Part 15 (1/2)

Mid-forenoon found him only half a mile froht the faint tang of smoke in the air

He did not follow it up, but circled like a wolf, co up stealthily and uncertainly until at last he looked out into the little clearing where a neorld had coe in which Jacques Le Beau had kept hie was still open, as Durant had left it after stealing hihed-up snohere he had leapt upon thethe cabin door--and the door ide open He could see no life, but he could SMELL it And s from the chioing there was an abject hu, a prayer to the creatures he worshi+pped that he ht not be driven away

He came to the door, and peered in The room was empty Nanette was not there Then his ears shot forward and his body grew suddenly tense, and he listened, listened, LISTENED to a soft, cooing sound that was co from the crib He sed hard; the faintest whine rose in his throat and his claws CLICKED, CLICKED, CLICKED, across the floor and he thrust his great head over the side of the little bed The baby was there

With his warue he kissed it--just once--and then, with another deep breath, lay down on the floor

He heard footsteps Nanette came in with her arms filled with blankets; she carried these into the smaller room, and returned, before she saw hie little cry, she ran to him; and once more he felt her arainst her breast, and Nanette laughed and sobbed, and in the crib the baby kicked and squealed and thrust her tiny moccasined feet up into the air

”Ao-oo tap-wa-oes heaven comes in,”) say the Crees And with the death of Le Beau, her husband, the devil had gone out of life for Nanette She was low of her eyes She was no longer like a dog under the club and the whip of a brute, and in the re-birth of her soul she was glorious Youth had come back to her--freed from the yoke of oppression She was happy Happy with her baby, with freedoain; and with new hope, the greatest star of all Again on the night of that first day of his return Miki crept up to her when she was brushi+ng her glorious hair He loved to put his muzzle in it; he loved the sweet scent of it; he loved to put his head on her knees and feel it sed the baby, for it was Miki who had brought her freedoedy It was justice God had sent Miki to do for her what a father or a brother would have done

And the second night after that, when Challoner came early in the darkness, it happened that Nanette had her hair down in that salow shi+ning in her eyes, felt that the world had taken a sudden swift turn under his feet--that through all his years he had been working forward to this hour

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

With the co of Challoner to the cabin of Nanette Le Beau there was no longer a shadow of gloom in the world for Miki He did not reason out the wonder of it, nor did he have a foreboding for the future It was the present in which he lived--the precious hours in which all the creatures he had ever loved were together And yet, away back in his rown deep in his soul, was the picture of Neewa, the bear; Neewa, his chu coht of the cold and snow-se in which Neewa had buried hi and mysterious sleep that was so much like death But it was in the present that he lived The hours lengthened theo, nor did Nanette leave with the Indian for Fort O' God The Indian returned with a note for MacDonnell in which Challoner told the Factor that sos, and that she could not travel until the weather, which was intensely cold, grearmer He asked that the Indian be sent back with certain supplies

In spite of the terrific cold which followed the birth of the new year Challoner had put up his tent in the edge of the timber a hundred yards from the cabin, and Miki divided his tilorious days And for Challoner--

In a way Miki saw, though it was ithened into a week, and the week into two, there was solow of Nanette's eyes that had never been there before, and in the sweetness of her voice a new thrill, and in her prayers at night the thankfulness of a new and great joy

And then, one day, Miki looked up fro beside the baby's crib and he saw Nanette in his master's arlory of the stars, and Challoner was saying soel

Miki was puzzled And he was more puzzled when Challoner caled the baby up in his ar at them both for a moment with that wonderful look in her eyes--suddenly covered her face with her hands and sobbed Half a snarl rose in Miki's throat, but in that moment Challoner had put his arm around Nanette too, and Nanette's ar which for the life of him Miki could make neither head nor tail of And yet he knew that heHe felt the wonder-thrill of the new thing that had coulped hard, and looked A moment or two later Nanette was on her knees beside him, and her arms were around him, just as they had been around theto the baby in his arms Then he, too, dropped down beside Miki, and cried:

”My Gawd! Miki--I'VE GOT A FAM'LY!”

