CHAPTER TWELVE
After the fight in the coulee there was no longer a thought on the partof Neewa and Miki of returning to the Garden of Eden in which the blackcurrants grew so lusciously. From the tip of his tail to the end of hisnose Miki was an adventurer, and like the nomadic rovers of old he washappiest when on the move. The wilderness had claimed him now, body andsoul, and it is probable that he would have shunned a human camp atthis stage of his life, even as Neewa would have shunned it. But in thelives of beasts, as well as in the lives of men, Fate plays her pranksand tricks, and even as they turned into the vast and mystery-filledspaces of the great lake and waterway-country, to the west, events wereslowly shaping themselves into what was to be perhaps the darkest hourof gloom in the life of Miki, son of Hela.
Through six glorious and sun-filled weeks of late summer and earlyautumn--until the middle of September--Miki and Neewa ranged thecountry westward, always heading toward the setting sun, the country ofJackson's Knee, of the Touchwood and the Clearwater, and God's Lake. Inthis country they saw many things. It was a region a hundred milessquare which the handiwork of Nature had made into a veritable kingdomof the wild. They came upon great beaver colonies in the dark andsilent places; they watched the otter at play; they came upon moose andcaribou so frequently that they no longer feared or evaded them, butwalked out openly into the meadows or down to the edge of the swampswhere they were feeding. It was here that Miki learned the great lessonthat claw and fang were made to prey upon cloven hoof and horn, for thewolves were thick, and a dozen times they came upon their kills, andeven more frequently heard the wild tongue of the hunting-packs. Sincehis experience with Maheegun he no longer had the desire to join them.And now Neewa no longer insisted on remaining near meat when they foundit. It was the beginning of the KWASKA-HAO in Neewa--the instinctivesensing of the Big Change.
Until early in October Miki could see but little of this change in hiscomrade. It was then that Neewa became more and more restless, and thisrestlessness grew as the chill nights came, and autumn breathed moreheavily in the air. It was Neewa who took the lead in theirperegrinations now, and he seemed always to be questing forsomething--a mysterious something which Miki could neither smell norsee. He no longer slept for hours at a time. By mid-October he sleptscarcely at all, but roved through most of the hours of night as wellas day, eating, eating, eating, and always smelling the wind for thatelusive thing which Nature was commanding him to seek and find.Ceaselessly he was nosing under windfalls and among the rocks, and Mikiwas always near him, always on the QUI VIVE for battle with the thingthat Neewa was hunting out. And it seemed to be never found.
Then Neewa turned back to the east, drawn by the instinct of hisforefathers; back toward the country of Noozak, his mother, and ofSoominitik, his father; and Miki followed. The nights grew more andmore chill. The stars seemed farther away, and no longer was the forestmoon red like blood. The cry of the loon had a moaning note in it, anote of grief and lamentation. And in their shacks and tepees theforest people sniffed the air of frosty mornings, and soaked theirtraps in fish-oil and beaver-grease, and made their moccasins, andmended snow-shoe and sledge, for the cry of the loon said that winterwas creeping down out of the North. And the swamps grew silent. The cowmoose no longer mooed to her young. In place of it, from the open plainand "burn" rose the defiant challenge of bull to bull and the deadlyclash of horn against horn under the stars of night. The wolf no longerhowled to hear his voice. In the travel of padded feet there came to bea slinking, hunting caution. In all the forest world blood was runningred again.
And then--November.
Perhaps Miki would never forget that first day when the snow came. Atfirst he thought all the winged things in the world were shedding theirwhite feathers. Then he felt the fine, soft touch of it under his feet,and the chill. It sent the blood rushing like a new kind of firethrough his body; a wild and thrilling joy--the exultation that leapsthrough the veins of the wolf when the winter comes.
