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-Project Gutenberg's The Life Story of a Black Bear, by Harry Perry Robinson
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
-
-
-Title: The Life Story of a Black Bear
-
-Author: Harry Perry Robinson
-
-Release Date: September 19, 2017 [EBook #55583]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE STORY OF A BLACK BEAR ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Mhairi Hindle and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber's Note
-
-
-Illustration markers have been moved near to the text they illustrate.
-All variant spellings and variant hyphenation have been preserved.
-However, punctuation has been corrected where necessary.
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: HOW I TUMBLED DOWNHILL.]
-
-
-
-
-  THE LIFE STORY OF
-  A BLACK BEAR
-
-
-  BY
-  H. PERRY ROBINSON
-
-
-  LONDON
-  ADAMˇ&ˇCHARLESˇBLACK
-  1913
-
-
-
-
-FOREWORD
-
-
-There is always tragedy when man invades the solitudes of the earth,
-for his coming never fails to mean the destruction of the wild
-things. But, surely, nowhere can the pathos be greater than when,
-in the western part of North America, there is a discovery of new
-gold-diggings. Then from all points of the compass men come pouring
-into the mountains with axe and pick, gold-pan and rifle, breaking
-paths through the forest wildernesses, killing and driving before them
-the wild animals that have heretofore held the mountains for their own.
-
-Here in these rocky, tree-clad fastnesses the bears have kinged it for
-centuries, ruling in right of descent for generation after generation,
-holding careless dominion over the coyote and the beaver, the wapiti,
-the white-tailed and the mule-eared deer. Except for the occasional
-rebellion of a mutinous lieutenant of a puma, there has been none to
-dispute their lordship from year to year and century to century. Each
-winter they have laid themselves down (or sat themselves up--for a bear
-does not lie down when hibernating) to sleep through the bitter months,
-in easy assurance that when they awoke they would find the sceptre
-still by their side.
-
-But a spring comes when they issue from their winter lairs and new
-sounds are borne to them on the keen, resin-scented mountain air. The
-hills ring to the chopping of axes; and the voices of men--a new and
-terrible sound--reach their ears. The earth, soft with the melting
-snows, shows unaccustomed prints of heavy heels. The coyote and the
-deer and all the forest folk have gone; the beaver-dams are broken, and
-the builders vanished.
-
-Dimly wondering at the strangeness of it all, the bears go forth,
-blundering and half awake, down the new-made pathways, not angry,
-but curious and perplexed, and by the trail-side they meet man--man
-with a rifle in his hand. And, still not angry, still only
-wondering and fearing nothing--for are they not lords of all the
-mountain-sides?--they die.
-
-
-    H. P. R.
-
-
-_First published September, 1905_
-
-_Reissued Autumn, 1910; reprinted July, 1913_
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
- CHAPTER                                                    PAGE
-     I. HOW I TUMBLED DOWNHILL                                1
-
-    II. CUBHOOD DAYS                                          9
-
-   III. THE COMING OF MAN                                    25
-
-    IV. THE FOREST FIRE                                      39
-
-     V. I LOSE A SISTER                                      57
-
-    VI. LIFE IN CAMP                                         71
-
-   VII. THE PARTING OF THE WAYS                              93
-
-  VIII. ALONE IN THE WORLD                                  105
-
-    IX. I FIND A COMPANION                                  120
-
-     X. A VISIT TO THE OLD HOME                             134
-
-    XI. THE TROUBLES OF A FATHER                            147
-
-   XII. WIPING OUT OLD SCORES                               163
-
-  XIII. THE TRAP                                            176
-
-   XIV. IN THE HANDS OF MAN                                 194
-
-
-
-
-LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
-
-
-  'HOW I TUMBLED DOWNHILL'                            _Frontispiece_
-
-                                                         FACING PAGE
-
-  'THE FATHER BEAR ASKED MY FATHER IF WE WERE NOT
-  GOING TOO'                                                 49
-
-  'SLOWLY, YARD BY YARD, SHE WAS BEING DRAGGED AWAY
-  FROM US'                                                   64
-
-  'AS I APPEARED THE YOUNG ONES RAN AND SNUGGLED
-  UP TO HER'                                                113
-
-  'SHE SAW ME, AND SAT UP AND LOOKED AT ME AMICABLY'        128
-
-  'FROM THE MOMENT THAT I THREW MYSELF ON HIM HE
-  NEVER HAD TIME TO BREATHE'                                177
-
-  'IT WAS EVIDENTLY A TRAP'                                 192
-
-  'BY STANDING ON HER BACK I WAS ABLE TO SEE OVER'         _On cover_
-
-
-
-
-THE BLACK BEAR
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-HOW I TUMBLED DOWNHILL
-
-
-It is not easy for one to believe that he ever was a cub. Of course, I
-know that I was, and as it was only nine years ago I ought to remember
-it fairly clearly. None the less, hundreds and hundreds of times I have
-looked at my own cubs, and said to myself: 'Surely, I can never have
-been like that!'
-
-It is not so much a mere matter of size, although it is doubtful if
-any young bear realizes how small he is. My father and mother seemed
-enormous to me, but, on the other hand, my sister was smaller than I,
-and perhaps the fact that I could always box her ears when I wanted to,
-gave me an exaggerated idea of my own importance. Not that I did it
-very often, except when she used to bite my hind-toes. Every bear, of
-course, likes to chew his own feet, for it is one of the most soothing
-and comforting things in the world; but it is horrid to have anyone
-else come up behind you, when you are asleep, and begin to chew your
-feet for you. And that was what Kahwa--that was my sister, my name
-being Wahka--was always doing, and I simply _had to_ slap her well
-whenever she did. It was the only way to stop her.
-
-But, as I said, cubhood is not a matter of size only. As I look down at
-this glossy black coat of mine, it is hard to believe that it was ever
-a dirty light brown in colour, and all ridiculous wool and fluff, as
-young cubs' coats are. But I must have been fluffy, because I remember
-how my mother, after she had been licking me for any length of time,
-used to be obliged to stop and wipe the fur out of her mouth with the
-back of her paw, just as my wife did later on when she licked our cubs.
-Every time my mother had to wipe her mouth she used to try to box my
-ears, so that when she stopped licking me, I, knowing what was coming
-next, would tuck my head down as far as it would go between my legs,
-and keep it there till she began licking again.
-
-Yes, when I stop to think, I know, from many things, that I must have
-been just an ordinary cub. For instance, my very earliest recollection
-is of tumbling downhill.
-
-Like all bears, I was born and lived on the hillside. In the Rocky
-Mountains, where my home was, there is nothing but hills, or mountains,
-for miles and miles, so that you can wander on for day after day,
-always going up one side of a hill and down the other, and up and down
-again; and at the bottom of almost every valley there is a stream or
-river, which for most of the year swirls along noisily and full of
-water. Towards the end of summer, however, the streams nearly dry up,
-just trickling along in places over their rocky beds, and you can
-splash about in them almost anywhere. The mountains are covered with
-trees--gorgeous trees, such as I have never seen anywhere else--with
-great straight trunks, splendid for practising climbing, shooting away
-up into the sky before the branches begin. Towards the summits of the
-bigger mountains the trees become smaller and grow wider apart, and if
-you go up to one of these and look around you, you can see nothing but
-a sea of dark-green tree-tops, rolling down into the valley and up the
-opposite slopes on all sides of you, with here and there the peaks of
-the highest mountains standing against the sky bare and rocky, with
-streaks and patches of snow clinging to them all through the summer.
-Oh, it was beautiful!
-
-In the winter the whole country is covered with snow many feet deep,
-which, as it falls, slides off the hillsides, and is drifted by the
-wind into the valleys and hollows till the smaller ones are filled up
-nearly to the tops of the trees. But bears do not see much of that, for
-when the first snow comes we get into our dens and go half asleep, and
-stay hibernating till springtime. And you have no idea how delightful
-hibernating is, nor how excruciatingly stiff we are when we wake up,
-and how hungry!
-
-The snow lies over everything for months, until in the early spring
-the warm west winds begin to blow, melting the snow from one side of
-the mountains. Then the sun grows hotter and hotter day by day, and
-helps to melt it until most of the mountain slopes are clear; but in
-sheltered places and in the bottoms of the little hollows the snow
-stays in patches till far into the summer. We bears come out from our
-winter sleep when the snow is not quite gone, when the whole earth
-everywhere is still wet with it, and the streams, swollen with floods,
-are bubbling and boiling along so that the air is filled with the
-noise of them by night and day.
-
-Our home was well up one of the hillsides, where two huge cedar-trees
-shot up side by side close by a jutting mass of rock. In between
-the roots of the trees and under the rock was as good a house as a
-family of bears could want--roomy enough for all four of us, perfectly
-sheltered, and hidden and dry. Can you imagine how warm and comfy it
-was when we were all snuggled in there, with our arms round each other,
-and our faces buried in each other's fur? Anyone looking in would have
-seen nothing but a huge ball of black and brown fluff.
-
-It was from just outside the door that I tumbled downhill.
-
-It must have been early in the year, because the ground was still very
-wet and soft, and the gully at the bottom full of snow. Of course, if
-I had not been a cub I should never have fallen, for big bears do not
-tumble downhill. If by any chance anything did start one, and he found
-he could not stop himself, he would know enough to tuck in his head and
-paws out of harm's way; but I only knew that somehow, in romping with
-Kahwa, I had lost my balance, and was going--goodness knew where! I
-went all spread out like a squirrel, first on my head, then on my back,
-then on my tummy, clutching at everything that I passed, slapping the
-ground with my outstretched paws, and squealing for help. Bump! bang!
-slap! bump! I went, hitting trees and thumping all the wind out of me
-against the earth, and at last--souse into the snow!
-
-Wow-ugh![1] How cold and wet it was! And it was deep--so deep, indeed,
-that I was buried completely out of sight; and I doubt if I should ever
-have got out alive had not my mother come down and dug me out with her
-nose and paws. Then she half pushed and half smacked me uphill again,
-and when I got home I was the wettest, coldest, sorest, wretchedest
-bear-cub in the Rocky Mountains.
-
-Then, while I lay and whimpered, my mother spent the rest of the day
-licking me into the semblance of a respectable bearkin again. But I was
-bruised and nervous for days afterwards.
-
-That tumble of mine gave us the idea of the game which Kahwa and I used
-to play almost every day after that. Kahwa would take her stand with
-her back against the rock by our door, just at the point where the hill
-went off most steeply, and it was my business to come charging up the
-hill at her and try to pull her down. What fun it was! Sometimes I was
-the one to stand against the rock, and Kahwa tried to pull me down.
-She could not do it; but she was plucky, and used to come at me so
-ferociously that I often wondered for a minute whether it was only play
-or whether she was really angry.
-
-Best of all was when mother used to play with us. Then she put her back
-to the rock, and we both attacked her at once from opposite sides, each
-trying to get hold of a hind-leg just above the foot. If she put her
-head down to pretend to bite either of us, the other jumped for her
-ear. Sometimes we would each get hold of an ear, and hang on as hard as
-we could, while she pretended we were hurting her dreadfully, growling
-and shaking her head, and making as much fuss as she could; but if in
-our excitement either of us did chance to bite a little too hard, we
-always knew it. With a couple of cuffs, hard enough to make us yelp,
-she would throw us to one side and the other, and there was no more
-play for that day. And mother could hit hard when she liked. I have
-seen her smack father in a way that would have broken all the bones in
-a cub's body, and killed any human being outright.
-
-Father did not romp with us as much as mother. He was more serious,
-but, on the other hand, he did not lose his temper nearly so quickly.
-She used to get angry with him over nothing, and I think he was afraid
-of her. And it was just the same later on with me and my wife. I always
-knew that I could have eaten her up had I wanted to, but, somehow, a
-bear cannot settle down in earnest to fight his own wife. If she loses
-her temper, he can pretend to be angry too, but in the end he surely
-gets the worst of it. I do not know why it is, but a she-bear does not
-seem to mind how hard she hits her husband, but he always stops just
-short of hurting her. Perhaps it is the same with human beings.
-
-But to Kahwa and me both father and mother were very gentle and kind in
-those first helpless days, and I suppose they never punished us unless
-we deserved it. Later on my father and I had differences, as you will
-hear. But in that first summer our lives, if uneventful, were very
-happy.
