CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The next morning Challoner's outfit of three teams and four men leftnorth and west for the Reindeer Lake country on the journey to his newpost at the mouth of the Cochrane. An hour later Challoner struck duewest with a light sledge and a five-dog team for the Jackson's Knee.Behind him followed one of MacDonnell's Indians with the team that wasto bring Nanette to Fort O' God.
He saw nothing more of Durant and Grouse Piet, and acceptedMacDonnell's explanation that they had undoubtedly left the Postshortly after their assault upon him in the cabin. No doubt theirdisappearance had been hastened by the fact that a patrol of the RoyalNorthwest Mounted Police on its way to York Factory was expected atFort O' God that day.
Not until the final moment of departure was Miki brought from the cabinand tied to the gee-bar of Challoner's sledge. When he saw the fivedogs squatted on their haunches he grew rigid and the old snarl rose inhis throat. Under Challoner's quieting words he quickly came tounderstand that these beasts were not enemies, and from a rathersuspicious toleration of them he very soon began to take a new sort ofinterest in them. It was a friendly team, bred in the south and withoutthe wolf strain.
Events had come to pass so swiftly and so vividly in Miki's life duringthe past twenty-four hours that for many miles after they left Fort O'God his senses were in an unsettled state of anticipation. His brainwas filled with a jumble of strange and thrilling pictures. Very faraway, and almost indistinct, were the pictures of things that hadhappened before he was made a prisoner by Jacques Le Beau. Even thememory of Neewa was fading under the thrill of events at Nanette'scabin and at Fort O' God. The pictures that blazed their way across hisbrain now were of men, and dogs, and many other things that he hadnever seen before. His world had suddenly transformed itself into ahost of Henri Durants and Grouse Piets and Jacques Le Beaus, two-leggedbeasts who had clubbed him, and half killed him, and who had made himfight to keep the life in his body. He had tasted their blood in hisvengeance. And he watched for them now. The pictures told him they wereeverywhere. He could imagine them as countless as the wolves, and as hehad seen them crowded round the big cage in which he had slain thewolf-dog.
In all of this excited and distorted world there was only oneChalloner, and one Nanette, and one baby. All else was a chaos ofuncertainty and of dark menace. Twice when the Indian came up closebehind them Miki whirled about with a savage snarl. Challoner watchedhim, and understood.
Of the pictures in his brain one stood out above all others, definiteand unclouded, and that was the picture of Nanette. Yes, even aboveChalloner himself. There lived in him the consciousness of her gentlehands; her sweet, soft voice; the perfume of her hair and clothes andbody--the WOMAN of her; and a part of the woman--as the hand is a partof the body--was the baby. It was this part of Miki that Challonercould not understand, and which puzzled him when they made camp thatnight. He sat for a long time beside the fire trying to bring back theold comradeship of the days of Miki's puppyhood. But he only partlysucceeded. Miki was restive. Every nerve in his body seemed on edge.Again and again he faced the west, and always when he sniffed the airin that direction there came a low whine in his throat.
That night, with doubt in his heart, Challoner fastened him near thetent with a tough rope of babiche.
For a long time after Challoner had gone to bed Miki sat on hishaunches close to the spruce to which he was fastened. It must havebeen ten o'clock, and the night was so still that the snap of a dyingember in the fire was like the crack of a whip to his ears. Miki's eyeswere wide open and alert. Near the slowly burning logs, wrapped in histhick blankets, he could make out the motionless form of the Indian,asleep. Back of him the sledge-dogs had wallowed their beds in the snowand were silent. The moon was almost straight overhead, and a mile ortwo away a wolf pointed his muzzle to the radiant glow of it andhowled. The sound, like a distant calling voice, added new fire to thegrowing thrill in Miki's blood. He turned in the direction of thewailing voice. He wanted to call back. He wanted to throw up his headand cry out to the forests, and the moon, and the starlit sky. But onlyhis jaws clicked, and he looked at the tent in which Challoner wassleeping. He dropped down upon his belly in the snow. But his head wasstill alert and listening. The moon had already begun its westwarddecline. The fire burned out until the logs were only a dull andslumbering glow; the hand of Challoner's watch passed midnight, andstill Miki was wide-eyed and restless in the thrill of the thing thatwas upon him. And then at last The Call that was coming to him from outof the night became his master, and he gnawed the babiche in two. Itwas the call of the Woman--of Nanette and the baby.
In his freedom Miki sniffed at the edge of Challoner's tent. His backsagged. His tail drooped. He knew that in this hour he was betrayingthe master for whom he had waited so long, and who had lived so vividlyin his dreams. It was not reasoning, but an instinctive oppression offact. He would come back. That conviction burned dully in his brain.But now--to-night--he must go. He slunk off into the darkness. With thestealth of a fox he made his way between the sleeping dogs. Not untilhe was a quarter of a mile from the camp did he straighten out, andthen a gray and fleeting shadow he sped westward under the light of themoon.
