of children. And Miki must have
sensed the change in the furry little black creature who a moment ago
was his enemy. His tail thumped almost frantically, and he swung out
his front paws toward Neewa. Then, a little fearful of what might
happen, he rolled on his side. Still Neewa did not move. Joyously Miki
wriggled.

A moment later, looking through the slit in the canvas, Challoner saw
them cautiously smelling noses.

CHAPTER FOUR

That night came a cold and drizzling rain from out of the north and the
east. In the wet dawn Challoner came out to start a fire, and in a
hollow under a spruce root he found Miki and Neewa cuddled together,
sound asleep.

It was the cub who first saw the man-beast, and for a brief space
before the pup roused himself Neewa's shining eyes were fixed on the
strange enemy who had so utterly changed his world for him. Exhaustion
had made him sleep through the long hours of that first night of
captivity, and in sleep he had forgotten many things. But now it all
came back to him as he cringed deeper into his shelter under the root,
and so softly that only Miki heard him he whimpered for his mother.

It was the whimper that roused Miki. Slowly he untangled himself from
the ball into which he had rolled, stretched his long and overgrown
legs, and yawned so loudly that the sound reached Challoner's ears. The
man turned and saw two pairs of eyes fixed upon him from the sheltered
hollow under the root. The pup's one good ear and the other that was
half gone stood up alertly, as he greeted his master with the boundless
good cheer of an irrepressible comradeship. Challoner's face, wet with
the drizzle of the gray skies and bronzed by the wind and storm of
fourteen months in the northland, lighted up with a responsive grin,
and Miki wriggled forth weaving and twisting himself into grotesque
contortions expressive of happiness at being thus directly smiled at by
his master.

With all the room under the root left to him Neewa pulled himself back
until only his round head was showing, and from this fortress of
temporary safety his bright little eyes glared forth at his mother's
murderer.

Vividly the tragedy of yesterday was before him again--the warm,
sun-filled creek bottom in which he and Noozak, his mother, were
hunting a breakfast of crawfish when the man-beast came; the crash of
strange thunder, their flight into the timber, and the end of it all
when his mother turned to confront the