-
-
-FOOTNOTE
-
-[1] It is not possible to give any idea of how a bear says _wow-ugh_.
-The _wow_ begins at the bottom of the octave, runs halfway up and then
-down again, and the _ugh_ comes from the very inside of his insides.
-It is as if he started on the ground floor of a house, _wowed_ clear
-upstairs to the top and down again, and then went into the cellar to
-say _ugh_!
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-CUBHOOD DAYS
-
-
-When they are small, bear-cubs rarely go about alone. The whole family
-usually keeps together, or, if it separates, it is generally into
-couples--one cub with each of the parents; or the father goes off
-alone, leaving both cubs with the mother. A cub toddling off alone in
-its own woolly, comfortable ignorance would be sure to make all manner
-of mistakes in what it ate, and it might find itself in very serious
-trouble in other ways.
-
-Bears, when they live far enough away from man, have absolutely nothing
-to be afraid of. There are, of course, bigger bears--perhaps bigger
-ones of our own kind, either black or brown ('cinnamon,' as the brown
-members of our family are called), or, especially, grizzly. But I never
-heard of a grizzly bear hurting one of us. When I smell a grizzly in
-the neighbourhood, I confess that it seems wiser to go round the other
-side of the hill; but that is probably inherited superstition more
-than anything else. My father and mother did it, and so do I. But I
-have known several of our cinnamon cousins in my life, and have been
-friendly enough with them--with the she-bears especially. Apart from
-these, there lives nothing in the forest that a full-grown black bear
-has any cause to fear. He goes where he pleases and does what he likes,
-and nobody ventures to dispute his rights. With a cub, however, it is
-different.
-
-I had heard my father and mother speak of pumas, or mountain lions, and
-I knew their smell well enough--and did not like it. But I shall never
-forget the first one that I saw.
-
-We were out together--father, mother, Kahwa, and I--and it was getting
-well on in the morning. The sun was up, and the day growing warm, and
-I, wandering drowsily along with my nose to the ground, had somehow
-strayed away from the rest, when suddenly I smelled puma very strong.
-As I threw myself up on my haunches, he came out from behind a tree,
-and stood facing me only a few yards away. I was simply paralyzed
-with fear--one of the two or three times in my life when I have been
-honestly and thoroughly frightened. As I looked at him, wondering what
-would happen next, he crouched down till he was almost flat along the
-ground, and I can see him now, his whole yellow body almost hidden
-behind his head, his eyes blazing, and his tail going slap, slap! from
-side to side. How I wished that I had a tail!
-
-Then inch by inch he crept towards me, very slowly, putting one foot
-forward and then the other. I did not know what to do, and so did what
-proved to be the best thing possible: I sat quite still, and screamed
-for mother as loud as I could. She must have known from my voice that
-something serious was the matter, because in a second, just as the
-puma's muscles were growing tense for the final spring, there was a
-sudden crash of broken boughs behind me, a feeling as if a whirlwind
-was going by, and my mother shot past me straight at the puma. I had
-no idea that she could go so fast. The puma was up on his hind-legs to
-meet her, but her impetus was so terrific that it bore him backwards,
-without seeming to check her speed in the least, and away they went
-rolling over and over down the hill.
-
-But it was not much of a fight. The puma, willing enough to attack a
-little cub like me, knew that he was no match for my mother, and while
-they were still rolling he wrenched himself loose, and was off among
-the trees like a shadow.
-
-When mother came back to me blood was running over her face, where, at
-the moment of meeting, the puma had managed to give her one wicked,
-tearing claw down the side of her nose. So, as soon as my father and
-Kahwa joined us, we all went down to the stream, where mother bathed
-her face, and kept it in the cold water for nearly the whole day.
-
-It was probably in some measure to pay me out for this scrape, and
-to give me another lesson in the unwisdom of too much independence
-and inquisitiveness in a youngster, that my parents, soon after this,
-allowed me to get into trouble with that porcupine.
-
-One evening my father had taken us to a place where the ground was full
-of mountain lilies. It was early in the year, when the green shoots
-were just beginning to appear above the earth; and wherever there was
-a shoot there was a bulb down below. And a mountain lily bulb is one
-of the very nicest things to eat that there is--so sweet, and juicy,
-and crisp! The place was some distance from our home, and after that
-first visit Kahwa and I kept begging to be taken there again. At last
-my father yielded, and we set out early one morning just before day was
-breaking.
-
-We were not loitering on the way, but trotting steadily along all
-together, and Kahwa and I, at least, were full of expectation of the
-lily bulbs in store, when, in a little open space among the trees,
-we came upon an object unlike anything I had ever seen before. As we
-came upon it, I could have declared that it was moving--that it was an
-animal which, at sight of us, had stopped stock still, and tucked its
-head and toes in underneath it. But it certainly was not moving now,
-and did not look as if it ever could move again, so finally I concluded
-that it must be a large fungus or a strange new kind of hillock, with
-black and white grass growing all over it. My father and mother had
-stopped short when they saw it, and just sat up on their haunches and
-looked at it; and Kahwa did the same, snuggling up close to my mother's
-side. Was it an animal, or a fungus, or only a mound of earth? The
-way to find out was to smell it. So, without any idea of hurting it,
-I trotted up and reached out my nose. As I did so it shrank a little
-more into itself, and became rounder and more like a fungus than ever;
-but the act of shrinking also made the black and white grass stick out
-a little further, so that my nose met it sooner than I expected, and
-I found that, if it was grass, it was very sharp grass, and pricked
-horribly. I tried again, and again it shrank up and pricked me worse
-than ever. Then I heard my father chuckling to himself.
-
-That made me angry, for I always have detested being laughed at, and,
-without stopping to think, I smacked the thing just as hard as I could.
-A moment later I was hopping round on three legs howling with pain, for
-a bunch of the quills had gone right into my paw, where they were still
-sticking, one coming out on the other side.
-
-My father laughed, but my mother drew out the quills with her teeth,
-and that hurt worse than anything; and all day, whenever she found a
-particularly fat lily bulb, she gave it to me. For my part, I could
-only dig for the bulbs with my left paw, and it was ever so many days
-before I could run on all four feet again.
-
-All these things must have happened when I was very young--less than
-three months old--because we were still living in the same place,
-whereas when summer came we moved away, as bears always do, and had no
-fixed home during the hot months.
-
-Bear-cubs are born when the mother is still in her winter den, and they
-are usually five or six weeks old before they come out into the world
-at all. Even then at first, when the cubs are very young, the family
-stays close at home, and for some time I imagine that the longest
-journey I made was when I tumbled those fifty feet downhill. Father or
-mother might wander away alone in the early morning or evening for a
-while, but for the most part we were all four at home by the rock and
-the cedar-trees, with the bare brown tree-trunks growing up all round
-out of the bare brown mountain-sides, and Kahwa and I spending our time
-lying sleepily cuddled up to mother, or romping together and wishing we
-could catch squirrels.
-
-There were a great many squirrels about--large gray ones mostly; but
-living in a fir-tree close by us was a black one with a deplorable
-temper.
-
-Every day he used to come and quarrel with us. Whenever he had nothing
-particular to do, he would say to himself, 'I'll go and tease those
-old bears.' And he did. His plan was to get on our trees from behind,
-where we could not see him, then to come round on our side about five
-or six feet from the ground, just safely out of reach, and there,
-hanging head downwards, call us every name he could think of. Squirrels
-have an awful vocabulary, but I never knew one that could talk like
-Blacky. And every time he thought of something new to say he waved his
-tail at us in a way that was particularly aggravating. You have no idea
-how other animals poke fun at us because we have no tails, and how
-sensitive we really are on the subject. They say that it was to hide
-our lack of tail that we originally got into the habit of sitting up on
-our haunches whenever we meet a stranger.
-
-Kahwa and I used to make all sorts of plans to catch Blacky, but we
-might as well have tried to catch a moonbeam. He knew exactly how far
-we could reach from the ground, and if we made a rush for him he was
-always three inches too high. Then we would run round on opposite sides
-of the tree in the hope of cutting him off when he came down. But when
-we did that he never did come down, but just went up instead, till he
-reached a place where the branches of our trees nearly touched those of
-his own fir, and then jumped across. We always hoped he would miss that
-jump, and Kahwa and I waited down below with our mouths open for him to
-drop in, but he never did.
-
-We used to try and persuade mother to go up his tree after him, but
-she knew very well that she could neither catch him nor get out on the
-thin branches where his nest was. There is only one way in which a bear
-can catch squirrels, and that is by pretending to be dead or asleep;
-for squirrels are so idiotically inquisitive that sooner or later they
-are certain to come right up to you if you do this, and sit on your
-nose. Some bears, I believe, are fond of squirrels, but I confess I
-never cared for them. There is so much fluff and stringy stuff in them,
-and so little to eat.
-
-Chipmunks[2] are different. Though smaller than squirrels, they are
-much less fluffy in proportion, and taste almost as nice as mice.
-
-Next to Blacky, our most frequent visitor was Rat-tat, the woodpecker.
-The air in the mountains is very still, so that you can hear sounds a
-long way, and all day long from every direction the 'rat-tat-tat-tat!'
-of the woodpeckers was ringing through the woods. In the evening
-when the sun was going down, they used to sit on the very tops of
-the trees, and call to each other from hill to hill--just two long
-whistles, 'whee-whoo, whee-whoo.' It was a sad noise, but I liked
-Rat-tat. He was so jauntily gay in his suit of black and white, with
-his bright red crest, and always so immensely busy. Starting near
-the bottom of a tree, he worked steadily up it--rat-tat-tat-tat! and
-up--rat-tat-tat-tat! till he got to the top; then down like a flash to
-another, to begin all over again. Grubs he was after, and nothing else
-mattered. Grubs--rat-tat-tat-tat! rat-tat-tat-tat! grubs! and up and up
-he went.
-
-One of our cedars was dead at the top, and Rat-tat used to come there
-nearly every day. Little chips and splinters of wood would come
-floating down to us, and once a lovely fat beetle grub that he had
-somehow overlooked came plump down under my very nose. If that was the
-kind of thing that he found up there, I was not surprised that he was
-fond of our tree. I would have gone up too, if I could; but the dead
-part would never have been safe for me.
-
-Very soon we began to be taken out on long excursions, going all four
-together, as I have said, and then we began to learn how much that is
-nice to eat there is in the world.
-
-You have probably no idea, for instance, how many good things there may
-be under one rotting log. Even if you do not get a mouse or a chipmunk,
-you are sure of a fringe of greenstuff which, from lack of sunlight,
-has grown white and juicy, and almost as sure of some mushrooms or
-other fungi, most of which are delicious. But before you can touch them
-you have to look after the insects. Mushrooms will wait, but the sooner
-you catch beetles, and earwigs, and ants, and grubs, the better. It is
-always worth while to roll a log over, if you can, no matter how much
-trouble it costs; and a big stone is sometimes nearly as good.
-
-Insects, of course, are small, and it would take a lot of ants, or
-even beetles, to make a meal for a bear; but they are good, and they
-help out. Some wild animals, especially those which prey upon others,
-eat a lot at one time, and then starve till they can kill again. A
-bear, on the other hand, is wandering about for more than half of the
-twenty-four hours, except in the very heat of summer, and he is eating
-most of the while that he wanders. The greater part of his food, of
-course, is greenstuff--lily bulbs, white camas roots, wild-onions, and
-young shoots and leaves. As he walks he browses a mouthful of young
-leaves here, scratches up a root there, tears the bark off a decaying
-tree and eats the insects underneath, lifts a stone and finds a mouse
-or a lizard beneath, or loiters for twenty minutes over an ant-hill.
-With plenty of time, he is never in a hurry, and every little counts.
