Three Day Road

Niska prepares a sweat lodge to try and heal Xavier. He is so weak that she wonders if he will even survive the night. To try and keep him conscious, she tells him a story about himself. In the story, she sees Xavier in visions even before he comes to live with her. Their first winter together, she takes him hunting, and they follow the tracks of a bull moose. At one point, they are separated, and though Xavier follows the tracks he sees, he comes to realize that they are the moose’s tracks, not Niska’s. Though he is afraid, he keeps following the tracks. He tracks the moose, but when he allows himself to become too confident, the moose flees from him, as if sensing his cockiness.

Xavier is afraid, but he remembers the stories he has been told about fear consuming people, and so he trudges on. At one point, he witnesses the rare mating dance of the grouse, which confirms for him the symbolism of the circle, and how all of life is connected. He then shoots and kills a grouse, and as he prepares to cook it, Niska appears, revealing that she has been watching him all along and that he will make a fine hunter.