And Miki tried to understand

That night, after supper, he saw Challoner unbraid Nanette's glorious hair, and brush it They laughed like two happy children Miki tried still harder to understand

When Challoner went to go to his tent in the edge of the forest he took Nanette in his ar hair; and Nanette took his face between her hands and smiled and almost cried in her joy

After that Miki DID understand He knew that happiness had come to all ere in that cabin

Now that his world was settled, Miki took onceThe thrill of the trail cae froain he followed Le Beau's old trapline But the traps were sprung now He had lost a great deal of his old caution He had grown fatter He no longer scented danger in every whiff of the wind It was in the third week of Challoner's stay at the cabin, the day whichof eather, that Miki came upon an old dead-fall in a swa Le Beau had set it for lynx, but nothing had touched the bait, which was a chunk of caribou flesh, frozen solid as a rock Curiously Miki began sone out of his world He nibbled He pulled--and the log crashed down to break his back Only by a little did it fail For twenty-four hours it held hih all those hours, he dragged hi te all tracks and trails Through this snow Miki dragged hi a path like that of an otter in the mud, for his hind quarters were helpless His back was not broken; it was te

He made in the direction of the cabin, but every foot that he dragged hiress was so slow that at the end of an hour he had not gone ht found him less than two miles from the deadfall He pulled himself under a shelter of brush and lay there until dawn All through that day he did not move The next, which was the fourth since he had left the cabin to hunt, the pain in his back was not so great But he could pull hiood spirit of the forests favoured him for in the afternoon he came upon the partly eaten carcass of a buck killed by the wolves The flesh was frozen but he gnawed at it ravenously Then he found himself a shelter under a mass of fallen tree-tops, and for ten days thereafter he lay between life and death He would have died had it not been for the buck To the carcass hehimself, sometimes each day and so It was the end of the second week before he could stand well on his feet The fifteenth day he returned to the cabin

In the edge of the clearing there fell upon hie The cabin was there It was no different than it had been fifteen days ago But out of the chimney there came no smoke, and the ere white with frost About it the snow lay clean and white, like an unspotted sheet Heto the door There were no tracks Drifted snoas piled high over the sill He whined, and scratched at the door There was no answer And he heard no sound

He went back into the edge of the ti occasionally to the cabin, and s about it, to convince himself that he had not made a mistake When darkness came he hollowed himself out a bed in the fresh snow close to the door and lay there all through the night Day caray and empty and still there was no s walls, and at last he knew that Challoner and Nanette and the baby were gone But he was hopeful He no longer listened for sound from within the cabin, but watched and listened for them to co now on this side and now on that of the cabin, sniffing futilely at the fresh and trackless snow and pointing the wind for minutes at a time In the afternoon, with a forlorn slouch to his body, he went deeper into the forest to hunt for a rabbit When he had killed and eaten his supper he returned again and slept a second night in the burrow beside the door A third day and a third night he re under a clear and star-filled sky, and frorief-filled cry that rose wailingly out of the clearing; the entreaty for his master, for Nanette, and the baby It was not an answer to the wolves In its note there was a trerown into hopelessness

And now there settled upon hireater than any loneliness he had ever known So seemed to whisper to his canine brain that all he had seen and felt had been but a dreaain, its dangers, its vast and soul-breaking emptiness, its friendlessness, its ceaseless strife for existence His instincts, dulled by the worshi+p of what the cabin had held, becaer, which comes of ALONENESS, and his old caution fell upon hie of the clearing like a wolf

The fifth night he did not sleep in the clearing but found hiht he had strange and troubled dreams They were not of Challoner, or of Nanette and the baby, nor were they of the fight and the unforgettable things he had seen at the Post His dreae smothered in deep snow, and of a cavern that was dark and deep Again he ith his brother and co to waken him, and he could feel the warrunts And then, later, he was fighting again in the paradise of black currants, and with Neeas running for his life froed she-bear who had invaded their coulee When he awoke suddenly fro and his rowled in the darkness His eyes were round balls of searching fire He whined softly and yearningly in that pit of gloom under the windfall, and for a ht answer

For a ht he remained near the cabin At least once each day, and so Andof Neewa Early in March ca Thaw) For a week the sun shone without a cloud in the sky The air arm The snow turned soft underfoot and on the sunny sides of slopes and ridges itstreams or rolled down in ”slides” that were miniature avalanches The world was vibrant with a new thrill It pulsed with the growing heart-beat of spring, and in Miki's soul there arose slowly a new hope, a new ie of a wonderful instinct NEEWA WOULD BE WAKING NOW!