During the last few days in December all trails for ten thousand square miles around led to Post Fort 0' God. It was the eve of OOSKE PIPOON—of the New Year—the mid-winter carnival time of the people of the wilderness, when from teepees and cabins far and near come the trappers and their families to sell their furs and celebrate for a few days with others of their kind. To this New Year gathering men, women, and children look forward through long and weary months. The trapper's wife has no neighbour. Her husband's "line" is a little kingdom inviolate, with no other human life within many miles of it; so for the women the OOSKE PIPOON is a time of rejoicing; for the children it is the "big circus," and for the men a reward for the labour and hardship of catching their fur. During these few days old acquaintanceships are renewed and new ones are made. It is here that the "news" of the trackless wilderness is spread, the news of deaths, of marriages, and of births; of tragic happenings that bring horror and grief and tears, and of others that bring laughter and joy. For the first and last time in all the seven months' winter the people of the forests "come to town." Indian, halfbreed, "blood," and white man, join in the holiday without distinction of colour or creed.
This year there was to be a great caribou roast, a huge barbecue, at Fort O' God, and by the time Henri Durant came within half a dozen miles of the Post the trails from north and south and east and west were beaten hard by the tracks of dogs and men. That year a hundred sledges came in from the forests, and with them were three hundred men and women and children and half a thousand dogs.
Durant was a day later than he had planned to be, but he had made good use of his time. For Miki, while still muzzled, now followed at the end of the babiche that was tied to Henri's sledge. In the afternoon of the third day after leaving Nanette Le Beau's cabin Durant turned off the main-travelled trail until he came to the shack of Andre Ribon, who kept the Factor and his people at the Post supplied with fresh meat. Andre, who was becoming over-anxious at Durant's delay, was still waiting when his friend came. It was here that Henri's Indian had left his fighting dog, the big husky. And here he left Miki, locked in Andre's shack. Then the two men went on to the Post which was only a mile away.
Neither he nor Ribon returned that night. The cabin was empty. And with the beginning of dusk Miki began to hear weird and strange sounds which grew louder as darkness settled deeper. It was the sound of the carnival at the Post—the distant tumult of human voice mingled with the howling of a hundred dogs. He had never heard anything like it before, and for a long time he listened without moving. Then he stood up like a man before the window with this fore-paws resting against the heavy sash. Ribon's cabin was at the crest of a knoll that over-looked the frozen lake, and far off, over the tops of the scrub timber that fringed the edge of it, Miki saw the red glow in the sky made by a score of great camp fires. He whined, and dropped on his four feet again. It was a long wait between that and another day. But the cabin was more comfortable than Le Beau's prison-cage had been. All through the night his restless slumber was filled with visions of Nanette and the baby.
Durant and Ribon did not return until nearly noon the next day. They brought with them fresh meat, of which Miki ate ravenously, for he was hungry. In an unresponsive way he tolerated the advances of these two. A second night he was left alone in the cabin. When Durant and Ribon came back again in the early dawn they brought with them a cage four feet square made of small birch saplings. The open door of this cage they drew close to the door of the cabin, and by means of a chunk of fresh meat Miki was induced to enter through it. Instantly the trap fell, and he was a prisoner. The cage was already fastened on a wide toboggan, and scarcely was the sun up when Miki was on his way to Fort O' God.
This was the big day at the carnival—the day of the caribou-roast and the fight. For many minutes before they came in sight of Fort O' God Miki heard the growing sound. It amazed him, and he stood up on his feet in his cage, rigid and alert, utterly unconscious of the men who were pulling him. He was looking ahead of them, and Durant chuckled exultantly 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 the end of a point, and all of Fort O' God lay on the rising shelf of the shore ahead of them. The growl died in Miki's throat. His teeth shut with a last click. For an instant his heart seemed to grow dead and still. Until this moment his world had held only half a dozen human beings. Now, so suddenly that he had no flash of warning, he saw a hundred of them, two hundred, three hundred. At sight of Durant and the cage a swarm of them began running down to the shore. And everywhere there were wolves, so many of them that his senses grew dazed as he stared. His cage was the centre of a clamouring, gesticulating horde of men and boys as it was dragged up the slope. Women began joining the crowd, many of them with small children in their arms. Then his journey came to an end. He was close to another cage, and in that cage was a beast like himself. Beside this cage there stood a tall, swarthy, shaggy-headed halfbreed who looked like a pirate. The man was Grouse Piet, 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 him he said something that roused a guttural laugh.
Durant's face flamed red.
"Laugh, you heathen," he challenged, "but don't forget that Henri Durant is here to take your bets!" Then he shook the two cross and ten red foxes in the face of Grouse Piet.
"Cover them, Grouse Piet," he cried. "And I have ten times more where they came from!"
