NOMADS OF THE NORTH

A STORY OF ROMANCE AND ADVENTURE UNDER THE OPEN STARS

BY

JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD

CHAPTER ONE

It was late in the month of March, at the dying-out of the Eagle Moon, that Neewa the black bear cub got his first real look at the world. Noozak, his mother, was an old bear, and like an old person she wasfilled with rheumatics and the desire to sleep late. So instead oftaking a short and ordinary nap of three months this particular winterof little Neewa's birth she slept four, which, made Neewa, who was bornwhile his mother was sound asleep, a little over two months old insteadof six weeks when they came out of den. 

In choosing this den Noozak had gone to a cavern at the crest of ahigh, barren ridge, and from this point Neewa first looked down intothe valley. For a time, coming out of darkness into sunlight, he wasblinded. He could hear and smell and feel many things before he couldsee. And Noozak, as though puzzled at finding warmth and sunshine inplace of cold and darkness, stood for many minutes sniffing the windand looking down upon her domain. 

For two weeks an early spring had been working its miracle of change inthat wonderful country of the northland between Jackson's Knee and theShamattawa River, and from north to south between God's Lake and theChurchill. 

It was a splendid world. From the tall pinnacle of rock on which theystood it looked like a great sea of sunlight, with only here and therepatches of white snow where the winter winds had piled it deep. Theirridge rose up out of a great valley. On all sides of them, as far as aman's eye could have reached, there were blue and black patches offorest, the shimmer of lakes still partly frozen, the sunlit sparkle ofrivulet and stream, and the greening open spaces out of which rose theperfumes of the earth. These smells drifted up like tonic and food tothe nostrils of Noozak the big bear. Down there the earth was alreadyswelling with life. The buds on the poplars were growing fat and nearthe bursting point; the grasses were sending out shoots tender andsweet; the camas were filling with juice; the shooting stars, thedog-tooth violets, and the spring beauties were thrusting themselves upinto the warm glow of the sun, inviting Noozak and Neewa to the feast. All these things Noozak smelled with the experience and the knowledgeof twenty years of life behind her--the delicious aroma of the spruceand the jackpine; the dank, sweet scent of water-lily roots andswelling bulbs that came from a thawed-out fen at the foot of theridge; and over all these things, overwhelming their individualsweetnesses in a still greater thrill of life, the smell of the heartitself!

And Neewa smelled them. His amazed little body trembled and thrilledfor the first time with the excitement of life. A moment before indarkness, he found himself now in a wonderland of which he had never somuch as had a dream. In these few minutes Nature was at work upon him. He possessed no knowledge, but instinct was born within him. He knewthis was HIS world, that the sun and the warmth were for him, and thatthe sweet things of the earth were inviting him into his heritage. Hepuckered up his little brown nose and sniffed the air, and the pungencyof everything that was sweet and to be yearned for came to him. 

And he listened. His pointed ears were pricked forward, and up to himcame the drone of a wakening earth. Even the roots of the grasses musthave been singing in their joy, for all through that sunlit valleythere was the low and murmuring music of a country that was at peacebecause it was empty of men. Everywhere was the rippling sound ofrunning water, and he heard strange sounds that he knew was life; thetwittering of a rock-sparrow, the silver-toned aria of a black-throatedthrush down in the fen, the shrill paean of a gorgeously colouredCanada jay exploring for a nesting place in a brake of velvety balsam. And then, far over his head, a screaming cry that made him shiver. Itwas instinct again that told him in that cry was danger. Noozak lookedup, and saw the shadow of Upisk, the great eagle, as it flung itselfbetween the sun and the earth. Neewa saw the shadow, and cringed nearerto his mother. 

And Noozak--so old that she had lost half her teeth, so old that herbones ached on damp and chilly nights, and her eyesight was growingdim--was still not so old that she did not look down with growingexultation upon what she saw. Her mind was travelling beyond the merevalley in which they had wakened. Off there beyond the walls of forest, beyond the farthest lake, beyond the river and the plain, were theillimitable spaces which gave her home. To her came dully a sounduncaught by Neewa--the almost unintelligible rumble of the greatwaterfall. It was this, and the murmur of a thousand trickles ofrunning water, and the soft wind breathing down in the balsam andspruce that put the music of spring into the air. 

At last Noozak heaved a great breath out of her lungs and with a gruntto Neewa began to lead the way slowly down among the rocks to the footof the ridge. 

In the golden pool of the valley it was even warmer than on the crestof the ridge. Noozak went straight to the edge of the slough. Half adozen rice birds rose with a whir of wings that made Neewa almost upsethimself. Noozak paid no attention to them. A loon let out a squawkyprotest at Noozak's soft-footed appearance, and followed it up with araucous screech that raised the hair on Neewa's spine. And Noozak paidno attention to this. Neewa observed these things. His eye was on her, and instinct had already winged his legs with the readiness to run ifhis mother should give the signal. In his funny little head it wasdeveloping very quickly that his mother was a most wonderful creature. She was by all odds the biggest thing alive--that is, the biggest thatstood on legs, and moved. He was confident of this for a space ofperhaps two minutes, when they came to the end of the fen. And here wasa sudden snort, a crashing of bracken, the floundering of a huge bodythrough knee-deep mud, and a monstrous bull moose, four times as big asNoozak, set off in lively flight. Neewa's eyes all but popped from hishead. And STILL Noozak PAID NO ATTENTION!

It was then that Neewa crinkled up his tiny nose and snarled, just ashe had snarled at Noozak's ears and hair and at sticks he had worriedin the black cavern. A glorious understanding dawned upon him. He couldsnarl at anything he wanted to snarl at, no matter how big. Foreverything ran away from Noozak his mother. 

All through this first glorious day Neewa was discovering things, andwith each hour it was more and more impressed upon him that his motherwas the unchallenged mistress of all this new and sunlit domain. 

Noozak was a thoughtful old mother of a bear who had reared fifteen oreighteen families in her time, and she travelled very little this firstday in order that Neewa's tender feet might toughen up a bit. Theyscarcely left the fen, except to go into a nearby clump of trees whereNoozak used her claws to shred a spruce that they might get at thejuice and slimy substance just under the bark. Neewa liked this dessertafter their feast of roots and bulbs, and tried to claw open a tree onhis own account. By mid-afternoon Noozak had eaten until her sidesbulged out, and Neewa himself--between his mother's milk and the manyodds and ends of other things--looked like an over-filled pod. Selecting a spot where the declining sun made a warm oven of a greatwhite rock, lazy old Noozak lay down for a nap, while Neewa, wanderingabout in quest of an adventure of his own, came face to face with aferocious bug. 

The creature was a giant wood-beetle two inches long. Its two battlingpincers were jet black, and curved like hooks of iron. It was a richbrown in colour and in the sunlight its metallic armour shone in adazzling splendour. Neewa, squatted flat on his belly, eyed it with aswiftly beating heart. The beetle was not more than a foot away, andADVANCING! That was the curious and rather shocking part of it. It wasthe first living thing he had met with that day that had not run away. As it advanced slowly on its two rows of legs the beetle made aclicking sound that Neewa heard quite distinctly. With the fightingblood of his father, Soominitik, nerving him on to the adventure hethrust out a hesitating paw, and instantly Chegawasse, the beetle, tookupon himself a most ferocious aspect. His wings began humming like abuzz-saw, his pincers opened until they could have taken in a man'sfinger, and he vibrated on his legs until it looked as though he mightbe performing some sort of a dance. Neewa jerked his paw back and aftera moment or two Chegawasse calmed himself and again began to ADVANCE!

Neewa did not know, of course, that the beetle's field of vision endedabout four inches from the end of his nose; the situation, consequently, was appalling. But it was never born in a son of a fatherlike Soominitik to run from a bug, even at nine weeks of age. Desperately he thrust out his paw again, and unfortunately for him oneof his tiny claws got a half Nelson on the beetle and held Chegawasseon his shining back so that he could neither buzz not click. A greatexultation swept through Neewa. Inch by inch he drew his paw in untilthe beetle was within reach of his sharp little teeth. Then he smelledof him. 

That was Chegawasse's opportunity. The pincers closed and Noozak'sslumbers were disturbed by a sudden bawl of agony. When she raised herhead Neewa was rolling about as if in a fit. He was scratching andsnarling and spitting. Noozak eyed him speculatively for some moments, then reared herself slowly and went to him. With one big paw she rolledhim over--and saw Chegawasse firmly and determinedly attached to heroffspring's nose. Flattening Neewa on his back so that he could notmove she seized the beetle between her teeth, bit slowly untilChegawasse lost his hold, and then swallowed him. 

From then until dusk Neewa nursed his sore nose. A little before darkNoozak curled herself up against the big rock, and Neewa took hissupper. Then he made himself a nest in the crook of her big, warmforearm. In spite of his smarting nose he was a happy bear, and at theend of his first day he felt very brave and very fearless, though hewas but nine weeks old. He had come into the world, he had looked uponmany things, and if he had not conquered he at least had gonegloriously through the day. 

CHAPTER TWO

That night Neewa had a hard attack of Mistu-puyew, or stomach-ache. Imagine a nursing baby going direct from its mother's breast to abeefsteak! That was what Neewa had done. Ordinarily he would not havebegun nibbling at solid foods for at least another month, but natureseemed deliberately at work in a process of intensive educationpreparing him for the mighty and unequal struggle which he would haveto put up a little later. For hours Neewa moaned and wailed, and Noozakmuzzled his bulging little belly with her nose, until finally hevomited and was better. 

After that he slept. When he awoke he was startled by opening his eyesfull into the glare of a great blaze of fire. Yesterday he had seen thesun, golden and shimmering and far away. But this was the first time hehad seen it come up over the edge of the world on a spring morning inthe Northland. It was as red as blood, and as he stared it rosesteadily and swiftly until the flat side of it rounded out and it was ahuge ball of SOMETHING. At first he thought it was Life--some monstrouscreature sailing up over the forest toward them--and he turned with awhine of enquiry to his mother. Whatever it was, Noozak was unafraid. Her big head was turned toward it, and she was blinking her eyes insolemn comfort. It was then that Neewa began to feel the pleasingwarmth of the red thing, and in spite of his nervousness he began topurr in the glow of it. From red the sun turned swiftly to gold, andthe whole valley was transformed once more into a warm and pulsatingglory of life. 

For two weeks after this first sunrise in Neewa's life Noozak remainednear the ridge and the slough. Then came the day, when Neewa was elevenweeks old, that she turned her nose toward the distant black forestsand began the summer's peregrination. Neewa's feet had lost theirtenderness, and he weighed a good six pounds. This was pretty goodconsidering that he had only weighed twelve ounces at birth. 

From the day when Noozak set off on her wandering TREK Neewa's realadventures began. In the dark and mysterious caverns of the foreststhere were places where the snow still lay unsoftened by the sun, andfor two days Neewa yearned and whined for the sunlit valley. Theypassed the waterfall, where Neewa looked for the first tune on arushing torrent of water. Deeper and darker and gloomier grew theforest Noozak was penetrating. In this forest Neewa received his firstlessons in hunting. Noozak was now well in the "bottoms" between theJackson's Knee and Shamattawa waterway divides, a great hunting groundfor bears in the early spring. When awake she was tireless in her questfor food, and was constantly digging in the earth, or turning overstones and tearing rotting logs and stumps into pieces. The little graywood-mice were her piece de resistance, small as they were, and itamazed Neewa to see how quick his clumsy old mother could be when oneof these little creatures was revealed. There were times when Noozakcaptured a whole family before they could escape. And to these wereadded frogs and toads, still partly somnambulent; many ants, curled upas if dead, in the heart of rotting logs; and occasional bumble-bees, wasps, and hornets. Now and then Neewa took a nibble at these things. On the third day Noozak uncovered a solid mass of hibernating vinegarants as large as a man's two fists, and frozen solid. Neewa ate aquantity of these, and the sweet, vinegary flavour of them wasdelicious to his palate. 

As the days progressed, and living things began to crawl out from underlogs and rocks, Neewa discovered the thrill and excitement of huntingon his own account. He encountered a second beetle, and killed it. Hekilled his first wood-mouse. Swiftly there were developing in him theinstincts of Soominitik, his scrap-loving old father, who lived threeor four valleys to the north of their own, and who never missed anopportunity to get into a fight. At four months of age, which was latein May, Neewa was eating many things that would have killed most cubsof his age, and there wasn't a yellow streak in him from the tip of hissaucy little nose to the end of his stubby tail. He weighed nine poundsat this date and was as black as a tar-baby. 

It was early in June that the exciting event occurred which broughtabout the beginning of the big change in Neewa's life, and it was on aday so warm and mellow with sunshine that Noozak started in right afterdinner to take her afternoon nap. They were out of the lower timbercountry now, and were in a valley through which a shallow streamwriggled and twisted around white sand-bars and between pebbly shores. Neewa was sleepless. He had less desire than ever to waste a gloriousafternoon in napping. With his little round eyes he looked out on awonderful world, and found it calling to him. He looked at his mother, and whined. Experience told him that she was dead to the world forhours to come, unless he tickled her foot or nipped her ear, and thenshe would only rouse herself enough to growl at him. He was tired ofthat. He yearned for something more exciting, and with his mindsuddenly made up he set off in quest of adventure. 

In that big world of green and golden colours he was a little blackball nearly as wide as he was long. He went down to the creek, andlooked back. He could still see his mother. Then his feet paddled inthe soft white sand of a long bar that edged the shore, and he forgotNoozak. He went to the end of the bar, and turned up on the green shorewhere the young grass was like velvet under his paws. Here he beganturning over small stones for ants. He chased a chipmunk that ran aclose and furious race with him for twenty seconds. A little later ahuge snow-shoe rabbit got up almost under his nose, and he chased thatuntil in a dozen long leaps Wapoos disappeared in a thicket. Neewawrinkled up his nose and emitted a squeaky snarl. Never hadSoominitik's blood run so riotously within him. He wanted to get holdof something. For the first time in his life he was yearning for ascrap. He was like a small boy who the day after Christmas has a pairof boxing gloves and no opponent. He sat down and looked about himquerulously, still wrinkling his nose and snarling defiantly. He hadthe whole world beaten. He knew that. Everything was afraid of hismother. Everything was afraid of HIM. It was disgusting--this lack ofsomething alive for an ambitious young fellow to fight. After all, theworld was rather tame. 

He set off at a new angle, came around the edge of a huge rock, andsuddenly stopped. 

From behind the other end of the rock protruded a huge hind paw. For afew moments Neewa sat still, eyeing it with a growing anticipation. This time he would give his mother a nip that would waken her for good!He would rouse her to the beauty and the opportunities of this day ifthere was any rouse in him! So he advanced slowly and cautiously, picked out a nice bare spot on the paw, and sank his little teeth in itto the gums. 

There followed a roar that shook the earth. Now it happened that thepaw did not belong to Noozak, but was the personal property of Makoos, an old he-bear of unlovely disposition and malevolent temper. But inhim age had produced a grouchiness that was not at all like thegrandmotherly peculiarities of old Noozak. Makoos was on his feetfairly before Neewa realized that he had made a mistake. He was notonly an old bear and a grouchy bear, but he was also a hater of cubs. More than once in his day he had committed the crime of cannibalism. Hewas what the Indian hunter calls uchan--a bad bear, an eater of his ownkind, and the instant his enraged eyes caught sight of Neewa he let outanother roar. 

At that Neewa gathered his fat little legs under his belly and was offlike a shot. Never before in his life had he run as he ran now. Instinct told him that at last he had met something which was notafraid of him, and that he was in deadly peril. He made no choice ofdirection, for now that he had made this mistake he had no idea wherehe would find his mother. He could hear Makoos coming after him, and ashe ran he set up a bawling that was filled with a wild and agonizingprayer for help. That cry reached the faithful old Noozak. In aninstant she was on her feet--and just in time. Like a round black ballshot out of a gun Neewa sped past the rock where she had been sleeping, and ten jumps behind him came Makoos. Out of the corner of his eye hesaw his mother, but his momentum carried him past her. In that momentNoozak leapt into action. As a football player makes a tackle sherushed out just in time to catch old Makoos with all her weight fullbroadside in the ribs, and the two old bears rolled over and over inwhat to Neewa was an exciting and glorious mix-up. 

He had stopped, and his eyes bulged out like shining little onions ashe took in the scene of battle. He had longed for a fight but what hesaw now fairly paralyzed him. The two bears were at it, roaring andtearing each other's hides and throwing up showers of gravel and earthin their deadly clinch. In this first round Noozak had the best of it. She had butted the wind out of Makoos in her first dynamic assault, andnow with her dulled and broken teeth at his throat she was lashing himwith her sharp hind claws until the blood streamed from the oldbarbarian's sides and he bellowed like a choking bull. Neewa knew thatit was his pursuer who was getting the worst of it, and with a squeakycry for his mother to lambast the very devil out of Makoos he ran backto the edge of the arena, his nose crinkled and his teeth gleaming in aferocious snarl. He danced about excitedly a dozen feet from thefighters, Soominitik's blood filling him with a yearning for the frayand yet he was afraid. 

Then something happened that suddenly and totally upset the maddeningjoy of his mother's triumph. Makoos, being a he-bear, was of necessityskilled in fighting, and all at once he freed himself from Noozak'sjaws, wallowed her under him, and in turn began ripping the hide offold Noozak's carcass in such quantities that she let out an agonizedbawling that turned Neewa's little heart into stone. 

It is a matter of most exciting conjecture what a small boy will dowhen he sees his father getting licked. If there is an axe handy he isliable to use it. The most cataclysmic catastrophe that cam come intohis is to have a father whom some other boy's father has given awalloping. Next to being President of the United States the averagesmall boy treasures the desire to possess a parent who can whip anyother two-legged creature that wears trousers. And there were a lot ofhuman things about Neewa. The louder his mother bawled the moredistinctly he felt the shock of his world falling about him. If Noozakhad lost a part of her strength in her old age her voice, at least, wasstill unimpaired, and such a spasm of outcry as she emitted could havebeen heard at least half a mile away. 

Neewa could stand no more. Blind with rage, he darted in. It was chancethat closed his vicious little jaws on a toe that belonged to Makoos, and his teeth sank into the flesh like two rows of ivory needles. Makoos gave a tug, but Neewa held on, and bit deeper. Then Makoos drewup his leg and sent it out like a catapault, and in spite of hisdetermination to hang on Neewa found himself sailing wildly through theair. He landed against a rock twenty feet from the fighters with aforce that knocked the wind out of him, and for a matter of eight orten seconds after that he wobbled dizzily in his efforts to stand up. Then his vision and his senses returned and he gazed on a scene thatbrought all the blood pounding back into his body again. 

Makoos was no longer fighting, but was RUNNING AWAY--and there was adecided limp in his gait!

Poor old Noozak was standing on her feet, facing the retreating enemy. She was panting like a winded calf. Her jaws were agape. Her tonguelolled out, and blood was dripping in little trickles from her body tothe ground. She had been thoroughly and efficiently mauled. She wasbeyond the shadow of a doubt a whipped bear. Yet in that gloriousflight of the enemy Neewa saw nothing of Noozak's defeat. Their enemywas RUNNING AWAY! Therefore, he was whipped. And with excited littlesqueaks of joy Neewa ran to his mother. 

CHAPTER THREE

As they stood in the warm sunshine of this first day of June, watchingthe last of Makoos as he fled across the creek bottom, Neewa felt verymuch like an old and seasoned warrior instead of a pot-bellied, round-faced cub of four months who weighed nine pounds and not fourhundred. 

It was many minutes after Neewa had sunk his ferocious little teethdeep into the tenderest part of the old he-bear's toe before Noozakcould get her wind sufficiently to grunt. Her sides were pumping like apair of bellows, and after Makoos had disappeared beyond the creekNeewa sat down on his chubby bottom, perked his funny ears forward, andeyed his mother with round and glistening eyes that were filled withuneasy speculation. With a wheezing groan Noozak turned and made herway slowly toward the big rock alongside which she had been sleepingwhen Neewa's fearful cries for help had awakened her. Every bone in heraged body seemed broken or dislocated. She limped and sagged and moanedas she walked, and behind her were left little red trails of blood inthe green grass. Makoos had given her a fine pummeling. 

She lay down, gave a final groan, and looked at Neewa, as if to say:

"If you hadn't gone off on some deviltry and upset that old viper'stemper this wouldn't have happened. And now--look at ME!"

A young bear would have rallied quickly from the effects of the battle, but Noozak lay without moving all the rest of that afternoon, and thenight that followed. And that night was by all odds the finest thatNeewa had ever seen. Now that the nights were warm, he had come to lovethe moon even more than the sun, for by birth and instinct he was morea prowler in darkness than a hunter of the day. The moon rose out ofthe east in a glory of golden fire. The spruce and balsam forests stoodout like islands in a yellow sea of light, and the creek shimmered andquivered like a living thing as it wound its way through the glowingvalley. But Neewa had learned his lesson, and though the moon and thestars called to him he hung close to his mother, listening to thecarnival of night sound that came to him, but never moving away fromher side. 

With the morning Noozak rose to her feet, and with a grunting commandfor Neewa to follow she slowly climbed the sun-capped ridge. She was inno mood for travel, but away back in her head was an unexpressed fearthat villainous old Makoos might return, and she knew that anotherfight would do her up entirely, in which event Makoos would make abreakfast of Neewa. So she urged herself down the other side of theridge, across a new valley, and through a cut that opened like a widedoor into a rolling plain that was made up of meadows and lakes andgreat sweeps of spruce and cedar forest. For a week Noozak had beenmaking for a certain creek in this plain, and now that the presence ofMakoos threatened behind she kept at her journeying until Neewa'sshort, fat legs could scarcely hold up his body. 

It was mid-afternoon when they reached the creek, and Neewa was soexhausted that he had difficulty in climbing the spruce up which hismother sent him to take a nap. Finding a comfortable crotch he quicklyfell asleep--while Noozak went fishing. 

The creek was alive with suckers, trapped in the shallow pools afterspawning, and within an hour she had the shore strewn with them. WhenNeewa came down out of his cradle, just at the edge of dusk, it was toa feast at which Noozak had already stuffed herself until she lookedlike a barrel. This was his first meal of fish, and for a weekthereafter he lived in a paradise of fish. He ate them morning, noon, and night, and when he was too full to eat he rolled in them. AndNoozak stuffed herself until it seemed her hide would burst. Whereverthey moved they carried with them a fishy smell that grew older day byday, and the older it became the more delicious it was to Neewa and hismother. And Neewa grew like a swelling pod. In that week he gainedthree pounds. He had given up nursing entirely now, for Noozak--beingan old bear--had dried up to a point where she was hopelesslydisappointing. 

It was early in the evening of the eighth day that Neewa and his motherlay down in the edge of a grassy knoll to sleep after their day'sfeasting. Noozak was by all odds the happiest old bear in all that partof the northland. Food was no longer a problem for her. In the creek, penned up in the pools, were unlimited quantities of it, and she hadencountered no other bear to challenge her possession of it. She lookedahead to uninterrupted bliss in their happy hunting grounds untilmidsummer storms emptied the pools, or the berries ripened. And Neewa, a happy little gourmand, dreamed with her. 

It was this day, just as the sun was setting, that a man on his handsand knees was examining a damp patch of sand five or six miles down thecreek. His sleeves were rolled up, baring his brown arms halfway to theshoulders and he wore no hat, so that the evening breeze ruffled aragged head of blond hair that for a matter of eight or nine months hadbeen cut with a hunting knife. 

Close on one side of this individual was a tin pail, and on the other, eying him with the keenest interest, one of the homeliest and yet oneof the most companionable-looking dog pups ever born of a Mackenziehound father and a mother half Airedale and half Spitz. 

With this tragedy of blood in his veins nothing in the world could havemade the pup anything more than "just dog. " His tail, --stretched outstraight on the sand, was long and lean, with a knot at every joint;his paws, like an overgrown boy's feet, looked like smallboxing-gloves; his head was three sizes too big for his body, andaccident had assisted Nature in the perfection of her masterpiece byrobbing him of a half of one of his ears. As he watched his master thishalf of an ear stood up like a galvanized stub, while the other--twiceas long--was perked forward in the deepest and most interested enquiry. Head, feet, and tail were Mackenzie hound, but the ears and his lank, skinny body was a battle royal between Spitz and Airedale. At hispresent inharmonious stage of development he was the doggiest dog-pupoutside the alleys of a big city. 

For the first time in several minutes his master spoke, and Mikiwiggled from stem to stern in appreciation of the fact that it wasdirectly to him the words were uttered. 

"It's a mother and a cub, as sure as you're a week old, Miki, " he said. "And if I know anything about bears they were here some time to-day!"

He rose to his feet, made note of the deepening shadows in the edge ofthe timber, and filled his pail with water. For a few moments the lastrays of the sun lit up his face. It was a strong, hopeful face. In itwas the joy of life. And now it was lighted up with a suddeninspiration, and a glow that was not of the forest alone came into hiseyes, as he added:

"Miki, I'm lugging your homely carcass down to the Girl because you'rean unpolished gem of good nature and beauty--and for those two things Iknow she'll love you. She is my sister, you know. Now, if I could onlytake that cub along with you----"

He began to whistle as he turned with his pail of water in thedirection of a thin fringe of balsams a hundred yards away. 

Close at his heels followed Miki. 

Challoner, who was a newly appointed factor of the Great Hudson's BayCompany, had pitched his camp at tie edge of the lake dose to the mouthof the creek. There was not much to it--a battered tent, a still morebattered canoe, and a small pile of dunnage. But in the last glow ofthe sunset it would have spoken volumes to a man with an eye trained tothe wear and the turmoil of the forests. It was the outfit of a man whohad gone unfearing to the rough edge of the world. And now what wasleft of it was returning with him. To Challoner there was something ofhuman comradeship in these remnants of things that had gone through thegreater part of a year's fight with him. The canoe was warped andbattered and patched; smoke and storm had blackened his tent until itwas the colour of rusty char, and his grub sacks were next to empty. 

Over a small fire title contents of a pan and a pot were brewing whenhe returned with Miki at his heels, and close to the heat was abattered and mended reflector in which a bannock of flour and water wasbeginning to brown. In one of the pots was coffee, in the other aboiling fish. 

Miki sat down on his angular haunches so that the odour of the fishfilled his nostrils. This, he had discovered, was the next thing toeating. His eyes, as they followed Challoner's final preparatorymovements, were as bright as garnets, and every third or fourth breathhe licked his chops, and swallowed hungrily. That, in fact, was whyMiki had got his name. He was always hungry, and apparently alwaysempty, no matter how much he ate. Therefore his name, Miki, "The drum. "

It was not until they had eaten the fish and the bannock, and Challonerhad lighted his pipe, that he spoke what was in his mind. 

"To-morrow I'm going after that bear, " he said. 

Miki, curled up near the dying embers, gave his tail a club-like thumpin evidence of the fact that he was listening. 

"I'm going to pair you up with the cub, and tickle the Girl to death. "

Miki thumped his tail harder than before. 

"Fine, " he seemed to say. 

"Just think of it, " said Challoner, looking over Miki's head a thousandmiles away, "Fourteen months--and at last we're going home. I'm goingto train you and the cub for that sister of mine. Eh, won't you likethat? You don't know what she's like, you homely little devil, or youwouldn't sit there staring at me like a totem-pole pup! And it isn't inyour stupid head to imagine how pretty she is. You saw that sunsetto-night? Well, she's prettier than THAT if she is my sister. Gotanything to add to that, Miki? If not, let's say our prayers and go tobed!"

Challoner rose and stretched himself. His muscles cracked. He felt lifesurging like a giant within him. 

And Miki, thumping his tail until this moment, rose on his overgrownlegs and followed his master into their shelter. 

It was in the gray light of the early summer dawn when Challoner cameforth again, and rekindled the fire. Miki followed a few moments later, and his master fastened the end of a worn tent-rope around his neck andtied the rope to a sapling. Another rope of similar length Challonertied to the corners of a grub sack so that it could be carried over hisshoulder like a game bag. With the first rose-flush of the sun he wasready for the trail of Neewa and his mother. Miki set up a melancholywailing when he found himself left behind, and when Challoner lookedback the pup was tugging and somersaulting at the end of his rope likea jumping-jack. For a quarter of a mile up the creek he could hearMiki's entreating protest. 

To Challoner the business of the day was not a matter of personalpleasure, nor was it inspired alone by his desire to possess a cubalong with Miki. He needed meat, and bear pork thus early in the seasonwould be exceedingly good; and above all else he needed a supply offat. If he bagged this bear, time would be saved all the rest of theway down to civilization. 

It was eight o'clock when he struck the first unmistakably fresh signsof Noozak and Neewa. It was at the point where Noozak had fished fouror five days previously, and where they had returned yesterday to feaston the "ripened" catch. Challoner was elated. He was sure that he wouldfind the pair along the creek, and not far distant. The wind was in hisfavour, and he began to advance with greater caution, his rifle readyfor the anticipated moment. For an hour he travelled steadily andquietly, marking every sound and movement ahead of him, and wetting hisfinger now and then to see if the wind had shifted. After all, it wasnot so much a matter of human cunning. Everything was in Challoner'sfavour. 

In a wide, flat part of the valley where the creek split itself into adozen little channels, and the water rippled between sandy bars andover pebbly shallows, Neewa and his mother were nosing about lazily fora breakfast of crawfish. The world had never looked more beautiful toNeewa. The sun made the soft hair on his back fluff up like that of apurring cat. He liked the plash of wet sand under his feet and thesinging gush of water against his legs. He liked the sound that was allabout him, the breath of the wind, the whispers that came out of thespruce-tops and the cedars, the murmur of water, the TWIT-TWIT of therock rabbits, the call of birds; and more than all else the low, grunting talk of his mother. 

It was in this sun-bathed sweep of the valley that Noozak caught thefirst whiff of danger. It came to her in a sudden twist of thewind--the smell of man!

Instantly she was turned into rock. There was still the deep scar inher shoulder which had come, years before, with that same smell of theone enemy she feared. For three summers she had not caught the taint inher nostrils and she had almost forgotten its existence. Now, sosuddenly that it paralyzed her, it was warm and terrible in the breathof the wind. 

In this moment, too, Neewa seemed to sense the nearness of an appallingdanger. Two hundred yards from Challoner he stood a motionless blotchof jet against the white of the sand about him, his eyes on his mother, and his sensitive little nose trying to catch the meaning of the menacein the air. 

Then came a thing he had never heard before--a splitting, crackingroar--something that was almost like thunder and yet unlike it; and hesaw his mother lurch where she stood and crumple down all at once onher fore legs. 

The next moment she was up, with a wild WHOOF in her voice that was newto him--a warning for him to fly for his life. 

Like all mothers who have known the comradeship and love of a child, Noozak's first thought was of him. Reaching out a paw she gave him asudden shove, and Neewa legged it wildly for the near-by shelter of thetimber. Noozak followed. A second shot came, and close over her headthere sped a purring, terrible sound. But Noozak did not hurry. Shekept behind Neewa, urging him on even as that pain of a red-hot iron inher groin filled her with agony. They came to the edge of the timber asChalloner's third shot bit under Noozak's feet. 

A moment more and they were within the barricade of the timber. Instinct guided Neewa into the thickest part of it, and close behindhim Noozak fought with the last of her dying strength to urge him on. In her old brain there was growing a deep and appalling shadow, something that was beginning to cloud her vision so that she could notsee, and she knew that at last she had come to the uttermost end of hertrail. With twenty years of life behind her, she struggled now for alast few seconds. She stopped Neewa close to a thick cedar, and as shehad done many times before she commanded him to climb it. Just once herhot tongue touched his face in a final caress. Then she turned to fighther last great fight. 

Straight into the face of Challoner she dragged herself, and fifty feetfrom the spruce she stopped and waited for him, her head droopedbetween her shoulders, her sides heaving, her eyes dimming more andmore, until at last she sank down with a great sigh, barring the trailof their enemy. For a space, it may be, she saw once more the goldenmoons and the blazing suns of those twenty years that were gone; it maybe that the soft, sweet music of spring came to her again, filled withthe old, old song of life, and that Something gracious and painlessdescended upon her as a final reward for a glorious motherhood on earth. 

When Challoner came up she was dead. 

From his hiding place in a crotch of the spruce Neewa looked down onthe first great tragedy of his life, and the advent of man. Thetwo-legged beast made him cringe deeper into his refuge, and his littleheart was near breaking with the terror that had seized upon him. Hedid not reason. It was by no miracle of mental process that he knewsomething terrible had happened, and that this tall, two-leggedcreature was the cause of it. His little eyes were blazing, just overthe level of the crotch. He wondered why his mother did not get up andfight when this new enemy came. Frightened as he was he was ready tosnarl if she would only wake up--ready to hurry down the tree and helpher as he had helped her in the defeat of Makoos, the old he-bear. Butnot a muscle of Noozak's huge body moved as Challoner bent over her. She was stone dead. 

Challoner's face was flushed with exultation. Necessity had made of hima killer. He saw in Noozak a splendid pelt, and a provision of meatthat would carry him all the rest of the way to the southland. Heleaned his rifle against a tree and began looking about for the cub. Knowledge of the wild told him it would not be far from its mother, andhe began looking into the trees and the near-by thickets. 

In the shelter of his crotch, screened by the thick branches, Neewamade himself as small as possible during the search. At the end of halfan hour Challoner disappointedly gave up his quest, and went back tothe creek for a drink before setting himself to the task of skinningNoozak. 

No sooner was he gone than Neewa's little head shot up alertly. For afew moments he watched, and then slipped backward down the trunk of thecedar to the ground. He gave his squealing call, but his mother did notmove. He went to her and stood beside her motionless head, sniffing theman-tainted air. Then he muzzled her jowl, butted his nose under herneck, and at last nipped her ear--always his last resort in theawakening process. He was puzzled. He whined softly, and climbed uponhis mother's big, soft back, and sat there. Into his whine there came astrange note, and then out of his throat there rose a whimpering crythat was like the cry of a child. 

Challoner heard that cry as he came back, and something seemed to griphold of his heart suddenly, and choke him. He had heard children cryinglike that; and it was the motherless cub!

Creeping up behind a dwarf spruce he looked where Noozak lay dead, andsaw Neewa perched on his mother's back. He had killed many things inhis time, for it was his business to kill, and to barter in the peltsof creatures that others killed. But he had seen nothing like thisbefore, and he felt all at once as if he had done murder. 

"I'm sorry, " he breathed softly, "you poor little devil; I'm sorry!"

It was almost a prayer--for forgiveness. Yet there was but one thing todo now. So quietly that Neewa failed to hear him he crept around withthe wind and stole up behind. He was within a dozen feet of Neewabefore the cub suspected danger. Then it was too late. In a swift rushChalloner was upon him and, before Neewa could leave the back of hismother, had smothered him in the folds of the grub sack. 

In all his life Challoner had never experienced a livelier five minutesthan the five that followed. Above Neewa's grief and his fear thererose the savage fighting blood of old Soominitik, his father. He clawedand bit and kicked and snarled. In those five minutes he was fivelittle devils all rolled into one, and by the time Challoner had therope fastened about Neewa's neck, and his fat body chucked into thesack, his hands were scratched and lacerated in a score of places. 

In the sack Neewa continued to fight until he was exhausted, whileChalloner skinned Noozak and cut from her the meat and fats which hewanted. The beauty of Noozak's pelt brought a glow into his eyes. In ithe rolled the meat and fats, and with babiche thong bound the wholeinto a pack around which he belted the dunnage ends of his shoulderstraps. Weighted under the burden of sixty pounds of pelt and meat hepicked up his rifle--and Neewa. It had been early afternoon when heleft. It was almost sunset when he reached camp. Every foot of the way, until the last half mile, Neewa fought like a Spartan. 

Now he lay limp and almost lifeless in his sack, and when Miki came upto smell suspiciously of his prison he made no movement of protest. Allsmells were alike to him now, and of sounds he made no distinction. Challoner was nearly done for. Every muscle and bone in his body hadits ache. Yet in his face, sweaty and grimed, was a grin of pride. 

"You plucky little devil, " he said, contemplating the limp sack as heloaded his pipe for the first time that afternoon. "You--you pluckylittle devil!"

