CHAPTER EIGHT

Not until he had covered at least a quarter of a mile did Neewa stop.  To Miki it seemed as though they had come suddenly out of day into the gloom of evening.  That part of the forest into which Neewa’s flight had led them was like a vast, mysterious cavern.  Even Challoner would have paused there, awed by the grandeur of its silence, held spellbound by the enigmatical whispers that made up its only sound.  The sun was still high in the heavens, but not a ray of it penetrated the dense green canopy of spruce and balsam that hung like a wall over the heads of Miki and Neewa.  About them was no bush, no undergrowth; under their feet was not a flower or a spear of grass.  Nothing but a thick, soft carpet of velvety brown needles under which all life was smothered.  It was as if the forest nymphs had made of this their bedchamber, sheltered through all the seasons of the year from wind and rain and snow; or else that the were-wolf people—­the loup-garou—­had chosen it as their hiding-place and from its weird and gloomy fastnesses went forth on their ghostly missions among the sons of men.

Not a bird twittered in the trees.  There was no flutter of life in their crowded branches.  Everything was so still that Miki heard the excited throbbing of life in his own body.  He looked at Neewa, and in the gloom the cub’s eyes were glistening with a strange fire.  Neither of them was afraid, yet in that cavernous silence their comradeship was born anew, and in it there was something now that crept down into their wild little souls and filled the emptiness that was left by the death of Neewa’s mother and the loss of Miki’s master.  The pup whined gently, and in his throat Neewa made a purring sound and followed it with a squeaky grunt that was like the grunt of a little pig.  They edged nearer, and stood shoulder to shoulder facing their world.  They went on after a little, like two children exploring the mystery of an old and abandoned house.  They were not hunting, yet every hunting instinct in their bodies was awake, and they stopped frequently to peer about them, and listen, and scent the air.

To Neewa it all brought back a memory of the black cavern in which he was born.  Would Noozak, his mother, come up presently out of one of those dark forest aisles?  Was she sleeping here, as she had slept in the darkness of their den?  The questions may have come vaguely in his mind.  For it was like the cavern, in that it was deathly still; and a short distance away its gloom thickened into black pits.  Such a place the Indians called MUHNEDOO—­a spot in the forest blasted of all life by the presence of devils; for only devils would grow trees so thick that sunlight never penetrated.  And only owls held the companionship of the evil spirits.