The morning after their painful experience with the wasp's nest, Neewa
and Miki rose on four pairs of stiff and swollen legs to greet a new
day in the deep and mysterious forest into which the accident of the
previous day had thrown them. The spirit of irrepressible youth was
upon them, and, though Miki was so swollen from the stings of the wasps
that his lank body and overgrown legs were more grotesque than ever, he
was in no way daunted from the quest of further adventure.
The pup's face was as round as a moon, and his head was puffed up until
Neewa might reasonably have had a suspicion that it was on the point of
exploding. But Miki's eyes--as much as could be seen of them--were as
bright as ever, and his one good ear and his one half ear stood up
hopefully as he waited for the cub to give some sign of what they were
going to do. The poison in his system no longer gave him discomfort. He
felt several sizes too large--but, otherwise, quite well.
Neewa, because of his fat, exhibited fewer effects of his battle with
the wasps. His one outstanding defect was an entirely closed eye. With
the other, wide open and alert, he looked about him. In spite of his
one bad eye and his stiff legs he was inspired with the optimism of one
who at last sees fortune turning his way. He was rid of the man-beast,
who had killed his mother; the forests were before him again, open and
inviting, and the rope with which Challoner had tied him and Miki
together he had successfully gnawed in two during the night. Having
dispossessed himself of at least two evils it would not have surprised
him much if he had seen Noozak, his mother, coming up from out of the
shadows of the trees. Thought of her made him whine. And Miki, facing
the vast loneliness of his new world, and thinking of his master,
whined in reply.
Both were hungry. The amazing swiftness with which their misfortunes
had descended upon them had given them no time in which to eat. To Miki
the change was more than astonishing; it was overwhelming, and he held
his breath in anticipation of some new evil while Neewa scanned the
forest about them.
As if assured by this survey that everything was right, Neewa turned
his back to the sun, which had been his mother's custom, and set out.
Miki followed. Not until then did he discover that every joint in his
body had apparently disappeared. His neck was stiff, his legs were like
stilts, and five times in as many minutes he stubbed his clumsy toes
and fell down in his efforts to keep up with the cub. On top of this
his eyes were so nearly closed that his vision was bad, and the fifth
time he stumbled he lost sight of Neewa entirely, and sent out a
protesting wail. Neewa stopped and began prodding with his nose under a
rotten log. When Miki came up Neewa was flat on his belly, licking up a
colony of big red vinegar ants as fast as he could catch them. Miki
studied the proceeding for some moments. It soon dawned upon him that
Neewa was eating something, but for the life of him he couldn't make
out what it was. Hungrily he nosed close to Neewa's foraging snout. He
licked with his tongue where Neewa licked, and he got only dirt. And
all the time Neewa was giving his jolly little grunts of satisfaction.
It was ten minutes before he hunted out the last ant and went on.
A little later they came to a small open space where the ground was
wet, and after sniffing about a bit, and focussing his one good eye
here and there, Neewa suddenly began digging. Very shortly he drew out
of the ground a white object about the size of a man's thumb and began
to crunch it ravenously between his jaws. Miki succeeded in capturing a
fair sized bit of it. Disappointment followed fast. The thing was like
wood; after rolling it in his mouth a few times he dropped it in
disgust, and Neewa finished the remnant of the root with a thankful
grunt.
They proceeded. For two heartbreaking hours Miki followed at Neewa's
heels, the void in his stomach increasing as the swelling in his body
diminished. His hunger was becoming a torture. Yet not a bit to eat
could he find, while Neewa at every few steps apparently discovered
something to devour. At the end of the two hours the cub's bill of fare
had grown to considerable proportions. It included, among other things,
half a dozen green and black beetles; numberless bugs, both hard and
soft; whole colonies of red and black ants; several white grubs dug out
of the heart of decaying logs; a handful of snails; a young frog; the
egg of a ground-plover that had failed to hatch; and, in the vegetable
line, the roots of two camas and one skunk cabbage. Now and then he
pulled down tender poplar shoots and nipped the ends off. Likewise he
nibbled spruce and balsam gum whenever he found it, and occasionally
added to his breakfast a bit of tender grass.
A number of these things Miki tried. He would have eaten the frog, but
Neewa was ahead of him there. The spruce and balsam gum clogged up his
teeth and almost made him vomit because of its bitterness. Between a
snail and a stone he could find little difference, and as the one bug
he tried happened to be that asafoetida-like creature known as a
stink-bug he made no further efforts in that direction. He also bit off
a tender tip from a ground-shoot, but instead of a young poplar it was
Fox-bite, and shrivelled up his tongue for a quarter of an hour. At
last he arrived at the conclusion that, up to date, the one thing in
Neewa's menu that he COULD eat was grass.
