On the third day it was sixty degrees below zero in the country between the Shamattawa and Jackson’s Knee.  Not until the fourth day did living things begin to move.  Moose and caribou heaved themselves up out of the thick covering of snow that had been their protection; smaller animals dug their way out of the heart of deep drifts and mounds; a half of the rabbits and birds were dead.  But the most terrible toll was of men.  Many of those who were caught out succeeded in keeping the life within their bodies, and dragged themselves back to teepee and shack.  But there were also many who did not return—­five hundred who died between Hudson Bay and the Athabasca in those three terrible days of the KUSKETA PIPPOON.

In the beginning of the Big Storm Miki found himself in the “burnt” country of Jackson’s Knee, and instinct sent him quickly into deeper timber.  Here he crawled into a windfall of tangled trunks and tree-tops, and during the three days he did not move.  Buried in the heart of the storm, there came upon him an overwhelming desire to return to Neewa’s den, and to snuggle up to him once more, even though Neewa lay as if dead.  The strange comradeship that had grown up between the two—­their wanderings together all through the summer, the joys and hardships of the days and months in which they had fought and feasted like brothers—­were memories as vivid in his brain as if it had all happened yesterday.  And in the dark wind-fall, buried deeper and deeper under the snow, he dreamed.

He dreamed of Challoner, who had been his master in the days of his joyous puppyhood; he dreamed of the time when Neewa, the motherless cub, was brought into camp, and of the happenings that had come to them afterward; the loss of his master, of their strange and thrilling adventures in the wilderness, and last of all of Neewa’s denning-up.  He could not understand that.  Awake, and listening to the storm, he wondered why it was that Neewa no longer hunted with him, but had curled himself up into a round ball, and slept a sleep from which he could not rouse him.  Through the long hours of the three days and nights of storm it was loneliness more than hunger that ate at his vitals.  When on the morning of the fourth day he came out from under the windfall his ribs were showing and there was a reddish film over his eyes.  First of all he looked south and east, and whined.

Through twenty miles of snow he travelled back that day to the ridge where he had left Neewa.  On this fourth day the sun shone like a dazzling fire.  It was so bright that the glare of the snow pricked his eyes, and the reddish film grew redder.  There was only a cold glow in the west when he came to the end of his journey.  Dusk had already begun to settle over the roofs of the forests when he reached the ridge where Neewa had found the cavern.  It was no longer a ridge.  The wind had piled the snow up over it in grotesque and monstrous shapes.  Rocks and bushes were obliterated.  Where the