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<p align="center">&nbsp;</p>


<h1>Nomads Of The North</h1>

<h4>by</h4>

<h1>James Oliver Curwood</h1>

<hr align="center" width="50%">
<ul>
<li><a href="#1_0_2">CHAPTER ONE</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_3">CHAPTER TWO</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_4">CHAPTER THREE</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_5">CHAPTER FOUR</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_6">CHAPTER FIVE</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_7">CHAPTER SIX</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_8">CHAPTER SEVEN</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_9">CHAPTER EIGHT</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_10">CHAPTER NINE</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_11">CHAPTER TEN</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_12">CHAPTER ELEVEN</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_13">CHAPTER TWELVE</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_14">CHAPTER THIRTEEN</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_15">CHAPTER FOURTEEN</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_16">CHAPTER FIFTEEN</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_17">CHAPTER SIXTEEN</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_18">CHAPTER SEVENTEEN</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_19">CHAPTER EIGHTEEN</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_20">CHAPTER NINETEEN</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_21">CHAPTER TWENTY</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_22">CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_23">CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_24">CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_25">CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_26">CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE</a></li>

<li><a href="#1_0_27">CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX</a></li>
</ul>

<hr align="center" width="50%">
<h2>NOMADS OF THE NORTH<br>
A STORY OF ROMANCE AND ADVENTURE UNDER THE OPEN STARS</h2>

<h3 align="CENTER"><a name="1_0_2">CHAPTER ONE</a></h3>

<p>It was late in the month of March, at the dying-out of the Eagle
Moon, that Neewa the black bear cub got his first real look at the
world. Noozak, his mother, was an old bear, and like an old person she
was filled with rheumatics and the desire to sleep late. So instead of
taking a short and ordinary nap of three months this particular winter
of little Neewa's birth she slept four, which, made Neewa, who was born
while ms mother was sound asleep, a little over two months old instead
of six weeks when they came out of den.</p>

<p>In choosing this den Noozak had gone to a cavern at the crest of a
high, barren ridge, and from this point Neewa first looked down into
the valley. For a time, coming out of darkness into sunlight, he was
blinded. He could hear and smell and feel many things before he could
see. And Noozak, as though puzzled at finding warmth and sunshine in
place of cold and darkness, stood for many minutes sniffing the wind
and looking down upon her domain.</p>

<p>For two weeks an early spring had been working its miracle of change
in that wonderful country of the northland between Jackson's Knee and
the Shamattawa River, and from north to south between God's Lake and
the Churchill.</p>

<p>It was a splendid world. From the tall pinnacle of rock on which
they stood it looked like a great sea of sunlight, with only here and
there patches of white snow where the winter winds had piled it deep.
Their ridge rose up out of a great valley. On all sides of them, as far
as a man's eye could have reached, there were blue and black patches of
forest, the shimmer of lakes still partly frozen, the sunlit sparkle of
rivulet and stream, and the greening open spaces out of which rose the
perfumes of the earth. These smells drifted up like tonic and food to
the nostrils of Noozak the big bear. Down there the earth was already
swelling with life. The buds on the poplars were growing fat and near
the bursting point; the grasses were sending out shoots tender and
sweet; the camas were filling with juice; the shooting stars, the
dog-tooth violets, and the spring beauties were thrusting themselves up
into the warm glow of the sun, inviting Noozak and Neewa to the feast.
All these things Noozak smelled with the experience and the knowledge
of twenty years of life behind her&mdash;the delicious aroma of the
spruce and the jackpine; the dank, sweet scent of water- lily roots and
swelling bulbs that came from a thawed-out fen at the foot of the
ridge; and over all these things, overwhelming their individual
sweetnesses in a still greater thrill of life, the smell of the heart
itself!</p>

<p>And Neewa smelled them. His amazed little body trembled and thrilled
for the first time with the excitement of life. A moment before in
darkness, he found himself now in a wonderland of which he had never so
much as had a dream. In these few minutes Nature was at work upon him.
He possessed no knowledge, but instinct was born within him. He knew
this was HIS world, that the sun and the warmth were for him, and that
the sweet things of the earth were inviting him into his heritage. He
puckered up his little brown nose and sniffed the air, and the pungency
of everything that was sweet and to be yearned for came to him.</p>

<p>And he listened. His pointed ears were pricked forward, and up to
him came the drone of a wakening earth. Even the roots of the grasses
must have been singing in their joy, for all through that sunlit valley
there was the low and murmuring music of a country that was at peace
because it was empty of men. Everywhere was the rippling sound of
running water, and he heard strange sounds that he knew was life; the
twittering of a rock-sparrow, the silver- toned aria of a
black-throated thrush down in the fen, the shrill paean of a gorgeously
coloured Canada jay exploring for a nesting place in a brake of velvety
balsam. And then, far over his head, a screaming cry that made him
shiver. It was instinct again that told him in that cry was danger.
Noozak looked up, and saw the shadow of Upisk, the great eagle, as it
flung itself between the sun and the earth. Neewa saw the shadow, and
cringed nearer to his mother.</p>

