In all his life Challoner had never experienced a livelier five minutes than the five that followed.  Above Neewa’s grief and his fear there rose the savage fighting blood of old Soominitik, his father.  He clawed and bit and kicked and snarled.  In those five minutes he was five little devils all rolled into one, and by the time Challoner had the rope fastened about Neewa’s neck, and his fat body chucked into the sack, his hands were scratched and lacerated in a score of places.

In the sack Neewa continued to fight until he was exhausted, while Challoner skinned Noozak and cut from her the meat and fats which he wanted.  The beauty of Noozak’s pelt brought a glow into his eyes.  In it he rolled the meat and fats, and with babiche thong bound the whole into a pack around which he belted the dunnage ends of his shoulder straps.  Weighted under the burden of sixty pounds of pelt and meat he picked up his rifle—­and Neewa.  It had been early afternoon when he left.  It was almost sunset when he reached camp.  Every foot of the way, until the last half mile, Neewa fought like a Spartan.

Now he lay limp and almost lifeless in his sack, and when Miki came up to smell suspiciously of his prison he made no movement of protest.  All smells were alike to him now, and of sounds he made no distinction.  Challoner was nearly done for.  Every muscle and bone in his body had its ache.  Yet in his face, sweaty and grimed, was a grin of pride.

“You plucky little devil,” he said, contemplating the limp sack as he loaded his pipe for the first time that afternoon.  “You—­you plucky little devil!”

He tied the end of Neewa’s rope halter to a sapling, and began cautiously to open the grub sack.  Then he rolled Neewa out on the ground, and stepped back.  In that hour Neewa was willing to accept a truce so far as Challoner was concerned.  But it was not Challoner that his half-blinded eyes saw first as he rolled from his bag.  It was Miki!  And Miki, his awkward body wriggling with the excitement of his curiosity, was almost on the point of smelling of him!

Neewa’s little eyes glared.  Was that ill-jointed lop-eared offspring of the man-beast an enemy, too?  Were those twisting convolutions of this new creature’s body and the club-like swing of his tail an invitation to fight?  He judged so.  Anyway, here was something of his size, and like a flash he was at the end of his rope and on the pup.  Miki, a moment before bubbling over with friendship and good cheer, was on his back in an instant, his grotesque legs paddling the air and his yelping cries for help rising in a wild clamour that filled the golden stillness of the evening with an unutterable woe.