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 the gloom of evening. That part of the forest into which Neewa's flight had led them was like a vast, mysterious cavern. Even Challoner would have paused there, awed by the grandeur of its silence, held spellbound by the enigmatical whispers that made up its only sound. The sun was still high in the heavens, but not a ray of it penetrated the dense green canopy of spruce and balsam that hung like a wall over the heads of Miki and Neewa. About them was no bush, no undergrowth; under their feet was not a flower or a spear of grass. Nothing but a thick, soft carpet of velvety brown needles under which all life was smothered. It was as if the forest nymphs had made of this their bedchamber, sheltered through all the seasons of the year from wind and rain and snow; or else that the were-wolf people—the loup-garou—had chosen it as their hiding-place and from its weird and gloomy fastnesses went forth on their ghostly missions among the sons of men.
Not a bird twittered in the trees. There was no flutter of life in their crowded branches. Everything was so still that Miki heard the excited throbbing of life in his own body. He looked at Neewa, and in the gloom the cub's eyes were glistening with a strange fire. Neither of them was afraid, yet in that cavernous silence their comradeship was born anew, and in it there was something now that crept down into their wild little souls and filled the emptiness that was left by the death of 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 a squeaky grunt that was like the grunt of a little pig. They edged nearer, and stood shoulder to shoulder facing their world. They went on after a little, like two children exploring the mystery of an old and abandoned house. They were not hunting, yet every hunting instinct in their 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 he was born. Would Noozak, his mother, come up presently out of one of those dark forest aisles? Was she sleeping here, as she had slept in the darkness of their den? The questions may have come vaguely in his mind. For it was like the cavern, in that it was deathly still; and a short distance away its gloom thickened into black pits. Such a place the Indians called MUHNEDOO—a spot in the forest blasted of all life by the presence of devils; for only devils would grow trees so thick that sunlight never penetrated. And only owls held the companionship of the evil spirits.
Where Neewa and Miki stood a grown wolf would have paused, and turned back; the fox would have slunk away, hugging the ground; even the murderous-hearted little ermine would have peered in with his beady red eyes, unafraid, but turned by instinct back into the open timber. For here, in spite of the stillness and the gloom, THERE WAS LIFE. It was beating and waiting in the ambush of those black pits. It was rousing itself, even as Neewa and Miki went on deeper into the silence, and eyes that were like round balls were beginning to glow with a greenish fire. Still there was no sound, no movement in the dense overgrowth of the 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 so close over the heads of Neewa and Miki that they heard the menacing purr of giant wings. As the wraith-like creature disappeared there came back to them a hiss and the grating snap of a powerful beak. It sent a shiver through Miki. The instinct that had been fighting to rouse itself within him flared up like a powder-flash. Instantly he sensed the nearness of an unknown and appalling danger.
There was sound about them now—movement in the trees, ghostly tremours in the air, and the crackling, metallic SNAP—SNAP—SNAP over their heads. Again Miki saw the great shadow come and go. It was followed by a second, and a third, until the vault under the trees seemed filled with shadows; and with each shadow came nearer that grating menace of powerfully beaked jaws. Like the wolf and the fox he cringed down, hugging the earth. But it was no longer with the whimpering fear of the pup. His muscles were drawn tight, and with a snarl he bared his fangs when 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 have been the defiant WHOOF of his mother. Bear-like he was standing up. And it was upon him that one of the shadows descended—a monstrous feathered bolt straight out of darkness.
Six feet away Miki's blazing eyes saw his comrade smothered under a gray mass, and for a moment or two he was held appalled and lifeless by the thunderous beat of the gargantuan wings. No sound came from Neewa. Flung on his back, he was digging his claws into feathers so thick and soft that they seemed to have no heart or flesh. He felt upon him the presence of the Thing that was death. The beat of the wings was like the beat of clubs: they drove the breath out of his body, they blinded his senses, yet he continued to tear fiercely with his claws into a fleshless breast.
In his first savage swoop Oohoomisew, whose great wings measured five feet from tip to tip, had missed his death-grip by the fraction of an inch. His powerful talons that would have buried themselves like knives in Neewa's vitals closed too soon, and were filled with the cub's thick hair and loose hide. Now he was beating his prey down with his wings until the right moment came for him to finish the killing with the terrific stabbing of his beak. Half a minute of that and Neewa's face would 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 in his throat. All at once fear went out of him and in its place came a wild and almost joyous exultation. He recognized their enemy—A BIRD. To him birds were a prey, and not a menace. A dozen times in their journey down from the Upper Country Challoner had shot big Canada geese and huge-winged cranes. Miki had eaten their flesh. Twice he had pursued wounded cranes, yapping at the top of his voice, AND THEY HAD RUN FROM HIM. He did not bark or yelp now. Like a flash he launched himself into the feathered mass of the owl. His fourteen pounds of flesh and bone landed with the force of a stone, and Oohoomisew was torn from his hold and flung with a great flutter of wings upon his side.
