Nomads of the North | Page 2

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--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!
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.
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.
And Noozak--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--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--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.
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.
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--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!
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