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
her. In the creek, penned up in the pools, were unlimited
quantities of it, and she had encountered no other bear to
challenge her possession of it. She looked ahead to uninterrupted
bliss in their happy hunting grounds until midsummer storms
emptied the pools, or the berries ripened. And Neewa, a happy
little gourmand, dreamed with her.
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