CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
With the coming of Challoner to the cabin of Nanette Le Beau there wasno longer a shadow of gloom in the world for Miki. He did not reasonout the wonder of it, nor did he have a foreboding for the future. Itwas the present in which he lived--the precious hours in which all thecreatures he had ever loved were together. And yet, away back in hismemory of those things that had grown deep in his soul, was the pictureof Neewa, the bear; Neewa, his chum, his brother, his fighting comradeof many battles, and he thought of the cold and snow-smothered cavernat the top of the ridge in which Neewa had buried himself in that longand mysterious sleep that was so much like death. But it was in thepresent that he lived. The hours lengthened themselves out into days,and still Challoner did not go, nor did Nanette leave with the Indianfor Fort O' God. The Indian returned with a note for MacDonnell inwhich Challoner told the Factor that something was the matter with thebaby's lungs, and that she could not travel until the weather, whichwas intensely cold, grew warmer. He asked that the Indian be sent backwith certain supplies.
In spite of the terrific cold which followed the birth of the new yearChalloner had put up his tent in the edge of the timber a hundred yardsfrom the cabin, and Miki divided his time between the cabin and thetent. For him they were glorious days. And for Challoner--
In a way Miki saw, though it was impossible for him to comprehend. Asthe days lengthened into a week, and the week into two, there wassomething in the glow of Nanette's eyes that had never been therebefore, and in the sweetness of her voice a new thrill, and in herprayers at night the thankfulness of a new and great joy.
And then, one day, Miki looked up from where he was lying beside thebaby's crib and he saw Nanette in his master's arms, her face turned upto him, her eyes filled with the glory of the stars, and Challoner wassaying something which transformed her face into the face of an angel.Miki was puzzled. And he was more puzzled when Challoner came fromNanette to the crib, and snuggled the baby up in his arms; and thewoman--looking at them both for a moment with that wonderful look inher eyes--suddenly covered her face with her hands and sobbed. Half asnarl rose in Miki's throat, but in that moment Challoner had put hisarm around Nanette too, and Nanette's arms were about him and the baby,and she was sobbing something which for the life of him Miki could makeneither head nor tail of. And yet he knew that he must not snarl orspring. He felt the wonder-thrill of the new thing that had come intothe cabin; he gulped hard, and looked. A moment or two later Nanettewas on her knees beside him, and her arms were around him, just as theyhad been around the man. And Challoner was dancing like a boy--cooingto the baby in his arms. Then he, too, dropped down beside Miki, andcried:
"My Gawd! Miki--I'VE GOT A FAM'LY!"
And Miki tried to understand.
That night, after supper, he saw Challoner unbraid Nanette's glorioushair, and brush it. They laughed like two happy children. Miki triedstill harder to understand.
When Challoner went to go to his tent in the edge of the forest he tookNanette in his arms, and kissed her, and stroked her shining hair; andNanette took his face between her hands and smiled and almost cried inher joy.
After that Miki DID understand. He knew that happiness had come to allwho were in that cabin.
Now that his world was settled, Miki took once more to hunting. Thethrill of the trail came back to him, and wider and wider grew hisrange from the cabin. Again he followed Le Beau's old trapline. But thetraps were sprung now. He had lost a great deal of his old caution. Hehad grown fatter. He no longer scented danger in every whiff of thewind. It was in the third week of Challoner's stay at the cabin, theday which marked the end of the cold spell and the beginning of warmweather, that Miki came upon an old dead-fall in a swamp a full tenmiles from the clearing. Le Beau had set it for lynx, but nothing hadtouched the bait, which was a chunk of caribou flesh, frozen solid as arock. Curiously Miki began smelling of it. He no longer feared danger.Menace had gone out of his world. He nibbled. He pulled--and the logcrashed down to break his back. Only by a little did it fail. Fortwenty-four hours it held him helpless and crippled. Then, fightingthrough all those hours, he dragged himself out from under it. With therising temperature a soft snow had fallen, covering all tracks andtrails. Through this snow Miki dragged himself, leaving a path likethat of an otter in the mud, for his hind quarters were helpless. Hisback was not broken; it was temporarily paralyzed by the blow and theweight of the log.
He made in the direction of the cabin, but every foot that he draggedhimself was filled with agony, and his progress was so slow that at theend of an hour he had not gone more than a quarter of a mile. Anothernight found him less than two miles from the deadfall. He pulledhimself under a shelter of brush and lay there until dawn. All throughthat day he did not move. The next, which was the fourth since he hadleft the cabin to hunt, the pain in his back was not so great. But hecould pull himself through the snow only a few yards at a time. Againthe good spirit of the forests favoured him for in the afternoon hecame upon the partly eaten carcass of a buck killed by the wolves. Theflesh was frozen but he gnawed at it ravenously. Then he found himselfa shelter under a mass of fallen tree-tops, and for ten days thereafterhe lay between life and death. He would have died had it not been forthe buck. To the carcass he managed to drag himself, sometimes each dayand sometimes every other day, and kept himself from starving. It wasthe end of the second week before he could stand well on his feet. Thefifteenth day he returned to the cabin.
In the edge of the clearing there fell upon him slowly a foreboding ofgreat change. The cabin was there. It was no different than it had beenfifteen days ago. But out of the chimney there came no smoke, and thewindows were white with frost. About it the snow lay clean and white,like an unspotted sheet. He made his way hesitatingly across theclearing to the door. There were no tracks. Drifted snow was piled highover the sill. He whined, and scratched at the door. There was noanswer. And he heard no sound.
