Bay, over a great plain that lay between
two ridges that were like forest walls, yellow and gold in the morning
sun. He had never seen the world as it looked to him now. The wolves
had overtaken the caribou on a scarp on the high ground that thrust
itself out like a short fat thumb from the black and owl-infested
forest, and the carcass lay in a meadowy dip that overhung the plain.
From the edge of this dip Miki could look down--and so far away that
the wonder of what he saw dissolved itself at last into the shimmer of
the sun and the blue of the sky. Within his vision lay a paradise of
marvellous promise; wide stretches of soft, green meadow; clumps of
timber, park-like until they merged into the deeper forest that began
with the farther ridge; great patches of bush radiant with the
colouring of June; here and there the gleam of water, and half a mile
away a lake that was like a giant mirror set in a purplish-green frame
of balsam and spruce.

Into these things Maheegun, the she-wolf, had gone. He wondered whether
she would come back. He sniffed the air for her. But there was no
longer the mother-yearning in his heart. Something had already begun to
tell him of the vast difference between the dog and the wolf. For a few
moments, still hopeful that the world held a mother for him, he had
mistaken her for the one he had lost. But he understood now. A little
more and Maheegun's teeth would have snapped his shoulder, or slashed
his throat to the jugular. TEBAH-GONE-GAWIN (the One Great Law) was
impinging itself upon him, the implacable law of the survival of the
fittest. To live was to fight--to kill; to beat everything that had
feet or wings. The earth and the air held menace for him. Nowhere,
since he had lost Challoner, had he found friendship except in the
heart of Neewa, the motherless cub. And he turned toward Neewa now,
growling at a gay-plumaged moose-bird that was hovering about for a
morsel of meat.

A few minutes before, Neewa had weighed a dozen pounds; now he weighed
fourteen or fifteen. His stomach was puffed out like the sides of an
overfilled bag, and he sat humped up in a pool of warm sunshine licking
his chops and vastly contented with himself and the world. Miki rubbed
up to him, and Neewa gave a chummy grunt. Then he rolled over on his
fat back and invited Miki to play. It was the first time; and with a
joyous yelp Miki jumped into him. Scratching and biting and kicking,
and interjecting their friend