CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

It was late the night of the big feast at Post Fort O’ God that MacDonnell, the factor, sent for Challoner.  Challoner was preparing for bed when an Indian boy pounded on the door of his shack and a moment later gave him the message.  He looked at his watch.  It was eleven o’clock.  What could the Factor want of him at that hour, he wondered?  Flat on his belly near the warm box stove Miki watched his new-found master speculatively as he pulled on his boots.  His eyes were wide open now.  Challoner had washed from him the blood of the terrific fight of that afternoon.

“Something to do with that devil of a Durant,” growled Challoner, looking at the battle-scarred dog.  “Well, if he hopes to get you again, Miki, he’s barking up the wrong tree.  You’re mine!”

Miki thumped his hard tail on the floor and wriggled toward his master in mute adoration.  Together they went out into the night.

It was a night of white moonlight and a multitude of stars.  The four great fires over which the caribou had roasted for the savage barbecue that day were still burning brightly.  In the edge of the forest that ringed in the Post were the smouldering embers of a score of smaller fires.  Back of these fires were faintly outlined the gray shadows of teepees and tents.  In these shelters the three hundred halfbreeds and Indians who had come in from the forest trails to the New Year carnival at the Post were sleeping.  Only here and there was there a movement of life.  Even the dogs were quiet after the earlier hours of excitement and gluttony.

Past the big fires, with their huge spits still standing, Challoner passed toward the Factor’s quarters.  Miki sniffed at the freshly picked bones.  Beyond these bones there was no sign of the two thousand pounds of flesh that had roasted that day on the spits.  Men, women, children, and dogs had stuffed themselves until there was nothing left.  It was the silence of Mutai—­the “belly god”—­the god who eats himself to sleep each night—­that hovered strangely over this Post of Fort O’ God, three hundred miles from civilization.

There was a light in the Factor’s room, and Challoner entered with Miki at his heels.  MacDonnell, the Scotchman, was puffing moodily on his pipe.  There was a worried look in his ruddy face as the younger man seated himself, and his eyes were on Miki.

“Durant has been here,” he said.  “He’s ugly.  I’m afraid of trouble.  If you hadn’t struck him—­”

Challoner shrugged his shoulders as he filled his own pipe from the Factor’s tobacco.

“You see—­you don’t just understand the situation at Fort 0’ God,” went on MacDonnell.  “There’s been a big dog fight here at New Year for the last fifty years.  It’s become a part of history, a part of Fort O’ God itself, and that’s why in my own fifteen years here I haven’t tried to stop it.  I believe it would bring on a sort of—­ revolution.  I’d wager a half of my people would go to another post with their furs.  That’s why all the sympathy seems to be with Durant.  Even Grouse Piet, his rival, tells him he’s a fool to let you get away with him that way.  Durant says that dog is his.”