<p>And Noozak&mdash;so old that she had lost half her teeth, so old
that her bones ached on damp and chilly nights, and her eyesight was
growing dim&mdash;was still not so old that she did not look down with
growing exultation upon what she saw. Her mind was travelling beyond
the mere valley in which they had wakened. Off there beyond the walls
of forest, beyond the farthest lake, beyond the river and the plain,
were the illimitable spaces which gave her home. To her came dully a
sound uncaught by Neewa&mdash;the almost unintelligible rumble of the
great waterfall. It was this, and the murmur of a thousand trickles of
running water, and the soft wind breathing down in the balsam and
spruce that put the music of spring into the air.</p>

<p>At last Noozak heaved a great breath out of her lungs and with a
grunt to Neewa began to lead the way slowly down among the rocks to the
foot of the ridge.</p>

<p>In the golden pool of the valley it was even warmer than on the
crest of the ridge. Noozak went straight to the edge of the slough.
Half a dozen rice birds rose with a whir of wings that made Neewa
almost upset himself. Noozak paid no attention to them. A loon let out
a squawky protest at Noozak's soft-footed appearance, and followed it
up with a raucous screech that raised the hair on Neewa's spine. And
Noozak paid no attention to this. Neewa observed these things. His eye
was on her, and instinct had already winged his legs with the readiness
to run if his mother should give the signal. In his funny little head
it was developing very quickly that his mother was a most wonderful
creature. She was by all odds the biggest thing alive&mdash;that is,
the biggest that stood on legs, and moved. He was confident of this for
a space of perhaps two minutes, when they came to the end of the fen.
And here was a sudden snort, a crashing of bracken, the floundering of
a huge body through knee-deep mud, and a monstrous bull moose, four
times as big as Noozak, set off in lively flight. Neewa's eyes all but
popped from his head. And STILL Noozak PAID NO ATTENTION!</p>

<p>It was then that Neewa crinkled up his tiny nose and snarled, just
as he had snarled at Noozak's ears and hair and at sticks he had
worried in the black cavern. A glorious understanding dawned upon him.
He could snarl at anything he wanted to snarl at, no matter how big.
For everything ran away from Noozak his mother.</p>

<p>All through this first glorious day Neewa was discovering things,
and with each hour it was more and more impressed upon him that his
mother was the unchallenged mistress of all this new and sunlit
domain.</p>

<p>Noozak was a thoughtful old mother of a bear who had reared fifteen
or eighteen families in her time, and she travelled very little this
first day in order that Neewa's tender feet might toughen up a bit.
They scarcely left the fen, except to go into a nearby clump of trees
where Noozak used her claws to shred a spruce that they might get at
the juice and slimy substance just under the bark. Neewa liked this
dessert after their feast of roots and bulbs, and tried to claw open a
tree on his own account. By mid-afternoon Noozak had eaten until her
sides bulged out, and Neewa himself&mdash;between his mother's milk and
the many odds and ends of other things&mdash;looked like an over-filled
pod. Selecting a spot where the declining sun made a warm oven of a
great white rock, lazy old Noozak lay down for a nap, while Neewa,
wandering about in quest of an adventure of his own, came face to face
with a ferocious bug.</p>

<p>The creature was a giant wood-beetle two inches long. Its two
battling pincers were jet black, and curved like hooks of iron. It was
a rich brown in colour and in the sunlight its metallic armour shone in
a dazzling splendour. Neewa, squatted flat on his belly, eyed it with a
swiftly beating heart. The beetle was not more than a foot away, and
ADVANCING! That was the curious and rather shocking part of it. It was
the first living thing he had met with that day that had not run away.
As it advanced slowly on its two rows of legs the beetle made a
clicking sound that Neewa heard quite distinctly. With the fighting
blood of his father, Soominitik, nerving him on to the adventure he
thrust out a hesitating paw, and instantly Chegawasse, the beetle, took
upon himself a most ferocious aspect. His wings began humming like a
buzz-saw, his pincers opened until they could have taken in a man's
finger, and he vibrated on his legs until it looked as though he might
be performing some sort of a dance. Neewa jerked his paw back and after
a moment or two Chegawasse calmed himself and again began to
ADVANCE!</p>

<p>Neewa did not know, of course, that the beetle's field of vision
ended about four inches from the end of his nose; the situation,
consequently, was appalling. But it was never born in a son of a father
like Soominitik to run from a bug, even at nine weeks of age.
Desperately he thrust out his paw again, and unfortunately for him one
of his tiny claws got a half Nelson on the beetle and held Chegawasse
on his shining back so that he could neither buzz not click. A great
exultation swept through Neewa. Inch by inch he drew his paw in until
the beetle was within reach of his sharp little teeth. Then he smelled
of him.</p>