He tied the end of Neewa's rope halter to a sapling, and begancautiously to open the grub sack. Then he rolled Neewa out on theground, and stepped back. In that hour Neewa was willing to accept atruce so far as Challoner was concerned. But it was not Challoner thathis half-blinded eyes saw first as he rolled from his bag. It was Miki!And Miki, his awkward body wriggling with the excitement of hiscuriosity, was almost on the point of smelling of him!

Neewa's little eyes glared. Was that ill-jointed lop-eared offspring ofthe man-beast an enemy, too? Were those twisting convolutions of thisnew creature's body and the club-like swing of his tail an invitationto fight? He judged so. Anyway, here was something of his size, andlike a flash he was at the end of his rope and on the pup. Miki, amoment before bubbling over with friendship and good cheer, was on hisback in an instant, his grotesque legs paddling the air and his yelpingcries for help rising in a wild clamour that filled the goldenstillness of the evening with an unutterable woe. 

Challoner stood dumbfounded. In another moment he would have separatedthe little fighters, but something happened that stopped him. Neewa, standing squarely over Miki, with Miki's four over-grown paws heldaloft as if signalling an unqualified surrender, slowly drew his teethfrom the pup's loose hide. Again he saw the man-beast. Instinct, keenerthan a clumsy reasoning, held him for a few moments without movement, his beady eyes on Challoner. In midair Miki wagged his paws; he whinedsoftly; his hard tail thumped the ground as he pleaded for mercy, andhe licked his chops and tried to wriggle, as if to tell Neewa that hehad no intention at all to do him harm. Neewa, facing Challoner, snarled defiantly. He drew himself slowly from over Miki. And Miki, afraid to move, still lay on his back with his paws in the air. 

Very slowly, a look of wonder in his face, Challoner drew back into thetent and peered through a rent in the canvas. 

The snarl left Neewa's face. He looked at the pup. Perhaps away back insome corner of his brain the heritage of instinct was telling him ofwhat he had lost because of brothers and sisters unborn--thecomradeship of babyhood, the play of children. And Miki must havesensed the change in the furry little black creature who a moment agowas his enemy. His tail thumped almost frantically, and he swung outhis front paws toward Neewa. Then, a little fearful of what mighthappen, he rolled on his side. Still Neewa did not move. Joyously Mikiwriggled. 

A moment later, looking through the slit in the canvas, Challoner sawthem cautiously smelling noses. 

CHAPTER FOUR

That night came a cold and drizzling rain from out of the north and theeast. In the wet dawn Challoner came out to start a fire, and in ahollow under a spruce root he found Miki and Neewa cuddled together, sound asleep. 

It was the cub who first saw the man-beast, and for a brief spacebefore the pup roused himself Neewa's shining eyes were fixed on thestrange enemy who had so utterly changed his world for him. Exhaustionhad made him sleep through the long hours of that first night ofcaptivity, and in sleep he had forgotten many things. But now it allcame back to him as he cringed deeper into his shelter under the root, and so softly that only Miki heard him he whimpered for his mother. 

It was the whimper that roused Miki. Slowly he untangled himself fromthe ball into which he had rolled, stretched his long and overgrownlegs, and yawned so loudly that the sound reached Challoner's ears. Theman turned and saw two pairs of eyes fixed upon him from the shelteredhollow under the root. The pup's one good ear and the other that washalf gone stood up alertly, as he greeted his master with the boundlessgood cheer of an irrepressible comradeship. Challoner's face, wet withthe drizzle of the gray skies and bronzed by the wind and storm offourteen months in the northland, lighted up with a responsive grin, and Miki wriggled forth weaving and twisting himself into grotesquecontortions expressive of happiness at being thus directly smiled at byhis master. 

With all the room under the root left to him Neewa pulled himself backuntil only his round head was showing, and from this fortress oftemporary safety his bright little eyes glared forth at his mother'smurderer. 

Vividly the tragedy of yesterday was before him again--the warm, sun-filled creek bottom in which he and Noozak, his mother, werehunting a breakfast of crawfish when the man-beast came; the crash ofstrange thunder, their flight into the timber, and the end of it allwhen his mother turned to confront their enemy. And yet it was not thedeath of his mother that remained with him most poignantly thismorning. It was the memory of his own terrific fight with the whiteman, and his struggle afterward in the black and suffocating depths ofthe bag in which Challoner had brought him to his camp. Even nowChalloner was looking at the scratches on his hands. He advanced a fewsteps, and grinned down at Neewa, just as he had grinnedgood-humouredly at Miki, the angular pup. 

Neewa's little eyes blazed. 

"I told you last night that I was sorry, " said Challoner, speaking asif to one of his own kind. 

In several ways Challoner was unusual, an out-of-the-ordinary type inthe northland. He believed, for instance, in a certain specificpsychology of the animal mind, and had proven to his own satisfactionthat animals treated and conversed with in a matter-of-fact human wayfrequently developed an understanding which he, in his unscientificway, called reason. 

"I told you I was sorry, " he repeated, squatting on his heels within ayard of the root from under which Neewa's eyes were glaring at him, "and I am. I'm sorry I killed your mother. But we had to have meat andfat. Besides, Miki and I are going to make it up to you. We're going totake you along with us down to the Girl, and if you don't learn to loveher you're the meanest, lowest-down little cuss in all creation anddon't deserve a mother. You and Miki are going to be brothers. Hismother is dead, too--plum starved to death, which is worse than dyingwith a bullet in your lung. And I found Miki just as I found you, hugging up close to her an' crying as if there wasn't any world leftfor him. So cheer up, and give us your paw. Let's shake!"

Challoner held out his hand. Neewa was as motionless as a stone. A fewmoments before he would have snarled and bared his teeth. But now hewas dead still. This was by all odds the strangest beast he had everseen. Yesterday it had not harmed him, except to put him into the bag. And now it did not offer to harm him. More than that, the talk it madewas not unpleasant, or threatening. His eyes took in Miki. The pup hadsqueezed himself squarely between Challoner's knees and was looking athim in a puzzled, questioning sort of way, as if to ask: "Why don't youcome out from under that root and help get breakfast?"

Challoner's hand came nearer, and Neewa crowded himself back untilthere was not another inch of room for him to fill. Then the miraclehappened. The man-beast's paw touched his head. It sent a strange andterrible thrill through him. Yet it did not hurt. If he had not wedgedhimself in so tightly he would have scratched and bitten. But he coulddo neither. 

Slowly Challoner worked his fingers to the loose hide at the back ofNeewa's neck. Miki, surmising that something momentous was about tohappen, watched the proceedings with popping eyes. Then Challoner'sfingers closed and the next instant he dragged Neewa forth and held himat arm's length, kicking and squirming, and setting up such a bawlingthat in sheer sympathy Miki raised his voice and joined in the agonizedorgy of sound. Half a minute later Challoner had Neewa once more in theprison-sack, but this time he left the cub's head protruding, and drewin the mouth of the sack closely about his neck, fastening it securelywith a piece of babiche string. Thus three quarters of Neewa wasimprisoned in the sack, with only his head sticking out. He was a cubin a poke. 

Leaving the cub to roll and squirm in protest Challoner went about thebusiness of getting breakfast. For once Miki found a proceeding moreinteresting than that operation, and he hovered about Neewa as hestruggled and bawled, trying vainly to offer him some assistance in thematter of sympathy. Finally Neewa lay still, and Miki sat down closebeside him and eyed his master with serious questioning if not actualdisapprobation. 

The gray sky was breaking with the promise of the sun when Challonerwas ready to renew his long journey into the southland. He packed hiscanoe, leaving Neewa and Miki until the last. In the bow of the canoehe made a soft nest of the skin taken from the cub's mother. Then hecalled Miki and tied the end of a worn rope around his neck, afterwhich he fastened the other end of this rope around the neck of Neewa. Thus he had the cub and the pup on the same yard-long halter. Takingeach of the twain by the scruff of the neck he carried them to thecanoe and placed them in the nest he had made of Noozak's hide. 

"Now you youngsters be good, " he warned. "We're going to aim at fortymiles to-day to make up for the time we lost yesterday. "

As the canoe shot out a shaft of sunlight broke through the sky low inthe east. 

CHAPTER FIVE

During the first few moments in which the canoe moved swiftly over thesurface of the lake an amazing change had taken place in Neewa. Challoner did not see it, and Miki was unconscious of it. But everyfibre in Neewa's body was atremble, and his heart was thumping as ithad pounded on that glorious day of the fight between his mother andthe old he-bear. It seemed to him that everything that he had lost wascoming back to him, and that all would be well very soon--FOR HESMELLED HIS MOTHER! And then he discovered that the scent of her waswarm and strong in the furry black mass under his feet, and hesmothered himself down in it, flat on his plump little belly, andpeered at Challoner over his paws. 

It was hard for him to understand--the man-beast back there, sendingthe canoe through the water, and under him his mother, warm and soft, but so deadly still! He could not keep the whimper out of histhroat--his low and grief-filled call for HER. And there was no answer, except Miki's responsive whine, the crying of one child for another. Neewa's mother did not move. She made no sound. And he could seenothing of her but her black and furry skin--without head, withoutfeet, without the big, bald paws he had loved to tickle, and the earshe had loved to nip. There was nothing of her but the patch of blackskin--and the SMELL. 

But a great comfort warmed his frightened little soul. He felt theprotecting nearness of an unconquerable and abiding force and in thefirst of the warm sunshine his back fluffed up, and he thrust his brownnose between his paws and into his mother's fur. Miki, as if vainlystriving to solve the mystery of his new-found chum, was watching himclosely from between his own fore-paws. In his comical head--adornedwith its one good ear and its one bad one, and furthermore beautifiedby the outstanding whiskers inherited from his Airedale ancestor--hewas trying to come to some sort of an understanding. At the outset hehad accepted Neewa as a friend and a comrade--and Neewa had thanklesslygiven him a good mauling for his trouble. That much Miki could forgiveand forget. What he could not forgive was the utter lack of regardwhich Neewa seemed to possess for him. His playful antics had gained norecognition from the cub. When he had barked and hopped about, flattening and contorting himself in warm invitation for him to join ina game of tag or a wrestling match, Neewa had simply stared at him likean idiot. He was wondering, perhaps, if Neewa would enjoy anythingbesides a fight. It was a long time before he decided to make anotherexperiment. 

It was, as a matter of fact, halfway between breakfast and noon. In allthat time Neewa had scarcely moved, and Miki was finding himself boredto death. The discomfort of last night's storm was only a memory, andoverhead there was a sun unshadowed by cloud. More than an hour beforeChalloner's canoe had left the lake, and was now in the clear-runningwater of a stream that was making its way down the southward slope ofthe divide between Jackson's Knee and the Shamattawa. It was a newstream to Challoner, fed by the large lake above, and guarding himselfagainst the treachery of waterfall and rapid he kept a keen lookoutahead. For a matter of half an hour the water had been growing steadilyswifter, and Challoner was satisfied that before very long he would becompelled to make a portage. A little later he heard ahead of him thelow and steady murmur which told him he was approaching a danger zone. As he shot around the next bend, hugging fairly close to shore, he saw, four or five hundred yards below him, a rock-frothed and boilingmaelstrom of water. 

Swiftly his eyes measured the situation. The rapids ran between analmost precipitous shore on one side and a deep forest on the other. Hesaw at a glance that it was the forest side over which he must make theportage, and this was the shore opposite him and farthest away. Swinging his canoe at a 45-degree angle he put all the strength of bodyand arms into the sweep of his paddle. There would be just time toreach the other shore before the current became dangerous. Above thesweep of the rapids he could now hear the growling roar of a waterfallbelow. 

It was at this unfortunate moment that Miki decided to venture one moreexperiment with Neewa. With a friendly yip he swung out one of hispaws. Now Miki's paw, for a pup, was monstrously big, and his forelegwas long and lanky, so that when the paw landed squarely on the end ofNeewa's nose it was like the swing of a prize-fighter's glove. Theunexpectedness of it was a further decisive feature in the situation;and, on top of this, Miki swung his other paw around like a club andcaught Neewa a jolt in the eye. This was too much, even from a friend, and with a sudden snarl Neewa bounced out of his nest and clinched withthe pup. 

Now the fact was that Miki, who had so ingloriously begged for mercy intheir first scrimmage, came of fighting stock himself. Mix the blood ofa Mackenzie hound--which is the biggest-footed, biggest-shouldered, most powerful dog in the northland--with the blood of a Spitz and anAiredale and something is bound to come of it. While the Mackenzie dog, with his ox-like strength, is peaceable and good-humoured in all sortsof weather, there is a good deal of the devil in the northern Spitz andAiredale and it is a question which likes a fight the best. And all atonce good-humoured little Miki felt the devil rising in him. This timehe did not yap for mercy. He met Neewa's jaws, and in two seconds theywere staging a first-class fight on the bit of precarious footing inthe prow of the canoe. 

Vainly Challoner yelled at them as he paddled desperately to beat outthe danger of the rapids. Neewa and Miki were too absorbed to hear him. Miki's four paws were paddling the air again, but this time his sharpteeth were firmly fixed in the loose hide under Neewa's neck, and withhis paws he continued to kick and bat in a way that promisedeffectively to pummel the wind out of Neewa had not the thing happenedwhich Challoner feared. Still in a clinch they rolled off the prow ofthe canoe into the swirling current of the stream. 

For ten seconds or so they utterly disappeared. Then they bobbed up, agood fifty feet below him, their heads close together as they spedswiftly toward the doom that awaited them, and a choking cry broke fromChalloner's lips. He was powerless to save them, and in his cry was theanguish of real grief. For many weeks Miki had been his only chum andcomrade. 

Held together by the yard-long rope to which they were fastened, Mikiand Neewa swept into the frothing turmoil of the rapids. For Miki itwas the kindness of fate that had inspired his master to fasten him tothe same rope with Neewa. Miki, at three months of age--weight, fourteen pounds--was about 80 per cent. Bone and only a half of 1 percent. Fat; while Neewa, weight thirteen pounds, was about 90 per cent. Fat. Therefore Miki had the floating capacity of a small anchor, whileNeewa was a first-class life-preserver, and almost unsinkable. 

In neither of the youngsters was there a yellow streak. Both were offighting stock, and, though Miki was under water most of the timeduring their first hundred-yard dash through the rapids, never for aninstant did he give up the struggle to keep his nose in the air. Sometimes he was on his back and sometimes on his belly; but no matterwhat his position, he kept his four overgrown paws going like paddles. To an extent this helped Neewa in the heroic fight he was making tokeep from shipping too much water himself. Had he been alone his ten oreleven pounds of fat would have carried him down-stream like a toyballoon covered with fur, but, with the fourteen-pound drag around hisneck, the problem of not going under completely was a serious one. Halfa dozen times he did disappear for an instant when some undertow caughtMiki and dragged him down--head, tail, legs, and all. But Neewa alwaysrose again, his four fat legs working for dear life. 

Then came the waterfall. By this time Miki had become accustomed totravelling under water, and the full horror of the new cataclysm intowhich they were plunged was mercifully lost to him. His paws had almostceased their motion. He was still conscious of the roar in his ears, but the affair was less unpleasant than it was at the beginning. Infact, he was drowning. To Neewa the pleasant sensations of a painlessdeath were denied. No cub in the world was wider awake than he when thefinal catastrophe came. His head was well above water and he wasclearly possessed of all his senses. Then the river itself dropped outfrom under him and he shot down in an avalanche of water, feeling nolonger the drag of Miki's weight at his neck. 

How deep the pool was at the bottom of the waterfall Challoner mighthave guessed quite accurately. Could Neewa have expressed an opinion ofhis own, he would have sworn that it was a mile. Miki was past thestage of making estimates, or of caring whether it was two feet or twoleagues. His paws had ceased to operate and he had given himself upentirely to his fate. But Neewa came up again, and Miki followed, likea bobber. He was about to gasp his last gasp when the force of thecurrent, as it swung out of the whirlpool, flung Neewa upon a bit ofpartly submerged driftage, and in a wild and strenuous effort to makehimself safe Neewa dragged Miki's head out of water so that the puphung at the edge of the driftage like a hangman's victim at the end ofhis rope. 

CHAPTER SIX

It is doubtful whether in the few moments that followed, any clear-cutmental argument passed through Neewa's head. It is too much to supposethat he deliberately set about assisting the half-dead and almostunconscious Miki from his precarious position. His sole ambition was toget himself where it was safe and dry, and to do this he of necessityhad to drag the pup with him. So Neewa tugged at the end of his rope, digging his sharp little claws into the driftwood, and as he advancedMiki was dragged up head foremost out of the cold and friendlessstream. It was a simple process. Neewa reached a log around which thewater was eddying, and there he flattened himself down and hung on ashe had never hung to anything else in his life. The log was entirelyhidden from shore by a dense growth of brushwood. Otherwise, tenminutes later Challoner would have seen them. 

As it was, Miki had not sufficiently recovered either to smell or hearhis master when Challoner came to see if there was a possibility of hissmall comrade being alive. And Neewa only hugged the log more tightly. He had seen enough of the man-beast to last him for the remainder ofhis life. It was half an hour before Miki began to gasp, and cough, andgulp up water, and for the first time since their scrap in the canoethe cub began to take a live interest in him. In another ten minutesMiki raised his head and looked about him. At that Neewa gave a tug onthe rope, as if to advise him that it was time to get busy if they wereexpected to reach shore. And Miki, drenched and forlorn, resemblingmore a starved bone than a thing of skin and flesh, actually made aneffort to wag his tail when he saw Neewa. 

He was still in a couple of inches of water, and with a hopeful eye onthe log upon which Neewa was squatted he began to work his wobbly legstoward it. It was a high log, and a dry log, and when Miki reached ithis unlucky star was with him again. Cumbrously he sprawled himselfagainst it, and as he scrambled and scraped with his four awkward legsto get up alongside Neewa he gave to the log the slight push which itneeded to set it free of the sunken driftage. Slowly at first theeddying current carried one end of the log away from its pier. Then theedge of the main current caught at it, viciously--and so suddenly thatMiki almost lost his precarious footing, the log gave a twist, righteditself, and began, to scud down stream at a speed that would have madeChalloner hug his breath had he been in their position with hisfaithful canoe. 

In fact, Challoner was at this very moment portaging the rapids belowthe waterfall. To have set his canoe in them where Miki and Neewa weregloriously sailing he would have considered an inexcusable hazard, andas a matter of safety he was losing the better part of a couple ofhours by packing his outfit through the forest to a point half a milebelow. That half mile was to the cub and the pup a show which wasdestined to live in their memories for as long as they were alive. 

They were facing each other about amidships of the log, Neewa flattenedtight, his sharp claws dug in like hooks, and his little brown eyeshalf starting from his head. It would have taken a crowbar to wrenchhim from the log. But with Miki it was an open question from thebeginning whether he would weather the storm. He had no claws that hecould dig into the wood, and it was impossible for him to use hisclumsy legs as Neewa used his--like two pairs of human arms. All hecould do was to balance himself, slipping this way or that as the logrolled or swerved in its course, sometimes lying across it andsometimes lengthwise, and every moment with the jaws of uncertaintyopen wide for him. Neewa's eyes never left him for an instant. Had theybeen gimlets they would have bored holes. From the acuteness of thislife-and-death stare one would have given Neewa credit forunderstanding that his own personal safety depended not so much uponhis claws and his hug as upon Miki's seamanship. If Miki went overboardthere would be left but one thing for him to do--and that would be tofollow. 

The log, being larger and heavier at one end than at the other, swepton without turning broadside, and with the swiftness and appearance ofa huge torpedo. While Neewa's back was turned toward the horror offrothing water and roaring rock behind him, Miki, who was facing it, lost none of its spectacular beauty. Now and then the log shot into oneof the white masses of foam and for an instant or two would utterlydisappear; and at these intervals Miki would hold his breath and closehis eyes while Neewa dug his toes in still deeper. Once the log grazeda rock. Six inches more and they would have been without a ship. Theirtrip was not half over before both cub and pup looked like two roundballs of lather out of which their eyes peered wildly. 

Swiftly the roar of the cataract was left behind; the huge rocks aroundwhich the current boiled and twisted with a ferocious snarling becamefewer; there came open spaces in which the log floated smoothly andwithout convulsions, and then, at last, the quiet and placid flow ofcalm water. Not until then did the two balls of suds make a move. Forthe first time Neewa saw the whole of the thing they had passedthrough, and Miki, looking down stream, saw the quiet shores again, thedeep forest, and the stream aglow with the warm sun. He drew in abreath that filled his whole body and let it out again with a sigh ofrelief so deep and sincere that it blew out a scatter of foam from theends of his nose and whiskers. For the first time he became consciousof his own discomfort. One of his hind legs was twisted under him, anda foreleg was under his chest. The smoothness of the water and thenearness of the shores gave him confidence, and he proceeded tostraighten himself. Unlike Neewa he was an experienced VOYAGEUR. Formore than a month he had travelled steadily with Challoner in hiscanoe, and of ordinarily decent water he was unafraid. So he perked upa little, and offered Neewa a congratulatory yip that was half a whine. 

But Neewa's education had travelled along another line, and while hisexperience in a canoe had been confined to that day he did know what alog was. He knew from more than one adventure of his own that a log inthe water is the next thing to a live thing, and that its capacity forplaying evil jokes was beyond any computation that he had ever beenable to make. That was where Miki's store of knowledge was fatallydefective. Inasmuch as the log had carried them safely through theworst stretch of water he had ever seen he regarded it in the light ofa first-class canoe--with the exception that it was unpleasantlyrounded on top. But this little defect did not worry him. To Neewa'shorror he sat up boldly, and looked about him. 

Instinctively the cub hugged the log still closer, while Miki wasseized with an overwhelming desire to shake from himself the mass ofsuds in which, with the exception of the end of his tail and his eyes, he was completely swathed. He had often shaken himself in the canoe;why not here? Without either asking or answering the question he did it. 

Like the trap of a gibbet suddenly sprung by the hangman, the loginstantly responded by turning half over. Without so much as a wailMiki was off like a shot, hit the water with a deep and solemn CHUG, and once more disappeared as completely as if he had been made of lead. 

Finding himself completely submerged for the first time, Neewa hung ongloriously, and when the log righted itself again he was tenaciouslyhugging his old place, all the froth washed from him. He looked forMiki--but Miki was gone. And then he felt once more that choking dragon his neck! Of necessity, because his head was pulled in the directionof the rope, he saw where the rope disappeared in the water. But therewas no Miki. The pup was down too far for Neewa to see. With the draggrowing heavier and heavier--for here there was not much current tohelp Miki along--Neewa hung on like grim death. If he had let go, andhad joined Miki in the water, the good fortune which was turning theirway would have been missed. For Miki, struggling well under water, wasserving both as an anchor and a rudder; slowly the log shifted itscourse, was caught in a beach-eddy, and drifted in close to a muddybank. 

With one wild leap Neewa was ashore. Feeling the earth under his feethe started to run, and the result was that Miki came up slowly throughthe mire and spread himself out like an overgrown crustacean while hegot the wind back into his lungs. Neewa, sensing the fact that for afew moments his comrade was physically unfit for travel, shook himself, and waited. Miki picked up quickly. Within five minutes he was on hisfeet shaking himself so furiously that Neewa became the centre of ashower of mud and water. 

Had they remained where they were, Challoner would have found them anhour or so later, for he paddled that way, close inshore, looking fortheir bodies. It may be that the countless generations of instinct backof Neewa warned him of that possibility, for within a quarter of anhour after they had landed he was leading the way into the forest, andMiki was following. It was a new adventure for the pup. 

But Neewa began to recover his good cheer. For him the forest was homeeven if his mother was missing. After his maddening experiences withMiki and the man-beast the velvety touch of the soft pine-needles underhis feet and the familiar smells of the silent places filled him with agrowing joy. He was back in his old trails. He sniffed the air andpricked up his ears, thrilled by the enlivening sensations of knowingthat he was once more the small master of his own destiny. It was a newforest, but Neewa was undisturbed by this fact. All forests were aliketo him, inasmuch as several hundred thousand square miles were includedin his domain and it was impossible for him to landmark them all. 

With Miki it was different. He not only began to miss Challoner and theriver, but became more and more disturbed the farther Neewa led himinto the dark and mysterious depths of the timber. At last he decidedto set up a vigorous protest, and in line with this decision he bracedhimself so suddenly that Neewa, coming to the end of the rope, floppedover on his back with an astonished grunt. Seizing his advantage Mikiturned, and tugging with the horse-like energy of his Mackenzie fatherhe started back toward the river, dragging Neewa after him for a spaceof ten or fifteen feet before the cub succeeded in regaining his feet. 

Then the battle began. With their bottoms braced and their forefeetdigging into the soft earth, they pulled on the rope in oppositedirections until their necks stretched and their eyes began to pop. Neewa's pull was steady and unexcited, while Miki, dog-like, yanked andconvulsed himself in sudden backward jerks that made Neewa give way aninch at a time. It was, after all, only a question as to whichpossessed the most enduring neck. Under Neewa's fat there was as yetlittle real physical strength. Miki had him handicapped there. Underthe pup's loose hide and his overgrown bones there was a lot of pull, and after bracing himself heroically for another dozen feet Neewa gaveup the contest and followed in the direction chosen by Miki. 

While the instincts of Neewa's breed would have taken him back to theriver as straight as a die, Miki's intentions were better than was hissense of orientation. Neewa followed in a sweeter temper when he foundthat his companion was making an unreasonable circle which was takingthem a little more slowly, but just as surely, away from thedanger-ridden stream. At the end of another quarter of an hour Miki wasutterly lost; he sat down on his rump, looked at Neewa, and confessedas much--with a low whine. Neewa did not move. His sharp little eyeswere fixed suddenly on an object that hung to a low bush half a dozenpaces from them. Before the man-beast's appearance the cub had spentthree quarters of his time in eating, but since yesterday morning hehad not swallowed so much as a bug. He was completely empty, and theobject he saw hanging to the bush set every salivary gland in his mouthworking. It was a wasp's nest. Many times in his young life he had seenNoozak, his mother, go up to nests like that, tear them down, crushthem under her big paw, and then invite him to the feast of dead waspswithin. For at least a month wasps had been included in his daily fare, and they were as good as anything he knew of. He approached the nest;Miki followed. When they were within three feet of it Miki began totake notice of a very distinct and peculiarly disquieting buzzingsound. Neewa was not at all alarmed; judging the distance of the nestfrom the ground, he rose on his hind feet, raised his arms, and gave ita fatal tug. 

Instantly the drone which Miki had heard changed into the angry buzzingof a saw. Quick as a flash Neewa's mother would have had the nest underher paws and the life crushed out of it, while Neewa's tug had onlyserved partly to dislodge the home of Ahmoo and his dangerous tribe. And it happened that Ahmoo was at home with three quarters of hiswarriors. Before Neewa could give the nest a second tug they werepiling out of it in a cloud and suddenly a wild yell of agony rose outof Miki. Ahmoo himself had landed on the end of the dog's nose. Neewamade no sound, but stood for a moment swiping at his face with bothpaws, while Miki, still yelling, ran the end of his crucified nose intothe ground. In another moment every fighter in Ahmoo's army was busy. Suddenly setting up a bawling on his own account Neewa turned tail tothe nest and ran. Miki was not a hair behind him. In every square inchof his tender hide he felt the red-hot thrust of a needle. It was Neewathat made the most noise. His voice was one continuous bawl, and tothis bass Miki's soprano wailing added the touch which would haveconvinced any passing Indian that the loup-garou devils were having adance. 

Now that their foes were in disorderly flight the wasps, who are rathera chivalrous enemy, would have returned to their upset fortress had notMiki, in his mad flight, chosen one side of a small sapling and Neewathe other--a misadventure that stopped them with a force almostsufficient to break their necks. Thereupon a few dozen of Ahmoo's rearguard started in afresh. With his fighting blood at last aroused, Neewaswung out and caught Miki where there was almost no hair on his rump. Already half blinded, and so wrought up with pain and terror that hehad lost all sense of judgment or understanding, Miki believed that thesharp dig of Neewa's razor-like claws was a deeper thrust than usual ofthe buzzing horrors that overwhelmed him, and with a final shriek heproceeded to throw a fit. 

It was the fit that saved them. In his maniacal contortions he swungaround to Neewa's side of the sapling, when, with their halter oncemore free from impediment, Neewa bolted for safety. Miki followed, yelping at every jump. No longer did Neewa feel a horror of the river. The instinct of his kind told him that he wanted water, and wanted itbadly. As straight as Challoner might have set his course by a compasshe headed for the stream, but he had proceeded only a few hundred feetwhen they came upon a tiny creek across which either of them could havejumped. Neewa jumped into the water, which was four or five inchesdeep, and for the first time in his life Miki voluntarily took aplunge. For a long time they lay in the cooling rill. 

The light of day was dim and hazy before Miki's eyes, and he wasbeginning to swell from the tip of his nose to the end of his bonytail. Neewa, being so much fat, suffered less. He could still see, and, as the painful hours passed, a number of things were adjustingthemselves in his brain. All this had begun with the man-beast. It wasthe man-beast who had taken his mother from him. It was the man-beastwho had chucked him into the dark sack, and it was the man-beast whohad FASTENED THE ROPE AROUND HIS NECK. Slowly the fact was beginning toimpinge itself upon him that the rope was to blame for everything. 

After a long time they dragged themselves out of the rivulet and founda soft, dry hollow at the foot of a big tree. Even to Neewa, who hadthe use of his eyes, it was growing dark in the deep forest. The sunwas far in the west. And the air was growing chilly. Flat on his belly, with his swollen head between his fore paws, Miki whined plaintively. 

Again and again Neewa's eyes went to the rope as the big thoughtdeveloped itself in his head. He whined. It was partly a yearning forhis mother, partly a response to Miki. He drew closer to the pup, filled with the irresistible desire for comradeship. After all, it wasnot Miki who was to blame. It was the man-beast--and THE ROPE!

The gloom of evening settled more darkly about them, and snugglinghimself still closer to the pup Neewa drew the rope between his forepaws. With a little snarl he set his teeth in it. And then, steadily, he began to chew. Now and then he growled, and in the growl there was apeculiarly communicative note, as if he wished to say to Miki:

"Don't you see?--I'm chewing this thing in two. I'll have it done bymorning. Cheer up! There's surely a better day coming. "

CHAPTER SEVEN

The morning after their painful experience with the wasp's nest, Neewaand Miki rose on four pairs of stiff and swollen legs to greet a newday in the deep and mysterious forest into which the accident of theprevious day had thrown them. The spirit of irrepressible youth wasupon them, and, though Miki was so swollen from the stings of the waspsthat his lank body and overgrown legs were more grotesque than ever, hewas in no way daunted from the quest of further adventure. 

The pup's face was as round as a moon, and his head was puffed up untilNeewa might reasonably have had a suspicion that it was on the point ofexploding. But Miki's eyes--as much as could be seen of them--were asbright as ever, and his one good ear and his one half ear stood uphopefully as he waited for the cub to give some sign of what they weregoing to do. The poison in his system no longer gave him discomfort. Hefelt several sizes too large--but, otherwise, quite well. 

Neewa, because of his fat, exhibited fewer effects of his battle withthe wasps. His one outstanding defect was an entirely closed eye. Withthe other, wide open and alert, he looked about him. In spite of hisone bad eye and his stiff legs he was inspired with the optimism of onewho at last sees fortune turning his way. He was rid of the man-beast, who had killed his mother; the forests were before him again, open andinviting, and the rope with which Challoner had tied him and Mikitogether he had successfully gnawed in two during the night. Havingdispossessed himself of at least two evils it would not have surprisedhim much if he had seen Noozak, his mother, coming up from out of theshadows of the trees. Thought of her made him whine. And Miki, facingthe vast loneliness of his new world, and thinking of his master, whined in reply. 

Both were hungry. The amazing swiftness with which their misfortuneshad descended upon them had given them no time in which to eat. To Mikithe change was more than astonishing; it was overwhelming, and he heldhis breath in anticipation of some new evil while Neewa scanned theforest about them. 

As if assured by this survey that everything was right, Neewa turnedhis back to the sun, which had been his mother's custom, and set out. 

Miki followed. Not until then did he discover that every joint in hisbody had apparently disappeared. His neck was stiff, his legs were likestilts, and five times in as many minutes he stubbed his clumsy toesand fell down in his efforts to keep up with the cub. On top of thishis eyes were so nearly closed that his vision was bad, and the fifthtime he stumbled he lost sight of Neewa entirely, and sent out aprotesting wail. Neewa stopped and began prodding with his nose under arotten log. When Miki came up Neewa was flat on his belly, licking up acolony of big red vinegar ants as fast as he could catch them. Mikistudied the proceeding for some moments. It soon dawned upon him thatNeewa was eating something, but for the life of him he couldn't makeout what it was. Hungrily he nosed close to Neewa's foraging snout. Helicked with his tongue where Neewa licked, and he got only dirt. Andall the time Neewa was giving his jolly little grunts of satisfaction. It was ten minutes before he hunted out the last ant and went on. 

A little later they came to a small open space where the ground waswet, and after sniffing about a bit, and focussing his one good eyehere and there, Neewa suddenly began digging. Very shortly he drew outof the ground a white object about the size of a man's thumb and beganto crunch it ravenously between his jaws. Miki succeeded in capturing afair sized bit of it. Disappointment followed fast. The thing was likewood; after rolling it in his mouth a few times he dropped it indisgust, and Neewa finished the remnant of the root with a thankfulgrunt. 

They proceeded. For two heartbreaking hours Miki followed at Neewa'sheels, the void in his stomach increasing as the swelling in his bodydiminished. His hunger was becoming a torture. Yet not a bit to eatcould he find, while Neewa at every few steps apparently discoveredsomething to devour. At the end of the two hours the cub's bill of farehad grown to considerable proportions. It included, among other things, half a dozen green and black beetles; numberless bugs, both hard andsoft; whole colonies of red and black ants; several white grubs dug outof the heart of decaying logs; a handful of snails; a young frog; theegg of a ground-plover that had failed to hatch; and, in the vegetableline, the roots of two camas and one skunk cabbage. Now and then hepulled down tender poplar shoots and nipped the ends off. Likewise henibbled spruce and balsam gum whenever he found it, and occasionallyadded to his breakfast a bit of tender grass. 

A number of these things Miki tried. He would have eaten the frog, butNeewa was ahead of him there. The spruce and balsam gum clogged up histeeth and almost made him vomit because of its bitterness. Between asnail and a stone he could find little difference, and as the one bughe tried happened to be that asafoetida-like creature known as astink-bug he made no further efforts in that direction. He also bit offa tender tip from a ground-shoot, but instead of a young poplar it wasFox-bite, and shrivelled up his tongue for a quarter of an hour. Atlast he arrived at the conclusion that, up to date, the one thing inNeewa's menu that he COULD eat was grass. 

In the face of his own starvation his companion grew happier as headded to the strange collection in his stomach. In fact, Neewaconsidered himself in clover and was grunting his satisfactioncontinually, especially as his bad eye was beginning to open and hecould see things better. Half a dozen times when he found fresh antnests he invited Miki to the feast with excited little squeals. Untilnoon Miki followed like a faithful satellite at his heels. The end camewhen Neewa deliberately dug into a nest inhabited by four hugebumble-bees, smashed them all, and ate them. 

From that moment something impressed upon Miki that he must do his ownhunting. With the thought came a new thrill. His eyes were fairly opennow, and much of the stiffness had gone from his legs. The blood of hisMackenzie father and of his half Spitz and half Airedale mother rose upin him in swift and immediate demand, and he began to quest about forhimself. He found a warm scent, and poked about until a partridge wentup with a tremendous thunder of wings. It startled him, but added tothe thrill. A few minutes later, nosing under a pile of brush, he cameface to face with his dinner. 

