Nomads of the North | Page 9

the fact that he was listening.

"I'm going to pair you up with the cub, and tickle the Girl to death."
Miki thumped his tail harder than before.
"Fine," he seemed to say.
"Just think of it," said Challoner, looking over Miki's head a thousand
miles away, "Fourteen months--and at last we're going home. I'm going
to train you and the cub for that sister of mine. Eh, won't you like that?
You don't know what she's like, you homely little devil, or you
wouldn't sit there staring at me like a totem-pole pup! And it isn't in
your stupid head to imagine how pretty she is. You saw that sunset
to-night? Well, she's prettier than THAT if she is my sister. Got
anything to add to that, Miki? If not, let's say our prayers and go to
bed!"
Challoner rose and stretched himself. His muscles cracked. He felt life
surging like a giant within him.
And Miki, thumping his tail until this moment, rose on his overgrown
legs and followed his master into their shelter.
It was in the gray light of the early summer dawn when Challoner came
forth again, and rekindled the fire. Miki followed a few moments later,
and his master fastened the end of a worn tent-rope around his neck and
tied the rope to a sapling. Another rope of similar length Challoner tied
to the corners of a grub sack so that it could be carried over his
shoulder like a game bag. With the first rose-flush of the sun he was
ready for the trail of Neewa and his mother. Miki set up a melancholy
wailing when he found himself left behind, and when Challoner looked
back the pup was tugging and somersaulting at the end of his rope like
a jumping-jack. For a quarter of a mile up the creek he could hear
Miki's entreating protest.
To Challoner the business of the day was not a matter of personal
pleasure, nor was it inspired alone by his desire to possess a cub along
with Miki. He needed meat, and bear pork thus early in the season
would be exceedingly good; and above all else he needed a supply of

fat. If he bagged this bear, time would be saved all the rest of the way
down to civilization.
It was eight o'clock when he struck the first unmistakably fresh signs of
Noozak and Neewa. It was at the point where Noozak had fished four
or five days previously, and where they had returned yesterday to feast
on the "ripened" catch. Challoner was elated. He was sure that he
would find the pair along the creek, and not far distant. The wind was
in his favour, and he began to advance with greater caution, his rifle
ready for the anticipated moment. For an hour he travelled steadily and
quietly, marking every sound and movement ahead of him, and wetting
his finger now and then to see if the wind had shifted. After all, it was
not so much a matter of human cunning. Everything was in Challoner's
favour.
In a wide, flat part of the valley where the creek split itself into a dozen
little channels, and the water rippled between sandy bars and over
pebbly shallows, Neewa and his mother were nosing about lazily for a
breakfast of crawfish. The world had never looked more beautiful to
Neewa. The sun made the soft hair on his back fluff up like that of a
purring cat. He liked the plash of wet sand under his feet and the
singing gush of water against his legs. He liked the sound that was all
about him, the breath of the wind, the whispers that came out of the
spruce-tops and the cedars, the murmur of water, the TWIT-TWIT of
the rock rabbits, the call of birds; and more than all else the low,
grunting talk of his mother.
It was in this sun-bathed sweep of the valley that Noozak caught the
first whiff of danger. It came to her in a sudden twist of the wind--the
smell of man!
Instantly she was turned into rock. There was still the deep scar in her
shoulder which had come, years before, with that same smell of the one
enemy she feared. For three summers she had not caught the taint in her
nostrils and she had almost forgotten its existence. Now, so suddenly
that it paralyzed her, it was warm and terrible in the breath of the wind.
In this moment, too, Neewa seemed to sense the nearness of an

appalling danger. Two hundred yards from Challoner he stood a
motionless blotch of jet against the white of the sand about him, his
eyes on his mother, and his sensitive little nose trying to catch the
meaning of the menace