<p>That was Chegawasse's opportunity. The pincers closed and Noozak's
slumbers were disturbed by a sudden bawl of agony. When she raised her
head Neewa was rolling about as if in a fit. He was scratching and
snarling and spitting. Noozak eyed him speculatively for some moments,
then reared herself slowly and went to him. With one big paw she rolled
him over&mdash;and saw Chegawasse firmly and determinedly attached to
her offspring's nose. Flattening Neewa on his back so that he could not
move she seized the beetle between her teeth, bit slowly until
Chegawasse lost his hold, and then swallowed him.</p>

<p>From then until dusk Neewa nursed his sore nose. A little before
dark Noozak curled herself up against the big rock, and Neewa took his
supper. Then he made himself a nest in the crook of her big, warm
forearm. In spite of his smarting nose he was a happy bear, and at the
end of his first day he felt very brave and very fearless, though he
was but nine weeks old. He had come into the world, he had looked upon
many things, and if he had not conquered he at least had gone
gloriously through the day.</p>

<h3 align="CENTER"><a name="1_0_3">CHAPTER TWO</a></h3>

<p>That night Neewa had a hard attack of Mistu-puyew, or stomach- ache.
Imagine a nursing baby going direct from its mother's breast to a
beefsteak! That was what Neewa had done. Ordinarily he would not have
begun nibbling at solid foods 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.</p>

<p>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&mdash;some monstrous creature sailing up over the forest toward
them&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 sand-bars and between pebbly shores.
Neewa was sleepless. He had less desire than ever to waste a glorious
afternoon in napping. With his little round eyes he looked out on a
wonderful world, and found it calling to him. He looked at his mother,
and whined. Experience told him that she was dead to the world for
hours to come, unless he tickled her foot or nipped her ear, and then
she would only rouse herself enough to growl at him. He was tired of
that. He yearned for something more exciting, and with his mind
suddenly made up he set off in quest of adventure.</p>

<p>In that big world of green and golden colours he was a little black
ball nearly as wide as he was long. He went down to the creek, and
looked back. He could still see his mother. Then his feet paddled in
the soft white sand of a long bar that edged the shore, and he forgot
Noozak. He went to the end of the bar, and turned up on the green shore
where the young grass was like velvet under his paws. Here he began
turning over small stones for ants. He chased a chipmunk that ran a
close and furious race with him for twenty seconds. A little later a
huge snow-shoe rabbit got up almost under his nose, and he chased that
until in a dozen long leaps Wapoos disappeared in a thicket. Neewa
wrinkled up his nose and emitted a squeaky snarl. Never had
Soominitik's blood run so riotously within him. He wanted to get hold
of something. For the first time in his life he was yearning for a
scrap. He was like a small boy who the day after Christmas has a pair
of boxing gloves and no opponent. He sat down and looked about him
querulously, still wrinkling his nose and snarling defiantly. He had
the whole world beaten. He knew that. Everything was afraid of his
mother. Everything was afraid of HIM. It was disgusting&mdash;this lack
of something alive for an ambitious young fellow to fight. After all,
the world was rather tame.</p>

<p>He set off at a new angle, came around the edge of a huge rock, and
suddenly stopped.</p>

<p>From behind the other end of the rock protruded a huge hind paw. For
a few moments Neewa sat still, eyeing it with a growing anticipation.
This time he would give his mother a nip that would waken her for good!
He would rouse her to the beauty and the opportunities of this day if
there was any rouse in him! So he advanced slowly and cautiously,
picked out a nice bare spot on the paw, and sank his little teeth in it
to the gums.</p>

<p>There followed a roar that shook the earth. Now it happened that the
paw did not belong to Noozak, but was the personal property of Makoos,
an old he-bear of unlovely disposition and malevolent temper. But in
him age had produced a grouchiness that was not at all like the
grandmotherly peculiarities of old Noozak. Makoos was on his feet
fairly before Neewa realized that he had made a mistake. He was not
only an old bear and a grouchy bear, but he was also a hater of cubs.
More than once in his day he had committed the crime of cannibalism. He
was what the Indian hunter calls uchan&mdash;a bad bear, an eater of
his own kind, and the instant his enraged eyes caught sight of Neewa he
let out another roar.</p>

<p>At that Neewa gathered his fat little legs under his belly and was
off like a shot. Never before in his life had he run as he ran now.
Instinct told him that at last he had met something which was not
afraid of him, and that he was in deadly peril. He made no choice of
direction, for now that he had made this mistake he had no idea where
he would find his mother. He could hear Makoos coming after him, and as
he ran he set up a bawling that was filled with a wild and agonizing
prayer for help. That cry reached the faithful old Noozak. In an
instant she was on her feet&mdash;and just in time. Like a round black
ball shot out of a gun Neewa sped past the rock where she had been
sleeping, and ten jumps behind him came Makoos. Out of the corner of
his eye he saw his mother, but his momentum carried him past her. In
that moment Noozak leapt into action. As a football player makes a
tackle she rushed out just in time to catch old Makoos with all her
weight full broadside in the ribs, and the two old bears rolled over
and over in what to Neewa was an exciting and glorious mix-up.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>Makoos was no longer fighting, but was RUNNING AWAY&mdash;and there
was a decided limp in his gait!</p>