In the face of his own starvation his companion grew happier as he
added to the strange collection in his stomach. In fact, Neewa
considered himself in clover and was grunting his satisfaction
continually, especially as his bad eye was beginning to open and he
could see things better. Half a dozen times when he found fresh ant
nests he invited Miki to the feast with excited little squeals. Until
noon Miki followed like a faithful satellite at his heels. The end came
when Neewa deliberately dug into a nest inhabited by four huge
bumble-bees, smashed them all, and ate them.
From that moment something impressed upon Miki that he must do his own
hunting. With the thought came a new thrill. His eyes were fairly open
now, and much of the stiffness had gone from his legs. The blood of his
Mackenzie father and of his half Spitz and half Airedale mother rose up
in him in swift and immediate demand, and he began to quest about for
himself. He found a warm scent, and poked about until a partridge went
up with a tremendous thunder of wings. It startled him, but added to
the thrill. A few minutes later, nosing under a pile of brush, he came
face to face with his dinner.
It was Wahboo, the baby rabbit. Instantly Miki was at him, and had a
firm hold at the back of Wahboo's back. Neewa, hearing the smashing of
the brush and the squealing of the rabbit, stopped catching ants and
hustled toward the scene of action. The squealing ceased quickly and
Miki backed himself out and faced Neewa with Wahboo held triumphantly
in his jaws. The young rabbit had already given his last kick, and with
a fierce show of growling Miki began tearing the fur off. Neewa edged
in, grunting affably. Miki snarled more fiercely. Neewa, undaunted,
continued to express his overwhelming regard for Miki in low and
supplicating grunts--and smelled the rabbit. The snarl in Miki's throat
died away. He may have remembered that Neewa had invited him more than
once to partake of his ants and bugs. Together they ate the rabbit. Not
until the last bit of flesh and the last tender bone were gone did the
feast end, and then Neewa sat back on his round bottom and stuck out
his little red tongue for the first time since he had lost his mother.
It was the cub sign of a full stomach and a blissful mind. He could see
nothing to be more desired at the present time than a nap, and
stretching himself languidly he began looking about for a tree.
Miki, on the other hand, was inspired to new action by the pleasurable
sensation of being comfortably filled. Inasmuch as Neewa chewed his
food very carefully, while Miki, paying small attention to mastication,
swallowed it in chunks, the pup had succeeded in getting away with
about four fifths of the rabbit. So he was no longer hungry. But he was
more keenly alive to his changed environment than at any time since he
and Neewa had fallen out of Challoner's canoe into the rapids. For the
first time he had killed, and for the first time he had tasted warm
blood, and the combination added to his existence an excitement that
was greater than any desire he might have possessed to lie down in a
sunny spot and sleep. Now that he had learned the game, the hunting
instinct trembled in every fibre of his small being. He would have gone
on hunting until his legs gave way under him if Neewa had not found a
napping-place.
Astonished half out of his wits he watched Neewa as he leisurely
climbed the trunk of a big poplar. He had seen squirrels climb
trees--just as he had seen birds fly--but Neewa's performance held him
breathless; and not until the cub had stretched himself out comfortably
in a crotch did Miki express himself. Then he gave an incredulous yelp,
sniffed at the butt of the tree, and made a half-hearted experiment at
the thing himself. One flop on his back convinced him that Neewa was
the tree-climber of the partnership. Chagrined, he wandered back
fifteen or twenty feet and sat down to study the situation. He could
not perceive that Neewa had any special business up the tree. Certainly
he was not hunting for bugs. He yelped half a dozen times, but Neewa
made no answer. At last he gave it up and flopped himself down with a
disconsolate whine.
But it was not to sleep. He was ready and anxious to go on. He wanted
to explore still further the mysterious and fascinating depths of the
forest. He no longer felt the strange fear that had been upon him
before he killed the rabbit. In two minutes under the brush-heap Nature
had performed one of her miracles of education. In those two minutes
Miki had risen out of whimpering puppyhood to new power and
understanding. He had passed that elemental stage which his
companionship with Challoner had prolonged. He had KILLED, and the hot
thrill of it set fire to every instinct that was in him. In the half
hour during which he lay flat on his belly, his head alert and
listening, while Neewa slept, he passed half way from puppyhood to
dogdom. He would never know that Hela, his Mackenzie hound father, was
the mightiest hunter in all the reaches of the Little Fox country, and
that alone he had torn down a bull caribou. But he FELT it. There was
something insistent and demanding in the call. And because he was
answering that call, and listening eagerly to the whispering voices of
the forest, his quick ears caught the low, chuckling monotone of
Kawook, the porcupine.
