Books: Nomads Of The North

J >> James Oliver Curwood >> Nomads Of The North

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Challoner's hand came nearer, and Neewa crowded himself back until
there was not another inch of room for him to fill. Then the
miracle happened. The man-beast's paw touched his head. It sent a
strange and terrible thrill through him. Yet it did not hurt. If
he had not wedged himself in so tightly he would have scratched
and bitten. But he could do neither.

Slowly Challoner worked his fingers to the loose hide at the back
of Neewa's neck. Miki, surmising that something momentous was
about to happen, watched the proceedings with popping eyes. Then
Challoner's fingers closed and the next instant he dragged Neewa
forth and held him at arm's length, kicking and squirming, and
setting up such a bawling that in sheer sympathy Miki raised his
voice and joined in the agonized orgy of sound. Half a minute
later Challoner had Neewa once more in the prison-sack, but this
time he left the cub's head protruding, and drew in the mouth of
the sack closely about his neck, fastening it securely with a
piece of babiche string. Thus three quarters of Neewa was
imprisoned in the sack, with only his head sticking out. He was a
cub in a poke.

Leaving the cub to roll and squirm in protest Challoner went about
the business of getting breakfast. For once Miki found a
proceeding more interesting than that operation, and he hovered
about Neewa as he struggled and bawled, trying vainly to offer him
some assistance in the matter of sympathy. Finally Neewa lay
still, and Miki sat down close beside him and eyed his master with
serious questioning if not actual disapprobation.

The gray sky was breaking with the promise of the sun when
Challoner was ready to renew his long journey into the southland.
He packed his canoe, leaving Neewa and Miki until the last. In the
bow of the canoe he made a soft nest of the skin taken from the
cub's mother. Then he called Miki and tied the end of a worn rope
around his neck, after which he fastened the other end of this
rope around the neck of Neewa. Thus he had the cub and the pup on
the same yard-long halter. Taking each of the twain by the scruff
of the neck he carried them to the canoe and placed them in the
nest he had made of Noozak's hide.

"Now you youngsters be good," he warned. "We're going to aim at
forty miles to-day to make up for the time we lost yesterday."

As the canoe shot out a shaft of sunlight broke through the sky
low in the east.

CHAPTER FIVE

During the first few moments in which the canoe moved swiftly over
the surface of the lake an amazing change had taken place in
Neewa. Challoner did not see it, and Miki was unconscious of it.
But every fibre in Neewa's body was atremble, and his heart was
thumping as it had pounded on that glorious day of the fight
between his mother and the old he-bear. It seemed to him that
everything that he had lost was coming back to him, and that all
would be well very soon--FOR HE SMELLED HIS MOTHER! And then he
discovered that the scent of her was warm and strong in the furry
black mass under his feet, and he smothered himself down in it,
flat on his plump little belly, and peered at Challoner over his
paws.

It was hard for him to understand--the man-beast back there,
sending the canoe through the water, and under him his mother,
warm and soft, but so deadly still! He could not keep the whimper
out of his throat--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 see nothing of her but her black and furry
skin--without head, without feet, without the big, bald paws he
had loved to tickle, and the ears he had loved to nip. There was
nothing of her but the patch of black skin--and the SMELL.

But a great comfort warmed his frightened little soul. He felt the
protecting nearness of an unconquerable and abiding force and in
the first of the warm sunshine his back fluffed up, and he thrust
his brown nose between his paws and into his mother's fur. Miki,
as if vainly striving to solve the mystery of his new-found chum,
was watching him closely from between his own fore-paws. In his
comical head--adorned with its one good ear and its one bad one,
and furthermore beautified by the outstanding whiskers inherited
from his Airedale ancestor--he was trying to come to some sort of
an understanding. At the outset he had accepted Neewa as a friend
and a comrade--and Neewa had thanklessly given him a good mauling
for his trouble. That much Miki could forgive and forget. What he
could not forgive was the utter lack of regard which Neewa seemed
to possess for him. His playful antics had gained no recognition
from the cub. When he had barked and hopped about, flattening and
contorting himself in warm invitation for him to join in a game of
tag or a wrestling match, Neewa had simply stared at him like an
idiot. He was wondering, perhaps, if Neewa would enjoy anything
besides a fight. It was a long time before he decided to make
another experiment.