<p>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.</p>

<h3 align="CENTER"><a name="1_0_4">CHAPTER THREE</a></h3>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 with
uneasy speculation. With a wheezing groan Noozak turned and made her
way slowly toward the big rock alongside which she had been sleeping
when Neewa's fearful cries for help had awakened her. Every bone in her
aged body seemed broken or dislocated. She limped and sagged and moaned
as she walked, and behind her were left little red trails of blood in
the green grass. Makoos had given her a fine pummeling.</p>

<p>She lay down, gave a final groan, and looked at Neewa, as if to
say:</p>

<p>"If you hadn't gone off on some deviltry and upset that old viper's
temper this wouldn't have happened. And now&mdash;look at ME!"</p>

<p>A young bear would have rallied quickly from the effects of the
battle, but Noozak lay without moving all the rest of that afternoon,
and the night that followed. And that night was by all odds the finest
that Neewa had ever seen. Now that the nights were warm, he had come to
love the moon even more than the sun, for by birth and instinct he was
more a prowler in darkness than a hunter of the day. The moon rose out
of the east in a glory of golden fire. The spruce and balsam forests
stood out like islands in a yellow sea of light, and the creek
shimmered and quivered like a living thing as it wound its way through
the glowing valley. But Neewa had learned his lesson, and though the
moon and the stars called to him he hung close to his mother, listening
to the carnival of night sound that came to him, but never moving away
from her side.</p>

<p>With the morning Noozak rose to her feet, and with a grunting
command for Neewa to follow she slowly climbed the sun-capped ridge.
She was in no mood for travel, but away back in her head was an
unexpressed fear that villainous old Makoos might return, and she knew
that another fight would do her up entirely, in which event Makoos
would make a breakfast of Neewa. So she urged herself down the other
side of the ridge, across a new valley, and through a cut that opened
like a wide door into a rolling plain that was made up of meadows and
lakes and great sweeps of spruce and cedar forest. For a week Noozak
had been making for a certain creek in this plain, and now that the
presence of Makoos threatened behind she kept at her journeying until
Neewa's short, fat legs could scarcely hold up his body.</p>

<p>It was mid-afternoon when they reached the creek, and Neewa was so
exhausted that he had difficulty in climbing the spruce up which his
mother sent him to take a nap. Finding a comfortable crotch he quickly
fell asleep&mdash;while Noozak went fishing.</p>

<p>The creek was alive with suckers, trapped in the shallow pools after
spawning, and within an hour she had the shore strewn with them. When
Neewa came down out of his cradle, just at the edge of dusk, it was to
a feast at which Noozak had already stuffed herself until she looked
like a barrel. This was his first meal of fish, and for a week
thereafter he lived in a paradise of fish. He ate them morning, noon,
and night, and when he was too full to eat he rolled in them. And
Noozak stuffed herself until it seemed her hide would burst. Wherever
they moved they carried with them a fishy smell that grew older day by
day, and the older it became the more delicious it was to Neewa and his
mother. And Neewa grew like a swelling pod. In that week he gained
three pounds. He had given up nursing entirely now, for
Noozak&mdash;being an old bear&mdash;had dried up to a point where she
was hopelessly disappointing.</p>

<p>It was early in the evening of the eighth day that Neewa and his
mother lay down in the edge of a grassy knoll to sleep after their
day's feasting. Noozak was by all odds the happiest old bear in all
that part of the northland. Food was no longer a problem for her. In
the creek, penned up in the pools, were unlimited quantities of it, and
she had encountered no other bear to challenge her possession of it.
She looked ahead to uninterrupted bliss in their happy hunting grounds
until midsummer storms emptied the pools, or the berries ripened. And
Neewa, a happy little gourmand, dreamed with her.</p>

<p>It was this day, just as the sun was setting, that a man on his
hands and knees was examining a damp patch of sand five or six miles
down the creek. His sleeves were rolled up, baring his brown arms
halfway to the shoulders and he wore no hat, so that the evening breeze
ruffled a ragged head of blond hair that for a matter of eight or nine
months had been cut with a hunting knife.</p>

<p>Close on one side of this individual was a tin pail, and on the
other, eying him with the keenest interest, one of the homeliest and
yet one of the most companionable-looking dog pups ever born of a
Mackenzie hound father and a mother half Airedale and half Spitz.</p>

<p>With this tragedy of blood in his veins nothing in the world could
have made the pup anything more than "just dog." His tail,&mdash;
stretched out straight on the sand, was long and lean, with a knot at
every joint; his paws, like an overgrown boy's feet, looked like small
boxing-gloves; his head was three sizes too big for his body, and
accident had assisted Nature in the perfection of her masterpiece by
robbing him of a half of one of his ears. As he watched his master this
half of an ear stood up like a galvanized stub, while the
other&mdash;twice as long&mdash;was perked forward in the deepest and
most interested enquiry. Head, feet, and tail were Mackenzie hound, but
the ears and his lank, skinny body was a battle royal between Spitz and
Airedale. At his present inharmonious stage of development he was the
doggiest dog-pup outside the alleys of a big city.</p>

