He responded to the call.  It was in the nature of things that no power less than physical force could hold him back.  And yet he did not travel as he had travelled from Challoner’s camp to the cabin of Nanette and the baby.  There had been a definite object there, something to achieve, something to spur him on to an immediate fulfilment.  Now the thing that drew him, at first, was an overpowering impulse, not a reality.  For two or three days his trail westward was wandering and indefinite.  Then it straightened out, and early in the morning of the fifth day he came from a deep forest into a plain, and across that plain he saw the ridge.  For a long time he gazed over the level space before he went on.

In his brain the pictures of Neewa were becoming clearer and clearer.  After all, it seemed only yesterday or the day before that he had gone away from that ridge.  Then it was smothered in snow, and a gray, terrible gloom had settled upon the earth.  Now there was but little snow, and the sun was shining, and the sky was blue again.  He went on, and sniffed along the foot of the ridge; he had not forgotten the way.  He was not excited, because time had ceased to have definite import for him.  Yesterday he had come down from that ridge, and to-day he was going back.  He went straight to the mouth of Neewa’s den, which was uncovered now, and thrust in his head and shoulders, and sniffed.  Ah! but that lazy rascal of a bear was a sleepy-head!  He was still sleeping.  Miki could smell him.  Listening hard, he could hear him.

He climbed over the low drift of snow that had packed itself in the neck of the cavern and entered confidently into the darkness.  He heard a soft, sleepy grunt and a great sigh.  He almost stumbled over Neewa, who had changed his bed.  Again Neewa grunted, and Miki whined.  He ran his muzzle into Neewa’s fresh, new coat of spring fur and smelled his way to Neewa’s ear.  After all, it was only yesterday!  And he remembered everything now!  So he gave Neewa’s ear a sudden sharp nip with his teeth, and then he barked in that low, throaty way that Neewa had always understood.

“Wake up, Neewa,” it all said.  “Wake up!  The snow is gone, and it’s fine out to-day.  Wake up!”

And Neewa, stretching himself, gave a great yawn.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Meshaba, the old Cree, sat on the sunny side of a rock on the sunny side of a slope that looked up and down the valley.  Meshaba —­who many, many years ago had been called The Giant—­was very old.  He was so old that even the Factor’s books over at Fort O’ God had no record of his birth; nor the “post logs” at Albany House, or Cumberland House, or Norway House, or Fort Churchill.  Perhaps farther north, at Lac La Biche, at Old Fort Resolution, or at Fort McPherson some trace of him might have been found.  His skin was crinkled and weather-worn, like dry buckskin, and over his brown, thin face his hair fell to his shoulders, snow-white.  His hands were thin, even his nose was thin with the thinness of age.  But his eyes were still like dark garnets, and down through the greater part of a century their vision had come undimmed.