Meshaba, the old Cree, sat on the sunny side of a rock on the sunny
side of a slope that looked up and down the valley. Meshaba--who many,
many years ago had been called The Giant--was very old. He was so old
that even the Factor's books over at Fort O' God had no record of his
birth; nor the "post logs" at Albany House, or Cumberland House, or
Norway House, or Fort Churchill. Perhaps farther north, at Lac La
Biche, at Old Fort Resolution, or at Fort McPherson some trace of him
might have been found. His skin was crinkled and weather-worn, like dry
buckskin, and over his brown, thin face his hair fell to his shoulders,
snow-white. His hands were thin, even his nose was thin with the
thinness of age. But his eyes were still like dark garnets, and down
through the greater part of a century their vision had come undimmed.
They roved over the valley now. At Meshaba's back, a mile on the other
side of the ridge, was the old trapper's cabin, where he lived alone.
The winter had been long and cold, and in his gladness at the coming of
spring Meshaba had come up the ridge to bask in the sun and look out
over the changing world. For an hour his eyes had travelled up and down
the valley like the eyes of an old and wary hawk. The dark spruce and
cedar forest edged in the far side of the valley; between that and the
ridge rolled the meadowy plain--still covered with melting snow in
places, and in others bare and glowing, a dull green in the sunlight.
From where he sat Meshaba could also see a rocky scarp of the ridge
that projected out into the plain a hundred yards away. But this did
not interest him, except that if it had not been in his line of vision
he could have seen a mile farther down the valley.
In that hour of Sphinx-like watching, while the smoke curled slowly up
from his black pipe, Meshaba had seen life. Half a mile from where he
was sitting a band of caribou had come out of the timber and wandered
into a less distant patch of low bush. They had not thrilled his old
blood with the desire to kill, for there was already a fresh carcass
hung up at the back of his cabin. Still farther away he had seen a
hornless moose, so grotesque in its spring ugliness that the
parchment-like skin of his face had cracked for half an instant in a
smile, and out of him had come a low and appreciative grunt; for
Meshaba, in spite of his age, still had a sense of humour left. Once he
had seen a wolf, and twice a fox, and now his eyes were on an eagle
high over his head. Meshaba would not have shot that eagle, for year
after year it had come down through time with him, and it was always
there soaring in the sun when spring came. So Meshaba grunted as he
watched it, and was glad that Upisk had not died during the winter.
"Kata y ati sisew," he whispered to himself, a glow of superstition in
his fiery eyes. "We have lived long together, and it is fated that we
die together, Oh Upisk. The spring has come for us many times, and soon
the black winter will swallow us up for ever."
His eyes shifted slowly, and then they rested on the scarp of the ridge
that shut out his vision. His heart gave a sudden thump in his body.
His pipe fell from his mouth to his hand; and he stared without moving,
stared like a thing of rock.
On a flat sunlit shelf not more than eighty or ninety yards away stood
a young black bear. In the warm glow of the sunlight the bear's spring
coat shone like polished jet. But it was not the sudden appearance of
the bear that amazed Meshaba. It was the fact that another animal was
standing shoulder to shoulder with Wakayoo, and that it was not a
brother bear, but a huge wolf. Slowly one of his thin hands rose to his
eyes and he wiped away what he thought must surely be a strange
something that was fooling his vision. In all his eighty years and odd
he had never known a wolf to be thus friendly with a bear. Nature had
made them enemies. Nature had fore-doomed their hatred to be the
deepest hatred of the forests. Therefore, for a space, Meshaba doubted
his eyes. But in another moment he saw that the miracle had truly come
to pass. For the wolf turned broadside to him and it WAS a wolf! A
huge, big-boned beast that stood as high at the shoulders as Wakayoo,
the bear; a great beast, with a great head, and--
It was then that Meshaba's heart gave another thump, for the tail of a
wolf is big and bushy in the springtime, and the tail of this beast was
as bare of hair as a beaver's tail!
"Ohne moosh!" gasped Meshaba, under his breath--"a dog!"
He seemed to draw slowly into himself, slinking backward. His rifle
stood just out of reach on the other side of the rock.
At the other end of that eighty or ninety yards Neewa and Miki stood
blinking in the bright sunlight, with the mouth of the cavern in which
Neewa had slept so many months just behind them. Miki was puzzled.
Again it seemed to him that it was only yesterday, and not months ago,
that he had left Neewa in that den, sleeping his lazy head off. And now
that he had returned to him after his own hard winter in the forests he
was astonished to find Neewa so big. For Neewa had grown steadily
through his four months' nap and he was half again as big as when he
went to sleep. Could Miki have spoken Cree, and had Meshaba given him
the opportunity, he might have explained the situation.
"You see, Mr. Indian"--he might have said--"this dub of a bear and I
have been pals from just about the time we were born. A man named
Challoner tied us together first when Neewa, there, was just about as
big as your head, and we did a lot of scrapping before we got properly
acquainted. Then we got lost, and after that we hitched up like
brothers; and we had a lot of fun and excitement all through last
summer, until at last, when the cold weather came, Neewa hunted up this
hole in the ground and the lazy cuss went to sleep for all winter. I
won't mention what happened to me during the winter. It was a-plenty.
So this spring I had a hunch it was about time for Neewa to get the
cobwebs out of his fool head, and came back. And--here we are! But tell
me this: WHAT MAKES NEEWA SO BIG?"
It was at least that thought--the bigness of Neewa--that was filling
Miki's head at the present moment. And Meshaba, in place of listening
to an explanation, was reaching for his rifle--while Neewa, with his
brown muzzle sniffing the wind, was gathering in a strange smell. Of
the three, Neewa saw nothing to be wondered at in the situation itself.
When he had gone to sleep four and a half months ago Miki was at his
side; and to-day, when he awoke, Miki was still at his side. The four
and a half months meant nothing to him. Many times he and Miki had gone
to sleep, and had awakened together. For all the knowledge he had of
time it might have been only last night that he had fallen asleep.
The one thing that made Neewa uneasy now was that strange odour he had
caught in the air. Instinctively he seized upon it as a menace--at
least as something that he would rather NOT smell than smell. So he
turned away with a warning WOOF to Miki. When Meshaba peered around the
edge of the rock, expecting an easy shot, he caught only a flash of the
two as they were disappearing. He fired quickly.
To Miki and Neewa the report of the rifle and the moaning whirr of the
bullet over their backs recalled memories of a host of things, and
Neewa settled down to that hump-backed, flat-eared flight of his that
kept Miki pegging along at a brisk pace for at least a mile. Then Neewa
stopped, puffing audibly. Inasmuch as he had had nothing to eat for a
third of a year, and was weak from long inactivity, the run came within
an ace of putting him out of business. It was several minutes before he
could gather his wind sufficiently to grunt. Miki, meanwhile, was
carefully smelling of him from his rump to his muzzle. There was
apparently nothing missing, for he gave a delighted little yap at the
end, and, in spite of his size and the dignity of increased age, he
began frisking about Neewa In a manner emphatically expressive of his
joy at his comrade's awakening.
"It's been a deuce of a lonely winter, Neewa, and I'm tickled to death
to see you on your feet again," his antics said. "What'll we do? Go for
a hunt?"
This seemed to be the thought in Neewa's mind, for he headed straight
up the valley until they came to an open fen where he proceeded to
quest about for a dinner of roots and grass; and as he searched he
grunted--grunted in his old, companionable, cubbish way. And Miki,
hunting with him, found that once more the loneliness had gone out of
his world.