Before he could recover his balance Miki was at him again, striking full at his head, where he had struck at the wounded crane. Oohoomisew went flat on his back—and for the first time Miki let out of his throat a series of savage and snarling yelps. It was a new sound to Oohoomisew and his blood-thirsty brethren watching the struggle from out of the gloom. The snapping beaks drifted farther away, and Oohoomisew, with a sudden sweep of wings, vaulted into the air.
With his big forefeet planted firmly and his snarling face turned up to the black wall of the tree-tops Miki continued to bark and howl defiantly. He wanted the bird to come back. He wanted to tear and rip at its feathers, and as he sent out his frantic challenge Neewa rolled over, got on his feet, and with a warning squeal to Miki once more set off in flight. If Miki was ignorant in the matter, HE at least understood the situation. Again it was the instinct born of countless generations. He knew that in the black pits about them hovered death—and he ran as he had never run before in his life. As Miki followed, 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 longer the cavernous hollows of gloom about them. If they had gone on another hundred yards they would have come to the edge of the big plain, the hunting grounds of the owls. But the flame of self-preservation was hot in 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 into the security of it so swiftly that for a moment or two Miki wondered where he had gone.
Crawling into the windfall after him Miki turned and poked out his head. He was not satisfied. His lips were still drawn back, and he continued to growl. He had beaten his enemy. He had knocked it over fairly, and had filled his jaws with its feathers. In the face of that triumph he sensed the fact that he had run away in following Neewa, and he was possessed with the desire to go back and have it out to a finish. It was the blood of the Airedale and the Spitz growing stronger in him, fearless of defeat; the blood of his father, the giant hunting-hound Hela. It was the demand of his breed, with its mixture of wolfish courage and fox-like persistency backed by the powerful jaws and Herculean strength of the Mackenzie hound, and if Neewa had not drawn deeper under the windfall he would have gone out again and yelped his challenge to the feathered things from which they had fled.
Neewa was smarting under the red-hot stab of Oohoomisew's talons, and he wanted no more of the fight that came out of the air. He began licking his wounds, and after a while Miki went back to him and smelled of the fresh, warm blood. It made him growl. He knew that it was Neewa's blood, and his eyes glowed like twin balls of fire as they watched the opening through which they had entered into the dark tangle of fallen trees.
For an hour he did not move, and in that hour, as in the hour after the killing of the rabbit, he GREW. When at last he crept out cautiously from under the windfall the sun was sinking behind the western forests. He peered about him, watching for movement and listening for sound. The sagging and apologetic posture of puppyhood was gone from him. His overgrown feet stood squarely on the ground; his angular legs were as hard as if carven out of knotty wood; his body was tense, his ears stood up, his head was rigidly set between the bony shoulders that already gave evidence of gigantic strength to come. About him he knew was the Big Adventure. The world was no longer a world of play and of snuggling under the hands of a master. Something vastly more thrilling had come into it now.
After a time he dropped on his belly close to the opening under the windfall and began chewing at the end of rope which dragged from about his neck. The sun sank lower. It disappeared. Still he waited for Neewa to come out and lie with him in the open. As the twilight thickened into deeper gloom he drew himself into the edge of the door under the windfall and found Neewa there. Together they peered forth into the mysterious night.
For a time there was the utter stillness of the first hour of darkness in the northland. Up in the clear sky the stars came out in twos and then in glowing constellations. There was an early moon. It was already over the edge of the forests, flooding the world with a golden glow, and in that glow the night was filled with grotesque black shadows that had neither movement nor sound. Then the silence was broken. From out of the owl-infested pits came a strange and hollow sound. Miki had heard the shrill screeching and the TU-WHO-O-O, TU-WHO-O-O, TU-WHO-O-O of the little owls, the trap-pirates, but never this voice of the strong-winged Jezebels and Frankensteins of the deeper forests—the real butchers of the night. It was a hollow, throaty sound—more a moan than a cry; a moan so short and low that it seemed born of caution, or of fear that it would frighten possible prey. For a few minutes pit after pit gave forth each its signal of life, and then there was a silence of voice, broken at intervals by the faint, crashing sweep of great wings in the spruce and balsam tops as the hunters launched themselves up and over them in the direction of the plain.
The going forth of the owls was only the beginning of the night carnival for Neewa and Miki. For a long time they lay side by side, sleepless, and listening. Past the windfall went the padded feet of a fisher-cat, and they caught the scent of it; to them came the far cry of a loon, the yapping of a restless fox, and the MOOING of a cow moose feeding in the edge of a lake on the farther side of the plain. And then, at last, came the thing that made their blood run faster and sent a deeper thrill into their hearts.