It was, as a matter of fact, halfway between breakfast and noon.
In all that time Neewa had scarcely moved, and Miki was finding
himself bored to death. The discomfort of last night's storm was
only a memory, and overhead there was a sun unshadowed by cloud.
More than an hour before Challoner's canoe had left the lake, and
was now in the clear-running water of a stream that was making its
way down the southward slope of the divide between Jackson's Knee
and the Shamattawa. It was a new stream to Challoner, fed by the
large lake above, and guarding himself against the treachery of
waterfall and rapid he kept a keen lookout ahead. For a matter of
half an hour the water had been growing steadily swifter, and
Challoner was satisfied that before very long he would be
compelled to make a portage. A little later he heard ahead of him
the low 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 boiling maelstrom of water.

Swiftly his eyes measured the situation. The rapids ran between an
almost precipitous shore on one side and a deep forest on the
other. He saw at a glance that it was the forest side over which
he must make the portage, and this was the shore opposite him and
farthest away. Swinging his canoe at a 45-degree angle he put all
the strength of body and arms into the sweep of his paddle. There
would be just time to reach the other shore before the current
became dangerous. Above the sweep of the rapids he could now hear
the growling roar of a waterfall below.

It was at this unfortunate moment that Miki decided to venture one
more experiment with Neewa. With a friendly yip he swung out one
of his paws. Now Miki's paw, for a pup, was monstrously big, and
his foreleg was long and lanky, so that when the paw landed
squarely on the end of Neewa's nose it was like the swing of a
prize-fighter's glove. The unexpectedness of it was a further
decisive feature in the situation; and, on top of this, Miki swung
his other paw around like a club and caught 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 with the pup.

Now the fact was that Miki, who had so ingloriously begged for
mercy in their first scrimmage, came of fighting stock himself.
Mix the blood of a Mackenzie hound--which is the biggest-footed,
biggest-shouldered, most powerful dog in the northland--with the
blood of a Spitz and an Airedale and something is bound to come of
it. While the Mackenzie dog, with his ox-like strength, is
peaceable and good-humoured in all sorts of weather, there is a
good deal of the devil in the northern Spitz and Airedale and it
is a question which likes a fight the best. And all at once good-
humoured little Miki felt the devil rising in him. This time he
did not yap for mercy. He met Neewa's jaws, and in two seconds
they were staging a first-class fight on the bit of precarious
footing in the prow of the canoe.

Vainly Challoner yelled at them as he paddled desperately to beat
out the 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 sharp teeth were firmly fixed in the loose hide under
Neewa's neck, and with his paws he continued to kick and bat in a
way that promised effectively to pummel the wind out of Neewa had
not the thing happened which Challoner feared. Still in a clinch
they rolled off the prow of the canoe into the swirling current of
the stream.

For ten seconds or so they utterly disappeared. Then they bobbed
up, a good fifty feet below him, their heads close together as
they sped swiftly toward the doom that awaited them, and a choking
cry broke from Challoner's lips. He was powerless to save them,
and in his cry was the anguish of real grief. For many weeks Miki
had been his only chum and comrade.

Held together by the yard-long rope to which they were fastened,
Miki and Neewa swept into the frothing turmoil of the rapids. For
Miki it was the kindness of fate that had inspired his master to
fasten him to the 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 per cent. fat; while Neewa, weight thirteen pounds,
was about 90 per cent. fat. Therefore Miki had the floating
capacity of a small anchor, while Neewa was a first-class life-
preserver, and almost unsinkable.

In neither of the youngsters was there a yellow streak. Both were
of fighting stock, and, though Miki was under water most of the
time during their first hundred-yard dash through the rapids,
never for an instant 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 matter what his position, he kept his four overgrown
paws going like paddles. To an extent this helped Neewa in the
heroic fight he was making to keep from shipping too much water
himself. Had he been alone his ten or eleven pounds of fat would
have carried him down-stream like a toy balloon covered with fur,
but, with the fourteen-pound drag around his neck, the problem of
not going under completely was a serious one. Half a dozen times
he did disappear for an instant when some undertow caught Miki and
dragged him down--head, tail, legs, and all. But Neewa always rose
again, his four fat legs working for dear life.

