depths of the timber. At last he decided
to set up a vigorous protest, and in line with this decision he braced
himself so suddenly that Neewa, coming to the end of the rope, flopped
over on his back with an astonished grunt. Seizing his advantage Miki
turned, and tugging with the horse-like energy of his Mackenzie father
he started back toward the river, dragging Neewa after him for a space
of ten or fifteen feet before the cub succeeded in regaining his feet.

Then the battle began. With their bottoms braced and their forefeet
digging into the soft earth, they pulled on the rope in opposite
directions until their necks stretched and their eyes began to pop.
Neewa's pull was steady and unexcited, while Miki, dog-like, yanked and
convulsed himself in sudden backward jerks that made Neewa give way an
inch at a time. It was, after all, only a question as to which
possessed the most enduring neck. Under Neewa's fat there was as yet
little real physical strength. Miki had him handicapped there. Under
the pup's loose hide and his overgrown bones there was a lot of pull,
and after bracing himself heroically for another dozen feet Neewa gave
up the contest and followed in the direction chosen by Miki.

While the instincts of Neewa's breed would have taken him back to the
river as straight as a die, Miki's intentions were better than was his
sense of orientation. Neewa followed in a sweeter temper when he found
that his companion was making an unreasonable circle which was taking
them a little more slowly, but just as surely, away from the
danger-ridden stream. At the end of another quarter of an hour Miki was
utterly lost; he sat down on his rump, looked at Neewa, and confessed
as much--with a low whine. Neewa did not move. His sharp little eyes
were fixed suddenly on an object that hung to a low bush half a dozen
paces from them. Before the man-beast's appearance the cub had spent
three quarters of his time in eating, but since yesterday morning he
had not swallowed so much as a bug. He was completely empty, and the
object he saw hanging to the bush set every salivary gland in his mouth
working. It was a wasp's nest. Many times in his young life he had seen
Noozak, his mother, go up to nests like that, tear them down, crush
them under her big paw, and then invite him to the feast of dead wasps
within. For at least a month wasps had been included in his daily fare,
and they were as good as anything he knew of. He approached th