-
-But most of all in summer I used to love to go down to the stream. In
-warm weather, during the heat of the day, bears stay in the shelter of
-thickets, among the brush by the water or under the shade of a fallen
-tree. As the sun sank we would move down to the stream, and lie all
-through the long evening in the shallows, where the cold water rippled
-against one's sides. And along the water there was always something
-good to eat--not merely the herbage and the roots of the water-plants,
-but frogs and insects of all sorts among the grass. Our favourite
-bathing-place was just above a wide pool made by a beaver-dam. The pool
-itself was deep in places, but before the river came to it, it flowed
-for a hundred yards and more over a level gravel bottom, so shallow
-that even as a cub I could walk from shore to shore without the water
-being above my shoulders. At the edge of the pool the same black and
-white kingfisher was always sitting on the same branch when we came
-down, and he disliked our coming, and _chirred_ at us to go away. I
-used to love to pretend not to understand him, and to walk solemnly
-through the water underneath and all round his branch. It made him
-furious, and sent him _chirring_ upstream to find another place to
-fish, where there were no idiotic bear-cubs who did not know any better
-than to walk about among his fish.
-
-Here, too, my father and mother taught us to fish; but it was a long
-time before I managed to catch a trout for myself. It takes such a
-dreadful lot of sitting still. Having found where a fish is lying,
-probably under an overhanging branch or beneath the grass jutting out
-from the bank, you lie down silently as close to the edge of the water
-as you can get, and slip one paw in, ever so gradually, behind the
-fish, and move it towards him gently--gently. If he takes fright and
-darts away, you leave your paw where it is, or move it as close to the
-spot where he was lying as you can reach, and wait. Sooner or later he
-will come back, swimming downstream and then swinging round to take
-his station almost exactly in the same spot as before. If you leave
-your paw absolutely still, he does not mind it, and may even, on his
-return, come and lie right up against it. If so, you strike at once.
-More probably he will stop a few inches or a foot away. If you have
-already reached as far as you can towards him, then is the time that
-you need all your patience. Again and again he darts out to take a fly
-from the surface of the water or swallow something that is floated down
-to him by the current, and each time that he comes back he may shift
-his position an inch or two. At last he comes to where you can actually
-crook your claws under his tail. Ever so cautiously you move your paw
-gently halfway up towards his head, and then, when your claws are
-almost touching him, you strike--strike, once and hard, with a hooking
-blow that sends him whirling like a bar of silver far out on the bank
-behind you. And trout is good--the plump, dark, pink-banded trout of
-the mountain streams. But you must not strike one fraction of a second
-too soon, for if your paw has more than an inch to travel before the
-claws touch him he is gone, and all you feel is the flip of a tail upon
-the inner side of the paw, and all your time is wasted.
-
-It is hard to learn to wait long enough, and I know that at first I
-used to strike at fish that were a foot away, with no more chance of
-catching them than of making supper off a waterfall. But father and
-mother used to catch a fish apiece for us almost every evening, and
-gradually Kahwa and I began to take them for ourselves.
-
-Then, as the daylight faded, the beavers came out upon their dam and
-played about in the pool, swimming and diving and slapping the surface
-with their tails with a noise like that of an osprey when he strikes
-the water in diving for a fish. But though they had time for play, they
-were busy folk, the beavers. Some of them were constantly patching and
-tinkering at the dam, and some always at work, except when the sun was
-up, one relieving another, gnawing their way with little tiny bites
-steadily through one of the great trees that stood by the water's edge,
-and always gnawing it so that when, after weeks of labour, it fell, it
-never failed to fall across the stream precisely where they wanted it.
-If an enemy appeared--at the least sign or smell of wolf or puma--there
-would be a loud ringing slap from one of the tails upon the water, and
-in an instant every beaver had vanished under water and was safe inside
-the house among the logs of the dam, the door of which was down below
-the surface.
-
-Us bears they were used to and did not mind; but they never let us come
-too near. Sitting safely on the top of their piled logs, or twenty feet
-away in the water, they would talk to us pleasantly enough; but--well,
-my father told me that young, very young, beaver was good eating, and
-I imagine that the beavers knew that we thought so, and were afraid,
-perhaps, that we might not be too particular about the age.
-
-As the dusk changed to darkness we would leave the water and roam over
-the hillsides, sometimes sleeping through the middle hours of the
-night, but in summer more often roaming on, to come back to the stream
-for a while just before the sun was up, and then turning in to sleep
-till he went down again.
-
-Those long rambles in the summer moonlight, or in the early dawn when
-everything reeked with dew, how good they were! And when the afternoon
-of a broiling day brought a thunderstorm, the delight of the smell of
-the moist earth and the almost overpowering scent of the pines! And
-when the berries were ripe--blueberries, cranberries, wild-raspberries,
-and, later in the year, elderberries--no fruit, nor anything else to
-eat, has ever tasted as they did then in that first summer when I was a
-cub.
-
-
-FOOTNOTE
-
-[2] The striped ground squirrels of North America.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-THE COMING OF MAN
-
-
-Summer was far advanced. We had had a week or two of hot, dry weather,
-during which we had wandered abroad, spending the heat of the days
-asleep in the shadow of cool brushwood down by the streams, and in the
-nights and early mornings roaming where we would. Ultimately we worked
-round to the neighbourhood of our home, and went to see if all was
-right there, and to spend one day in the familiar place.
-
-It was in the very middle of the day--a sultry day, when the sun was
-blazing hot--that we were awakened by the sound of somebody coming
-through the bushes. The wind was blowing towards us, so that long
-before he came in sight we knew that it was a bear like ourselves. But
-what was a bear doing abroad at high noon of such a day, and crashing
-through the bushes in that headlong fashion? Something extraordinary
-must have happened to him, and we soon learned that indeed something
-had.
-
-Coming plunging downhill with the wind behind him, he was right on
-us before he knew we were there. He was one of our brown cousins--a
-cinnamon--and we saw at once that he was hurt, for he was going on
-three legs, holding his left fore-paw off the ground. It was covered
-with blood and hung limply, showing that the bone was broken. He was
-so nervous that at sight of us he threw himself up on his haunches and
-prepared to fight; but we all felt sorry for him, and he soon quieted
-down.
-
-'Whatever has happened to you?' asked my father, while we others sat
-and listened.
-
-'Man!' replied Cinnamon, with a growl that made my blood run cold.
-
-Man! Father had told us of man, but he had never seen him; nor had his
-father or his grandfather before him. Man had never visited our part
-of the mountains, as far as we knew, but stories of him we had heard
-in plenty. They had been handed down in our family from generation to
-generation, from the days when our ancestors lived far away from our
-present abiding-place; and every year, too, the animals that left the
-mountains when the snow came brought us back stories of man in the
-spring. The coyotes knew him and feared him; the deer knew him and
-trembled at his very name; the pumas knew him and both feared and hated
-him. Everyone who knew him seemed to fear him, and we had caught the
-fear from them, and feared him, too, and had blessed ourselves that he
-did not come near us.
-
-And now he was here! And poor Cinnamon's shattered leg was evidence
-that his evil reputation was not unjustified.
-
-Then Cinnamon told us his story.
-
-He had lived, like his father and grandfather before him, some miles
-away on the other side of the high range of mountains behind us; and
-there he had considered himself as safe from man as we on our side had
-supposed ourselves to be. But that spring when he awoke he found that
-during the winter the men had come. They were few in the beginning,
-he said, and he had first heard of them as being some miles away. But
-more came, and ever more; and as they came they pushed further and
-further into the mountains. What they were doing he did not know, but
-they kept for the most part along by the streams, where they dug holes
-everywhere. No, they did not live in the holes. They built themselves
-places to live in out of trees which they cut down and chopped into
-lengths and piled together. Why they did that, when it was so much
-easier to dig comfortable holes in the hillside, he did not know; but
-they did. And they did not cut down the trees with their teeth like
-beavers, but took sticks in their hands and beat them till they fell!
-
-Yes, it was true about the fires they made. They made them every day
-and all the time, usually just outside the houses that they built of
-the chopped trees. The fires were terrible to look at, but the men
-did not seem to be afraid of them. They stood quite close to them,
-especially in the evenings, and burned their food in them before they
-ate it.
-
-We had heard this before, but had not believed it. And it was true,
-after all! What was still more wonderful, Cinnamon said that he had
-gone down at night, when the men were all asleep in their chopped-tree
-houses, and, sniffing round, had found pieces of this burnt food lying
-about, and eaten them, and--they were very good! So good were they
-that, incredible as it might seem, Cinnamon had gone again and again,
-night after night, to look for scraps that had been left lying about.
-
-On the previous night he had gone down as usual after the men, as
-he supposed, were all asleep, but he was arrested before he got to
-the houses themselves by a strong smell of the burnt food somewhere
-close by him. The men, he explained, had cut down the trees nearest
-to the stream to build their houses with, so that between the edge
-of the forest and the water there was an open space dotted with the
-stumps of the trees that had been felled, which stuck up as high as a
-bear's shoulder from the ground. It was just at the edge of this open
-space that he smelled the burnt food, and, sure enough, on one of the
-nearest stumps there was a bigger lump of it than any he had ever seen.
-Naturally, he went straight up to it.
-
-Just as he got to it he heard a movement between him and the houses,
-and, looking round, he saw a man lying flat on the ground in such a
-way that he had hitherto been hidden by another stump. As Cinnamon
-looked he saw the man point something at him (yes, unquestionably, the
-dreadful thing we had heard of--the thunder-stick--with which man kills
-at long distances), and in a moment there was a flash of flame and a
-noise like a big tree breaking in the wind, and something hit his leg
-and smashed it, as we could see. It hurt horribly, and Cinnamon turned
-at once and plunged into the wood. As he did so there was a second
-flash and roar, and something hit a tree-trunk within a foot of his
-head, and sent splinters flying in every direction.
-
-Since then Cinnamon had been trying only to get away. His foot hurt him
-so that he had been obliged to be down for a few hours in the bushes
-during the morning; but now he was pushing on again, only anxious to go
-somewhere as far away from man as possible.
-
-While he was talking, my mother had been licking his wounded foot,
-while father sat up on his haunches, with his nose buried in the fur
-of his chest, grumbling and growling to himself, as his way was when
-he was very much annoyed. I have the same trick, which I suppose I
-inherited from him. We cubs sat shivering and whimpering, and listening
-terror-stricken to the awful story.
-
-What was to be done now? That was the question. How far away, we asked,
-were the men? Well, it was about midnight when Cinnamon was wounded,
-and now it was noon. Except the three or four hours that he had lain
-in the bushes, he had been travelling in a straight line all the time,
-as fast as he could with his broken leg. And did men travel fast? No;
-they moved very slowly, and always on their hind-legs. Cinnamon had
-never seen one go on all fours, though that seemed to him as ridiculous
-as their building houses of chopped trees instead of making holes in
-the ground. They very rarely went about at night, and Cinnamon did
-not believe any of them had followed him, so there was probably no
-immediate danger. Moreover, Cinnamon explained, they seldom moved far
-away from the streams, and they made a great deal of noise wherever
-they went, so that it was easy to hear them. Besides which, you could
-smell them a long way off. It did not matter if you had never smelled
-it before: any bear would know the man-smell by the first whiff he got
-of it.
-
-All this was somewhat consoling. It made the danger a little more
-remote, and, especially, it reduced the chance of our being taken by
-surprise. Still, the situation was bad enough as it stood, for the
-news changed the whole colour and current of our lives. Hitherto we
-had gone without fear where we would, careless of anything but our own
-inclinations. Now a sudden terror had arisen, that threw a shadow
-over every minute of the day and night. Man was near--man, who seemed
-to love to kill, and who _could_ kill; not by his strength, but by
-virtue of some cunning which we could neither combat nor understand.
-Thereafter, though perhaps man's name might not be mentioned between us
-from one day to another, I do not think there was a minute when we were
-not all more or less on the alert, with ears and nostrils open for an
-indication of his dreaded presence.
-
-Though Cinnamon thought we could safely stay where we were, he proposed
-himself to push on, further away from the neighbourhood of the hated
-human beings. In any emergency he would be sadly crippled by his broken
-leg, and--at least till that was healed--he preferred to be as remote
-from danger as possible.
-
-After he was gone my father and mother held council. There was no more
-sleep for us that day, and in the evening, when we started out on our
-regular search for food, it was very cautiously, and with nerves all on
-the jump. It was a trying night. We went warily, with our heads ever
-turned up-wind, hardly daring to dig for a root lest the sound of our
-digging should fill our ears so that we would not hear man's approach;
-and when I stripped a bit of bark from a fallen log to look for
-beetles underneath, and it crackled noisily as it came away, my father
-growled angrily at me and mother cuffed me from behind.