He went back into the edge of the timber, and waited. He waited allthrough that day, going occasionally to the cabin, and smelling aboutit, to convince himself that he had not made a mistake. When darknesscame he hollowed himself out a bed in the fresh snow close to the doorand lay there all through the night. Day came again, gray and empty andstill there was no smoke from the chimney or sound from within the logwalls, and at last he knew that Challoner and Nanette and the baby weregone. But he was hopeful. He no longer listened for sound from withinthe cabin, but watched and listened for them to come from out of theforest. He made short quests, hunting now on this side and now on thatof the cabin, sniffing futilely at the fresh and trackless snow andpointing the wind for minutes at a time. In the afternoon, with aforlorn slouch to his body, he went deeper into the forest to hunt fora rabbit. When he had killed and eaten his supper he returned again andslept a second night in the burrow beside the door. A third day and athird night he remained, and the third night he heard the wolveshowling under a clear and star-filled sky, and from him there came hisfirst cry--a yearning, grief-filled cry that rose wailingly out of theclearing; the entreaty for his master, for Nanette, and the baby. Itwas not an answer to the wolves. In its note there was a tremblingfear, the voicing of a thing that had grown into hopelessness.
And now there settled upon him a loneliness greater than any lonelinesshe had ever known. Something seemed to whisper to his canine brain thatall he had seen and felt had been but a dream, and that he was face toface with his old world again, its dangers, its vast and soul-breakingemptiness, its friendlessness, its ceaseless strife for existence. Hisinstincts, dulled by the worship of what the cabin had held, becamekeenly alive. He sensed again the sharp thrill of danger, which comesof ALONENESS, and his old caution fell upon him, so that the fourth dayhe slunk around the edge of the clearing like a wolf.
The fifth night he did not sleep in the clearing but found himself awindfall a mile back in the forest. That night he had strange andtroubled dreams. They were not of Challoner, or of Nanette and thebaby, nor wer
e they of the fight and the unforgettable things he hadseen at the Post. His dreams were of a high and barren ridge smotheredin deep snow, and of a cavern that was dark and deep. Again he was withhis brother and comrade of days that were gone--Neewa the bear. He wastrying to waken him, and he could feel the warmth of his body and hearhis sleepy, protesting grunts. And then, later, he was fighting againin the paradise of black currants, and with Neewa was running for hislife from the enraged she-bear who had invaded their coulee. When heawoke suddenly from out of these dreams he was trembling and hismuscles were tense. He growled in the darkness. His eyes were roundballs of searching fire. He whined softly and yearningly in that pit ofgloom under the windfall, and for a moment or two he listened, for hethought that Neewa might answer.
For a month after that night he remained near the cabin. At least onceeach day, and sometimes at night, he would return to the clearing. Andmore and more frequently he was thinking of Neewa. Early in March camethe Tiki-Swao--(the Big Thaw). For a week the sun shone without a cloudin the sky. The air was warm. The snow turned soft underfoot and on thesunny sides of slopes and ridges it melted away into trickling streamsor rolled down in "slides" that were miniature avalanches. The worldwas vibrant with a new thrill. It pulsed with the growing heart-beat ofspring, and in Miki's soul there arose slowly a new hope, a newimpression a new inspiration that was the thrilling urge of a wonderfulinstinct. NEEWA WOULD BE WAKING NOW!
It came to him at last like a voice which he could understand. Thetrickling music of the growing streams sang it to him; he heard it inthe warm winds that were no longer filled with the blast of winter; hecaught it in the new odours that were rising out of the earth; hesmelled it in the dank, sweet perfume of the black woods-soil. Thething thrilled him. It called him. And he KNEW!
NEEWA WOULD BE WAKING NOW!
He responded to the call. It was in the nature of things that no powerless than physical force could hold him back. And yet he did not travelas he had travelled from Challoner's camp to the cabin of Nanette andthe baby. There had been a definite object there, something to achieve,something to spur him on to an immediate fulfilment. Now the thing thatdrew him, at first, was an overpowering impulse, not a reality. For twoor three days his trail westward was wandering and indefinite. Then itstraightened out, and early in the morning of the fifth day he camefrom a deep forest into a plain, and across that plain he saw theridge. For a long time he gazed over the level space before he went on.
In his brain the pictures of Neewa were becoming clearer and clearer.After all, it seemed only yesterday or the day before that he had goneaway from that ridge. Then it was smothered in snow, and a gray,terrible gloom had settled upon the earth. Now there was but littlesnow, and the sun was shining, and the sky was blue again. He went on,and sniffed along the foot of the ridge; he had not forgotten the way.He was not excited, because time had ceased to have definite import forhim. Yesterday he had come down from that ridge, and to-day he wasgoing back. He went straight to the mouth of Neewa's den, which wasuncovered now, and thrust in his head and shoulders, and sniffed. Ah!but that lazy rascal of a bear was a sleepy-head! He was stillsleeping. Miki could smell him. Listening hard, he could HEAR him.
He climbed over the low drift of snow that had packed itself in theneck of the cavern and entered confidently into the darkness. He hearda soft, sleepy grunt and a great sigh. He almost stumbled over Neewa,who had changed his bed. Again Neewa grunted, and Miki whined. He ranhis muzzle into Neewa's fresh, new coat of spring fur and smelled hisway to Neewa's ear. After all, it was only yesterday! And he rememberedeverything now! So he gave Neewa's ear a sudden sharp nip with histeeth, and then he barked in that low, throaty way that Neewa hadalways understood.
"Wake up, Neewa," it all said. "Wake up! The snow is gone, and it'sfine out to-day. WAKE UP!"
And Neewa, stretching himself, gave a great yawn.