It was another and a more potent thing than an ordinary quarrel that placed the first great barrier between them.  Now it happened that Miki was of the breed which preferred its meat fresh, while Neewa liked his “well hung.”  And from the fourth day onward, what was left of Ahtik’s carcass was ripening.  On the fifth day Miki found the flesh difficult to eat; on the sixth, impossible.  To Neewa it became increasingly delectable as the flavour grew and the perfume thickened.  On the sixth day, in sheer delight, he rolled in it.  That night, for the first time, Miki could not sleep with him.

The seventh day brought the climax.  Ahtik now fairly smelled to heaven.  The odour of him drifted up and away on the soft June wind until all the crows in the country were gathering.  It drove Miki, slinking like a whipped cur, down into the creek bottom.  When Neewa came down for a drink after his morning feast Miki sniffed him over for a moment and then slunk away from him again.  As a matter of fact, there was small difference between Ahtik and Neewa now, except that one lay still and the other moved.  Both smelled dead; both were decidedly “well hung.”  Even the crows circled over Neewa, wondering why it was that he walked about like a living thing.

That night Miki slept alone under a clump of bush in the creek bottom.  He was hungry and lonely, and for the first time in many days he felt the bigness and emptiness of the world.  He wanted Neewa.  He whined for him in the starry silence of the long hours between sunset and dawn.  The sun was well up before Neewa came down the hill.  He had finished his breakfast and his morning roll, and he was worse than ever.  Again Miki tried to coax him away but Neewa was disgustingly fixed in his determination to remain in his present glory.  And this morning he was more than usually anxious to return to the dip.  All of yesterday he had found it necessary to frighten the crows away from his meat, and to-day they were doubly persistent in their efforts to rob him.  With a grunt and a squeal to Miki he hustled back up the hill after he had taken his drink.

His trail entered the dip through the pile of rocks from which Miki and he had watched the battle between Maheegun and the two owls, and as a matter of caution he always paused for a few moments among these rocks to make sure that all was well in the open.  This morning he received a decided shock.  Ahtik’s carcass was literally black with crows.  Kakakew and his Ethiopic horde of scavengers had descended in a cloud, and they were tearing and fighting and beating their wings about Ahtik as if all of them had gone mad.  Another cloud was hovering in air; every bush and near-by sapling was bending under the weight of them, and in the sun their jet-black plumage glistened as if they had just come out of the bath of a tinker’s pot.  Neewa stood astounded.  He was not frightened; he had driven the cowardly robbers away many times.  But never had there been so many of them.  He could see no trace of his meat.  Even the ground about it was black.