-
-I remember, though, that they shared the beetles between them.
-
-I need not dwell on the days of anxiety that followed. I do not
-remember them much myself, except that they were very long and
-nerve-racking. I will tell you at once how it was that we first
-actually came in contact with man himself.
-
-In the course of my life I have reached the conclusion that nearly
-all the troubles that come to animals are the result of one of two
-things--either of their greediness or their curiosity. It was curiosity
-which led me into the difficulty with Porcupine. It was Cinnamon's
-greediness that got his leg broken for him. Our first coming in contact
-with man was the result, I am afraid, of both--but chiefly of our
-curiosity.
-
-During the days that followed our meeting with Cinnamon, while we were
-moving about so cautiously, we were also all the time (and, though we
-never mentioned the fact, we all knew that we were) gradually working
-nearer to the place where Cinnamon had told us that man was. I knew
-what was happening, but would not have mentioned it for worlds,
-lest if we talked about it we should change our direction. And I
-wanted--yes, in spite of his terrors--I _wanted_ to see man just once.
-Also--I may as well confess it--there were memories of what Cinnamon
-had said of that wonderful burnt food.
-
-Some ten or twelve days must have passed in this way, when one morning,
-after we had been abroad for three or four hours, and the sun was just
-getting up, we heard a noise such as we had never heard before. Chuck!
-chuck! chuck! chuck! It came at regular intervals for a while, then
-stopped and began again. What could it be? It was not the noise of a
-woodpecker, nor that which a beaver makes with its tail. Chuck! chuck!
-chuck! chuck! It was not the clucking of a grouse, though perhaps more
-like that than anything else, but different, somehow, in quality.
-Chuck! chuck! chuck! chuck! I think we all knew in our hearts that it
-had something to do with man.
-
-The noise came from not far away, but the wind was blowing across us.
-So we made a circle till it blew from the noise to us; and suddenly in
-one whiff we all knew that it was man. I felt my skin crawling up my
-spine, and I saw my father's nose go down into his chest, while the
-hair on his neck and shoulders stood out as it only could do in moments
-of intense excitement.
-
-Slowly, very slowly, we moved towards the noise, until at last we were
-so close that the smell grew almost overpowering. But still we could
-not see him, because of the brushwood. Then we came to a fallen log
-and, carefully and silently we stepped on to it--my father and mother
-first, then I, then Kahwa. Now, by standing up on our hind-feet, our
-heads--even mine and Kahwa's--were clear of the bushes, and there,
-not fifty yards away from us, was man. He was chopping down a tree,
-and that was the noise that we had heard. He did not see us, being
-too intent on his work. Chuck! chuck! chuck! chuck! He was striking
-steadily at the tree with what I now know was an axe, but which at
-the time we all supposed to be a thunder-stick, and at each blow the
-splinters of wood flew just as Cinnamon had told us. After a while he
-stopped, and stooped to pick something off the ground. This hid him
-from my sight, and from Kahwa's also, so she strained up on her tiptoes
-to get another look at him. In doing so her feet slipped on the bark of
-the log, and down she came with a crash that could have been heard at
-twice his distance from us, even if the shock had not knocked a loud
-'Wooff!' out of her as she fell. The man instantly stood up and turned
-round, and, of course, found himself staring straight into our three
-faces.
-
-He did not hesitate a moment, but dropped his axe and ran. I think he
-ran as fast as he could, but what Cinnamon said was true: he went, of
-course, on his hind-legs, and did _not_ travel fast. It was downhill,
-and running on your hind-legs for any distance downhill is an awkward
-performance at best.
-
-We, of course, followed our impulse, and went after him. We did not
-want him in the least. We would not have known what to do with him
-if we had him. But you know how impossible it is to resist chasing
-anything that runs away from you. We could easily have caught him had
-we wished to, but why should we? Besides, he might still have another
-thunder-stick concealed about him. So we just ran fast enough to keep
-him running. And as we ran, crashing through the bushes, galloping down
-the hill, with his head rising and falling as he leaped along ahead of
-us, the absurdity of it got hold of me, and I yelped with excitement
-and delight. To be chasing man, of all things living--man--like this!
-And I could hear my father 'wooffing' to himself at each gallop with
-amusement and satisfaction.
-
-Very soon, however, we smelled more men. Then we slowed down, and
-presently there came in sight what we knew must be one of the
-chopped-tree houses. So we stood and watched, while the man, still
-running as if we were at his very heels, tore up to the house, and out
-from behind it came three or four others. We could see them brandishing
-their arms and talking very excitedly. Then two of them plunged into
-the house, and came out with--yes, there could be no doubt of it; these
-were the real things--the dreaded thunder-sticks themselves.
-
-Then we knew that it was our turn to run; and we ran.
-
-Back up the hill we went, much faster than we had come down; for we
-were running for our own lives now, and bears like running uphill best.
-On and on we went, as fast as we could go. We had no idea at how long
-a distance man could hit us with the thunder-sticks, but we preferred
-to be on the safe side, and it must have been at least two hours before
-we stopped for a moment to take breath. And when a bear is in a hurry,
-two hours, even for a cub, mean more than twenty miles.
-
-So it was that we first met man. And how absurdly different from what
-in our terrified imaginations we had pictured it!
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-THE FOREST FIRE
-
-
-Though we had come off so happily from our first encounter with man,
-none the less we had no desire to see him again. On the contrary, we
-determined to keep as far away from him as possible. For my part, I
-confess that thoughts of him were always with me, and every thought
-made the skin crawl up my back. At nights I dreamed of him--dreamed
-that he was chasing me endlessly over the mountains. I would get
-away from him, and, thinking myself safe, crawl into a thicket to
-sleep; but before I could shut my eyes he was on me again, and the
-dreadful thunder-stick would speak, and showers of chips flew off the
-tree-trunks all round me, and off I would have to go again. And all
-the time my fore-leg was broken, like Cinnamon's, and I never dared
-to stop long enough to wash it in the streams. It seemed to me that
-the chase lasted for days and days, over hills and across valleys, and
-always, apparently, in a circle, because I never managed to get any
-distance away from home. Then, just as man was going to catch me, and
-the thunder-stick was roaring, and the chips flying off the trees in
-bewildering showers about me, my mother would slap me, and wake me up
-because she could not sleep for the noise that I was making. And I was
-very glad that she did.
-
-Nor was I the only one of the family who was nervous. Father and mother
-had become so changed that they were gruff and bad-tempered; and all
-the pleasure and light-heartedness seemed to have gone out of our
-long rambles. There was no more romping and rolling together down the
-hillsides. If Kahwa and I grew noisy in our play, we were certain to be
-stopped with a 'Woof, children! be quiet.' The fear of man was always
-with us, and his presence seemed to pervade the whole of the mountains.
-
-Soon, however, a thing happened which for a time at least drove man and
-everything else out of our minds.
-
-We still lingered around the neighbourhood of our home, because, I
-think, we felt safer there, where we knew every inch of the hills and
-every bush, and tree, and stone. It had been very hot for weeks, so
-that the earth was parched dry, and the streams had shrunk till, in
-places where torrents were pouring but a few weeks ago, there was now
-no more than a dribble of water going over the stones. During the day
-we hardly went about at all, but from soon after sunrise to an hour
-or so before sunset we kept in the shadow of the brushwood along the
-water's edge.
-
-One evening the sun did not seem to be able to finish setting, but
-after it had gone down the red glow still stayed in the sky to
-westward, and instead of fading it glowed visibly brighter as the
-night went on. All night my father was uneasy, growling and grumbling
-to himself and continually sniffing the air to westward; but the
-atmosphere was stagnant and hot and dead all night, with not a breath
-of wind moving. When daylight came the glow died out of the western
-sky, but in place of it a heavy gray cloud hung over the further
-mountains and hid their tops from sight. We went to bed that morning
-feeling very uncomfortable and restless, and by mid-day we were up
-again. And now we knew what the matter was.
-
-A breeze had sprung up from the west, and when I woke after a few
-hours' sleep--sleep which had been one long nightmare of man and
-thunder-sticks and broken leg--the air was full of a new smell, very
-sharp and pungent; and not only was there the smell, but with the
-breeze the cloud from the west had been rolling towards us, and the
-whole mountain-side was covered with a thin haze, like a mist, only
-different from any mist that I had seen. And it was this haze that
-smelled so strongly. Instead of clearing away, as mist ought to do
-when the sun grows hot, this one became denser as the day went on,
-half veiling the sun itself. And we soon found that things--unusual
-things--were going on in the mountains. The birds were flying excitedly
-about, and the squirrels chattering, and everything was travelling from
-west to east, and on all sides we heard the same thing.
-
-'The world's on fire! quick, quick, quick, quick!' screamed the
-squirrels as they raced along the ground or jumped from tree to
-tree overhead. 'Fire! fire!' called the myrtle-robin as it passed.
-'Firrrrrre!' shouted the blue jay. A coyote came limping by, yelping
-that the end of the world was at hand. Pumas passed snarling and
-growling angrily, first at us, and then over their shoulders at the
-smoke that rolled behind. Deer plunged up to us, stood for a minute
-quivering with terror, and plunged on again into the brush. Overhead
-and along the ground was an almost constant stream of birds and
-animals, all hurrying in the same direction.
-
-Presently there came along another family of bears, the parents and two
-cubs just about the size of Kahwa and myself, the cubs whimpering and
-whining as they ran. The father bear asked my father if we were not
-going, too; but my father thought not. He was older and bigger than
-the other bear, and had seen a forest fire when he was a cub, and his
-father then had saved them by taking to the water.
-
-'If a strong wind gets up,' he said, 'you cannot escape by running away
-from the fire, because it will travel faster than you. It may drive
-you before it for days, until you are worn out, and there's no knowing
-where it will drive you. It may drive you unexpectedly straight into
-man. I shall try the water.'
-
-The others listened to what he had to say, but they were too frightened
-to pay much attention, and soon went on again, leaving us to face the
-fire. And I confess that I wished that father would let us go, too.
-
-Meanwhile the smoke had been growing thicker and thicker. It made eyes
-and throat smart, and poor little Kahwa was crying with discomfort
-and terror. Before sunset the air was so thick that we could not see
-a hundred yards in any direction, and as the twilight deepened the
-whole western half of the sky, from north to south and almost overhead,
-seemed to be aflame. Now, too, we could hear the roaring of the fire
-in the distance, like the noise the wind makes in the pine-trees
-before a thunderstorm. Then my father began to move, not away from the
-fire, however, but down the stream, and the stream ran almost due west
-straight towards it. What a terrible trip that was! The fire was, of
-course, much further away than it looked; the smoke had been carried
-with the wind many miles ahead of the fire itself, and we could not
-yet see the flames, but only the awful glare in the sky. But, in my
-inexperience, I thought it was close upon us, and, with the dreadful
-roaring growing louder and louder in my ears, every minute was an agony.
-
-But my father and mother went steadily on, and there was nothing to
-do but to follow them. Sometimes we left the stream for a little to
-make a short-cut, but we soon came back to it, and for the most part
-we kept in the middle of the water, or wading along by the bank where
-it was deep. All the time the noise of the roaring of the flames grew
-louder and the light in the sky brighter, until, as we went forward,
-everything in front of us looked black against it, and if we looked
-behind us everything was glowing, even in the haze of smoke, as if in
-strong red sunshine. Now, too, at intervals the gusts of wind came
-stiflingly hot, laden with the breath of the fire itself, and we were
-glad to plunge our faces down into the cool water until the gusts went
-by.
-
-At last we reached our pool above the beaver-dam, and here, feeling
-his way cautiously well out into the middle, till he found a place
-where it was just deep enough for Kahwa and me to be able to lift our
-heads above the water, father stopped. By this time the air was so hot
-that it was hard to breathe without dipping one's mouth constantly in
-the water, and for the roaring of the flames I could not hear Kahwa
-whimpering at my side, or the rush of the stream below the dam. And we
-soon found that we were not alone in the pool. My friend the kingfisher
-was not there, but close beside us were old Grey Wolf and his wife,
-and, as I remembered that Grey Wolf was considered the wisest animal
-in the mountains, I began to feel more comfortable, and was glad that
-we had not run away with the others. The beavers--what a lot of them
-there were!--were in a state of great excitement, climbing out on to
-the top of the dam and slapping the logs and the water with their
-tails, then plunging into the water, only to climb out again and plunge
-in once more. Once a small herd of deer, seven or eight of them,
-came rushing into the water, evidently intending to stay there, but
-their courage failed them. Whether it was the proximity of Grey Wolf
-or whether it was mere nervousness I do not know, but after they had
-settled down in the water one of them was suddenly panic-stricken, and
-plunged for the bank and off into the woods, followed by all the rest.
