A little later they came to a small open space where the ground was wet, and after sniffing about a bit, and focussing his one good eye here and there, Neewa suddenly began digging.  Very shortly he drew out of the ground a white object about the size of a man’s thumb and began to crunch it ravenously between his jaws.  Miki succeeded in capturing a fair sized bit of it.  Disappointment followed fast.  The thing was like wood; after rolling it in his mouth a few times he dropped it in disgust, and Neewa finished the remnant of the root with a thankful grunt.

They proceeded.  For two heartbreaking hours Miki followed at Neewa’s heels, the void in his stomach increasing as the swelling in his body diminished.  His hunger was becoming a torture.  Yet not a bit to eat could he find, while Neewa at every few steps apparently discovered something to devour.  At the end of the two hours the cub’s bill of fare had grown to considerable proportions.  It included, among other things, half a dozen green and black beetles; numberless bugs, both hard and soft; whole colonies of red and black ants; several white grubs dug out of the heart of decaying logs; a handful of snails; a young frog; the egg of a ground-plover that had failed to hatch; and, in the vegetable line, the roots of two camas and one skunk cabbage.  Now and then he pulled down tender poplar shoots and nipped the ends off.  Likewise he nibbled spruce and balsam gum whenever he found it, and occasionally added to his breakfast a bit of tender grass.

A number of these things Miki tried.  He would have eaten the frog, but Neewa was ahead of him there.  The spruce and balsam gum clogged up his teeth and almost made him vomit because of its bitterness.  Between a snail and a stone he could find little difference, and as the one bug he tried happened to be that asafoetida-like creature known as a stink-bug he made no further efforts in that direction.  He also bit off a tender tip from a ground-shoot, but instead of a young poplar it was Fox-bite, and shrivelled up his tongue for a quarter of an hour.  At last he arrived at the conclusion that, up to date, the one thing in Neewa’s menu that he could eat was grass.

In the face of his own starvation his companion grew happier as he added to the strange collection in his stomach.  In fact, Neewa considered himself in clover and was grunting his satisfaction continually, especially as his bad eye was beginning to open and he could see things better.  Half a dozen times when he found fresh ant nests he invited Miki to the feast with excited little squeals.  Until noon Miki followed like a faithful satellite at his heels.  The end came when Neewa deliberately dug into a nest inhabited by four huge bumble-bees, smashed them all, and ate them.

From that moment something impressed upon Miki that he must do his own hunting.  With the thought came a new thrill.  His eyes were fairly open now, and much of the stiffness had gone from his legs.  The blood of his Mackenzie father and of his half Spitz and half Airedale mother rose up in him in swift and immediate demand, and he began to quest about for himself.  He found a warm scent, and poked about until a partridge went up with a tremendous thunder of wings.  It startled him, but added to the thrill.  A few minutes later, nosing under a pile of brush, he came face to face with his dinner.