It was Wahboo, the baby rabbit. Instantly Miki was at him, and had afirm hold at the back of Wahboo's back. Neewa, hearing the smashing ofthe brush and the squealing of the rabbit, stopped catching ants andhustled toward the scene of action. The squealing ceased quickly andMiki backed himself out and faced Neewa with Wahboo held triumphantlyin his jaws. The young rabbit had already given his last kick, and witha fierce show of growling Miki began tearing the fur off. Neewa edgedin, grunting affably. Miki snarled more fiercely. Neewa, undaunted, continued to express his overwhelming regard for Miki in low andsupplicating grunts--and smelled the rabbit. The snarl in Miki's throatdied away. He may have remembered that Neewa had invited him more thanonce to partake of his ants and bugs. Together they ate the rabbit. Notuntil the last bit of flesh and the last tender bone were gone did thefeast end, and then Neewa sat back on his round bottom and stuck outhis little red tongue for the first time since he had lost his mother. It was the cub sign of a full stomach and a blissful mind. He could seenothing to be more desired at the present time than a nap, andstretching himself languidly he began looking about for a tree. 

Miki, on the other hand, was inspired to new action by the pleasurablesensation of being comfortably filled. Inasmuch as Neewa chewed hisfood very carefully, while Miki, paying small attention to mastication, swallowed it in chunks, the pup had succeeded in getting away withabout four fifths of the rabbit. So he was no longer hungry. But he wasmore keenly alive to his changed environment than at any time since heand Neewa had fallen out of Challoner's canoe into the rapids. For thefirst time he had killed, and for the first time he had tasted warmblood, and the combination added to his existence an excitement thatwas greater than any desire he might have possessed to lie down in asunny spot and sleep. Now that he had learned the game, the huntinginstinct trembled in every fibre of his small being. He would have goneon hunting until his legs gave way under him if Neewa had not found anapping-place. 

Astonished half out of his wits he watched Neewa as he leisurelyclimbed the trunk of a big poplar. He had seen squirrels climbtrees--just as he had seen birds fly--but Neewa's performance held himbreathless; and not until the cub had stretched himself out comfortablyin a crotch did Miki express himself. Then he gave an incredulous yelp, sniffed at the butt of the tree, and made a half-hearted experiment atthe thing himself. One flop on his back convinced him that Neewa wasthe tree-climber of the partnership. Chagrined, he wandered backfifteen or twenty feet and sat down to study the situation. He couldnot perceive that Neewa had any special business up the tree. Certainlyhe was not hunting for bugs. He yelped half a dozen times, but Neewamade no answer. At last he gave it up and flopped himself down with adisconsolate whine. 

But it was not to sleep. He was ready and anxious to go on. He wantedto explore still further the mysterious and fascinating depths of theforest. He no longer felt the strange fear that had been upon himbefore he killed the rabbit. In two minutes under the brush-heap Naturehad performed one of her miracles of education. In those two minutesMiki had risen out of whimpering puppyhood to new power andunderstanding. He had passed that elemental stage which hiscompanionship with Challoner had prolonged. He had KILLED, and the hotthrill of it set fire to every instinct that was in him. In the halfhour during which he lay flat on his belly, his head alert andlistening, while Neewa slept, he passed half way from puppyhood todogdom. He would never know that Hela, his Mackenzie hound father, wasthe mightiest hunter in all the reaches of the Little Fox country, andthat alone he had torn down a bull caribou. But he FELT it. There wassomething insistent and demanding in the call. And because he wasanswering that call, and listening eagerly to the whispering voices ofthe forest, his quick ears caught the low, chuckling monotone ofKawook, the porcupine. 

Miki lay very still. A moment later he heard the soft clicking ofquills, and then Kawook came out in the open and stood up on his hindfeet in a patch of sunlight. 

For thirteen years Kawook had lived undisturbed in this particular partof the wilderness, and in his old age he weighed thirty pounds if heweighed an ounce. On this afternoon, coming for his late dinner, he wasfeeling even more than usually happy. His eyesight at best was dim. Nature had never intended him to see very far, and had thereforequilted him heavily with the barbed shafts of his protecting armour. Thirty feet away he was entirely oblivious of Miki, at least apparentlyso; and Miki hugged the ground closer, warned by the swiftly developinginstinct within him that here was a creature it would be unwise toattack. 

For perhaps a minute Kawook stood up, chuckling his tribal song withoutany visible movement of his body. He stood profile to Miki, like a fatalderman. He was so fat that his stomach bulged out in front like thehalf of a balloon, and over this stomach his hands were folded in apeculiarly human way, so that he looked more like an old she-porcupinethan a master in his tribe. 

It was not until then that Miki observed Iskwasis, the young femaleporcupine, who had poked herself slyly out from under a bush nearKawook. In spite of his years the red thrill of romance was not yetgone from the old fellow's bones, and he immediately started to give anexhibition of his good breeding and elegance. He began with hisludicrous love-making dance, hopping from one foot to the other untilhis fat stomach shook, and chuckling louder than ever. The charms ofIskwasis were indeed sufficient to turn the head of an older beau thanKawook. She was a distinctive blonde; in other words, one of thoseunusual creatures of her kind, an albino. Her nose was pink, the palmsof her little feet were pink, and each of her pretty pink eyes was setin an iris of sky-blue. It was evident that she did not regard oldKawook's passion-dance with favour and sensing this fact Kawook changedhis tactics and falling on all four feet began to chase his spiky tailas if he had suddenly gone mad. When he stopped, and looked to see whateffect he had made he was clearly knocked out by the fact that Iskwasishad disappeared. 

For another minute he sat stupidly, without making a sound. Then toMiki's consternation he started straight for the tree in which Neewawas sleeping. As a matter of fact, it was Kawook's dinner-tree, and hebegan climbing it, talking to himself all the time. Miki's hair beganto stand on end. He did not know that Kawook, like all his kind, wasthe best-natured fellow in the world, and had never harmed anything inhis life unless assaulted first. Lacking this knowledge he set up asudden frenzy of barking to warn Neewa. 

Neewa roused himself slowly, and when he opened his eyes he was lookinginto a spiky face that sent him into a convulsion of alarm. With asuddenness that came within an ace of toppling him from his crotch heswung over and scurried higher up the tree. Kawook was not at allexcited. Now that Iskwasis was gone he was entirely absorbed in theanticipation of his dinner. He continued to clamber slowly upward, andat this the horrified Neewa backed himself out on a limb in order thatKawook might have an unobstructed trail up the tree. 

Unfortunately for Neewa it was on this limb that Kawook had eaten hislast meal, and he began working himself out on it, still apparentlyoblivious of the fact that the cub was on the same branch. At this Mikisent up such a series of shrieking yelps from below that Kawook seemedat last to realize that something unusual was going on. He peered downat Miki who was making vain efforts to jump up the trunk of the tree;then he turned and, for the first time, contemplated Neewa with somesign of interest. Neewa was hugging the limb with both forearms andboth hind legs. To retreat another foot on the branch that was alreadybending dangerously under his weight seemed impossible. 

It was at this point that Kawook began to scold fiercely. With a finalfrantic yelp Miki sat back on his haunches and watched the thrillingdrama above him. A little at a time Kawook advanced, and inch by inchNeewa retreated, until at last he rolled clean over and was hangingwith his back toward the ground. It was then that Kawook ceased hisscolding and calmly began eating his dinner. For two or three minutesNeewa kept his hold. Twice he made efforts to pull himself up so thathe could get the branch under him. Then his hind feet slipped. For adozen seconds he hung with his two front paws--then shot down throughfifteen feet of space to the ground. Close to Miki he landed with athud that knocked the wind out of him. He rose with a grunt, took onedazed look up the tree, and without further explanation to Miki beganto leg it deeper into the forest--straight into the face of the greatadventure which was to be the final test for these two. 

CHAPTER EIGHT

Not until he had covered at least a quarter of a mile did Neewa stop. To Miki it seemed as though they had come suddenly out of day into thegloom of evening. That part of the forest into which Neewa's flight hadled them was like a vast, mysterious cavern. Even Challoner would havepaused there, awed by the grandeur of its silence, held spellbound bythe enigmatical whispers that made up its only sound. The sun was stillhigh in the heavens, but not a ray of it penetrated the dense greencanopy of spruce and balsam that hung like a wall over the heads ofMiki and Neewa. About them was no bush, no undergrowth; under theirfeet was not a flower or a spear of grass. Nothing but a thick, softcarpet of velvety brown needles under which all life was smothered. Itwas as if the forest nymphs had made of this their bedchamber, sheltered through all the seasons of the year from wind and rain andsnow; or else that the were-wolf people--the loup-garou--had chosen itas their hiding-place and from its weird and gloomy fastnesses wentforth on their ghostly missions among the sons of men. 

Not a bird twittered in the trees. There was no flutter of life intheir crowded branches. Everything was so still that Miki heard theexcited throbbing of life in his own body. He looked at Neewa, and inthe gloom the cub's eyes were glistening with a strange fire. Neitherof them was afraid, yet in that cavernous silence their comradeship wasborn anew, and in it there was something now that crept down into theirwild little souls and filled the emptiness that was left by the deathof Neewa's mother and the loss of Miki's master. The pup whined gently, and in his throat Neewa made a purring sound and followed it with asqueaky grunt that was like the grunt of a little pig. They edgednearer, and stood shoulder to shoulder facing their world. They went onafter a little, like two children exploring the mystery of an old andabandoned house. They were not hunting, yet every hunting instinct intheir bodies was awake, and they stopped frequently to peer about them, and listen, and scent the air. 

To Neewa it all brought back a memory of the black cavern in which hewas born. Would Noozak, his mother, come up presently out of one ofthose dark forest aisles? Was she sleeping here, as she had slept inthe darkness of their den? The questions may have come vaguely in hismind. For it was like the cavern, in that it was deathly still; and ashort distance away its gloom thickened into black pits. Such a placethe Indians called MUHNEDOO--a spot in the forest blasted of all lifeby the presence of devils; for only devils would grow trees so thickthat sunlight never penetrated. And only owls held the companionship ofthe evil spirits. 

Where Neewa and Miki stood a grown wolf would have paused, and turnedback; the fox would have slunk away, hugging the ground; even themurderous-hearted little ermine would have peered in with his beady redeyes, unafraid, but turned by instinct back into the open timber. Forhere, in spite of the stillness and the gloom, THERE WAS LIFE. It wasbeating and waiting in the ambush of those black pits. It was rousingitself, even as Neewa and Miki went on deeper into the silence, andeyes that were like round balls were beginning to glow with a greenishfire. Still there was no sound, no movement in the dense overgrowth ofthe trees. Like the imps of MUHNEDOO the monster owls looked down, gathering their slow wits--and waiting. 

And then a huge shadow floated out of the dark chaos and passed soclose over the heads of Neewa and Miki that they heard the menacingpurr of giant wings. As the wraith-like creature disappeared there cameback to them a hiss and the grating snap of a powerful beak. It sent ashiver through Miki. The instinct that had been fighting to rouseitself within him flared up like a powder-flash. Instantly he sensedthe nearness of an unknown and appalling danger. 

There was sound about them now--movement in the trees, ghostly tremoursin the air, and the crackling, metallic SNAP--SNAP--SNAP over theirheads. Again Miki saw the great shadow come and go. It was followed bya second, and a third, until the vault under the trees seemed filledwith shadows; and with each shadow came nearer that grating menace ofpowerfully beaked jaws. Like the wolf and the fox he cringed down, hugging the earth. But it was no longer with the whimpering fear of thepup. His muscles were drawn tight, and with a snarl he bared his fangswhen one of the owls swooped so low that he felt the beat of its wings. Neewa responded with a sniff that a little later in his life would havebeen the defiant WHOOF of his mother. Bear-like he was standing up. Andit was upon him that one of the shadows descended--a monstrousfeathered bolt straight out of darkness. 

Six feet away Miki's blazing eyes saw his comrade smothered under agray mass, and for a moment or two he was held appalled and lifeless bythe thunderous beat of the gargantuan wings. No sound came from Neewa. Flung on his back, he was digging his claws into feathers so thick andsoft that they seemed to have no heart or flesh. He felt upon him thepresence of the Thing that was death. The beat of the wings was likethe beat of clubs: they drove the breath out of his body, they blindedhis senses, yet he continued to tear fiercely with his claws into afleshless breast. 

In his first savage swoop Oohoomisew, whose great wings measured fivefeet from tip to tip, had missed his death-grip by the fraction of aninch. His powerful talons that would have buried themselves like knivesin Neewa's vitals closed too soon, and were filled with the cub's thickhair and loose hide. Now he was beating his prey down with his wingsuntil the right moment came for him to finish the killing with theterrific stabbing of his beak. Half a minute of that and Neewa's facewould be torn into pieces. 

It was the fact that Neewa made no sound, that no cry came from him, that brought Miki to his feet with his lips drawn back and a snarl inhis throat. All at once fear went out of him and in its place came awild and almost joyous exultation. He recognized their enemy--A BIRD. To him birds were a prey, and not a menace. A dozen times in theirjourney down from the Upper Country Challoner had shot big Canada geeseand huge-winged cranes. Miki had eaten their flesh. Twice he hadpursued wounded cranes, yapping at the top of his voice, AND THEY HADRUN FROM HIM. He did not bark or yelp now. Like a flash he launchedhimself into the feathered mass of the owl. His fourteen pounds offlesh and bone landed with the force of a stone, and Oohoomisew wastorn from his hold and flung with a great flutter of wings upon hisside. 

Before he could recover his balance Miki was at him again, strikingfull at his head, where he had struck at the wounded crane. Oohoomisewwent flat on his back--and for the first time Miki let out of histhroat a series of savage and snarling yelps. It was a new sound toOohoomisew and his blood-thirsty brethren watching the struggle fromout of the gloom. The snapping beaks drifted farther away, andOohoomisew, with a sudden sweep of wings, vaulted into the air. 

With his big forefeet planted firmly and his snarling face turned up tothe black wall of the tree-tops Miki continued to bark and howldefiantly. He wanted the bird to come back. He wanted to tear and ripat its feathers, and as he sent out his frantic challenge Neewa rolledover, got on his feet, and with a warning squeal to Miki once more setoff in flight. If Miki was ignorant in the matter, HE at leastunderstood the situation. Again it was the instinct born of countlessgenerations. He knew that in the black pits about them hovereddeath--and he ran as he had never run before in his life. As Mikifollowed, the shadows were beginning to float nearer again. 

Ahead of them they saw a glimmer of sunshine. The trees grew taller, and soon the day began breaking through so that there were no longerthe cavernous hollows of gloom about them. If they had gone on anotherhundred yards they would have come to the edge of the big plain, thehunting grounds of the owls. But the flame of self-preservation was hotin Neewa's head; he was still dazed by the thunderous beat of wings;his sides burned where Oohoomisew's talons had scarred his flesh; so, when he saw in his path a tangled windfall of tree trunks he dived intothe security of it so swiftly that for a moment or two Miki wonderedwhere he had gone. 

Crawling into the windfall after him Miki turned and poked out hishead. He was not satisfied. His lips were still drawn back, and hecontinued to growl. He had beaten his enemy. He had knocked it overfairly, and had filled his jaws with its feathers. In the face of thattriumph he sensed the fact that he had run away in following Neewa, andhe was possessed with the desire to go back and have it out to afinish. It was the blood of the Airedale and the Spitz growing strongerin him, fearless of defeat; the blood of his father, the gianthunting-hound Hela. It was the demand of his breed, with its mixture ofwolfish courage and fox-like persistency backed by the powerful jawsand Herculean strength of the Mackenzie hound, and if Neewa had notdrawn deeper under the windfall he would have gone out again and yelpedhis challenge to the feathered things from which they had fled. 

Neewa was smarting under the red-hot stab of Oohoomisew's talons, andhe wanted no more of the fight that came out of the air. He beganlicking his wounds, and after a while Miki went back to him and smelledof the fresh, warm blood. It made him growl. He knew that it wasNeewa's blood, and his eyes glowed like twin balls of fire as theywatched the opening through which they had entered into the dark tangleof fallen trees. 

For an hour he did not move, and in that hour, as in the hour after thekilling of the rabbit, he GREW. When at last he crept out cautiouslyfrom under the windfall the sun was sinking behind the western forests. He peered about him, watching for movement and listening for sound. Thesagging and apologetic posture of puppyhood was gone from him. Hisovergrown feet stood squarely on the ground; his angular legs were ashard as if carven out of knotty wood; his body was tense, his earsstood up, his head was rigidly set between the bony shoulders thatalready gave evidence of gigantic strength to come. About him he knewwas the Big Adventure. The world was no longer a world of play and ofsnuggling under the hands of a master. Something vastly more thrillinghad come into it now. 

After a time he dropped on his belly close to the opening under thewindfall and began chewing at the end of rope which dragged from abouthis neck. The sun sank lower. It disappeared. Still he waited for Neewato come out and lie with him in the open. As the twilight thickenedinto deeper gloom he drew himself into the edge of the door under thewindfall and found Neewa there. Together they peered forth into themysterious night. 

For a time there was the utter stillness of the first hour of darknessin the northland. Up in the clear sky the stars came out in twos andthen in glowing constellations. There was an early moon. It was alreadyover the edge of the forests, flooding the world with a golden glow, and in that glow the night was filled with grotesque black shadows thathad neither movement nor sound. Then the silence was broken. From outof the owl-infested pits came a strange and hollow sound. Miki hadheard the shrill screeching and the TU-WHO-O-O, TU-WHO-O-O, TU-WHO-O-Oof the little owls, the trap-pirates, but never this voice of thestrong-winged Jezebels and Frankensteins of the deeper forests--thereal butchers of the night. It was a hollow, throaty sound--more a moanthan a cry; a moan so short and low that it seemed born of caution, orof fear that it would frighten possible prey. For a few minutes pitafter pit gave forth each its signal of life, and then there was asilence of voice, broken at intervals by the faint, crashing sweep ofgreat wings in the spruce and balsam tops as the hunters launchedthemselves up and over them in the direction of the plain. 

The going forth of the owls was only the beginning of the nightcarnival for Neewa and Miki. For a long time they lay side by side, sleepless, and listening. Past the windfall went the padded feet of afisher-cat, and they caught the scent of it; to them came the far cryof a loon, the yapping of a restless fox, and the MOOING of a cow moosefeeding in the edge of a lake on the farther side of the plain. Andthen, at last, came the thing that made their blood run faster and senta deeper thrill into their hearts. 

It seemed a vast distance away at first--the hot throated cry of wolveson the trail of meat. It was swinging northward into the plain, andthis shortly brought the cry with the wind, which was out of the northand the west. The howling of the pack was very distinct after that, andin Miki's brain nebulous visions and almost unintelligible memorieswere swiftly wakening into life. It was not Challoner's voice that heheard, but it was A VOICE THAT HE KNEW. It was the voice of Hela, hisgiant father; the voice of Numa, his mother; the voice of his kind fora hundred and a thousand generations before him, and it was theinstinct of those generations and the hazy memory of his earliestpuppyhood that were impinging the thing upon him. A little later itwould take both intelligence and experience to make him discriminatethe hair-breadth difference between wolf and dog. And this voice of hisblood was COMING! It bore down upon them swiftly, fierce and filledwith the blood-lust of hunger. He forgot Neewa. He did not observe thecub when he slunk back deeper under the windfall. He rose up on hisfeet and stood stiff and tense, unconscious of all things but thatthrilling tongue of the hunt-pack. 

Wind-broken, his strength failing him, and his eyes wildly searchingthe night ahead for the gleam of water that might save him, Ahtik, theyoung caribou bull, raced for his life a hundred yards ahead of thewolves. The pack had already flung itself out in the form of ahorse-shoe, and the two ends were beginning to creep up abreast ofAhtik, ready to close in for the hamstring--and the kill. In these lastminutes every throat was silent, and the young bull sensed thebeginning of the end. Desperately he turned to the right and plungedinto the forest. 

Miki heard the crash of his body and he hugged close to the windfall. Ten seconds later Ahtik passed within fifty feet of him, a huge andgrotesque form in the moonlight, his coughing breath filled with theagony and hopelessness of approaching death. As swiftly as he had comehe was gone, and in his place followed half a score of noiselessshadows passing so quickly that to Miki they were like the coming andthe going of the wind. 

For many minutes after that he stood and listened but again silence hadfallen upon the night. After a little he went back into the windfalland lay down beside Neewa. 

Hours that followed he passed in restless snatches of slumber. Hedreamed of things that he had forgotten. He dreamed of Challoner. Hedreamed of chill nights and the big fires; he heard his master's voiceand he felt again the touch of his hand; but over it all and through itall ran that wild hunting voice of his own kind. 

In the early dawn he came out from under the windfall and smelled ofthe trail where the wolves and the caribou had passed. Heretofore itwas Neewa who had led in their wandering; now it was Neewa thatfollowed. His nostrils filled with the heavy scent of the pack, Mikitravelled steadily in the direction of the plain. It took him half anhour to reach the edge of it. After that he came to a wide and stonyout-cropping of the earth over which he nosed the spoor to a low andabrupt descent into the wider range of the valley. 

Here he stopped. 

Twenty feet under him and fifty feet away lay the partly devouredcarcass of the young bull. It was not this fact that thrilled him untilhis heart stood still. From out of the bushy plain had come Maheegun, arenegade she-wolf, to fill herself of the meat which she had not helpedto kill. She was a slinking, hollow-backed, quick-fanged creature, still rib-thin from the sickness that had come of eating a poison-bait;a beast shunned by her own kind--a coward, a murderess even of her ownwhelps. But she was none of these things to Miki. In her he saw inliving flesh and bone what his memory and his instinct recalled to himof his mother. And his mother had come before Challoner, his master. 

For a minute or two he lay trembling, and then he went down, as hewould have gone to Challoner; with great caution, with a wildersuspense, but with a strange yearning within him that the man'spresence would have failed to rouse. He was very close to Maheegunbefore she was conscious that he was near. The Mother-smell was warm inhis nose now; it filled him with a great joy; and yet--he was afraid. But it was not a physical fear. Flattened on the ground, with his headbetween his fore-paws, he whined. 

Like a flash the she-wolf turned, her fangs bared the length of herjaws and her bloodshot eyes aglow with menace and suspicion. Miki hadno time to make a move or another sound. With the suddenness of a catthe outcast creature was upon him. Her fangs slashed him just once--andshe was gone. Her teeth had drawn blood from his shoulder, but it wasnot the smart of the wound that held him for many moments as still asif dead. The Mother-smell was still where Maheegun had been. But hisdreams had crumbled. The thing that had been Memory died away at lastin a deep breath that was broken by a whimper of pain. For him, even asfor Neewa, there was no more a Challoner, and no longer a mother. Butthere remained--the world! In it the sun was rising. Out of it came thethrill and the perfume of life. And close to him--very close--was therich, sweet smell of meat. 

He sniffed hungrily. Then he turned, and saw Neewa's black and pudgybody tumbling down the slope of the dip to join him in the feast. 

CHAPTER NINE

Had Makoki, the leather-faced old Cree runner between God's Lake andFort Churchill, known the history of Miki and Neewa up to the pointwhere they came to feast on the fat and partly devoured carcass of theyoung caribou bull, he would have said that Iskoo Wapoo, the GoodSpirit of the beasts, was watching over them most carefully. For Makokihad great faith in the forest gods as well as in those of his owntepee. He would have given the story his own picturesque version, andwould have told it to the little children of his son's children; andhis son's children would have kept it in their memory for their ownchildren later on. 

It was not in the ordained nature of things that a black bear cub and aMackenzie hound pup with a dash of Airedale and Spitz in him should"chum up" together as Neewa and Miki had done. Therefore, he would havesaid, the Beneficent Spirit who watched over the affairs of four-leggedbeasts must have had an eye on them from the beginning. It wasshe--Iskoo Wapoo was a goddess and not a god--who had made Challonerkill Neewa's mother, the big black bear; and it was she who had inducedhim to tie the pup and the cub together on the same piece of rope, sothat when they fell out of the white man's canoe into the rapids theywould not die, but would be company and salvation for each other. NESWA-PAWUK ("two little brothers") Makoki would have called them; andhad it come to the test he would have cut off a finger before harmingeither of them. But Makoki knew nothing of their adventures, and onthis morning when they came down to the feast he was a hundred milesaway, haggling with a white man who wanted a guide. He would never knowthat Iskoo Wapoo was at his side that very moment, planning the thingthat was to mean so much in the lives of Neewa and Miki. 

Meanwhile Neewa and Miki went at their breakfast as if starved. Theywere immensely practical. They did not look back on what had happened, but for the moment submerged themselves completely in the present. Thefew days of thrill and adventure through which they had gone seemedlike a year. Neewa's yearning for his mother had grown less and lessinsistent, and Miki's lost master counted for nothing now, as thingswere going with him. Last night was the big, vivid thing in theirmemories--their fight for life with the monster owls, their flight, thekilling of the young caribou bull by the wolves, and (with Miki) theshort, bitter experience with Maheegun, the renegade she-wolf. Hisshoulder burned where she had torn at him with her teeth. But this didnot lessen his appetite. Growling as he ate, he filled himself until hecould hold no more. 

Then he sat back on his haunches and looked in the direction Maheegunhad taken. 

It was eastward, toward Hudson Bay, over a great plain that lay betweentwo ridges that were like forest walls, yellow and gold in the morningsun. He had never seen the world as it looked to him now. The wolveshad overtaken the caribou on a scarp on the high ground that thrustitself out like a short fat thumb from the black and owl-infestedforest, and the carcass lay in a meadowy dip that overhung the plain. From the edge of this dip Miki could look down--and so far away thatthe wonder of what he saw dissolved itself at last into the shimmer ofthe sun and the blue of the sky. Within his vision lay a paradise ofmarvellous promise; wide stretches of soft, green meadow; clumps oftimber, park-like until they merged into the deeper forest that beganwith the farther ridge; great patches of bush radiant with thecolouring of June; here and there the gleam of water, and half a mileaway a lake that was like a giant mirror set in a purplish-green frameof balsam and spruce. 

Into these things Maheegun, the she-wolf, had gone. He wondered whethershe would come back. He sniffed the air for her. But there was nolonger the mother-yearning in his heart. Something had already begun totell him of the vast difference between the dog and the wolf. For a fewmoments, still hopeful that the world held a mother for him, he hadmistaken her for the one he had lost. But he understood now. A littlemore and Maheegun's teeth would have snapped his shoulder, or slashedhis throat to the jugular. TEBAH-GONE-GAWIN (the One Great Law) wasimpinging itself upon him, the implacable law of the survival of thefittest. To live was to fight--to kill; to beat everything that hadfeet or wings. The earth and the air held menace for him. Nowhere, since he had lost Challoner, had he found friendship except in theheart of Neewa, the motherless cub. And he turned toward Neewa now, growling at a gay-plumaged moose-bird that was hovering about for amorsel of meat. 

A few minutes before, Neewa had weighed a dozen pounds; now he weighedfourteen or fifteen. His stomach was puffed out like the sides of anoverfilled bag, and he sat humped up in a pool of warm sunshine lickinghis chops and vastly contented with himself and the world. Miki rubbedup to him, and Neewa gave a chummy grunt. Then he rolled over on hisfat back and invited Miki to play. It was the first time; and with ajoyous yelp Miki jumped into him. Scratching and biting and kicking, and interjecting their friendly scrimmage with ferocious growling onMiki's part and pig-like grunts and squeals on Neewa's, they rolled tothe edge of the dip. It was a good hundred feet to the bottom--a steep, grassy slope that ran to the plain--and like two balls they catapultedthe length of it. For Neewa it was not so bad. He was round and fat, and went easily. 

With Miki it was different. He was all legs and skin and angular bone, and he went down twisting and somersaulting and tying himself intoknots until by the time he struck the hard strip of shale at the edgeof the plain he was drunk with dizziness and the breath was out of hisbody. He staggered to his feet with a gasp. For a space the world waswhirling round and round in a sickening circle. Then he pulled himselftogether, and made out Neewa a dozen feet away. 

Neewa was just awakening to the truth of an exhilarating discovery. Next to a boy on a sled, or a beaver on its tail, no one enjoys a"slide" more than a black bear cub, and as Miki rearranged hisscattered wits Neewa climbed twenty or thirty feet up the slope anddeliberately rolled down again! Miki's jaws fell apart in amazement. Again Neewa climbed up and rolled down--and Miki ceased to breathealtogether. Five times he watched Neewa go that twenty or thirty feetup the grassy slope and tumble down. The fifth time he waded into Neewaand gave him a rough-and-tumble that almost ended in a fight. 

After that Miki began exploring along the foot of the slope, and for ascant hundred yards Neewa humoured him by following, but beyond thatpoint he flatly refused to go. In the fourth month of his excitingyoung life Neewa was satisfied that Nature had given him birth that hemight have the endless pleasure of filling his stomach. For him, eatingwas the one and only excuse for existing. In the next few months he hada big job on his hands if he kept up the record of his family, and thefact that Miki was apparently abandoning the fat and juicy carcass ofthe young bull filled him with alarm and rebellion. Straightway heforgot all thought of play and started back up the slope on a missionthat was 100 per cent. Business. 

Observing this, Miki gave up his idea of exploration and joined him. They reached the shelf of the dip twenty yards from the carcass of thebull, and from a clutter of big stones looked forth upon their meat. Inthat moment they stood dumb and paralyzed. Two gigantic owls weretearing at the carcass. To Miki and Neewa these were the monsters ofthe black forest out of which they had escaped so narrowly with theirlives. But as a matter of fact they were not of Oohoomisew's breed ofnight-seeing pirates. They were Snowy Owls, unlike all others of theirkind in that their vision was as keen as a hawk's in the light of broadday. Mispoon, the big male, was immaculately white. His mate, a size ortwo smaller, was barred with brownish-slate colour--and their headswere round and terrible looking because they had no ear-tufts. Mispoon, with his splendid wings spread half over the carcass of Ahtik, the deadbull, was rending flesh so ravenously with his powerful beak that Neewaand Miki could hear the sound of it. Newish, his mate, had her headalmost buried in Ahtik's bowels. The sight of them and the sound oftheir eating were enough to disturb the nerves of an older bear thanNeewa, and he crouched behind a stone, with just his head sticking out. 

In Miki's throat was a sullen growl. But he held it back, and flattenedhimself on the ground. The blood of the giant hunter that was hisfather rose in him again like fire. The carcass was his meat, and hewas ready to fight for it. Besides, had he not whipped the big owl inthe forest? But here there were two. The fact held him flattened on hisbelly a moment or two longer, and in that brief space the unexpectedhappened. 

Slinking up out of the low growth of bush at the far edge of the diplie saw Maheegun, the renegade she-wolf. Hollow-backed, red-eyed, herbushy tail hanging with the sneaky droop of the murderess, she advancedover the bit of open, a gray and vengeful shadow. Furtive as she was, she at least acted with great swiftness. Straight at Mispoon shelaunched herself with a snarl and snap of fangs that made Miki hug theground still closer. 

Deep into Mispoon's four-inch armour of feathers Maheegun buried herfangs. Taken at a disadvantage Mispoon's head would have been torn fromhis body before he could have gathered himself for battle had it notbeen for Newish. Pulling her blood stained head from Ahtik's flesh andblood she drove at Maheegun with a throaty, wheezing scream--a cry thatwas like the cry of no other thing that lived. Into the she-wolf's backshe sank her beak and talons and Maheegun gave up her grip on Mispoonand tore ferociously at her new assailant. For a space Mispoon wassaved, but it was at a terrible sacrifice to Newish. With a singlelucky slash of her long-fanged jaws, Maheegun literally tore one ofNewish's great wings from her body. The croak of agony that came out ofher may have held the death-note for Mispoon, her mate; for he rose onhis wings, poised himself for an instant, and launched himself at theshe-wolf's back with a force that drove Maheegun off her feet. 

Deep into her loins the great owl sank his talons, gripping at therenegade's vitals with an avenging and ferocious tenacity. In that holdMaheegun felt the sting of death. She flung herself on her back; sherolled over and over, snarling and snapping and clawing the air in herefforts to free herself of the burning knives that were sinking stilldeeper into her bowels. Mispoon hung on, rolling as she rolled, beatingwith his giant wings, fastening his talons in that clutch that deathcould not shake loose. On the ground his mate was dying. Her life'sblood was pouring out of the hole in her side, but with the dimmingvision of death she made a last effort to help Mispoon. And Mispoon, ahero to the last, kept his grip until he was dead. 

Into the edge of the bush Maheegun dragged herself. There she freedherself of the big owl. But the deep wounds were still in her sides. The blood dripped from her belly as she made her way down into thethicker cover, leaving a red trail behind her. A quarter of a mile awayshe lay down under a clump of dwarf spruce; and there, a little later, she died. 

To Neewa and Miki--and especially to the son of Hela--the grim combathad widened even more that subtle and growing comprehension of theworld as it existed for them. It was the unforgettable wisdom ofexperience backed by an age-old instinct and the heredity of breed. They had killed small things--Neewa, his bugs and his frogs and hisbumble-bees; Miki, his rabbit--they had fought for their lives; theyhad passed through experiences that, from the beginning, had been agamble with death; but it had needed the climax of a struggle such asthey had seen with their own eyes to open up the doors that gave them anew viewpoint of life. 

It was many minutes before Miki went forth and smelled of Newish, thedead owl. He had no desire now to tear at her feathers in theexcitement of an infantile triumph and ferocity. Along with greaterunderstanding a new craft and a new cunning were born in him. The fateof Mispoon and his mate had taught him the priceless value of silenceand of caution, for he knew now that in the world there were manythings that were not afraid of him, and many things that would not runaway from him. He had lost his fearless and blatant contempt for wingedcreatures; he had learned that the earth was not made for him alone, and that to hold his small place on it he must fight as Maheegun andthe owls had fought. This was because in Miki's veins was the redfighting blood of a long line of ancestors that reached back to thewolves. 

In Neewa the process of deduction was vastly different. His breed wasnot the fighting breed, except as it fought among its own kind. It didnot make a habit of preying upon other beasts, and no other beastpreyed upon it. This was purely an accident of birth--the fact that noother creature in all his wide domain was powerful enough, either aloneor in groups, to defeat a grown black bear in open battle. ThereforeNeewa learned nothing of fighting in the tragedy of Maheegun and theowls. His profit, if any, was in a greater caution. And his chiefinterest was in the fact that Maheegun and the two owls had notdevoured the young bull. His supper was still safe. 

With his little round eyes on the alert for fresh trouble he kepthimself safely hidden while he watched Miki investigating the scene ofbattle. From the body of the owl Miki went to Ahtik, and from Ahtik hesniffed slowly over the trail which Maheegun had taken into the bush. In the edge of the cover he found Mispoon. He did not go farther, butreturned to Neewa, who by this time had made up his mind that he couldsafely come out into the open. 

Fifty times that day Miki rushed to the defense of their meat. Thebig-eyed, clucking moose-birds were most annoying. Next to them theCanada jays were most persistent. Twice a little gray-coated ermine, with eyes as red as garnets, came in to get his fill of blood. Miki wasat him so fiercely that he did not return a third time. By noon thecrows had got scent or sight of the carcass and were circling overhead, waiting for Neewa and Miki to disappear. Later, they set up a raucousprotest from the tops of the trees in the edge of the forest. 

That night the wolves did not return to the dip. Meat was tooplentiful, and those that were over their gorge were off on a freshkill far to the west. Once or twice Neewa and Miki heard their distantcry. 

Again through a star-filled radiant night they watched and listened, and slept at times. In the soft gray dawn they went forth once more totheir feast. 

And here is where Makoki, the old Cree runner, would have emphasizedthe presence of the Beneficent Spirit. For day followed day, and nightfollowed night, and Ahtik's flesh and blood put into Neewa and Miki astrength and growth that developed marvellously. By the fourth dayNeewa had become so fat and sleek that he was half again as big as onthe day he fell out of the canoe. Miki had begun to fill out. His ribscould no longer be counted from a distance. His chest was broadeningand his legs were losing some of their angular clumsiness. Practice onAhtik's bones had strengthened his jaws. With his development he feltless and less the old puppyish desire to play--more and more therestlessness of the hunter. The fourth night he heard again the wailinghunt-cry of the wolves, and it held a wild and thrilling note for him. 

