CHAPTER SEVEN
The morning after their painful experience with the wasp's nest, Neewaand Miki rose on four pairs of stiff and swollen legs to greet a newday in the deep and mysterious forest into which the accident of theprevious day had thrown them. The spirit of irrepressible youth wasupon them, and, though Miki was so swollen from the stings of the waspsthat his lank body and overgrown legs were more grotesque than ever, hewas in no way daunted from the quest of further adventure.
The pup's face was as round as a moon, and his head was puffed up untilNeewa might reasonably have had a suspicion that it was on the point ofexploding. But Miki's eyes--as much as could be seen of them--were asbright as ever, and his one good ear and his one half ear stood uphopefully as he waited for the cub to give some sign of what they weregoing to do. The poison in his system no longer gave him discomfort. Hefelt several sizes too large--but, otherwise, quite well.
Neewa, because of his fat, exhibited fewer effects of his battle withthe wasps. His one outstanding defect was an entirely closed eye. Withthe other, wide open and alert, he looked about him. In spite of hisone bad eye and his stiff legs he was inspired with the optimism of onewho at last sees fortune turning his way. He was rid of the man-beast,who had killed his mother; the forests were before him again, open andinviting, and the rope with which Challoner had tied him and Mikitogether he had successfully gnawed in two during the night. Havingdispossessed himself of at least two evils it would not have surprisedhim much if he had seen Noozak, his mother, coming up from out of theshadows of the trees. Thought of her made him whine. And Miki, facingthe vast loneliness of his new world, and thinking of his master,whined in reply.
Both were hungry. The amazing swiftness with which their misfortuneshad descended upon them had given them no time in which to eat. To Mikithe change was more than astonishing; it was overwhelming, and he heldhis breath in anticipation of some new evil while Neewa scanned theforest about them.
As if assured by this survey that everything was right, Neewa turnedhis back to the sun, which had been his mother's custom, and set out.
Miki followed. Not until then did he discover that every joint in hisbody had apparently disappeared. His neck was stiff, his legs were likestilts, and five times in as many minutes he stubbed his clumsy toesand fell down in his efforts to keep up with the cub. On top of thishis eyes were so nearly closed that his vision was bad, and the fifthtime he stumbled he lost sight of Neewa entirely, and sent out aprotesting wail. Neewa stopped and began prodding with his nose under arotten log. When Miki came up Neewa was flat on his belly, licking up acolony of big red vinegar ants as fast as he could catch them. Mikistudied the proceeding for some moments. It soon dawned upon him thatNeewa was eating something, but for the life of him he couldn't makeout what it was. Hungrily he nosed close to Neewa's foraging snout. Helicked with his tongue where Neewa licked, and he got only dirt. Andall the time Neewa was giving his jolly little grunts of satisfaction.It was ten minutes before he hunted out the last ant and went on.
A little later they came to a small open space where the ground waswet, and after sniffing about a bit, and focussing his one good eyehere and there, Neewa suddenly began digging. Very shortly he drew outof the ground a white object about the size of a man's thumb and beganto crunch it ravenously between his jaws. Miki succeeded in capturing afair sized bit of it. Disappointment followed fast. The thing was likewood; after rolling it in his mouth a few times he dropped it indisgust, and Neewa finished the remnant of the root with a thankfulgrunt.
They proceeded. For two heartbreaking hours Miki followed at Neewa'sheels, the void in his stomach increasing as the swelling in his bodydiminished. His hunger was becoming a torture. Yet not a bit to eatcould he find, while Neewa at every few steps apparently discoveredsomething to devour. At the end of the two hours the cub's bill of farehad grown to considerable proportions. It included, among other things,half a dozen green and black beetles; numberless bugs, both hard andsoft; whole colonies of red and black ants; several white grubs dug outof the heart of decaying logs; a handful of snails; a young frog; theegg of a ground-plover that had failed to hatch; and, in the vegetableline, the roots of two camas and one skunk cabbage. Now and then hepulled down tender poplar shoots and nipped the ends off. Likewise henibbled spruce and balsam gum whenever he found it, and occasionallyadded to his breakfast a bit of tender grass.
A number of these things Miki tried. He would have eaten the frog, butNeewa was ahead of him there. The spruce and balsam gum clogged up histeeth and almost made him vomit because of its bitterness. Between asnail and a stone he could find little difference, and as the one bughe tried happened to be that asafoetida-like creature known as astink-bug he made no further efforts in that direction. He also bit offa tender tip from a ground-shoot, but instead of a young poplar it wasFox-bite, and shrivelled up his tongue for a quarter of an hour. Atlast he arrived at the conclusion that, up to date, the one thing inNeewa's menu that he COULD eat was grass.