It seemed a vast distance away at first—the hot throated cry of wolves on the trail of meat. It was swinging northward into the plain, and this shortly brought the cry with the wind, which was out of the north and the west. The howling of the pack was very distinct after that, and in Miki's brain nebulous visions and almost unintelligible memories were swiftly wakening into life. It was not Challoner's voice that he heard, but it was A VOICE THAT HE KNEW. It was the voice of Hela, his giant father; the voice of Numa, his mother; the voice of his kind for a hundred and a thousand generations before him, and it was the instinct of those generations and the hazy memory of his earliest puppyhood that were impinging the thing upon him. A little later it would take both intelligence and experience to make him discriminate the hair-breadth difference between wolf and dog. And this voice of his blood was COMING! It bore down upon them swiftly, fierce and filled with the blood-lust of hunger. He forgot Neewa. He did not observe the cub when he slunk back deeper under the windfall. He rose up on his feet and stood stiff and tense, unconscious of all things but that thrilling tongue of the hunt-pack.
Wind-broken, his strength failing him, and his eyes wildly searching the night ahead for the gleam of water that might save him, Ahtik, the young caribou bull, raced for his life a hundred yards ahead of the wolves. The pack had already flung itself out in the form of a horse-shoe, and the two ends were beginning to creep up abreast of Ahtik, ready to close in for the hamstring—and the kill. In these last minutes every throat was silent, and the young bull sensed the beginning of the end. Desperately he turned to the right and plunged into 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 and grotesque form in the moonlight, his coughing breath filled with the agony and hopelessness of approaching death. As swiftly as he had come he was gone, and in his place followed half a score of noiseless shadows passing so quickly that to Miki they were like the coming and the going of the wind.
For many minutes after that he stood and listened but again silence had fallen upon the night. After a little he went back into the windfall and lay down beside Neewa.
Hours that followed he passed in restless snatches of slumber. He dreamed of things that he had forgotten. He dreamed of Challoner. He dreamed of chill nights and the big fires; he heard his master's voice and he felt again the touch of his hand; but over it all and through it all ran that wild hunting voice of his own kind.
In the early dawn he came out from under the windfall and smelled of the trail where the wolves and the caribou had passed. Heretofore it was Neewa who had led in their wandering; now it was Neewa that followed. His nostrils filled with the heavy scent of the pack, Miki travelled steadily in the direction of the plain. It took him half an hour to reach the edge of it. After that he came to a wide and stony out-cropping of the earth over which he nosed the spoor to a low and abrupt descent into the wider range of the valley.
Here he stopped.
Twenty feet under him and fifty feet away lay the partly devoured carcass of the young bull. It was not this fact that thrilled him until his heart stood still. From out of the bushy plain had come Maheegun, a renegade she-wolf, to fill herself of the meat which she had not helped to 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 own whelps. But she was none of these things to Miki. In her he saw in living flesh and bone what his memory and his instinct recalled to him of 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 he would have gone to Challoner; with great caution, with a wilder suspense, but with a strange yearning within him that the man's presence would have failed to rouse. He was very close to Maheegun before she was conscious that he was near. The Mother-smell was warm in his 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 head between his fore-paws, he whined.
Like a flash the she-wolf turned, her fangs bared the length of her jaws and her bloodshot eyes aglow with menace and suspicion. Miki had no time to make a move or another sound. With the suddenness of a cat the outcast creature was upon him. Her fangs slashed him just once—and she was gone. Her teeth had drawn blood from his shoulder, but it was not the smart of the wound that held him for many moments as still as if dead. The Mother-smell was still where Maheegun had been. But his dreams had crumbled. The thing that had been Memory died away at last in a deep breath that was broken by a whimper of pain. For him, even as for Neewa, there was no more a Challoner, and no longer a mother. But there remained—the world! In it the sun was rising. Out of it came the thrill and the perfume of life. And close to him—very close—was the rich, sweet smell of meat.
He sniffed hungrily. Then he turned, and saw Neewa's black and pudgy body tumbling down the slope of the dip to join him in the feast.
Had Makoki, the leather-faced old Cree runner between God's Lake and Fort Churchill, known the history of Miki and Neewa up to the point where they came to feast on the fat and partly devoured carcass of the young caribou bull, he would have said that Iskoo Wapoo, the Good Spirit of the beasts, was watching over them most carefully. For Makoki had great faith in the forest gods as well as in those of his own tepee. He would have given the story his own picturesque version, and would have told it to the little children of his son's children; and his son's children would have kept it in their memory for their own children later on.