With Neewa, fat and good humour and contentment were all synonymous. Aslong as the meat held out there was no very great temptation for himbeyond the dip and the slope. Two or three times a day he went down tothe creek; and every morning and afternoon--especially about sunset--hehad his fun rolling downhill. In addition to this he began taking hisafternoon naps in the crotch of a small sapling. As Miki could seeneither sense nor sport in tobogganing, and as he could not climb atree, he began to spend more and more time in venturing up and down thefoot of the ridge. He wanted Neewa to go with him on these expeditions. He never set out until he had entreated Neewa to come down out of histree, or until he had made an effort to coax him away from the singletrail he had made to the creek and back. Neewa's obstinacy would neverhave brought about any real unpleasantness between them. Miki thoughttoo much of him for that; and if it had come to a final test, and Neewahad thought that Miki would not return, he would undoubtedly havefollowed him. 

It was another and a more potent thing than an ordinary quarrel thatplaced the first great barrier between them. Now it happened that Mikiwas of the breed which preferred its meat fresh, while Neewa liked his"well hung. " And from the fourth day onward, what was left of Ahtik'scarcass was ripening. On the fifth day Miki found the flesh difficultto eat; on the sixth, impossible. To Neewa it became increasinglydelectable as the flavour grew and the perfume thickened. On the sixthday, in sheer delight, he rolled in it. That night, for the first time, Miki could not sleep with him. 

The seventh day brought the climax. Ahtik now fairly smelled to heaven. The odour of him drifted up and away on the soft June wind until allthe crows in the country were gathering. It drove Miki, slinking like awhipped cur, down into the creek bottom. When Neewa came down for adrink after his morning feast Miki sniffed him over for a moment andthen slunk away from him again. As a matter of fact, there was smalldifference between Ahtik and Neewa now, except that one lay still andthe other moved. Both smelled dead; both were decidedly "well hung. "Even the crows circled over Neewa, wondering why it was that he walkedabout like a living thing. 

That night Miki slept alone under a clump of bush in the creek bottom. He was hungry and lonely, and for the first time in many days he feltthe bigness and emptiness of the world. He wanted Neewa. He whined forhim in the starry silence of the long hours between sunset and dawn. The sun was well up before Neewa came down the hill. He had finishedhis breakfast and his morning roll, and he was worse than ever. AgainMiki tried to coax him away but Neewa was disgustingly fixed in hisdetermination to remain in his present glory. And this morning he wasmore than usually anxious to return to the dip. All of yesterday he hadfound it necessary to frighten the crows away from his meat, and to-daythey were doubly persistent in their efforts to rob him. With a gruntand a squeal to Miki he hustled back up the hill after he had taken hisdrink. 

His trail entered the dip through the pile of rocks from which Miki andhe had watched the battle between Maheegun and the two owls, and as amatter of caution he always paused for a few moments among these rocksto make sure that all was well in the open. This morning he received adecided shock. Ahtik's carcass was literally black with crows. Kakakewand his Ethiopic horde of scavengers had descended in a cloud, and theywere tearing and fighting and beating their wings about Ahtik as if allof them had gone mad. Another cloud was hovering in air; every bush andnear-by sapling was bending under the weight of them, and in the suntheir jet-black plumage glistened as if they had just come out of thebath of a tinker's pot. Neewa stood astounded. He was not frightened;he had driven the cowardly robbers away many times. But never had therebeen so many of them. He could see no trace of his meat. Even theground about it was black. 

He rushed out from the rocks with his lips drawn back, just as he hadrushed a dozen or more times before. There was a mighty roar of wings. The air was darkened by them, and the ravenish screaming that followedcould have been heard a mile away. This time Kakakew and his mightycrew did not fly back to the forest. Their number gave them courage. The taste of Ahtik's flesh and the flavour of it in their nostrilsintoxicated them, to the point of madness, with desire. Neewa wasdazed. Over him, behind him, on all sides of him they swept andcircled, croaking and screaming at him, the boldest of them swoopingdown to beat at him with their wings. Thicker grew the menacing cloud, and then suddenly it descended like an avalanche. It covered Ahtikagain. In it Neewa was fairly smothered. He felt himself buried under amass of wings and bodies, and he began fighting, as he had fought theowls. A score of pincer-like black beaks fought to get at his hair andhide; others stabbed at his eyes; he felt his ears being pulled fromhis head, and the end of his nose was a bloody cushion within a dozenseconds. The breath was beaten out of him; he was blinded, and dazed, and every square inch of him was aquiver with its own excruciatingpain. He forgot Ahtik. The one thing in the world he wanted most was alarge open space in which to run. 

Putting all his strength into the effort he struggled to his feet andcharged through the mass of living things about him. At this sign ofdefeat many of the crows left him to join in the feast. By the time hewas half way to the cover into which Maheegun had gone all but one hadleft him. That one may have been Kakakew himself. He had fastenedhimself like a rat-trap to Neewa's stubby tail, and there he hung onlike grim death while Neewa ran. He kept his hold until his victim waswell into the cover. Then he flopped himself into the air and rejoinedhis brethren at the putrified carcass of the bull. 

If ever Neewa had wanted Miki he wanted him now. Again his entireviewpoint of the world was changed. He was stabbed in a hundred places. He burned as if afire. Even the bottoms of his feet hurt him when hestepped on them, and for half an hour he hid himself under a bush, licking his wounds and sniffing the air for Miki. 

Then he went down the slope into the creek bottom, and hurried to thefoot of the trail he had made to and from the dip. Vainly he questedabout him for his comrade. He grunted and squealed, and tried to catchthe scent of him in the air. He ran up the creek a distance, and backagain. Ahtik counted as nothing now. 

Miki was gone. 

CHAPTER TEN

A quarter of a mile away Miki had heard the clamour of the crows. Buthe was in no humour to turn back, even had he guessed that Neewa was inneed of his help. He was hungry from long fasting and, for the present, his disposition had taken a decided turn. He was in a mood to tackleanything in the eating line, no matter how big, but he was a good milefrom the dip in the side of the ridge before he found even a crawfish. He crunched this down, shell and all. It helped to take the bad tasteout of his mouth. 

The day was destined to hold for him still another unforgettable eventin his life. Now that he was alone the memory of his master was not sovague as it had been yesterday, and the days before. Brain-picturescame back to him more vividly as the morning lengthened into afternoon, bridging slowly but surely the gulf that Neewa's comradeship hadwrought. For a time the exciting thrill of his adventure was gone. Halfa dozen times he hesitated on the point of turning back to Neewa. Itwas hunger that always drove him on a little farther. He found two morecrawfish. Then the creek deepened and its water ran slowly, and wasdarker. Twice he chased old rabbits, that got away from him easily. Once he came within an ace of catching a young one. Frequently apartridge rose with a thunder of wings. He saw moose-birds, and jays, and many squirrels. All about him was meat which it was impossible forhim to catch. Then fortune turned his way. Poking his head into the endof a hollow log he cornered a rabbit so completely that there was noescape. During the next few minutes he indulged in the first squaremeal he had eaten for three days. 

So absorbed was he in his feast that he was unconscious of a newarrival on the scene. He did not hear the coming of Oochak, thefisher-cat; nor, for a few moments, did he smell him. It was not inOochak's nature to make a disturbance. He was by birth and instinct avaliant hunter and a gentleman, and when he saw Miki (whom he took tobe a young wolf) feeding on a fresh kill, he made no move to demand ashare for himself. Nor did he run away. He would undoubtedly havecontinued on his way very soon if Miki had not finally sensed hispresence, and faced him. 

Oochak had come from the other side of the log, and stood not more thansix feet distant. To one who knew as little of his history as Mikithere was nothing at all ferocious about him. He was shaped like hiscousins, the weazel, the mink, and the skunk. He was about half as highas Miki, and fully as long, so that his two pairs of short legs seemedsomewhat out of place, as on a dachshund. He probably weighed betweeneight and ten pounds, had a bullet head, almost no ears, and atrociouswhiskers. Also he had a bushy tail and snapping little eyes that seemedto bore clean through whatever he looked at. To Miki his accidentalpresence was a threat and a challenge. Besides, Oochak looked like aneasy victim if it came to a fight. So he pulled back his lips andsnarled. 

Oochak accepted this as an invitation for him to move on, and being agentleman who respected other people's preserves he made his apologiesby beginning a velvet-footed exit. This was too much for Miki, who hadyet to learn the etiquette of the forest trails. Oochak was afraid ofhim. He was running away! With a triumphant yelp Miki took after him. After all, it was simply a mistake in judgment. (Many two-footedanimals with bigger brains than Miki's had made similar mistakes. ) ForOochak, attending always to his own business, was, for his size andweight, the greatest little fighter in North America. 

Just what happened in the one minute that followed his assault Mikiwould never be able quite to understand. It was not in reality a fight;it was a one-sided immolation, a massacre. His first impression wasthat he had tackled a dozen Oochaks instead of one. Beyond that firstimpression his mind did not work, nor did his eyes visualize. He waswhipped as he would never be whipped again in his life. He was cut andbruised and bitten; he was strangled and stabbed; he was so utterlymauled that for a space after Oochak had gone he continued to rake theair with his paws, unconscious of the fact that the affair was over. When he opened his eyes, and found himself alone, he slunk into thehollow log where he had cornered the rabbit. 

In there he lay a good half hour, trying hard to comprehend just whathad happened. The sun was setting when he dragged himself out. Helimped. His one good ear was bitten clean through. There were barespots on his hide where Oochak had scraped the hair off. His bonesached, his throat was sore, and there was a lump over one eye. Helooked longingly back over the "home" trail. Up there was Neewa. Withthe lengthening shadows of the day's end a great loneliness crept uponhim and a desire to turn back to his comrade. But Oochak had gone thatway--and he did not want to meet Oochak again. 

He wandered a little farther south and east, perhaps a quarter of amile, before the sun disappeared entirely. In the thickening gloom oftwilight he struck the Big Rock portage between the Beaver and the Loon. 

It was not a trail. Only at rare intervals did wandering voyageurscoming down from the north make use of it in their passage from onewaterway to the other. Three or four times a year at the most would awolf have caught the scent of man in it. It was there tonight, so freshthat Miki stopped when he came to it as if another Oochak had risenbefore him. For a space he was turned into the rigidity of rock by asingle overwhelming emotion. All other things were forgotten in thefact that he had struck the trail of a man--AND, THEREFORE, THE TRAILOF CHALLONER, HIS MASTER. He began to follow it--slowly at first, as iffearing that it might get away from him. Darkness came, and he wasstill following it. In the light of the stars he persisted, all elsecrowded from him but the homing instinct of the dog and the desire fora master. 

At last he came almost to the shore of the Loon, and there he saw thecampfire of Makoki and the white man. 

He did not rush in. He did not bark or yelp; the hard schooling of thewilderness had already set its mark upon him. He slunk incautiously--then stopped, flat on his belly, just outside the rim offirelight. Then he saw that neither of the men was Challoner. But bothwere smoking, as Challoner had smoked. He could hear their voices, andthey were like Challoner's voice. And the camp was the same--a fire, apot hanging over it, a tent, and in the air the odours of recentlycooked things. 

Another moment or two and he would have gone into the firelight. Butthe white man rose to his feet, stretched himself as he had often seenChalloner stretch, and picked up a stick of wood as big as his arm. Hecame within ten feet of Miki, and Miki wormed himself just a littletoward him, and stood up on his feet. It brought him into a half light. His eyes were aglow with the reflection of the fire. And the man sawhim. 

In a flash the club he held was over his head; it swung through the airwith the power of a giant arm behind it and was launched straight atMiki. Had it struck squarely it would have killed him. The big end ofit missed him; the smaller end landed against his neck and shoulder, driving him back into the gloom with such force and suddenness that theman thought he had done for him. He called out loudly to Makoki that hehad killed a young wolf or a fox, and dashed out into the darkness. 

The club had knocked Miki fairly into the heart of a thick groundspruce. There he lay, making no sound, with a terrible pain in hisshoulder. Between himself and the fire he saw the man bend over andpick up the club. He saw Makoki hurrying toward him with ANOTHER club, and under his shelter he made himself as small as he could. He wasfilled with a great dread, for now he understood the truth. THESE menwere not Challoner. They were hunting for him--with clubs in theirhands. He knew what the clubs meant. His shoulder was almost broken. 

He lay very still while the men searched about him. The Indian evenpoked his stick into the thick ground spruce. The white man kept sayingthat he was sure he had made a hit, and once he stood so near thatMiki's nose almost touched his boot. He went back and added fresh birchto the fire, so that the light of it illumined a greater space aboutthem. Miki's heart stood still. But the men searched farther on, and atlast went back to the fire. 

For an hour Miki did not move. The fire burned itself low. The old Creewrapped himself in a blanket, and the white man went into his tent. Notuntil then did Miki dare to crawl out from under the spruce. With hisbruised shoulder making him limp at every step he hurried back over thetrail which he had followed so hopefully a little while before. Theman-scent no longer made his heart beat swiftly with joy. It was amenace now. A warning. A thing from which he wanted to get away. Hewould sooner have faced Oochak again, or the owls, than the white manwith his club. With the owls he could fight, but in the club he sensedan overwhelming superiority. 

The night was very still when he dragged himself back to the hollow login which he had killed the rabbit. He crawled into it, and nursed hiswounds through all the rest of the hours of darkness. In the earlymorning he came out and ate the rest of the rabbit. 

After that he faced the north and west--where Neewa was. There was nohesitation now. He wanted Neewa again. He wanted to muzzle him with hisnose and lick his face even though he did smell to heaven. He wanted tohear him grunt and squeal in his funny, companionable way; he wanted tohunt with him again, and play with him, and lie down beside him in asunny spot and sleep. Neewa, at last, was a necessary part of his world. 

He set out. 

And Neewa, far up the creek, still followed hopefully and yearninglyover the trail of Miki. 

Half way to the dip, in a small open meadow that was a glory of sun, they met. There was no very great demonstration. They stopped andlooked at each other for a moment, as if to make sure that there was nomistake. Neewa grunted. Miki wagged his tail. They smelled noses. Neewaresponded with a little squeal, and Miki whined. It was as if they hadsaid, "Hello, Miki!"

"Hello, Neewa!"

And then Neewa lay down in the sun and Miki sprawled himself out besidehim. After all, it was a funny world. It went to pieces now and then, but it always came together again. And to-day their world hadthoroughly adjusted itself. Once more they were chums--and they werehappy. 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It was the Flying-Up Moon--deep and slumbering midsummer--in all theland of Keewatin. From Hudson Bay to the Athabasca and from the Hightof Land to the edge of the Great Barrens, forest, plain, and swamp layin peace and forgetfulness under the sun-glowing days and thestar-filled nights of the August MUKOO-SAWIN. It was the breeding moon, the growing moon, the moon when all wild life came into its own oncemore. For the trails of this wilderness world--so vast that it reacheda thousand miles east and west and as far north and south--were emptyof human life. At the Hudson Bay Company's posts--scattered here andthere over the illimitable domain of fang and claw--had gathered thethousands of hunters and trappers, with their wives and children, tosleep and gossip and play through the few weeks of warmth and plentyuntil the strife and tragedy of another winter began. For these peopleof the forests it was MUKOO-SAWIN--the great Play Day of the year; theweeks in which they ran up new debts and established new credits at thePosts; the weeks in which they foregathered at every Post as at a greatfair--playing, and making love, and marrying, and fattening up for themany days of hunger and gloom to come. 

It was because of this that the wild things had come fully into thepossession of their world for a space. There was no longer the scent ofman in all the wilderness. They were not hunted. There were no trapslaid for their feet, no poison-baits placed temptingly where they mightpass. In the fens and on the lakes the wildfowl squawked and honkedunfearing to their young, just learning the power of wing; the lynxplayed with her kittens without sniffing the air for the menace of man;the cow moose went openly into the cool water of the lakes with theircalves; the wolverine and the marten ran playfully over the roofs ofdeserted shacks and cabins; the beaver and the otter tumbled andfrolicked in their dark pools; the birds sang, and through all thewilderness there was the drone and song of Nature as some Great Powermust at first have meant that Nature should be. A new generation ofwild things had been born. It was a season of Youth, with tens ofthousands and hundreds of thousands of little children of the wildplaying their first play, learning their first lessons, growing upswiftly to face the menace and doom of their first winter. And theBeneficent Spirit of the forests, anticipating what was to come, hadprepared well for them. Everywhere there was plenty. The blueberries, the blackberries, the mountain-ash and the saskatoons were ripe; treeand vine were bent low with their burden of fruit. The grass was greenand tender from the summer rains. Bulbous roots were fairly popping outof the earth; the fens and the edges of the lakes were rich with thingsto eat, overhead and underfoot the horn of plenty was emptying itselfwithout stint. 

In this world Neewa and Miki found a vast and unending contentment. They lay, on this August afternoon, on a sun-bathed shelf of rock thatoverlooked a wonderful valley. Neewa, stuffed with lusciousblueberries, was asleep. Miki's eyes were only partly closed as helooked down into the soft haze of the valley. Up to him came therippling music of the stream running between the rocks and over thepebbly bars below, and with it the soft and languorous drone of thevalley itself. He napped uneasily for half an hour, and then his eyesopened and he was wide awake. He took a sharp look over the valley. Then he looked at Neewa, who, fat and lazy, would have slept untildark. It was always Miki who kept him on the move. And now Miki barkedat him gruffly two or three times, and nipped at one of his ears. 

"Wake up!" he might have said. "What's the sense of sleeping on a daylike this? Let's go down along the creek and hunt something. "

Neewa roused himself, stretched his fat body, and yawned. Sleepily hislittle eyes took in the valley. Miki got up and gave the low andanxious whine which always told his companion that he wanted to be onthe move. Neewa responded, and they began making their way down thegreen slope into the rich bottom between the two ridges. 

They were now almost six months of age, and in the matter of size hadnearly ceased to be a cub and a pup. They were almost a dog and a bear. Miki's angular legs were getting their shape; his chest had filled out;his neck had grown until it no longer seemed too small for his big headand jaws, and his body had increased in girth and length until he wastwice as big as most ordinary dogs of his age. 

Neewa had lost his round, ball-like cubbishness, though he stillbetrayed far more than Miki the fact that he was not many months lostfrom his mother. But he was no longer filled with that wholesome loveof peace that had filled his earlier cubhood. The blood of Soominitikwas at last beginning to assert itself, and he no longer sought a placeof safety in time of battle--unless the grimness of utter necessitymade it unavoidable. In fact, unlike most bears, he loved a fight. Ifthere were a stronger term at hand it might be applied to Miki, thetrue son of Hela. Youthful as they were, they were already covered withscars that would have made a veteran proud. Crows and owls, wolf-fangand fisher-claw had all left their marks, and on Miki's side was a barespace eight inches long left as a souvenir by a wolverine. 

In Neewa's funny round head there had grown, during the course ofevents, an ambition to have it out some day with a citizen of his ownkind; but the two opportunities that had come his way were spoiled bythe fact that the other cubs' mothers were with them. So now, when Mikiled off on his trips of adventure, Neewa always followed with anotherthrill than that of getting something to eat, which so long had beenhis one ambition. Which is not to say that Neewa had lost his appetite. He could eat more in one day than Miki could eat in three, mainlybecause Miki was satisfied with two or three meals a day while Neewapreferred one--a continuous one lasting from dawn until dark. On thetrail he was always eating something. 

A quarter of a mile along the foot of the ridge, in a stony coulee downwhich a tiny rivulet trickled, there grew the finest wild currants inall the Shamattawa country. Big as cherries, black as ink, and swellingalmost to the bursting point with luscious juice, they hung in clustersso thick that Neewa could gather them by the mouthful. Nothing in allthe wilderness is quite so good as one of these dead-ripe blackcurrants, and this coulee wherein they grew so richly Neewa hadpreempted as his own personal property. Miki, too, had learned to eatthe currants; so to the coulee they went this afternoon, for suchcurrants as these one can eat even when one is already full. Besides, the coulee was fruitful for Miki in other ways. There were many youngpartridges and rabbits in it--"fool hens" of tender flesh and deliciousflavour which he caught quite easily, and any number of gophers andsquirrels. 

To-day they had scarcely taken their first mouthful of the big juicycurrants when an unmistakable sound came to them. Unmistakable becauseeach recognized instantly what it meant. It was the tearing down ofcurrant bushes twenty or thirty yards higher up the coulee. Some robberhad invaded their treasure-house, and instantly Miki bared his fangswhile Neewa wrinkled up his nose in an ominous snarl. Soft-footed theyadvanced toward the sound until they came to the edge of a small openspace which was as flat as a table. In the centre of this space was aclump of currant bushes not more than a yard in girth, and black withfruit; and squatted on his haunches there, gathering the laden bushesin his arms, was a young black bear about four sizes larger than Neewa. 

In that moment of consternation and rage Neewa did not take size intoconsideration. He was much in the frame of mind of a man returning hometo discover his domicile, and all it contained, in full possession ofanother. At the same time here was his ambition easily to beachieved--his ambition to lick the daylight out of a member of his ownkind. Miki seemed to sense this fact. Under ordinary conditions hewould have led in the fray, and before Neewa had fairly got started, would have been at the impudent interloper's throat. But now somethingheld him back, and it was Neewa who first shot out--like a blackbolt--landing squarely in the ribs of his unsuspecting enemy. 

(Old Makoki, the Cree runner, had he seen that attack, would instantlyhave found a name for the other bear--"Petoot-a-wapis-kum, " whichmeans, literally: "Kicked-off-his-Feet. " Perhaps he would have calledhim "Pete" for short. For the Cree believes in fitting names to fact, and Petoot-a-wapis-kum certainly fitted the unknown bear like a glove. )

Taken utterly by surprise, with his mouth full of berries, he wasbowled over like an overfilled bag under the force of Neewa's charge. So complete was his discomfiture for the moment that Miki, watching theaffair with a yearning interest, could not keep back an excited yap ofapprobation. Before Pete could understand what had happened, and whilethe berries were still oozing from his mouth, Neewa was at histhroat--and the fun began. 

Now bears, and especially young bears, have a way of fighting that isall their own. It reminds one of a hair-pulling contest between twowell-matched ladies. There are no rules to the game--absolutely none. As Pete and Neewa clinched, their hind legs began to do the fighting, and the fur began to fly. Pete, being already on his back--afirst-class battling position for a bear--would have possessed anadvantage had it not been for Neewa's ferocious hold at his throat. Asit was, Neewa sank his fangs in to their full length, and scrubbed awayfor dear life with his sharp hind claws. Miki drew nearer at sight ofthe flying fur, his soul filled with joy. Then Pete got one leg intoaction, and then the other, and Miki's jaws came together with a suddenclick. Over and over the two fighters rolled, Neewa holding to histhroat-grip, and not a squeal or a grunt came from either of them. Pebbles and dirt flew along with hair and fur. Stones rolled with aclatter down the coulee. The very air trembled with the thrill ofcombat. In Miki's attitude of tense waiting there was something now ofsuspicious anxiety. With eight furry legs scratching and tearingfuriously, and the two fighters rolling and twisting and contortingthemselves like a pair of windmills gone mad, it was almost impossiblefor Miki to tell who was getting the worst of it--Neewa or Pete; atleast he was in doubt for a matter of three or four minutes. 

Then he recognized Neewa's voice. It was very faint, but for all thatit was an unmistakable bawl of pain. 

Smothered under Pete's heavier body Neewa began to realize, at the endof those three or four minutes, that he had tackled more than was goodfor him. It was altogether Pete's size and not his fighting qualities, for Neewa had him outpointed there. But he fought on, hoping for somegood turn of luck, until at last Pete got him just where he wanted himand began raking him up and down his sides until in another threeminutes he would have been half skinned if Miki hadn't judged themoment ripe for intervention. Even then Neewa was taking his punishmentwithout a howl. 

In another instant Miki had Pete by the ear. It was a grim and terriblehold. Old Soominitik himself would have bawled lustily in thecircumstances. Pete raised his voice in a howl of agony. He forgoteverything else but the terror and the pain of this new SOMETHING thathad him by the ear, and he rent the air with his outcry. Hislamentation poured in an unbroken spasm of sound from his throat. Neewaknew that Miki was in action. 

He pulled himself from under the young interloper's body--and not asecond too soon. Down the coulee, charging like a mad bull, came Pete'smother. Neewa was off like a shot just as she made a powerful swing athim. The blow missed, and the old bear turned excitedly to her bawlingoffspring. Miki, hanging joyously to his victim, was oblivious of hisdanger until Pete's mother was almost upon him. He caught sight of herjust as her long arm shot out like a wooden beam. He dodged; and theblow intended for him landed full against the side of the unfortunatePete's head with a force that took him clean off his feet and sent himflying like a football twenty yards down the coulee. 

Miki did not wait for further results. Quick as a flash he was in acurrant thicket tearing down the little gulch after Neewa. They cameout on the plain together, and for a good ten minutes they did not haltin their flight long enough to look back. When they did, the coulee wasa mile away. They sat down, panting. Neewa's red tongue was hanging outin his exhaustion. He was scratched and bleeding; loose hair hung allover him. As he looked at Miki there was something in the dolorousexpression of Neewa's face which was a confession of the fact that herealized Pete had licked him. 

CHAPTER TWELVE

After the fight in the coulee there was no longer a thought on the partof Neewa and Miki of returning to the Garden of Eden in which the blackcurrants grew so lusciously. From the tip of his tail to the end of hisnose Miki was an adventurer, and like the nomadic rovers of old he washappiest when on the move. The wilderness had claimed him now, body andsoul, and it is probable that he would have shunned a human camp atthis stage of his life, even as Neewa would have shunned it. But in thelives of beasts, as well as in the lives of men, Fate plays her pranksand tricks, and even as they turned into the vast and mystery-filledspaces of the great lake and waterway-country, to the west, events wereslowly shaping themselves into what was to be perhaps the darkest hourof gloom in the life of Miki, son of Hela. 

Through six glorious and sun-filled weeks of late summer and earlyautumn--until the middle of September--Miki and Neewa ranged thecountry westward, always heading toward the setting sun, the country ofJackson's Knee, of the Touchwood and the Clearwater, and God's Lake. Inthis country they saw many things. It was a region a hundred milessquare which the handiwork of Nature had made into a veritable kingdomof the wild. They came upon great beaver colonies in the dark andsilent places; they watched the otter at play; they came upon moose andcaribou so frequently that they no longer feared or evaded them, butwalked out openly into the meadows or down to the edge of the swampswhere they were feeding. It was here that Miki learned the great lessonthat claw and fang were made to prey upon cloven hoof and horn, for thewolves were thick, and a dozen times they came upon their kills, andeven more frequently heard the wild tongue of the hunting-packs. Sincehis experience with Maheegun he no longer had the desire to join them. And now Neewa no longer insisted on remaining near meat when they foundit. It was the beginning of the KWASKA-HAO in Neewa--the instinctivesensing of the Big Change. 

Until early in October Miki could see but little of this change in hiscomrade. It was then that Neewa became more and more restless, and thisrestlessness grew as the chill nights came, and autumn breathed moreheavily in the air. It was Neewa who took the lead in theirperegrinations now, and he seemed always to be questing forsomething--a mysterious something which Miki could neither smell norsee. He no longer slept for hours at a time. By mid-October he sleptscarcely at all, but roved through most of the hours of night as wellas day, eating, eating, eating, and always smelling the wind for thatelusive thing which Nature was commanding him to seek and find. Ceaselessly he was nosing under windfalls and among the rocks, and Mikiwas always near him, always on the QUI VIVE for battle with the thingthat Neewa was hunting out. And it seemed to be never found. 

Then Neewa turned back to the east, drawn by the instinct of hisforefathers; back toward the country of Noozak, his mother, and ofSoominitik, his father; and Miki followed. The nights grew more andmore chill. The stars seemed farther away, and no longer was the forestmoon red like blood. The cry of the loon had a moaning note in it, anote of grief and lamentation. And in their shacks and tepees theforest people sniffed the air of frosty mornings, and soaked theirtraps in fish-oil and beaver-grease, and made their moccasins, andmended snow-shoe and sledge, for the cry of the loon said that winterwas creeping down out of the North. And the swamps grew silent. The cowmoose no longer mooed to her young. In place of it, from the open plainand "burn" rose the defiant challenge of bull to bull and the deadlyclash of horn against horn under the stars of night. The wolf no longerhowled to hear his voice. In the travel of padded feet there came to bea slinking, hunting caution. In all the forest world blood was runningred again. 

And then--November. 

Perhaps Miki would never forget that first day when the snow came. Atfirst he thought all the winged things in the world were shedding theirwhite feathers. Then he felt the fine, soft touch of it under his feet, and the chill. It sent the blood rushing like a new kind of firethrough his body; a wild and thrilling joy--the exultation that leapsthrough the veins of the wolf when the winter comes. 

With Neewa its effect was different--so different that even Miki feltthe oppression of it, and waited vaguely and anxiously for what was tocome. And then, on this day of the first snow, he saw his comrade do astrange and unaccountable thing. He began to eat things that he hadnever touched as food before. He lapped up soft pine needles, andswallowed them. He ate of the dry, pulpy substance of rotted logs. Andthen he went into a great cleft broken into the heart of a rocky ridge, and found at last the thing for which he had been seeking. It was acavern--deep, and dark, and warm. 

Nature works in strange ways. She gives to the birds of the air eyeswhich men may never have, and she gives to the beasts of the earth aninstinct which men may never know. For Neewa had come back to sleep hisfirst Long Sleep in the place of his birth--the cavern in which Noozak, his mother, had brought him into the world. 

His old bed was still there, the wallow in the soft sand, the blanketof hair Noozak had shed; but the smell of his mother was gone. In thenest where he was born Neewa lay down, and for the last time he gruntedsoftly to Miki. It was as if he felt upon him the touch of a hand, gentle but inevitable, which he could no longer refuse to obey, and toMiki was saying, for the last time: "Good-night!"

That night the PIPOO KESTIN--the first storm of winter--came like anavalanche from out of the North. With it came a wind that was like theroaring of a thousand bulls, and over all the land of the wild therewas nothing that moved. Even in the depth of the cavern Miki heard thebeat and the wail of it and the swishing of the shot-like snow beyondthe door through which they had come, and he snuggled close to Neewa, content that they had found shelter. 

With the day he went to the slit in the face of the rock, and in hisastonishment he made no sound, but stared forth upon a world that wasno longer the world he had left last night. Everywhere it was white--adazzling, eye-blinding white. The sun had risen. It shot a thousandflashing shafts of radiant light into Miki's eyes. So far as his visioncould reach the earth was as if covered with a robe of diamonds. Fromrock and tree and shrub blazed the fire of the sun; it quivered in thetree-tops, bent low with their burden of snow; it was like a sea in thevalley, so vivid that the unfrozen stream running through the heart ofit was black. Never had Miki seen a day so magnificent. Never had hisheart pounded at the sight of the sun as it pounded now, and never hadhis blood burned with a wilder exultation. He whined, and ran back toNeewa. He barked in the gloom of the cavern and gave his comrade anudge with his nose. Neewa grunted sleepily. He stretched himself, raised his head for an instant, and then curled himself into a ballagain. Vainly Miki protested that it was day, and time for them to bemoving. Neewa made no response, and after a while Miki returned to themouth of the cavern, and looked back to see if Neewa was following him. Then, disappointed, he went out into the snow. For an hour he did notmove farther than ten feet away from the den. Three times he returnedto Neewa and urged him to get up and come out where it was light. Inthat far corner of the cavern it was dark, and it was as if he weretrying to tell Neewa that he was a dunce to lie there still thinking itwas night when the sun was up outside. But he failed. Neewa was in theedge of his Long Sleep--the beginning of USKE-POW-A-MEW, the dream landof the bears. 

Annoyance, the desire almost to sink his teeth in Neewa's ear, gaveplace slowly to another thing in Miki. The instinct that between beastsis like the spoken reason of men stirred in a strange and disquietingway within him. He became more and more uneasy. There was almostdistress in his restlessness as he hovered about the mouth of thecavern. A last time he went to Neewa, and then he started alone downinto the valley. 

He was hungry, but on this first day after the storm there was smallchance of him finding anything to eat. The snowshoe rabbits werecompletely buried under their windfalls and shelters, and lay quietlyin their warm nests. Nothing had moved during the hours of the storm. There were no trails of living things for him to follow, and in placeshe sank to his shoulders in the soft snow. He made his way to thecreek. It was no longer the creek he had known. It was edged with ice. There was something dark and brooding about it now. The sound it madewas no longer the rippling song of summer and golden autumn. There wasa threat in its gurgling monotone--a new voice, as if a black andforbidding spirit had taken possession of it and was warning him thatthe times had changed, and that new laws and a new force had come toclaim sovereignty in the land of his birth. 

He drank of the water cautiously. It was cold--ice-cold. Slowly it wasbeing impinged upon him that in the beauty of this new world that washis there was no longer the warm and pulsing beat of the heart that waslife. He was alone. ALONE! Everything else was covered up; everythingelse seemed dead. 

He went back to Neewa and lay close to him all through the day. Andthrough the night that followed he did not move again from the cavern. He went only as far as the door and saw celestial spaces ablaze withstars and a moon that rode up into the heavens like a white sun. They, too, seemed no longer like the moon and stars he had known. They wereterribly still and cold. And under them the earth was terribly whiteand silent. 

With the coming of dawn he tried once more to awaken Neewa. But thistime he was not so insistent. Nor did he have the desire to nip Neewawith his teeth. Something had happened--something which he could notunderstand. He sensed the thing, but he could not reason it. And he wasfilled with a strange and foreboding fear. 

He went down again to hunt. Under the glory of the moon and stars ithad been a wild night of carnival for the rabbits, and in the edge ofthe timber Miki found the snow beaten hard in places with their tracks. It was not difficult for him to stalk his breakfast this morning. Hemade his kill, and feasted. He killed again after that, and stillagain. He could have gone on killing, for now that the snow betrayedthem, the hiding-places of the rabbits were so many traps for them. Miki's courage returned. He was fired again with the joy of life. Neverhad he known such hunting, never had he found such a treasure-housebefore--not even in the coulee where the currants grew. He ate until hecould eat no more, and then he went back to Neewa, carrying with himone of the rabbits he had slain. He dropped it in front of his comrade, and whined. Even then Neewa did not respond, except to draw a deeperbreath, and change his position a little. 

That afternoon, for the first time in many hours, Neewa rose to hisfeet, stretched himself, and sniffed of the dead rabbit. But he did noteat. To Miki's consternation he rolled himself round and round in hisnest of sand and went to sleep again. 

The next day, at about the same time, Neewa roused himself once more. This time he went as far as the mouth of the den, and lapped up a fewmouthfuls of snow. But he still refused to eat the rabbit. Again it wasNature telling him that he must not disturb the pine needles and drybark with which he had padded his stomach and intestines. And he wentto sleep again. He did not get up after that. 

Day followed day, and, growing lonelier as the winter deepened, Mikihunted alone. All through November he came back each night and sleptwith Neewa. And Neewa was as if dead, except that his body was warm, and he breathed, and made little sounds now and then in his throat. Butthis did not satisfy the great yearning that was becoming more and moreinsistent in Miki's soul, the overwhelming desire for company, for abrotherhood on the trail. He loved Neewa. Through the first long weeksof winter he returned to him faithfully; he brought him meat. He wasfilled with a strange grief--even greater than if Neewa had been dead. For Miki knew that he was alive, and he could not account for the thingthat had happened. Death he would have understood, and FROM death hewould have gone away--for good. 

So it came that one night, having hunted far, Miki remained away fromthe den for the first time, and slept under a deep windfall. After thatit was still harder for him to resist the CALL. A second and a thirdnight he went away; and then came the time--inevitable as the comingand going of the moon and stars--when understanding at last broke itsway through his hope and his fear, and something told him that Neewawould never again travel with him as through those glorious days ofold, when shoulder to shoulder they had faced together the comedies andtragedies of life in a world that was no longer soft and green and warmwith a golden sun, but white, and still, and filled with death. 

Neewa did not know when Miki went away from the den for the last time. And yet it may be that even in his slumber the Beneficent Spirit mayhave whispered that Miki was going, for there were restlessness anddisquiet in Neewa's dreamland for many days thereafter. 

"Be quiet--and sleep!" the Spirit may have whispered. "The Winter islong. The rivers are black and chill, the lakes are covered with floorsof ice, and the waterfalls are frozen like great white giants. Sleep!For Miki must go his way, just as the waters of the streams must gotheir way to the sea. For he is Dog. And you are Bear. SLEEP!"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

In many years there had not been such a storm in all the Northland asthat which followed swiftly in the trail of the first snows that haddriven Neewa into his den--the late November storm of that year whichwill long be remembered as KUSKETA PIPPOON (the Black Year), the yearof great and sudden cold, of starvation and of death. 

