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.

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