It was not in the ordained nature of things that a black bear cub and a Mackenzie hound pup with a dash of Airedale and Spitz in him should "chum up" together as Neewa and Miki had done. Therefore, he would have said, the Beneficent Spirit who watched over the affairs of four-legged beasts must have had an eye on them from the beginning. It was she—Iskoo Wapoo was a goddess and not a god—who had made Challoner kill Neewa's mother, the big black bear; and it was she who had induced him to tie the pup and the cub together on the same piece of rope, so that when they fell out of the white man's canoe into the rapids they would not die, but would be company and salvation for each other. NESWA-PAWUK ("two little brothers") Makoki would have called them; and had it come to the test he would have cut off a finger before harming either of them. But Makoki knew nothing of their adventures, and on this morning when they came down to the feast he was a hundred miles away, haggling with a white man who wanted a guide. He would never know that Iskoo Wapoo was at his side that very moment, planning the thing that was to mean so much in the lives of Neewa and Miki.
Meanwhile Neewa and Miki went at their breakfast as if starved. They were immensely practical. They did not look back on what had happened, but for the moment submerged themselves completely in the present. The few days of thrill and adventure through which they had gone seemed like a year. Neewa's yearning for his mother had grown less and less insistent, and Miki's lost master counted for nothing now, as things were going with him. Last night was the big, vivid thing in their memories—their fight for life with the monster owls, their flight, the killing of the young caribou bull by the wolves, and (with Miki) the short, bitter experience with Maheegun, the renegade she-wolf. His shoulder burned where she had torn at him with her teeth. But this did not lessen his appetite. Growling as he ate, he filled himself until he could hold no more.
Then he sat back on his haunches and looked in the direction Maheegun had taken.
It was eastward, toward Hudson Bay, over a great plain that lay between two ridges that were like forest walls, yellow and gold in the morning sun. He had never seen the world as it looked to him now. The wolves had overtaken the caribou on a scarp on the high ground that thrust itself out like a short fat thumb from the black and owl-infested forest, 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 that the wonder of what he saw dissolved itself at last into the shimmer of the sun and the blue of the sky. Within his vision lay a paradise of marvellous promise; wide stretches of soft, green meadow; clumps of timber, park-like until they merged into the deeper forest that began with the farther ridge; great patches of bush radiant with the colouring of June; here and there the gleam of water, and half a mile away a lake that was like a giant mirror set in a purplish-green frame of balsam and spruce.
Into these things Maheegun, the she-wolf, had gone. He wondered whether she would come back. He sniffed the air for her. But there was no longer the mother-yearning in his heart. Something had already begun to tell him of the vast difference between the dog and the wolf. For a few moments, still hopeful that the world held a mother for him, he had mistaken her for the one he had lost. But he understood now. A little more and Maheegun's teeth would have snapped his shoulder, or slashed his throat to the jugular. TEBAH-GONE-GAWIN (the One Great Law) was impinging itself upon him, the implacable law of the survival of the fittest. To live was to fight—to kill; to beat everything that had feet or wings. The earth and the air held menace for him. Nowhere, since he had lost Challoner, had he found friendship except in the heart of Neewa, the motherless cub. And he turned toward Neewa now, growling at a gay-plumaged moose-bird that was hovering about for a morsel of meat.
A few minutes before, Neewa had weighed a dozen pounds; now he weighed fourteen or fifteen. His stomach was puffed out like the sides of an overfilled bag, and he sat humped up in a pool of warm sunshine licking his chops and vastly contented with himself and the world. Miki rubbed up to him, and Neewa gave a chummy grunt. Then he rolled over on his fat back and invited Miki to play. It was the first time; and with a joyous yelp Miki jumped into him. Scratching and biting and kicking, and interjecting their friendly scrimmage with ferocious growling on Miki's part and pig-like grunts and squeals on Neewa's, they rolled to the 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 catapulted the 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 into knots until by the time he struck the hard strip of shale at the edge of the plain he was drunk with dizziness and the breath was out of his body. He staggered to his feet with a gasp. For a space the world was whirling round and round in a sickening circle. Then he pulled himself together, 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 his scattered wits Neewa climbed twenty or thirty feet up the slope and deliberately rolled down again! Miki's jaws fell apart in amazement. Again Neewa climbed up and rolled down—and Miki ceased to breathe altogether. Five times he watched Neewa go that twenty or thirty feet up the grassy slope and tumble down. The fifth time he waded into Neewa and 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 a scant hundred yards Neewa humoured him by following, but beyond that point he flatly refused to go. In the fourth month of his exciting young life Neewa was satisfied that Nature had given him birth that he might have the endless pleasure of filling his stomach. For him, eating was the one and only excuse for existing. In the next few months he had a big job on his hands if he kept up the record of his family, and the fact that Miki was apparently abandoning the fat and juicy carcass of the young bull filled him with alarm and rebellion. Straightway he forgot all thought of play and started back up the slope on a mission that 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 the bull, and from a clutter of big stones looked forth upon their meat. In that moment they stood dumb and paralyzed. Two gigantic owls were tearing at the carcass. To Miki and Neewa these were the monsters of the black forest out of which they had escaped so narrowly with their lives. But as a matter of fact they were not of Oohoomisew's breed of night-seeing pirates. They were Snowy Owls, unlike all others of their kind in that their vision was as keen as a hawk's in the light of broad day. Mispoon, the big male, was immaculately white. His mate, a size or two smaller, was barred with brownish-slate colour—and their heads were round and terrible looking because they had no ear-tufts. Mispoon, with his splendid wings spread half over the carcass of Ahtik, the dead bull, was rending flesh so ravenously with his powerful beak that Neewa and Miki could hear the sound of it. Newish, his mate, had her head almost buried in Ahtik's bowels. The sight of them and the sound of their eating were enough to disturb the nerves of an older bear than Neewa, 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 flattened himself on the ground. The blood of the giant hunter that was his father rose in him again like fire. The carcass was his meat, and he was ready to fight for it. Besides, had he not whipped the big owl in the forest? But here there were two. The fact held him flattened on his belly a moment or two longer, and in that brief space the unexpected happened.