It came a week after Miki had left the cavern wherein Neewa wassleeping so soundly. Preceding that, when all the forest world layunder its mantle of white, the sun shone day after day, and the moonand stars were as clear as golden fires in the night skies. The windwas out of the west. The rabbits were so numerous they made hard floorsof the snow in thicket and swamp. Caribou and moose were plentiful, andthe early cry of wolves on the hunt was like music in the ears of athousand trappers in shack and teepee. 

With appalling suddenness came the unexpected. There was no warning. The day had dawned with a clear sky, and a bright sun followed thedawn. Then the world darkened so swiftly that men on their traplinespaused in amazement. With the deepening gloom came a strange moaning, and there was something in that sound that seemed like the rolling of agreat drum--the knell of an impending doom. It was THUNDER. The warningwas too late. Before men could turn back to safety, or build themselvesshelters, the Big Storm was upon them. For three days and three nightsit raged like a mad bull from out of the north. In the open barrens noliving creature could stand upon its feet. The forests were broken, andall the earth was smothered. All things that breathed buriedthemselves--or died; for the snow that piled itself up in windrows andmountains was round and hard as leaden shot, and with it came anintense cold. 

On the third day it was sixty degrees below zero in the country betweenthe Shamattawa and Jackson's Knee. Not until the fourth day did livingthings begin to move. Moose and caribou heaved themselves up out of thethick covering of snow that had been their protection; smaller animalsdug their way out of the heart of deep drifts and mounds; a half of therabbits and birds were dead. But the most terrible toll was of men. Many of those who were caught out succeeded in keeping the life withintheir bodies, and dragged themselves back to teepee and shack. Butthere were also many who did not return--five hundred who died betweenHudson Bay and the Athabasca in those three terrible days of theKUSKETA PIPPOON. 

In the beginning of the Big Storm Miki found himself in the "burnt"country of Jackson's Knee, and instinct sent him quickly into deepertimber. Here he crawled into a windfall of tangled trunks andtree-tops, and during the three days he did not move. Buried in theheart of the storm, there came upon him an overwhelming desire toreturn to Neewa's den, and to snuggle up to him once more, even thoughNeewa lay as if dead. The strange comradeship that had grown up betweenthe two--their wanderings together all through the summer, the joys andhardships of the days and months in which they had fought and feastedlike brothers--were memories as vivid in his brain as if it had allhappened yesterday. And in the dark wind-fall, buried deeper and deeperunder the snow, he dreamed. 

He dreamed of Challoner, who had been his master in the days of hisjoyous puppyhood; he dreamed of the time when Neewa, the motherlesscub, was brought into camp, and of the happenings that had come to themafterward; the loss of his master, of their strange and thrillingadventures in the wilderness, and last of all of Neewa's denning-up. Hecould not understand that. Awake, and listening to the storm, hewondered why it was that Neewa no longer hunted with him, but hadcurled himself up into a round ball, and slept a sleep from which hecould not rouse him. Through the long hours of the three days andnights of storm it was loneliness more than hunger that ate at hisvitals. When on the morning of the fourth day he came out from underthe windfall his ribs were showing and there was a reddish film overhis eyes. First of all he looked south and east, and whined. 

Through twenty miles of snow he travelled back that day to the ridgewhere he had left Neewa. On this fourth day the sun shone like adazzling fire. It was so bright that the glare of the snow pricked hiseyes, and the reddish film grew redder. There was only a cold glow inthe west when he came to the end of his journey. Dusk had already begunto settle over the roofs of the forests when he reached the ridge whereNeewa had found the cavern. It was no longer a ridge. The wind hadpiled the snow up over it in grotesque and monstrous shapes. Rocks andbushes were obliterated. Where the mouth of the cavern should have beenwas a drift ten feet deep. Cold and hungry, thinned by his days andnights of fasting, and with his last hope of comradeship shattered bythe pitiless mountains of snow, Miki turned back over his trail. Therewas nothing left for him now but the old windfall, and his heart was nolonger the heart of the joyous comrade and brother of Neewa, the bear. His feet were sore and bleeding, but still he went on. The stars cameout; the night was ghostly white in their pale fire; and it wascold--terribly cold. The trees began to snap. Now and then there came areport like a pistol-shot as the frost snapped at the heart of timber. It was thirty degrees below zero. And it was growing colder. With thewindfall as his only inspiration Miki drove himself on. Never had hetested his strength or his endurance as he strained them now. Olderdogs would have fallen in the trail or have sought shelter or rest. ButMiki was the true son of Hela, his giant Mackenzie hound father, and hewould have continued until he triumphed--or died. 

But a strange thing happened. He had travelled twenty miles to theridge, and fifteen of the twenty miles back, when a shelf of snow gaveway under his feet and he was pitched suddenly downward. When hegathered his dazed wits and stood up on his half frozen legs he foundhimself in a curious place. He had rolled completely into awigwam-shaped shelter of spruce boughs and sticks, and strong in hisnostrils was the SMELL OF MEAT. He found the meat not more than a footfrom the end of his nose. It was a chunk of frozen caribou fleshtransfixed on a stick, and without questioning the manner of itspresence he gnawed at it ravenously. Only Jacques Le Beau, who livedeight or ten miles to the east, could have explained the situation. Miki had rolled into one of his trap-houses, and it was the bait he waseating. 

There was not much of it, but it fired Miki's blood with new life. There was smell in his nostrils now, and he began clawing in the snow. After a little his teeth struck something hard and cold. It wassteel--a fisher trap. He dragged it up from under a foot of snow, andwith it came a huge rabbit. The snow had so protected the rabbit that, although several days dead, it was not frozen stiff. Not until the lastbone of it was gone did Miki's feast end. He even devoured the head. Then he went on to the windfall, and in his warm nest slept untilanother day. 

That day Jacques Le Beau--whom the Indians called "Muchet-ta-aao" (theOne with an Evil Heart)--went over his trapline and rebuilt hissnow-smothered "houses" and re-set his traps. 

It was in the afternoon that Miki, who was hunting, struck his trail ina swamp several miles from the windfall. No longer was his soul stirredby the wild yearning for a master. He sniffed, suspiciously, of LeBeau's snowshoe tracks and the crest along his spine trembled as hecaught the wind, and listened. He followed cautiously, and a hundredyards farther on came to one of Le Beau's KEKEKS or trap-shelters. Heretoo, there was meat--fixed on a peg. Miki reached in. From under hisfore-paw came a vicious snap and the steel jaws of a trap flung sticksand snow into his face. He snarled, and for a few moments he waited, with his eyes on the trap. Then he stretched himself until he reachedthe meat, without advancing his feet. Thus he had discovered the hiddenmenace of the steel jaws, and instinct told him how to evade them. 

For another third of a mile he followed Le Beau's tracks. He sensed thepresence of a new and thrilling danger, and yet he did not turn off thetrail. An impulse which he was powerless to resist drew him on. He cameto a second trap, and this time he robbed the bait-peg withoutspringing the thing which he knew was concealed close under it. Hislong fangs clicked as he went on. He was eager for a glimpse of theman-beast. But he did not hurry. A third, a fourth, and a fifth trap herobbed of their meat. 

Then, as the day ended, he swung westward and covered quickly the fivemiles between the swamp and his windfall. 

Half an hour later Le Beau came back over the line. He saw the firstempty KEKEK, and the tracks in the snow. 

"TONNERRE!--a wolf!" he exclaimed. "And in broad day!"

Then a slow look of amazement crept into his face, and he fell upon hisknees in the snow and examined the tracks. 

"NON!" he gasped. "It is a dog! A devil of a wild dog--robbing mytraps!"

He rose to his feet, cursing. From the pocket of his coat he drew asmall tin box, and from this box he took a round ball of fat. In theheart of the fat was a strychnine capsule. It was a poison-bait, to beset for wolves and foxes. 

Le Beau chuckled exultantly as he stuck the deadly lure on the end ofthe bait-peg. 

"OW, a wild dog, " he growled. "I will teach him. To-morrow he will bedead. "

On each of the five ravished bait-pegs he placed a strychnine capsulerolled in its inviting little ball of fat. 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The next morning Miki set out again for the trapline of Jacques LeBeau. It was not the thought of food easily secured that tempted him. There would have been a greater thrill in killing for himself. It wasthe trail, with its smell of the man-beast, that drew him like amagnet. Where that smell was very strong he wanted to lie down, andwait. Yet with his desire there was also fear, and a steadily growingcaution. He did not tamper with the first KEKEK, nor with the second. At the third Le Beau had fumbled in the placing of his bait, and forthat reason the little ball of fat was strong with the scent of hishands. A fox would have turned away from it quickly. Miki, however, drew it from the peg and dropped it in the snow between his forefeet. Then he looked about him, and listened for a full minute. After that helicked the ball of fat with his tongue. The scent of Le Beau's handskept him from swallowing it as he had swallowed the caribou meat. Alittle suspiciously he crushed it slowly between his jaws. The fat wassweet. He was about to gulp it down when he detected another and lesspleasant taste, and what remained in his mouth he spat out upon thesnow. But the acrid bite of the poison remained upon his tongue and inhis throat. It crept deeper--and he caught up a mouthful of snow andswallowed it to put out the burning sensation that was crawling nearerto his vitals. 

Had he devoured the ball of fat as he had eaten the other baits hewould have been dead within a quarter of an hour, and Le Beau would nothave gone far to find his body. As it was, he was beginning to turnsick at the end of the fifteen minutes. A premonition of the evil thatwas upon him drew him off the trail and in the direction of thewindfall. He had gone only a short distance when suddenly his legs gaveway under him, and he fell. He began to shiver. Every muscle in hisbody trembled. His teeth clicked. His eyes grew wide, and it wasimpossible for him to move. And then, like a hand throttling him, therecame a strange stiffness in the back of his neck, and his breath hissedchokingly out of his throat. The stiffness passed like a wave of firethrough his body. Where his muscles had trembled and shivered a momentbefore they now became rigid and lifeless. The throttling grip of thepoison at the base of his brain drew his head back until his muzzle waspointed straight up to the sky. Still he made no cry. For a space everynerve in his body was at the point of death. 

Then came the change. As though a string had snapped, the horrible gripleft the back of his neck; the stiffness shot out of his body in aflood of shivering cold, and in another moment he was twisting andtearing up the snow in mad convulsions. The spasm lasted for perhaps aminute. When it was over Miki was panting. Streams of saliva drippedfrom his jaws into the snow. But he was alive. Death had missed him bya hair, and after a little he staggered to his feet and continued onhis way to the windfall. 

Thereafter Jacques Le Beau might place a million poison capsules in hisway and he would not touch them. Never again would he steal the meatfrom a bait-peg. 

Two days later Le Beau saw where Miki had fought his fight with deathin the snow and his heart was black with rage and disappointment. Hebegan to follow the footprints of the dog. It was noon when he came tothe windfall and saw the beaten path where Miki entered it. On hisknees he peered into the cavernous depths--and saw nothing. But Miki, lying watchfully, saw the man, and he was like the black, beardedmonster who had almost killed him with a club a long time ago. And inhis heart, too, there was disappointment, for away back in his memoryof things there was always the thought of Challoner--the master he hadlost; and it was never Challoner whom he found when he came upon theman smell. 

Le Beau heard his growl, and the man's blood leapt excitedly as he roseto his feet. He could not go in after the wild dog, and he could notlure him out. But there was another way. He would drive him out withfire!

Deep back in his fortress, Miki heard the crunch of Le Beau's feet inthe snow. A few minutes later he saw the man-beast again peering intohis lair. 

"BETE, BETE, " he called half tauntingly, and again Miki growled. 

Jacques was satisfied. The windfall was not more than thirty or fortyfeet in diameter, and about it the forest was open and clear ofundergrowth. It would be impossible for the wild dog to get away fromhis rifle. 

A second time he went around the piled-up mass of fallen timber. Onthree sides it was completely smothered under the deep snow. Only whereMiki's trail entered was it open. 

Getting the wind behind him Le Beau made his ISKOO of birch-bark anddry wood at the far end of the windfall. The seasoned logs andtree-tops caught the fire like tinder, and within a few minutes theflames began to crackle and roar in a manner that made Miki wonder whatwas happening. For a space the smoke did not reach him. Le Beau, watching, with his rifle in his bare hands, did not for an instant lethis eyes leave the spot where the wild dog must come out. 

Suddenly a pungent whiff of smoke filled Miki's nostrils, and a thinwhite cloud crept in a ghostly veil between him and the opening. Acrawling, snake-like rope of it began to pour between two logs within ayard of him, and with it the strange roaring grew nearer and moremenacing. Then, for the first time, he saw lightning flashes of yellowflame through the tangled debris as the fire ate into the heart of amass of pitch-filled spruce. In another ten seconds the flames leapttwenty feet into the air, and Jacques Le Beau stood with his rifle halfto his shoulder, ready to kill. 

Appalled by the danger that was upon him, Miki did not forget Le Beau. With an instinct sharpened to fox-like keenness his mind leaptinstantly to the truth of the matter. It was the man-beast who had setthis new enemy upon him; and out there, just beyond the opening, theman-beast was waiting. So, like the fox, he did what Le Beau leastexpected. He crawled back swiftly through the tangled tops until hecame to the wall of snow that shut the windfall in, and through this heburrowed his way almost as quickly as the fox himself would have doneit. With his jaws he tore through the half-inch outer crust, and amoment later stood in the open, with the fire between him and Le Beau. 

The windfall was a blazing furnace, and suddenly Le Beau ran back adozen steps so that he could see on the farther side. A hundred yardsaway he saw Miki making for the deeper forest. 

It was a clear shot. At that distance Le Beau would have staked hislife that it was impossible for him to miss. He did not hurry. Oneshot, and it would be over. He raised his rifle, and in that instant awisp of smoke came like the lash of a whip with the wind and caught himfairly in the eyes, and his bullet passed three inches over Miki'shead. The whining snarl of it was a new thing to Miki. But herecognized the thunder of the gun--and he knew what a gun could do. ToLe Beau, still firing at him through the merciful cloud of smoke, hewas like a gray streak flashing to the thick timber. Three times moreLe Beau fired. From the edge of a dense clump of spruce Miki flung backa defiant howl. He disappeared as Le Beau's last shot shovelled up thesnow at his heels. 

The narrowness of his escape from the man-beast did not frighten Mikiout of the Jackson's Knee country. If anything, it held him moreclosely to it. It gave him something to think about besides Neewa andhis aloneness. As the fox returns to peer stealthily upon the deadfallthat has almost caught him, so the trapline was possessed now of a newthrill for Miki. Heretofore the man-smell had held for him only a vaguesignificance; now it marked the presence of a real and concrete danger. And he welcomed it. His wits were sharpened. The fascination of thetrapline was deadlier than before. 

From the burned windfall he made a wide detour to a point where LeBeau's snowshoe trail entered the edge of the swamp; and here, hiddenin a thick clump of bushes, he watched him as he travelled homewardhalf an hour later. 

From that day he hung like a grim, gray ghost to the trapline. Silent-footed, cautious, always on the alert for the danger whichthreatened him, he haunted Jacques Le Beau's thoughts and footstepswith the elusive persistence of a were-wolf--a loup-garou of the BlackForest. Twice in the next week Le Beau caught a flash of him. Threetimes he heard him howl. And twice he followed his trail until, indespair and exhaustion, he turned back. Never was Miki caught unaware. He ate no more baits in the trap-houses. Even when Le Beau lured himwith the whole carcass of a rabbit he would not touch it, nor would hetouch a rabbit frozen dead in a snare. From Le Beau's traps he tookonly the living things, chiefly birds and squirrels and the bigweb-footed snowshoe rabbits. And because a mink jumped at him once, andtore open his nose, he destroyed a number of minks so utterly thattheir pelts were spoiled. He found himself another windfall, butinstinct taught him now never to go to it directly, but to approach it, and leave it, in a roundabout way. 

Day and night Le Beau, the man-brute, plotted against him. He set manypoison-baits. He killed a doe, and scattered strychnine in itsentrails. He built deadfalls, and baited them with meat soaked inboiling fat. He made himself a "blind" of spruce and cedar boughs, andsat for long hours, watching with his rifle. And still Miki was thevictor. 

One day Miki found a huge fisher-cat in one of the traps. He had notforgotten the battle of long ago with Oochak, the other fisher-cat, orthe whipping he had received. But there was no thought of vengeance inhis heart on the early evening he became acquainted with Oochak theSecond. Usually he was in his windfall at dusk, but this afternoon agreat and devouring loneliness had held him on the trail. The spirit ofKuskayetum--the hand of the mating-god--was pressing heavily upon him;the consuming desire of flesh and blood for the companionship of otherflesh and blood. It burned in his veins like a fever. It took away fromhim all thought of hunger or of the hunt. In his soul was a vast, unfilled yearning. 

It was then that he came upon Oochak. Perhaps it was the same Oochak ofmonths ago. If so, he had grown even as Miki had grown. He wassplendid, with his long silken fur and his sleek body, and he was notstruggling, but sat awaiting his fate without excitement. To Miki helooked warm and soft and comfortable. It made him think of Neewa, andthe hundred and one nights they had slept together. His desire leaptout to Oochak. He whined softly as he advanced. He would make friends. Even with Oochak, his old enemy, he would lie down in peace andhappiness, so great was the gnawing emptiness in his heart. 

Oochak made no response, nor did he move, but sat furred up like a hugesoft ball, watching Miki as he crept nearer on his belly. Something ofthe old puppishness came back into the dog. He wriggled and thumped histail, and as he whined again he seemed to say. 

"Let's forget the old trouble, Oochak. Let's be friends. I've got afine windfall--and I'll kill you a rabbit. "

And still Oochak did not move or make a sound. At last Miki couldalmost reach out with his forepaws and touch him. He dragged himselfstill nearer, and his tail thumped harder. 

"And I'll get you out of the trap, " he may have been saying. "It's theman-beast's trap--and I hate him. "

And then, so suddenly that Miki had no chance to guard himself, Oochaksprang the length of the trap-chain and was at him. With teeth andrazor-edged claws he tore deep gashes in Miki's nose. Even then theblood of battle rose slowly in him, and he might have retreated had notOochak's teeth got a hold in his shoulder. With a roar he tried toshake himself free, but Oochak held on. Then his jaws snapped at theback of the fisher-cat's neck. When he was done Oochak was dead. 

He slunk away, but in him there was no more the thrill of the victor. He had killed, but in killing he had found no joy. Upon him--thefour-footed beast--had fallen at last the oppression of the thing thatdrives men mad. He stood in the heart of a vast world, and for him thatworld was empty. He was an outcast. His heart crying out forcomradeship, he found that all things feared him or hated him. He was apariah; a wanderer without a friend or a home. He did not reason thesethings but the gloom of them settled upon him like black night. 

He did not return to his windfall. In a little open he sat on hishaunches, listening to the night sounds, and watching the stars as theycame out. There was an early moon, and as it came up over the forest, agreat throbbing red disc that seemed filled with life, he howledmournfully in the face of it. He wandered out into a big burn a littlelater, and there the night was like day, so clear that his shadowfollowed him and all other things about him cast shadows, And then, allat once, he caught in the night wind a sound which he had heard manytimes before. 

It came from far away, and it was like a whisper at first, an echo ofstrange voices riding on the wind, A hundred times he had heard thatcry of the wolves. Since Maheegun, the she-wolf, had gashed hisshoulder so fiercely away back in the days of his puppyhood he hadevaded the path of that cry. He had learned, in a way, to hate it. Buthe could not wipe out entirely the thrill that came with that call ofthe blood. And to-night it rode over all his fear and hatred. Out therewas COMPANY. Whence the cry came the wild brethren were running two bytwo, and three by three, and there was COMRADESHIP. His body quivered. An answering cry rose in his throat, dying away in a whine, and for anhour after that he heard no more of the wolf-cry in the wind. The packhad swung to the west--so far away that their voices were lost. And itpassed--with the moon straight over them--close to the shack ofPierrot, the halfbreed. 

In Pierrot's cabin was a white man, on his way to Fort O' God. He sawthat Pierrot crossed himself, and muttered. 

"It is the mad pack, " explained Pierrot then. "M'sieu, they have beenKESKWAO since the beginning of the new moon. In them are the spirits ofdevils. "

He opened the cabin door a little, so that the mad cry of the beastscame to them plainly. When he closed it there was in his eyes a look ofstrange fear. 

"Now and then wolves go like that--KESKWAO (stark mad)--in the dead ofwinter, " he shuddered. "Three days ago there were twenty of them, m'sieu, for I saw them with my own eyes, and counted their tracks inthe snow. Since then they been murdered and torn into strings by theothers of the pack. Listen to them ravin'! Can you tell me why, m'sieu?Can you tell me why wolves sometimes go mad in the heart of winter whenthere is no heat or rotten meat to turn them sick? NON? But I can tellyou. They are the loups-garous; in their bodies ride the spirits ofdevils, and there they will ride until the bodies die. For the wolvesthat go mad in the deep snows always die, m'sieu. That is the strangepart of it. THEY DIE!"

And then it was, swinging eastward from the cabin of Pierrot, that themad wolves of Jackson's Knee came into the country of the big swampwherein trees bore the Double-X blaze of Jacques Le Beau's axe. Therewere fourteen of them running in the moonlight. What it is that now andthen drives a wolf-pack mad in the dead of winter no man yet has whollylearned. Possibly it begins with a "bad" wolf; just as a "bad"sledge-dog, nipping and biting his fellows, will spread his distemperamong them until the team becomes an ugly, quarrelsome horde. Such adog the wise driver kills--or turns loose. 

The wolves that bore down upon Le Beau's country were red-eyed andthin. Their bodies were covered with gashes, and the mouths of somefrothed blood. They did not run as wolves run for meat. They were asinister and suspicious lot, with a sneaking droop to their haunches, and their cry was not the deep-throated cry of the hunt-pack but aravening clamour that seemed to have no leadership or cause. Scarcelywas the sound of their tongues gone beyond the hearing of Pierrot'sears than one of the thin gray beasts rubbed against the shoulder ofanother, and the second turned with the swiftness of a snake, like the"bad" dog of the traces, and struck his fangs deep into the firstwolf's flesh. Could Pierrot have seen, he would have understood thenhow the four he had found had come to their end. 

Swift as the snap of a whip-lash the fight between the two was on. Theother twelve of the pack stopped. They came back, circling incautiously and grimly silent about their fighting comrades. They rangedthemselves in a ring, as men gather about a fistic battle; and therethey waited, their jaws drooling, their fangs clicking, a low and eagerwhining smothered in their throats. And then the thing happened. One ofthe fighting wolves went down. He was on his back--and the end came. The twelve wolves were upon him as one, and, like those Pierrot hadseen, he was torn to pieces, and his flesh devoured. After that thethirteen went on deeper into Le Beau's country. 

Miki heard them again, after that hour's interval of silence. Fartherand farther he had wandered from the forest. He had crossed the "burn, "and was in the open plain, with the rough ridges cutting through andthe big river at the edge of it. It was not so gloomy out here, and hisloneliness weighed upon him less heavily than in the deep timber. 

And across this plain came the voice of the wolves. 

He did not move away from it to-night. He waited, silhouetted againstthe vivid starlight at the crest of a rocky knoll, and the top of thisknoll was so small that another could not have stood beside him withouttheir shoulders touching. On all sides of him the plain swept away inthe white light of the stars and moon; never had the desire to respondto the wild brethren urged itself upon him more fiercely than now. Heflung back his head, until his black-tipped muzzle pointed up to thestars, and the voice rolled out of his throat. But it was only half ahowl. Even then, oppressed by his great loneliness, there gripped himthat something instinctive which warned him against betrayal. Afterthat he remained quiet, and as the wolves drew nearer his body grewtense, his muscles hardened, and in his throat there was the lowwhispering of a snarl instead of a howl. He sensed danger. He hadcaught, in the voice of the wolves, the ravening note that had madePierrot cross himself and mutter of the loups-garous, and he croucheddown on his belly at the top of the rocky mound. 

Then he saw them. They were sweeping like dark and swiftly movingshadows between him and the forest. Suddenly they stopped, and for afew moments no sound came from them as they packed themselves closelyon the scent of his fresh trail in the snow. And then they surged inhis direction; this time there was a still fiercer madness in the wildcry that rose from their throats. In a dozen seconds they were at themound. They swept around it and past it, all save one--a huge graybrute who shot up the hillock straight at the prey the others had notyet seen. There was a snarl in Miki's throat as he came. Once more hewas facing the thrill of a great fight. Once more the blood ransuddenly hot in his veins, and fear was driven from him as the winddrives smoke from a fire. If Neewa were only there now, to fend at hisback while he fought in front! He stood up on his feet. He met theup-rushing pack-brute head to head. Their jaws clashed, and the wildwolf found jaws at last that crunched through his own as if they hadbeen whelp's bone, and he rolled and twisted back to the plain in adying agony. But not until another gray form had come to fill hisplace. Into the throat of this second Miki drove his fangs as the wolfcame over the crest. It was the slashing, sabre-like stroke of thenorth-dog, and the throat of the wolf was torn open and the bloodpoured out as if emptied by the blade of a knife. Down he plunged tojoin the first, and in that instant the pack swept up and over Miki, and he was smothered under the mass of their bodies. Had two or threeattacked him at once he would have died as quickly as the first two ofhis enemies had come to their end. Numbers saved him in the first rush. On the level of the plain he would have been torn into pieces like abit of cloth, but on the space at the top of the KOPJE, no larger thanthe top of a table, he was lost for a few seconds under the snarlingand rending horde of his enemies. Fangs intended for him sank intoother wolf-flesh; the madness of the pack became a blind rage, and theassault upon Miki turned into a slaughter of the wolves themselves. Onhis back, held down by the weight of bodies, Miki drove his fangs againand again into flesh. A pair of jaws seized him in the groin, and ashock of agony swept through him. It was a death-grip, sinking steadilyinto his vitals. Just in time another pair of jaws seized the wolf whoheld him, and the hold in his groin gave way. In that moment Miki felthimself plunging down the steep side of the knoll, and after him came ahalf of what was left alive of the pack. 

The fighting devils in Miki's brain gave way all at once to thatcunning of the fox which had served him even more than claw and fang intimes of great danger. Scarcely had he reached the plain before he wason his feet, and no sooner had he touched his feet than he was off likethe wind in direction of the river. He had gained a fifty-yard startbefore the first of the wolves discovered his flight. There were onlyeight that followed him now. Of the thirteen mad beasts five were deador dying at the foot of the hillock. Of these Miki had slain two. Theothers had fallen at the fangs of their own brethren. 

Half a mile away were the steep cliffs of the river, and at the edge ofthese cliffs was a great cairn of rocks in which for one night Miki hadsought shelter. He had not forgotten the tunnel into the tumbled massof rock debris, nor how easily it could be defended from within. Oncein that tunnel he would turn in the door of it and slaughter hisenemies one by one, for only one by one could they attack him. But hehad not reckoned with that huge gray form behind him that might havebeen named Lightning, the fiercest and swiftest of all the mad wolvesof the pack. He sped ahead of his slower-footed companions like astreak of light, and Miki had made but half the distance to the cairnwhen he heard the panting breath of Lightning behind him. Even Hela, his father, could not have run more swiftly than Miki, but great as wasMiki's speed, Lightning ran more swiftly. Two thirds of the distance tothe cliff and the huge wolf's muzzle was at Miki's flank. With a burstof speed Miki gained a little. Then steadily Lightning drew abreast ofhim, a grim and merciless shadow of doom. 

A hundred yards farther on and a little to the right was the cairn. ButMiki could not run to the right without turning into Lightning's jaws, and he realized now that if he reached the cairn his enemy would beupon him before he could dive into the tunnel and face about. To stopand fight would be death, for behind he could hear the other wolves. Ten seconds more and the chasm of the river yawned ahead of them. 

At its very brink Miki swung and struck at Lightning. He sensed deathnow, and in the face of death all his hatred turned upon the one beastthat had run at his side. In an instant they were down. Two yards fromthe edge of the cliff, and Miki's jaws were at Lightning's throat whenthe pack rushed upon them. They were swept onward. The earth flew outfrom under their feet, and they were in space. Grimly Miki held to thethroat of his foe. Over and over they twisted in mid-air, and then camea terrific shock. Lightning was under. Yet so great was the shock, that, even though the wolf's huge body was under him like a cushion, Miki was stunned and dazed. A minute passed before he staggered to hisfeet. Lightning lay still, the life smashed out of him. A little beyondhim lay the bodies of two other wolves that in their wild rush hadswept over the cliff. 

Miki looked up. Between him and the stars he could see the top of thecliff, a vast distance above him. One after the other he smelled at thebodies of the three dead wolves. Then he limped slowly along the baseof the cliff until he came to a fissure between two huge rocks. Intothis he crept and lay down, licking his wounds. After all there wereworse things in the world than Le Beau's trapline. Perhaps there wereeven worse things than men. 

After a time he stretched his great head out between his fore-paws, andslowly the starlight grew dimmer, and the snow less white, and he slept. 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

In a twist of Three Jackpine River, buried in the deep of the forestbetween the Shamattawa country and Hudson Bay, was the cabin in whichlived Jacques Le Beau, the trapper. There was not another man in allthat wilderness who was the equal of Le Beau in wickedness--unless itwas Durant, who hunted foxes a hundred miles north, and who wasJacques's rival in several things. A giant in size, with a heavy, sullen face and eyes which seemed but half-hidden greenish loopholesfor the pitiless soul within him--if he had a soul at all--Le Beau wasa "throw-back" of the worst sort. In their shacks and teepees theIndians whispered softly that all the devils of his forebears hadgathered in him. 

It was a grim kind of fate that had given to Le Beau a wife. Had shebeen a witch, an evil-doer and an evil-thinker like himself, the thingwould not have been such an abortion of what should have been. But shewas not that. Sweet-faced, with something of unusual beauty still inher pale cheeks and starving eyes--trembling at his approach and aslave in his presence--she was, like his dogs, the PROPERTY of TheBrute. And the woman had a baby. One had already died; and it was thethought that this one might die, as the other had died, that brought attimes the new flash of fire into her dark eyes. 

"Le bon Dieu--I pray to the Blessed Angels--I swear you SHALL live!"she would cry to it at times, hugging it close to her breast. And itwas at these times that the fire came into her eyes, and her palecheeks flushed with a smouldering bit of the flame that had once beenher beauty. "Some day--SOME DAY--"

But she never finished, even to the child, what was in her mind. Sometimes her dreams were filled with visions. The world was stillyoung, and SHE was not old. She was thinking of that as she stoodbefore the cracked bit of mirror in the cabin, brushing out her hair, that was black and shining and so long that it fell to her hips. Of herbeauty her hair had remained. It was defiant of The Brute. And deepback in her eyes, and in her face, there were still the living, hiddentraces of her girlhood heritage ready to bloom again if Fate, mendingits error at last, would only take away forever the crushing presenceof the Master. She stood a little longer before the bit of glass whenshe heard the crunching of footsteps in the snow outside. 

Swiftly what had been in her face was gone. Le Beau had been away onhis trapline since yesterday, and his return filled her with the olddread. Twice he had caught her before the mirror and had called hervile names for wasting her time in admiring herself when she might havebeen scraping the fat from his pelts. The second time he had sent herreeling back against the wall, and had broken the mirror until the bitshe treasured now was not much larger than her two slim hands. Shewould not be caught again. She ran with the glass to the place whereshe kept it in hiding, and then quickly she wove the heavy strands ofher hair into a braid. The strange, dead look of fear and forebodingclosed like a veil over the secrets her eyes had disclosed to herself. She turned, as she always turned in her woman's hope and yearning, togreet him when he entered. 

The Brute entered, a dark and surly monster. He was in a wicked humour. His freshly caught furs he flung to the floor. He pointed to them, andhis eyes were narrowed to menacing slits as they fell upon her. 

"He was there again--that devil!" he growled. "See, he has spoiled thefisher, and he has cleaned out my baits and knocked down thetrap-houses. Par les mille cornes du diable, but I will kill him! Ihave sworn to cut him into bits with a knife when I catch him--andcatch him I will, to-morrow. See to it there--the skins--when you havegot me something to eat. Mend the fisher where he is torn in two, andcover the seam well with fat so that the agent over at the post willnot discover it is bad. Tonnerre de Dieu!--that brat! Why do you alwayskeep his squalling until I come in? Answer me, Bete!"

Such was his greeting. He flung his snowshoes into a corner, stampedthe snow off his feet, and got himself a fresh plug of black tobaccofrom a shelf over the stove. Then he went out again, leaving the womanwith a cold tremble in her heart and the wan desolation of hopelessnessin her face as she set about getting him food. 

From the cabin Le Beau went to his dog-pit, a corral of saplings with ashelter-shack in the centre of it. It was The Brute's boast that he hadthe fiercest pack of sledge-dogs between Hudson Bay and the Athabasca. It was his chief quarrel with Durant, his rival farther north; and hisambition was to breed a pup that would kill the fighting husky whichDurant brought down to the Post with him each winter at New Year. Thisseason he had chosen Netah ("The Killer") for the big fight at God'sLake. On the day he would gamble his money and his reputation againstDurant's, his dog would be just one month under two years of age. Itwas Netah he called from out of the pack now. 

The dog slunk to him with a low growl in his throat, and for the firsttime something like joy shone in Le Beau's face. He loved to hear thatgrowl. He loved to see the red and treacherous glow in Netah's eyes, and hear the menacing click of his jaws. Whatever of nobility mighthave been in Netah's blood had been clubbed out by the man. They werealike, in that their souls were dead. And Netah, for a dog, was adevil. For that reason Le Beau had chosen him to fight the big fight. 

Le Beau looked down at him, and drew a deep breath of satisfaction. 

"OW! but you are looking fine, Netah, " he exulted. "I can almost seerunning blood in those devil-eyes of yours; OUI--red blood that smellsand runs, as the blood of Durant's POOS shall run when you sink thoseteeth in its jugular. And to-morrow we are going to give you thetest--such a beautiful test!--with the wild dog that is robbing mytraps and tearing my fishers into bits. For I will catch him, and youshall fight him until he is almost dead; and then I shall cut his heartout alive, as I have promised, and you will eat it while it is stillbeating, so that there will be no excuse for your losing to that POOSwhich M'sieu Durant will bring down. COMPRENEZ? It will be a beautifultest--to-morrow. And if you fail I will kill you. OUI; if you so muchas let a whimper out of you, I will kill you--dead. "

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

That same night, ten miles to the west, Miki slept under a windfall oflogs and treetops not more than half a mile from Le Beau's trapline. 

In the early dawn, when Le Beau left his cabin, accompanied by Netah, The Killer, Miki came out from under his windfall after a night oftroublous dreams. He had dreamed of those first weeks after he had losthis master, when Neewa was always at his side; and the visions that hadcome to him filled him with an uneasiness and a loneliness that madehim whine as he stood watching the dark shadows fading away before thecoming of day. Could Le Beau have seen him there, as the first of thecold sun struck upon him, the words which he had repeated over and overto The Killer would have stuck in his throat. For at eleven months ofage Miki was a young giant of his breed. He weighed sixty pounds, andnone of that sixty was fat. His body was as slim and as lean as awolf's. His chest was massive, and over it the muscles rolled likeBABICHE cord when he moved. His legs were like the legs of Hela, thebig Mackenzie hound who was his father; and with his jaws he couldcrack a caribou bone as Le Beau might have cracked it with a stone. Foreight of the eleven months of his life the wilderness had been hismaster; it had tempered him to the hardness of living steel; it hadwrought him without abeyance to age in the mould of its pitilessschooling--had taught him to fight for his life, to kill that he mightlive, and to use his brain before he used his jaws. He was as powerfulas Netah, The Killer, who was twice his age, and with his strength hepossessed a cunning and a quickness which The Killer would never know. Thus had the raw wilderness prepared him for this day. 

