Part 7 (1/2)

He pulled hi interloper's body--and not a second too soon Down the coulee, charging like a mad bull, came Pete's mother Neeas off like a shot just as sheat him The blowoffspring Miki, hanging joyously to his victier until Pete's ht of her just as her long ared; and the blow intended for hiainst the side of the unfortunate Pete's head with a force that took hi like a football twenty yards down the coulee

Miki did not wait for further results Quick as a flash he was in a currant thicket tearing down the little gulch after Neewa They caood ten h to look back When they did, the coulee was a ing out in his exhaustion He was scratched and bleeding; loose hair hung all over hi in the dolorous expression of Neewa's face which was a confession of the fact that he realized Pete had licked hiht in the coulee there was no longer a thought on the part of Neewa and Miki of returning to the Garden of Eden in which the black currants grew so lusciously From the tip of his tail to the end of his nose Miki was an adventurer, and like the nomadic rovers of old he was happiest when on the move The wilderness had claimed him now, body and soul, and it is probable that he would have shunned a hue of his life, even as Neeould have shunned it But in the lives of beasts, as well as in the lives of men, Fate plays her pranks and tricks, and even as they turned into the vast and reat lake and ay-country, to the west, events were slowly shaping theloolorious and sun-filled weeks of late summer and early autued the country ard, always heading toward the setting sun, the country of Jackson's Knee, of the Touchwood and the Clearwater, and God's Lake In this country they saw ion a hundred miles square which the handiwork of Nature had reat beaver colonies in the dark and silent places; they watched the otter at play; they caer feared or evaded thee of the swa It was here that Miki learned the great lesson that claw and fang were made to prey upon cloven hoof and horn, for the wolves were thick, and a dozen times they came upon their kills, and even -packs Since his experience with Maheegun he no longer had the desire to join the nearof the KWASKA-HAO in Neewa--the instinctive sensing of the Big Change

Until early in October Miki could see but little of this change in his comrade It was then that Neewa becarew as the chill nights came, and autumn breathed more heavily in the air It was Neeho took the lead in their peregrinations now, and he see--awhich Miki could neither ser slept for hours at a tih , eating, and always s which Nature was co under windfalls and a the rocks, and Miki was always near hi that Neeas hunting out And it seemed to be never found

Then Neewa turned back to the east, drawn by the instinct of his forefathers; back toward the country of Noozak, his mother, and of Soorew more and er was the forestnote in it, a note of grief and lamentation And in their shacks and tepees the forest people sniffed the air of frosty rease, and e, for the cry of the loon said that winter was creeping down out of the North And the swa In place of it, froe of bull to bull and the deadly clash of horn against horn under the stars of night The wolf no longer howled to hear his voice In the travel of padded feet there ca caution In all the forest world blood was running red again

And then--Noveet that first day when the snow cas in the world were shedding their white feathers Then he felt the fine, soft touch of it under his feet, and the chill It sent the blood rushi+ng like a new kind of fire through his body; a wild and thrilling joy--the exultation that leaps through the veins of the hen the winter comes

With Neewa its effect was different--so different that even Miki felt the oppression of it, and waited vaguely and anxiously for as to come And then, on this day of the first snow, he saw his coan to eat things that he had never touched as food before He lapped up soft pine needles, and sed thes And then he went into a great cleft broken into the heart of a rocky ridge, and found at last the thing for which he had been seeking It was a cavern--deep, and dark, and warives to the birds of the air eyes which ives to the beasts of the earth an instinct which men may never know For Neewa had co Sleep in the place of his birth--the cavern in which Noozak, his ht him into the world

