember that shaft we had to climb up to get to the top of the cliff? What if we got the wolves up onto the ridge, and then found a way to block the route back?”

Lusa saw that Yakone was starting to look excited. He thinks Kallik’s plan might work!

“Kallik’s right,” the white bear said, turning to Lusa and Toklo. “That narrow shaft is the only way up or down a sheer cliff that stretches for skylengths. If the wolves can’t get down it, then they’ll be stuck up there, forced to get used to their old territory again.”

Lusa blinked. “Assuming we could get the wolves up there in the first place, how would we block it?”

“With an avalanche!” Kallik exclaimed.

Lusa stared at her, remembering the terror she had felt during the avalanche on Star Island, where Ujurak had died to save their lives. “You’re not serious?” she whispered.

“On the other side of the ridge there’s an old waterfall that’s pretty much like the shaft,” Kallik told her. “We were hunting a mountain goat there the other day, and something started an avalanche. It felt like the whole mountain was sliding down . . . snow and rocks and trees. We were both buried.”

“We had to dig ourselves out.” Yakone took up the story. “Then we discovered that a brown she-bear and one of her cubs were caught in it, too, so we searched for them and got them out.”

Lusa listened to the tale with growing horror. “Wow!” she gasped. “You could have died.”

“We almost did,” Yakone said somberly.

“But we didn’t, and we’re fine.” Kallik briefly touched her nose to Lusa’s shoulder. “Anyway, if we started an avalanche on this side of the ridge, inside the shaft, we could block it off and trap the wolves on the ridge.”

Lusa nodded. “It’s a fantastic idea!”

“But how are you going to round up the wolves?” Toklo cut in with a challenge in his voice. “They’ll never do what you want.”