As the sun fired up the forest with a cold flame Miki set off indirection of Le Beau's trapline. He came to where Le Beau had passedyesterday and sniffed suspiciously of the man-smell that was stillstrong in the snowshoe tracks. He had become accustomed to this smell, but he had not lost his suspicion of it. It was repugnant to him, evenas it fascinated him. It filled him with an inexplicable fear, and yethe found himself powerless to run away from it. Three times in the lastten days he had seen the man-brute himself. Once he had been hidingwithin a dozen yards of Le Beau when he passed. 

This morning he headed straight for the swamp through which Le Beau'straps were set. There the rabbits were thickest and it was in the swampthat they most frequently got in Jacques's KEKEKS--the little houses hebuilt of sticks and cedar boughs to keep the snow off his baits. Theywere so numerous that they were a pest, and each time that Le Beau madehis trip over the line he found at least two out of every three trapssprung by them, and therefore made useless for the catching of fur. But, where there were many rabbits there were also fishers and lynx, and in spite of the rage which the plague of rabbits sent him into, LeBeau continued to set his traps there. And now, in addition to therabbits, he had the wild dog to contend with. 

His heart was fired by a vengeful anticipation as he hurried on throughthe glow of the early sun, with The Killer at his heels, led by aBABICHE thong. Miki was nosing about the first trap-house as Netah andLe Beau entered the edge of the swamp, three miles to the east. 

It was in this KEKEK that Miki had killed the fisher-cat the previousmorning. It was empty now. Even the bait-peg was gone, and there was nosign of a trap. A quarter of a mile farther on he came to a secondtrap-house, and this also was empty. He was a bit puzzled. And then hewent on to the third house. He stood for several minutes, sniffing theair still more suspiciously, before he drew close to it. The man-trackswere thicker here. The snow was beaten down with them, and the scent ofLe Beau was so strong in the air that for a space Miki believed he wasnear. Then he advanced so that he got a look into the door of thetrap-house. Squatted there, staring at him with big round eyes, was ahuge snowshoe rabbit. A premonition of danger held Miki back. It wassomething in the attitude of Wapoos, the old rabbit. He was not likethe others he had caught along Le Beau's line. He was not struggling ina trap; he was not stretched out, half frozen, and he was not danglingat the end of a snare. He was all furred up into a warm and comfortablelooking ball. As a matter of fact, Le Beau had caught him with hishands in a hollow log, and had tied him to the bait peg with a piece ofbuck-skin string; and after that, just out of Wapoos's reach, he hadset a nest of traps and covered them with snow. 

Nearer and nearer to this menace drew Miki, in spite of theunaccountable impulse that warned him to keep back. Wapoos, fascinatedby his slow and deadly advance, made no movement, but sat as if frozeninto stone. Then Miki was at him. His powerful jaws closed with acrunch. In the same instant there came the angry snap of steel and afisher-trap closed on one of his hind feet. With a snarl he droppedWapoos and turned upon it, SNAP--SNAP--SNAP went three more ofJacques's nest of traps. Two of them missed. The third caught him by afront paw. As he had caught Wapoos, and as he had killed thefisher-cat, so now he seized this new and savage enemy between hisjaws. His fangs crunched on the cold steel; he literally tore it fromhis paw so that blood streamed forth and strained the snow red. Madlyhe twisted himself to get at his hind foot. On this foot thefisher-trap had secured a hold that was unbreakable. He ground itbetween his jaws until the blood ran from his mouth. He was fighting itwhen Le Beau came out from behind a clump of spruce twenty yards awaywith The Killer at his heels. 

The Brute stopped. He was panting, and his eyes were aflame. Twohundred yards away he had heard the clinking of the trap-chain. 

"OW! he is there, " he gasped, tightening his hold on The Killer's leadthong. "He is there, Netah, you Red Eye! That is the robber devil youare to kill--almost. I will unfasten you, and then--GO TO!"

Miki, no longer fighting the trap, was eyeing them as they advanced. Inthis moment of peril he felt no fear of the man. In his veins the hotblood raged with a killing madness. The truth leapt upon him in a flashof instinctive awakening. These two were his enemies instead of thething on his foot--the man-beast, and Netah, The Killer. Heremembered--as if it were yesterday. This was not the first time he hadseen a man with a club in his hand. And Le Beau held a club. But he wasnot afraid. His steady eyes watched Netah. Unleashed by his master, TheKiller stood on stiff legs a dozen feet away, the wiry crest along hisspine erect, his muscles tense. 

Miki heard the man-beast's voice. 

"Go to, you devil! GO TO!"

Miki waited, without the quiver of a muscle. Thus much he had learnedof his hard lessons in the wilderness--to wait, and watch, and use hiscunning. He was flat on his belly, his nose between his forepaws. Hislips were drawn back a little, just a little; but he made no sound, andhis eyes were as steady as two points of flame. Le Beau stared. He feltsuddenly a new thrill, and it was not the thrill of his desire forvengeance. Never had he seen a lynx or a fox or a wolf in a trap likethat. Never had he seen a dog with eyes like the eyes that were onNetah. For a moment he held his breath. 

Foot by foot, and then almost inch by inch, The Killer crept in. Tenfeet, eight, six--and all that time Miki made no move, never winked aneye. With a snarl like that of a tiger, Netah came at him. 

What happened then was the most marvellous thing that Jacques Le Beauhad ever seen. So swiftly that his eyes could scarcely follow themovement, Miki had passed like a flash under the belly of Netah, andturning then at the end of his trap chain he was at The Killer's throatbefore Le Beau could have counted ten. They were down, and The Brutegripped the club in his hand and stared like one fascinated. He heardthe grinding crunch of jaws, and he knew they were the Wild Dog's jaws;he heard a snarl choking slowly into a wheezing sob of agony, and heknew that the sound came from The Eller. The blood rose into his face. The red fire in his eyes grew livid--a blaze of exultation, of triumph. 

"TONNERRE DE DIEU! he is choking the life out of Netah!" he gasped. "NON, I have never seen a dog like that. I will keep him alive; and heshall fight Durant's POOS over at Post Fort O' God! By the belly ofSaint Gris, I say--"

The Killer was as good as dead if left another minute. With upraisedclub Le Beau advanced. As he sank his fangs deeper into Netah's throatMiki saw the new danger out of the corner of his eye. He loosed hisjaws and swung himself free of The Killer as the club descended. Heonly partly evaded the smashing blow, which caught him on the shoulderand knocked him down. Quick as a flash he was on his feet and hadlunged at Le Beau. The Frenchman was a master with the club. All hislife he had used it, and he brought it around in a sudden side-swingthat landed with terrific force against Miki's head. The blood spurtedfrom his mouth and nostrils. He was dazed and half blinded. He leaptagain, and the club caught him once more. He heard Le Beau's ferociouscry of joy. A third, a fourth, and a fifth time he went down under theclub, and Le Beau no longer laughed, but swung his weapon with a lookthat was half fear in his eyes. The sixth time the club missed, andMiki's jaws closed against The Brute's chest, ripping away the thickcoat and shirt as if they had been of paper, and leaving on Le Beau'sskin a bleeding gash. Ten inches more--a little better vision in hisblood-dimmed eyes--and he would have reached the man's throat. A greatcry rose out of Le Beau. For an instant he felt the appalling nearnessof death. 

"Netah! Netah!" he cried, and swung the club wildly. 

Netah did not respond. It may be that in this moment he sensed the factthat it was his master who had made him into a monster. About him wasthe wilderness, opening its doors of freedom. When Le Beau called againThe Killer was slinking away, dripping blood as he went--and this wasthe last that Le Beau saw of him. Probably he joined the wolves, forThe Killer was a quarter-strain wild. 

Le Beau got no more than a glimpse of him as he disappeared. Hisclub-arm shot out again, a clean miss; and this time it was pure chancethat saved him. The trap-chain caught, and Miki fell back when his hotbreath was almost at The Brute's jugular. He fell upon his side. Beforehe could recover himself the club was pounding his head into the snow. The world grew black. He no longer had the power to move. Lying as ifdead he still heard over him the panting, exultant voice of theman-beast. For Le Beau, black though his heart was, could not keep backa prayerful cry of thankfulness that he was victor--and had misseddeath, though by a space no wider than the link of a chain. 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Nanette, the woman, saw Jacques come out of the edge of the timber latein the afternoon, dragging something on the snow behind him. In herheart, ever since her husband had begun to talk about him, she had keptsecret to herself a pity for the wild dog. Long before the last babyhad come she had loved a dog. It was this dog that had given her theonly real affection she had known in the company of The Brute, and withbarbarous cruelty Le Beau had driven it from her. Nanette herself hadencouraged it to seek freedom in the wilderness, as Netah had at lastsought his. Therefore she had prayed that the wild dog of the traplinemight escape. 

As Le Beau came nearer she saw that what he drew after him upon thesnow was a sledge-drag made of four lengths of sapling, and when, amoment later, she looked down at its burden, she gave a little cry ofhorror. 

Miki's four feet were tied so firmly to the pieces of sapling that hecould not move. A cord about his neck was fastened to one of thecrossbars, and over his jaws Le Beau had improvised a muzzle ofunbreakable BABICHE thong. He had done all this before Miki regainedconsciousness after the clubbing. The woman stared, and there was asudden catch in her breath after the little cry that had fallen fromher lips. Many times she had seen Jacques club his dogs, but never hadshe seen one clubbed like this. Miki's head and shoulders were a massof frozen blood. And then she saw his eyes. They were looking straightup at her. She turned, fearing that Jacques might see what was in herface. 

Le Beau dragged his burden straight into the cabin, and then stood backand rubbed his hands as he looked at Miki on the floor. Nanette sawthat he was in a strangely good humour, and waited. 

"By the Blessed Saints, but you should have seen him killNetah--almost, " he exulted. "OUI; he had him down by the throat quickerthan you could flash your eye, and twice he was within an inch of mylife when I fought him with the club. DIEU! I say, what will happen toDurant's dog when they meet at Post Fort 0' God? I will make a sidewager that he kills him before the second-hand of LE FACTEUR'S watch, goes round twice. He is splendid! Watch him, Nanette, while I go make acorral for him alone. If I put him in with the pack he will kill themall. "

Miki's eyes followed him as he disappeared through the cabin door. Thenhe looked swiftly back to Nanette. She had drawn nearer. Her eyes wereshining as she bent over him. A snarl rose in Miki's throat, and diedthere. For the first time he was looking upon WOMAN. He sensed, all atonce, a difference as vast as the world itself. In his bruised andbroken body his heart stood still. Nanette spoke to him. Never in hislife had he heard a voice like hers--soft and gentle, with a breakingsob in it; and then--miracle of miracles--she had dropped on her kneesand her hands were at his head!

In that instant his spirit leapt back through the generations--backbeyond his father, and his father's father; back to that far day whenthe blood in the veins of his race was "just dog, " and he romped withchildren, and listened to the call of woman, and worshipped at theshrine of humankind. And now the woman had run quickly to the stove, and was back again with a dish of warm water and a soft cloth, and wasbathing his head, talking to him all the time in that gentle, half-sobbing voice of pity and of love. He closed his eyes--no longerafraid. A great sigh heaved out of his body. He wanted to put out histongue and lick the slim white hands that were bringing him peace andcomfort. And then the strangest thing of all happened. In the crib thebaby sat up and began to prattle. It was a new note to Miki, a new songof Life's spring-tide to him, but it thrilled him as nothing else inall the world had ever thrilled him before. He opened his eyeswide--and whined. 

A laugh of joy--new and strange even to herself--came into the woman'svoice, and she ran to the crib and returned with the baby in her arms. She knelt down beside him again, and the baby, at sight of this strangeplaything on the floor, thrust out its little arms, and kicked its tinymoccasined feet, and cooed and laughed and squirmed until Miki strainedat his thongs to get a little nearer that he might touch this wonderfulcreature with his nose. He forgot his pain. He no longer sensed theagony of his bruised and beaten jaws. He did not feel the numbness ofhis tightly bound and frozen legs. Every instinct in him was centred inthese two. 

And the woman, now, was beautiful. She UNDERSTOOD; and the gentle heartthrobbed in her bosom, forgetful of The Brute. Her eyes glowed with thesoft radiance of stars. Into her pale cheeks came a sweet flush. Shesat the baby down, and with the cloth and warm water continued to batheMiki's head. Le Beau, had he been human, must have worshipped her thenas she knelt there, all that was pure and beautiful in motherhood, anangel of mercy, radiant for a moment in her forgetfulness of HIM. AndLe Beau DID enter--and see her--so quietly that for a space she did notrealize his presence; and with him staring down on her she continued totalk and laugh and half sob, and the baby kicked and prattled and flungout its little arms wildly in the joy of these exciting moments. 

Le Beau's thick lips drew back in an ugly leer, and he gave a savagecurse. Nanette flinched as if struck a blow. 

"Get up, you fool!" he snarled. 

She obeyed, shrinking back with the baby in her arms. Miki saw thechange, and the greenish fire returned into his eyes when he caughtsight of Le Beau. A deep and wolfish snarl rose in his throat. 

Le Beau turned on Nanette. The glow and the flush had not quite gonefrom her eyes and cheeks as she stood with the baby hugged up to herbreast, and her big shining braid had fallen over her shoulder, glistening with a velvety fire in the light that came through thewestern window. But Le Beau saw nothing of this. 

"If you make a POOS (a house-kitten) of that dog--a thing like you madeof Minoo, the breed-bitch, I will--"

He did not finish, but his huge hands were clinched, and there was anugly passion in his eyes. Nanette needed no more than that. Sheunderstood. She had received many blows, but there was the memory ofone that never left her, night or day. Some day, if she could ever getto Post Fort O' God, and had the courage, she would tell LE FACTEUR ofthat blow--how Jacques Le Beau, her husband, struck it at the nursingtime, and her bosom was so hurt that the baby of two years ago haddied. She would tell it, when she knew she and the baby would be safefrom the vengeance of the Brute. And only LE FACTEUR--the Big Man atPost Fort O' God a hundred miles away--was powerful enough to save her. 

It was well that Le Beau did not read this thought in her mind now. With his warning he turned to Miki and dragged him out of the cabin toa cage made of saplings in which the winter before he had kept two livefoxes. A small chain ten feet in length he fastened around Miki's neckand then to one of the sapling bars before he thrust his prisonerinside the door of the prison and freed him by cutting the BABICHEthongs with a knife. 

For several minutes after that Miki lay still while the blood made itsway slowly through his numbed and half-frozen limbs. At last hestaggered to his feet, and then it was that Le Beau chuckled jubilantlyand turned back to the cabin. 

And now followed many days that were days of hell and torment forhim--an unequal struggle between the power of The Brute and the spiritof the Dog. 

"I must break you--OW! by the Christ! I WILL break you!"--Le Beau wouldsay time and again when he came with the club and the whip. "I willmake you crawl to me--OUI, and when I say fight you will fight!"

It was a small cage, so small that Miki could not get away from thereach of the club and the whip. They maddened him--for a time, and LeBeau's ugly soul was filled with joy as Miki launched himself again andagain at the sapling bars, tearing at them with his teeth and frothingblood like a wolf gone mad. For twenty years Le Beau had trainedfighting dogs, and this was his way. So he had done with Netah untilThe Killer was mastered, and at his call crept to him on his belly. 

Three times, from a window in the cabin, Nanette looked forth on thesehorrible struggles between the man and the dog, and the third time sheburied her face in her arms and sobbed; and when Le Beau came in andfound her crying he dragged her to the window and made her look outagain at Miki, who lay bleeding and half dead in the cage. It was amorning on which he started the round of his traps, and he was alwaysgone until late the following day. And never was he more than well outof sight than Nanette would run out and go to the cage. 

It was then that Miki forgot The Brute. At times so beaten and blindedthat he could scarcely stand or see, he would crawl to the bars of thecage and caress the soft hands that Nanette held in fearlessly to him. And then, after a little, Nanette began to bring the baby out with her, bundled up like a little Eskimo, and in his joy Miki whimpered andwagged his tail and grovelled in his worship before these two. 

It was in the second week of his captivity that the wonderful thinghappened. Le Beau was gone, and there was a raging blizzard outside towhich Nanette dared not expose the baby. So she went to the cage, andwith a heart that beat wildly, she unbarred the door--and brought Mikiinto the cabin! If Le Beau should ever discover what she had done--!

The thought made her shiver. 

After this first time she brought him into the cabin again and again. Once her heart stood still when Le Beau saw blood on the floor, and hiseyes shot at her suspiciously. Then she lied. 

"I cut my finger she said, " and a moment later, with her back to him, she DID cut it, and when Jacques looked at her hand he saw a clothabout the finger, with blood-stain on it. 

After that Nanette always watched the floor carefully. 

More and more this cabin, with the woman and the baby in it, became aparadise for Miki. Then came the time when Nanette dared to keep him inthe cabin with her all night, and lying close to the precious cradleMiki never once took his eyes from her. It was late when she preparedfor bed. She changed into a long, soft robe, and then, sitting nearMiki, with her bare little feet in the fireglow, she took down herwonderful hair and began brushing it. It was the first time Miki hadseen this new and marvellous garment about her. It fell over hershoulders and breast and almost to the floor in a shimmering glory, andthe scent of it was so sweet that Miki crept a few inches nearer, andwhimpered softly. After she had done brushing it Miki watched her asher slim fingers plaited it into two braids; and then, before she putthe light out, a still more curious thing happened. She went to herbed, made of saplings, against the wall, and from its hiding placeunder the blankets drew forth tenderly a little ivory Crucifix. Withthis in her hands she knelt upon the log floor, and Miki listened toher prayer. He did not know, but she was asking God to be good to herbaby--the little Nanette in the crib. 

After that she cuddled the baby up in her arms, and put out the light, and went to bed; and through all the hours of the night Miki made nosound that would waken them. 

In the morning, when Nanette opened her eyes, she found Miki with hishead resting on the edge of the bed, close to the baby that was nestledagainst her bosom. 

That morning, as she built the fire, something strange and stirring inNanette's breast made her sing. Le Beau would be away until dark thatnight, and she would never dare to tell him what she and the baby andthe dog were going to do. It was her birthday. Twenty-six; and itseemed to her that she had lived the time of two lives! And eight ofthose years with The Brute! But to-day they would celebrate, theythree. All the morning the cabin was filled with a new spirit--a newhappiness. 

Years ago, before she had met Le Beau, the Indians away back on theWaterfound had called Nanette "Tanta Penashe" ("the Little Bird")because of the marvellous sweetness of her voice. And this morning shesang as she prepared the birthday feast; the sun flooded through thewindows, and Miki whimpered happily and thumped his tail, and the babycackled and crowed, and The Brute was forgotten. In that forgetfulnessNanette was a girl again, sweet and beautiful as in those days when oldJackpine, the Cree--who was now dead--had told her that she was born ofthe flowers. The wonderful dinner was ready at last, and to the baby'sdelight Nanette induced Miki to sit on a chair at the table. He feltfoolish there, and he looked so foolish that Nanette laughed until herlong dark lashes were damp with tears; and then, when Miki slunk downfrom the chair, feeling his shame horribly, she ran to him and put herarms around him and pleaded with him until he took his place at thetable again. 

So the day passed until mid-afternoon, when Nanette cleared away allsigns of the celebration and locked Miki in his cage. It was fortunateshe was ahead of time, for scarcely was she done when Le Beau came intothe edge of the clearing, and with him was Durant, his acquaintance andrival from the edge of the Barrens farther north. Durant had sent hisoutfit on to Port O' God by an Indian, and had struck south and westwith two dogs and a sledge to visit a cousin for a day or two. He wason his way to the Post when he came upon Le Beau on his trapline. 

Thus much Le Beau told Nanette, and Nanette looked at Durant withstartled eyes. They were a good pair, Jacques and his guest, only thatDurant was older. She had become somewhat accustomed to the brutalityin Le Beau's face, but she thought that Durant was a monster. He madeher afraid, and she was glad when they went from the cabin. 

"Now I will show you the BETE that is going to kill your POOS as easilyas your lead-whelp killed that rabbit to-day, m'sieu, " exulted Jacques. "I have told you but you have not seen!"

And he took with him the club and the whip. 

Like a tiger fresh out of the jungles Miki responded to the club andthe whip to-day, until Durant himself stood aghast, and exclaimed underhis breath: "MON DIEU! he is a devil!"

From the window Nanette saw what was happening, and out of her rose acry of anguish. Sudden as a burst of fire there arose inher--triumphant at last and unafraid--that thing which for years TheBrute had crushed back: her womanhood resurrected! Her soul broken freeof its shackles! Her faith, her strength, her courage! She turned fromthe window and ran to the door, and out over the snow to the cage; andfor the first time in her life she struck at Le Beau, and beat fiercelyat the arm that was wielding the club. 

"You beast!" she cried. "I tell you, you SHALL NOT! Do you hear? YouSHALL NOT!"

Paralyzed with amazement, The Brute stood still. Was this Nanette, hisslave? This wonderful creature with eyes that were glowing fire anddefiance, and a look in her face that he had never seen in any woman'sface before? NON--impossible! Hot rage rose in him, and with a singlesweep of his powerful arm he flung her back so that she fell to theearth. With a wild curse he lifted the bar of the cage door. 

"I will kill him, now; I will KILL him!" he almost shrieked. "And it isYOU--YOU--you she-devil! who shall eat his heart alive! I will force itdown your throat: I will--"

He was dragging Miki forth by the chain. The club rose as Miki's headcame through. In another instant it would have beaten his head to apulp--but Nanette was between it and the dog like a flash, and the blowwent wild. It was with his fist that Le Beau struck out now, and theblow caught Nanette on the shoulder and sent her frail body down with acrash. The Brute sprang upon her. His fingers gripped in her thick, soft hair. 

And then--

From Durant came a warning cry. It was too late. A lean gray streak ofvengeance and retribution, Miki was at the end of his chain and at LeBeau's throat. Nanette HEARD! Through dazed eyes she SAW! She reachedout gropingly and struggled to her feet, and looked just once down uponthe snow. Then, with a terrible cry, she staggered toward the cabin. 

When Durant gathered courage to drag Le Beau out of Miki's reach Mikimade no movement to harm him. Again, perhaps, it was the BeneficentSpirit that told him his duty was done. He went back into his cage, andlying there on his belly looked forth at Durant. 

And Durant, looking at the blood-stained snow and the dead body of TheBrute, whispered to himself again:

"MON DIEU! he is a devil!"

In the cabin, Nanette was upon her knees before the crucifix. 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

There are times when death is a shock, but not a grief. And so it waswith Nanette Le Beau. With her own eyes she had looked upon theterrible fate of her husband, and it was not in her gentle soul to weepor wish him alive again. At last there had overtaken him what LE BONDIEU had intended him to receive some day: justice. And for the baby'ssake more than her own Nanette was not sorry. Durant, whose soul wasonly a little less wicked than the dead man's, had not even waited fora prayer--had not asked her what to do. He had chopped a hole in thefrozen earth and had buried Le Beau almost before his body was cold. And Nanette was not sorry for that. The Brute was gone. He was gone forever. He would never strike her again. And because of the baby sheoffered up a prayer of gratitude to God. 

In his prison-cage of sapling bars Miki cringed on his belly at the endof his chain. He had scarcely moved since those terrible moments inwhich he had torn the life out of the man-brute's throat. He had noteven growled at Durant when he dragged the body away. Upon him hadfallen a fearful and overwhelming oppression. He was not thinking ofhis own brutal beatings, or of the death which Le Beau had been aboutto inflict upon him with the club; he did not feel the presence of painin his bruised and battered body, nor in his bleeding jaws andwhip-lashed eyes. He was thinking of Nanette, the woman. Why had sherun away with that terrible cry when he killed the man-beast? Was itnot the man-beast who had struck her down, and whose hands were at herwhite throat when he sprang the length of his chain and tore out hisjugular? Then why was it that she ran away, and did not come back?

He whimpered softly. 

The afternoon was almost gone, and the early gloom of mid-winter nightin the Northland was settling thickly over the forests. In that gloomthe dark face of Durant appeared at the bars of Miki's prison. Instinctively Miki had hated this foxhunter from the edge of theBarrens, just as he had hated Le Beau, for in their brutish faces aswell as in their hearts they were like brothers. Yet he did not growlat Durant as he peered through. He did not even move. 

"UGH! LE DIABLE!" shuddered Durant. 

Then he laughed. It was a low, terrible laugh, half smothered in hiscoarse black beard, and it sent an odd chill through Miki. 

He turned after that and went into the cabin. 

Nanette rose to meet him, her great dark eyes glowing in a face deadwhite. She had not yet risen above the shock of Le Beau's tragic death, and yet in those eyes there was already something re-born. It had notbeen there when Durant came to the cabin with Le Beau that afternoon. He looked at her strangely as she stood with the baby in her arms. Shewas another Nanette. He felt uneasy. Why was it that a few hours ago hehad laughed boldly when her husband had cursed her and said vile thingsin her presence--and now he could not meet the steady gaze of her eyes?DIEU! he had never before observed how lovely she was! He drew himselftogether, and stated the business in his mind. 

"You will not want the dog, " he said. "I will take him away. "

Nanette did not answer. She seemed scarcely to be breathing as shelooked at him. It seemed to him that she was waiting for him toexplain; and then the inspiration to lie leapt into his mind. 

"You know, there was to be the big fight between HIS dog and mine atPost Fort O' God at the New Year carnival, " he went on, shuffling hisheavy feet. "For that, Jacques--your husband--was training the wilddog. And when I saw that OOCHUN--that wolf devil--tearing at the barsof the cage I knew he would kill my dog as a fox kills a rabbit. So westruck a bargain, and for the two cross foxes and the ten red which Ihave outside I bought him. " (The VRAISEMBLANCE of his lie gave himcourage. It sounded like truth, and Jacques, the dead man, was notthere to repudiate his claim. ) "So he is mine, " he finished a littleexultantly, "and I will take him to the Post, and will fight himagainst any dog or wolf in all the North. Shall I bring in the skins, MADAME?"

"He is not for sale, " said Nanette, the glow in her eyes deepening. "Heis my dog--mine and the baby's. Do you understand, Henri Durant? HE ISNOT FOR SALE!"

"OUI, " gasped Durant, amazed. 

"And when you reach Post Fort O' God, m'sieu, you will tell LE FACTEURthat Jacques is dead, and how he died, and say that some one must besent for the baby and me. We will stay here until then. "

"OUI, " said Durant again, backing to the door. 

He had never seen her like that. He wondered how Jacques Le Beau couldswear at her, and strike her. For himself, he was afraid. Standingthere with those wonderful eyes and white face, with the baby in herarms, and her shining hair over her breasts, she made him think of apicture he had once seen of the Blessed Lady. 

He went out through the door and back to the sapling cage where Mikilay. Softly he spoke through the bars. 

"OW, BETE" he called; "she will not sell you. She keeps you because youfought for her, and killed MON AMI, Jacques Le Beau. And so I must takeyou my own way. In a little while the moon will be up, and then I willslip a noose over your head at the end of a pole, and will choke you soquickly she will not hear a sound. And who will know where you aregone, if the cage door is left open? And you will fight for me at PostFort 0' God. MON DIEU! how you will fight! I swear it will do the ghostof Jacques Le Beau good to see what happens there. "

He went away, to where he had left his light sledge and two dogs in theedge of the timber, and waited for the moon to rise. 

Still Miki did not move, A light had appeared in the window of thecabin, and his eyes were fixed on it yearningly as the low whinegathered in his throat again. His world no longer lay beyond thatwindow. The Woman and the baby had obliterated in him all desire but tobe with them. 

In the cabin Nanette was thinking of him--and of Durant. The man'swords came to her again, vividly, significantly: "YOU WILL NOT WANT THEDOG. " Yes, all the forest people would say that same thing--even LEFACTEUR himself, when he heard. SHE WOULD NOT WANT THE DOG! And whynot? Because he had killed Jacques Le Beau, her husband, in defence ofher? Because he had freed her from the bondage of The Brute? BecauseGod had sent him to the end of his chain in that terrible moment thatthe baby Nanette might live, as the OTHER had not, and that she mightgrow up with laughter on her lips instead of sobs? In her there rosesuddenly a thought that fanned the new flame in her heart. It MUST havebeen LE BON DIEU! Others might doubt, but she--never. She recalled allthat Le Beau had told her about the wild dog--how for many days he hadrobbed the traps, and the terrific fight he had made when at last hewas caught. And of all that The Brute had said there stood out most thewords he had spoken one day. 

"He is a devil, but he was not born of wolf. NON, some time, a longtime ago, he was a white man's dog. "

A WHITE MAN'S DOG!

Her soul thrilled. Once--a long time ago--he had known a master with awhite heart, just as she had known a girlhood in which the flowersbloomed and the birds sang. She tried to look back, but she could notsee very far. She could not vision that day, less than a year ago, whenMiki, an angular pup, came down out of the Farther North withChalloner; she could not vision the strange comradeship between the pupand Neewa, the little black bear cub, nor that tragic day when they hadfallen out of Challoner's canoe into the swift stream that had carriedthem over the waterfall and into the Great Adventure which had turnedNeewa into a grown bear and Miki into a wild dog. But in her heart sheFELT the things which she could not see. Miki had not come by chance. Something greater than that had sent him. 

She rose quietly, so that she would not waken the baby in the crib, andopened the door. The moon was just rising over the forest and throughthe glow of it she went to the cage. She heard the dog's joyous whine, and then she felt the warm caress of his tongue upon her bare hands asshe thrust them between the sapling bars. 

"NON, NON; you are not a devil, " she cried softly, her voice filledwith a strange tremble. "O-o-ee, my SOKETAAO, I prayed, PRAYED--and youcame. Yes, on my knees each night I prayed to Our Blessed Lady that shemight have mercy on my baby, and make the sun in heaven shine for herthrough all time. AND YOU CAME! And the dear God does not send devilsin answer to prayer. NON; never!"

And Miki, as though some spirit had given him the power to understand, rested the weight of his bruised and beaten head on her hands. 

From the edge of the forest Durant was watching. He had caught theflash of light from the door and had seen Nanette go to the cage, andhis eyes did not leave her until she returned into the cabin. Helaughed as he went to his fire and finished making the WAHGUN he wasfastening to the end of a long pole. This WAHGUN and the pole added tohis own cleverness were saving him twelve good fox skins, and hecontinued to chuckle there in the fireglow as he thought how easy itwas to beat a woman's wits. Nanette was a fool to refuse the pelts, andJacques was--dead. It was a most lucky combination of circumstances forhim. Fortune had surely come his way. On LE BETE, as he called the wilddog, he would gamble all that he possessed in the big fight. And hewould win. 

He waited until the light in the cabin went out before he approachedthe cage again. Miki heard him coming. At a considerable distance hesaw him, for the moon was already turning the night into day. Durantknew the ways of dogs. With them he employed a superior reason where LeBeau had used the club and the rawhide. So he came up openly andboldly, and, as if by accident, dropped the end of the pole between thebars. With his hands against the cage, apparently unafraid, he begantalking in a casual way. He was different from Le Beau. Miki watchedhim closely for a space and then let his eyes rest again on thedarkened cabin window. Stealthily Durant began to take advantage of hisopportunity. A little at a time he moved the end of the pole until itwas over Miki's head, with the deadly bowstring and its open noosehanging down. He was an adept in the use of the WAHGUN. Many foxes andwolves, and even a bear, he had caught that way. Miki, numbed by thecold, scarcely felt the BABICHE noose as it settled softly about hisneck. He did not see Durant brace himself, with his feet against therunning-log of the cage. 

Then, suddenly, Durant lurched himself backward, and it seemed to Mikias though a giant trap of steel had closed about his neck. Instantlyhis wind was cut off. He could make no sound as he struggledfrantically to free himself. Hand over hand Durant dragged him to thebars, and there, with his feet still braced, he choked with his wholeweight until--when at last he let up on the WAHGUN--Miki collapsed asif dead. Ten seconds later Durant was looping a muzzle over his closedjaws. He left the cage door open when he went back to his sledge, carrying Miki in his arms. Nanette's slow wits would never guess, hetold himself. She would think that LE BETE had escaped into the forest. 

It was not his scheme to club Miki into serfdom, as Le Beau had failedto do. Durant was wiser than that. In his crude and merciless way hehad come to know certain phenomena of the animal mind. He was not apsychologist; oh the other hand brutality had not utterly blinded him. So, instead of lashing Miki to the sledge as Le Beau had fastened himto his improvised drag, Durant made his captive comfortable, coveringhim with a warm blanket before he began his journey eastward. He madesure, however, that there was no flaw in the muzzle about Miki's jaws, and that the free end of the chain to which he was still fastened waswell hitched to the Gee-bar of his sledge. 

When these things were done Durant set off in the direction of Fort O'God, and if Jacques Le Beau could have seen him then he would have hadgood reason to guess at his elation. By taint of birth and blood Durantwas a gambler first, and a trapper afterward. He set his traps that hemight have the thrill of wagering his profits, and for half a dozensuccessive years he had won at the big annual dog fight at Post Fort O'God. But this year he had been half afraid. His fear had not been ofJacques Le Beau and Netah, but of the halfbreed away over on Red BellyLake. Grouse Piet was the halfbreed's name, and the "dog" that he wasgoing to put up at the fight was half wolf. Therefore, in the foolisheagerness of his desire, had Durant offered two cross foxes and tenreds--the price of five dogs and not one--for the possession of LeBeau's wild dog. And now that he had him for nothing, and Nanette waspoorer by twelve skins, he was happy. For he had now a good match forGrouse Piet's half wolf, and he would chance his money and his creditat the Post to the limit. 

When Miki came back to his senses Durant stopped his dogs, for he hadbeen watching closely for this moment. He bent over the sledge andbegan talking, not in Le Beau's brutal way, but in a careless chummysort of voice, and with his mittened hand he patted his captive's head. This was a new thing to Miki, for he knew that it was not the hand ofNanette, but of a man-beast, and the softness of his nest in theblanket, over which Henri had thrown a bear skin, was also new. A shorttime ago he was frozen and stiff. Now he was warm and comfortable. Sohe did not move. And Durant exulted in his cleverness. He did nottravel far in the night, but stopped four or five miles from Nanette'scabin, and built a fire. Over this he boiled coffee and roasted meat. He allowed the meat to roast slowly, turning it round and round on awooden spit, so that the aroma of it grew thick and inviting in theair. He had fastened his two sledge dogs fifty paces away, but thesledge was close to the fire, and he watched the effect on Miki of theroasting meat. Since the days of his puppyhood with Challoner a smelllike that which came from the meat had not filled Miki's nostrils, andat last Durant saw him lick his chops and heard the click of his teeth. He chuckled in his beard. Still he waited another quarter of an hour. Then he pulled the meat off the spit, cut it up, and gave a half of itto Miki. And Miki ate it ravenously. 

A clever man was Henri Durant!

CHAPTER NINETEEN

During the last few days in December all trails for ten thousand squaremiles around led to Post Fort 0' God. It was the eve of OOSKEPIPOON--of the New Year--the mid-winter carnival time of the people ofthe wilderness, when from teepees and cabins far and near come thetrappers and their families to sell their furs and celebrate for a fewdays with others of their kind. To this New Year gathering men, women, and children look forward through long and weary months. The trapper'swife has no neighbour. Her husband's "line" is a little kingdominviolate, with no other human life within many miles of it; so for thewomen the OOSKE PIPOON is a time of rejoicing; for the children it isthe "big circus, " and for the men a reward for the labour and hardshipof catching their fur. During these few days old acquaintanceships arerenewed and new ones are made. It is here that the "news" of thetrackless wilderness is spread, the news of deaths, of marriages, andof births; of tragic happenings that bring horror and grief and tears, and of others that bring laughter and joy. For the first and last timein all the seven months' winter the people of the forests "come totown. " Indian, halfbreed, "blood, " and white man, join in the holidaywithout distinction of colour or creed. 

This year there was to be a great caribou roast, a huge barbecue, atFort O' God, and by the time Henri Durant came within half a dozenmiles of the Post the trails from north and south and east and westwere beaten hard by the tracks of dogs and men. That year a hundredsledges came in from the forests, and with them were three hundred menand women and children and half a thousand dogs. 

