The Project Gutenberg EBook of Nomads of the North, by James Oliver Curwood

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Title: Nomads of the North
A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars

Author: James Oliver Curwood

Posting Date: September 6, 2009 [EBook #4704]
Release Date: December, 2003
First Posted: March 3, 2002

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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NOMADS OF THE NORTH

A STORY OF ROMANCE AND ADVENTURE UNDER THE OPEN STARS

BY

JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD

CHAPTER ONE

It was late in the month of March, at the dying-out of the Eagle 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 rheumatics and the desire to sleep late. So instead of
taking a short and ordinary nap of three months this particular winter
of little Neewa's birth she slept four, which, made Neewa, who was born
while his mother was sound asleep, a little over two months old instead
of six weeks when they came out of den.

In choosing this den Noozak had gone to a cavern at the crest of a
high, barren ridge, and from this point Neewa first looked down into
the valley. For a time, coming out of darkness into sunlight, he was
blinded. He could hear and smell and feel many things before he could
see. And Noozak, as though puzzled at finding warmth and sunshine in
place of cold and darkness, stood for many minutes sniffing the wind
and looking down upon her domain.

For two weeks an early spring had been working its miracle of change 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 snow where 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 re