With his muzzle lifted, Miki was sniffing the air. It was filled with strange scents, heavy with the odours of men, of dogs, and of the five huge caribou roasting on their spits fifteen feet over the big fires that 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 come before the feast.
For an hour the clatter and tumult of voices hovered about the two cages. Men appraised the fighters and made their bets, and Grouse Piet and Henri Durant made their throats hoarse flinging banter and contempt at each other. At the end of the hour the crowd began to thin out. In the place of men and women half a hundred dark-visaged little children crowded about the cages. It was not until then that Miki caught glimpses of the hordes of beasts fastened in ones and twos and groups in the edge of the clearing. His nostrils had at last caught the distinction. They were not wolves. They were like himself.
It was a long time before his eyes rested steadily on the wolf-dog in the other cage. He went to the edge of his bars and sniffed. The wolf-dog thrust his gaunt muzzle toward him. He made Miki think of the huge wolf he had fought one day on the edge of the cliff, and instinctively he showed his fangs, and snarled. The wolf-dog snarled back. Henri Durant rubbed his hands exultantly, and Grouse Piet laughed softly.
"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 was MacDonnell, the Scotch factor. He gazed at Miki and the wolf-dog with troubled eyes. Ten minutes later, in the little room which he had made his 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 would lose us half a season's catch of fur. There's been a fight like this at Fort 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, in this 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."
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 at hand.
In the centre of the clearing three hundred men, women, and children were 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, Grouse Piet. They were not bantering now. Their faces were hard and set. And three hundred pairs of eyes were staring at them, and three hundred pairs 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 a single leap Miki was in the big cage. Almost at the same instant the wolf-dog leapt from Grouse Piet's cage, and the two faced each other in the arena.
With the next breath he drew Durant could have groaned. What happened in the following half minute was a matter of environment with Miki. In the forest the wolf-dog would have interested him to the exclusion of everything else, and he would have looked upon him as another Netah or a wild wolf. But in his present surroundings the idea of fighting was the last to possess him. He was fascinated by that grim and waiting circle of faces closing in the big cage; he scrutinized it, turning his head sharply from point to point, as if hoping to see Nanette and the baby, or even Challoner his first master. To the wolf-dog Grouse Piet had given the name of Taao, because of the extraordinary length of his fangs; and of Taao, to Durant's growing horror, Miki was utterly oblivious after that first head-on glance. He trotted to the edge of the cage and thrust his nose between the bars, and a taunting laugh rose out of Grouse Piet's throat. Then he began making a circle of the cage, his sharp eyes on the silent ring of faces. Taao stood in the centre of the cage, and not once did his reddish eyes leave Miki. What was outside of the cage held small interest for him. He understood his business, and murder was bred in his heart. For a space during which Durant'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 like bristles.
Then Miki stopped, and in that moment Durant saw the end of all his hopes. Without a sound the wolf-dog was at his opponent. A bellow rose from Grouse Piet's lips. A deep breath passed through the circle of spectators, and Durant felt a cold chill run up his back to the roots of his hair. What happened in the next instant made men's hearts stand still. In that first rush Miki should have died. Grouse Piet expected him to die, and Durant expected him to die. But in the last fractional bit of the second in which the wolf-dog's jaws closed, Miki was transformed into a thing of living lightning. No man had ever seen a movement swifter than that with which he turned on Taao. Their jaws clashed. There was a sickening grinding of bone, and in another moment they were rolling and twisting together on the earth floor. Neither Grouse Piet nor Durant could see what was happening. They forgot even their own bets in the horror of that fight. Never had there been such a fight at Fort O' God.
The sound of it reached to the Company's store. In the door, looking toward 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 burned in 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 went toward the cage. It was over when he made his way through the ring of spectators. The fight had ended as suddenly as it had begun, and Grouse Piet'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 and had slipped a rope over his head, and outside the cage Miki stood swaying on his feet, red with blood, and half blind. His flesh was red and bleeding in a dozen places, and a stream of blood trickled from his mouth. A cry of horror rose to the young white man's lips as he looked down 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 him through the blindness of his wounds, Miki heard that voice.
The VOICE! THE voice that had lived with him in all his dreams, the voice he had waited for, and searched for, and knew that some day he would find. The voice of Challoner, his master!
He dropped on his belly, whining, trying to see through the film of blood in his eyes; and lying there, wounded almost unto death, his tail thumped the ground in recognition. And then, to the amazement of all who beheld, Challoner was down upon his knees beside him, and his arms were 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 was on his feet, facing him.
"He's mine," Challoner cried, trying to hold back his passion. "He's mine you—you devil!"