Durant was a day later than he had planned to be, but he had made gooduse of his time. For Miki, while still muzzled, now followed at the endof the babiche that was tied to Henri's sledge. In the afternoon of thethird day after leaving Nanette Le Beau's cabin Durant turned off themain-travelled trail until he came to the shack of Andre Ribon, whokept the Factor and his people at the Post supplied with fresh meat. Andre, who was becoming over-anxious at Durant's delay, was stillwaiting when his friend came. It was here that Henri's Indian had lefthis fighting dog, the big husky. And here he left Miki, locked inAndre's shack. Then the two men went on to the Post which was only amile away. 

Neither he nor Ribon returned that night. The cabin was empty. And withthe beginning of dusk Miki began to hear weird and strange sounds whichgrew louder as darkness settled deeper. It was the sound of thecarnival at the Post--the distant tumult of human voice mingled withthe howling of a hundred dogs. He had never heard anything like itbefore, and for a long time he listened without moving. Then he stoodup like a man before the window with this fore-paws resting against theheavy sash. Ribon's cabin was at the crest of a knoll that over-lookedthe frozen lake, and far off, over the tops of the scrub timber thatfringed the edge of it, Miki saw the red glow in the sky made by ascore of great camp fires. He whined, and dropped on his four feetagain. It was a long wait between that and another day. But the cabinwas more comfortable than Le Beau's prison-cage had been. All throughthe night his restless slumber was filled with visions of Nanette andthe baby. 

Durant and Ribon did not return until nearly noon the next day. Theybrought with them fresh meat, of which Miki ate ravenously, for he washungry. In an unresponsive way he tolerated the advances of these two. A second night he was left alone in the cabin. When Durant and Riboncame back again in the early dawn they brought with them a cage fourfeet square made of small birch saplings. The open door of this cagethey drew close to the door of the cabin, and by means of a chunk offresh meat Miki was induced to enter through it. Instantly the trapfell, and he was a prisoner. The cage was already fastened on a widetoboggan, and scarcely was the sun up when Miki was on his way to FortO' God. 

This was the big day at the carnival--the day of the caribou-roast andthe fight. For many minutes before they came in sight of Fort O' GodMiki heard the growing sound. It amazed him, and he stood up on hisfeet in his cage, rigid and alert, utterly unconscious of the men whowere pulling him. He was looking ahead of them, and Durant chuckledexultantly as they heard him growl, and his teeth click. 

"Oui, he will fight! He would fight NOW, " he chuckled. 

They were following the shore of a lake. Suddenly they came around theend of a point, and all of Fort O' God lay on the rising shelf of theshore ahead of them. The growl died in Miki's throat. His teeth shutwith a last click. For an instant his heart seemed to grow dead andstill. Until this moment his world had held only half a dozen humanbeings. Now, so suddenly that he had no flash of warning, he saw ahundred of them, two hundred, three hundred. At sight of Durant and thecage a swarm of them began running down to the shore. And everywherethere were wolves, so many of them that his senses grew dazed as hestared. His cage was the centre of a clamouring, gesticulating horde ofmen and boys as it was dragged up the slope. Women began joining thecrowd, many of them with small children in their arms. Then his journeycame to an end. He was close to another cage, and in that cage was abeast like himself. Beside this cage there stood a tall, swarthy, shaggy-headed halfbreed who looked like a pirate. The man was GrousePiet, Durant's rival. 

A contemptuous leer was on his thick-lipped face as he looked at Miki. He turned, and to the group of dark-faced Indians and breeds about himhe said something that roused a guttural laugh. 

Durant's face flamed red. 

"Laugh, you heathen, " he challenged, "but don't forget that HenriDurant is here to take your bets!" Then he shook the two cross and tenred foxes in the face of Grouse Piet. 

"Cover them, Grouse Piet, " he cried. "And I have ten times more wherethey came from!"

With his muzzle lifted, Miki was sniffing the air. It was filled withstrange scents, heavy with the odours of men, of dogs, and of the fivehuge caribou roasting on their spits fifteen feet over the big firesthat were built under them. For ten hours those caribou would roast, turning slowly on spits as thick as a man's leg. The fight was to comebefore the feast. 

For an hour the clatter and tumult of voices hovered about the twocages. Men appraised the fighters and made their bets, and Grouse Pietand Henri Durant made their throats hoarse flinging banter and contemptat each other. At the end of the hour the crowd began to thin out. Inthe place of men and women half a hundred dark-visaged little childrencrowded about the cages. It was not until then that Miki caughtglimpses of the hordes of beasts fastened in ones and twos and groupsin the edge of the clearing. His nostrils had at last caught thedistinction. They were not wolves. They were like himself. 

It was a long time before his eyes rested steadily on the wolf-dog inthe other cage. He went to the edge of his bars and sniffed. Thewolf-dog thrust his gaunt muzzle toward him. He made Miki think of thehuge wolf he had fought one day on the edge of the cliff, andinstinctively he showed his fangs, and snarled. The wolf-dog snarledback. Henri Durant rubbed his hands exultantly, and Grouse Piet laughedsoftly. 

"Oui; they will FIGHT!" said Henri again. 

"Ze wolf, he will fight, oui, " said Grouse Piet. "But your dog, m'sieu, he be vair seek, lak a puppy, w'en ze fight come!"

A little later Miki saw a white man standing close to his cage. It wasMacDonnell, the Scotch factor. He gazed at Miki and the wolf-dog withtroubled eyes. Ten minutes later, in the little room which he had madehis office, he was saying to a younger man:

"I'd like to stop it, but I can't. They wouldn't stand for it. It wouldlose us half a season's catch of fur. There's been a fight like this atFort O' God for the last fifty years, and I don't suppose, after all, that it's any worse than one of the prize fights down there. Only, inthis case--"

"They kill, " said the younger man. 

"Yes, that's it. Usually one of the dogs dies. "

The younger man knocked the ash out of his pipe. 

"I love dogs, " he said, simply. "There'll never be a fight at my post, Mac--unless it's between men. And I'm not going to see this fight, because I'm afraid I'd kill some one if I did. "

CHAPTER TWENTY

It was two o'clock in the afternoon. The caribou were roasting brown. In two more hours the feast would begin. The hour of the fight was athand. 

In the centre of the clearing three hundred men, women, and childrenwere gathered in a close circle about a sapling cage ten feet square. Close to this cage, one at each side, were drawn the two smaller cages. Beside one of these cages stood Henri Durant; beside the other, GrousePiet. They were not bantering now. Their faces were hard and set. Andthree hundred pairs of eyes were staring at them, and three hundredpairs of ears waiting for the thrilling signal. 

It came--from Grouse Piet. 

With a swift movement Durant pulled up the door of Miki's cage. Then, suddenly, he prodded him from behind with a crotched stick, and with asingle leap Miki was in the big cage. Almost at the same instant thewolf-dog leapt from Grouse Piet's cage, and the two faced each other inthe arena. 

With the next breath he drew Durant could have groaned. What happenedin the following half minute was a matter of environment with Miki. Inthe forest the wolf-dog would have interested him to the exclusion ofeverything else, and he would have looked upon him as another Netah ora wild wolf. But in his present surroundings the idea of fighting wasthe last to possess him. He was fascinated by that grim and waitingcircle of faces closing in the big cage; he scrutinized it, turning hishead sharply from point to point, as if hoping to see Nanette and thebaby, or even Challoner his first master. To the wolf-dog Grouse Piethad given the name of Taao, because of the extraordinary length of hisfangs; and of Taao, to Durant's growing horror, Miki was utterlyoblivious after that first head-on glance. He trotted to the edge ofthe cage and thrust his nose between the bars, and a taunting laughrose out of Grouse Piet's throat. Then he began making a circle of thecage, his sharp eyes on the silent ring of faces. Taao stood in thecentre of the cage, and not once did his reddish eyes leave Miki. Whatwas outside of the cage held small interest for him. He understood hisbusiness, and murder was bred in his heart. For a space during whichDurant's heart beat like a hammer Taao turned, as if on a pivot, following Miki's movement, and the crest on his spine stood up likebristles. 

Then Miki stopped, and in that moment Durant saw the end of all hishopes. Without a sound the wolf-dog was at his opponent. A bellow rosefrom Grouse Piet's lips. A deep breath passed through the circle ofspectators, and Durant felt a cold chill run up his back to the rootsof his hair. What happened in the next instant made men's hearts standstill. In that first rush Miki should have died. Grouse Piet expectedhim to die, and Durant expected him to die. But in the last fractionalbit of the second in which the wolf-dog's jaws closed, Miki wastransformed into a thing of living lightning. No man had ever seen amovement swifter than that with which he turned on Taao. Their jawsclashed. There was a sickening grinding of bone, and in another momentthey were rolling and twisting together on the earth floor. NeitherGrouse Piet nor Durant could see what was happening. They forgot eventheir own bets in the horror of that fight. Never had there been such afight at Fort O' God. 

The sound of it reached to the Company's store. In the door, lookingtoward the big cage, stood the young white man. He heard the snarling, the clashing of teeth, and his jaws set heavily and a dull flame burnedin his eyes. His breath came in a sudden gasp. 

"DAMN!" he cried, softly. 

His hands clenched, and he stepped slowly down from the door and wenttoward the cage. It was over when he made his way through the ring ofspectators. The fight had ended as suddenly as it had begun, and GrousePiet's wolf-dog lay in the centre of the cage with a severed jugular. Miki looked as though he might be dying. Durant had opened the door andhad slipped a rope over his head, and outside the cage Miki stoodswaying on his feet, red with blood, and half blind. His flesh was redand bleeding in a dozen places, and a stream of blood trickled from hismouth. A cry of horror rose to the young white man's lips as he lookeddown at him. 

And then, almost in the same breath, there came a still stranger cry. 

"Good God! Miki--Miki--Miki--"

Beating upon his brain as if from a vast distance, coming to himthrough the blindness of his wounds, Miki heard that voice. 

The VOICE! THE voice that had lived with him in all his dreams, thevoice he had waited for, and searched for, and knew that some day hewould find. The voice of Challoner, his master!

He dropped on his belly, whining, trying to see through the film ofblood in his eyes; and lying there, wounded almost unto death, his tailthumped the ground in recognition. And then, to the amazement of allwho beheld, Challoner was down upon his knees beside him, and his armswere about him, and Miki's lacerated tongue was reaching for his hands, his face, his clothes. 

"Miki--Miki--Miki!"

Durant's hand fell heavily upon Challoner's shoulder. 

It was like the touch of a red-hot iron to Challoner. In a flash he wason his feet, facing him. 

"He's mine, " Challoner cried, trying to hold back his passion. "He'smine you--you devil!"

And then, powerless to hold back his desire for vengeance, his clenchedfist swung like a rock to Durant's heavy jaw, and the Frenchman went tothe ground. For a moment Challoner stood over him, but he did not move. Fiercely he turned upon Grouse Piet and the crowd. Miki was cringing athis feet again. Pointing to him, Challoner cried loudly, so all couldhear. 

"He's my dog. Where this beast got him I don't know. But he's mine. Look for yourselves! See--see him lick my hand. Would he do that forHIM? And look at that ear. There's no other ear in all the north cutlike that. I lost him almost a year ago, but I'd know him among tenthousand by that ear. By God!--if I had known--"

He elbowed his way through the breeds and Indians, leading Miki by therope Durant had slipped over the dog's head. He went to MacDonnell, andtold him what had happened. He told of the preceding spring, and of theaccident in which Miki and the bear cub were lost from his canoe andswept over the waterfall. After registering his claim against whateverDurant might have to say he went to the shack in which he was stayingat Fort 0' God. 

An hour later Challoner sat with Miki's big head between his two hands, and talked to him. He had bathed and dressed his wounds, and Miki couldsee. His eyes were on his master's face, and his hard tail thumped thefloor. Both were oblivious of the sounds of the revellers outside; thecries of men, the shouting of boys, the laughter of women, and theincessant barking of dogs. In Challoner's eyes there was a soft glow. 

"Miki, old boy, you haven't forgotten a thing--not a dam' thing, haveyou? You were nothing but an onery-legged pup then, but you didn'tforget! Remember what I told you, that I was going to take you and thecub down to the Girl? Do you remember? The Girl I said was an angel, and 'd love you to death, and all that? Well, I'm glad somethinghappened--and you didn't go. It wasn't the same when I got back, an'SHE wasn't the same, Miki. Lord, she'd got married, AND HAD TWO KIDS!Think of that, old scout--TWO! How the deuce could she have taken careof you and the cub, eh? And nothing else was the same, Boy. Three yearsin God's Country--up here where you burst your lungs just for the funof drinking in air--changed me a lot, I guess. Inside a week I wantedto come back, Miki. Yessir, I was SICK to come back. So I came. Andwe're going to stick now, Miki. You're going with me up to that newPost the Company has given me. From now on we're pals. Understand, oldscout, we're PALS!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

It was late the night of the big feast at Post Fort O' God thatMacDonnell, the factor, sent for Challoner. Challoner was preparing forbed when an Indian boy pounded on the door of his shack and a momentlater gave him the message. He looked at his watch. It was eleveno'clock. What could the Factor want of him at that hour, he wondered?Flat on his belly near the warm box stove Miki watched his new-foundmaster speculatively as he pulled on his boots. His eyes were wide opennow. Challoner had washed from him the blood of the terrific fight ofthat afternoon. 

"Something to do with that devil of a Durant, " growled Challoner, looking at the battle-scarred dog. "Well, if he hopes to get YOU again, Miki, he's barking up the wrong tree. You're MINE!"

Miki thumped his hard tail on the floor and wriggled toward his masterin mute adoration. Together they went out into the night. 

It was a night of white moonlight and a multitude of stars. The fourgreat fires over which the caribou had roasted for the savage barbecuethat day were still burning brightly. In the edge of the forest thatringed in the Post were the smouldering embers of a score of smallerfires. Back of these fires were faintly outlined the gray shadows ofteepees and tents. In these shelters the three hundred halfbreeds andIndians who had come in from the forest trails to the New Year carnivalat the Post were sleeping. Only here and there was there a movement oflife. Even the dogs were quiet after the earlier hours of excitementand gluttony. 

Past the big fires, with their huge spits still standing, Challonerpassed toward the Factor's quarters. Miki sniffed at the freshly pickedbones. Beyond these bones there was no sign of the two thousand poundsof flesh that had roasted that day on the spits. Men, women, children, and dogs had stuffed themselves until there was nothing left. It wasthe silence of Mutai--the "belly god"--the god who eats himself tosleep each night--that hovered strangely over this Post of Fort O' God, three hundred miles from civilization. 

There was a light in the Factor's room, and Challoner entered with Mikiat his heels. MacDonnell, the Scotchman, was puffing moodily on hispipe. There was a worried look in his ruddy face as the younger manseated himself, and his eyes were on Miki. 

"Durant has been here, " he said. "He's ugly. I'm afraid of trouble. Ifyou hadn't struck him--"

Challoner shrugged his shoulders as he filled his own pipe from theFactor's tobacco. 

"You see--you don't just understand the situation at Fort 0' God, " wenton MacDonnell. "There's been a big dog fight here at New Year for thelast fifty years. It's become a part of history, a part of Fort O' Goditself, and that's why in my own fifteen years here I haven't tried tostop it. I believe it would bring on a sort of--revolution. I'd wager ahalf of my people would go to another post with their furs. That's whyall the sympathy seems to be with Durant. Even Grouse Piet, his rival, tells him he's a fool to let you get away with him that way. Durantsays that dog is HIS. "

MacDonnell nodded at Miki, lying at Challoner's feet. 

"Then he lies, " said Challoner quietly. 

"He says he bought him of Jacques Le Beau. "

"Then Le Beau sold a dog that didn't belong to him. "

For a moment MacDonnell was silent. Then he said:

"But that wasn't what I had you come over for, Challoner. Durant toldme something that froze my blood to-night. Your outfit starts for yourpost up in the Reindeer Lake county to-morrow, doesn't it?"

"In the morning. "

"Then could you, with one of my Indians and a team, arrange to swingaround by way of the Jackson's Knee? You'd lose a week, but you couldovertake your outfit before it reached the Reindeer--and it would be amighty big favour to me. There's a--a HELL of a thing happened overthere. "

Again he looked at Miki. 

"GAWD!" he breathed. 

Challoner waited. He thought he saw a shudder pass through the Factor'sshoulders. 

"I'd go myself--I ought to, but this frosted lung of mine has made mesit tight this winter, Challoner. I OUGHT to go. Why--(a sudden glowshot into his eyes)--I knew this Nanette Le Beau when she was SO HIGH, fifteen years ago. I watched her grow up, Challoner. If I hadn't beenmarried--then--I'd have fallen in love with her. Do you know her, Challoner? Did you ever see Nanette Le Beau?"

Challoner shook his head. 

"An angel--if God ever made one, " declared MacDonnell through his redbeard. "She lived over beyond the Jackson's Knee with her father. Andhe died, froze to death crossing Red Eye Lake one night. I've alwaysthought Jacques Le Beau MADE her marry him after that. Or else shedidn't know, or was crazed, or frightened at being alone. Anyway, shemarried him. It was five years ago I saw her last. Now and then I'veheard things, but I didn't believe--not all of them. I didn't believethat Le Beau beat her, and knocked her down when he wanted to. I didn'tbelieve he dragged her through the snow by her hair one day until shewas nearly dead. They were just rumours, and he was seventy miles away. But I believe them now. Durant came from their place, and I guess hetold me a whole lot of the truth--to save that dog. "

Again he looked at Miki. 

"You see, Durant tells me that Le Beau caught the dog in one of histraps, took him to his cabin, and tortured him into shape for the bigfight. When Durant came he was so taken with the dog that he boughthim, and it was while Le Beau was driving the dog mad in his cage toshow his temper that Nanette interfered. Le Beau knocked her down, andthen jumped on her and was pulling her hair and choking her when thedog went for him and killed him. That's the story. Durant told me thetruth through fear that I'd have the dog shot if he was an out-and-outmurderer. And that's why I want you to go by way of the Jackson's Knee. I want you to investigate, and I want you to do what you can forNanette Le Beau. My Indian will bring her back to Port O' God. "

With Scotch stoicism MacDonnell had repressed whatever excitement hemay have felt. He spoke quietly. But the curious shudder went throughhis shoulders again. Challoner stared at him in blank amazement. 

"You mean to say that Miki--this dog--has killed a man?"

"Yes. He killed him, Durant says, just as he killed Grouse Piet'swolf-dog in the big fight to-day. UGH!" As Challoner's eyes fell slowlyupon Miki, the Factor added: "But Grouse Piet's dog was better than theman. If what I hear about Le Beau was true he's better dead than alive. Challoner, if you didn't think it too much trouble, and could go thatway--and see Nanette--"

"I'll go, " said Challoner, dropping a hand to Miki's head. 

For half an hour after that MacDonnell told him the things he knewabout Nanette Le Beau. When Challoner rose to go the Factor followedhim to the door. 

"Keep your eyes open for Durant, " he warned. "That dog is worth more tohim than all his winnings to-day, and they say his stakes were big. Hewon heavily from Grouse Piet, but the halfbreed is thick with him now. I know it. So watch out. "

Out in the open space, in the light of the moon and stars, Challonerstood far a moment with Miki's forepaws resting against his breast. Thedog's head was almost on a level with his shoulders. 

"D'ye remember when you fell out of the canoe, Boy?" he asked softly. "Remember how you 'n' the cub were tied in the bow, an' you got toscrapping and fell overboard just above the rapids? Remember? By Jove!those rapids pretty near got ME, too. I thought you were dead, sure--both of you. I wonder what happened to the cub?"

Miki whined in response, and his whole body trembled. 

"And since then you've killed a man, " added Challoner, as if he stillcould not quite believe. "And I'm to take you back to the woman. That'sthe funny thing about it. You're going back to HER, and if she sayskill you--"

He dropped Miki's forefeet and went on to the cabin. At the threshold alow growl rose in Miki's throat. Challoner laughed, and opened thedoor. They went in, and the dog's growl was a menacing snarl. Challonerhad left his lamp burning low, and in the light of it he saw HenriDurant and Grouse Piet waiting for him. He turned up the wick, andnodded. 

"Good evening. Pretty late for a call, isn't it?"

Grouse Piet's stolid face did not change its expression. It struckChalloner, as he glanced at him, that in head and shoulders he bore agrotesque resemblance to a walrus. Durant's eyes were dully ablaze. Hisface was swollen where Challoner had struck him. Miki, stiffened to thehardness of a knot, and still snarling under his breath, had crawledunder Challoner's bunk. Durant pointed to him. 

"We've come after that dog, " he said. 

"You can't have him, Durant, " replied Challoner, trying hard to makehimself appear at ease in a situation that sent a chill up his back. Ashe spoke he was making up his mind why Grouse Piet had come withDurant. They were giants, both of them: more than that--monsters. Instinctively he had faced them with the small table between them. "I'msorry I lost my temper out there, " he continued. "I shouldn't havestruck you, Durant. It wasn't your fault--and I apologize. But the dogis mine. I lost him over in the Jackson's Knee country, and if JacquesLe Beau caught him in a trap, and sold him to you, he sold a dog thatdidn't belong to him. I'm willing to pay you back what you gave forhim, just to be fair. How much was it?"

Grouse Piet had risen to his feet. Durant came to the opposite edge ofthe table, and leaned over it. Challoner wondered how a single blow hadknocked him down. 

"Non, he is not for sale. " Durant's voice was low; so low that itseemed to choke him to get it out. It was filled with a repressedhatred. Challoner saw the great cords of his knotted hands bulgingunder the skin as he gripped the edge of the table. "M'sieu, we havecome for that dog. Will you let us take him?"

"I will pay you back what you gave for him, Durant. I will add to theprice. "

"Non. He is mine. Will you give him back--NOW?"

"No!"

Scarcely was the word out of his mouth when Durant flung his wholeweight and strength against the table. Challoner had not expected themove--just yet. With a bellow of rage and hatred Durant was upon him, and under the weight of the giant he crashed to the floor. With themwent the table and lamp. There was a vivid splutter of flame and thecabin was in darkness, except where the moon-light flooded through theone window. Challoner had looked for something different. He hadexpected Durant to threaten before he acted, and, sizing up the two ofthem, he had decided to reach the edge of his bunk during thediscussion. Under the pillow was his revolver. It was too late now. Durant was on him, fumbling in the darkness for his throat, and as heflung one arm upward to get a hook around the Frenchman's neck he heardGrouse Piet throw the table back. The next instant they were rolling inthe moonlight on the floor, and Challoner caught a glimpse of GrousePiet's huge bulk bending over them. Durant's head was twisted under hisarm, but one of the giant's hands had reached his throat. The halfbreedsaw this, and he cried out something in a guttural voice. With atremendous effort Challoner rolled himself and his adversary out of thepatch of light into darkness again. Durant's thick neck cracked. AgainGrouse Piet called out in that guttural, questioning voice. Challonerput every ounce of his energy into the crook of his arm, and Durant didnot answer. 

Then the weight of Grouse Piet fell upon them, and his great handsgroped for Challoner's neck. His thick fingers found Durant's beardfirst, then fumbled for Challoner, and got their hold. Ten seconds oftheir terrific grip would have broken his neck. But the fingers neverclosed. A savage cry of agony burst from Grouse Piet's lips, and withthat cry, ending almost in a scream, came the snap of great jaws andthe rending snarl of fangs in the darkness. Durant heard, and with agreat heave of his massive body he broke free from Challoner's grip, and leapt to his feet. In a flash Challoner was at his bunk, facing hisenemies with the revolver in his hand. 

Everything had happened quickly. Scarcely more than a minute had passedsince the overturning of the table, and now, in the moment when thesituation had turned in his favour, a sudden swift and sickening horrorseized upon Challoner. Bloody and terrible there rose before him theone scene he had witnessed that day in the big cage where Miki and thewolf-dog had fought. And there--in that darkness of the cabin--

He heard a moaning cry and the crash of a body to the floor. 

"Miki, Miki, " he cried. "Here! Here!"

He dropped his revolver and sprang to the door, flinging it wide open. 

"For God's sake get out!" he cried. "GET OUT!"

A bulk dashed past him into the night. He knew it was Durant. Then heleapt to the dark shadows on the floor and dug his two hands into theloose hide at the back of Miki's neck, dragging him back, and shoutinghis name. He saw Grouse Piet crawling toward the door. He saw him riseto his feet, silhouetted for a moment against the starlight, andstagger out into the night. And then he felt Miki's weight slinkingdown to the floor, and under his hands the dog's muscles grew limp andsaggy. For two or three minutes he continued to kneel beside him beforehe closed the cabin door and lighted another lamp. He set up theoverturned table and placed the lamp on it. Miki had not moved. He layflat on his belly, his head between his forepaws, looking up atChalloner with a mute appeal in his eyes. 

Challoner reached out his two arms. 

"Miki!"

In an instant Miki was up against him, his forefeet against his breast, and with his arms about the dog's shoulders Challoner's eyes took inthe floor. On it were wet splashes and bits of torn clothing. 

His arms closed more tightly. 

"Miki, old boy, I'm much obliged, " he said. 

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The next morning Challoner's outfit of three teams and four men leftnorth and west for the Reindeer Lake country on the journey to his newpost at the mouth of the Cochrane. An hour later Challoner struck duewest with a light sledge and a five-dog team for the Jackson's Knee. Behind him followed one of MacDonnell's Indians with the team that wasto bring Nanette to Fort O' God. 

He saw nothing more of Durant and Grouse Piet, and acceptedMacDonnell's explanation that they had undoubtedly left the Postshortly after their assault upon him in the cabin. No doubt theirdisappearance had been hastened by the fact that a patrol of the RoyalNorthwest Mounted Police on its way to York Factory was expected atFort O' God that day. 

Not until the final moment of departure was Miki brought from the cabinand tied to the gee-bar of Challoner's sledge. When he saw the fivedogs squatted on their haunches he grew rigid and the old snarl rose inhis throat. Under Challoner's quieting words he quickly came tounderstand that these beasts were not enemies, and from a rathersuspicious toleration of them he very soon began to take a new sort ofinterest in them. It was a friendly team, bred in the south and withoutthe wolf strain. 

Events had come to pass so swiftly and so vividly in Miki's life duringthe past twenty-four hours that for many miles after they left Fort O'God his senses were in an unsettled state of anticipation. His brainwas filled with a jumble of strange and thrilling pictures. Very faraway, and almost indistinct, were the pictures of things that hadhappened before he was made a prisoner by Jacques Le Beau. Even thememory of Neewa was fading under the thrill of events at Nanette'scabin and at Fort O' God. The pictures that blazed their way across hisbrain now were of men, and dogs, and many other things that he hadnever seen before. His world had suddenly transformed itself into ahost of Henri Durants and Grouse Piets and Jacques Le Beaus, two-leggedbeasts who had clubbed him, and half killed him, and who had made himfight to keep the life in his body. He had tasted their blood in hisvengeance. And he watched for them now. The pictures told him they wereeverywhere. He could imagine them as countless as the wolves, and as hehad seen them crowded round the big cage in which he had slain thewolf-dog. 

In all of this excited and distorted world there was only oneChalloner, and one Nanette, and one baby. All else was a chaos ofuncertainty and of dark menace. Twice when the Indian came up closebehind them Miki whirled about with a savage snarl. Challoner watchedhim, and understood. 

Of the pictures in his brain one stood out above all others, definiteand unclouded, and that was the picture of Nanette. Yes, even aboveChalloner himself. There lived in him the consciousness of her gentlehands; her sweet, soft voice; the perfume of her hair and clothes andbody--the WOMAN of her; and a part of the woman--as the hand is a partof the body--was the baby. It was this part of Miki that Challonercould not understand, and which puzzled him when they made camp thatnight. He sat for a long time beside the fire trying to bring back theold comradeship of the days of Miki's puppyhood. But he only partlysucceeded. Miki was restive. Every nerve in his body seemed on edge. Again and again he faced the west, and always when he sniffed the airin that direction there came a low whine in his throat. 

That night, with doubt in his heart, Challoner fastened him near thetent with a tough rope of babiche. 

For a long time after Challoner had gone to bed Miki sat on hishaunches close to the spruce to which he was fastened. It must havebeen ten o'clock, and the night was so still that the snap of a dyingember in the fire was like the crack of a whip to his ears. Miki's eyeswere wide open and alert. Near the slowly burning logs, wrapped in histhick blankets, he could make out the motionless form of the Indian, asleep. Back of him the sledge-dogs had wallowed their beds in the snowand were silent. The moon was almost straight overhead, and a mile ortwo away a wolf pointed his muzzle to the radiant glow of it andhowled. The sound, like a distant calling voice, added new fire to thegrowing thrill in Miki's blood. He turned in the direction of thewailing voice. He wanted to call back. He wanted to throw up his headand cry out to the forests, and the moon, and the starlit sky. But onlyhis jaws clicked, and he looked at the tent in which Challoner wassleeping. He dropped down upon his belly in the snow. But his head wasstill alert and listening. The moon had already begun its westwarddecline. The fire burned out until the logs were only a dull andslumbering glow; the hand of Challoner's watch passed midnight, andstill Miki was wide-eyed and restless in the thrill of the thing thatwas upon him. And then at last The Call that was coming to him from outof the night became his master, and he gnawed the babiche in two. Itwas the call of the Woman--of Nanette and the baby. 

In his freedom Miki sniffed at the edge of Challoner's tent. His backsagged. His tail drooped. He knew that in this hour he was betrayingthe master for whom he had waited so long, and who had lived so vividlyin his dreams. It was not reasoning, but an instinctive oppression offact. He would come back. That conviction burned dully in his brain. But now--to-night--he must go. He slunk off into the darkness. With thestealth of a fox he made his way between the sleeping dogs. Not untilhe was a quarter of a mile from the camp did he straighten out, andthen a gray and fleeting shadow he sped westward under the light of themoon. 

There was no hesitation in the manner of his going. Free of the pain ofhis wounds, strong-limbed, deep-lunged as the strongest wolf of theforests, he went on tirelessly. Rabbits bobbing out of his path did notmake him pause; even the strong scent of a fisher-cat almost under hisnose did not swerve him a foot from his trail. Through swamp and deepforest, over lake and stream, across open barren and charred burns hisunerring sense of orientation led him on. Once he stopped to drinkwhere the swift current of a creek kept the water open. Even then hegulped in haste--and shot on. The moon drifted lower and lower until itsank into oblivion. The stars began to fade away The little ones wentout, and the big ones grew sleepy and dull. A great snow-ghostly gloomsettled over the forest world. 

In the six hours between midnight and dawn he covered thirty-five miles. 

And then he stopped. Dropping on his belly beside a rock at the crestof a ridge he watched the birth of day. With drooling jaws and pantingbreath he rested, until at last the dull gold of the winter sun beganto paint the eastern sky. And then came the first bars of vividsunlight, shooting over the eastern ramparts as guns flash from behindtheir battlements, and Miki rose to his feet and surveyed the morningwonder of his world. Behind him was Fort O' God, fifty miles away;ahead of him the cabin--twenty. It was the cabin he faced as he wentdown from the ridge. 

As the miles between him and the cabin grew fewer and fewer he feltagain something of the oppression that had borne upon him atChalloner's tent. And yet it was different. He had run his race. He hadanswered The Call. And now, at the end, he was seized by a fear of whathis welcome would be. For at the cabin he had killed a man--and the manhad belonged to the woman. His progress became more hesitating. Mid-forenoon found him only half a mile from the home of Nanette andthe baby. His keen nostrils caught the faint tang of smoke in the air. He did not follow it up, but circled like a wolf, coming up stealthilyand uncertainly until at last he looked out into the little clearingwhere a new world had come into existence for him. He saw the saplingcage in which Jacques Le Beau had kept him a prisoner; the door of thatcage was still open, as Durant had left it after stealing him; he sawthe ploughed-up snow where he had leapt upon the man-brute--and hewhined. 

He was facing the cabin door--and the door was wide open. He could seeno life, but he could SMELL it. And smoke was rising from the chimney. He slunk across the open. In the manner of his going there was anabject humiliation--a plea for mercy if he had done wrong, a prayer tothe creatures he worshipped that he might not be driven away. 

He came to the door, and peered in. The room was empty. Nanette was notthere. Then his ears shot forward and his body grew suddenly tense, andhe listened, listened, LISTENED to a soft, cooing sound that was comingfrom the crib. He swallowed hard; the faintest whine rose in his throatand his claws CLICKED, CLICKED, CLICKED, across the floor and he thrusthis great head over the side of the little bed. The baby was there. With his warm tongue he kissed it--just once--and then, with anotherdeep breath, lay down on the floor. 

He heard footsteps. Nanette came in with her arms filled with blankets;she carried these into the smaller room, and returned, before she sawhim. For a moment she stared. Then, with a strange little cry, she ranto him; and once more he felt her arms about him; and he cried like apuppy with his muzzle against her breast, and Nanette laughed andsobbed, and in the crib the baby kicked and squealed and thrust hertiny moccasined feet up into the air. 

"Ao-oo tap-wa-mukun" ("When the devil goes heaven comes in, ") say theCrees. And with the death of Le Beau, her husband, the devil had goneout of life for Nanette. She was more beautiful than ever. Heaven wasin the dark, pure glow of her eyes. She was no longer like a dog underthe club and the whip of a brute, and in the re-birth of her soul shewas glorious. Youth had come back to her--freed from the yoke ofoppression. She was happy. Happy with her baby, with freedom, with thesun and the stars shining for her again; and with new hope, thegreatest star of all. Again on the night of that first day of hisreturn Miki crept up to her when she was brushing her glorious hair. Heloved to put his muzzle in it; he loved the sweet scent of it; he lovedto put his head on her knees and feel it smothering him. And Nanettehugged him tight, even as she hugged the baby, for it was Miki who hadbrought her freedom, and hope, and life. What had passed was no longera tragedy. It was justice. God had sent Miki to do for her what afather or a brother would have done. 

And the second night after that, when Challoner came early in thedarkness, it happened that Nanette had her hair down in that same way;and Challoner, seeing her thus, with the lampglow shining in her eyes, felt that the world had taken a sudden swift turn under his feet--thatthrough all his years he had been working forward to this hour. 

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

With the coming of Challoner to the cabin of Nanette Le Beau there wasno longer a shadow of gloom in the world for Miki. He did not reasonout the wonder of it, nor did he have a foreboding for the future. Itwas the present in which he lived--the precious hours in which all thecreatures he had ever loved were together. And yet, away back in hismemory of those things that had grown deep in his soul, was the pictureof Neewa, the bear; Neewa, his chum, his brother, his fighting comradeof many battles, and he thought of the cold and snow-smothered cavernat the top of the ridge in which Neewa had buried himself in that longand mysterious sleep that was so much like death. But it was in thepresent that he lived. The hours lengthened themselves out into days, and still Challoner did not go, nor did Nanette leave with the Indianfor Fort O' God. The Indian returned with a note for MacDonnell inwhich Challoner told the Factor that something was the matter with thebaby's lungs, and that she could not travel until the weather, whichwas intensely cold, grew warmer. He asked that the Indian be sent backwith certain supplies. 

In spite of the terrific cold which followed the birth of the new yearChalloner had put up his tent in the edge of the timber a hundred yardsfrom the cabin, and Miki divided his time between the cabin and thetent. For him they were glorious days. And for Challoner--

In a way Miki saw, though it was impossible for him to comprehend. Asthe days lengthened into a week, and the week into two, there wassomething in the glow of Nanette's eyes that had never been therebefore, and in the sweetness of her voice a new thrill, and in herprayers at night the thankfulness of a new and great joy. 

And then, one day, Miki looked up from where he was lying beside thebaby's crib and he saw Nanette in his master's arms, her face turned upto him, her eyes filled with the glory of the stars, and Challoner wassaying something which transformed her face into the face of an angel. Miki was puzzled. And he was more puzzled when Challoner came fromNanette to the crib, and snuggled the baby up in his arms; and thewoman--looking at them both for a moment with that wonderful look inher eyes--suddenly covered her face with her hands and sobbed. Half asnarl rose in Miki's throat, but in that moment Challoner had put hisarm around Nanette too, and Nanette's arms were about him and the baby, and she was sobbing something which for the life of him Miki could makeneither head nor tail of. And yet he knew that he must not snarl orspring. He felt the wonder-thrill of the new thing that had come intothe cabin; he gulped hard, and looked. A moment or two later Nanettewas on her knees beside him, and her arms were around him, just as theyhad been around the man. And Challoner was dancing like a boy--cooingto the baby in his arms. Then he, too, dropped down beside Miki, andcried:

"My Gawd! Miki--I'VE GOT A FAM'LY!"

