To Miki and Neewa, especially Neewa, there seemed nothing extraordinary
in the fact that they were together again, and that their comradeship
was resumed. Although during his months of hibernation Neewa's body had
grown, his mind had not changed its memories or its pictures. It had
not passed through a mess of stirring events such as had made the
winter a thrilling one for Miki, and so it was Neewa who accepted the
new situation most casually. He went on feeding as if nothing at all
unusual had happened during the past four months, and after the edge
had gone from his first hunger he fell into his old habit of looking to
Miki for leadership. And Miki fell into the old ways as though only a
day or a week and not four months had lapsed in their brotherhood. It
is possible that he tried mightily to tell Neewa what had happened. At
least he must have had that desire--to let him know in what a strange
way he had found his old master, Challoner, and how he had lost him
again. And also how he found the woman, Nanette, and the little baby
Nanette, and how for a long time he had lived with them and loved them
as he had never loved anything else on earth.
It was the old cabin, far to the north and east, that drew him now--the
cabin in which Nanette and the baby had lived; and it was toward this
cabin that he lured Neewa during the first two weeks of their hunting.
They did not travel quickly, largely because of Neewa's voracious
spring appetite and the fact that it consumed nine tenths of his waking
hours to keep full on such provender as roots and swelling buds and
grass. During the first week Miki grew either hopeless or disgusted in
his hunting. One day he killed five rabbits and Neewa ate four of them
and grunted piggishly for more.
If Miki had stood amazed and appalled at Neewa's appetite in the days
of their cubhood and puppyhood a year ago, he was more than astounded
now, for in the matter of food Neewa was a bottomless pit. On the other
hand he was jollier than ever, and in their wrestling matches he was
almost more than a match for Miki, being nearly again as heavy. He very
soon acquired the habit of taking advantage of this superiority of
weight, and at unexpected moments he would hop on Miki and pin him to
the ground, his fat body smothering him like a huge soft cushion, and
his arms holding him until at times Miki could scarcely squirm. Now and
then, hugging him in this embrace, he would roll over and over, both of
them snarling and growling as though in deadly combat. This play,
though he was literally the under dog, delighted Miki until one day
they rolled over the edge of a deep ravine and crashed in a
dog-and-bear avalanche to the bottom. After that, for a long time,
Neewa did not roll with his victim. Whenever Miki wanted to end a bout,
however, all he had to do was to give Neewa a sharp nip with his long
fangs and the bear would uncoil himself and hop to his feet like a
spring. He had a most serious respect for Miki's teeth.
But Miki's greatest moments of joy were where Neewa stood up
man-fashion. Then was a real tussle. And his greatest hours of disgust
were when Neewa stretched himself out in a tree for a nap.
It was the beginning of the third week before they came one day to the
cabin. There was no change in it, and Miki's body sagged disconsolately
as he and Neewa looked at it from the edge of the clearing. No smoke,
no sign of life, and the window was broken now--probably by an
inquisitive bear or a wolverine. Miki went to the window and stood up
to it, sniffing inside. The SMELL was still there--so faint that he
could only just detect it. But that was all. The big room was empty
except for the stove, a table and a few bits of rude furniture. All
else was gone. Three or four times during the next half hour Miki stood
up at the window, and at last Neewa--urged by his curiosity--did
likewise. He also detected the faint odour that was left in the cabin.
He sniffed at it for a long time. It was like the smell he had caught
the day he came out of his den--and yet different. It was fainter, more
elusive, and not so unpleasant.
For a month thereafter Miki insisted on hunting in the vicinity of the
cabin, held there by the "pull" of the thing which he could neither
analyze nor quite understand. Neewa accepted the situation
good-naturedly for a time. Then he lost patience and surrendered
himself to a grouch for three whole days during which he wandered at
his own sweet will. To preserve the alliance Miki was compelled to
follow him. Berry time--early July--found them sixty miles north and
west of the cabin, in the edge of the country where Neewa was born.
But there were few berries that summer of bebe nak um geda (the summer
of drought and fire). As early as the middle of July a thin, gray film
began to hover in palpitating waves over the forests. For three weeks
there had been no rain. Even the nights were hot and dry. Each day the
factors at their posts looked out with anxious eyes over their domains,
and by the first of August every post had a score of halfbreeds and
Indians patrolling the trails on the watch for fire. In their cabins
and teepees the forest dwellers who had not gone to pass the summer at
the posts waited and watched; each morning and noon and night they
climbed tall trees and peered through that palpitating gray film for a
sign of smoke. For weeks the wind came steadily from the south and
west, parched as though swept over the burning sands of a desert.
