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.

CHAPTER TWO

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.

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