oted, biggest-shouldered,
most powerful dog in the northland--with the blood of a Spitz and an
Airedale and something is bound to come of it. While the Mackenzie dog,
with his ox-like strength, is peaceable and good-humoured in all sorts
of weather, there is a good deal of the devil in the northern Spitz and
Airedale and it is a question which likes a fight the best. And all at
once good-humoured little Miki felt the devil rising in him. This time
he did not yap for mercy. He met Neewa's jaws, and in two seconds they
were staging a first-class fight on the bit of precarious footing in
the prow of the canoe.

Vainly Challoner yelled at them as he paddled desperately to beat out
the danger of the rapids. Neewa and Miki were too absorbed to hear him.
Miki's four paws were paddling the air again, but this time his sharp
teeth were firmly fixed in the loose hide under Neewa's neck, and with
his paws he continued to kick and bat in a way that promised
effectively to pummel the wind out of Neewa had not the thing happened
which Challoner feared. Still in a clinch they rolled off the prow of
the canoe into the swirling current of the stream.

For ten seconds or so they utterly disappeared. Then they bobbed up, a
good fifty feet below him, their heads close together as they sped
swiftly toward the doom that awaited them, and a choking cry broke from
Challoner's lips. He was powerless to save them, and in his cry was the
anguish of real grief. For many weeks Miki had been his only chum and
comrade.

Held together by the yard-long rope to which they were fastened, Miki
and Neewa swept into the frothing turmoil of the rapids. For Miki it
was the kindness of fate that had inspired his master to fasten him to
the same rope with Neewa. Miki, at three months of age--weight,
fourteen pounds--was about 80 per cent. bone and only a half of 1 per
cent. fat; while Neewa, weight thirteen pounds, was about 90 per cent.
fat. Therefore Miki had the floating capacity of a small anchor, while
Neewa was a first-class life-preserver, and almost unsinkable.

In neither of the youngsters was there a yellow streak. Both were of
fighting stock, and, though Miki was under water most of the time
during their first hundred-yard dash through the rapids, never for an
instant did he give up the struggle to keep his nose in the air.
Sometimes he was on his back and sometimes on his belly; but no matter
what his position, he kept his four overgrown paws go