Slinking up out of the low growth of bush at the far edge of the dip lie saw Maheegun, the renegade she-wolf. Hollow-backed, red-eyed, her bushy tail hanging with the sneaky droop of the murderess, she advanced over the bit of open, a gray and vengeful shadow. Furtive as she was, she at least acted with great swiftness. Straight at Mispoon she launched herself with a snarl and snap of fangs that made Miki hug the ground still closer.
Deep into Mispoon's four-inch armour of feathers Maheegun buried her fangs. Taken at a disadvantage Mispoon's head would have been torn from his body before he could have gathered himself for battle had it not been for Newish. Pulling her blood stained head from Ahtik's flesh and blood she drove at Maheegun with a throaty, wheezing scream—a cry that was like the cry of no other thing that lived. Into the she-wolf's back she sank her beak and talons and Maheegun gave up her grip on Mispoon and tore ferociously at her new assailant. For a space Mispoon was saved, but it was at a terrible sacrifice to Newish. With a single lucky slash of her long-fanged jaws, Maheegun literally tore one of Newish's great wings from her body. The croak of agony that came out of her may have held the death-note for Mispoon, her mate; for he rose on his wings, poised himself for an instant, and launched himself at the she-wolf's back with a force that drove Maheegun off her feet.
Deep into her loins the great owl sank his talons, gripping at the renegade's vitals with an avenging and ferocious tenacity. In that hold Maheegun felt the sting of death. She flung herself on her back; she rolled over and over, snarling and snapping and clawing the air in her efforts to free herself of the burning knives that were sinking still deeper into her bowels. Mispoon hung on, rolling as she rolled, beating with his giant wings, fastening his talons in that clutch that death could not shake loose. On the ground his mate was dying. Her life's blood was pouring out of the hole in her side, but with the dimming vision of death she made a last effort to help Mispoon. And Mispoon, a hero to the last, kept his grip until he was dead.
Into the edge of the bush Maheegun dragged herself. There she freed herself 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 the thicker cover, leaving a red trail behind her. A quarter of a mile away she 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 combat had widened even more that subtle and growing comprehension of the world as it existed for them. It was the unforgettable wisdom of experience backed by an age-old instinct and the heredity of breed. They had killed small things—Neewa, his bugs and his frogs and his bumble-bees; Miki, his rabbit—they had fought for their lives; they had passed through experiences that, from the beginning, had been a gamble with death; but it had needed the climax of a struggle such as they had seen with their own eyes to open up the doors that gave them a new viewpoint of life.
It was many minutes before Miki went forth and smelled of Newish, the dead owl. He had no desire now to tear at her feathers in the excitement of an infantile triumph and ferocity. Along with greater understanding a new craft and a new cunning were born in him. The fate of Mispoon and his mate had taught him the priceless value of silence and of caution, for he knew now that in the world there were many things that were not afraid of him, and many things that would not run away from him. He had lost his fearless and blatant contempt for winged creatures; 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 and the owls had fought. This was because in Miki's veins was the red fighting blood of a long line of ancestors that reached back to the wolves.
In Neewa the process of deduction was vastly different. His breed was not the fighting breed, except as it fought among its own kind. It did not make a habit of preying upon other beasts, and no other beast preyed upon it. This was purely an accident of birth—the fact that no other creature in all his wide domain was powerful enough, either alone or in groups, to defeat a grown black bear in open battle. Therefore Neewa learned nothing of fighting in the tragedy of Maheegun and the owls. His profit, if any, was in a greater caution. And his chief interest was in the fact that Maheegun and the two owls had not devoured the young bull. His supper was still safe.
