CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was the Flying-Up Moon--deep and slumbering midsummer--in all theland of Keewatin. From Hudson Bay to the Athabasca and from the Hightof Land to the edge of the Great Barrens, forest, plain, and swamp layin peace and forgetfulness under the sun-glowing days and thestar-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 oncemore. For the trails of this wilderness world--so vast that it reacheda thousand miles east and west and as far north and south--were emptyof human life. At the Hudson Bay Company's posts--scattered here andthere over the illimitable domain of fang and claw--had gathered thethousands of hunters and trappers, with their wives and children, tosleep and gossip and play through the few weeks of warmth and plentyuntil the strife and tragedy of another winter began. For these peopleof the forests it was MUKOO-SAWIN--the great Play Day of the year; theweeks in which they ran up new debts and established new credits at thePosts; the weeks in which they foregathered at every Post as at a greatfair--playing, and making love, and marrying, and fattening up for themany days of hunger and gloom to come.
It was because of this that the wild things had come fully into thepossession of their world for a space. There was no longer the scent ofman in all the wilderness. They were not hunted. There were no trapslaid for their feet, no poison-baits placed temptingly where they mightpass. In the fens and on the lakes the wildfowl squawked and honkedunfearing to their young, just learning the power of wing; the lynxplayed 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 theircalves; the wolverine and the marten ran playfully over the roofs ofdeserted shacks and cabins; the beaver and the otter tumbled andfrolicked in their dark pools; the birds sang, and through all thewilderness there was the drone and song of Nature as some Great Powermust at first have meant that Nature should be. A new generation ofwild things had been born. It was a season of Youth, with tens ofthousands and hundreds of thousands of little children of the wildplaying their first play, learning their first lessons, growing upswiftly to face the menace and doom of their first winter. And theBeneficent Spirit of the forests, anticipating what was to come, hadprepared well for them. Everywhere there was plenty. The blueberries,the blackberries, the mountain-ash and the saskatoons were ripe; treeand vine were bent low with their burden of fruit. The grass was greenand tender from the summer rains. Bulbous roots were fairly popping outof the earth; the fens and the edges of the lakes were rich with thingsto eat, overhead and underfoot the horn of plenty was emptying itselfwithout 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 thatoverlooked a wonderful valley. Neewa, stuffed with lusciousblueberries, was asleep. Miki's eyes were only partly closed as helooked down into the soft haze of the valley. Up to him came therippling music of the stream running between the rocks and over thepebbly bars below, and with it the soft and languorous drone of thevalley itself. He napped uneasily for half an hour, and then his eyesopened 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 untildark. It was always Miki who kept him on the move. And now Miki barkedat 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 daylike this? Let's go down along the creek and hunt something."
Neewa roused himself, stretched his fat body, and yawned. Sleepily hislittle eyes took in the valley. Miki got up and gave the low andanxious whine which always told his companion that he wanted to be onthe move. Neewa responded, and they began making their way down thegreen slope into the rich bottom between the two ridges.
They were now almost six months of age, and in the matter of size hadnearly 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 headand jaws, and his body had increased in girth and length until he wastwice as big as most ordinary dogs of his age.
Neewa had lost his round, ball-like cubbishness, though he stillbetrayed far more than Miki the fact that he was not many months lostfrom his mother. But he was no longer filled with that wholesome loveof peace that had filled his earlier cubhood. The blood of Soominitikwas at last beginning to assert itself, and he no longer sought a placeof safety in time of battle--unless the grimness of utter necessitymade it unavoidable. In fact, unlike most bears, he loved a fight. Ifthere were a stronger term at hand it might be applied to Miki, thetrue son of Hela. Youthful as they were, they were already covered withscars that would have made a veteran proud. Crows and owls, wolf-fangand fisher-claw had all left their marks, and on Miki's side was a barespace eight inches long left as a souvenir by a wolverine.
In Neewa's funny round head there had grown, during the course ofevents, an ambition to have it out some day with a citizen of his ownkind; but the two opportunities that had come his way were spoiled bythe fact that the other cubs' mothers were with them. So now, when Mikiled off on his trips of adventure, Neewa always followed with anotherthrill than that of getting something to eat, which so long had beenhis 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, mainlybecause Miki was satisfied with two or three meals a day while Neewapreferred one--a continuous one lasting from dawn until dark. On thetrail he was always eating something.
A quarter of a mile along the foot of the ridge, in a stony coulee downwhich a tiny rivulet trickled, there grew the finest wild currants inall the Shamattawa country. Big as cherries, black as ink, and swellingalmost to the bursting point with luscious juice, they hung in clustersso thick that Neewa could gather them by the mouthful. Nothing in allthe wilderness is quite so good as one of these dead-ripe blackcurrants, and this coulee wherein they grew so richly Neewa hadpreempted as his own personal property. Miki, too, had learned to eatthe currants; so to the coulee they went this afternoon, for suchcurrants as these one can eat even when one is already full. Besides,the coulee was fruitful for Miki in other ways. There were many youngpartridges and rabbits in it--"fool hens" of tender flesh and deliciousflavour which he caught quite easily, and any number of gophers andsquirrels.