And then, powerless to hold back his desire for vengeance, his clenched fist swung like a rock to Durant's heavy jaw, and the Frenchman went to the 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 at his feet again. Pointing to him, Challoner cried loudly, so all could hear.
"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 for HIM? And look at that ear. There's no other ear in all the north cut like that. I lost him almost a year ago, but I'd know him among ten thousand by that ear. By God!—if I had known—"
He elbowed his way through the breeds and Indians, leading Miki by the rope Durant had slipped over the dog's head. He went to MacDonnell, and told him what had happened. He told of the preceding spring, and of the accident in which Miki and the bear cub were lost from his canoe and swept over the waterfall. After registering his claim against whatever Durant might have to say he went to the shack in which he was staying at 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 could see. His eyes were on his master's face, and his hard tail thumped the floor. Both were oblivious of the sounds of the revellers outside; the cries of men, the shouting of boys, the laughter of women, and the incessant 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, have you? You were nothing but an onery-legged pup then, but you didn't forget! Remember what I told you, that I was going to take you and the cub 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 something happened—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 care of you and the cub, eh? And nothing else was the same, Boy. Three years in God's Country—up here where you burst your lungs just for the fun of drinking in air—changed me a lot, I guess. Inside a week I wanted to come back, Miki. Yessir, I was SICK to come back. So I came. And we're going to stick now, Miki. You're going with me up to that new Post the Company has given me. From now on we're pals. Understand, old scout, we're PALS!"
It was late the night of the big feast at Post Fort O' God that MacDonnell, the factor, sent for Challoner. Challoner was preparing for bed when an Indian boy pounded on the door of his shack and a moment later gave him the message. He looked at his watch. It was eleven o'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-found master speculatively as he pulled on his boots. His eyes were wide open now. Challoner had washed from him the blood of the terrific fight of that 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 master in mute adoration. Together they went out into the night.
It was a night of white moonlight and a multitude of stars. The four great fires over which the caribou had roasted for the savage barbecue that day were still burning brightly. In the edge of the forest that ringed in the Post were the smouldering embers of a score of smaller fires. Back of these fires were faintly outlined the gray shadows of teepees and tents. In these shelters the three hundred halfbreeds and Indians who had come in from the forest trails to the New Year carnival at the Post were sleeping. Only here and there was there a movement of life. Even the dogs were quiet after the earlier hours of excitement and gluttony.
Past the big fires, with their huge spits still standing, Challoner passed toward the Factor's quarters. Miki sniffed at the freshly picked bones. Beyond these bones there was no sign of the two thousand pounds of flesh that had roasted that day on the spits. Men, women, children, and dogs had stuffed themselves until there was nothing left. It was the silence of Mutai—the "belly god"—the god who eats himself to sleep 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 Miki at his heels. MacDonnell, the Scotchman, was puffing moodily on his pipe. There was a worried look in his ruddy face as the younger man seated himself, and his eyes were on Miki.
"Durant has been here," he said. "He's ugly. I'm afraid of trouble. If you hadn't struck him—"
Challoner shrugged his shoulders as he filled his own pipe from the Factor's tobacco.
"You see—you don't just understand the situation at Fort 0' God," went on MacDonnell. "There's been a big dog fight here at New Year for the last fifty years. It's become a part of history, a part of Fort O' God itself, and that's why in my own fifteen years here I haven't tried to stop it. I believe it would bring on a sort of—revolution. I'd wager a half of my people would go to another post with their furs. That's why all 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. Durant says 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 told me something that froze my blood to-night. Your outfit starts for your post 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 swing around by way of the Jackson's Knee? You'd lose a week, but you could overtake your outfit before it reached the Reindeer—and it would be a mighty big favour to me. There's a—a HELL of a thing happened over there."
Again he looked at Miki.
"GAWD!" he breathed.
Challoner waited. He thought he saw a shudder pass through the Factor's shoulders.
"I'd go myself—I ought to, but this frosted lung of mine has made me sit tight this winter, Challoner. I OUGHT to go. Why—(a sudden glow shot 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 been married—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 red beard. "She lived over beyond the Jackson's Knee with her father. And he died, froze to death crossing Red Eye Lake one night. I've always thought Jacques Le Beau MADE her marry him after that. Or else she didn't know, or was crazed, or frightened at being alone. Anyway, she married him. It was five years ago I saw her last. Now and then I've heard things, but I didn't believe—not all of them. I didn't believe that Le Beau beat her, and knocked her down when he wanted to. I didn't believe he dragged her through the snow by her hair one day until she was 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 he told 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 his traps, took him to his cabin, and tortured him into shape for the big fight. When Durant came he was so taken with the dog that he bought him, and it was while Le Beau was driving the dog mad in his cage to show his temper that Nanette interfered. Le Beau knocked her down, and then jumped on her and was pulling her hair and choking her when the dog went for him and killed him. That's the story. Durant told me the truth through fear that I'd have the dog shot if he was an out-and-out murderer. 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 for Nanette Le Beau. My Indian will bring her back to Port O' God."