<p>For the first time in several minutes his master spoke, and Miki
wiggled from stem to stern in appreciation of the fact that it was
directly to him the words were uttered.</p>

<p>"It's a mother and a cub, as sure as you're a week old, Miki," he
said. "And if I know anything about bears they were here some time
to-day!"</p>

<p>He rose to his feet, made note of the deepening shadows in the edge
of the timber, and filled his pail with water. For a few moments the
last rays of the sun lit up his face. It was a strong, hopeful face. In
it was the joy of life. And now it was lighted up with a sudden
inspiration, and a glow that was not of the forest alone came into his
eyes, as he added:</p>

<p>"Miki, I'm lugging your homely carcass down to the Girl because
you're an unpolished gem of good nature and beauty&mdash;and for those
two things I know she'll love you. She is my sister, you know. Now, if
I could only take that cub along with you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>He began to whistle as he turned with his pail of water in the
direction of a thin fringe of balsams a hundred yards away.</p>

<p>Close at his heels followed Miki.</p>

<p>Challoner, who was a newly appointed factor of the Great Hudson's
Bay Company, had pitched his camp at tie edge of the lake dose to the
mouth of the creek. There was not much to it&mdash;a battered tent, a
still more battered canoe, and a small pile of dunnage. But in the last
glow of the sunset it would have spoken volumes to a man with an eye
trained to the wear and the turmoil of the forests. It was the outfit
of a man who had gone unfearing to the rough edge of the world. And now
what was left of it was returning with him. To Challoner there was
something of human comradeship in these remnants of things that had
gone through the greater part of a year's fight with him. The canoe was
warped and battered and patched; smoke and storm had blackened his tent
until it was the colour of rusty char, and his grub sacks were next to
empty.</p>

<p>Over a small fire title contents of a pan and a pot were brewing
when he returned with Miki at his heels, and close to the heat was a
battered and mended reflector in which a bannock of flour and water was
beginning to brown. In one of the pots was coffee, in the other a
boiling fish.</p>

<p>Miki sat down on his angular haunches so that the odour of the fish
filled his nostrils. This, he had discovered, was the next thing to
eating. His eyes, as they followed Challoner's final preparatory
movements, were as bright as garnets, and every third or fourth breath
he licked his chops, and swallowed hungrily. That, in fact, was why
Miki had got his name. He was always hungry, and apparently always
empty, no matter how much he ate. Therefore his name, Miki, "The
drum."</p>

<p>It was not until they had eaten the fish and the bannock, and
Challoner had lighted his pipe, that he spoke what was in his mind.</p>

<p>"To-morrow I'm going after that bear," he said.</p>

<p>Miki, curled up near the dying embers, gave his tail a club-like
thump in evidence of the fact that he was listening.</p>

<p>"I'm going to pair you up with the cub, and tickle the Girl to
death."</p>

<p>Miki thumped his tail harder than before.</p>

<p>"Fine," he seemed to say.</p>

<p>"Just think of it," said Challoner, looking over Miki's head a
thousand miles away, "Fourteen months&mdash;and at last we're going
home. I'm going to train you and the cub for that sister of mine. Eh,
won't you like that? You don't know what she's like, you homely little
devil, or you wouldn't sit there staring at me like a totem-pole pup!
And it isn't in your stupid head to imagine how pretty she is. You saw
that sunset to-night? Well, she's prettier than THAT if she is my
sister. Got anything to add to that, Miki? If not, let's say our
prayers and go to bed!"</p>

<p>Challoner rose and stretched himself. His muscles cracked. He felt
life surging like a giant within him.</p>

<p>And Miki, thumping his tail until this moment, rose on his overgrown
legs and followed his master into their shelter.</p>

<p>It was in the gray light of the early summer dawn when Challoner
came forth again, and rekindled the fire. Miki followed a few moments
later, and his master fastened the end of a worn tent-rope around his
neck and tied the rope to a sapling. Another rope of similar length
Challoner tied to the corners of a grub sack so that it could be
carried over his shoulder like a game bag. With the first rose-flush of
the sun he was ready for the trail of Neewa and his mother. Miki set up
a melancholy wailing when he found himself left behind, and when
Challoner looked back the pup was tugging and somersaulting at the end
of his rope like a jumping-jack. For a quarter of a mile up the creek
he could hear Miki's entreating protest.</p>

<p>To Challoner the business of the day was not a matter of personal
pleasure, nor was it inspired alone by his desire to possess a cub
along with Miki. He needed meat, and bear pork thus early in the season
would be exceedingly good; and above all else he needed a supply of
fat. If he bagged this bear, time would be saved all the rest of the
way down to civilization.</p>

