ost carefully. For Makoki
had great faith in the forest gods as well as in those of his own
tepee. He would have given the story his own picturesque version, and
would have told it to the little children of his son's children; and
his son's children would have kept it in their memory for their own
children later on.

It was not in the ordained nature of things that a black bear cub and a
Mackenzie hound pup with a dash of Airedale and Spitz in him should
"chum up" together as Neewa and Miki had done. Therefore, he would have
said, the Beneficent Spirit who watched over the affairs of four-legged
beasts must have had an eye on them from the beginning. It was
she--Iskoo Wapoo was a goddess and not a god--who had made Challoner
kill Neewa's mother, the big black bear; and it was she who had induced
him to tie the pup and the cub together on the same piece of rope, so
that when they fell out of the white man's canoe into the rapids they
would not die, but would be company and salvation for each other.
NESWA-PAWUK ("two little brothers") Makoki would have called them; and
had it come to the test he would have cut off a finger before harming
either of them. But Makoki knew nothing of their adventures, and on
this morning when they came down to the feast he was a hundred miles
away, haggling with a white man who wanted a guide. He would never know
that Iskoo Wapoo was at his side that very moment, planning the thing
that was to mean so much in the lives of Neewa and Miki.

Meanwhile Neewa and Miki went at their breakfast as if starved. They
were immensely practical. They did not look back on what had happened,
but for the moment submerged themselves completely in the present. The
few days of thrill and adventure through which they had gone seemed
like a year. Neewa's yearning for his mother had grown less and less
insistent, and Miki's lost master counted for nothing now, as things
were going with him. Last night was the big, vivid thing in their
memories--their fight for life with the monster owls, their flight, the
killing of the young caribou bull by the wolves, and (with Miki) the
short, bitter experience with Maheegun, the renegade she-wolf. His
shoulder burned where she had torn at him with her teeth. But this did
not lessen his appetite. Growling as he ate, he filled himself until he
could hold no more.

Then he sat back on his haunches and looked in the direction Maheegun
had taken.

It was eastward, toward Hudson