Nomads of the North | Page 4

for at least another month, but
nature seemed deliberately at work in a process of intensive education
preparing him for the mighty and unequal struggle which he would
have to put up a little later. For hours Neewa moaned and wailed, and
Noozak muzzled his bulging little belly with her nose, until finally he
vomited and was better.
After that he slept. When he awoke he was startled by opening his eyes
full into the glare of a great blaze of fire. Yesterday he had seen the sun,
golden and shimmering and far away. But this was the first time he had
seen it come up over the edge of the world on a spring morning in the
Northland. It was as red as blood, and as he stared it rose steadily and
swiftly until the flat side of it rounded out and it was a huge ball of
SOMETHING. At first he thought it was Life--some monstrous
creature sailing up over the forest toward them--and he turned with a
whine of enquiry to his mother. Whatever it was, Noozak was unafraid.
Her big head was turned toward it, and she was blinking her eyes in
solemn comfort. It was then that Neewa began to feel the pleasing
warmth of the red thing, and in spite of his nervousness he began to
purr in the glow of it. From red the sun turned swiftly to gold, and the
whole valley was transformed once more into a warm and pulsating
glory of life.
For two weeks after this first sunrise in Neewa's life Noozak remained
near the ridge and the slough. Then came the day, when Neewa was
eleven weeks old, that she turned her nose toward the distant black
forests and began the summer's peregrination. Neewa's feet had lost
their tenderness, and he weighed a good six pounds. This was pretty
good considering that he had only weighed twelve ounces at birth.
From the day when Noozak set off on her wandering TREK Neewa's
real adventures began. In the dark and mysterious caverns of the forests
there were places where the snow still lay unsoftened by the sun, and
for two days Neewa yearned and whined for the sunlit valley. They
passed the waterfall, where Neewa looked for the first tune on a rushing

torrent of water. Deeper and darker and gloomier grew the forest
Noozak was penetrating. In this forest Neewa received his first lessons
in hunting. Noozak was now well in the "bottoms" between the
Jackson's Knee and Shamattawa waterway divides, a great hunting
ground for bears in the early spring. When awake she was tireless in
her quest for food, and was constantly digging in the earth, or turning
over stones and tearing rotting logs and stumps into pieces. The little
gray wood- mice were her piece de resistance, small as they were, and
it amazed Neewa to see how quick his clumsy old mother could be
when one of these little creatures was revealed. There were times when
Noozak captured a whole family before they could escape. And to these
were added frogs and toads, still partly somnambulent; many ants,
curled up as if dead, in the heart of rotting logs; and occasional
bumble-bees, wasps, and hornets. Now and then Neewa took a nibble at
these things. On the third day Noozak uncovered a solid mass of
hibernating vinegar ants as large as a man's two fists, and frozen solid.
Neewa ate a quantity of these, and the sweet, vinegary flavour of them
was delicious to his palate.
As the days progressed, and living things began to crawl out from
under logs and rocks, Neewa discovered the thrill and excitement of
hunting on his own account. He encountered a second beetle, and killed
it. He killed his first wood-mouse. Swiftly there were developing in
him the instincts of Soominitik, his scrap-loving old father, who lived
three or four valleys to the north of their own, and who never missed an
opportunity to get into a fight. At four months of age, which was late in
May, Neewa was eating many things that would have killed most cubs
of his age, and there wasn't a yellow streak in him from the tip of his
saucy little nose to the end of his stubby tail. He weighed nine pounds
at this date and was as black as a tar-baby.
It was early in June that the exciting event occurred which brought
about the beginning of the big change in Neewa's life, and it was on a
day so warm and mellow with sunshine that Noozak started in right
after dinner to take her afternoon nap. They were out of the lower
timber country now, and were in a valley through which a shallow
stream wriggled and twisted around white