CHAPTER TWENTY
It was two o'clock in the afternoon. The caribou were roasting brown.In two more hours the feast would begin. The hour of the fight was athand.
In the centre of the clearing three hundred men, women, and childrenwere gathered in a close circle about a sapling cage ten feet square.Close to this cage, one at each side, were drawn the two smaller cages.Beside one of these cages stood Henri Durant; beside the other, GrousePiet. They were not bantering now. Their faces were hard and set. Andthree hundred pairs of eyes were staring at them, and three hundredpairs of ears waiting for the thrilling signal.
It came--from Grouse Piet.
With a swift movement Durant pulled up the door of Miki's cage. Then,suddenly, he prodded him from behind with a crotched stick, and with asingle leap Miki was in the big cage. Almost at the same instant thewolf-dog leapt from Grouse Piet's cage, and the two faced each other inthe arena.
With the next breath he drew Durant could have groaned. What happenedin the following half minute was a matter of environment with Miki. Inthe forest the wolf-dog would have interested him to the exclusion ofeverything else, and he would have looked upon him as another Netah ora wild wolf. But in his present surroundings the idea of fighting wasthe last to possess him. He was fascinated by that grim and waitingcircle of faces closing in the big cage; he scrutinized it, turning hishead sharply from point to point, as if hoping to see Nanette and thebaby, or even Challoner his first master. To the wolf-dog Grouse Piethad given the name of Taao, because of the extraordinary length of hisfangs; and of Taao, to Durant's growing horror, Miki was utterlyoblivious after that first head-on glance. He trotted to the edge ofthe cage and thrust his nose between the bars, and a taunting laughrose out of Grouse Piet's throat. Then he began making a circle of thecage, his sharp eyes on the silent ring of faces. Taao stood in thecentre of the cage, and not once did his reddish eyes leave Miki. Whatwas outside of the cage held small interest for him. He understood hisbusiness, and murder was bred in his heart. For a space during whichDurant's heart beat like a hammer Taao turned, as if on a pivot,following Miki's movement, and the crest on his spine stood up likebristles.
Then Miki stopped, and in that moment Durant saw the end of all hishopes. Without a sound the wolf-dog was at his opponent. A bellow rosefrom Grouse Piet's lips. A deep breath passed through the circle ofspectators, and Durant felt a cold chill run up his back to the rootsof his hair. What happened in the next instant made men's hearts standstill. In that first rush Miki should have died. Grouse Piet expectedhim to die, and Durant expected him to die. But in the last fractionalbit of the second in which the wolf-dog's jaws closed, Miki wastransformed into a thing of living lightning. No man had ever seen amovement swifter than that with which he turned on Taao. Their jawsclashed. There was a sickening grinding of bone, and in another momentthey were rolling and twisting together on the earth floor. NeitherGrouse Piet nor Durant could see what was happening. They forgot eventheir own bets in the horror of that fight. Never had there been such afight at Fort O' God.
The sound of it reached to the Company's store. In the door, lookingtoward the big cage, stood the young white man. He heard the snarling,the clashing of teeth, and his jaws set heavily and a dull flame burnedin his eyes. His breath came in a sudden gasp.
"DAMN!" he cried, softly.
His hands clenched, and he stepped slowly down from the door and wenttoward the cage. It was over when he made his way through the ring ofspectators. The fight had ended as suddenly as it had begun, and GrousePiet's wolf-dog lay in the centre of the cage with a severed jugular.Miki looked as though he might be dying. Durant had opened the door andhad slipped a rope over his head, and outside the cage Miki stoodswaying on his feet, red with blood, and half blind. His flesh was redand bleeding in a dozen places, and a stream of blood trickled from hismouth. A cry of horror rose to the young white man's lips as he lookeddown at him.
And then, almost in the same breath, there came a still stranger cry.
"Good God! Miki--Miki--Miki--"
Beating upon his brain as if from a vast distance, coming to himthrough the blindness of his wounds, Miki heard that voice.
The VOICE! THE voice that had lived with him in all his dreams, thevoice he had waited for, and searched for, and knew that some day hewould find. The voice of Challoner, his master!
He dropped on his belly, whining, trying to see through the film ofblood in his eyes; and lying there, wounded almost unto death, his tailthumped the ground in recognition. And then, to the amazement of allwho beheld, Challoner was down upon his knees beside him, and his armswere about him, and Miki's lacerated tongue was reaching for his hands,his face, his clothes.
"Miki--Miki--Miki!"
Durant's hand fell heavily upon Challoner's shoulder.
It was like the touch of a red-hot iron to Challoner. In a flash he wason his feet, facing him.
"He's mine," Challoner cried, trying to hold back his passion. "He'smine you--you devil!"
And then, powerless to hold back his desire for vengeance, his clenchedfist swung like a rock to Durant's heavy jaw, and the Frenchman went tothe ground. For a moment Challoner stood over him, but he did not move.Fiercely he turned upon Grouse Piet and the crowd. Miki was cringing athis feet again. Pointing to him, Challoner cried loudly, so all couldhear.
"He's my dog. Where this beast got him I don't know. But he's mine.Look for yourselves! See--see him lick my hand. Would he do that forHIM? And look at that ear. There's no other ear in all the north cutlike that. I lost him almost a year ago, but I'd know him among tenthousand by that ear. By God!--if I had known--"
He elbowed his way through the breeds and Indians, leading Miki by therope Durant had slipped over the dog's head. He went to MacDonnell, andtold him what had happened. He told of the preceding spring, and of theaccident in which Miki and the bear cub were lost from his canoe andswept over the waterfall. After registering his claim against whateverDurant might have to say he went to the shack in which he was stayingat Fort 0' God.
An hour later Challoner sat with Miki's big head between his two hands,and talked to him. He had bathed and dressed his wounds, and Miki couldsee. His eyes were on his master's face, and his hard tail thumped thefloor. Both were oblivious of the sounds of the revellers outside; thecries of men, the shouting of boys, the laughter of women, and theincessant barking of dogs. In Challoner's eyes there was a soft glow.
"Miki, old boy, you haven't forgotten a thing--not a dam' thing, haveyou? You were nothing but an onery-legged pup then, but you didn'tforget! Remember what I told you, that I was going to take you and thecub down to the Girl? Do you remember? The Girl I said was an angel,and 'd love you to death, and all that? Well, I'm glad somethinghappened--and you didn't go. It wasn't the same when I got back, an'SHE wasn't the same, Miki. Lord, she'd got married, AND HAD TWO KIDS!Think of that, old scout--TWO! How the deuce could she have taken careof you and the cub, eh? And nothing else was the same, Boy. Three yearsin God's Country--up here where you burst your lungs just for the funof drinking in air--changed me a lot, I guess. Inside a week I wantedto come back, Miki. Yessir, I was SICK to come back. So I came. Andwe're going to stick now, Miki. You're going with me up to that newPost the Company has given me. From now on we're pals. Understand, oldscout, we're PALS!"