With his little round eyes on the alert for fresh trouble he kept himself safely hidden while he watched Miki investigating the scene of battle. From the body of the owl Miki went to Ahtik, and from Ahtik he sniffed 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, but returned to Neewa, who by this time had made up his mind that he could safely come out into the open.
Fifty times that day Miki rushed to the defense of their meat. The big-eyed, clucking moose-birds were most annoying. Next to them the Canada 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 was at him so fiercely that he did not return a third time. By noon the crows had got scent or sight of the carcass and were circling overhead, waiting for Neewa and Miki to disappear. Later, they set up a raucous protest from the tops of the trees in the edge of the forest.
That night the wolves did not return to the dip. Meat was too plentiful, and those that were over their gorge were off on a fresh kill far to the west. Once or twice Neewa and Miki heard their distant cry.
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 to their feast.
And here is where Makoki, the old Cree runner, would have emphasized the presence of the Beneficent Spirit. For day followed day, and night followed night, and Ahtik's flesh and blood put into Neewa and Miki a strength and growth that developed marvellously. By the fourth day Neewa had become so fat and sleek that he was half again as big as on the day he fell out of the canoe. Miki had begun to fill out. His ribs could no longer be counted from a distance. His chest was broadening and his legs were losing some of their angular clumsiness. Practice on Ahtik's bones had strengthened his jaws. With his development he felt less and less the old puppyish desire to play—more and more the restlessness of the hunter. The fourth night he heard again the wailing hunt-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. As long as the meat held out there was no very great temptation for him beyond the dip and the slope. Two or three times a day he went down to the creek; and every morning and afternoon—especially about sunset—he had his fun rolling downhill. In addition to this he began taking his afternoon naps in the crotch of a small sapling. As Miki could see neither sense nor sport in tobogganing, and as he could not climb a tree, he began to spend more and more time in venturing up and down the foot 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 his tree, or until he had made an effort to coax him away from the single trail he had made to the creek and back. Neewa's obstinacy would never have brought about any real unpleasantness between them. Miki thought too much of him for that; and if it had come to a final test, and Neewa had thought that Miki would not return, he would undoubtedly have followed him.
It was another and a more potent thing than an ordinary quarrel that placed the first great barrier between them. Now it happened that Miki was 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's carcass was ripening. On the fifth day Miki found the flesh difficult to eat; on the sixth, impossible. To Neewa it became increasingly delectable as the flavour grew and the perfume thickened. On the sixth day, 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 all the crows in the country were gathering. It drove Miki, slinking like a whipped cur, down into the creek bottom. When Neewa came down for a drink after his morning feast Miki sniffed him over for a moment and then slunk away from him again. As a matter of fact, there was small difference between Ahtik and Neewa now, except that one lay still and the other moved. Both smelled dead; both were decidedly "well hung." Even the crows circled over Neewa, wondering why it was that he walked about 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 felt the bigness and emptiness of the world. He wanted Neewa. He whined for him 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 finished his breakfast and his morning roll, and he was worse than ever. Again Miki tried to coax him away but Neewa was disgustingly fixed in his determination to remain in his present glory. And this morning he was more than usually anxious to return to the dip. All of yesterday he had found it necessary to frighten the crows away from his meat, and to-day they were doubly persistent in their efforts to rob him. With a grunt and a squeal to Miki he hustled back up the hill after he had taken his drink.
His trail entered the dip through the pile of rocks from which Miki and he had watched the battle between Maheegun and the two owls, and as a matter of caution he always paused for a few moments among these rocks to make sure that all was well in the open. This morning he received a decided shock. Ahtik's carcass was literally black with crows. Kakakew and his Ethiopic horde of scavengers had descended in a cloud, and they were tearing and fighting and beating their wings about Ahtik as if all of them had gone mad. Another cloud was hovering in air; every bush and near-by sapling was bending under the weight of them, and in the sun their jet-black plumage glistened as if they had just come out of the bath of a tinker's pot. Neewa stood astounded. He was not frightened; he had driven the cowardly robbers away many times. But never had there been so many of them. He could see no trace of his meat. Even the ground about it was black.