-
-When we reached the pool there was still one ridge or spur of the
-mountains between us and the fire, making a black wall in front of us,
-above which was nothing but a furnace of swirling smoke and red-hot
-air. It seemed as if we waited a long time for the flames to top that
-wall, because, I suppose, they travelled slowly down in the valley
-beyond, where they did not get the full force of the wind. Then we
-saw the sky just above the top of the wall glowing brighter from red
-to yellow; then came a few scattered, tossing bits of flame against
-the glow and the swirling smoke; and then, with one roar, it was upon
-us. In an instant the whole line of the mountain ridge was a mass of
-flame, the noise redoubled till it was almost deafening, and, as the
-wind now caught it, the fire leaped from tree to tree, not pausing at
-one before it swallowed the next, but in one steady rush, without check
-or interruption, it swept over the hill-top and down the nearer slope,
-and instantaneously, as it seemed, we were in the middle of it.
-
-I remember recalling then what my father had said to the other bears
-about not being able to run away from the fire if the wind were blowing
-strongly.
-
-Had we not been out in the middle of the pool, we must have perished.
-The fire was on both sides of the stream--indeed, as we learned later,
-it reached for many miles on both sides, and where there was only the
-usual width of water the flames joined hands across it and swept up
-the stream in one solid wall. Where we were was the whole width of
-the pool, while, besides, the beavers had cut down the larger trees
-immediately near the water, so there was less for the fire to feed
-upon. But even so I did not believe that we could come through alive.
-It was impossible to open my eyes above water, and the hot air scorched
-my throat. There was nothing for it but to keep my head under water
-and hold my breath as long as I could, then put my nose out just enough
-to breathe once, and plunge it in again. How long that went on I do not
-know, but it seemed to me ages; though the worst of it can only have
-lasted for minutes. But at the end of those minutes all the water in
-that huge pool was hot.
-
-I saw my father raising his head and shoulders slowly out of the water
-and beginning to look about him. That gave me courage, and I did the
-same. The first thing that I realized was that the roaring was less
-loud, and then, though it was still almost intolerably hot, I found
-that it was possible to keep one's head in the open air and one's eyes
-open. Looking back, I saw that the line of flame had already swept far
-away, and was even now surmounting the top of the next high ridge; and
-it was, I knew, at that moment devouring the familiar cedars by our
-home, just as it had devoured the trees on either side of the beavers'
-pool. On all sides of us the bigger trees were still in flames,
-and from everywhere thick white smoke was rising, and over all the
-mountain-side, right down to the water's edge, there was not one green
-leaf or twig. Everything was black. The brushwood was completely
-gone. The trees were no more than bare trunks, some of them still
-partially wreathed in flames. The whole earth was black, and from every
-side rose columns and jets and streams of smoke. It seemed incredible
-that such a change could have been wrought so instantaneously. It was
-awful. Just a few minutes, and what had been a mountain-side clothed
-in splendid trees, making one dense shield of green, sloping down to
-the bottom-land by the stream, with its thickets of undergrowth, and
-all the long cool green herbage by the water, had been swept away, and
-in its place was only a black and smoking wilderness. And what we saw
-before our eyes was the same for miles and miles to north and south of
-us, for a hundred miles to the west from which the fire had come; and
-every few minutes, as long as the wind held, carried desolation another
-mile to eastward.
-
-[Illustration: THE FATHER BEAR ASKED MY FATHER IF WE WERE NOT GOING
-TOO.]
-
-And what of all the living things that had died? Had the animals and
-birds that had passed us earlier in the day escaped? The deer which had
-fled from the pool at the last moment--they, I knew, must have been
-overtaken in that first terrible rush of the flames; and I wondered
-what the chances were that the bears who had declined to stay with
-us, the squirrels, the coyote, the pumas, and the hosts of birds that
-had been hurrying eastward all day, would be able to keep moving long
-enough to save themselves. And what of all the insects and smaller
-things that must be perishing by millions every minute? I do not know
-whether I was more frightened at the thought of what we had escaped or
-grateful to my father for the course he had taken.
-
-It is improbable that I thought of all this at the time, but I know
-I was dreadfully frightened; and it makes me laugh now to think what
-a long time it was before we could persuade Kahwa to put her head
-above water and look about her. Our eyes and throats were horribly
-sore, but otherwise none of us was hurt. But though we were alive,
-life did not look very bright for us. Where should we go? That was the
-first question. And what should we find to eat in all this smoking
-wilderness? While we sat in the middle of the pool wondering what we
-could do or whether it would be safe to do anything, we saw Grey Wolf
-start to go away. He climbed out on the bank while his wife sat in the
-water and watched him. He got out safely, and then put his nose down to
-snuff at the ground. The instant his nose touched the earth he gave
-a yelp, and plunged back into the water again. He had burnt the tip
-of his nose, for the ground was baking hot, as we soon discovered for
-ourselves. When we first stepped out on shore, our feet were so wet
-that we did not feel the heat, but in a few seconds they began to dry,
-and then the sooner we scrambled back into the water again, the better.
-
-How long it would have taken the earth to cool again I do not know.
-It was covered with a layer of burned stuff, ashes, and charred wood,
-which everywhere continued smouldering underneath, and all through the
-morning of the next day little spirals of smoke were rising from the
-ground in every direction. Fortunately, at mid-day came a thunderstorm
-which lasted well on towards evening, and when the rain stopped the
-ground had ceased smoking. Many of the trees still smouldered and
-burned inside. Sometimes the flame would eat its way out again to the
-surface, so that the tree would go on burning in the middle of the wet
-forest until it was consumed; and for days afterwards, on scratching
-away the stuff on the surface, we would come to a layer of half-burned
-sticks that was still too hot to touch. And nothing more desolate than
-the landscape can be imagined. Wherever we looked there was not a
-speck of green to be seen--nothing but blackness. The earth everywhere
-was black, and out of it in long rows in every direction stood up the
-black trees. In many cases only the branches were burnt, leaving the
-whole straight shaft of the trunk going up like a mast into the sky. In
-others the trees were destroyed, trunk and all, to within a foot or two
-of the ground, leaving nothing but a ragged and charred stump standing.
-Sometimes the fire had eaten through the tree halfway up, so that the
-top had broken off, and what remained was only a column, ten, twenty,
-or thirty feet high. And everything was black, black, black--like
-ourselves.
-
-We of course kept to the stream. There along the edges we found food,
-for the rushes and grass and plants of all kinds had burned to the
-water-line, but below that the stems and roots remained fresh and good.
-But it was impossible to avoid getting the black dust into one's nose
-and mouth, and our throats and nostrils were still full of the smell
-of the smoke. No amount of water would wash it out. The effect of the
-thunderstorm soon passed off, and by the next day everything was as
-dry as ever, and the least puff of wind filled the air with clouds of
-black powder which made us sneeze, and, getting into our eyes, kept
-them red and sore. I do not think that in all my life I have spent such
-a miserable time as during those days while we were trying to escape
-from the region of the fire.
-
-Of course, we did not know that there was any escape. Perhaps the whole
-world had burned. But my father was sure that we should get out of it
-some time or other if we only kept straight on. And keep on we did,
-hardly ever leaving the water, but travelling on and on up the stream
-as it got smaller and smaller, until finally there was no stream at
-all, but only a spring bubbling out of the mountain-side. So we crossed
-over the burnt ground until we came to the beginning of another stream
-on the other side, and followed that down just as we had followed the
-first one up. And perhaps the most dreadful thing all the time was the
-utter silence of the woods. As a rule, both day and night, they were
-full of the noises of other animals and birds, but now there was not a
-sound in all the mountains. We seemed to be the only living things left.
-
-The stream which we now followed was that on which the men whom we had
-seen were camping, and presently we came to the place where they had
-been. The chopped-log house was a pile of ashes and half-burnt wood.
-About the ruins we found all sorts of curious things that were new to
-us--among them, things which I now know were kettles and frying-pans;
-and we came across lumps of their food, but it was all too much covered
-with the black powder to be eatable. There we stayed for the best
-part of a day, and then we went on without having seen a sign of man
-himself, and wondering what had become of him. We had no cause to love
-him; but I remember hoping that he had not been burned. And the thought
-that even man himself had been as helpless as we made it all seem more
-terrible and hopeless.
-
-Seven or eight days had passed since the fire, when, the day after we
-passed the place where man had lived, we came to a beaver-dam across
-the stream, and the beavers told us that, some hours before the fire
-reached there, they had seen the men hurrying downstream, but they did
-not know whether they had succeeded in escaping or not. And now other
-life began to reappear. We met badgers and woodchucks and rats which
-had taken refuge in their holes, and had at first been unable to force
-their way out again through the mass of burnt stuff which covered the
-ground and choked up their burrows. The air, too, began to be full of
-insects, which had been safe underground or in the hearts of trees, and
-were now hatching out. And then we met birds--woodpeckers first, and
-afterwards jays, which were working back into the burnt district, and
-from them it was that we first learned for certain that it was only a
-burnt district, and that there was part of the world which had escaped.
-So we pushed on, until one morning, when daylight came, we saw in the
-distance a hill-top on which the trees still stood with all their
-leaves unconsumed. And how good and cool it looked!
-
-We did not stop to sleep, but travelled on all through the day, going
-as fast as we could along the rocky edges of the stream, which was now
-almost wide enough to be a river, when suddenly we heard strange noises
-ahead of us, and we knew what the noises were, and that they meant man
-again. Men were coming towards us along the bank of the stream, so we
-had to leave it and hurry into the woods. There, though there was no
-shelter but the burnt tree-stumps, we were safe; for everything around
-us was of the same colour as ourselves, and all we had to do was to
-squat perfectly still, and it was impossible even for us, at a little
-distance, to distinguish each other from burnt tree-stumps. So we
-sat and watched the men pass. There were five of them, each carrying
-a bundle nearly as big as himself on his back, and they laughed and
-talked noisily as they passed, without a suspicion that four bears were
-looking at them from less than a hundred yards away.
-
-As soon as they had passed, we went on again, and before evening we
-came to places where the trees were only partly burned; here and
-there one had escaped altogether. Then, close by the stream, a patch
-of willows was as green and fresh as if there had been no fire;
-and at last we had left the burnt country behind us. How good it
-was--the smell of the dry pine-needles and the good, soft brown earth
-underneath, and the delight of the taste of food that was once more
-free from smoke, and the glory of that first roll in the green grass
-among the fresh, juicy undergrowth by the water!
-
-That next day we slept--really slept--for the first time since the
-night in the beavers' pool.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-I LOSE A SISTER
-
-
-We soon found that the country which we were now in was simply full of
-animals. Of course it had had its share of inhabitants before the fire,
-and, in addition, all those that fled before the flames had crowded
-into it; besides which the beasts of prey from all directions were
-drawn towards the same place by the abundance of food which was easy
-to get. We heard terrible stories of sufferings and narrow escapes,
-and the poor deer especially, when they had at last won to a place of
-safety from the flames, were generally so tired and so bewildered that
-they fell an easy prey to the pumas and wolves. All night long the
-forest was full of the yelping of the coyotes revelling over the bodies
-of animals that the larger beasts had killed and only partly eaten,
-and every creature seemed to be quarrelling with those of its kind,
-the former inhabitants of the neighbourhood resenting the intrusion of
-the newcomers. For ourselves, nobody attacked us. We found two other
-families of bears quite close to us, but though we did not make friends
-at first, they did not quarrel with us. We were glad enough to live in
-peace, and to be able to devote ourselves to learning something about
-the new country.