<p>It was eight o'clock when he struck the first unmistakably fresh
signs of Noozak and Neewa. It was at the point where Noozak had fished
four or five days previously, and where they had returned yesterday to
feast on the "ripened" catch. Challoner was elated. He was sure that he
would find the pair along the creek, and not far distant. The wind was
in his favour, and he began to advance with greater caution, his rifle
ready for the anticipated moment. For an hour he travelled steadily and
quietly, marking every sound and movement ahead of him, and wetting his
finger now and then to see if the wind had shifted. After all, it was
not so much a matter of human cunning. Everything was in Challoner's
favour.</p>

<p>In a wide, flat part of the valley where the creek split itself into
a dozen little channels, and the water rippled between sandy bars and
over pebbly shallows, Neewa and his mother were nosing about lazily for
a breakfast of crawfish. The world had never looked more beautiful to
Neewa. The sun made the soft hair on his back fluff up like that of a
purring cat. He liked the plash of wet sand under his feet and the
singing gush of water against his legs. He liked the sound that was all
about him, the breath of the wind, the whispers that came out of the
spruce-tops and the cedars, the murmur of water, the TWIT-TWIT of the
rock rabbits, the call of birds; and more than all else the low,
grunting talk of his mother.</p>

<p>It was in this sun-bathed sweep of the valley that Noozak caught the
first whiff of danger. It came to her in a sudden twist of the
wind&mdash;the smell of man!</p>

<p>Instantly she was turned into rock. There was still the deep scar in
her shoulder which had come, years before, with that same smell of the
one enemy she feared. For three summers she had not caught the taint in
her nostrils and she had almost forgotten its existence. Now, so
suddenly that it paralyzed her, it was warm and terrible in the breath
of the wind.</p>

<p>In this moment, too, Neewa seemed to sense the nearness of an
appalling danger. Two hundred yards from Challoner he stood a
motionless blotch of jet against the white of the sand about him, his
eyes on his mother, and his sensitive little nose trying to catch the
meaning of the menace in the air.</p>

<p>Then came a thing he had never heard before&mdash;a splitting,
cracking roar&mdash;something that was almost like thunder and yet
unlike it; and he saw his mother lurch where she stood and crumple down
all at once on her fore legs.</p>

<p>The next moment she was up, with a wild WHOOF in her voice that was
new to him&mdash;a warning for him to fly for his life.</p>

<p>Like all mothers who have known the comradeship and love of a child,
Noozak's first thought was of him. Reaching out a paw she gave him a
sudden shove, and Neewa legged it wildly for the near- by shelter of
the timber. Noozak followed. A second shot came, and close over her
head there sped a purring, terrible sound. But Noozak did not hurry.
She kept behind Neewa, urging him on even as that pain of a red-hot
iron in her groin filled her with agony. They came to the edge of the
timber as Challoner's third shot bit under Noozak's feet.</p>

<p>A moment more and they were within the barricade of the timber.
Instinct guided Neewa into the thickest part of it, and close behind
him Noozak fought with the last of her dying strength to urge him on.
In her old brain there was growing a deep and appalling shadow,
something that was beginning to cloud her vision so that she could not
see, and she knew that at last she had come to the uttermost end of her
trail. With twenty years of life behind her, she struggled now for a
last few seconds. She stopped Neewa close to a thick cedar, and as she
had done many times before she commanded him to climb it. Just once her
hot tongue touched his face in a final caress. Then she turned to fight
her last great fight.</p>

<p>Straight into the face of Challoner she dragged herself, and fifty
feet from the spruce she stopped and waited for him, her head drooped
between her shoulders, her sides heaving, her eyes dimming more and
more, until at last she sank down with a great sigh, barring the trail
of their enemy. For a space, it may be, she saw once more the golden
moons and the blazing suns of those twenty years that were gone; it may
be that the soft, sweet music of spring came to her again, filled with
the old, old song of life, and that Something gracious and painless
descended upon her as a final reward for a glorious motherhood on
earth.</p>

<p>When Challoner came up she was dead.</p>

<p>From his hiding place in a crotch of the spruce Neewa looked down on
the first great tragedy of his life, and the advent of man. The
two-legged beast made him cringe deeper into his refuge, and his little
heart was near breaking with the terror that had seized upon him. He
did not reason. It was by no miracle of mental process that he knew
something terrible had happened, and that this tall, two-legged
creature was the cause of it. His little eyes were blazing, just over
the level of the crotch. He wondered why his mother did not get up and
fight when this new enemy came. Frightened as he was he was ready to
snarl if she would only wake up&mdash;ready to hurry down the tree and
help her as he had helped her in the defeat of Makoos, the old he-bear.
But not a muscle of Noozak's huge body moved as Challoner bent over
her. She was stone dead.</p>

<p>Challoner's face was flushed with exultation. Necessity had made of
him a killer. He saw in Noozak a splendid pelt, and a provision of meat
that would carry him all the rest of the way to the southland. He
leaned his rifle against a tree and began looking about for the cub.
Knowledge of the wild told him it would not be far from its mother, and
he began looking into the trees and the near-by thickets.</p>

