Lusa and the white bears looked at each other blankly for a moment. Lusa shivered at the thought of trying to make the wolves do anything, much less leave a rich hunting ground.

“We could leave a trail of dead prey,” Yakone suggested.

Toklo shook his head. “That wouldn’t work. Wolves only eat one piece of prey at a time, so they wouldn’t follow a trail.”

“Then we’ll have to lie in wait for them every night,” Kallik said, “and chase a few of them at a time, until all the packs have gone up.”

Lusa shook her head. “No, they’d just come back down again before the shaft is blocked.”

The bears settled into a gloomy silence. The shadows thickened around them, and in the distance the thin howl of a wolf echoed through the trees. Night had fallen, and the hunters were out.

Lusa began to fear that their plan would come to nothing. How can you make packs of ferocious wolves do what you want? Then an idea stirred in her mind. “Suppose we could trap all the wolves first?” she began uncertainly.

“Come on, Lusa. How—” Toklo began.

Kallik silenced him with a gesture of one paw. “Go on, Lusa.”

Lusa found some sticks among the debris under a bush and began laying them out on the ground. Her idea grew clearer as she spoke. “Imagine this is the ravine with the waterfall. What if we got them all in there, and then attacked them from the sides—here, and here,” she added, scraping little hollows in the earth to demonstrate. “Once the wolves are weak and scared, we could chase them up to the ridge.” She dusted off her forepaws. “Job done.”

Her friends examined the outline she had laid on the ground. Lusa was relieved to see that even Toklo was looking interested.

“How do we get the wolves into the ravine?” he asked.

“That would be difficult,” Kallik agreed. “And would we have enough strength left to attack the wolves and chase them up the mountain?”

“We could get other bears to help,” Lusa pointed out. “Makya and Aiyanna and Maniitok would all love to get rid of the wolves. Surely some of them would join in.”

“Yes,” Yakone said encouragingly. “An ambush worked for those rowdy bears on the Melting Sea, so I don’t see why it couldn’t work here.”

“Don’t forget what happened when we tried to ambush the coyotes,” Toklo warned him. “We had to jump onto the firesnake to escape. And this time there’ll be many more wolves than bears.”