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!