<p>In the shelter of his crotch, screened by the thick branches, Neewa
made himself as small as possible during the search. At the end of half
an hour Challoner disappointedly gave up his quest, and went back to
the creek for a drink before setting himself to the task of skinning
Noozak.</p>

<p>No sooner was he gone than Neewa's little head shot up alertly. For
a few moments he watched, and then slipped backward down the trunk of
the cedar to the ground. He gave his squealing call, but his mother did
not move. He went to her and stood beside her motionless head, sniffing
the man-tainted air. Then he muzzled her jowl, butted his nose under
her neck, and at last nipped her ear&mdash; always his last resort in
the awakening process. He was puzzled. He whined softly, and climbed
upon his mother's big, soft back, and sat there. Into his whine there
came a strange note, and then out of his throat there rose a whimpering
cry that was like the cry of a child.</p>

<p>Challoner heard that cry as he came back, and something seemed to
grip hold of his heart suddenly, and choke him. He had heard children
crying like that; and it was the motherless cub!</p>

<p>Creeping up behind a dwarf spruce he looked where Noozak lay dead,
and saw Neewa perched on his mother's back. He had killed many things
in his time, for it was his business to kill, and to barter in the
pelts of creatures that others killed. But he had seen nothing like
this before, and he felt all at once as if he had done murder.</p>

<p>"I'm sorry," he breathed softly, "you poor little devil; I'm
sorry!"</p>

<p>It was almost a prayer&mdash;for forgiveness. Yet there was but one
thing to do now. So quietly that Neewa failed to hear him he crept
around with the wind and stole up behind. He was within a dozen feet of
Neewa before the cub suspected danger. Then it was too late. In a swift
rush Challoner was upon him and, before Neewa could leave the back of
his mother, had smothered him in the folds of the grub sack.</p>

<p>In all his life Challoner had never experienced a livelier five
minutes than the five that followed. Above Neewa's grief and his fear
there rose the savage fighting blood of old Soominitik, his father. He
clawed and bit and kicked and snarled. In those five minutes he was
five little devils all rolled into one, and by the time Challoner had
the rope fastened about Neewa's neck, and his fat body chucked into the
sack, his hands were scratched and lacerated in a score of places.</p>

<p>In the sack Neewa continued to fight until he was exhausted, while
Challoner skinned Noozak and cut from her the meat and fats which he
wanted. The beauty of Noozak's pelt brought a glow into his eyes. In it
he rolled the meat and fats, and with babiche thong bound the whole
into a pack around which he belted the dunnage ends of his shoulder
straps. Weighted under the burden of sixty pounds of pelt and meat he
picked up his rifle&mdash;and Neewa. It had been early afternoon when
he left. It was almost sunset when he reached camp. Every foot of the
way, until the last half mile, Neewa fought like a Spartan.</p>

<p>Now he lay limp and almost lifeless in his sack, and when Miki came
up to smell suspiciously of his prison he made no movement of protest.
All smells were alike to him now, and of sounds he made no distinction.
Challoner was nearly done for. Every muscle and bone in his body had
its ache. Yet in his face, sweaty and grimed, was a grin of pride.</p>

<p>"You plucky little devil," he said, contemplating the limp sack as
he loaded his pipe for the first time that afternoon. "You&mdash;you
plucky little devil!"</p>

<p>He tied the end of Neewa's rope halter to a sapling, and began
cautiously to open the grub sack. Then he rolled Neewa out on the
ground, and stepped back. In that hour Neewa was willing to accept a
truce so far as Challoner was concerned. But it was not Challoner that
his half-blinded eyes saw first as he rolled from his bag. It was Miki!
And Miki, his awkward body wriggling with the excitement of his
curiosity, was almost on the point of smelling of him!</p>

<p>Neewa's little eyes glared. Was that ill-jointed lop-eared offspring
of the man-beast an enemy, too? Were those twisting convolutions of
this new creature's body and the club-like swing of his tail an
invitation to fight? He judged so. Anyway, here was something of his
size, and like a flash he was at the end of his rope and on the pup.
Miki, a moment before bubbling over with friendship and good cheer, was
on his back in an instant, his grotesque legs paddling the air and his
yelping cries for help rising in a wild clamour that filled the golden
stillness of the evening with an unutterable woe.</p>

<p>Challoner stood dumbfounded. In another moment he would have
separated the little fighters, but something happened that stopped him.
Neewa, standing squarely over Miki, with Miki's four over- grown paws
held aloft as if signalling an unqualified surrender, slowly drew his
teeth from the pup's loose hide. Again he saw the man-beast. Instinct,
keener than a clumsy reasoning, held him for a few moments without
movement, his beady eyes on Challoner. In midair Miki wagged his paws;
he whined softly; his hard tail thumped the ground as he pleaded for
mercy, and he licked his chops and tried to wriggle, as if to tell
Neewa that he had no intention at all to do him harm. Neewa, facing
Challoner, snarled defiantly. He drew himself slowly from over Miki.
And Miki, afraid to move, still lay on his back with his paws in the
air.</p>

