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.

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.

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—­while Noozak went fishing.

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—­being an old bear—­had dried up to a point where she was hopelessly disappointing.