With Neewa its effect was different--so different that even Miki feltthe oppression of it, and waited vaguely and anxiously for what was tocome. And then, on this day of the first snow, he saw his comrade do astrange and unaccountable thing. He began to eat things that he hadnever touched as food before. He lapped up soft pine needles, andswallowed them. He ate of the dry, pulpy substance of rotted logs. Andthen he went into a great cleft broken into the heart of a rocky ridge,and found at last the thing for which he had been seeking. It was acavern--deep, and dark, and warm.
Nature works in strange ways. She gives to the birds of the air eyeswhich men may never have, and she gives to the beasts of the earth aninstinct which men may never know. For Neewa had come back to sleep hisfirst Long Sleep in the place of his birth--the cavern in which Noozak,his mother, had brought him into the world.
His old bed was still there, the wallow in the soft sand, the blanketof hair Noozak had shed; but the smell of his mother was gone. In thenest where he was born Neewa lay down, and for the last time he gruntedsoftly to Miki. It was as if he felt upon him the touch of a hand,gentle but inevitable, which he could no longer refuse to obey, and toMiki was saying, for the last time: "Good-night!"
That night the PIPOO KESTIN--the first storm of winter--came like anavalanche from out of the North. With it came a wind that was like theroaring of a thousand bulls, and over all the land of the wild therewas nothing that moved. Even in the depth of the cavern Miki heard thebeat and the wail of it and the swishing of the shot-like snow beyondthe door through which they had come, and he snuggled close to Neewa,content that they had found shelter.
With the day he went to the slit in the face of the rock, and in hisastonishment he made no sound, but stared forth upon a world that wasno longer the world he had left last night. Everywhere it was white--adazzling, eye-blinding white. The sun had risen. It shot a thousandflashing shafts of radiant light into Miki's eyes. So far as his visioncould reach the earth was as if covered with a robe of diamonds. Fromrock and tree and shrub blazed the fire of the sun; it quivered in thetree-tops, bent low with their burden of snow; it was like a sea in thevalley, so vivid that the unfrozen stream running through the heart ofit was black. Never had Miki seen a day so magnificent. Never had hisheart pounded at the sight of the sun as it pounded now, and never hadhis blood burned with a wilder exultation. He whined, and ran back toNeewa. He barked in the gloom of the cavern and gave his comrade anudge with his nose. Neewa grunted sleepily. He stretched himself,raised his head for an instant, and then curled himself into a ballagain. Vainly Miki protested that it was day, and time for them to bemoving. Neewa made no response, and after a while Miki returned to themouth of the cavern, and looked back to see if Neewa was following him.Then, disappointed, he went out into the snow. For an hour he did notmove farther than ten feet away from the den. Three times he returnedto Neewa and urged him to get up and come out where it was light. Inthat far corner of the cavern it was dark, and it was as if he weretrying to tell Neewa that he was a dunce to lie there still thinking itwas night when the sun was up outside. But he failed. Neewa was in theedge of his Long Sleep--the beginning of USKE-POW-A-MEW, the dream landof the bears.
Annoyance, the desire almost to sink his teeth in Neewa's ear, gaveplace slowly to another thing in Miki. The instinct that between beastsis like the spoken reason of men stirred in a strange and disquietingway within him. He became more and more uneasy. There was almostdistress in his restlessness as he hovered about the mouth of thecavern. A last time he went to Neewa, and then he started alone downinto the valley.
He was hungry, but on this first day after the storm there was smallchance of him finding anything to eat. The snowshoe rabbits werecompletely buried under their windfalls and shelters, and lay quietlyin their warm nests. Nothing had moved during the hours of the storm.There were no trails of living things for him to follow, and in placeshe sank to his shoulders in the soft snow. He made his way to thecreek. It was no longer the creek he had known. It was edged with ice.Th
ere was something dark and brooding about it now. The sound it madewas no longer the rippling song of summer and golden autumn. There wasa threat in its gurgling monotone--a new voice, as if a black andforbidding spirit had taken possession of it and was warning him thatthe times had changed, and that new laws and a new force had come toclaim sovereignty in the land of his birth.
