noon
The sun that night went down in a lurid cloud . The moon , drifting into the west , became blood red . When it dropped behind the wilderness in this manner , the Indians called it the Bleeding Moon , and the air was filled with omens . All the next day Gray Wolf was nervous , and toward noon Kazan caught in the air the warning that she had sensed many hours ahead of him . Steadily the scent grew stronger , and by the middle of the afternoon the sun was veiled by a film of smoke . The flight of the wild things from the triangle of forest between the junctions of the Pipestone and Cree Rivers would have begun then , but the wind shifted . It was a fatal shift .