With Scotch stoicism MacDonnell had repressed whatever excitement he may have felt. He spoke quietly. But the curious shudder went through his 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's wolf-dog in the big fight to-day. UGH!" As Challoner's eyes fell slowly upon Miki, the Factor added: "But Grouse Piet's dog was better than the man. 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 that way—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 knew about Nanette Le Beau. When Challoner rose to go the Factor followed him to the door.
"Keep your eyes open for Durant," he warned. "That dog is worth more to him than all his winnings to-day, and they say his stakes were big. He won 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, Challoner stood far a moment with Miki's forepaws resting against his breast. The dog'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 to scrapping 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 still could not quite believe. "And I'm to take you back to the woman. That's the funny thing about it. You're going back to HER, and if she says kill you—"
He dropped Miki's forefeet and went on to the cabin. At the threshold a low growl rose in Miki's throat. Challoner laughed, and opened the door. They went in, and the dog's growl was a menacing snarl. Challoner had left his lamp burning low, and in the light of it he saw Henri Durant and Grouse Piet waiting for him. He turned up the wick, and nodded.
"Good evening. Pretty late for a call, isn't it?"
Grouse Piet's stolid face did not change its expression. It struck Challoner, as he glanced at him, that in head and shoulders he bore a grotesque resemblance to a walrus. Durant's eyes were dully ablaze. His face was swollen where Challoner had struck him. Miki, stiffened to the hardness of a knot, and still snarling under his breath, had crawled under 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 make himself appear at ease in a situation that sent a chill up his back. As he spoke he was making up his mind why Grouse Piet had come with Durant. They were giants, both of them: more than that—monsters. Instinctively he had faced them with the small table between them. "I'm sorry I lost my temper out there," he continued. "I shouldn't have struck you, Durant. It wasn't your fault—and I apologize. But the dog is mine. I lost him over in the Jackson's Knee country, and if Jacques Le Beau caught him in a trap, and sold him to you, he sold a dog that didn't belong to him. I'm willing to pay you back what you gave for him, just to be fair. How much was it?"
Grouse Piet had risen to his feet. Durant came to the opposite edge of the table, and leaned over it. Challoner wondered how a single blow had knocked him down.
"Non, he is not for sale." Durant's voice was low; so low that it seemed to choke him to get it out. It was filled with a repressed hatred. Challoner saw the great cords of his knotted hands bulging under the skin as he gripped the edge of the table. "M'sieu, we have come for that dog. Will you let us take him?"
"I will pay you back what you gave for him, Durant. I will add to the price."
"Non. He is mine. Will you give him back—NOW?"
"No!"
Scarcely was the word out of his mouth when Durant flung his whole weight and strength against the table. Challoner had not expected the move—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 them went the table and lamp. There was a vivid splutter of flame and the cabin was in darkness, except where the moon-light flooded through the one window. Challoner had looked for something different. He had expected Durant to threaten before he acted, and, sizing up the two of them, he had decided to reach the edge of his bunk during the discussion. Under the pillow was his revolver. It was too late now. Durant was on him, fumbling in the darkness for his throat, and as he flung one arm upward to get a hook around the Frenchman's neck he heard Grouse Piet throw the table back. The next instant they were rolling in the moonlight on the floor, and Challoner caught a glimpse of Grouse Piet's huge bulk bending over them. Durant's head was twisted under his arm, but one of the giant's hands had reached his throat. The halfbreed saw this, and he cried out something in a guttural voice. With a tremendous effort Challoner rolled himself and his adversary out of the patch of light into darkness again. Durant's thick neck cracked. Again Grouse Piet called out in that guttural, questioning voice. Challoner put every ounce of his energy into the crook of his arm, and Durant did not answer.
Then the weight of Grouse Piet fell upon them, and his great hands groped for Challoner's neck. His thick fingers found Durant's beard first, then fumbled for Challoner, and got their hold. Ten seconds of their terrific grip would have broken his neck. But the fingers never closed. A savage cry of agony burst from Grouse Piet's lips, and with that cry, ending almost in a scream, came the snap of great jaws and the rending snarl of fangs in the darkness. Durant heard, and with a great 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 his enemies with the revolver in his hand.