Then came the waterfall. By this time Miki had become accustomed
to travelling under water, and the full horror of the new
cataclysm into which they were plunged was mercifully lost to him.
His paws had almost ceased their motion. He was still conscious of
the roar in his ears, but the affair was less unpleasant than it
was at the beginning. In fact, he was drowning. To Neewa the
pleasant sensations of a painless death were denied. No cub in the
world was wider awake than he when the final catastrophe came. His
head was well above water and he was clearly possessed of all his
senses. Then the river itself dropped out from under him and he
shot down in an avalanche of water, feeling no longer the drag of
Miki's weight at his neck.

How deep the pool was at the bottom of the waterfall Challoner
might have guessed quite accurately. Could Neewa have expressed an
opinion of his own, he would have sworn that it was a mile. Miki
was past the stage of making estimates, or of caring whether it
was two feet or two leagues. His paws had ceased to operate and he
had given himself up entirely to his fate. But Neewa came up
again, and Miki followed, like a bobber. He was about to gasp his
last gasp when the force of the current, as it swung out of the
whirlpool, flung Neewa upon a bit of partly submerged driftage,
and in a wild and strenuous effort to make himself safe Neewa
dragged Miki's head out of water so that the pup hung at the edge
of the driftage like a hangman's victim at the end of his rope.

CHAPTER SIX

It is doubtful whether in the few moments that followed, any
clear-cut mental argument passed through Neewa's head. It is too
much to suppose that he deliberately set about assisting the half-
dead and almost unconscious Miki from his precarious position. His
sole ambition was to get himself where it was safe and dry, and to
do this he of necessity had to drag the pup with him. So Neewa
tugged at the end of his rope, digging his sharp little claws into
the driftwood, and as he advanced Miki was dragged up head
foremost out of the cold and friendless stream. It was a simple
process. Neewa reached a log around which the water was eddying,
and there he flattened himself down and hung on as he had never
hung to anything else in his life. The log was entirely hidden
from shore by a dense growth of brushwood. Otherwise, ten minutes
later Challoner would have seen them.

As it was, Miki had not sufficiently recovered either to smell or
hear his master when Challoner came to see if there was a
possibility of his small comrade being alive. And Neewa only
hugged the log more tightly. He had seen enough of the man-beast
to last him for the remainder of his life. It was half an hour
before Miki began to gasp, and cough, and gulp up water, and for
the first time since their scrap in the canoe the cub began to
take a live interest in him. In another ten minutes Miki raised
his head and looked about him. At that Neewa gave a tug on the
rope, as if to advise him that it was time to get busy if they
were expected to reach shore. And Miki, drenched and forlorn,
resembling more a starved bone than a thing of skin and flesh,
actually made an effort to wag his tail when he saw Neewa.

He was still in a couple of inches of water, and with a hopeful
eye on the log upon which Neewa was squatted he began to work his
wobbly legs toward it. It was a high log, and a dry log, and when
Miki reached it his unlucky star was with him again. Cumbrously he
sprawled himself against it, and as he scrambled and scraped with
his four awkward legs to get up alongside Neewa he gave to the log
the slight push which it needed to set it free of the sunken
driftage. Slowly at first the eddying current carried one end of
the log away from its pier. Then the edge of the main current
caught at it, viciously--and so suddenly that Miki almost lost his
precarious footing, the log gave a twist, righted itself, and
began, to scud down stream at a speed that would have made
Challoner hug his breath had he been in their position with his
faithful canoe.

In fact, Challoner was at this very moment portaging the rapids
below the waterfall. To have set his canoe in them where Miki and
Neewa were gloriously sailing he would have considered an
inexcusable hazard, and as a matter of safety he was losing the
better part of a couple of hours by packing his outfit through the
forest to a point half a mile below. That half mile was to the cub
and the pup a show which was destined to live in their memories
for as long as they were alive.

