CHAPTER FOUR
That night came a cold and drizzling rain from out of the north and theeast. In the wet dawn Challoner came out to start a fire, and in ahollow under a spruce root he found Miki and Neewa cuddled together,sound asleep.
It was the cub who first saw the man-beast, and for a brief spacebefore the pup roused himself Neewa's shining eyes were fixed on thestrange enemy who had so utterly changed his world for him. Exhaustionhad made him sleep through the long hours of that first night ofcaptivity, and in sleep he had forgotten many things. But now it allcame back to him as he cringed deeper into his shelter under the root,and so softly that only Miki heard him he whimpered for his mother.
It was the whimper that roused Miki. Slowly he untangled himself fromthe ball into which he had rolled, stretched his long and overgrownlegs, and yawned so loudly that the sound reached Challoner's ears. Theman turned and saw two pairs of eyes fixed upon him from the shelteredhollow under the root. The pup's one good ear and the other that washalf gone stood up alertly, as he greeted his master with the boundlessgood cheer of an irrepressible comradeship. Challoner's face, wet withthe drizzle of the gray skies and bronzed by the wind and storm offourteen months in the northland, lighted up with a responsive grin,and Miki wriggled forth weaving and twisting himself into grotesquecontortions expressive of happiness at being thus directly smiled at byhis master.
With all the room under the root left to him Neewa pulled himself backuntil only his round head was showing, and from this fortress oftemporary safety his bright little eyes glared forth at his mother'smurderer.
Vividly the tragedy of yesterday was before him again--the warm,sun-filled creek bottom in which he and Noozak, his mother, werehunting a breakfast of crawfish when the man-beast came; the crash ofstrange thunder, their flight into the timber, and the end of it allwhen his mother turned to confront their enemy. And yet it was not thedeath of his mother that remained with him most poignantly thismorning. It was the memory of his own terrific fight with the whiteman, and his struggle afterward in the black and suffocating depths ofthe bag in which Challoner had brought him to his camp. Even nowChalloner was looking at the scratches on his hands. He advanced a fewsteps, and grinned down at Neewa, just as he had grinnedgood-humouredly at Miki, the angular pup.
Neewa's little eyes blazed.
"I told you last night that I was sorry," said Challoner, speaking asif to one of his own kind.
In several ways Challoner was unusual, an out-of-the-ordinary type inthe northland. He believed, for instance, in a certain specificpsychology of the animal mind, and had proven to his own satisfactionthat animals treated and conversed with in a matter-of-fact human wayfrequently developed an understanding which he, in his unscientificway, called reason.
"I told you I was sorry," he repeated, squatting on his heels within ayard of the root from under which Neewa's eyes were glaring at him,"and I am. I'm sorry I killed your mother. But we had to have meat andfat. Besides, Miki and I are going to make it up to you. We're going totake you along with us down to the Girl, and if you don't learn to loveher you're the meanest, lowest-down little cuss in all creation anddon't deserve a mother. You and Miki are going to be brothers. Hismother is dead, too--plum starved to death, which is worse than dyingwith a bullet in your lung. And I found Miki just as I found you,hugging up close to her an' crying as if there wasn't any world leftfor him. So cheer up, and give us your paw. Let's shake!"
Challoner held out his hand. Neewa was as motionless as a stone. A fewmoments before he would have snarled and bared his teeth. But now hewas dead still. This was by all odds the strangest beast he had everseen. Yesterday it had not harmed him, except to put him into the bag.And now it did not offer to harm him. More than that, the talk it madewas not unpleasant, or threatening. His eyes took in Miki. The pup hadsqueezed himself squarely between Challoner's knees and was looking athim in a puzzled, questioning sort of way, as if to ask: "Why don't youcome out from under that root and help get breakfast?"
Challoner's hand came nearer, and Neewa crowded himself back untilthere was not another inch of room for him to fill. Then the miraclehappened. The man-beast's paw touched his head. It sent a strange andterrible thrill through him. Yet it did not hurt. If he had not wedgedhimself in so tightly he would have scratched and bitten. But he coulddo neither.
Slowly Challoner worked his fingers to the loose hide at the back ofNeewa's neck. Miki, surmising that something momentous was about tohappen, watched the proceedings with popping eyes. Then Challoner'sfingers closed and the next instant he dragged Neewa forth and held himat arm's length, kicking and squirming, and setting up such a bawlingthat in sheer sympathy Miki raised his voice and joined in the agonizedorgy of sound. Half a minute later Challoner had Neewa once more in theprison-sack, but this time he left the cub's head protruding, and drewin the mouth of the sack closely about his neck, fastening it securelywith a piece of babiche string. Thus three quarters of Neewa wasimprisoned in the sack, with only his head sticking out. He was a cubin a poke.
Leaving the cub to roll and squirm in protest Challoner went about thebusiness of getting breakfast. For once Miki found a proceeding moreinteresting than that operation, and he hovered about Neewa as hestruggled and bawled, trying vainly to offer him some assistance in thematter of sympathy. Finally Neewa lay still, and Miki sat down closebeside him and eyed his master with serious questioning if not actualdisapprobation.
The gray sky was breaking with the promise of the sun when Challonerwas ready to renew his long journey into the southland. He packed hiscanoe, leaving Neewa and Miki until the last. In the bow of the canoehe made a soft nest of the skin taken from the cub's mother. Then hecalled Miki and tied the end of a worn rope around his neck, afterwhich he fastened the other end of this rope around the neck of Neewa.Thus he had the cub and the pup on the same yard-long halter. Takingeach of the twain by the scruff of the neck he carried them to thecanoe and placed them in the nest he had made of Noozak's hide.
"Now you youngsters be good," he warned. "We're going to aim at fortymiles to-day to make up for the time we lost yesterday."
As the canoe shot out a shaft of sunlight broke through the sky low inthe east.