ly scrimmage with ferocious growling on
Miki's part and pig-like grunts and squeals on Neewa's, they rolled to
the edge of the dip. It was a good hundred feet to the bottom--a steep,
grassy slope that ran to the plain--and like two balls they catapulted
the length of it. For Neewa it was not so bad. He was round and fat,
and went easily.

With Miki it was different. He was all legs and skin and angular bone,
and he went down twisting and somersaulting and tying himself into
knots until by the time he struck the hard strip of shale at the edge
of the plain he was drunk with dizziness and the breath was out of his
body. He staggered to his feet with a gasp. For a space the world was
whirling round and round in a sickening circle. Then he pulled himself
together, and made out Neewa a dozen feet away.

Neewa was just awakening to the truth of an exhilarating discovery.
Next to a boy on a sled, or a beaver on its tail, no one enjoys a
"slide" more than a black bear cub, and as Miki rearranged his
scattered wits Neewa climbed twenty or thirty feet up the slope and
deliberately rolled down again! Miki's jaws fell apart in amazement.
Again Neewa climbed up and rolled down--and Miki ceased to breathe
altogether. Five times he watched Neewa go that twenty or thirty feet
up the grassy slope and tumble down. The fifth time he waded into Neewa
and gave him a rough-and-tumble that almost ended in a fight.

After that Miki began exploring along the foot of the slope, and for a
scant hundred yards Neewa humoured him by following, but beyond that
point he flatly refused to go. In the fourth month of his exciting
young life Neewa was satisfied that Nature had given him birth that he
might have the endless pleasure of filling his stomach. For him, eating
was the one and only excuse for existing. In the next few months he had
a big job on his hands if he kept up the record of his family, and the
fact that Miki was apparently abandoning the fat and juicy carcass of
the young bull filled him with alarm and rebellion. Straightway he
forgot all thought of play and started back up the slope on a mission
that was 100 per cent. business.

Observing this, Miki gave up his idea of exploration and joined him.
They reached the shelf of the dip twenty yards from the carcass of the
bull, and from a clutter of big stones looked forth upon their meat. In
that moment they stood dumb and paralyzed. Two gigantic owls were
tearing at the carcass. To Miki