In the face of his own starvation his companion grew happier as headded to the strange collection in his stomach. In fact, Neewaconsidered himself in clover and was grunting his satisfactioncontinually, especially as his bad eye was beginning to open and hecould see things better. Half a dozen times when he found fresh antnests he invited Miki to the feast with excited little squeals. Untilnoon Miki followed like a faithful satellite at his heels. The end camewhen Neewa deliberately dug into a nest inhabited by four hugebumble-bees, smashed them all, and ate them.
From that moment something impressed upon Miki that he must do his ownhunting. With the thought came a new thrill. His eyes were fairly opennow, and much of the stiffness had gone from his legs. The blood of hisMackenzie father and of his half Spitz and half Airedale mother rose upin him in swift and immediate demand, and he began to quest about forhimself. He found a warm scent, and poked about until a partridge wentup with a tremendous thunder of wings. It startled him, but added tothe thrill. A few minutes later, nosing under a pile of brush, he cameface to face with his dinner.
It was Wahboo, the baby rabbit. Instantly Miki was at him, and had afirm hold at the back of Wahboo's back. Neewa, hearing the smashing ofthe brush and the squealing of the rabbit, stopped catching ants andhustled toward the scene of action. The squealing ceased quickly andMiki backed himself out and faced Neewa with Wahboo held triumphantlyin his jaws. The young rabbit had already given his last kick, and witha fierce show of growling Miki began tearing the fur off. Neewa edgedin, grunting affably. Miki snarled more fiercely. Neewa, undaunted,continued to express his overwhelming regard for Miki in low andsupplicating grunts--and smelled the rabbit. The snarl in Miki's throatdied away. He may have remembered that Neewa had invited him more thanonce to partake of his ants and bugs. Together they ate the rabbit. Notuntil the last bit of flesh and the last tender bone were gone did thefeast end, and then Neewa sat back on his round bottom and stuck outhis little red tongue for the first time since he had lost his mother.It was the cub sign of a full stomach and a blissful mind. He could seenothing to be more desired at the present time than a nap, andstretching himself languidly he began looking about for a tree.
Miki, on the other hand, was inspired to new action by the pleasurablesensation of being comfortably filled. Inasmuch as Neewa chewed hisfood very carefully, while Miki, paying small attention to mastication,swallowed it in chunks, the pup had succeeded in getting away withabout four fifths of the rabbit. So he was no longer hungry. But he wasmore keenly alive to his changed environment than at any time since heand Neewa had fallen out of Challoner's canoe into the rapids. For thefirst time he had killed, and for the first time he had tasted warmblood, and the combination added to his existence an excitement thatwas greater than any desire he might have possessed to lie down in asunny spot and sleep. Now that he had learned the game, the huntinginstinct trembled in every fibre of his small being. He would have goneon hunting until his legs gave way under him if Neewa had not found anapping-place.
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nbsp; Astonished half out of his wits he watched Neewa as he leisurelyclimbed the trunk of a big poplar. He had seen squirrels climbtrees--just as he had seen birds fly--but Neewa's performance held himbreathless; and not until the cub had stretched himself out comfortablyin a crotch did Miki express himself. Then he gave an incredulous yelp,sniffed at the butt of the tree, and made a half-hearted experiment atthe thing himself. One flop on his back convinced him that Neewa wasthe tree-climber of the partnership. Chagrined, he wandered backfifteen or twenty feet and sat down to study the situation. He couldnot perceive that Neewa had any special business up the tree. Certainlyhe was not hunting for bugs. He yelped half a dozen times, but Neewamade no answer. At last he gave it up and flopped himself down with adisconsolate whine.
But it was not to sleep. He was ready and anxious to go on. He wantedto explore still further the mysterious and fascinating depths of theforest. He no longer felt the strange fear that had been upon himbefore he killed the rabbit. In two minutes under the brush-heap Naturehad performed one of her miracles of education. In those two minutesMiki had risen out of whimpering puppyhood to new power andunderstanding. He had passed that elemental stage which hiscompanionship with Challoner had prolonged. He had KILLED, and the hotthrill of it set fire to every instinct that was in him. In the halfhour during which he lay flat on his belly, his head alert andlistening, while Neewa slept, he passed half way from puppyhood todogdom. He would never know that Hela, his Mackenzie hound father, wasthe mightiest hunter in all the reaches of the Little Fox country, andthat alone he had torn down a bull caribou. But he FELT it. There wassomething insistent and demanding in the call. And because he wasanswering that call, and listening eagerly to the whispering voices ofthe forest, his quick ears caught the low, chuckling monotone ofKawook, the porcupine.
