He saw nothing more of Durant and Grouse Piet, and accepted MacDonnell’s explanation that they had undoubtedly left the Post shortly after their assault upon him in the cabin.  No doubt their disappearance had been hastened by the fact that a patrol of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police on its way to York Factory was expected at Fort O’ God that day.

Not until the final moment of departure was Miki brought from the cabin and tied to the gee-bar of Challoner’s sledge.  When he saw the five dogs squatted on their haunches he grew rigid and the old snarl rose in his throat.  Under Challoner’s quieting words he quickly came to understand that these beasts were not enemies, and from a rather suspicious toleration of them he very soon began to take a new sort of interest in them.  It was a friendly team, bred in the south and without the wolf strain.

Events had come to pass so swiftly and so vividly in Miki’s life during the past twenty-four hours that for many miles after they left Fort O’ God his senses were in an unsettled state of anticipation.  His brain was filled with a jumble of strange and thrilling pictures.  Very far away, and almost indistinct, were the pictures of things that had happened before he was made a prisoner by Jacques Le Beau.  Even the memory of Neewa was fading under the thrill of events at Nanette’s cabin and at Fort O’ God.  The pictures that blazed their way across his brain now were of men, and dogs, and many other things that he had never seen before.  His world had suddenly transformed itself into a host of Henri Durants and Grouse Piets and Jacques Le Beaus, two-legged beasts who had clubbed him, and half killed him, and who had made him fight to keep the life in his body.  He had tasted their blood in his vengeance.  And he watched for them now.  The pictures told him they were everywhere.  He could imagine them as countless as the wolves, and as he had seen them crowded round the big cage in which he had slain the wolf-dog.

In all of this excited and distorted world there was only one Challoner, and one Nanette, and one baby.  All else was a chaos of uncertainty and of dark menace.  Twice when the Indian came up close behind them Miki whirled about with a savage snarl.  Challoner watched him, and understood.

Of the pictures in his brain one stood out above all others, definite and unclouded, and that was the picture of Nanette.  Yes, even above Challoner himself.  There lived in him the consciousness of her gentle hands; her sweet, soft voice; the perfume of her hair and clothes and body—­the woman of her; and a part of the woman—­as the hand is a part of the body—­was the baby.  It was this part of Miki that Challoner could not understand, and which puzzled him when they made camp that night.  He sat for a long time beside the fire trying to bring back the old comradeship of the days of Miki’s puppyhood.  But he only partly succeeded.  Miki was restive.  Every nerve in his body seemed on edge.  Again and again he faced the west, and always when he sniffed the air in that direction there came a low whine in his throat.