Nomads of the North | Page 6

James Oliver Curwood
in what
to Neewa was an exciting and glorious mix-up.
He had stopped, and his eyes bulged out like shining little onions as he
took in the scene of battle. He had longed for a fight but what he saw
now fairly paralyzed him. The two bears were at it, roaring and tearing
each other's hides and throwing up showers of gravel and earth in their

deadly clinch. In this first round Noozak had the best of it. She had
butted the wind out of Makoos in her first dynamic assault, and now
with her dulled and broken teeth at his throat she was lashing him with
her sharp hind claws until the blood streamed from the old barbarian's
sides and he bellowed like a choking bull. Neewa knew that it was his
pursuer who was getting the worst of it, and with a squeaky cry for his
mother to lambast the very devil out of Makoos he ran back to the edge
of the arena, his nose crinkled and his teeth gleaming in a ferocious
snarl. He danced about excitedly a dozen feet from the fighters,
Soominitik's blood filling him with a yearning for the fray and yet he
was afraid.
Then something happened that suddenly and totally upset the
maddening joy of his mother's triumph. Makoos, being a he-bear, was
of necessity skilled in fighting, and all at once he freed himself from
Noozak's jaws, wallowed her under him, and in turn began ripping the
hide off old Noozak's carcass in such quantities that she let out an
agonized bawling that turned Neewa's little heart into stone.
It is a matter of most exciting conjecture what a small boy will do when
he sees his father getting licked. If there is an axe handy he is liable to
use it. The most cataclysmic catastrophe that cam come into his is to
have a father whom some other boy's father has given a walloping.
Next to being President of the United States the average small boy
treasures the desire to possess a parent who can whip any other
two-legged creature that wears trousers. And there were a lot of human
things about Neewa. The louder his mother bawled the more distinctly
he felt the shock of his world falling about him. If Noozak had lost a
part of her strength in her old age her voice, at least, was still
unimpaired, and such a spasm of outcry as she emitted could have been
heard at least half a mile away.
Neewa could stand no more. Blind with rage, he darted in. It was
chance that closed his vicious little jaws on a toe that belonged to
Makoos, and his teeth sank into the flesh like two rows of ivory needles.
Makoos gave a tug, but Neewa held on, and bit deeper. Then Makoos
drew up his leg and sent it out like a catapault, and in spite of his

determination to hang on Neewa found himself sailing wildly through
the air. He landed against a rock twenty feet from the fighters with a
force that knocked the wind out of him, and for a matter of eight or ten
seconds after that he wobbled dizzily in his efforts to stand up. Then his
vision and his senses returned and he gazed on a scene that brought all
the blood pounding back into his body again.
Makoos was no longer fighting, but was RUNNING AWAY--and there
was a decided limp in his gait!
Poor old Noozak was standing on her feet, facing the retreating enemy.
She was panting like a winded calf. Her jaws were agape. Her tongue
lolled out, and blood was dripping in little trickles from her body to the
ground. She had been thoroughly and efficiently mauled. She was
beyond the shadow of a doubt a whipped bear. Yet in that glorious
flight of the enemy Neewa saw nothing of Noozak's defeat. Their
enemy was RUNNING AWAY! Therefore, he was whipped. And with
excited little squeaks of joy Neewa ran to his mother.
CHAPTER THREE
As they stood in the warm sunshine of this first day of June, watching
the last of Makoos as he fled across the creek bottom, Neewa felt very
much like an old and seasoned warrior instead of a pot-bellied,
round-faced cub of four months who weighed nine pounds and not four
hundred.
It was many minutes after Neewa had sunk his ferocious little teeth
deep into the tenderest part of the old he-bear's toe before Noozak
could get her wind sufficiently to grunt. Her sides were pumping like a
pair of bellows, and after Makoos had disappeared beyond the creek
Neewa sat down on his chubby bottom, perked his funny ears forward,
and eyed his mother with round and glistening eyes that were filled
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