And Miki tried to understand. 

That night, after supper, he saw Challoner unbraid Nanette's glorioushair, and brush it. They laughed like two happy children. Miki triedstill harder to understand. 

When Challoner went to go to his tent in the edge of the forest he tookNanette in his arms, and kissed her, and stroked her shining hair; andNanette took his face between her hands and smiled and almost cried inher joy. 

After that Miki DID understand. He knew that happiness had come to allwho were in that cabin. 

Now that his world was settled, Miki took once more to hunting. Thethrill of the trail came back to him, and wider and wider grew hisrange from the cabin. Again he followed Le Beau's old trapline. But thetraps were sprung now. He had lost a great deal of his old caution. Hehad grown fatter. He no longer scented danger in every whiff of thewind. It was in the third week of Challoner's stay at the cabin, theday which marked the end of the cold spell and the beginning of warmweather, that Miki came upon an old dead-fall in a swamp a full tenmiles from the clearing. Le Beau had set it for lynx, but nothing hadtouched the bait, which was a chunk of caribou flesh, frozen solid as arock. Curiously Miki began smelling of it. He no longer feared danger. Menace had gone out of his world. He nibbled. He pulled--and the logcrashed down to break his back. Only by a little did it fail. Fortwenty-four hours it held him helpless and crippled. Then, fightingthrough all those hours, he dragged himself out from under it. With therising temperature a soft snow had fallen, covering all tracks andtrails. Through this snow Miki dragged himself, leaving a path likethat of an otter in the mud, for his hind quarters were helpless. Hisback was not broken; it was temporarily paralyzed by the blow and theweight of the log. 

He made in the direction of the cabin, but every foot that he draggedhimself was filled with agony, and his progress was so slow that at theend of an hour he had not gone more than a quarter of a mile. Anothernight found him less than two miles from the deadfall. He pulledhimself under a shelter of brush and lay there until dawn. All throughthat day he did not move. The next, which was the fourth since he hadleft the cabin to hunt, the pain in his back was not so great. But hecould pull himself through the snow only a few yards at a time. Againthe good spirit of the forests favoured him for in the afternoon hecame upon the partly eaten carcass of a buck killed by the wolves. Theflesh was frozen but he gnawed at it ravenously. Then he found himselfa shelter under a mass of fallen tree-tops, and for ten days thereafterhe lay between life and death. He would have died had it not been forthe buck. To the carcass he managed to drag himself, sometimes each dayand sometimes every other day, and kept himself from starving. It wasthe end of the second week before he could stand well on his feet. Thefifteenth day he returned to the cabin. 

In the edge of the clearing there fell upon him slowly a foreboding ofgreat change. The cabin was there. It was no different than it had beenfifteen days ago. But out of the chimney there came no smoke, and thewindows were white with frost. About it the snow lay clean and white, like an unspotted sheet. He made his way hesitatingly across theclearing to the door. There were no tracks. Drifted snow was piled highover the sill. He whined, and scratched at the door. There was noanswer. And he heard no sound. 

He went back into the edge of the timber, and waited. He waited allthrough that day, going occasionally to the cabin, and smelling aboutit, to convince himself that he had not made a mistake. When darknesscame he hollowed himself out a bed in the fresh snow close to the doorand lay there all through the night. Day came again, gray and empty andstill there was no smoke from the chimney or sound from within the logwalls, and at last he knew that Challoner and Nanette and the baby weregone. But he was hopeful. He no longer listened for sound from withinthe cabin, but watched and listened for them to come from out of theforest. He made short quests, hunting now on this side and now on thatof the cabin, sniffing futilely at the fresh and trackless snow andpointing the wind for minutes at a time. In the afternoon, with aforlorn slouch to his body, he went deeper into the forest to hunt fora rabbit. When he had killed and eaten his supper he returned again andslept a second night in the burrow beside the door. A third day and athird night he remained, and the third night he heard the wolveshowling under a clear and star-filled sky, and from him there came hisfirst cry--a yearning, grief-filled cry that rose wailingly out of theclearing; the entreaty for his master, for Nanette, and the baby. Itwas not an answer to the wolves. In its note there was a tremblingfear, the voicing of a thing that had grown into hopelessness. 

And now there settled upon him a loneliness greater than any lonelinesshe had ever known. Something seemed to whisper to his canine brain thatall he had seen and felt had been but a dream, and that he was face toface with his old world again, its dangers, its vast and soul-breakingemptiness, its friendlessness, its ceaseless strife for existence. Hisinstincts, dulled by the worship of what the cabin had held, becamekeenly alive. He sensed again the sharp thrill of danger, which comesof ALONENESS, and his old caution fell upon him, so that the fourth dayhe slunk around the edge of the clearing like a wolf. 

The fifth night he did not sleep in the clearing but found himself awindfall a mile back in the forest. That night he had strange andtroubled dreams. They were not of Challoner, or of Nanette and thebaby, nor were they of the fight and the unforgettable things he hadseen at the Post. His dreams were of a high and barren ridge smotheredin deep snow, and of a cavern that was dark and deep. Again he was withhis brother and comrade of days that were gone--Neewa the bear. He wastrying to waken him, and he could feel the warmth of his body and hearhis sleepy, protesting grunts. And then, later, he was fighting againin the paradise of black currants, and with Neewa was running for hislife from the enraged she-bear who had invaded their coulee. When heawoke suddenly from out of these dreams he was trembling and hismuscles were tense. He growled in the darkness. His eyes were roundballs of searching fire. He whined softly and yearningly in that pit ofgloom under the windfall, and for a moment or two he listened, for hethought that Neewa might answer. 

For a month after that night he remained near the cabin. At least onceeach day, and sometimes at night, he would return to the clearing. Andmore and more frequently he was thinking of Neewa. Early in March camethe Tiki-Swao--(the Big Thaw). For a week the sun shone without a cloudin the sky. The air was warm. The snow turned soft underfoot and on thesunny sides of slopes and ridges it melted away into trickling streamsor rolled down in "slides" that were miniature avalanches. The worldwas vibrant with a new thrill. It pulsed with the growing heart-beat ofspring, and in Miki's soul there arose slowly a new hope, a newimpression a new inspiration that was the thrilling urge of a wonderfulinstinct. NEEWA WOULD BE WAKING NOW!

It came to him at last like a voice which he could understand. Thetrickling music of the growing streams sang it to him; he heard it inthe warm winds that were no longer filled with the blast of winter; hecaught it in the new odours that were rising out of the earth; hesmelled it in the dank, sweet perfume of the black woods-soil. Thething thrilled him. It called him. And he KNEW!

NEEWA WOULD BE WAKING NOW!

He responded to the call. It was in the nature of things that no powerless than physical force could hold him back. And yet he did not travelas he had travelled from Challoner's camp to the cabin of Nanette andthe baby. There had been a definite object there, something to achieve, something to spur him on to an immediate fulfilment. Now the thing thatdrew him, at first, was an overpowering impulse, not a reality. For twoor three days his trail westward was wandering and indefinite. Then itstraightened out, and early in the morning of the fifth day he camefrom a deep forest into a plain, and across that plain he saw theridge. For a long time he gazed over the level space before he went on. 

In his brain the pictures of Neewa were becoming clearer and clearer. After all, it seemed only yesterday or the day before that he had goneaway from that ridge. Then it was smothered in snow, and a gray, terrible gloom had settled upon the earth. Now there was but littlesnow, and the sun was shining, and the sky was blue again. He went on, and sniffed along the foot of the ridge; he had not forgotten the way. He was not excited, because time had ceased to have definite import forhim. Yesterday he had come down from that ridge, and to-day he wasgoing back. He went straight to the mouth of Neewa's den, which wasuncovered now, and thrust in his head and shoulders, and sniffed. Ah!but that lazy rascal of a bear was a sleepy-head! He was stillsleeping. Miki could smell him. Listening hard, he could HEAR him. 

He climbed over the low drift of snow that had packed itself in theneck of the cavern and entered confidently into the darkness. He hearda soft, sleepy grunt and a great sigh. He almost stumbled over Neewa, who had changed his bed. Again Neewa grunted, and Miki whined. He ranhis muzzle into Neewa's fresh, new coat of spring fur and smelled hisway to Neewa's ear. After all, it was only yesterday! And he rememberedeverything now! So he gave Neewa's ear a sudden sharp nip with histeeth, and then he barked in that low, throaty way that Neewa hadalways understood. 

"Wake up, Neewa, " it all said. "Wake up! The snow is gone, and it'sfine out to-day. WAKE UP!"

And Neewa, stretching himself, gave a great yawn. 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Meshaba, the old Cree, sat on the sunny side of a rock on the sunnyside of a slope that looked up and down the valley. Meshaba--who many, many years ago had been called The Giant--was very old. He was so oldthat even the Factor's books over at Fort O' God had no record of hisbirth; nor the "post logs" at Albany House, or Cumberland House, orNorway House, or Fort Churchill. Perhaps farther north, at Lac LaBiche, at Old Fort Resolution, or at Fort McPherson some trace of himmight have been found. His skin was crinkled and weather-worn, like drybuckskin, and over his brown, thin face his hair fell to his shoulders, snow-white. His hands were thin, even his nose was thin with thethinness of age. But his eyes were still like dark garnets, and downthrough the greater part of a century their vision had come undimmed. 

They roved over the valley now. At Meshaba's back, a mile on the otherside of the ridge, was the old trapper's cabin, where he lived alone. The winter had been long and cold, and in his gladness at the coming ofspring Meshaba had come up the ridge to bask in the sun and look outover the changing world. For an hour his eyes had travelled up and downthe valley like the eyes of an old and wary hawk. The dark spruce andcedar forest edged in the far side of the valley; between that and theridge rolled the meadowy plain--still covered with melting snow inplaces, and in others bare and glowing, a dull green in the sunlight. From where he sat Meshaba could also see a rocky scarp of the ridgethat projected out into the plain a hundred yards away. But this didnot interest him, except that if it had not been in his line of visionhe could have seen a mile farther down the valley. 

In that hour of Sphinx-like watching, while the smoke curled slowly upfrom his black pipe, Meshaba had seen life. Half a mile from where hewas sitting a band of caribou had come out of the timber and wanderedinto a less distant patch of low bush. They had not thrilled his oldblood with the desire to kill, for there was already a fresh carcasshung up at the back of his cabin. Still farther away he had seen ahornless moose, so grotesque in its spring ugliness that theparchment-like skin of his face had cracked for half an instant in asmile, and out of him had come a low and appreciative grunt; forMeshaba, in spite of his age, still had a sense of humour left. Once hehad seen a wolf, and twice a fox, and now his eyes were on an eaglehigh over his head. Meshaba would not have shot that eagle, for yearafter year it had come down through time with him, and it was alwaysthere soaring in the sun when spring came. So Meshaba grunted as hewatched it, and was glad that Upisk had not died during the winter. 

"Kata y ati sisew, " he whispered to himself, a glow of superstition inhis fiery eyes. "We have lived long together, and it is fated that wedie together, Oh Upisk. The spring has come for us many times, and soonthe black winter will swallow us up for ever. "

His eyes shifted slowly, and then they rested on the scarp of the ridgethat shut out his vision. His heart gave a sudden thump in his body. His pipe fell from his mouth to his hand; and he stared without moving, stared like a thing of rock. 

On a flat sunlit shelf not more than eighty or ninety yards away stooda young black bear. In the warm glow of the sunlight the bear's springcoat shone like polished jet. But it was not the sudden appearance ofthe bear that amazed Meshaba. It was the fact that another animal wasstanding shoulder to shoulder with Wakayoo, and that it was not abrother bear, but a huge wolf. Slowly one of his thin hands rose to hiseyes and he wiped away what he thought must surely be a strangesomething that was fooling his vision. In all his eighty years and oddhe had never known a wolf to be thus friendly with a bear. Nature hadmade them enemies. Nature had fore-doomed their hatred to be thedeepest hatred of the forests. Therefore, for a space, Meshaba doubtedhis eyes. But in another moment he saw that the miracle had truly cometo pass. For the wolf turned broadside to him and it WAS a wolf! Ahuge, big-boned beast that stood as high at the shoulders as Wakayoo, the bear; a great beast, with a great head, and--

It was then that Meshaba's heart gave another thump, for the tail of awolf is big and bushy in the springtime, and the tail of this beast wasas bare of hair as a beaver's tail!

"Ohne moosh!" gasped Meshaba, under his breath--"a dog!"

He seemed to draw slowly into himself, slinking backward. His riflestood just out of reach on the other side of the rock. 

At the other end of that eighty or ninety yards Neewa and Miki stoodblinking in the bright sunlight, with the mouth of the cavern in whichNeewa had slept so many months just behind them. Miki was puzzled. Again it seemed to him that it was only yesterday, and not months ago, that he had left Neewa in that den, sleeping his lazy head off. And nowthat he had returned to him after his own hard winter in the forests hewas astonished to find Neewa so big. For Neewa had grown steadilythrough his four months' nap and he was half again as big as when hewent to sleep. Could Miki have spoken Cree, and had Meshaba given himthe opportunity, he might have explained the situation. 

"You see, Mr. Indian"--he might have said--"this dub of a bear and Ihave been pals from just about the time we were born. A man namedChalloner tied us together first when Neewa, there, was just about asbig as your head, and we did a lot of scrapping before we got properlyacquainted. Then we got lost, and after that we hitched up likebrothers; and we had a lot of fun and excitement all through lastsummer, until at last, when the cold weather came, Neewa hunted up thishole in the ground and the lazy cuss went to sleep for all winter. Iwon't mention what happened to me during the winter. It was a-plenty. So this spring I had a hunch it was about time for Neewa to get thecobwebs out of his fool head, and came back. And--here we are! But tellme this: WHAT MAKES NEEWA SO BIG?"

It was at least that thought--the bigness of Neewa--that was fillingMiki's head at the present moment. And Meshaba, in place of listeningto an explanation, was reaching for his rifle--while Neewa, with hisbrown muzzle sniffing the wind, was gathering in a strange smell. Ofthe three, Neewa saw nothing to be wondered at in the situation itself. When he had gone to sleep four and a half months ago Miki was at hisside; and to-day, when he awoke, Miki was still at his side. The fourand a half months meant nothing to him. Many times he and Miki had goneto sleep, and had awakened together. For all the knowledge he had oftime it might have been only last night that he had fallen asleep. 

The one thing that made Neewa uneasy now was that strange odour he hadcaught in the air. Instinctively he seized upon it as a menace--atleast as something that he would rather NOT smell than smell. So heturned away with a warning WOOF to Miki. When Meshaba peered around theedge of the rock, expecting an easy shot, he caught only a flash of thetwo as they were disappearing. He fired quickly. 

To Miki and Neewa the report of the rifle and the moaning whirr of thebullet over their backs recalled memories of a host of things, andNeewa settled down to that hump-backed, flat-eared flight of his thatkept Miki pegging along at a brisk pace for at least a mile. Then Neewastopped, puffing audibly. Inasmuch as he had had nothing to eat for athird of a year, and was weak from long inactivity, the run came withinan ace of putting him out of business. It was several minutes before hecould gather his wind sufficiently to grunt. Miki, meanwhile, wascarefully smelling of him from his rump to his muzzle. There wasapparently nothing missing, for he gave a delighted little yap at theend, and, in spite of his size and the dignity of increased age, hebegan frisking about Neewa In a manner emphatically expressive of hisjoy at his comrade's awakening. 

"It's been a deuce of a lonely winter, Neewa, and I'm tickled to deathto see you on your feet again, " his antics said. "What'll we do? Go fora hunt?"

This seemed to be the thought in Neewa's mind, for he headed straightup the valley until they came to an open fen where he proceeded toquest about for a dinner of roots and grass; and as he searched hegrunted--grunted in his old, companionable, cubbish way. And Miki, hunting with him, found that once more the loneliness had gone out ofhis world. 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

To Miki and Neewa, especially Neewa, there seemed nothing extraordinaryin the fact that they were together again, and that their comradeshipwas resumed. Although during his months of hibernation Neewa's body hadgrown, his mind had not changed its memories or its pictures. It hadnot passed through a mess of stirring events such as had made thewinter a thrilling one for Miki, and so it was Neewa who accepted thenew situation most casually. He went on feeding as if nothing at allunusual had happened during the past four months, and after the edgehad gone from his first hunger he fell into his old habit of looking toMiki for leadership. And Miki fell into the old ways as though only aday or a week and not four months had lapsed in their brotherhood. Itis possible that he tried mightily to tell Neewa what had happened. Atleast he must have had that desire--to let him know in what a strangeway he had found his old master, Challoner, and how he had lost himagain. And also how he found the woman, Nanette, and the little babyNanette, and how for a long time he had lived with them and loved themas he had never loved anything else on earth. 

It was the old cabin, far to the north and east, that drew him now--thecabin in which Nanette and the baby had lived; and it was toward thiscabin that he lured Neewa during the first two weeks of their hunting. They did not travel quickly, largely because of Neewa's voraciousspring appetite and the fact that it consumed nine tenths of his wakinghours to keep full on such provender as roots and swelling buds andgrass. During the first week Miki grew either hopeless or disgusted inhis hunting. One day he killed five rabbits and Neewa ate four of themand grunted piggishly for more. 

If Miki had stood amazed and appalled at Neewa's appetite in the daysof their cubhood and puppyhood a year ago, he was more than astoundednow, for in the matter of food Neewa was a bottomless pit. On the otherhand he was jollier than ever, and in their wrestling matches he wasalmost more than a match for Miki, being nearly again as heavy. He verysoon acquired the habit of taking advantage of this superiority ofweight, and at unexpected moments he would hop on Miki and pin him tothe ground, his fat body smothering him like a huge soft cushion, andhis arms holding him until at times Miki could scarcely squirm. Now andthen, hugging him in this embrace, he would roll over and over, both ofthem snarling and growling as though in deadly combat. This play, though he was literally the under dog, delighted Miki until one daythey rolled over the edge of a deep ravine and crashed in adog-and-bear avalanche to the bottom. After that, for a long time, Neewa did not roll with his victim. Whenever Miki wanted to end a bout, however, all he had to do was to give Neewa a sharp nip with his longfangs and the bear would uncoil himself and hop to his feet like aspring. He had a most serious respect for Miki's teeth. 

But Miki's greatest moments of joy were where Neewa stood upman-fashion. Then was a real tussle. And his greatest hours of disgustwere when Neewa stretched himself out in a tree for a nap. 

It was the beginning of the third week before they came one day to thecabin. There was no change in it, and Miki's body sagged disconsolatelyas he and Neewa looked at it from the edge of the clearing. No smoke, no sign of life, and the window was broken now--probably by aninquisitive bear or a wolverine. Miki went to the window and stood upto it, sniffing inside. The SMELL was still there--so faint that hecould only just detect it. But that was all. The big room was emptyexcept for the stove, a table and a few bits of rude furniture. Allelse was gone. Three or four times during the next half hour Miki stoodup at the window, and at last Neewa--urged by his curiosity--didlikewise. He also detected the faint odour that was left in the cabin. He sniffed at it for a long time. It was like the smell he had caughtthe day he came out of his den--and yet different. It was fainter, moreelusive, and not so unpleasant. 

For a month thereafter Miki insisted on hunting in the vicinity of thecabin, held there by the "pull" of the thing which he could neitheranalyze nor quite understand. Neewa accepted the situationgood-naturedly for a time. Then he lost patience and surrenderedhimself to a grouch for three whole days during which he wandered athis own sweet will. To preserve the alliance Miki was compelled tofollow him. Berry time--early July--found them sixty miles north andwest of the cabin, in the edge of the country where Neewa was born. 

But there were few berries that summer of bebe nak um geda (the summerof drought and fire). As early as the middle of July a thin, gray filmbegan to hover in palpitating waves over the forests. For three weeksthere had been no rain. Even the nights were hot and dry. Each day thefactors at their posts looked out with anxious eyes over their domains, and by the first of August every post had a score of halfbreeds andIndians patrolling the trails on the watch for fire. In their cabinsand teepees the forest dwellers who had not gone to pass the summer atthe posts waited and watched; each morning and noon and night theyclimbed tall trees and peered through that palpitating gray film for asign of smoke. For weeks the wind came steadily from the south andwest, parched as though swept over the burning sands of a desert. Berries dried up on the bushes; the fruit of the mountain ash shriveledon its stems; creeks ran dry; swamps turned into baked peat, and thepoplar leaves hung wilted and lifeless, too limp to rustle in thebreeze. Only once or twice in a lifetime does the forest dweller seepoplar leaves curl up and die like that, baked to death in the summersun. It is Kiskewahoon (the Danger Signal). Not only the warning ofpossible death in a holocaust of fire, but the omen of poor hunting andtrapping in the winter to come. 

Miki and Neewa were in a swamp country when the fifth of August came. In the lowland it was sweltering. Neewa's tongue hung from his mouth, and Miki was panting as they made their way along a black and sluggishstream that was like a great ditch and as dead as the day itself. Therewas no visible sun, but a red and lurid glow filled the sky--the sunstruggling to fight its way through the smothering film that had grownthicker over the earth. Because they were in a "pocket"--a sweep oftangled country lower than the surrounding country--Neewa and Miki werenot caught in this blackening cloud. Five miles away they might haveheard the thunder of cloven hoofs and the crash of heavy bodies intheir flight before the deadly menace of fire. As it was they madetheir way slowly through the parched swamp, so that it was midday whenthey came out of the edge of it and up through a green fringe of timberto the top of a ridge. Before this hour neither had passed through thehorror of a forest fire. But it seized upon them now. It needed no pastexperience. The cumulative instinct of a thousand generations leaptthrough their brains and bodies. Their world was in the grip ofIskootao (the Fire Devil). To the south and the east and the west itwas buried in a pall like the darkness of night, and out of the faredge of the swamp through which they had come they caught the firstlivid spurts of flame. From that direction, now that they were out ofthe "pocket, " they felt a hot wind, and with that wind came a dull andrumbling roar that was like the distant moaning of a cataract. Theywaited, and watched, struggling to get their bearings, their mindsfighting for a few moments in the gigantic process of changing instinctinto reasoning and understanding. Neewa, being a bear, was afflictedwith the near-sightedness of his breed, and he could see neither theblack tornado of smoke bearing down upon them nor the flames leapingout of the swamp. But he could SMELL, and his nose was twisted into ahundred wrinkles, and even ahead of Miki he was ready for flight. ButMiki, whose vision was like a hawk's, stood as if fascinated. 

The roaring grew more distinct. It seemed on all sides of them. But itwas from the south that there came the first storm of ash rushingnoiselessly ahead of the fire, and after that the smoke. It was thenthat Miki turned with a strange whine but it was Neewa now who took thelead--Neewa, whose forebears had ten thousand times run this same wildrace with death in the centuries since their world was born. He did notneed the keenness of far vision now. He KNEW. He knew what was behind, and what was on either side, and where the one trail to safety lay; andin the air he felt and smelled the thing that was death. Twice Mikimade efforts to swing their course into the east, but Neewa would havenone of it. With flattened ears he went on NORTH. Three times Mikistopped to turn and face the galloping menace behind them, but neverfor an instant did Neewa pause. Straight on--NORTH, NORTH, NORTH--northto the higher lands, the big waters, the open plains. 

They were not alone. A caribou sped past them with the swiftness of thewind itself. "FAST, FAST, FAST!"--Neewa's instinct cried; "but--ENDURE!For the caribou, speeding even faster than the fire, will fall ofexhaustion shortly and be eaten up by the flames. FAST--but ENDURE!"

And steadily, stoically, at his loping gait Neewa led on. 

A bull moose swung half across their trail from the west, wind-gone andpanting as though his throat were cut. He was badly burned, and runningblindly into the eastern wall of fire. 

Behind and on either side, where the flames were rushing on with thepitiless ferocity of hunnish regiments, the harvest of death was a vastand shuddering reality. In hollow logs, under windfalls, in the thicktree-tops, and in the earth itself, the smaller things of thewilderness sought their refuge--and died. Rabbits became leaping ballsof flame, then lay shrivelled and black; the marten were baked in theirtrees; fishers and mink and ermine crawled into the deepest corners ofthe windfalls and died there by inches; owls fluttered out of theirtree-tops, staggered for a few moments in the fiery air, and fell downinto the heart of the flame. No creature made a sound--except theporcupines; and as they died they cried like little children. 

In the green spruce and cedar timber, heavy with the pitch that madetheir thick tops spurt into flame like a sea of explosive, the firerushed on with a tremendous roar. From it--in a straight race--therewas no escape for man or beast. Out of that world of conflagrationthere might have risen one great, yearning cry to heaven:WATER--WATER--WATER! Wherever there was water there was also hope--andlife. Breed and blood and wilderness feuds were forgotten in the greathour of peril. Every lake became a haven of refuge. 

To such a lake came Neewa, guided by an unerring instinct and sense ofsmell sharpened by the rumble and roar of the storm of fire behind him. Miki had "lost" himself; his senses were dulled; his nostrils caught noscent but that of a world in flames--so, blindly, he followed hiscomrade. The fire was enveloping the lake along its western shore, andits water was already thickly tenanted. It was not a large lake, andalmost round. Its diameter was not more than two hundred yards. Fartherout--a few of them swimming, but most of them standing on bottom withonly their heads out of water--were a score of caribou and moose. Manyother shorter-legged creatures were swimming aimlessly, turning thisway and that, paddling their feet only enough to keep afloat. On theshore where Neewa and Miki paused was a huge porcupine, chattering andchuckling foolishly, as if scolding all things in general for havingdisturbed him at dinner. Then he took to the water. A little farther upthe shore a fisher-cat and a fox hugged close to the water line, hesitating to wet their precious fur until death itself snapped attheir heels; and as if to bring fresh news of this death a second foxdragged himself wearily out on the shore, as limp as a wet rag afterhis swim from the opposite shore, where the fire was already leaping ina wall of flame. And as this fox swam in, hoping to find safety, an oldbear twice as big as Neewa, crashed panting from the undergrowth, plunged into the water, and swam OUT. Smaller things were creeping andcrawling and slinking along the shore; little red-eyed ermine, marten, and mink, rabbits, squirrels, and squeaking gophers, and a horde ofmice. And at last, with these things which he would have devoured sogreedily running about him, Neewa waded slowly out into the water. Mikifollowed until he was submerged to his shoulders. Then he stopped. Thefire was close now, advancing like a race-horse. Over the protectingbarrier of thick timber drove the clouds of smoke and ash. Swiftly thelake became obliterated, and now out of that awful chaos of blacknessand smoke and heat there rose strange and thrilling cries; the bleatingof a moose calf that was doomed to die and the bellowing, terror-filledresponse of its mother; the agonized howling of a wolf; the terrifiedbarking of a fox, and over all else the horrible screaming of a pair ofloons whose home had been transformed into a sea of flame. 

Through the thickening smoke and increasing heat Neewa gave his call toMiki as he began to swim, and with an answering whine Miki plungedafter him, swimming so close to his big black brother that his muzzletouched the other's flank. In mid-lake Neewa did as the other swimmingcreatures were doing--paddled only enough to keep himself afloat; butfor Miki, big of bone and unassisted by a life-preserver of fat, thestruggle was not so easy. He was forced to swim to keep afloat. A dozentimes he circled around Neewa, and then, with something of thesituation driven upon him, he came up close to the bear and rested hisforepaws on his shoulders. 

The lake was now encircled by a solid wall of fire. Blasts of flameshot up the pitch-laden trees and leapt for fifty feet into theblistering air. The roar of the conflagration was deafening. It drownedall sound that brute agony and death may have made. And its heat wasterrific. For a few terrible minutes the air which Miki drew into hislungs was like fire itself. Neewa plunged his head under water everyfew seconds, but it was not Miki's instinct to do this. Like the wolfand the fox and the fisher-cat and the lynx it was his nature to diebefore completely submerging himself. 

Swift as it had come the fire passed; and the walls of timber that hadbeen green a few moments before were black and shrivelled and dead; andsound swept on with the flame until it became once more only a low andrumbling murmur. 

To the black and smouldering shores the live things slowly made theirway. Of all the creatures that had taken refuge in the lake many haddied. Chief of those were the porcupines. All had drowned. 

Close to the shore the heat was still intense, and for hours the earthwas hot with smouldering fire. All the rest of that day and the nightthat followed no living thing moved out of the shallow water. And yetno living thing thought to prey upon its neighbour. The great peril hadmade of all beasts kin. 

A little before dawn of the day following the fire relief came. Adeluge of rain fell, and when day broke and the sun shone through amurky heaven there was left no sign of what the lake had been, exceptfor the dead bodies that floated on its surface or lined its shores. The living things had returned into their desolated wilderness--andamong them Neewa and Miki. 

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

For many days after the Great Fire it was Neewa who took the lead. Alltheir world was a black and lifeless desolation and Miki would not haveknown which way to turn. Had it been a local fire of small extent hewould have "wandered" out of its charred path. But the conflagrationhad been immense. It had swept over a vast reach of country, and for ahalf of the creatures who had saved themselves in the lakes and streamsthere was only a death by starvation left. 

But not for Neewa and his breed. Just as there had been no indecisionin the manner and direction of his flight before the fire so there wasnow no hesitation in the direction he chose to seek a live world again. It was due north and west--as straight as a die. If they came to alake, and went around it, Neewa would always follow the shore until hecame directly opposite his trail on the other side of the lake--andthen strike north and west again. He travelled steadily, not only byday but also by night, with only short intervals of rest, and thedawning of the second morning found Miki more exhausted than the bear. 

There were many evidences now that they had reached a point where thefire had begun to burn itself out. Patches of green timber were leftstanding, there were swamps unscathed by the flames, and here and therethey came upon green patches of meadow. In the swamps and timber theyfeasted, for these oases in what had been a sea of flame were filledwith food ready to be preyed upon and devoured. For the first timeNeewa refused to stop because there was plenty to eat. The sixth daythey were a hundred miles from the lake in which they had sought refugefrom the fire. 

It was a wonderful country of green timber, of wide plains and of manylakes and streams--cut up by a thousand usayow (low ridges), which madethe best of hunting. Because it was a country of many waters, with livestreams running between the ridges and from lake to lake, it had notsuffered from the drought like the country farther south. For a monthNeewa and Miki hunted in their new paradise, and became fat and happyagain. 

It was in September that they came upon a strange thing in the edge ofa swamp. At first Miki thought that it was a cabin; but it was a greatdeal smaller than any cabin he had known. It was not much larger thanthe cage of saplings in which Le Beau had kept him. But it was made ofheavy logs, and the logs were notched so that nothing could knock themdown. And these logs, instead of lying closely one on the other, hadopen spaces six or eight inches wide between them. And there was awide-open door. From this strange contraption there came a strong odourof over-ripened fish. The smell repelled Miki. But it was a powerfulattraction to Neewa, who persisted in remaining near it in spite of allMiki could do to drag him away. Finally, disgusted at his comrade's badtaste, Miki sulked off alone to hunt. It was some time after thatbefore Neewa dared to thrust his head and shoulders through theopening. The smell of the fish made his little eyes gleam. Cautiouslyhe stepped inside the queer looking thing of logs. Nothing happened. Hesaw the fish, all he could eat, just on the other side of a saplingagainst which he must lean to reach them. He went deliberately to thesapling, leaned over, and then!--

"CRASH!"

He whirled about as if shot. There was no longer an opening where hehad entered. The sapling "trigger" had released an over-head door, andNeewa was a prisoner. He was not excited, but accepted the situationquite coolly, probably having no doubt in his mind that somewhere therewas an aperture between the logs large enough for him to squeezethrough. After a few inquisitive sniffs he proceeded to devour thefish. He was absorbed in his odoriferous feast when out of a clump ofdwarf balsams a few yards away appeared an Indian. He quickly took inthe situation, turned, and disappeared. 

Half an hour later this Indian ran into a clearing in which were therecently constructed buildings of a new Post. He made for the Companystore. In the fur-carpeted "office" of this store a man was bendingfondly over a woman. The Indian saw them as he entered, and chuckled. "Sakehewawin" ("the love couple"); that was what they had already cometo call them at Post Lac Bain--this man and woman who had given them agreat feast when the missioner had married them not so very long ago. The man and the woman stood up when the Indian entered, and the womansmiled at him. She was beautiful. Her eyes were glowing, and there wasthe flush of a flower in her cheeks. The Indian felt the worship of herwarm in his heart. 

"Oo-ee, we have caught the bear, " he said. "But it is napao (ahe-bear). There is no cub, Iskwao Nanette!"

The white man chuckled. 

"Aren't we having the darndest luck getting you a cub for a house-pet, Nanette?" he asked. "I'd have sworn this mother and her cub would havebeen easily caught. A he-bear! We'll have to let him loose, Mootag. Hispelt is good for nothing. Do you want to go with us and see the fun, Nanette?"

She nodded, her little laugh filled with the joy of love and life. 

"Oui. It will be such fun--to see him go!"

Challoner led the way, with an axe in his hand; and with him cameNanette, her hand in his. Mootag followed with his rifle, prepared foran emergency. From the thick screen of balsams Challoner peered forth, then made a hole through which Nanette might look at the cage and itsprisoner. For a moment or two she held her breath as she watched Neewapacing back and forth, very much excited now. Then she gave a littlecry, and Challoner felt her fingers pinch his own sharply. Before heknew what she was about to do she had thrust herself through the screenof balsams. 

Close to the log prison, faithful to his comrade in the hour of peril, lay Miki. He was exhausted from digging at the earth under the lowerlog, and he had not smelled or heard anything of the presence of othersuntil he saw Nanette standing not twenty paces away. His heart leapt upinto his panting throat. He swallowed, as though to get rid of a greatlump; he stared. And then, with a sudden, yearning whine, he sprangtoward her. With a yell Challoner leapt out of the balsams withuplifted axe. But before the axe could fall, Miki was in Nanette'sarms, and Challoner dropped his weapon with a gasp of amazement--andone word:

"MIKI!"

Mootag, looking on in stupid astonishment, saw both the man and thewoman making a great fuss over a strange and wild-looking beast thatlooked as if it ought to be killed. They had forgotten the bear. AndMiki, wildly joyous at finding his beloved master and mistress, hadforgotten him also. It was a prodigious WHOOF from Neewa himself thatbrought their attention to him. Like a flash Miki was back at the pensmelling of Neewa's snout between two of the logs, and with a greatwagging of tail trying to make him understand what had happened. 

Slowly, with a thought born in his head that made him oblivious of allelse but the big black brute in the pen, Challoner approached the trap. Was it possible that Miki could have made friends with any other bearthan the cub of long ago? He drew in a deep breath as he looked atthem. Neewa's brown-tipped nose was thrust between two of the logs andMIKI WAS LICKING IT WITH HIS TONGUE! He held out a hand to Nanette, andwhen she came to him he pointed for a space, without speaking. 

Then he said:

"It is the cub, Nanette. You know--the cub I have told you about. They've stuck together all this time--ever since I killed the cub'smother a year and a half ago, and tied them together on a piece ofrope. I understand now why Miki ran away from us when we were at thecabin. He went back--to the bear. "

To-day if you strike northward from Le Pas and put your canoe in theRat River or Grassberry waterways, and thence paddle and run with thecurrent down the Reindeer River and along the east shore of ReindeerLake you will ultimately come to the Cochrane--and Post Lac Bain. It isone of the most wonderful countries in all the northland. Three hundredIndians, breeds and French, come with their furs to Lac Bain. Not asoul among them--man, woman, or child--but knows the story of the "tamebear of Lac Bain"--the pet of l'ange, the white angel, the Factor'swife. 

The bear wears a shining collar and roams at will in the company of agreat dog, but, having grown huge and fat now, never wanders far fromthe Post. And it is an unwritten law in all that country that theanimal must not be harmed, and that no bear traps shall be set withinfive miles of the Company buildings. Beyond that limit the bear neverroams; and when it comes cold, and he goes into his long sleep, hecrawls into a deep warm cavern that has been dug for him under theCompany storehouse. And with him, when the nights come, sleeps Miki thedog. 

THE END