Everything had happened quickly. Scarcely more than a minute had passed since the overturning of the table, and now, in the moment when the situation had turned in his favour, a sudden swift and sickening horror seized upon Challoner. Bloody and terrible there rose before him the one scene he had witnessed that day in the big cage where Miki and the wolf-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 he leapt to the dark shadows on the floor and dug his two hands into the loose hide at the back of Miki's neck, dragging him back, and shouting his name. He saw Grouse Piet crawling toward the door. He saw him rise to his feet, silhouetted for a moment against the starlight, and stagger out into the night. And then he felt Miki's weight slinking down to the floor, and under his hands the dog's muscles grew limp and saggy. For two or three minutes he continued to kneel beside him before he closed the cabin door and lighted another lamp. He set up the overturned table and placed the lamp on it. Miki had not moved. He lay flat on his belly, his head between his forepaws, looking up at Challoner 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 in the 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.
The next morning Challoner's outfit of three teams and four men left north and west for the Reindeer Lake country on the journey to his new post at the mouth of the Cochrane. An hour later Challoner struck due west 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 was to bring Nanette to Fort O' God.
He saw nothing more of Durant and Grouse Piet, and accepted MacDonnell's explanation that they had undoubtedly left the Post shortly after their assault upon him in the cabin. No doubt their disappearance had been hastened by the fact that a patrol of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police on its way to York Factory was expected at Fort O' God that day.
Not until the final moment of departure was Miki brought from the cabin and tied to the gee-bar of Challoner's sledge. When he saw the five dogs squatted on their haunches he grew rigid and the old snarl rose in his throat. Under Challoner's quieting words he quickly came to understand that these beasts were not enemies, and from a rather suspicious toleration of them he very soon began to take a new sort of interest in them. It was a friendly team, bred in the south and without the wolf strain.
Events had come to pass so swiftly and so vividly in Miki's life during the past twenty-four hours that for many miles after they left Fort O' God his senses were in an unsettled state of anticipation. His brain was filled with a jumble of strange and thrilling pictures. Very far away, and almost indistinct, were the pictures of things that had happened before he was made a prisoner by Jacques Le Beau. Even the memory of Neewa was fading under the thrill of events at Nanette's cabin and at Fort O' God. The pictures that blazed their way across his brain now were of men, and dogs, and many other things that he had never seen before. His world had suddenly transformed itself into a host of Henri Durants and Grouse Piets and Jacques Le Beaus, two-legged beasts who had clubbed him, and half killed him, and who had made him fight to keep the life in his body. He had tasted their blood in his vengeance. And he watched for them now. The pictures told him they were everywhere. He could imagine them as countless as the wolves, and as he had seen them crowded round the big cage in which he had slain the wolf-dog.
In all of this excited and distorted world there was only one Challoner, and one Nanette, and one baby. All else was a chaos of uncertainty and of dark menace. Twice when the Indian came up close behind them Miki whirled about with a savage snarl. Challoner watched him, and understood.
Of the pictures in his brain one stood out above all others, definite and unclouded, and that was the picture of Nanette. Yes, even above Challoner himself. There lived in him the consciousness of her gentle hands; her sweet, soft voice; the perfume of her hair and clothes and body—the WOMAN of her; and a part of the woman—as the hand is a part of the body—was the baby. It was this part of Miki that Challoner could not understand, and which puzzled him when they made camp that night. He sat for a long time beside the fire trying to bring back the old comradeship of the days of Miki's puppyhood. But he only partly succeeded. Miki was restive. Every nerve in his body seemed on edge. Again and again he faced the west, and always when he sniffed the air in that direction there came a low whine in his throat.
That night, with doubt in his heart, Challoner fastened him near the tent with a tough rope of babiche.
For a long time after Challoner had gone to bed Miki sat on his haunches close to the spruce to which he was fastened. It must have been ten o'clock, and the night was so still that the snap of a dying ember in the fire was like the crack of a whip to his ears. Miki's eyes were wide open and alert. Near the slowly burning logs, wrapped in his thick blankets, he could make out the motionless form of the Indian, asleep. Back of him the sledge-dogs had wallowed their beds in the snow and were silent. The moon was almost straight overhead, and a mile or two away a wolf pointed his muzzle to the radiant glow of it and howled. The sound, like a distant calling voice, added new fire to the growing thrill in Miki's blood. He turned in the direction of the wailing voice. He wanted to call back. He wanted to throw up his head and cry out to the forests, and the moon, and the starlit sky. But only his jaws clicked, and he looked at the tent in which Challoner was sleeping. He dropped down upon his belly in the snow. But his head was still alert and listening. The moon had already begun its westward decline. The fire burned out until the logs were only a dull and slumbering glow; the hand of Challoner's watch passed midnight, and still Miki was wide-eyed and restless in the thrill of the thing that was upon him. And then at last The Call that was coming to him from out of the night became his master, and he gnawed the babiche in two. It was the call of the Woman—of Nanette and the baby.
