his vision.  In all his eighty years and odd he had never known a wolf to be thus friendly with a bear.  Nature had made them enemies.  Nature had fore-doomed their hatred to be the deepest hatred of the forests.  Therefore, for a space, Meshaba doubted his eyes.  But in another moment he saw that the miracle had truly come to pass.  For the wolf turned broadside to him and it was a wolf!  A huge, big-boned beast that stood as high at the shoulders as Wakayoo, the bear; a great beast, with a great head, and—­

It was then that Meshaba’s heart gave another thump, for the tail of a wolf is big and bushy in the springtime, and the tail of this beast was as bare of hair as a beaver’s tail!

“Ohne moosh!” gasped Meshaba, under his breath—­“a dog!”

He seemed to draw slowly into himself, slinking backward.  His rifle stood just out of reach on the other side of the rock.

At the other end of that eighty or ninety yards Neewa and Miki stood blinking in the bright sunlight, with the mouth of the cavern in which Neewa had slept so many months just behind them.  Miki was puzzled.  Again it seemed to him that it was only yesterday, and not months ago, that he had left Neewa in that den, sleeping his lazy head off.  And now that he had returned to him after his own hard winter in the forests he was astonished to find Neewa so big.  For Neewa had grown steadily through his four months’ nap and he was half again as big as when he went to sleep.  Could Miki have spoken Cree, and had Meshaba given him the opportunity, he might have explained the situation.

“You see, Mr. Indian”—­he might have said—­“this dub of a bear and I have been pals from just about the time we were born.  A man named Challoner tied us together first when Neewa, there, was just about as big as your head, and we did a lot of scrapping before we got properly acquainted.  Then we got lost, and after that we hitched up like brothers; and we had a lot of fun and excitement all through last summer, until at last, when the cold weather came, Neewa hunted up this hole in the ground and the lazy cuss went to sleep for all winter.  I won’t mention what happened to me during the winter.  It was a-plenty.  So this spring I had a hunch it was about time for Neewa to get the cobwebs out of his fool head, and came back.  And—­here we are!  But tell me this:  What makes Neewa so big?”

It was at least that thought—­the bigness of Neewa—­that was filling Miki’s head at the present moment.  And Meshaba, in place of listening to an explanation, was reaching for his rifle—­while Neewa, with his brown muzzle sniffing the wind, was gathering in a strange smell.  Of the three, Neewa saw nothing to be wondered at in the situation itself.  When he had gone to sleep four and a half months ago Miki was at his side; and to-day, when he awoke, Miki was still at his side.  The four and a half months meant nothing to him.  Many times he and Miki had gone to sleep, and had awakened together.  For all the knowledge he had of time it might have been only last night that he had fallen asleep.