It was the Flying-Up Moon--deep and slumbering midsummer--in all the
land of Keewatin. From Hudson Bay to the Athabasca and from the Hight
of Land to the edge of the Great Barrens, forest, plain, and swamp lay
in peace and forgetfulness under the sun-glowing days and the
star-filled nights of the August MUKOO-SAWIN. It was the breeding moon,
the growing moon, the moon when all wild life came into its own once
more. For the trails of this wilderness world--so vast that it reached
a thousand miles east and west and as far north and south--were empty
of human life. At the Hudson Bay Company's posts--scattered here and
there over the illimitable domain of fang and claw--had gathered the
thousands of hunters and trappers, with their wives and children, to
sleep and gossip and play through the few weeks of warmth and plenty
until the strife and tragedy of another winter began. For these people
of the forests it was MUKOO-SAWIN--the great Play Day of the year; the
weeks in which they ran up new debts and established new credits at the
Posts; the weeks in which they foregathered at every Post as at a great
fair--playing, and making love, and marrying, and fattening up for the
many days of hunger and gloom to come.
It was because of this that the wild things had come fully into the
possession of their world for a space. There was no longer the scent of
man in all the wilderness. They were not hunted. There were no traps
laid for their feet, no poison-baits placed temptingly where they might
pass. In the fens and on the lakes the wildfowl squawked and honked
unfearing to their young, just learning the power of wing; the lynx
played with her kittens without sniffing the air for the menace of man;
the cow moose went openly into the cool water of the lakes with their
calves; the wolverine and the marten ran playfully over the roofs of
deserted shacks and cabins; the beaver and the otter tumbled and
frolicked in their dark pools; the birds sang, and through all the
wilderness there was the drone and song of Nature as some Great Power
must at first have meant that Nature should be. A new generation of
wild things had been born. It was a season of Youth, with tens of
thousands and hundreds of thousands of little children of the wild
playing their first play, learning their first lessons, growing up
swiftly to face the menace and doom of their first winter. And the
Beneficent Spirit of the forests, anticipating what was to come, had
prepared well for them. Everywhere there was plenty. The blueberries,
the blackberries, the mountain-ash and the saskatoons were ripe; tree
and vine were bent low with their burden of fruit. The grass was green
and tender from the summer rains. Bulbous roots were fairly popping out
of the earth; the fens and the edges of the lakes were rich with things
to eat, overhead and underfoot the horn of plenty was emptying itself
without stint.
In this world Neewa and Miki found a vast and unending contentment.
They lay, on this August afternoon, on a sun-bathed shelf of rock that
overlooked a wonderful valley. Neewa, stuffed with luscious
blueberries, was asleep. Miki's eyes were only partly closed as he
looked down into the soft haze of the valley. Up to him came the
rippling music of the stream running between the rocks and over the
pebbly bars below, and with it the soft and languorous drone of the
valley itself. He napped uneasily for half an hour, and then his eyes
opened and he was wide awake. He took a sharp look over the valley.
Then he looked at Neewa, who, fat and lazy, would have slept until
dark. It was always Miki who kept him on the move. And now Miki barked
at him gruffly two or three times, and nipped at one of his ears.
"Wake up!" he might have said. "What's the sense of sleeping on a day
like this? Let's go down along the creek and hunt something."
Neewa roused himself, stretched his fat body, and yawned. Sleepily his
little eyes took in the valley. Miki got up and gave the low and
anxious whine which always told his companion that he wanted to be on
the move. Neewa responded, and they began making their way down the
green slope into the rich bottom between the two ridges.
They were now almost six months of age, and in the matter of size had
nearly ceased to be a cub and a pup. They were almost a dog and a bear.
Miki's angular legs were getting their shape; his chest had filled out;
his neck had grown until it no longer seemed too small for his big head
and jaws, and his body had increased in girth and length until he was
twice as big as most ordinary dogs of his age.
Neewa had lost his round, ball-like cubbishness, though he still
betrayed far more than Miki the fact that he was not many months lost
from his mother. But he was no longer filled with that wholesome love
of peace that had filled his earlier cubhood. The blood of Soominitik
was at last beginning to assert itself, and he no longer sought a place
of safety in time of battle--unless the grimness of utter necessity
made it unavoidable. In fact, unlike most bears, he loved a fight. If
there were a stronger term at hand it might be applied to Miki, the
true son of Hela. Youthful as they were, they were already covered with
scars that would have made a veteran proud. Crows and owls, wolf-fang
and fisher-claw had all left their marks, and on Miki's side was a bare
space eight inches long left as a souvenir by a wolverine.
In Neewa's funny round head there had grown, during the course of
events, an ambition to have it out some day with a citizen of his own
kind; but the two opportunities that had come his way were spoiled by
the fact that the other cubs' mothers were with them. So now, when Miki
led off on his trips of adventure, Neewa always followed with another
thrill than that of getting something to eat, which so long had been
his one ambition. Which is not to say that Neewa had lost his appetite.
He could eat more in one day than Miki could eat in three, mainly
because Miki was satisfied with two or three meals a day while Neewa
preferred one--a continuous one lasting from dawn until dark. On the
trail he was always eating something.
A quarter of a mile along the foot of the ridge, in a stony coulee down
which a tiny rivulet trickled, there grew the finest wild currants in
all the Shamattawa country. Big as cherries, black as ink, and swelling
almost to the bursting point with luscious juice, they hung in clusters
so thick that Neewa could gather them by the mouthful. Nothing in all
the wilderness is quite so good as one of these dead-ripe black
currants, and this coulee wherein they grew so richly Neewa had
preempted as his own personal property. Miki, too, had learned to eat
the currants; so to the coulee they went this afternoon, for such
currants as these one can eat even when one is already full. Besides,
the coulee was fruitful for Miki in other ways. There were many young
partridges and rabbits in it--"fool hens" of tender flesh and delicious
flavour which he caught quite easily, and any number of gophers and
squirrels.
