utter necessity made it unavoidable.  In fact, unlike most bears, he loved a fight.  If there were a stronger term at hand it might be applied to Miki, the true son of Hela.  Youthful as they were, they were already covered with scars that would have made a veteran proud.  Crows and owls, wolf-fang and fisher-claw had all left their marks, and on Miki’s side was a bare space eight inches long left as a souvenir by a wolverine.

In Neewa’s funny round head there had grown, during the course of events, an ambition to have it out some day with a citizen of his own kind; but the two opportunities that had come his way were spoiled by the fact that the other cubs’ mothers were with them.  So now, when Miki led off on his trips of adventure, Neewa always followed with another thrill than that of getting something to eat, which so long had been his one ambition.  Which is not to say that Neewa had lost his appetite.  He could eat more in one day than Miki could eat in three, mainly because Miki was satisfied with two or three meals a day while Neewa preferred one—­a continuous one lasting from dawn until dark.  On the trail he was always eating something.

A quarter of a mile along the foot of the ridge, in a stony coulee down which a tiny rivulet trickled, there grew the finest wild currants in all the Shamattawa country.  Big as cherries, black as ink, and swelling almost to the bursting point with luscious juice, they hung in clusters so thick that Neewa could gather them by the mouthful.  Nothing in all the wilderness is quite so good as one of these dead-ripe black currants, and this coulee wherein they grew so richly Neewa had preempted as his own personal property.  Miki, too, had learned to eat the currants; so to the coulee they went this afternoon, for such currants as these one can eat even when one is already full.  Besides, the coulee was fruitful for Miki in other ways.  There were many young partridges and rabbits in it—­“fool hens” of tender flesh and delicious flavour which he caught quite easily, and any number of gophers and squirrels.

To-day they had scarcely taken their first mouthful of the big juicy currants when an unmistakable sound came to them.  Unmistakable because each recognized instantly what it meant.  It was the tearing down of currant bushes twenty or thirty yards higher up the coulee.  Some robber had invaded their treasure-house, and instantly Miki bared his fangs while Neewa wrinkled up his nose in an ominous snarl.  Soft-footed they advanced toward the sound until they came to the edge of a small open space which was as flat as a table.  In the centre of this space was a clump of currant bushes not more than a yard in girth, and black with fruit; and squatted on his haunches there, gathering the laden bushes in his arms, was a young black bear about four sizes larger than Neewa.