They were facing each other about amidships of the log, Neewa
flattened tight, his sharp claws dug in like hooks, and his little
brown eyes half starting from his head. It would have taken a
crowbar to wrench him from the log. But with Miki it was an open
question from the beginning whether he would weather the storm. He
had no claws that he could dig into the wood, and it was
impossible for him to use his clumsy legs as Neewa used his--like
two pairs of human arms. All he could do was to balance himself,
slipping this way or that as the log rolled or swerved in its
course, sometimes lying across it and sometimes lengthwise, and
every moment with the jaws of uncertainty open wide for him.
Neewa's eyes never left him for an instant. Had they been gimlets
they would have bored holes. From the acuteness of this life-and-
death stare one would have given Neewa credit for understanding
that his own personal safety depended not so much upon his claws
and his hug as upon Miki's seamanship. If Miki went overboard
there would be left but one thing for him to do--and that would be
to follow.

The log, being larger and heavier at one end than at the other,
swept on without turning broadside, and with the swiftness and
appearance of a huge torpedo. While Neewa's back was turned toward
the horror of frothing water and roaring rock behind him, Miki,
who was facing it, lost none of its spectacular beauty. Now and
then the log shot into one of the white masses of foam and for an
instant or two would utterly disappear; and at these intervals
Miki would hold his breath and close his eyes while Neewa dug his
toes in still deeper. Once the log grazed a rock. Six inches more
and they would have been without a ship. Their trip was not half
over before both cub and pup looked like two round balls of lather
out of which their eyes peered wildly.

Swiftly the roar of the cataract was left behind; the huge rocks
around which the current boiled and twisted with a ferocious
snarling became fewer; there came open spaces in which the log
floated smoothly and without convulsions, and then, at last, the
quiet and placid flow of calm water. Not until then did the two
balls of suds make a move. For the first time Neewa saw the whole
of the thing they had passed through, and Miki, looking down
stream, saw the quiet shores again, the deep forest, and the
stream aglow with the warm sun. He drew in a breath that filled
his whole body and let it out again with a sigh of relief so deep
and sincere that it blew out a scatter of foam from the ends of
his nose and whiskers. For the first time he became conscious of
his own discomfort. One of his hind legs was twisted under him,
and a foreleg was under his chest. The smoothness of the water and
the nearness of the shores gave him confidence, and he proceeded
to straighten himself. Unlike Neewa he was an experienced
VOYAGEUR. For more than a month he had travelled steadily with
Challoner in his canoe, and of ordinarily decent water he was
unafraid. So he perked up a little, and offered Neewa a
congratulatory yip that was half a whine.

But Neewa's education had travelled along another line, and while
his experience in a canoe had been confined to that day he did
know what a log was. He knew from more than one adventure of his
own that a log in the water is the next thing to a live thing, and
that its capacity for playing evil jokes was beyond any
computation that he had ever been able to make. That was where
Miki's store of knowledge was fatally defective. Inasmuch as the
log had carried them safely through the worst stretch of water he
had ever seen he regarded it in the light of a first-class canoe--
with the exception that it was unpleasantly rounded on top. But
this little defect did not worry him. To Neewa's horror he sat up
boldly, and looked about him.

Instinctively the cub hugged the log still closer, while Miki was
seized with an overwhelming desire to shake from himself the mass
of suds in which, with the exception of the end of his tail and
his eyes, he was completely swathed. He had often shaken himself
in the canoe; why not here? Without either asking or answering the
question he did it.

Like the trap of a gibbet suddenly sprung by the hangman, the log
instantly responded by turning half over. Without so much as a
wail Miki was off like a shot, hit the water with a deep and
solemn CHUG, and once more disappeared as completely as if he had
been made of lead.

Finding himself completely submerged for the first time, Neewa
hung on gloriously, and when the log righted itself again he was
tenaciously hugging his old place, all the froth washed from him.
He looked for Miki--but Miki was gone. And then he felt once more
that choking drag on his neck! Of necessity, because his head was
pulled in the direction of the rope, he saw where the rope
disappeared in the water. But there was no Miki. The pup was down
too far for Neewa to see. With the drag growing heavier and
heavier--for here there was not much current to help Miki along--
Neewa hung on like grim death. If he had let go, and had joined
Miki in the water, the good fortune which was turning their way
would have been missed. For Miki, struggling well under water, was
serving both as an anchor and a rudder; slowly the log shifted its
course, was caught in a beach-eddy, and drifted in close to a
muddy bank.