Miki lay very still. A moment later he heard the soft clicking ofquills, and then Kawook came out in the open and stood up on his hindfeet in a patch of sunlight.
For thirteen years Kawook had lived undisturbed in this particular partof the wilderness, and in his old age he weighed thirty pounds if heweighed an ounce. On this afternoon, coming for his late dinner, he wasfeeling even more than usually happy. His eyesight at best was dim.Nature had never intended him to see very far, and had thereforequilted him heavily with the barbed shafts of his protecting armour.Thirty feet away he was entirely oblivious of Miki, at least apparentlyso; and Miki hugged the ground closer, warned by the swiftly developinginstinct within him that here was a creature it would be unwise toattack.
For perhaps a minute Kawook stood up, chuckling his tribal song withoutany visible movement of his body. He stood profile to Miki, like a fatalderman. He was so fat that his stomach bulged out in front like thehalf of a balloon, and over this stomach his hands were folded in apeculiarly human way, so that he looked more like an old she-porcupinethan a master in his tribe.
It was not until then that Miki observed Iskwasis, the young femaleporcupine, who had poked herself slyly out from under a bush nearKawook. In spite of his years the red thrill of romance was not yetgone from the old fellow's bones, and he immediately started to give anexhibition of his good breeding and elegance. He began with hisludicrous love-making dance, hopping from one foot to the other untilhis fat stomach shook, and chuckling louder than ever. The charms ofIskwasis were indeed sufficient to turn the head of an older beau thanKawook. She was a distinctive blonde; in other words, one of thoseunusual creatures of her kind, an albino. Her nose was pink, the palmsof her little feet were pink, and each of her pretty pink eyes was setin an iris of sky-blue. It was evident that she did not regard oldKawook's passion-dance with favour and sensing this fact Kawook changedhis tactics and falling on all four feet began to chase his spiky tailas if he had suddenly gone mad. When he stopped, and looked to see whateffect he had made he was clearly knocked out by the fact that Iskwasishad disappeared.
For another minute he sat stupidly, without making a sound. Then toMiki's consternation he started straight for the tree in which Neewawas sleeping. As a matter of fact, it was Kawook's dinner-tree, and hebegan climbing it, talking to himself all the time. Miki's hair beganto stand on end. He did not know that Kawook, like all his kind, wasthe best-natured fellow in the world, and had never harmed anything inhis life unless assaulted first. Lacking this knowledge he set up asudden frenzy of barking to warn Neewa.
Neewa roused himself slowly, and when he opened his eyes he was lookinginto a spiky face that sent him into a convulsion of alarm. With asuddenness that came within an ace of toppling him from his crotch heswung over and scurried higher up the tree. Kawook was not at allexcited. Now that Iskwasis was gone he was entirely absorbed in theanticipation of his dinner. He continued to clamber slowly upward, andat this the horrified Neewa backed himself out on a limb in order thatKawook might have an unobstructed trail up the tree.
Unfortunately for Neewa it was on this limb that Kawook had eaten hislast meal, and he began working himself out on it, still apparentlyoblivious of the fact that the cub was on the same branch. At this Mikisent up such a series of shrieking yelps from below that Kawook seemedat last to realize that something unusual was going on. He peered downat Miki who was making vain efforts to jump up the trunk of the tree;then he turned and, for the first time, contemplated Neewa with somesign of interest. Neewa was hugging the limb with both forearms andboth hind legs. To retreat another foot on the branch that was alreadybending dangerously under his weight seemed impossible.
It was at this point that Kawook began to scold fiercely. With a finalfrantic yelp Miki sat back on his haunches and watched the thrillingdrama above him. A little at a time Kawook advanced, and inch by inchNeewa retreated, until at last he rolled clean over and was hangingwith his back toward the ground. It was then that Kawook ceased hisscolding and calmly began eating his dinner. For two or three minutesNeewa kept his hold. Twice he made efforts to pull himself up so thathe could get the branch under him. Then his hind feet slipped. For adozen seconds he hung with his two front paws--then shot down throughfifteen feet of space to the ground. Close to Miki he landed with athud that knocked the wind out of him. He rose with a grunt, took onedazed look up the tree, and without further explanation to Miki beganto leg it deeper into the forest--straight into the face of the greatadventure which was to be the final test for these two.