In his freedom Miki sniffed at the edge of Challoner's tent. His back sagged. His tail drooped. He knew that in this hour he was betraying the master for whom he had waited so long, and who had lived so vividly in his dreams. It was not reasoning, but an instinctive oppression of fact. 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 the stealth of a fox he made his way between the sleeping dogs. Not until he was a quarter of a mile from the camp did he straighten out, and then a gray and fleeting shadow he sped westward under the light of the moon.
There was no hesitation in the manner of his going. Free of the pain of his wounds, strong-limbed, deep-lunged as the strongest wolf of the forests, he went on tirelessly. Rabbits bobbing out of his path did not make him pause; even the strong scent of a fisher-cat almost under his nose did not swerve him a foot from his trail. Through swamp and deep forest, over lake and stream, across open barren and charred burns his unerring sense of orientation led him on. Once he stopped to drink where the swift current of a creek kept the water open. Even then he gulped in haste—and shot on. The moon drifted lower and lower until it sank into oblivion. The stars began to fade away The little ones went out, and the big ones grew sleepy and dull. A great snow-ghostly gloom settled 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 crest of a ridge he watched the birth of day. With drooling jaws and panting breath he rested, until at last the dull gold of the winter sun began to paint the eastern sky. And then came the first bars of vivid sunlight, shooting over the eastern ramparts as guns flash from behind their battlements, and Miki rose to his feet and surveyed the morning wonder 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 went down from the ridge.
As the miles between him and the cabin grew fewer and fewer he felt again something of the oppression that had borne upon him at Challoner's tent. And yet it was different. He had run his race. He had answered The Call. And now, at the end, he was seized by a fear of what his welcome would be. For at the cabin he had killed a man—and the man had belonged to the woman. His progress became more hesitating. Mid-forenoon found him only half a mile from the home of Nanette and the 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 stealthily and uncertainly until at last he looked out into the little clearing where a new world had come into existence for him. He saw the sapling cage in which Jacques Le Beau had kept him a prisoner; the door of that cage was still open, as Durant had left it after stealing him; he saw the ploughed-up snow where he had leapt upon the man-brute—and he whined.
He was facing the cabin door—and the door was wide open. He could see no 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 an abject humiliation—a plea for mercy if he had done wrong, a prayer to the creatures he worshipped that he might not be driven away.
He came to the door, and peered in. The room was empty. Nanette was not there. Then his ears shot forward and his body grew suddenly tense, and he listened, listened, LISTENED to a soft, cooing sound that was coming from the crib. He swallowed hard; the faintest whine rose in his throat and his claws CLICKED, CLICKED, CLICKED, across the floor and he thrust his 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 another deep 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 saw him. For a moment she stared. Then, with a strange little cry, she ran to him; and once more he felt her arms about him; and he cried like a puppy with his muzzle against her breast, and Nanette laughed and sobbed, and in the crib the baby kicked and squealed and thrust her tiny moccasined feet up into the air.
"Ao-oo tap-wa-mukun" ("When the devil goes heaven comes in,") say the Crees. And with the death of Le Beau, her husband, the devil had gone out of life for Nanette. She was more beautiful than ever. Heaven was in the dark, pure glow of her eyes. She was no longer like a dog under the club and the whip of a brute, and in the re-birth of her soul she was glorious. Youth had come back to her—freed from the yoke of oppression. She was happy. Happy with her baby, with freedom, with the sun and the stars shining for her again; and with new hope, the greatest star of all. Again on the night of that first day of his return Miki crept up to her when she was brushing her glorious hair. He loved to put his muzzle in it; he loved the sweet scent of it; he loved to put his head on her knees and feel it smothering him. And Nanette hugged him tight, even as she hugged the baby, for it was Miki who had brought her freedom, and hope, and life. What had passed was no longer a tragedy. It was justice. God had sent Miki to do for her what a father or a brother would have done.
And the second night after that, when Challoner came early in the darkness, 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—that through all his years he had been working forward to this hour.
With the coming of Challoner to the cabin of Nanette Le Beau there was no longer a shadow of gloom in the world for Miki. He did not reason out the wonder of it, nor did he have a foreboding for the future. It was the present in which he lived—the precious hours in which all the creatures he had ever loved were together. And yet, away back in his memory of those things that had grown deep in his soul, was the picture of Neewa, the bear; Neewa, his chum, his brother, his fighting comrade of many battles, and he thought of the cold and snow-smothered cavern at the top of the ridge in which Neewa had buried himself in that long and mysterious sleep that was so much like death. But it was in the present that he lived. The hours lengthened themselves out into days, and still Challoner did not go, nor did Nanette leave with the Indian for Fort O' God. The Indian returned with a note for MacDonnell in which Challoner told the Factor that something was the matter with the baby's lungs, and that she could not travel until the weather, which was intensely cold, grew warmer. He asked that the Indian be sent back with certain supplies.