He drank of the water cautiously. It was cold--ice-cold. Slowly it wasbeing impinged upon him that in the beauty of this new world that washis there was no longer the warm and pulsing beat of the heart that waslife. He was alone. ALONE! Everything else was covered up; everythingelse seemed dead.
He went back to Neewa and lay close to him all through the day. Andthrough the night that followed he did not move again from the cavern.He went only as far as the door and saw celestial spaces ablaze withstars and a moon that rode up into the heavens like a white sun. They,too, seemed no longer like the moon and stars he had known. They wereterribly still and cold. And under them the earth was terribly whiteand silent.
With the coming of dawn he tried once more to awaken Neewa. But thistime he was not so insistent. Nor did he have the desire to nip Neewawith his teeth. Something had happened--something which he could notunderstand. He sensed the thing, but he could not reason it. And he wasfilled with a strange and foreboding fear.
He went down again to hunt. Under the glory of the moon and stars ithad been a wild night of carnival for the rabbits, and in the edge ofthe timber Miki found the snow beaten hard in places with their tracks.It was not difficult for him to stalk his breakfast this morning. Hemade his kill, and feasted. He killed again after that, and stillagain. He could have gone on killing, for now that the snow betrayedthem, the hiding-places of the rabbits were so many traps for them.Miki's courage returned. He was fired again with the joy of life. Neverhad he known such hunting, never had he found such a treasure-housebefore--not even in the coulee where the currants grew. He ate until hecould eat no more, and then he went back to Neewa, carrying with himone of the rabbits he had slain. He dropped it in front of his comrade,and whined. Even then Neewa did not respond, except to draw a deeperbreath, and change his position a little.
That afternoon, for the first time in many hours, Neewa rose to hisfeet, stretched himself, and sniffed of the dead rabbit. But he did noteat. To Miki's consternation he rolled himself round and round in hisnest of sand and went to sleep again.
The next day, at about the same time, Neewa roused himself once more.This time he went as far as the mouth of the den, and lapped up a fewmouthfuls of snow. But he still refused to eat the rabbit. Again it wasNature telling him that he must not disturb the pine needles and drybark with which he had padded his stomach and intestines. And he wentto sleep again. He did not get up after that.
Day followed day, and, growing lonelier as the winter deepened, Mikihunted alone. All through November he came back each night and sleptwith Neewa. And Neewa was as if dead, except that his body was warm,and he breathed, and made little sounds now and then in his throat. Butthis did not satisfy the great yearning that was becoming more and moreinsistent in Miki's soul, the overwhelming desire for company, for abrotherhood on the trail. He loved Neewa. Through the first long weeksof winter he returned to him faithfully; he brought him meat. He wasfilled with a strange grief--even greater than if Neewa had been dead.For Miki knew that he was alive, and he could not account for the thingthat had happened. Death he would have understood, and FROM death hewould have gone away--for good.
So it came that one night, having hunted far, Miki remained away fromthe den for the first time, and slept under a deep windfall. After thatit was still harder for him to resist the CALL. A second and a thirdnight he went away; and then came the time--inevitable as the comingand going of the moon and stars--when understanding at last broke itsway through his hope and his fear, and something told him that Neewawould never again travel with him as through those glorious days ofold, when shoulder to shoulder they had faced together the comedies andtragedies of life in a world that was no longer soft and green and warmwith a golden sun, but white, and still, and filled with death.
Neewa did not know when Miki went away from the den for the last time.And yet it may be that even in his slumber the Beneficent Spirit mayhave whispered that Miki was going, for there were restlessness anddisquiet in Neewa's dreamland for many days thereafter.
"Be quiet--and sleep!" the Spirit may have whispered. "The Winter islong. The rivers are black and chill, the lakes are covered with floorsof ice, and the waterfalls are frozen like great white giants. Sleep!For Miki must go his way, just as the waters of the streams must gotheir way to the sea. For he is Dog. And you are Bear. SLEEP!"