Part 1 (1/2)
Nomads of the North
by James Oliver Curwood
CHAPTER ONE
It was late in the le 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 rheu a short and ordinary nap of three months this particular winter of little Neewa's birth she slept four, which, made Neeas born while his mother was sound asleep, a little over two months old instead of six weeks when they caone to a cavern at the crest of a high, barren ridge, and from this point Neewa first looked down into the valley For a tiht, he was blinded He could hear and ss before he could see And Noozak, as though puzzled at finding warmth and sunshi+ne in place of cold and darkness, stood fordown upon her do its e 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
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 snohere 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 shi+mmer of lakes still partly frozen, the sunlit sparkle of rivulet and strea 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 ca-tooth violets, and the spring beauties were thrusting the Noozak and Neewa to the feast
All these things Noozak se of twenty years of life behind her--the delicious aroma of the spruce and the jackpine; the dank, sweet scent of water-lily roots and swelling bulbs that cae; and over all these things, overwhelreater thrill of life, the smell of the heart itself!
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 hie, but instinct was born within him He knew this was HIS world, that the sun and the wars of the earth were inviting hie He puckered up his little brown nose and sniffed the air, and the pungency of everything that eet and to be yearned for came to him
And he listened His pointed ears were pricked forward, and up to hirasses h that sunlit valley there was the low andmusic of a country that was at peace because it was e water, and he heard strange sounds that he kneas 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 balsa cry that ain that told hier Noozak looked up, and saw the shadow of Upisk, the great eagle, as it flung itself between the sun and the earth Nee the shadow, and cringed nearer to his mother
And Noozak--so old that she had lost half her teeth, so old that her bones ached on da dirowing exultation upon what she saw Herbeyond 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 illiave her hoht by Neewa--the alreat waterfall It was this, and thewater, and the soft wind breathing down in the balsa into the air
At last Noozak heaved a great breath out of her lungs and with a grunt to Neewa began to lead the way slowly down aolden pool of the valley it was even warht 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 nal In his funny little head it was developing very quickly that his mother was a est thing alive--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 crashi+ng of bracken, the floundering of a huge body through knee-deepas Noozak, set off in lively flight Neewa's eyes all but popped from his head And STILL Noozak PAID NO ATTENTION!
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 hi he wanted to snarl at, noran away frolorious day Neeas discovering things, and with each hour it was more and ed mistress of all this new and sunlit dohtful old hteen families in her time, and she travelled very little this first day in order that Neewa's tender feet hen 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 et 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 ed out, and Neewa himself--between his s--looked like an over-filled pod
Selecting a spot where the declining sun reat white rock, lazy old Noozak lay down for a nap, while Neeandering about in quest of an adventure of his own, ca
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 itssplendour 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 ts of legs the beetlesound that Neewa heard quite distinctly With the fighting blood of his father, Soo hi paw, and instantly Chegawasse, the beetle, took upon hi like a buzz-saw, his pincers opened until they could have taken in a s until it looked as though hesome sort of a dance Neewa jerked his paw back and after a an to ADVANCE!
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 Sooe
Desperately he thrust out his paw again, and unfortunately for hiot a half Nelson on the beetle and held Chegawasse on his shi+ning 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 ithin reach of his sharp little teeth Then he sawasse's opportunity The pincers closed and Noozak's sluony When she raised her head Neeas 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 hiawasse fir'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 sed him
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 , war 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 cos, and if he had not conquered he at least had gone gloriously through the day
CHAPTER TWO
That night Neewa had a hard attack of Mistu-puyew, or sto direct from its mother's breast to a beefsteak! That hat 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 hile which he would have to put up a little later For hours Neewalittle belly with her nose, until finally he vomited and was better