-
-In general it was very much like the place that we had left--the same
-succession of mountain after mountain, all densely covered with trees,
-and with the streams winding down through gulch and valley. The stream
-that we had followed was now a river, broader all along its course
-than the beavers' pool which had saved our lives, and at one place,
-about two miles beyond the end of the burned region, it passed through
-a valley, wider than any that I had seen, with an expanse of level
-land on either side. Here it was, on this level bottom-land, that I
-first tasted what are, I think, next to honey, of all wild things
-the greatest treat that a bear knows--ripe blueberries. But this
-'berry-patch,' as we called it, was to play a very important part in my
-life, and I must explain.
-
-We had soon learned that we were now almost in the middle of men. There
-was the party which had passed us going up the stream into the burned
-country. There were two more log-houses about a mile from the edge of
-the burned country, and therefore also behind us. There were others
-further down the stream, and almost every day men passed either up or
-down the river, going from one set of houses to another. Finally we
-heard, and, before we had been there a week, saw with our own eyes,
-that only some ten miles further on, where our stream joined another
-and made a mighty river, there was a town, which had all sprung up
-since last winter, in which hundreds of men lived together. This was
-the great drawback of our new home. But if we went further on, the
-chances were that we should only come to more and more men; and for the
-present, by lying up most of the day, and only going out at night in
-the direction of their houses, there was no difficulty in keeping away
-from them.
-
-Familiarity with them indeed had lessened our terror. We certainly had
-no desire to hurt them, and they, as they passed up and down or went
-about their work digging in the ground along the side of the river or
-chopping down trees, appeared to give no thought to us; and with that
-fear removed, even though we kept constantly on the alert, lest they
-should unexpectedly come too near us, our life was happy and free from
-care. Father and mother grew to be like their old selves again, less
-gruff and nervous than they had been since the memorable day when we
-saw Cinnamon with his broken leg; and as for Kahwa and me, though we
-romped less than we used to do--for we were seven months old now, and
-at seven months a bear is getting to be a big and serious animal--we
-were as happy as two young bears could be. After a long hot day,
-during which we had been sleeping in the shade, what could be more
-delightful than to go and lie in the cool stream, where it flowed only
-a foot or so deep, and as clear as the air itself, over a firm sandy
-bottom? There were frogs, and snails, and beetles of all sorts, along
-the water's edge, and the juicy stems of the reeds and water-plants.
-Then, in the night we wandered abroad finding lily roots, and the sweet
-ferns, and camas, and mushrooms, with another visit to the river in the
-early morning, and perhaps a trout to wind up with before the sun drove
-us under cover again.
-
-And above all there was the berry-patch.
-
-The mere smell of a berry-patch at the end of summer, when the sun has
-been beating down all day, so that the air is heavy with the scent
-of the cooking fruit, is delicious enough, but it is nothing to the
-sweetness of the berries themselves.
-
-It was in the evening, after our dip in the river, when twilight was
-shading into night, that we used to visit the patch. It was a great
-open space in a bend of the river, half a mile long and nearly as
-wide, without a tree on it, and nothing but just the blue-berry bushes
-growing close together all over it, reaching about up to one's chest as
-one walked through, and every bush loaded with berries. Not only we,
-but every bear in the neighbourhood, used to go there each evening--the
-two other families of whom I have spoken, and also two other single
-he-bears who had no families. One of these was the only animal in the
-neighbourhood--except the porcupines, which every bear hates--whom I
-disliked and feared. He was a bad-tempered beast, bigger than father,
-with whom at our first meeting he wanted to pick a quarrel, while
-making friends with mother. She, however, would not have anything to
-say to him. When he was getting ready to fight my father--walking
-sideways at him and snarling, while my father, I am bound to confess,
-backed away--mother did not say a word, but went straight at him as she
-had rushed at the puma that day when she saved my life. Then father
-jumped at him also, and between them they bundled him along till
-he fairly took to his heels and ran. But whenever we met him after
-that--and we saw him every evening at the patch--he snarled viciously
-at us, and I, at least, was careful to keep father and mother between
-him and me. If he had caught any one of us alone, I believe he would
-have killed us; so we took care that he never should.
-
-I can see the berry-patch now, lying white and shining in the
-moonlight, with here and there round the edges, and even sometimes
-pretty well out into the middle, if the night was not too light, the
-black spots showing where the bears were feeding. We enjoyed our feasts
-in silence, and beyond an occasional snapping of a twig, or the cry of
-some animal from the forest, or the screech of a passing owl, there was
-not a sound but that of our own eating. One night, however, there came
-an interruption.
-
-It was bright moonlight, and we were revelling in our enjoyment of the
-fruit, but father was curiously restless. The air was very still, but
-in a little gust of wind early in the evening father declared that
-he had smelled man. As an hour passed and there was no further sign
-of him, however, we forgot him in the delight of the ripe berries.
-Suddenly from the other side of the patch, nearly half a mile away from
-us, rang out the awful voice of the thunder-stick. We did not wait to
-see what was happening, but made at all speed for the shelter of the
-trees, and tore on up the mountain slope. There was no further sound,
-but we did not dare to go back to the patch that night, nor did we see
-any of the other bears; so that it was not until some days afterwards
-that we heard that the thunder-stick had very nearly killed the mother
-of one of the other families. It had cut a deep wound in her neck,
-and she had saved herself only by plunging into the woods. If we had
-known all this at the time, I doubt if we should have gone back to the
-berry-patch as we did on the very next night.
-
-On our way to the patch we met the bad-tempered bear coming away
-from it. That was curious, and if it had been anybody else we should
-undoubtedly have asked him why he was leaving the feast at that time
-in the evening. Had we done so, it might have saved a lot of trouble.
-As it was, we only snarled back at him as he passed snarling by us,
-and went on our way. We were very careful, however, and took a long
-time to make our way out of the trees down to the edge of the bushes;
-but there was no sound to make us uneasy, nor any smell of man in such
-wind as blew. Of course we took care to approach the patch at the
-furthest point from where we had heard the thunder-stick on the night
-before. It was a cloudy night, and the moon shone only at intervals.
-Taking advantage of a passing cloud, we slipped out from the cover of
-the trees into the berry-bushes. We could see no other bears, but they
-might be hidden by the clouds. In a minute, however, the moon shone
-out, and had there been any others there--at least, as far out from
-the edge as ourselves--we must have been able to see them. Certainly,
-alas! we were seen, for even as I was looking round the patch in the
-first ray of the moonlight to see if any of our friends were there, the
-thunder-stick rang out again, and once more we plunged for the trees.
-But this time the sound was much nearer, and there was a second report
-before we were well into the shadow, and then a third. So terrified
-were we that there was no thought of stopping, but after we got into
-the woods we kept straight on as fast as we could go, father and mother
-in front, I next, and Kahwa behind; and none of us looked back, for we
-heard the shouts of men and the crashing of branches as they ran, and
-again and again the thunder-stick spoke.
-
-Suddenly I became aware that Kahwa was not behind me. I stopped and
-looked round, but she was nowhere to be seen. I remembered having heard
-her give a sudden squeal, as if she had trodden on something sharp, but
-I had paid no attention to it at the time. Now I became frightened, and
-called to father and mother to stop. They were a long way ahead, and it
-was some time before I could get near enough to attract their attention
-and tell them that Kahwa was missing.
-
-Mother wished to charge straight down the hill again at the men,
-thunder-sticks or no thunder-sticks; but father dissuaded her, and at
-last we began to retrace our steps cautiously, keeping our ears and
-noses open for any sign either of Kahwa or of man. As we came near
-the edge of the wood, noises reached us--shouts and stamping; and
-then, mixed with the other sounds, I clearly heard Kahwa's voice. She
-was crying in anger and pain, as if she was fighting, and fighting
-desperately. A minute later we were near enough to see, and a miserable
-sight it was that we saw.
-
-Out in the middle of the berry-patch, in the brilliant moonlight, was
-poor Kahwa with four men. They had fastened ropes around her, and two
-of them at the end of one rope on one side, and two at the end of one
-on the other, were dragging her across the middle of the patch. She was
-fighting every inch of the way, but her struggles against four men were
-useless, and slowly, yard by yard, she was being dragged away from us.
-
-[Illustration: SLOWLY, YARD BY YARD, SHE WAS BEING DRAGGED AWAY FROM
-US.]
-
-But if she could not fight four men, could not we? There were four of
-us, and I said so to my father. But he only grunted, and reminded me of
-the thunder-sticks. It was only too true. Without the thunder-sticks
-we should have had no difficulty in meeting them, but with those
-weapons in their hands it would only be sacrificing our lives in vain
-to attempt a rescue. So there we had to stand and watch, my mother all
-the time whimpering, and my father growling, and sitting up on his
-haunches and rubbing his nose in his chest. We dared not show ourselves
-in the open, so we followed the edge of the patch, keeping alongside of
-the men, but in the shadow of the trees. They pulled Kahwa across the
-middle of the patch into the woods on the other side, and down to the
-river-bank, where, we knew, there began an open path which the men had
-beaten in going to and from their houses half a mile further on. Here
-there were several houses in a bunch together. Inside one of these they
-shut her, and then all went in to another house themselves. We stayed
-around, and two or three times later on we saw one or more of the men
-come out and stand for awhile at Kahwa's door listening; but at last
-they came out no more, and we saw the lights go out in their house, and
-we knew that the men had gone to sleep.
-
-Then we crept down cautiously till we could hear Kahwa whimpering and
-growling through the walls. My mother spoke to her, and there was
-silence for a moment, and then, when mother spoke again, the poor
-little thing recognised her voice and squealed with delight. But what
-could we do? We talked to her for awhile, and tried to scratch away the
-earth from round the wall, in the hope of getting at her; but it was
-all useless, and as the day began to dawn nothing remained but to make
-off before the men arose, and to crawl away to hide ourselves in the
-woods again.
-
-What a wretched night that was! Hitherto I do not think that I had
-thought much of Kahwa. I had taken her as a matter of course, played
-with her and quarrelled with her by turns, without stopping to think
-what life might be without her. But now I thought of it, and as I lay
-awake through the morning I realized how much she had been to me, and
-wondered what the men would do with her. Most of all I wondered why
-they should have wanted to catch her at all. We had no wish to do them
-any harm. We were nobody's enemy; least of all was little Kahwa. Why
-could not men live in peace with us as we were willing to live in peace
-with them?
-
-Long before it was dusk next evening we were in the woods as near to
-the men's houses as we dared to go, but we could hear no sound of my
-sister's voice. There appeared to be only one man about the place, and
-he was at work chopping wood, until just at sunset, when the other
-three men came back from down the stream, and we noticed that they
-carried long ropes slung over their arms. Were those the ropes with
-which they had dragged Kahwa the night before? If so, had they again,
-while we slept, dragged her off somewhere else? We feared it must be so.
-
-Impatiently we waited until it was dark enough to trust ourselves
-in the open near the houses, and then we soon knew that our fears
-were justified. The door of the house in which Kahwa had been shut
-was open; the men went in and out of it, and evidently Kahwa was not
-there. Nor was there any trace of her about the buildings. So under my
-father's guidance we started on the path down the stream by which the
-three men had returned, and it was not long before we found the marks
-of where she had struggled against her captors, and in places the scent
-of her trail was still perceptible, in spite of the strong man-smell
-which pervaded the beaten path.
-
-So we followed the trail down until we came to more houses; then made
-a circuit and followed on again, still finding evidence that she had
-passed. Soon we came to more houses, at ever shortening intervals,
-until the bank of the stream on both sides was either continuously
-occupied by houses or showed traces of men being constantly at work
-there. And beyond was the town itself. It was of no use for us to
-go further. In the town we could see lights streaming from many of
-the buildings, and the shouting of men's voices came to our ears. We
-wandered round the outskirts of the town till it was daylight, and then
-drew back into the hills and lay down again, very sad and hungry--for
-we had hardly thought of food--and very lonesome.
-
-Kahwa, we felt sure, was somewhere among those houses in the town. But
-that was little comfort to us. And all the time we wondered what man
-wanted with her, and why he could not have left us to be happy, as we
-had been before he came.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-LIFE IN CAMP
-
-
-One of the results of Kahwa's disappearance was to make me much more
-solitary than I had ever been before, not merely because I did not have
-her to play with, but now, for the first time, I took to wandering on
-excursions by myself. And these excursions all had one object:--to find
-Kahwa.