To-day they had scarcely taken their first mouthful of the big juicycurrants when an unmistakable sound came to them. Unmistakable becauseeach recognized instantly what it meant. It was the tearing down ofcurrant bushes twenty or thirty yards higher up the coulee. Some robberhad invaded their treasure-house, and instantly Miki bared his fangswhile Neewa wrinkled up his nose in an ominous snarl. Soft-footed theyadvanced toward the sound until they came to the edge of a small openspace which was as flat as a table. In the centre of this space was aclump of currant bushes not more than a yard in girth, and black withfruit; and squatted on his haunches there, gathering the laden bushesin 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 intoconsideration. He was much in the frame of mind of a man returning hometo discover his domicile, and all it contained, in full possession ofanother. At the same time here was his ambition easily to beachieved--his ambition to lick the daylight out of a member of his ownkind. Miki seemed to sense this fact. Under ordinary conditions hewould have led in the fray, and before Neewa had fairly got started,would have been at the impudent interloper's throat. But now somethingheld him back, and it was Neewa who first shot out--like a blackbolt--landing squarely in the ribs of his unsuspecting enemy.
(Old Makoki, the Cree runner, had he seen that attack, would instantlyhave found a name for the other bear--"Petoot-a-wapis-kum," whichmeans, literally: "Kicked-off-his-Feet." Perhaps he would have calledhim "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.)
&n
bsp; Taken utterly by surprise, with his mouth full of berries, he wasbowled over like an overfilled bag under the force of Neewa's charge.So complete was his discomfiture for the moment that Miki, watching theaffair with a yearning interest, could not keep back an excited yap ofapprobation. Before Pete could understand what had happened, and whilethe berries were still oozing from his mouth, Neewa was at histhroat--and the fun began.
Now bears, and especially young bears, have a way of fighting that isall their own. It reminds one of a hair-pulling contest between twowell-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--afirst-class battling position for a bear--would have possessed anadvantage had it not been for Neewa's ferocious hold at his throat. Asit was, Neewa sank his fangs in to their full length, and scrubbed awayfor dear life with his sharp hind claws. Miki drew nearer at sight ofthe flying fur, his soul filled with joy. Then Pete got one leg intoaction, and then the other, and Miki's jaws came together with a suddenclick. Over and over the two fighters rolled, Neewa holding to histhroat-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 aclatter down the coulee. The very air trembled with the thrill ofcombat. In Miki's attitude of tense waiting there was something now ofsuspicious anxiety. With eight furry legs scratching and tearingfuriously, and the two fighters rolling and twisting and contortingthemselves like a pair of windmills gone mad, it was almost impossiblefor Miki to tell who was getting the worst of it--Neewa or Pete; atleast 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 thatit was an unmistakable bawl of pain.
Smothered under Pete's heavier body Neewa began to realize, at the endof those three or four minutes, that he had tackled more than was goodfor him. It was altogether Pete's size and not his fighting qualities,for Neewa had him outpointed there. But he fought on, hoping for somegood turn of luck, until at last Pete got him just where he wanted himand began raking him up and down his sides until in another threeminutes he would have been half skinned if Miki hadn't judged themoment ripe for intervention. Even then Neewa was taking his punishmentwithout a howl.
In another instant Miki had Pete by the ear. It was a grim and terriblehold. Old Soominitik himself would have bawled lustily in thecircumstances. Pete raised his voice in a howl of agony. He forgoteverything else but the terror and the pain of this new SOMETHING thathad him by the ear, and he rent the air with his outcry. Hislamentation poured in an unbroken spasm of sound from his throat. Neewaknew that Miki was in action.
He pulled himself from under the young interloper's body--and not asecond too soon. Down the coulee, charging like a mad bull, came Pete'smother. Neewa was off like a shot just as she made a powerful swing athim. The blow missed, and the old bear turned excitedly to her bawlingoffspring. Miki, hanging joyously to his victim, was oblivious of hisdanger until Pete's mother was almost upon him. He caught sight of herjust as her long arm shot out like a wooden beam. He dodged; and theblow intended for him landed full against the side of the unfortunatePete's head with a force that took him clean off his feet and sent himflying like a football twenty yards down the coulee.
Miki did not wait for further results. Quick as a flash he was in acurrant thicket tearing down the little gulch after Neewa. They cameout on the plain together, and for a good ten minutes they did not haltin their flight long enough to look back. When they did, the coulee wasa mile away. They sat down, panting. Neewa's red tongue was hanging outin his exhaustion. He was scratched and bleeding; loose hair hung allover him. As he looked at Miki there was something in the dolorousexpression of Neewa's face which was a confession of the fact that herealized Pete had licked him.