Berries dried up on the bushes; the fruit of the mountain ash shriveled
on its stems; creeks ran dry; swamps turned into baked peat, and the
poplar leaves hung wilted and lifeless, too limp to rustle in the
breeze. Only once or twice in a lifetime does the forest dweller see
poplar leaves curl up and die like that, baked to death in the summer
sun. It is Kiskewahoon (the Danger Signal). Not only the warning of
possible death in a holocaust of fire, but the omen of poor hunting and
trapping in the winter to come.
Miki and Neewa were in a swamp country when the fifth of August came.
In the lowland it was sweltering. Neewa's tongue hung from his mouth,
and Miki was panting as they made their way along a black and sluggish
stream that was like a great ditch and as dead as the day itself. There
was no visible sun, but a red and lurid glow filled the sky--the sun
struggling to fight its way through the smothering film that had grown
thicker over the earth. Because they were in a "pocket"--a sweep of
tangled country lower than the surrounding country--Neewa and Miki were
not caught in this blackening cloud. Five miles away they might have
heard the thunder of cloven hoofs and the crash of heavy bodies in
their flight before the deadly menace of fire. As it was they made
their way slowly through the parched swamp, so that it was midday when
they came out of the edge of it and up through a green fringe of timber
to the top of a ridge. Before this hour neither had passed through the
horror of a forest fire. But it seized upon them now. It needed no past
experience. The cumulative instinct of a thousand generations leapt
through their brains and bodies. Their world was in the grip of
Iskootao (the Fire Devil). To the south and the east and the west it
was buried in a pall like the darkness of night, and out of the far
edge of the swamp through which they had come they caught the first
livid spurts of flame. From that direction, now that they were out of
the "pocket," they felt a hot wind, and with that wind came a dull and
rumbling roar that was like the distant moaning of a cataract. They
waited, and watched, struggling to get their bearings, their minds
fighting for a few moments in the gigantic process of changing instinct
into reasoning and understanding. Neewa, being a bear, was afflicted
with the near-sightedness of his breed, and he could see neither the
black tornado of smoke bearing down upon them nor the flames leaping
out of the swamp. But he could SMELL, and his nose was twisted into a
hundred wrinkles, and even ahead of Miki he was ready for flight. But
Miki, whose vision was like a hawk's, stood as if fascinated.
The roaring grew more distinct. It seemed on all sides of them. But it
was from the south that there came the first storm of ash rushing
noiselessly ahead of the fire, and after that the smoke. It was then
that Miki turned with a strange whine but it was Neewa now who took the
lead--Neewa, whose forebears had ten thousand times run this same wild
race with death in the centuries since their world was born. He did not
need the keenness of far vision now. He KNEW. He knew what was behind,
and what was on either side, and where the one trail to safety lay; and
in the air he felt and smelled the thing that was death. Twice Miki
made efforts to swing their course into the east, but Neewa would have
none of it. With flattened ears he went on NORTH. Three times Miki
stopped to turn and face the galloping menace behind them, but never
for an instant did Neewa pause. Straight on--NORTH, NORTH, NORTH--north
to the higher lands, the big waters, the open plains.
They were not alone. A caribou sped past them with the swiftness of the
wind itself. "FAST, FAST, FAST!"--Neewa's instinct cried; "but--ENDURE!
For the caribou, speeding even faster than the fire, will fall of
exhaustion shortly and be eaten up by the flames. FAST--but ENDURE!"
And steadily, stoically, at his loping gait Neewa led on.
A bull moose swung half across their trail from the west, wind-gone and
panting as though his throat were cut. He was badly burned, and running
blindly into the eastern wall of fire.
Behind and on either side, where the flames were rushing on with the
pitiless ferocity of hunnish regiments, the harvest of death was a vast
and shuddering reality. In hollow logs, under windfalls, in the thick
tree-tops, and in the earth itself, the smaller things of the
wilderness sought their refuge--and died. Rabbits became leaping balls
of flame, then lay shrivelled and black; the marten were baked in their
trees; fishers and mink and ermine crawled into the deepest corners of
the windfalls and died there by inches; owls fluttered out of their
tree-tops, staggered for a few moments in the fiery air, and fell down
into the heart of the flame. No creature made a sound--except the
porcupines; and as they died they cried like little children.
