CHAPTER FIVE
During the first few moments in which the canoe moved swiftly over thesurface of the lake an amazing change had taken place in Neewa.Challoner did not see it, and Miki was unconscious of it. But everyfibre in Neewa's body was atremble, and his heart was thumping as ithad pounded on that glorious day of the fight between his mother andthe old he-bear. It seemed to him that everything that he had lost wascoming back to him, and that all would be well very soon--FOR HESMELLED HIS MOTHER! And then he discovered that the scent of her waswarm and strong in the furry black mass under his feet, and hesmothered himself down in it, flat on his plump little belly, andpeered at Challoner over his paws.
It was hard for him to understand--the man-beast back there, sendingthe canoe through the water, and under him his mother, warm and soft,but so deadly still! He could not keep the whimper out of histhroat--his low and grief-filled call for HER. And there was no answer,except Miki's responsive whine, the crying of one child for another.Neewa's mother did not move. She made no sound. And he could seenothing of her but her black and furry skin--without head, withoutfeet, without the big, bald paws he had loved to tickle, and the earshe had loved to nip. There was nothing of her but the patch of blackskin--and the SMELL.
But a great comfort warmed his frightened little soul. He felt theprotecting nearness of an unconquerable and abiding force and in thefirst of the warm sunshine his back fluffed up, and he thrust his brownnose between his paws and into his mother's fur. Miki, as if vainlystriving to solve the mystery of his new-found chum, was watching himclosely from between his own fore-paws. In his comical head--adornedwith its one good ear and its one bad one, and furthermore beautifiedby the outstanding whiskers inherited from his Airedale ancestor--hewas trying to come to some sort of an understanding. At the outset hehad accepted Neewa as a friend and a comrade--and Neewa had thanklesslygiven him a good mauling for his trouble. That much Miki could forgiveand forget. What he could not forgive was the utter lack of regardwhich Neewa seemed to possess for him. His playful antics had gained norecognition from the cub. When he had barked and hopped about,flattening and contorting himself in warm invitation for him to join ina game of tag or a wrestling match, Neewa had simply stared at him likean idiot. He was wondering, perhaps, if Neewa would enjoy anythingbesides a fight. It was a long time before he decided to make anotherexperiment.
It was, as a matter of fact, halfway between breakfast and noon. In allthat time Neewa had scarcely moved, and Miki was finding himself boredto death. The discomfort of last night's storm was only a memory, andoverhead there was a sun unshadowed by cloud. More than an hour beforeChalloner's canoe had left the lake, and was now in the clear-runningwater of a stream that was making its way down the southward slope ofthe divide between Jackson's Knee and the Shamattawa. It was a newstream to Challoner, fed by the large lake above, and guarding himselfagainst the treachery of waterfall and rapid he kept a keen lookoutahead. For a matter of half an hour the water had been growing steadilyswifter, and Challoner was satisfied that before very long he would becompelled to make a portage. A little later he heard ahead of him thelow and steady murmur which told him he was approaching a danger zone.As he shot around the next bend, hugging fairly close to shore, he saw,four or five hundred yards below him, a rock-frothed and boilingmaelstrom of water.
Swiftly his eyes measured the situation. The rapids ran between analmost precipitous shore on one side and a deep forest on the other. Hesaw at a glance that it was the forest side over which he must make theportage, and this was the shore opposite him and farthest away.Swinging his canoe at a 45-degree angle he put all the strength of bodyand arms into the sweep of his paddle. There would be just time toreach the other shore before the current became dangerous. Above thesweep of the rapids he could now hear the growling roar of a waterfallbelow.
It was at this unfortunate moment that Miki decided to venture one moreexperiment with Neewa. With a friendly yip he swung out one of hispaws. Now Miki's paw, for a pup, was monstrously big, and his forelegwas long and lanky, so that when the paw landed squarely on the end ofNeewa's nose it was like the swing of a prize-fighter's glove. Theunexpectedness of it was a further decisive feature in the situation;and, on top of this, Miki swung his other paw around like a club andcaught Neewa a jolt in the eye. This was too much, even from a friend,and with a sudden snarl Neewa bounced out of his nest and clinched withthe pup.
