The one thing that made Neewa uneasy now was that strange odour he had caught in the air.  Instinctively he seized upon it as a menace—­at least as something that he would rather not smell than smell.  So he turned away with a warning woof to Miki.  When Meshaba peered around the edge of the rock, expecting an easy shot, he caught only a flash of the two as they were disappearing.  He fired quickly.

To Miki and Neewa the report of the rifle and the moaning whirr of the bullet over their backs recalled memories of a host of things, and Neewa settled down to that hump-backed, flat-eared flight of his that kept Miki pegging along at a brisk pace for at least a mile.  Then Neewa stopped, puffing audibly.  Inasmuch as he had had nothing to eat for a third of a year, and was weak from long inactivity, the run came within an ace of putting him out of business.  It was several minutes before he could gather his wind sufficiently to grunt.  Miki, meanwhile, was carefully smelling of him from his rump to his muzzle.  There was apparently nothing missing, for he gave a delighted little yap at the end, and, in spite of his size and the dignity of increased age, he began frisking about Neewa In a manner emphatically expressive of his joy at his comrade’s awakening.

“It’s been a deuce of a lonely winter, Neewa, and I’m tickled to death to see you on your feet again,” his antics said.  “What’ll we do?  Go for a hunt?”

This seemed to be the thought in Neewa’s mind, for he headed straight up the valley until they came to an open fen where he proceeded to quest about for a dinner of roots and grass; and as he searched he grunted—­grunted in his old, companionable, cubbish way.  And Miki, hunting with him, found that once more the loneliness had gone out of his world.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

To Miki and Neewa, especially Neewa, there seemed nothing extraordinary in the fact that they were together again, and that their comradeship was resumed.  Although during his months of hibernation Neewa’s body had grown, his mind had not changed its memories or its pictures.  It had not passed through a mess of stirring events such as had made the winter a thrilling one for Miki, and so it was Neewa who accepted the new situation most casually.  He went on feeding as if nothing at all unusual had happened during the past four months, and after the edge had gone from his first hunger he fell into his old habit of looking to Miki for leadership.  And Miki fell into the old ways as though only a day or a week and not four months had lapsed in their brotherhood.  It is possible that he tried mightily to tell Neewa what had happened.  At least he must have had that desire—­to let him know in what a strange way he had found his old master, Challoner, and how he had lost him again.  And also how he found the woman, Nanette, and the little baby Nanette, and how for a long time he had lived with them and loved them as he had never loved anything else on earth.