With one wild leap Neewa was ashore. Feeling the earth under his
feet he started to run, and the result was that Miki came up
slowly through the mire and spread himself out like an overgrown
crustacean while he got the wind back into his lungs. Neewa,
sensing the fact that for a few moments his comrade was physically
unfit for travel, shook himself, and waited. Miki picked up
quickly. Within five minutes he was on his feet shaking himself so
furiously that Neewa became the centre of a shower of mud and
water.

Had they remained where they were, Challoner would have found them
an hour or so later, for he paddled that way, close inshore,
looking for their bodies. It may be that the countless generations
of instinct back of Neewa warned him of that possibility, for
within a quarter of an hour after they had landed he was leading
the way into the forest, and Miki was following. It was a new
adventure for the pup.

But Neewa began to recover his good cheer. For him the forest was
home even if his mother was missing. After his maddening
experiences with Miki and the man-beast the velvety touch of the
soft pine-needles under his feet and the familiar smells of the
silent places filled him with a growing joy. He was back in his
old trails. He sniffed the air and pricked up his ears, thrilled
by the enlivening sensations of knowing that he was once more the
small master of his own destiny. It was a new forest, but Neewa
was undisturbed by this fact. All forests were alike to him,
inasmuch as several hundred thousand square miles were included in
his domain and it was impossible for him to landmark them all.

With Miki it was different. He not only began to miss Challoner
and the river, but became more and more disturbed the farther
Neewa led him into the dark and mysterious depths of the timber.
At last he decided to set up a vigorous protest, and in line with
this decision he braced himself so suddenly that Neewa, coming to
the end of the rope, flopped over on his back with an astonished
grunt. Seizing his advantage Miki turned, and tugging with the
horse-like energy of his Mackenzie father he started back toward
the river, dragging Neewa after him for a space of ten or fifteen
feet before the cub succeeded in regaining his feet.

Then the battle began. With their bottoms braced and their
forefeet digging into the soft earth, they pulled on the rope in
opposite directions until their necks stretched and their eyes
began to pop. Neewa's pull was steady and unexcited, while Miki,
dog-like, yanked and convulsed himself in sudden backward jerks
that made Neewa give way an inch at a time. It was, after all,
only a question as to which possessed the most enduring neck.
Under Neewa's fat there was as yet little real physical strength.
Miki had him handicapped there. Under the pup's loose hide and his
overgrown bones there was a lot of pull, and after bracing himself
heroically for another dozen feet Neewa gave up the contest and
followed in the direction chosen by Miki.

While the instincts of Neewa's breed would have taken him back to
the river as straight as a die, Miki's intentions were better than
was his sense of orientation. Neewa followed in a sweeter temper
when he found that his companion was making an unreasonable circle
which was taking them a little more slowly, but just as surely,
away from the danger-ridden stream. At the end of another quarter
of an hour Miki was utterly lost; he sat down on his rump, looked
at Neewa, and confessed as much--with a low whine. Neewa did not
move. His sharp little eyes were fixed suddenly on an object that
hung to a low bush half a dozen paces from them. Before the man-
beast's appearance the cub had spent three quarters of his time in
eating, but since yesterday morning he had not swallowed so much
as a bug. He was completely empty, and the object he saw hanging
to the bush set every salivary gland in his mouth working. It was
a wasp's nest. Many times in his young life he had seen Noozak,
his mother, go up to nests like that, tear them down, crush them
under her big paw, and then invite him to the feast of dead wasps
within. For at least a month wasps had been included in his daily
fare, and they were as good as anything he knew of. He approached
the nest; Miki followed. When they were within three feet of it
Miki began to take notice of a very distinct and peculiarly
disquieting buzzing sound. Neewa was not at all alarmed; judging
the distance of the nest from the ground, he rose on his hind
feet, raised his arms, and gave it a fatal tug.

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