Nomads of the North | Page 8

dog pups ever born of a Mackenzie hound father and a mother half Airedale and half Spitz.
With this tragedy of blood in his veins nothing in the world could have made the pup anything more than "just dog." His tail,-- stretched out straight on the sand, was long and lean, with a knot at every joint; his paws, like an overgrown boy's feet, looked like small boxing-gloves; his head was three sizes too big for his body, and accident had assisted Nature in the perfection of her masterpiece by robbing him of a half of one of his ears. As he watched his master this half of an ear stood up like a galvanized stub, while the other--twice as long--was perked forward in the deepest and most interested enquiry. Head, feet, and tail were Mackenzie hound, but the ears and his lank, skinny body was a battle royal between Spitz and Airedale. At his present inharmonious stage of development he was the doggiest dog-pup outside the alleys of a big city.
For the first time in several minutes his master spoke, and Miki wiggled from stem to stern in appreciation of the fact that it was directly to him the words were uttered.
"It's a mother and a cub, as sure as you're a week old, Miki," he said. "And if I know anything about bears they were here some time to-day!"
He rose to his feet, made note of the deepening shadows in the edge of the timber, and filled his pail with water. For a few moments the last rays of the sun lit up his face. It was a strong, hopeful face. In it was the joy of life. And now it was lighted up with a sudden inspiration, and a glow that was not of the forest alone came into his eyes, as he added:
"Miki, I'm lugging your homely carcass down to the Girl because you're an unpolished gem of good nature and beauty--and for those two things I know she'll love you. She is my sister, you know. Now, if I could only take that cub along with you----"
He began to whistle as he turned with his pail of water in the direction of a thin fringe of balsams a hundred yards away.
Close at his heels followed Miki.
Challoner, who was a newly appointed factor of the Great Hudson's Bay Company, had pitched his camp at tie edge of the lake dose to the mouth of the creek. There was not much to it--a battered tent, a still more battered canoe, and a small pile of dunnage. But in the last glow of the sunset it would have spoken volumes to a man with an eye trained to the wear and the turmoil of the forests. It was the outfit of a man who had gone unfearing to the rough edge of the world. And now what was left of it was returning with him. To Challoner there was something of human comradeship in these remnants of things that had gone through the greater part of a year's fight with him. The canoe was warped and battered and patched; smoke and storm had blackened his tent until it was the colour of rusty char, and his grub sacks were next to empty.
Over a small fire title contents of a pan and a pot were brewing when he returned with Miki at his heels, and close to the heat was a battered and mended reflector in which a bannock of flour and water was beginning to brown. In one of the pots was coffee, in the other a boiling fish.
Miki sat down on his angular haunches so that the odour of the fish filled his nostrils. This, he had discovered, was the next thing to eating. His eyes, as they followed Challoner's final preparatory movements, were as bright as garnets, and every third or fourth breath he licked his chops, and swallowed hungrily. That, in fact, was why Miki had got his name. He was always hungry, and apparently always empty, no matter how much he ate. Therefore his name, Miki, "The drum."
It was not until they had eaten the fish and the bannock, and Challoner had lighted his pipe, that he spoke what was in his mind.
"To-morrow I'm going after that bear," he said.
Miki, curled up near the dying embers, gave his tail a club-like thump in evidence of 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