He rushed out from the rocks with his lips drawn back, just as he had rushed a dozen or more times before. There was a mighty roar of wings. The air was darkened by them, and the ravenish screaming that followed could have been heard a mile away. This time Kakakew and his mighty crew 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 nostrils intoxicated them, to the point of madness, with desire. Neewa was dazed. Over him, behind him, on all sides of him they swept and circled, croaking and screaming at him, the boldest of them swooping down to beat at him with their wings. Thicker grew the menacing cloud, and then suddenly it descended like an avalanche. It covered Ahtik again. In it Neewa was fairly smothered. He felt himself buried under a mass of wings and bodies, and he began fighting, as he had fought the owls. A score of pincer-like black beaks fought to get at his hair and hide; others stabbed at his eyes; he felt his ears being pulled from his head, and the end of his nose was a bloody cushion within a dozen seconds. The breath was beaten out of him; he was blinded, and dazed, and every square inch of him was aquiver with its own excruciating pain. He forgot Ahtik. The one thing in the world he wanted most was a large open space in which to run.
Putting all his strength into the effort he struggled to his feet and charged through the mass of living things about him. At this sign of defeat many of the crows left him to join in the feast. By the time he was half way to the cover into which Maheegun had gone all but one had left him. That one may have been Kakakew himself. He had fastened himself like a rat-trap to Neewa's stubby tail, and there he hung on like grim death while Neewa ran. He kept his hold until his victim was well into the cover. Then he flopped himself into the air and rejoined his brethren at the putrified carcass of the bull.
If ever Neewa had wanted Miki he wanted him now. Again his entire viewpoint 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 he stepped 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 the foot of the trail he had made to and from the dip. Vainly he quested about him for his comrade. He grunted and squealed, and tried to catch the scent of him in the air. He ran up the creek a distance, and back again. Ahtik counted as nothing now.
Miki was gone.
A quarter of a mile away Miki had heard the clamour of the crows. But he was in no humour to turn back, even had he guessed that Neewa was in need 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 tackle anything in the eating line, no matter how big, but he was a good mile from 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 taste out of his mouth.
The day was destined to hold for him still another unforgettable event in his life. Now that he was alone the memory of his master was not so vague as it had been yesterday, and the days before. Brain-pictures came back to him more vividly as the morning lengthened into afternoon, bridging slowly but surely the gulf that Neewa's comradeship had wrought. For a time the exciting thrill of his adventure was gone. Half a dozen times he hesitated on the point of turning back to Neewa. It was hunger that always drove him on a little farther. He found two more crawfish. Then the creek deepened and its water ran slowly, and was darker. Twice he chased old rabbits, that got away from him easily. Once he came within an ace of catching a young one. Frequently a partridge rose with a thunder of wings. He saw moose-birds, and jays, and many squirrels. All about him was meat which it was impossible for him to catch. Then fortune turned his way. Poking his head into the end of a hollow log he cornered a rabbit so completely that there was no escape. During the next few minutes he indulged in the first square meal he had eaten for three days.
So absorbed was he in his feast that he was unconscious of a new arrival on the scene. He did not hear the coming of Oochak, the fisher-cat; nor, for a few moments, did he smell him. It was not in Oochak's nature to make a disturbance. He was by birth and instinct a valiant hunter and a gentleman, and when he saw Miki (whom he took to be a young wolf) feeding on a fresh kill, he made no move to demand a share for himself. Nor did he run away. He would undoubtedly have continued on his way very soon if Miki had not finally sensed his presence, and faced him.
Oochak had come from the other side of the log, and stood not more than six feet distant. To one who knew as little of his history as Miki there was nothing at all ferocious about him. He was shaped like his cousins, the weazel, the mink, and the skunk. He was about half as high as Miki, and fully as long, so that his two pairs of short legs seemed somewhat out of place, as on a dachshund. He probably weighed between eight and ten pounds, had a bullet head, almost no ears, and atrocious whiskers. Also he had a bushy tail and snapping little eyes that seemed to bore clean through whatever he looked at. To Miki his accidental presence was a threat and a challenge. Besides, Oochak looked like an easy victim if it came to a fight. So he pulled back his lips and snarled.
Oochak accepted this as an invitation for him to move on, and being a gentleman who respected other people's preserves he made his apologies by beginning a velvet-footed exit. This was too much for Miki, who had yet to learn the etiquette of the forest trails. Oochak was afraid of him. He was running away! With a triumphant yelp Miki took after him. After all, it was simply a mistake in judgment. (Many two-footed animals with bigger brains than Miki's had made similar mistakes.) For Oochak, attending always to his own business, was, for his size and weight, the greatest little fighter in North America.
Just what happened in the one minute that followed his assault Miki would never be able quite to understand. It was not in reality a fight; it was a one-sided immolation, a massacre. His first impression was that he had tackled a dozen Oochaks instead of one. Beyond that first impression his mind did not work, nor did his eyes visualize. He was whipped as he would never be whipped again in his life. He was cut and bruised and bitten; he was strangled and stabbed; he was so utterly mauled that for a space after Oochak had gone he continued to rake the air with his paws, unconscious of the fact that the affair was over. When he opened his eyes, and found himself alone, he slunk into the hollow log where he had cornered the rabbit.