There was no hesitation in the manner of his going. Free of the pain ofhis wounds, strong-limbed, deep-lunged as the strongest wolf of theforests, he went on tirelessly. Rabbits bobbing out of his path did notmake him pause; even the strong scent of a fisher-cat almost under hisnose did not swerve him a foot from his trail. Through swamp and deepforest, over lake and stream, across open barren and charred burns hisunerring sense of orientation led him on. Once he stopped to drinkwhere the swift current of a creek kept the water open. Even then hegulped in haste--and shot on. The moon drifted lower and lower until itsank into oblivion. The stars began to fade away The little ones wentout, and the big ones grew sleepy and dull. A great snow-ghostly gloomsettled over the forest world.
In the six hours between midnight and dawn he covered thirty-five miles.
And then he stopped. Dropping on his belly beside a rock at the crestof a ridge he watched the birth of day. With drooling jaws and pantingbreath he rested, until at last the dull gold of the winter sun beganto paint the eastern sky. And then came the first bars of vividsunlight, shooting over the eastern ramparts as guns flash from behindtheir battlements, and Miki rose to his feet and surveyed the morningwonder of his world. Behind him was Fort O' God, fifty miles away;ahead of him the cabin--twenty. It was the cabin he faced as he wentdown from the ridge.
As the miles between him and the cabin grew fewer and fewer he feltagain something of the oppression that had borne upon him atChalloner's tent. And yet it was different. He had run his race. He hadanswered The Call. And now, at the end, he was seized by a fear of whathis welcome would be. For at the cabin he had killed a man--and the manhad belonged to the woman. His progress became more hesitating.Mid-forenoon found him only half a mile from the home of Nanette andthe baby. His keen nostrils caught the faint tang of smoke in the air.He did not follow it up, but circled like a wolf, coming up stealthilyand uncertainly until at last he looked out into the little clearingwhere a new world had come into existence for him. He saw the saplingcage in which Jacques Le Beau had kept him a prisoner; the door of thatcage was still open, as Durant had left it after stealing him; he sawthe ploughed-up snow where he had leapt upon the man-brute--and hewhined.
He was facing the cabin door--and the door was wide open. He could seeno life, but he could SMELL it. And smoke was rising from the chimney.He slunk across the open. In the manner of his going there was anabject humiliation--a plea for mercy if he had done wrong, a prayer tothe creatures he worshipped that he might not be driven away.
He came to the door, and peered in. The room was empty. Nanette was notthere. Then his ears shot forward and his body grew suddenly tense, andhe listened, listened, LISTENED to a soft, cooing sound that was comingfrom the crib. He swallowed hard; the faintest whine rose in his throatand his claws CLICKED, CLICKED, CLI
CKED, across the floor and he thrusthis great head over the side of the little bed. The baby was there.With his warm tongue he kissed it--just once--and then, with anotherdeep breath, lay down on the floor.
He heard footsteps. Nanette came in with her arms filled with blankets;she carried these into the smaller room, and returned, before she sawhim. For a moment she stared. Then, with a strange little cry, she ranto him; and once more he felt her arms about him; and he cried like apuppy with his muzzle against her breast, and Nanette laughed andsobbed, and in the crib the baby kicked and squealed and thrust hertiny moccasined feet up into the air.
"Ao-oo tap-wa-mukun" ("When the devil goes heaven comes in,") say theCrees. And with the death of Le Beau, her husband, the devil had goneout of life for Nanette. She was more beautiful than ever. Heaven wasin the dark, pure glow of her eyes. She was no longer like a dog underthe club and the whip of a brute, and in the re-birth of her soul shewas glorious. Youth had come back to her--freed from the yoke ofoppression. She was happy. Happy with her baby, with freedom, with thesun and the stars shining for her again; and with new hope, thegreatest star of all. Again on the night of that first day of hisreturn Miki crept up to her when she was brushing her glorious hair. Heloved to put his muzzle in it; he loved the sweet scent of it; he lovedto put his head on her knees and feel it smothering him. And Nanettehugged him tight, even as she hugged the baby, for it was Miki who hadbrought her freedom, and hope, and life. What had passed was no longera tragedy. It was justice. God had sent Miki to do for her what afather or a brother would have done.
And the second night after that, when Challoner came early in thedarkness, it happened that Nanette had her hair down in that same way;and Challoner, seeing her thus, with the lampglow shining in her eyes,felt that the world had taken a sudden swift turn under his feet--thatthrough all his years he had been working forward to this hour.