-
-For some days after her capture we waited about the outskirts of the
-town nearly all night long; but on the third or fourth morning father
-made up his mind that it was useless, and, though mother persuaded him
-not to abandon the search for another night or two, he insisted after
-that on giving up and returning to the neighbourhood where we had been
-living since the fire. So we turned our backs upon the town, and, for
-my part very reluctantly, went home.
-
-The moon was not yet much past the full, and I can remember now how the
-berry-patch looked that night as we passed it, lying white and shining
-in the moonlight. We saw no other bears at it, and did not stop, but
-kept under the trees round the edges, and went on to our favourite
-resting-place, where, a few hundred yards from the river, a couple of
-huge trees had at some time been blown down. Round their great trunks
-as they lay on the ground, young trees and a mass of elder-bushes and
-other brushwood had sprung up, making a dense thicket. The two logs lay
-side by side, and in between them, with the tangle of bushes all round
-and the branches of the other trees overhead, there was a complete and
-impenetrable shelter.
-
-We had used this place so much that a regular path was worn to it
-through the bushes. This night as we came near we saw recent prints
-of a bear's feet on the path, and the bear that made them was
-evidently a big one. From the way father growled when he saw them, I
-think he guessed at once whose feet they were. I know that I had my
-suspicions--suspicions which soon proved to be correct.
-
-During our absence our enemy, the surly bear that I have spoken of,
-had taken it into his head that he would occupy our home. Of course he
-had lived in this district much longer than we, and, had this been
-his home when we first came, we should never have thought of disputing
-possession with him. But it had been our home now, so far as we had
-any regular home at this time of year, ever since our arrival after
-the fire, while he had lived half a mile away. Now, however, there he
-was, standing obstinately in the pathway, swinging his head from side
-to side, and evidently intending to fight rather than go away. We all
-stopped, my father in front, my mother next, and I behind. I have said
-that the stranger was bigger than my father, and in an ordinary meeting
-in the forest I do not think my father would have attempted to stand up
-to him; but this was different. It was our home, and we all felt that
-he had no right there, but that, on the contrary, he was behaving as he
-was out of pure bad temper and a desire to bully us and make himself
-unpleasant. Moreover, the events of the last few days had rendered my
-father and mother irritable, and they were in no mood to be polite to
-anybody.
-
-Usually it takes a long time to make two bears fight. We begin slowly,
-growling and walking sideways towards each other, and only getting
-nearer inch by inch. But on this occasion there was not much room in
-the path, and father was thoroughly exasperated. He hardly waited at
-all, but just stood sniffling with his nose up for a minute to see if
-the other showed any sign of going away, and then, without further
-warning, threw himself at him. I had never seen my father in a real
-fight, and now he was simply splendid. Before the stranger had time to
-realize what was happening, he was flung back on his haunches, and in
-a moment they were rolling over and over in one mass in the bushes. At
-first it was impossible to see what was going on, but, in spite of the
-ferocity of my father's rush, it soon became evident that in the end
-the bigger bear must win. My father's face was buried in the other's
-left shoulder, and he had evidently got a good grip there; but he was
-almost on his back, for the stranger had worked himself uppermost, and
-we could see that he was trying to get his teeth round my father's fore
-leg. Had he once got hold, nothing could have saved the leg, bone and
-all, from being crushed to pieces, and father, if not killed, would
-certainly have been beaten, and probably crippled for life. And sooner
-or later it seemed certain that the stranger would get his hold.
-
-Then it was that my mother interfered. Hurling herself at him, she
-threw her whole weight into one swinging blow on the side of the big
-bear's head, and in another second had plunged her teeth into the back
-of his neck. My father's grip in the fleshy part of the shoulder,
-however painful it might be, had little real effect; but where my
-mother had attacked, behind the right ear, was a different matter. The
-stranger was obliged to leave my father's leg alone and to turn and
-defend himself against this new onslaught; but, big as he was, he now
-had more on his hands than he could manage. As soon as he turned his
-attention to my mother, my father let go of his shoulder, and in his
-turn tried to grip the other's fore-leg. There was nothing for the
-stranger to do now but to get out of it as fast as he could; and even
-I could not help admiring his strength as he lifted himself up and
-shook mother off as lightly as she would have shaken me. She escaped
-the wicked blow that he aimed at her, and dodged out of his reach,
-and my father, letting go his hold of the fore-leg, did the same. The
-stranger, with one on either side of him, backed himself against one of
-the fallen logs and waited for them to attack him. But that they had no
-wish to do. All that they wanted was that he should go away, and they
-told him so. They moved aside from the path on either hand to give him
-space to go, and slowly and surlily he began to move.
-
-I was still standing in the pathway. Suddenly he made a movement
-as if to rush at me, but my father and mother jumped towards him
-simultaneously, while I plunged into the bushes, and he was compelled
-to turn and defend himself against my parents again. But they did not
-attack him, though they followed him slowly along the path. Every step
-or two he stopped to make an ugly start back at one or the other, but
-he knew that he was overmatched, and yard by yard he made off, my
-father and mother following him as far as the edge of the thicket, and
-standing to watch him out of sight. And I was glad when he was safely
-gone and they came back to me.
-
-It was not a pleasant home-coming, and we were all restless and nervous
-for days afterwards; and then it was that I vowed to myself that, if I
-ever grew up and the opportunity came, I would wreak vengeance on that
-bear.
-
-If we were all nervous, I was the worst, and in my restlessness took
-to going off by myself. Up to this time I do not think I had ever been
-a hundred yards away from one or other of my parents, and now, when
-I started out alone, it was always in horrible fear of meeting the
-big bear when there was no one to stand by me. Gradually, however, I
-acquired confidence in myself, making each night a longer trip alone,
-and each night going in the direction of the town. At last, one night,
-I found myself at the edge of the town itself, and now when I was
-alone I did not stop at the first building that I came to, but very
-cautiously--for the man-smell was thick around me, and terrified me in
-spite of myself--very cautiously I began to thread my way in between
-the buildings.[3] As I snuffed round each building, I found all sorts
-of new things to eat, with strange tastes, but most of them were good.
-That the men were not all asleep was plain from the shouts and noises
-which reached me at times from the centre of the big town, where, as
-I could see by occasional glimpses which I caught through the nearer
-buildings, many of the houses had bright lights streaming from them
-all night. Avoiding these, I wandered on, picking up things to eat, and
-all the while keeping ears and nose open for a sign of Kahwa.
-
-I stayed thus, moving in and out among the buildings, till dawn. Once a
-dog inside a house barked furiously as I came near, and I heard a man's
-voice speaking to it, and I hurried on. As the sky began to lighten, I
-made my way out into the woods again, and rejoined my father and mother
-before the sun was up. When I joined them, my father growled at me
-because I smelled of man.
-
-The next night found me down in the town again. I began to know my way
-about. I learned which houses contained dogs, and avoided them. Other
-animals besides myself, I discovered, came into the town at night
-for the sake of the food which they found lying about--coyotes and
-wood-rats, and polecats; but though bears would occasionally visit the
-buildings nearest to the woods, no other penetrated into the heart of
-the town as I did. It had a curious fascination for me, and gradually I
-grew so much at home, that even when a man came through the buildings
-towards me, I only slipped out of his way round a corner, and--for
-man's sight and smell are both miserably bad compared with ours--he
-never had a suspicion that I was near.
-
-On the third or fourth night I had gone nearer to the lighted buildings
-than I had ever been before, when I heard a sound that made me stop
-dead and throw myself up on my haunches to listen. Yes, there could be
-no doubt of it! It was Kahwa's voice. Anyone who did not know her might
-have thought that she was angry, but I knew better. She was making
-exactly the noise that she used to make when romping with me, and I
-knew that she was not angry, but only pretending, and that she must be
-playing with someone. I suppose I ought to have been glad that she was
-alive and happy enough to be able to play, but it only enraged me and
-made me wonder who her playmates might be. Then gradually the truth,
-the incredible truth, dawned upon me. Truly incredible it seemed at
-first, but there could be no doubt of it. _She was playing with man._
-
-I could hear men's voices speaking to her as if in anger, and then I
-heard her voice and theirs in turn again, and at last I recognised that
-their anger was no more real than hers. The sounds came from where the
-lights were brightest, and it was long before I could make up my mind
-to go near enough to be able to see. At last, however, I crept to a
-place from which I could look out between two buildings, keeping in the
-deep shade myself, and I can see now every detail of what met my eyes
-as plainly as if it was all before me at this minute.
-
-There was a building larger than those around it, with a big door wide
-open, and from the door and from the windows on either side poured
-streams of light out into the night. In the middle of the light, and
-almost in front of the door, was a group of five or six men, and in
-the centre of the group was Kahwa, tied to a post by a chain which was
-fastened to a collar round her neck. I saw a man stoop down and hold
-something out to her--presumably something to eat--and then, as she
-came to take it from the hand which he held out, he suddenly drew it
-away and hit her on the side of the head with his other hand. He did
-not hit hard enough to hurt her, and it was evidently done in play,
-because as he did it she got up on her hind-legs and slapped at him,
-first with one hand and then with the other, growling all the time in
-angry make-believe. Sometimes the man came too near, and Kahwa would
-hit him, and the other men all burst out laughing. Then I saw him walk
-deliberately right up to her, and they took hold of each other and
-wrestled, just as Kahwa and I used to do by the old place under the
-cedar-trees when we were little cubs. I could see, too, that now and
-then she was not doing her best, and did not want to hurt him, and he
-certainly did not hurt her.
-
-At last the men went into the building, leaving Kahwa alone outside;
-but other men were continually coming out of, or going into, the open
-door, and I was afraid to approach her, or even to make any noise to
-tell her of my presence. So I sat in the shade of the buildings and
-watched. Nearly every man who passed stopped for a minute and spoke to
-her, but none except the man whom I had first seen tried to play with
-her or went within her reach. The whole thing seemed to me incredible,
-but there it was under my eyes, and, somehow, it made me feel terribly
-lonely--all the lonelier, I think, because she had these new friends;
-for as friends she undoubtedly regarded them, while I could not even go
-near enough to speak to her.
-
-At last so many men came out of the building that I was afraid to
-stay. Some of them went one way, and some another, and I had to keep
-constantly moving my position to avoid being seen. In doing so I found
-myself further and further away from the centre of the town, and nearer
-to the outskirts. The men shouted and laughed, and made so much noise
-that I did not dare to go back, but made my way out into the woods.
-And for the first time I did not go home to my father and mother, but
-stayed by myself in the brush.
-
-The next evening I again made my way into the town, and once more saw
-the same sights as on the preceding night. This evening, however, there
-was a wind blowing, and it blew directly from me, as I stood in the
-same place, to Kahwa in front of the lighted door. Suddenly, while she
-was in the middle of her play, I saw her stop and begin to snuff up the
-wind with every sign of excitement. Then she called to me. Answer I
-dared not, but I knew that she had recognised me and would understand
-why I did not speak. While she was still calling to me, the man with
-whom she had been playing--the same man as on the night before--came up
-and gave her a cuff on the head, and she lost her temper in earnest.
-She hit at him angrily, but he jumped out of her way (how I wished she
-had caught him!), and, after trying for awhile to tempt her to play
-again, he and the other men left her and went into the building. Then
-she gave all her time to me, and at last, when nobody was near, I spoke
-just loud enough for her to hear. She simply danced with excitement,
-running to the end of her chain toward me until it threw her back on
-to her hind-legs, circling round and round the stump to which she was
-fastened, and then charging out to the end of her chain again, all the
-time whimpering and calling to me in a way which made me long to go to
-her.
-
-I did not dare to show myself, however, but waited until, as on the
-night before, just as it was beginning to get light, the men all came
-out of the building and scattered in different directions. This time,
-however, I did not go back to the woods, but merely shifted out of the
-men's way behind the dark corners of the buildings, hoping that somehow
-I would find an opportunity of getting to speak to Kahwa. At last the
-building was quiet, and only the man who had played with Kahwa seemed
-to be left, and I saw the lights inside begin to grow less. I hoped
-that then the door would be shut, and the man inside would go to sleep,
-as I knew that men did in other houses when the lights disappeared
-at night; but while there was still some light issuing from door and
-windows the man came out and went up to Kahwa, and, unfastening the
-chain from the stump, proceeded to lead her away somewhere to the rear
-of the building. She struggled and tried to pull away from him, but he
-jerked her along with the chain, and I could see that she was afraid
-of him, and did not dare to fight him in earnest, and bit by bit he
-dragged her along. I followed and saw him go to a sort of pen, or a
-small enclosure of high walls without any roof, in which he left her,
-and then went in to his own building. And soon I saw the last lights go
-out inside and everything was quiet.