His old bed was still there, thein the soft sand, the blanket of hair Noozak had shed; but the sone In the nest where he was born Neewa lay down, and for the last tirunted softly to Miki It was as if he felt upon hientle but inevitable, which he could no longer refuse to obey, and to Miki was saying, for the last tiht the PIPOO KESTIN--the first storm of winter--came like an avalanche from out of the North With it ca of a thousand bulls, and over all the land of the wild there was nothing that moved Even in the depth of the cavern Miki heard the beat and the wail of it and the swishi+ng of the shot-like snow beyond the door through which they had coled close to Neewa, content that they had found shelter

With the day he went to the slit in the face of the rock, and in his astonishment he er the world he had left last night Everywhere it hite--a dazzling, eye-blinding white The sun had risen It shot a thousand flashi+ng shafts of radiant light into Miki's eyes So far as his vision could reach the earth was as if covered with a robe of diamonds From rock and tree and shrub blazed the fire of the sun; it quivered in the tree-tops, bent loith their burden of snow; it was like a sea in the valley, so vivid that the unfrozen streah the heart of it was black Never had Miki seen a day so ht of the sun as it pounded now, and never had his blood burned with a wilder exultation He whined, and ran back to Neewa He barked in the glooe with his nose Neewa grunted sleepily He stretched himself, raised his head for an instant, and then curled hiain Vainly Miki protested that it was day, and ti Neewa made no response, and after a while Miki returned to the mouth of the cavern, and looked back to see if Neeas following him

Then, disappointed, he went out into the snow For an hour he did not move farther than ten feet away froet up and coht In that far corner of the cavern it was dark, and it was as if he were trying to tell Neewa that he was a dunce to lie there still thinking it was night when the sun was up outside But he failed Neeas in the edge of his Long Sleep--the beginning of USKE-POW-A-MEW, the dream land of the bears

Annoyance, the desire alave place slowly to another thing in Miki The instinct that between beasts is like the spoken reason ofithin him He became more and more uneasy There was almost distress in his restlessness as he hovered about the mouth of the cavern A last time he went to Neewa, and then he started alone down into the valley

He was hungry, but on this first day after the stor to eat The snowshoe rabbits were completely buried under their windfalls and shelters, and lay quietly in their war the hours of the stors for him to follow, and in places he sank to his shoulders in the soft snow He er the creek he had known It was edged with ice

There was so about it now The sound it olden autuspirit had taken possession of it and arning hied, and that nes and a new force had conty in the land of his birth

He drank of the water cautiously It was cold--ice-cold Slowly it was being ied upon him that in the beauty of this neorld that was his there was no longer the war beat of the heart that was life He was alone ALONE! Everything else was covered up; everything else seemed dead

He went back to Neewa and lay close to hiht that followed he did not ain from the cavern

He went only as far as the door and saw celestial spaces ablaze with stars and a moon that rode up into the heavens like a white sun They, too, seeer like the moon and stars he had known They were terribly still and cold And under them the earth was terribly white and silent

With the co of dawn he tried once more to awaken Neewa But this time he was not so insistent Nor did he have the desire to nip Neeith his teeth So which he could not understand He sensed the thing, but he could not reason it And he was filled with a strange and foreboding fear

He went down again to hunt Under the glory of the ht of carnival for the rabbits, and in the edge of the timber Miki found the snow beaten hard in places with their tracks

It was not difficult for hi He ain after that, and still again He could have gone on killing, for now that the snow betrayed the-places of the rabbits were so e returned He was fired again with the joy of life Never had he known such hunting, never had he found such a treasure-house before--not even in the coulee where the currants grew He ate until he could eat nowith him one of the rabbits he had slain He dropped it in front of his comrade, and whined Even then Neewa did not respond, except to draw a deeper breath, and change his position a little

That afternoon, for the first time in many hours, Neewa rose to his feet, stretched himself, and sniffed of the dead rabbit But he did not eat To Miki's consternation he rolled hiain

The next day, at about the same time, Neewa roused himself once more

This time he went as far as the mouth of the den, and lapped up a few ain it was Nature telling him that he must not disturb the pine needles and dry bark hich he had padded his stoet up after that