Nomads of the North: A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars

by James Oliver Curwood

"Hello, Miki!"

"Hello, Neewa!"

And then Neewa lay down in the sun and Miki sprawled himself out beside him. After all, it was a funny world. It went to pieces now and then, but it always came together again. And to-day their world had thoroughly adjusted itself. Once more they were chums—and they were happy.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It was the Flying-Up Moon—deep and slumbering midsummer—in all the land of Keewatin. From Hudson Bay to the Athabasca and from the Hight of Land to the edge of the Great Barrens, forest, plain, and swamp lay in peace and forgetfulness under the sun-glowing days and the star-filled nights of the August MUKOO-SAWIN. It was the breeding moon, the growing moon, the moon when all wild life came into its own once more. For the trails of this wilderness world—so vast that it reached a thousand miles east and west and as far north and south—were empty of human life. At the Hudson Bay Company's posts—scattered here and there over the illimitable domain of fang and claw—had gathered the thousands of hunters and trappers, with their wives and children, to sleep and gossip and play through the few weeks of warmth and plenty until the strife and tragedy of another winter began. For these people of the forests it was MUKOO-SAWIN—the great Play Day of the year; the weeks in which they ran up new debts and established new credits at the Posts; the weeks in which they foregathered at every Post as at a great fair—playing, and making love, and marrying, and fattening up for the many days of hunger and gloom to come.

It was because of this that the wild things had come fully into the possession of their world for a space. There was no longer the scent of man in all the wilderness. They were not hunted. There were no traps laid for their feet, no poison-baits placed temptingly where they might pass. In the fens and on the lakes the wildfowl squawked and honked unfearing to their young, just learning the power of wing; the lynx played with her kittens without sniffing the air for the menace of man; the cow moose went openly into the cool water of the lakes with their calves; the wolverine and the marten ran playfully over the roofs of deserted shacks and cabins; the beaver and the otter tumbled and frolicked in their dark pools; the birds sang, and through all the wilderness there was the drone and song of Nature as some Great Power must at first have meant that Nature should be. A new generation of wild things had been born. It was a season of Youth, with tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of little children of the wild playing their first play, learning their first lessons, growing up swiftly to face the menace and doom of their first winter. And the Beneficent Spirit of the forests, anticipating what was to come, had prepared well for them. Everywhere there was plenty. The blueberries, the blackberries, the mountain-ash and the saskatoons were ripe; tree and vine were bent low with their burden of fruit. The grass was green and tender from the summer rains. Bulbous roots were fairly popping out of the earth; the fens and the edges of the lakes were rich with things to eat, overhead and underfoot the horn of plenty was emptying itself without stint.

In this world Neewa and Miki found a vast and unending contentment. They lay, on this August afternoon, on a sun-bathed shelf of rock that overlooked a wonderful valley. Neewa, stuffed with luscious blueberries, was asleep. Miki's eyes were only partly closed as he looked down into the soft haze of the valley. Up to him came the rippling music of the stream running between the rocks and over the pebbly bars below, and with it the soft and languorous drone of the valley itself. He napped uneasily for half an hour, and then his eyes opened and he was wide awake. He took a sharp look over the valley. Then he looked at Neewa, who, fat and lazy, would have slept until dark. It was always Miki who kept him on the move. And now Miki barked at him gruffly two or three times, and nipped at one of his ears.

"Wake up!" he might have said. "What's the sense of sleeping on a day like this? Let's go down along the creek and hunt something."

Neewa roused himself, stretched his fat body, and yawned. Sleepily his little eyes took in the valley. Miki got up and gave the low and anxious whine which always told his companion that he wanted to be on the move. Neewa responded, and they began making their way down the green slope into the rich bottom between the two ridges.