<p>Very slowly, a look of wonder in his face, Challoner drew back into
the tent and peered through a rent in the canvas.</p>

<p>The snarl left Neewa's face. He looked at the pup. Perhaps away back
in some corner of his brain the heritage of instinct was telling him of
what he had lost because of brothers and sisters unborn&mdash;the
comradeship of babyhood, the play of children. And Miki must have
sensed the change in the furry little black creature who a moment ago
was his enemy. His tail thumped almost frantically, and he swung out
his front paws toward Neewa. Then, a little fearful of what might
happen, he rolled on his side. Still Neewa did not move. Joyously Miki
wriggled.</p>

<p>A moment later, looking through the slit in the canvas, Challoner
saw them cautiously smelling noses.</p>

<h3 align="CENTER"><a name="1_0_5">CHAPTER FOUR</a></h3>

<p>That night came a cold and drizzling rain from out of the north and
the east. In the wet dawn Challoner came out to start a fire, and in a
hollow under a spruce root he found Miki and Neewa cuddled together,
sound asleep.</p>

<p>It was the cub who first saw the man-beast, and for a brief space
before the pup roused himself Neewa's shining eyes were fixed on the
strange enemy who had so utterly changed his world for him. Exhaustion
had made him sleep through the long hours of that first night of
captivity, and in sleep he had forgotten many things. But now it all
came back to him as he cringed deeper into his shelter under the root,
and so softly that only Miki heard him he whimpered for his mother.</p>

<p>It was the whimper that roused Miki. Slowly he untangled himself
from the ball into which he had rolled, stretched his long and
overgrown legs, and yawned so loudly that the sound reached Challoner's
ears. The man turned and saw two pairs of eyes fixed upon him from the
sheltered hollow under the root. The pup's one good ear and the other
that was half gone stood up alertly, as he greeted his master with the
boundless good cheer of an irrepressible comradeship. Challoner's face,
wet with the drizzle of the gray skies and bronzed by the wind and
storm of fourteen months in the northland, lighted up with a responsive
grin, and Miki wriggled forth weaving and twisting himself into
grotesque contortions expressive of happiness at being thus directly
smiled at by his master.</p>

<p>With all the room under the root left to him Neewa pulled himself
back until only his round head was showing, and from this fortress of
temporary safety his bright little eyes glared forth at his mother's
murderer.</p>

<p>Vividly the tragedy of yesterday was before him again&mdash;the
warm, sun-filled creek bottom in which he and Noozak, his mother, were
hunting a breakfast of crawfish when the man-beast came; the crash of
strange thunder, their flight into the timber, and the end of it all
when his mother turned to confront their enemy. And yet it was not the
death of his mother that remained with him most poignantly this
morning. It was the memory of his own terrific fight with the white
man, and his struggle afterward in the black and suffocating depths of
the bag in which Challoner had brought him to his camp. Even now
Challoner was looking at the scratches on his hands. He advanced a few
steps, and grinned down at Neewa, just as he had grinned
good-humouredly at Miki, the angular pup.</p>

<p>Neewa's little eyes blazed.</p>

<p>"I told you last night that I was sorry," said Challoner, speaking
as if to one of his own kind.</p>

<p>In several ways Challoner was unusual, an out-of-the-ordinary type
in the northland. He believed, for instance, in a certain specific
psychology of the animal mind, and had proven to his own satisfaction
that animals treated and conversed with in a matter- of-fact human way
frequently developed an understanding which he, in his unscientific
way, called reason.</p>

<p>"I told you I was sorry," he repeated, squatting on his heels within
a yard of the root from under which Neewa's eyes were glaring at him,
"and I am. I'm sorry I killed your mother. But we had to have meat and
fat. Besides, Miki and I are going to make it up to you. We're going to
take you along with us down to the Girl, and if you don't learn to love
her you're the meanest, lowest-down little cuss in all creation and
don't deserve a mother. You and Miki are going to be brothers. His
mother is dead, too&mdash;plum starved to death, which is worse than
dying with a bullet in your lung. And I found Miki just as I found you,
hugging up close to her an' crying as if there wasn't any world left
for him. So cheer up, and give us your paw. Let's shake!"</p>

<p>Challoner held out his hand. Neewa was as motionless as a stone. A
few moments before he would have snarled and bared his teeth. But now
he was dead still. This was by all odds the strangest beast he had ever
seen. Yesterday it had not harmed him, except to put him into the bag.
And now it did not offer to harm him. More than that, the talk it made
was not unpleasant, or threatening. His eyes took in Miki. The pup had
squeezed himself squarely between Challoner's knees and was looking at
him in a puzzled, questioning sort of way, as if to ask: "Why don't you
come out from under that root and help get breakfast?"</p>

<p>Challoner's hand came nearer, and Neewa crowded himself back until
there was not another inch of room for him to fill. Then the miracle
happened. The man-beast's paw touched his head. It sent a strange and
terrible thrill through him. Yet it did not hurt. If he had not wedged
himself in so tightly he would have scratched and bitten. But he could
do neither.</p>