Miki lay very still. A moment later he heard the soft clicking of
quills, and then Kawook came out in the open and stood up on his hind
feet in a patch of sunlight.
For thirteen years Kawook had lived undisturbed in this particular part
of the wilderness, and in his old age he weighed thirty pounds if he
weighed an ounce. On this afternoon, coming for his late dinner, he was
feeling even more than usually happy. His eyesight at best was dim.
Nature had never intended him to see very far, and had therefore
quilted him heavily with the barbed shafts of his protecting armour.
Thirty feet away he was entirely oblivious of Miki, at least apparently
so; and Miki hugged the ground closer, warned by the swiftly developing
instinct within him that here was a creature it would be unwise to
attack.
For perhaps a minute Kawook stood up, chuckling his tribal song without
any visible movement of his body. He stood profile to Miki, like a fat
alderman. He was so fat that his stomach bulged out in front like the
half of a balloon, and over this stomach his hands were folded in a
peculiarly human way, so that he looked more like an old she-porcupine
than a master in his tribe.
It was not until then that Miki observed Iskwasis, the young female
porcupine, who had poked herself slyly out from under a bush near
Kawook. In spite of his years the red thrill of romance was not yet
gone from the old fellow's bones, and he immediately started to give an
exhibition of his good breeding and elegance. He began with his
ludicrous love-making dance, hopping from one foot to the other until
his fat stomach shook, and chuckling louder than ever. The charms of
Iskwasis were indeed sufficient to turn the head of an older beau than
Kawook. She was a distinctive blonde; in other words, one of those
unusual creatures of her kind, an albino. Her nose was pink, the palms
of her little feet were pink, and each of her pretty pink eyes was set
in an iris of sky-blue. It was evident that she did not regard old
Kawook's passion-dance with favour and sensing this fact Kawook changed
his tactics and falling on all four feet began to chase his spiky tail
as if he had suddenly gone mad. When he stopped, and looked to see what
effect he had made he was clearly knocked out by the fact that Iskwasis
had disappeared.
For another minute he sat stupidly, without making a sound. Then to
Miki's consternation he started straight for the tree in which Neewa
was sleeping. As a matter of fact, it was Kawook's dinner-tree, and he
began climbing it, talking to himself all the time. Miki's hair began
to stand on end. He did not know that Kawook, like all his kind, was
the best-natured fellow in the world, and had never harmed anything in
his life unless assaulted first. Lacking this knowledge he set up a
sudden frenzy of barking to warn Neewa.
Neewa roused himself slowly, and when he opened his eyes he was looking
into a spiky face that sent him into a convulsion of alarm. With a
suddenness that came within an ace of toppling him from his crotch he
swung over and scurried higher up the tree. Kawook was not at all
excited. Now that Iskwasis was gone he was entirely absorbed in the
anticipation of his dinner. He continued to clamber slowly upward, and
at this the horrified Neewa backed himself out on a limb in order that
Kawook might have an unobstructed trail up the tree.
Unfortunately for Neewa it was on this limb that Kawook had eaten his
last meal, and he began working himself out on it, still apparently
oblivious of the fact that the cub was on the same branch. At this Miki
sent up such a series of shrieking yelps from below that Kawook seemed
at last to realize that something unusual was going on. He peered down
at Miki who was making vain efforts to jump up the trunk of the tree;
then he turned and, for the first time, contemplated Neewa with some
sign of interest. Neewa was hugging the limb with both forearms and
both hind legs. To retreat another foot on the branch that was already
bending dangerously under his weight seemed impossible.
It was at this point that Kawook began to scold fiercely. With a final
frantic yelp Miki sat back on his haunches and watched the thrilling
drama above him. A little at a time Kawook advanced, and inch by inch
Neewa retreated, until at last he rolled clean over and was hanging
with his back toward the ground. It was then that Kawook ceased his
scolding and calmly began eating his dinner. For two or three minutes
Neewa kept his hold. Twice he made efforts to pull himself up so that
he could get the branch under him. Then his hind feet slipped. For a
dozen seconds he hung with his two front paws--then shot down through
fifteen feet of space to the ground. Close to Miki he landed with a
thud that knocked the wind out of him. He rose with a grunt, took one
dazed look up the tree, and without further explanation to Miki began
to leg it deeper into the forest--straight into the face of the great
adventure which was to be the final test for these two.