He rushed out from the rocks with his lips drawn back, just as he had rushed a dozen or more times before.  There was a mighty roar of wings.  The air was darkened by them, and the ravenish screaming that followed could have been heard a mile away.  This time Kakakew and his mighty crew did not fly back to the forest.  Their number gave them courage.  The taste of Ahtik’s flesh and the flavour of it in their nostrils intoxicated them, to the point of madness, with desire.  Neewa was dazed.  Over him, behind him, on all sides of him they swept and circled, croaking and screaming at him, the boldest of them swooping down to beat at him with their wings.  Thicker grew the menacing cloud, and then suddenly it descended like an avalanche.  It covered Ahtik again.  In it Neewa was fairly smothered.  He felt himself buried under a mass of wings and bodies, and he began fighting, as he had fought the owls.  A score of pincer-like black beaks fought to get at his hair and hide; others stabbed at his eyes; he felt his ears being pulled from his head, and the end of his nose was a bloody cushion within a dozen seconds.  The breath was beaten out of him; he was blinded, and dazed, and every square inch of him was aquiver with its own excruciating pain.  He forgot Ahtik.  The one thing in the world he wanted most was a large open space in which to run.

Putting all his strength into the effort he struggled to his feet and charged through the mass of living things about him.  At this sign of defeat many of the crows left him to join in the feast.  By the time he was half way to the cover into which Maheegun had gone all but one had left him.  That one may have been Kakakew himself.  He had fastened himself like a rat-trap to Neewa’s stubby tail, and there he hung on like grim death while Neewa ran.  He kept his hold until his victim was well into the cover.  Then he flopped himself into the air and rejoined his brethren at the putrified carcass of the bull.

If ever Neewa had wanted Miki he wanted him now.  Again his entire viewpoint of the world was changed.  He was stabbed in a hundred places.  He burned as if afire.  Even the bottoms of his feet hurt him when he stepped on them, and for half an hour he hid himself under a bush, licking his wounds and sniffing the air for Miki.

Then he went down the slope into the creek bottom, and hurried to the foot of the trail he had made to and from the dip.  Vainly he quested about him for his comrade.  He grunted and squealed, and tried to catch the scent of him in the air.  He ran up the creek a distance, and back again.  Ahtik counted as nothing now.

Miki was gone.

CHAPTER TEN

A quarter of a mile away Miki had heard the clamour of the crows.  But he was in no humour to turn back, even had he guessed that Neewa was in need of his help.  He was hungry from long fasting and, for the present, his disposition had taken a decided turn.  He was in a mood to tackle anything in the eating line, no matter how big, but he was a good mile from the dip in the side of the ridge before he found even a crawfish.  He crunched this down, shell and all.  It helped to take the bad taste out of his mouth.