Part 4 (2/2)

Six feet away Miki's blazing eyes saw his coray mass, and for a moment or two he was held appalled and lifeless by the thunderous beat of the gargantuan wings No sound ca his claws into feathers so thick and soft that they seemed to have no heart or flesh He felt upon hi that was death The beat of the wings was like the beat of clubs: they drove the breath out of his body, they blinded his senses, yet he continued to tear fiercely with his claws into a fleshless breast

In his first savage swoop Oohoos rip by the fraction of an inch His powerful talons that would have buried themselves like knives in Neewa's vitals closed too soon, and were filled with the cub's thick hair and loose hide Noas beating his prey doith his wings until the rightwith the terrific stabbing of his beak Half a minute of that and Neewa's face would be torn into pieces

It was the fact that Neewa ht Miki to his feet with his lips drawn back and a snarl in his throat All at once fear went out of him and in its place canized their enemy--A BIRD

To him birds were a prey, and not a menace A dozen times in their journey down froeese and huge-winged cranes Miki had eaten their flesh Twice he had pursued wounded cranes, yapping at the top of his voice, AND THEY HAD RUN FROM HIM He did not bark or yelp now Like a flash he launched himself into the feathered mass of the owl His fourteen pounds of flesh and bone landed with the force of a stone, and Oohooreat flutter of wings upon his side

Before he could recover his balance Miki was at hi full at his head, where he had struck at the wounded crane Oohoomiseent flat on his back--and for the first ti yelps It was a new sound to Oohoole fro beaks drifted farther away, and Oohoos, vaulted into the air

With his big forefeet planted fir face turned up to the black wall of the tree-tops Miki continued to bark and howl defiantly He wanted the bird to come back He wanted to tear and rip at its feathers, and as he sent out his frantic challenge Neewa rolled over, got on his feet, and with a warning squeal to Miki once norant in the ain it was the instinct born of countless generations He knew that in the black pits about them hovered death--and he ran as he had never run before in his life As Miki followed, the shadoere beginning to float nearer again

Ahead of therew taller, and soon the day began breaking through so that there were no longer the cavernous hollows of glooone on another hundred yards they would have corounds of the owls But the flame of self-preservation was hot in Neewa's head; he was still dazed by the thunderous beat of wings; his sides burned where Oohoomisew's talons had scarred his flesh; so, when he saw in his path a tangled windfall of tree trunks he dived into the security of it so swiftly that for ainto the windfall after him Miki turned and poked out his head He was not satisfied His lips were still drawn back, and he continued to growl He had beaten his enemy He had knocked it over fairly, and had filled his jaith its feathers In the face of that triu Neewa, and he was possessed with the desire to go back and have it out to a finish It was the blood of the Airedale and the Spitz growing stronger in hiiant hunting-hound Hela It was the dee and fox-like persistency backed by the powerful jaws and Herculean strength of the Mackenzie hound, and if Neewa had not drawn deeper under the windfall he would have gone out again and yelped his challenge to the feathered things fro under the red-hot stab of Oohooht that ca his wounds, and after a while Miki went back to hirowl He knew that it was Neewa's blood, and his eyes glowed like twin balls of fire as they watched the opening through which they had entered into the dark tangle of fallen trees

For an hour he did notof the rabbit, he GREW When at last he crept out cautiously fro behind the western forests

He peered about hi and apologetic posture of puppyhood was gone froround; his angular legs were as hard as if carven out of knotty wood; his body was tense, his ears stood up, his head was rigidly set between the bony shoulders that already gave evidence of gigantic strength to co Adventure The world was no longer a world of play and of snuggling under the hands of ahad come into it now

After a ti under the windfall and began chewing at the end of rope which dragged from about his neck The sun sank lower It disappeared Still he waited for Neewa to coht thickened into deeper glooe of the door under the windfall and found Neewa there Together they peered forth into the ht

For a time there was the utter stillness of the first hour of darkness in the northland Up in the clear sky the stars ca constellations There was an earlythe world with a golden glow, and in that glow the night was filled with grotesque black shadows that had neither movement nor sound Then the silence was broken Froe and hollow sound Miki had heard the shrill screeching and the TU-WHO-O-O, TU-WHO-O-O, TU-WHO-O-O of the little owls, the trap-pirates, but never this voice of the strong-winged Jezebels and Frankensteins of the deeper forests--the real butchers of the night It was a hollow, throaty sound--more a moan than a cry; a moan so short and low that it seehten possible prey For a few nal of life, and then there was a silence of voice, broken at intervals by the faint, crashi+ng sweep of great wings in the spruce and balsam tops as the hunters launched themselves up and over the forth of the oas only the beginning of the night carnival for Neewa and Miki For a long ti Past the windfall went the padded feet of a fisher-cat, and they caught the scent of it; to the of a restless fox, and the MOOING of a cow e of a lake on the farther side of the plain And then, at last, ca that made their blood run faster and sent a deeper thrill into their hearts

It seemed a vast distance away at first--the hot throated cry of wolves on the trail ofnorthward into the plain, and this shortly brought the cry with the wind, which was out of the north and the west The howling of the pack was very distinct after that, and in Miki's brain nebulous visions and al into life It was not Challoner's voice that he heard, but it was A VOICE THAT HE KNEW It was the voice of Hela, his giant father; the voice of Numa, his enerations before hienerations and the hazyupon hience and experience to make him discri And this voice of his blood was COMING! It bore down upon theer He forgot Neewa He did not observe the cub when he slunk back deeper under the windfall He rose up on his feet and stood stiff and tense, unconscious of all things but that thrilling tongue of the hunt-pack

Wind-broken, his strength failing hilea caribou bull, raced for his life a hundred yards ahead of the wolves The pack had already flung itself out in the for to creep up abreast of Ahtik, ready to close in for the ha--and the kill In these lastbull sensed the beginning of the end Desperately he turned to the right and plunged into the forest

Miki heard the crash of his body and he hugged close to the windfall

Ten seconds later Ahtik passed within fifty feet of hi breath filled with the agony and hopelessness of approaching death As swiftly as he had coone, and in his place followed half a score of noiseless shadows passing so quickly that to Miki they were like the co of the wind

For ain silence had fallen upon the night After a little he went back into the windfall and lay down beside Neewa

Hours that followed he passed in restless snatches of sluotten He drea fires; he heard his ain the touch of his hand; but over it all and through it all ran that wild hunting voice of his own kind

In the early dawn he came out from under the windfall and smelled of the trail where the wolves and the caribou had passed Heretofore it was Neeho had led in their wandering; noas Neewa that followed His nostrils filled with the heavy scent of the pack, Miki travelled steadily in the direction of the plain It took hie of it After that he ca of the earth over which he nosed the spoor to a low and abrupt descent into the wider range of the valley

Here he stopped

Twenty feet under him and fifty feet away lay the partly devoured carcass of the young bull It was not this fact that thrilled him until his heart stood still Froade she-wolf, to fill herself of the , hollow-backed, quick-fanged creature, still rib-thin fro a poison-bait; a beast shunned by her own kind--a coward, a murderess even of her ohelps But she was none of these things to Miki In her he saw in living flesh and bone what his memory and his instinct recalled to him of his mother And his mother had come before Challoner, his , and then he went down, as he would have gone to Challoner; with great caution, with a wilder suspense, but with a strange yearning within him that the man's presence would have failed to rouse He was very close to Maheegun before she was conscious that he was near The Mother-sreat joy; and yet--he was afraid

But it was not a physical fear Flattened on the ground, with his head between his fore-paws, he whined