- Cole gladly goes inside and settles in to sleep on the floor. He makes hot chocolate for Peter and himself and doesn't even mind when Peter reminds him that this doesn't mean they're friends or anything.
- Making this point even clearer is the fact that Peter continues to take out his anger on Cole. He tracks mud across Cole's sleeping bag and knocks his jacket to the floor; he leaves the door open at night so icy wind blows on Cole as he's sleeping. Then one day, he takes a hatchet to the bear carving on Cole's totem.
- That's when Cole finally confronts him and asks why he did that. Peter says it's not like Cole is so innocent—after all, he's the one who severely beat him up.
- Cole calms down and says he'll find a good log and help Peter drag it back to camp so that he can work on his own totem.
- Then Cole shows Peter how to do a dance by the fire at night. He reluctantly does a mouse dance with Garvey and Cole, but then says it's stupid and storms back into the cabin.
- When Cole tells Garvey that he doesn't think Peter will ever forgive him at this rate, Garvey says that wounds of the spirit take a long time to heal.
- The next day, the boys spend a lot of time working on their respective totems and carving mice. Later, Peter tells Cole he wants to be alone for a while. When Cole returns to where he's working, he gets mad because he sees Peter messing with his totem again.
- But when he comes up to the totem, he sees that Peter has carved a new bear to make up for the one that he destroyed—and Cole is amazed by how good he is. Then he asks Peter if he'll teach him how to carve like that.