midnight
The moon rose clear and brilliant in the sky again that night , and Kazan set out once more on the hunt . He urged Gray Wolf to accompany him , whining for her outside the windfall -- returning for her twice -- but Gray Wolf laid her ears aslant and refused to move . The temperature had now fallen to sixty-five or seventy degrees below zero , and with it there came from the north an increasing wind , making the night one in which human life could not have existed for an hour . By midnight Kazan was back under the windfall . The wind grew stronger . It began to wail in mournful dirges over the swamp , and then it burst in fierce shrieking volleys , with intervals of quiet between . These were the first warnings from the great barrens that lay between the last lines of timber and the Arctic .