To-day they had scarcely taken their first mouthful of the big juicy
currants when an unmistakable sound came to them. Unmistakable because
each recognized instantly what it meant. It was the tearing down of
currant bushes twenty or thirty yards higher up the coulee. Some robber
had invaded their treasure-house, and instantly Miki bared his fangs
while Neewa wrinkled up his nose in an ominous snarl. Soft-footed they
advanced toward the sound until they came to the edge of a small open
space which was as flat as a table. In the centre of this space was a
clump of currant bushes not more than a yard in girth, and black with
fruit; and squatted on his haunches there, gathering the laden bushes
in his arms, was a young black bear about four sizes larger than Neewa.
In that moment of consternation and rage Neewa did not take size into
consideration. He was much in the frame of mind of a man returning home
to discover his domicile, and all it contained, in full possession of
another. At the same time here was his ambition easily to be
achieved--his ambition to lick the daylight out of a member of his own
kind. Miki seemed to sense this fact. Under ordinary conditions he
would have led in the fray, and before Neewa had fairly got started,
would have been at the impudent interloper's throat. But now something
held him back, and it was Neewa who first shot out--like a black
bolt--landing squarely in the ribs of his unsuspecting enemy.
(Old Makoki, the Cree runner, had he seen that attack, would instantly
have found a name for the other bear--"Petoot-a-wapis-kum," which
means, literally: "Kicked-off-his-Feet." Perhaps he would have called
him "Pete" for short. For the Cree believes in fitting names to fact,
and Petoot-a-wapis-kum certainly fitted the unknown bear like a glove.)
Taken utterly by surprise, with his mouth full of berries, he was
bowled over like an overfilled bag under the force of Neewa's charge.
So complete was his discomfiture for the moment that Miki, watching the
affair with a yearning interest, could not keep back an excited yap of
approbation. Before Pete could understand what had happened, and while
the berries were still oozing from his mouth, Neewa was at his
throat--and the fun began.
Now bears, and especially young bears, have a way of fighting that is
all their own. It reminds one of a hair-pulling contest between two
well-matched ladies. There are no rules to the game--absolutely none.
As Pete and Neewa clinched, their hind legs began to do the fighting,
and the fur began to fly. Pete, being already on his back--a
first-class battling position for a bear--would have possessed an
advantage had it not been for Neewa's ferocious hold at his throat. As
it was, Neewa sank his fangs in to their full length, and scrubbed away
for dear life with his sharp hind claws. Miki drew nearer at sight of
the flying fur, his soul filled with joy. Then Pete got one leg into
action, and then the other, and Miki's jaws came together with a sudden
click. Over and over the two fighters rolled, Neewa holding to his
throat-grip, and not a squeal or a grunt came from either of them.
Pebbles and dirt flew along with hair and fur. Stones rolled with a
clatter down the coulee. The very air trembled with the thrill of
combat. In Miki's attitude of tense waiting there was something now of
suspicious anxiety. With eight furry legs scratching and tearing
furiously, and the two fighters rolling and twisting and contorting
themselves like a pair of windmills gone mad, it was almost impossible
for Miki to tell who was getting the worst of it--Neewa or Pete; at
least he was in doubt for a matter of three or four minutes.
Then he recognized Neewa's voice. It was very faint, but for all that
it was an unmistakable bawl of pain.
Smothered under Pete's heavier body Neewa began to realize, at the end
of those three or four minutes, that he had tackled more than was good
for him. It was altogether Pete's size and not his fighting qualities,
for Neewa had him outpointed there. But he fought on, hoping for some
good turn of luck, until at last Pete got him just where he wanted him
and began raking him up and down his sides until in another three
minutes he would have been half skinned if Miki hadn't judged the
moment ripe for intervention. Even then Neewa was taking his punishment
without a howl.
In another instant Miki had Pete by the ear. It was a grim and terrible
hold. Old Soominitik himself would have bawled lustily in the
circumstances. Pete raised his voice in a howl of agony. He forgot
everything else but the terror and the pain of this new SOMETHING that
had him by the ear, and he rent the air with his outcry. His
lamentation poured in an unbroken spasm of sound from his throat. Neewa
knew that Miki was in action.
He pulled himself from under the young interloper's body--and not a
second too soon. Down the coulee, charging like a mad bull, came Pete's
mother. Neewa was off like a shot just as she made a powerful swing at
him. The blow missed, and the old bear turned excitedly to her bawling
offspring. Miki, hanging joyously to his victim, was oblivious of his
danger until Pete's mother was almost upon him. He caught sight of her
just as her long arm shot out like a wooden beam. He dodged; and the
blow intended for him landed full against the side of the unfortunate
Pete's head with a force that took him clean off his feet and sent him
flying like a football twenty yards down the coulee.
Miki did not wait for further results. Quick as a flash he was in a
currant thicket tearing down the little gulch after Neewa. They came
out on the plain together, and for a good ten minutes they did not halt
in their flight long enough to look back. When they did, the coulee was
a mile away. They sat down, panting. Neewa's red tongue was hanging out
in his exhaustion. He was scratched and bleeding; loose hair hung all
over him. As he looked at Miki there was something in the dolorous
expression of Neewa's face which was a confession of the fact that he
realized Pete had licked him.