which he could neither
analyze nor quite understand. Neewa accepted the situation
good-naturedly for a time. Then he lost patience and surrendered
himself to a grouch for three whole days during which he wandered at
his own sweet will. To preserve the alliance Miki was compelled to
follow him. Berry time--early July--found them sixty miles north and
west of the cabin, in the edge of the country where Neewa was born.

But there were few berries that summer of bebe nak um geda (the summer
of drought and fire). As early as the middle of July a thin, gray film
began to hover in palpitating waves over the forests. For three weeks
there had been no rain. Even the nights were hot and dry. Each day the
factors at their posts looked out with anxious eyes over their domains,
and by the first of August every post had a score of halfbreeds and
Indians patrolling the trails on the watch for fire. In their cabins
and teepees the forest dwellers who had not gone to pass the summer at
the posts waited and watched; each morning and noon and night they
climbed tall trees and peered through that palpitating gray film for a
sign of smoke. For weeks the wind came steadily from the south and
west, parched as though swept over the burning sands of a desert.
Berries dried up on the bushes; the fruit of the mountain ash shriveled
on its stems; creeks ran dry; swamps turned into baked peat, and the
poplar leaves hung wilted and lifeless, too limp to rustle in the
breeze. Only once or twice in a lifetime does the forest dweller see
poplar leaves curl up and die like that, baked to death in the summer
sun. It is Kiskewahoon (the Danger Signal). Not only the warning of
possible death in a holocaust of fire, but the omen of poor hunting and
trapping in the winter to come.

Miki and Neewa were in a swamp country when the fifth of August came.
In the lowland it was sweltering. Neewa's tongue hung from his mouth,
and Miki was panting as they made their way along a black and sluggish
stream that was like a great ditch and as dead as the day itself. There
was no visible sun, but a red and lurid glow filled the sky--the sun
struggling to fight its way through the smothering film that had grown
thicker over the earth. Because they were in a "pocket"--a sweep of
tangled country lower than the surrounding country--Neewa and Miki were
not caught in this blackening cloud. Five miles away they might have
heard the thunder of cloven hoofs and the crash of heavy