In spite of the terrific cold which followed the birth of the new year Challoner had put up his tent in the edge of the timber a hundred yards from the cabin, and Miki divided his time between the cabin and the tent. For him they were glorious days. And for Challoner—
In a way Miki saw, though it was impossible for him to comprehend. As the days lengthened into a week, and the week into two, there was something in the glow of Nanette's eyes that had never been there before, and in the sweetness of her voice a new thrill, and in her prayers at night the thankfulness of a new and great joy.
And then, one day, Miki looked up from where he was lying beside the baby's crib and he saw Nanette in his master's arms, her face turned up to him, her eyes filled with the glory of the stars, and Challoner was saying something which transformed her face into the face of an angel. Miki was puzzled. And he was more puzzled when Challoner came from Nanette to the crib, and snuggled the baby up in his arms; and the woman—looking at them both for a moment with that wonderful look in her eyes—suddenly covered her face with her hands and sobbed. Half a snarl rose in Miki's throat, but in that moment Challoner had put his arm 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 make neither head nor tail of. And yet he knew that he must not snarl or spring. He felt the wonder-thrill of the new thing that had come into the cabin; he gulped hard, and looked. A moment or two later Nanette was on her knees beside him, and her arms were around him, just as they had been around the man. And Challoner was dancing like a boy—cooing to the baby in his arms. Then he, too, dropped down beside Miki, and cried:
"My Gawd! Miki—I'VE GOT A FAM'LY!"
And Miki tried to understand.
That night, after supper, he saw Challoner unbraid Nanette's glorious hair, and brush it. They laughed like two happy children. Miki tried still harder to understand.
When Challoner went to go to his tent in the edge of the forest he took Nanette in his arms, and kissed her, and stroked her shining hair; and Nanette took his face between her hands and smiled and almost cried in her joy.
After that Miki DID understand. He knew that happiness had come to all who were in that cabin.
Now that his world was settled, Miki took once more to hunting. The thrill of the trail came back to him, and wider and wider grew his range from the cabin. Again he followed Le Beau's old trapline. But the traps were sprung now. He had lost a great deal of his old caution. He had grown fatter. He no longer scented danger in every whiff of the wind. It was in the third week of Challoner's stay at the cabin, the day which marked the end of the cold spell and the beginning of warm weather, that Miki came upon an old dead-fall in a swamp a full ten miles from the clearing. Le Beau had set it for lynx, but nothing had touched the bait, which was a chunk of caribou flesh, frozen solid as a rock. Curiously Miki began smelling of it. He no longer feared danger. Menace had gone out of his world. He nibbled. He pulled—and the log crashed down to break his back. Only by a little did it fail. For twenty-four hours it held him helpless and crippled. Then, fighting through all those hours, he dragged himself out from under it. With the rising temperature a soft snow had fallen, covering all tracks and trails. Through this snow Miki dragged himself, leaving a path like that of an otter in the mud, for his hind quarters were helpless. His back was not broken; it was temporarily paralyzed by the blow and the weight of the log.
He made in the direction of the cabin, but every foot that he dragged himself was filled with agony, and his progress was so slow that at the end of an hour he had not gone more than a quarter of a mile. Another night found him less than two miles from the deadfall. He pulled himself under a shelter of brush and lay there until dawn. All through that day he did not move. The next, which was the fourth since he had left the cabin to hunt, the pain in his back was not so great. But he could pull himself through the snow only a few yards at a time. Again the good spirit of the forests favoured him for in the afternoon he came upon the partly eaten carcass of a buck killed by the wolves. The flesh was frozen but he gnawed at it ravenously. Then he found himself a shelter under a mass of fallen tree-tops, and for ten days thereafter he lay between life and death. He would have died had it not been for the buck. To the carcass he managed to drag himself, sometimes each day and sometimes every other day, and kept himself from starving. It was the end of the second week before he could stand well on his feet. The fifteenth day he returned to the cabin.
In the edge of the clearing there fell upon him slowly a foreboding of great change. The cabin was there. It was no different than it had been fifteen days ago. But out of the chimney there came no smoke, and the windows were white with frost. About it the snow lay clean and white, like an unspotted sheet. He made his way hesitatingly across the clearing to the door. There were no tracks. Drifted snow was piled high over the sill. He whined, and scratched at the door. There was no answer. And he heard no sound.
