Just as he spoke, there was a splash as both cats reached the stream. They sprang back, and the vole appeared scurrying downstream along the bank next to Splash. The she-cat pounced, but the vole darted to one side and her paws hit the icy surface of the stream.

“Mouse dung!” Splash snarled.

“Bad luck!” Foxleap called to her.

Meanwhile the vole fled back upstream, where Gray was waiting for it. He pounced from the bank right on top of it and killed it with a swift bite to the back of its neck. “Thanks to the Tribe of Endless Hunting!” he mewed.

“Great teamwork!” Foxleap exclaimed.

Dovewing murmured agreement, but privately she was a bit shocked that it had taken four cats to catch one miserable little vole.

“Are you going to bury it while we do the rest of the patrol?” Foxleap went on. “That’s what we do in the forest.”

Gray shook his head. “If we did that out here, it would freeze,” he pointed out. “I’ll take it back to the cave. In the Tribe, we like to eat our prey warm.”

He picked up the vole and bounded away, back in the direction they had come. Crag watched until he had gone, his lithe gray shape hidden by the rocks, then turned and headed toward the next border marker. Dovewing followed, and Splash came to pad alongside her.

“It must be really strange for you up here,” the tabby she-cat began in a friendly tone. “What’s it like, living in a Clan?”

For a few heartbeats Dovewing was silent, hardly knowing where to start. “There are more of us, to start with,” she replied at last. “Four Clans, not just one. We share our borders, but we live by the warrior code, and don’t often have to worry about other Clans invading us. And our territories aren’t as big as yours, so it doesn’t take as long to patrol the border.”

“We need a big territory,” Splash responded defensively. “Prey’s scarce up here, and we have to survive.”

“Oh, I understand that,” Dovewing assured her. “And we don’t have cave-guards or prey-hunters,” she went on. “In a Clan, every cat learns how to do all the duties.”

Splash nodded. “Stormfur told us about that. But surely it makes sense for each cat to specialize in what they do best?”

Dovewing was beginning to feel embarrassed. She wasn’t trying to say that Clan life was so much better than Tribe life, even though Splash seemed determined to defend her Tribe.

“Cats have survived here for many, many seasons,” Splash meowed quietly, as if she had guessed Dovewing’s thoughts. “I couldn’t live anywhere else. This is where I belong, between the snow and the sky.”

“I feel the same way about the forest,” Dovewing admitted. “I need grass and earth beneath my paws, and the rustle of branches over my head.”

Splash gave her a long, considering look. “I think you’d do just fine if you lived up here,” she meowed. “Look at the way you heard that vole under the snow!”