In the green spruce and cedar timber, heavy with the pitch that made
their thick tops spurt into flame like a sea of explosive, the fire
rushed on with a tremendous roar. From it--in a straight race--there
was no escape for man or beast. Out of that world of conflagration
there might have risen one great, yearning cry to heaven:
WATER--WATER--WATER! Wherever there was water there was also hope--and
life. Breed and blood and wilderness feuds were forgotten in the great
hour of peril. Every lake became a haven of refuge.
To such a lake came Neewa, guided by an unerring instinct and sense of
smell sharpened by the rumble and roar of the storm of fire behind him.
Miki had "lost" himself; his senses were dulled; his nostrils caught no
scent but that of a world in flames--so, blindly, he followed his
comrade. The fire was enveloping the lake along its western shore, and
its water was already thickly tenanted. It was not a large lake, and
almost round. Its diameter was not more than two hundred yards. Farther
out--a few of them swimming, but most of them standing on bottom with
only their heads out of water--were a score of caribou and moose. Many
other shorter-legged creatures were swimming aimlessly, turning this
way and that, paddling their feet only enough to keep afloat. On the
shore where Neewa and Miki paused was a huge porcupine, chattering and
chuckling foolishly, as if scolding all things in general for having
disturbed him at dinner. Then he took to the water. A little farther up
the shore a fisher-cat and a fox hugged close to the water line,
hesitating to wet their precious fur until death itself snapped at
their heels; and as if to bring fresh news of this death a second fox
dragged himself wearily out on the shore, as limp as a wet rag after
his swim from the opposite shore, where the fire was already leaping in
a wall of flame. And as this fox swam in, hoping to find safety, an old
bear twice as big as Neewa, crashed panting from the undergrowth,
plunged into the water, and swam OUT. Smaller things were creeping and
crawling and slinking along the shore; little red-eyed ermine, marten,
and mink, rabbits, squirrels, and squeaking gophers, and a horde of
mice. And at last, with these things which he would have devoured so
greedily running about him, Neewa waded slowly out into the water. Miki
followed until he was submerged to his shoulders. Then he stopped. The
fire was close now, advancing like a race-horse. Over the protecting
barrier of thick timber drove the clouds of smoke and ash. Swiftly the
lake became obliterated, and now out of that awful chaos of blackness
and smoke and heat there rose strange and thrilling cries; the bleating
of a moose calf that was doomed to die and the bellowing, terror-filled
response of its mother; the agonized howling of a wolf; the terrified
barking of a fox, and over all else the horrible screaming of a pair of
loons whose home had been transformed into a sea of flame.
Through the thickening smoke and increasing heat Neewa gave his call to
Miki as he began to swim, and with an answering whine Miki plunged
after him, swimming so close to his big black brother that his muzzle
touched the other's flank. In mid-lake Neewa did as the other swimming
creatures were doing--paddled only enough to keep himself afloat; but
for Miki, big of bone and unassisted by a life-preserver of fat, the
struggle was not so easy. He was forced to swim to keep afloat. A dozen
times he circled around Neewa, and then, with something of the
situation driven upon him, he came up close to the bear and rested his
forepaws on his shoulders.
The lake was now encircled by a solid wall of fire. Blasts of flame
shot up the pitch-laden trees and leapt for fifty feet into the
blistering air. The roar of the conflagration was deafening. It drowned
all sound that brute agony and death may have made. And its heat was
terrific. For a few terrible minutes the air which Miki drew into his
lungs was like fire itself. Neewa plunged his head under water every
few seconds, but it was not Miki's instinct to do this. Like the wolf
and the fox and the fisher-cat and the lynx it was his nature to die
before completely submerging himself.
Swift as it had come the fire passed; and the walls of timber that had
been green a few moments before were black and shrivelled and dead; and
sound swept on with the flame until it became once more only a low and
rumbling murmur.
To the black and smouldering shores the live things slowly made their
way. Of all the creatures that had taken refuge in the lake many had
died. Chief of those were the porcupines. All had drowned.
Close to the shore the heat was still intense, and for hours the earth
was hot with smouldering fire. All the rest of that day and the night
that followed no living thing moved out of the shallow water. And yet
no living thing thought to prey upon its neighbour. The great peril had
made of all beasts kin.
A little before dawn of the day following the fire relief came. A
deluge of rain fell, and when day broke and the sun shone through a
murky heaven there was left no sign of what the lake had been, except
for the dead bodies that floated on its surface or lined its shores.
The living things had returned into their desolated wilderness--and
among them Neewa and Miki.