He went back into the edge of the timber, and waited. He waited all through that day, going occasionally to the cabin, and smelling about it, to convince himself that he had not made a mistake. When darkness came he hollowed himself out a bed in the fresh snow close to the door and lay there all through the night. Day came again, gray and empty and still there was no smoke from the chimney or sound from within the log walls, and at last he knew that Challoner and Nanette and the baby were gone. But he was hopeful. He no longer listened for sound from within the cabin, but watched and listened for them to come from out of the forest. He made short quests, hunting now on this side and now on that of the cabin, sniffing futilely at the fresh and trackless snow and pointing the wind for minutes at a time. In the afternoon, with a forlorn slouch to his body, he went deeper into the forest to hunt for a rabbit. When he had killed and eaten his supper he returned again and slept a second night in the burrow beside the door. A third day and a third night he remained, and the third night he heard the wolves howling under a clear and star-filled sky, and from him there came his first cry—a yearning, grief-filled cry that rose wailingly out of the clearing; the entreaty for his master, for Nanette, and the baby. It was not an answer to the wolves. In its note there was a trembling fear, the voicing of a thing that had grown into hopelessness.
And now there settled upon him a loneliness greater than any loneliness he had ever known. Something seemed to whisper to his canine brain that all he had seen and felt had been but a dream, and that he was face to face with his old world again, its dangers, its vast and soul-breaking emptiness, its friendlessness, its ceaseless strife for existence. His instincts, dulled by the worship of what the cabin had held, became keenly alive. He sensed again the sharp thrill of danger, which comes of ALONENESS, and his old caution fell upon him, so that the fourth day he slunk around the edge of the clearing like a wolf.
The fifth night he did not sleep in the clearing but found himself a windfall a mile back in the forest. That night he had strange and troubled dreams. They were not of Challoner, or of Nanette and the baby, nor were they of the fight and the unforgettable things he had seen at the Post. His dreams were of a high and barren ridge smothered in deep snow, and of a cavern that was dark and deep. Again he was with his brother and comrade of days that were gone—Neewa the bear. He was trying to waken him, and he could feel the warmth of his body and hear his sleepy, protesting grunts. And then, later, he was fighting again in the paradise of black currants, and with Neewa was running for his life from the enraged she-bear who had invaded their coulee. When he awoke suddenly from out of these dreams he was trembling and his muscles were tense. He growled in the darkness. His eyes were round balls of searching fire. He whined softly and yearningly in that pit of gloom under the windfall, and for a moment or two he listened, for he thought that Neewa might answer.
For a month after that night he remained near the cabin. At least once each day, and sometimes at night, he would return to the clearing. And more and more frequently he was thinking of Neewa. Early in March came the Tiki-Swao—(the Big Thaw). For a week the sun shone without a cloud in the sky. The air was warm. The snow turned soft underfoot and on the sunny sides of slopes and ridges it melted away into trickling streams or rolled down in "slides" that were miniature avalanches. The world was vibrant with a new thrill. It pulsed with the growing heart-beat of spring, and in Miki's soul there arose slowly a new hope, a new impression a new inspiration that was the thrilling urge of a wonderful instinct. NEEWA WOULD BE WAKING NOW!
It came to him at last like a voice which he could understand. The trickling music of the growing streams sang it to him; he heard it in the warm winds that were no longer filled with the blast of winter; he caught it in the new odours that were rising out of the earth; he smelled it in the dank, sweet perfume of the black woods-soil. The thing 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 power less than physical force could hold him back. And yet he did not travel as he had travelled from Challoner's camp to the cabin of Nanette and the baby. There had been a definite object there, something to achieve, something to spur him on to an immediate fulfilment. Now the thing that drew him, at first, was an overpowering impulse, not a reality. For two or three days his trail westward was wandering and indefinite. Then it straightened out, and early in the morning of the fifth day he came from a deep forest into a plain, and across that plain he saw the ridge. 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 gone away from that ridge. Then it was smothered in snow, and a gray, terrible gloom had settled upon the earth. Now there was but little snow, 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 for him. Yesterday he had come down from that ridge, and to-day he was going back. He went straight to the mouth of Neewa's den, which was uncovered now, and thrust in his head and shoulders, and sniffed. Ah! but that lazy rascal of a bear was a sleepy-head! He was still sleeping. Miki could smell him. Listening hard, he could HEAR him.
He climbed over the low drift of snow that had packed itself in the neck of the cavern and entered confidently into the darkness. He heard a soft, sleepy grunt and a great sigh. He almost stumbled over Neewa, who had changed his bed. Again Neewa grunted, and Miki whined. He ran his muzzle into Neewa's fresh, new coat of spring fur and smelled his way to Neewa's ear. After all, it was only yesterday! And he remembered everything now! So he gave Neewa's ear a sudden sharp nip with his teeth, and then he barked in that low, throaty way that Neewa had always understood.
"Wake up, Neewa," it all said. "Wake up! The snow is gone, and it's fine out to-day. WAKE UP!"
And Neewa, stretching himself, gave a great yawn.