him, and as he ran he set up a bawling that was filled with a wild and agonizing prayer for help.  That cry reached the faithful old Noozak.  In an instant she was on her feet—­and just in time.  Like a round black ball shot out of a gun Neewa sped past the rock where she had been sleeping, and ten jumps behind him came Makoos.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw his mother, but his momentum carried him past her.  In that moment Noozak leapt into action.  As a football player makes a tackle she rushed out just in time to catch old Makoos with all her weight full broadside in the ribs, and the two old bears rolled over and over in what to Neewa was an exciting and glorious mix-up.

He had stopped, and his eyes bulged out like shining little onions as he took in the scene of battle.  He had longed for a fight but what he saw now fairly paralyzed him.  The two bears were at it, roaring and tearing each other’s hides and throwing up showers of gravel and earth in their deadly clinch.  In this first round Noozak had the best of it.  She had butted the wind out of Makoos in her first dynamic assault, and now with her dulled and broken teeth at his throat she was lashing him with her sharp hind claws until the blood streamed from the old barbarian’s sides and he bellowed like a choking bull.  Neewa knew that it was his pursuer who was getting the worst of it, and with a squeaky cry for his mother to lambast the very devil out of Makoos he ran back to the edge of the arena, his nose crinkled and his teeth gleaming in a ferocious snarl.  He danced about excitedly a dozen feet from the fighters, Soominitik’s blood filling him with a yearning for the fray and yet he was afraid.

Then something happened that suddenly and totally upset the maddening joy of his mother’s triumph.  Makoos, being a he-bear, was of necessity skilled in fighting, and all at once he freed himself from Noozak’s jaws, wallowed her under him, and in turn began ripping the hide off old Noozak’s carcass in such quantities that she let out an agonized bawling that turned Neewa’s little heart into stone.

It is a matter of most exciting conjecture what a small boy will do when he sees his father getting licked.  If there is an axe handy he is liable to use it.  The most cataclysmic catastrophe that cam come into his is to have a father whom some other boy’s father has given a walloping.  Next to being President of the United States the average small boy treasures the desire to possess a parent who can whip any other two-legged creature that wears trousers.  And there were a lot of human things about Neewa.  The louder his mother bawled the more distinctly he felt the shock of his world falling about him.  If Noozak had lost a part of her strength in her old age her voice, at least, was still unimpaired, and such a spasm of outcry as she emitted could have been heard at least half a mile away.