Now the fact was that Miki, who had so ingloriously begged for mercy intheir first scrimmage, came of fighting stock himself. Mix the blood ofa Mackenzie hound--which is the biggest-footed, biggest-shouldered,most powerful dog in the northland--with the blood of a Spitz and anAiredale and something is bound to come of it. While the Mackenzie dog,with his ox-like strength, is peaceable and good-humoured in all sortsof weather, there is a good deal of the devil in the northern Spitz andAiredale and it is a question which likes a fight the best. And all atonce good-humoured little Miki felt the devil rising in him. This timehe did not yap for mercy. He met Neewa's jaws, and in two seconds theywere staging a first-class fight on the bit of precarious footing inthe prow of the canoe.
Vainly Challoner yelled at them as he paddled desperately to beat outthe danger of the rapids. Neewa and Miki were too absorbed to hear him.Miki's four paws were paddling the air again, but this time his sharpteeth were firmly fixed in the loose hide under Neewa's neck, and withhis paws he continued to kick and bat in a way that promisedeffectively to pummel the wind out of Neewa had not the thing happenedwhich Challoner feared. Still in a clinch they rolled off the prow ofthe canoe into the swirling current of the stream.
For ten seconds or so they utterly disappeared. Then they bobbed up, agood fifty feet below him, their heads close together as they spedswiftly toward the doom that awaited them, and a choking cry broke fromChalloner's lips. He was powerless to save them, and in his cry was theanguish of real grief. For many weeks Miki had been his only chum andcomrade.
Held together by the yard-long rope to which they were fastened, Mikiand Neewa swept into the frothing turmoil of the rapids. For Miki itwas the kindness of fate that had inspired his master to fasten him tothe same rope with Neewa. Miki, at three months of age--weight,fourteen pounds--was about 80 per cent. bone and only a half of 1 percent. fat; while Neewa, weight thirteen pounds, was about 90 per cent.fat. Therefore Miki had the floating capacity of a small anchor, whileNeewa was a first-class life-preserver, and almost unsinkable.
In neither of the youngsters was there a yellow streak. Both were offighting stock, and, though Miki was under water most of the timeduring their first hundred-yard dash through the rapids, never for aninstant did he give up the struggle to keep his nose in the air.Sometimes he was on his back and sometimes on his belly; but no matterwhat his position, he kept his four overgrown paws going like paddles.To an extent this helped Neewa in the heroic fight he was making tokeep from shipping too much water himself. Had he been alone his ten oreleven pounds of fat would have carried him down-stream like a toyballoon covered with fur, but, with the fourteen-pound drag around hisneck, the problem of not going under completely was a serious one. Halfa dozen times he did disappear for an instant when some undertow caughtMiki and dragged him down--head, tail, legs, and all. But Neewa alwaysrose again, his four fat legs working for dear life.
Then came the waterfall. By this time Miki had become accustomed totravelling under water, and the full horror of the new cataclysm intowhich they were plunged was mercifully lost to him. His paws had almostceased their motion. He was still conscious of the roar in his ears,but the affair was less unpleasant than it was at the beginning. Infact, he was drowning. To Neewa the pleasant sensations of a painlessdeath were denied. No cub in the world was wider awake than he when thefinal catastrophe came. His head was well above water and he wasclearly possessed of all his senses. Then the river itself dropped outfrom under him and he shot down in an avalanche of water, feeling nolonger the drag of Miki's weight at his neck.
How deep the pool was
at the bottom of the waterfall Challoner mighthave guessed quite accurately. Could Neewa have expressed an opinion ofhis own, he would have sworn that it was a mile. Miki was past thestage of making estimates, or of caring whether it was two feet or twoleagues. His paws had ceased to operate and he had given himself upentirely to his fate. But Neewa came up again, and Miki followed, likea bobber. He was about to gasp his last gasp when the force of thecurrent, as it swung out of the whirlpool, flung Neewa upon a bit ofpartly submerged driftage, and in a wild and strenuous effort to makehimself safe Neewa dragged Miki's head out of water so that the puphung at the edge of the driftage like a hangman's victim at the end ofhis rope.