In there he lay a good half hour, trying hard to comprehend just what had happened. The sun was setting when he dragged himself out. He limped. His one good ear was bitten clean through. There were bare spots on his hide where Oochak had scraped the hair off. His bones ached, his throat was sore, and there was a lump over one eye. He looked longingly back over the "home" trail. Up there was Neewa. With the lengthening shadows of the day's end a great loneliness crept upon him and a desire to turn back to his comrade. But Oochak had gone that way—and he did not want to meet Oochak again.
He wandered a little farther south and east, perhaps a quarter of a mile, before the sun disappeared entirely. In the thickening gloom of twilight he struck the Big Rock portage between the Beaver and the Loon.
It was not a trail. Only at rare intervals did wandering voyageurs coming down from the north make use of it in their passage from one waterway to the other. Three or four times a year at the most would a wolf have caught the scent of man in it. It was there tonight, so fresh that Miki stopped when he came to it as if another Oochak had risen before him. For a space he was turned into the rigidity of rock by a single overwhelming emotion. All other things were forgotten in the fact that he had struck the trail of a man—AND, THEREFORE, THE TRAIL OF CHALLONER, HIS MASTER. He began to follow it—slowly at first, as if fearing that it might get away from him. Darkness came, and he was still following it. In the light of the stars he persisted, all else crowded from him but the homing instinct of the dog and the desire for a master.
At last he came almost to the shore of the Loon, and there he saw the campfire of Makoki and the white man.
He did not rush in. He did not bark or yelp; the hard schooling of the wilderness had already set its mark upon him. He slunk in cautiously—then stopped, flat on his belly, just outside the rim of firelight. Then he saw that neither of the men was Challoner. But both were smoking, as Challoner had smoked. He could hear their voices, and they were like Challoner's voice. And the camp was the same—a fire, a pot hanging over it, a tent, and in the air the odours of recently cooked things.
Another moment or two and he would have gone into the firelight. But the white man rose to his feet, stretched himself as he had often seen Challoner stretch, and picked up a stick of wood as big as his arm. He came within ten feet of Miki, and Miki wormed himself just a little toward 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 saw him.
In a flash the club he held was over his head; it swung through the air with the power of a giant arm behind it and was launched straight at Miki. Had it struck squarely it would have killed him. The big end of it missed him; the smaller end landed against his neck and shoulder, driving him back into the gloom with such force and suddenness that the man thought he had done for him. He called out loudly to Makoki that he had 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 ground spruce. There he lay, making no sound, with a terrible pain in his shoulder. Between himself and the fire he saw the man bend over and pick 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 was filled with a great dread, for now he understood the truth. THESE men were not Challoner. They were hunting for him—with clubs in their hands. He knew what the clubs meant. His shoulder was almost broken.
He lay very still while the men searched about him. The Indian even poked his stick into the thick ground spruce. The white man kept saying that he was sure he had made a hit, and once he stood so near that Miki's nose almost touched his boot. He went back and added fresh birch to the fire, so that the light of it illumined a greater space about them. Miki's heart stood still. But the men searched farther on, and at last went back to the fire.
For an hour Miki did not move. The fire burned itself low. The old Cree wrapped himself in a blanket, and the white man went into his tent. Not until then did Miki dare to crawl out from under the spruce. With his bruised shoulder making him limp at every step he hurried back over the trail which he had followed so hopefully a little while before. The man-scent no longer made his heart beat swiftly with joy. It was a menace now. A warning. A thing from which he wanted to get away. He would sooner have faced Oochak again, or the owls, than the white man with his club. With the owls he could fight, but in the club he sensed an overwhelming superiority.
The night was very still when he dragged himself back to the hollow log in which he had killed the rabbit. He crawled into it, and nursed his wounds through all the rest of the hours of darkness. In the early morning he came out and ate the rest of the rabbit.
After that he faced the north and west—where Neewa was. There was no hesitation now. He wanted Neewa again. He wanted to muzzle him with his nose and lick his face even though he did smell to heaven. He wanted to hear him grunt and squeal in his funny, companionable way; he wanted to hunt with him again, and play with him, and lie down beside him in a sunny 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 yearningly over 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 and looked at each other for a moment, as if to make sure that there was no mistake. Neewa grunted. Miki wagged his tail. They smelled noses. Neewa responded with a little squeal, and Miki whined. It was as if they had said,
"Hello, Miki!"
"Hello, Neewa!"
And then Neewa lay down in the sun and Miki sprawled himself out beside him. 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 had thoroughly adjusted itself. Once more they were chums—and they were happy.