-
-I stole round to the pen and spoke to Kahwa through the walls. She was
-crazy at the sound of my voice, and I could hear her running round and
-round inside, dragging the chain after her. Could she not climb out?
-I asked her. No; the walls were made of straight, smooth boards with
-nothing that she could get her claws into, and much too high to jump.
-But we found a crack close to the ground through which our noses would
-almost touch, and that was some consolation.
-
-I stayed there as long as I dared, and told her all that had happened
-since she was taken away--of the fight with the strange bear, and how
-I had been in the town alone looking for her night after night; and
-she told me her story, parts of which I could not believe at the time,
-though now I can understand them better.
-
-What puzzled me, and at the time made me thoroughly angry, was the way
-in which she spoke of the man whom I had seen playing with her, and
-who had dragged her into the pen. She was afraid of him in a curious
-way--in much the same way as she was afraid of father or mother. The
-idea that she could feel any affection for him I would have scouted as
-preposterous; but after the experiences of the last few nights nothing
-seemed too wonderful to be true, and it was plain that all her thoughts
-centred in him and he represented everything in life to her. Without
-him she would have no food, but as it was she had plenty. He never came
-to her without bringing things to eat, delightful things sometimes;
-and in particular she told me of pieces of white stuff, square and
-rough like small stones, but sweeter and more delicious than honey. Of
-course, I know now that it was sugar; but as she told me about it then,
-and how good it was, and how the man always had pieces of it in his
-pockets, which he gave her while they were playing together, I found
-myself envying her, and even wishing that the man would take me to play
-with, too.
-
-But as we talked the day was getting lighter, and, promising to come
-again next night, I slipped away in the dawn into the woods.
-
-Night after night I used to go and speak to Kahwa. Sometimes I did
-not go until it was nearly daylight, and she was already in her pen.
-Sometimes I went earlier, and watched her with the men before the door
-of the building, and often I saw the man who was her master playing
-with her and giving her lumps of sugar, and I could tell from the way
-in which she ate it how good it was. Many times I had narrow escapes
-of being seen, for I grew careless, and trotted among the houses as
-if I were in the middle of the forest. More than once I came close to
-a man unexpectedly, for the man-smell was so strong everywhere that a
-single man more or less in my neighbourhood made no difference, and I
-had to trust to my eyes and ears entirely. Somehow, however, I managed
-always to keep out of their way, and during this time I used to eat
-very little wild food, living almost altogether on the things that I
-picked up in the town. And during all these days and nights I never saw
-my father or my mother.
-
-Then one evening an eventful thing happened.
-
-The door of Kahwa's pen closed with a latch from the outside--a large
-piece of iron which lifted and fell, and was then kept in place by a
-block of wood. I had spent a great deal of time at that latch, lifting
-it with my nose, and biting and worrying it, in the hopes of breaking
-it off or opening the door; but when I did that I was always standing
-on my hind-legs, so as to reach up to it, with my fore-feet on the
-door, and, of course, my weight kept the door shut. But that never
-occurred to me. One evening, however, I happened to be standing up and
-sniffing at the latch, with my fore-feet not on the door itself, but on
-the wall beside the door. It happened that, just as I lifted the latch
-with my nose, Kahwa put her fore-feet against the door on the inside.
-To my astonishment, the door swung open into my face, and Kahwa came
-rolling out. If we had only thought it out, we could just as well have
-done that on the first night, instead of trying to reach each other for
-nearly two weeks through a narrow crack in the wall until nearly all
-the skin was rubbed off our noses.
-
-However, it was done at last, and we were so glad that we thought of
-nothing else. Now we were free to go back into the woods and take up
-our old life again with father and mother. Would it not be glorious, I
-asked? Yes, she said, it would be glorious. To go off into the woods,
-and never, never, never, I said, see or think of man again.
-
-Yes--yes, she said, but----Of course it would be very glorious,
-but----Well, there was the white stuff--the sugar--she could come back
-once in a while--just once in a while--couldn't she, to see the man and
-get a lump or two?
-
-I am afraid I lost my temper. Here was what ought to have been a moment
-of complete happiness spoiled by her greediness. Of course she could
-not come back, I told her. If she did she would never get away a second
-time. We would go to father and mother and persuade them to move just
-as far away from man as they could. Instead of being delighted, the
-prospect only made her gloomy and thoughtful. Of course she wanted
-to see father and mother, but--but--but----There was always that
-'but'--and the thought of the man and the sugar.
-
-While we were arguing, the time came when I usually left the town for
-the day, and the immediate thing to be done was to get her away from
-that place and out into the woods. Then, I thought, I could prevent her
-going back into the town; so by pointing out to her that, if she wanted
-to, she could come back at any time, I persuaded her to move, and we
-started off through the buildings on the road that I usually took back
-to the forest. But at the first step we were reminded of her chain,
-which was still attached to her collar, and dragged along the ground as
-she walked. It was a nuisance, but there was no way to get it off at
-the moment. Perhaps, when we were safe away and had plenty of time, we
-could find some way of loosening it, but at present the first thing was
-to get clear of the town.
-
-So we started, but the path was new to Kahwa, who, of course, had never
-been away from the pen and the door of the building where her master
-lived, and had seen nothing of the town except as she was being dragged
-in by the men who had caught her, and then she had been too busy
-fighting to pay any attention to her surroundings. So at almost every
-step she must needs stop to smell something. Meanwhile it was getting
-lighter, and we began to hear noises of men moving about inside the
-buildings. Once a door opened, and I only just had time to dodge
-back and keep Kahwa behind as a man stepped out into the air. But we
-succeeded in reaching the very edge of the town before anything serious
-happened.
-
-The houses were all made of wood, those in the middle, like that where
-Kahwa had lived, being of boards nailed together, and those on the
-outskirts of logs laid upon each other whole, with the bark still on,
-like the first houses that we had seen up the river. There was one of
-this last kind in particular, which stood away from all the others
-almost inside the forest. It was the first house that I came to each
-evening on approaching the town, and the last one that I passed on
-leaving it; but I always gave it a wide berth, because there was a dog
-there--a small dog, it is true, but a noisy one--and the first time
-that I came that way he had seen me, and made such a fuss that I had to
-bolt back into the forest and wait a long time before I dared to go on
-again.
-
-Now, however, Kahwa insisted on going up to snuff around this house. I
-warned her of the dog, but the truth was that she had grown accustomed
-to dogs, and I think had really lost her fear of men. So she went
-close up to the house, and began smelling round the walls to see if
-there was anything good to eat, while I stood back under the trees
-fretting and impatient of her delay.
-
-Having sniffed all along one side of the house, she passed round the
-corner to the back. In turning the corner she came right upon the dog,
-who flew at her at once, though he was not much bigger than her head.
-Whether she was accustomed to dogs or not, the sudden attack startled
-her, and she turned round to run back to me. In doing so she just
-grazed the corner of the house, and the next instant she was rolling
-head over heels on the ground. The end of her chain had caught in the
-crack between the ends of two of the logs at the corner, and she was
-held as firmly as if she had been tied to her stump in front of the
-door. As she rolled over, the dog jumped upon her, small as he was,
-yelping all the time, and barking furiously. I thought it would only be
-a momentary delay, but the chain held fast, and all the while the dog's
-attacks made it impossible for her to give her attention to trying to
-tear it free.
-
-A minute later, and the door of the house burst open, and a man came
-running out, carrying, to my horror, a thunder-stick in his hand.
-Kahwa and the dog were all mixed up together on the ground, and I saw
-the man stop and stand still a moment and point the thunder-stick at
-her. And then came that terrible noise of the thunder-stick speaking.
-
-Too frightened to see what happened, I took to my heels, and plunged
-into the wood as fast as I could, without the man or the dog having
-seen me. I ran on for some distance till I felt safe enough to stop and
-listen, but there was not a sound, and no sign of Kahwa coming after
-me. I waited and waited until the sun came up, and still there was no
-sign of Kahwa, until at last I summoned up courage to steal slowly back
-again. As I came near I heard the dog barking at intervals, and then
-the voices of men. Very cautiously I crept near enough to get a view of
-the house from behind, and as I came in sight of the corner where Kahwa
-had fallen I saw her for the second time--just as on that wretched
-evening at the berry-patch--surrounded by a group of three or four men.
-But this time they had no ropes round her, and were not trying to drag
-her away; only they stood talking and looking down at her, while she
-lay dead on the ground before them.
-
-
-FOOTNOTE
-
-[3] The new mining town or camp of the Far West has no long rows of
-houses or paved streets. The houses are built of logs or of boards,
-rarely more than one story high, and are set down irregularly. There
-may be one more or less well-defined 'street'--the main trail running
-through the camp--but even along that there will be wide gaps between
-the houses; while, for the rest, the buildings are at all sorts of
-angles, so that a man or a bear may wander through them as he pleases,
-regardless of whether he is following a 'street' or not.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
-
-
-Now indeed I was truly lonely. During the three or four weeks that had
-passed since I had seen my father or mother, I had in a measure learned
-to rely upon myself; nor had I so far felt the separation keenly,
-because I knew that every evening I should see Kahwa. Now she was gone
-for ever. There was no longer any object in going into the town, and
-the terror of that last scene was still so vivid in my mind that I
-wished never to see man again.
-
-It was true that I had feared man instinctively from the first, but
-familiarity with him had for a while overcome that fear. Now it
-returned, and with the fear was mingled another feeling--a feeling of
-definite hatred. Originally, though afraid of him, I had borne man
-no ill-will whatever, and would have been entirely content to go on
-living beside him in peace and friendliness, just as we lived with the
-deer and the beaver. Man himself made that impossible, and now I no
-longer wished it. I hated him--hated him thoroughly. Had it not been
-for dread of the thunder-sticks, I should have gone down into the town
-and attacked the first man that I met. I would have persuaded other
-bears to go with me to rage through the buildings, destroying every man
-that we could find; and though this was impossible, I made up my mind
-that it would be a bad day for any man whom I might meet alone, when
-unprotected by the weapon that gave him so great an advantage.
-
-Meanwhile my present business was, somehow and somewhere, to go on
-living. On that first evening, amid my conflict of emotions, it was
-some time before I could bring myself to turn my back definitely upon
-the town; for it was difficult to realize at once that there was in
-truth no longer any Kahwa there, nor any reason for my going again
-among the buildings, and it was late in the night before I finally
-started to look for my father and mother. I went, of course, to the
-place where I had left them, and where the fight with the stranger had
-taken place.
-
-They were not there when I arrived, but I saw that they had spent the
-preceding day at home, and would, in all probability, be back soon
-after it was light. So I stayed in the immediate neighbourhood, and
-before sunrise they returned. My mother was glad to see me, but I do
-not think I can say as much for my father. I told them where I had
-been, and of my visits to the town, and of poor Kahwa's death; and
-though at the time father did not seem to pay much attention to what I
-said, next day he suggested that we should move further away from the
-neighbourhood of men.
-
-The following afternoon we started, making our way back along the
-stream by which we had descended, and soon finding ourselves once more
-in the region that had been swept by the fire. It was still desolate,
-but the two months that had passed had made a wonderful difference. It
-was covered by the bright red flowers of a tall plant, standing nearly
-as high as a bear's head, which shoots up all over the charred soil
-whenever a tract of forest is burned. Other undergrowth may come up in
-the following spring, but for the first year nothing appears except
-the red 'fireweed,' and that grows so thickly that the burnt wood is
-a blaze of colour, out of which the blackened trunks of the old trees
-stand up naked and gaunt.
-
-We passed several houses of men by the waterside, and gave them a wide
-berth. We learned from the beavers and the ospreys that a number of
-men had gone up the stream during the summer, and few had come back,
-so that now there must be many more of them in the district swept by
-the fire than there had been before. We did not wish to live in the
-burnt country, however, because there was little food to be found
-there, and under the fireweed the ground was still covered with a layer
-of the bitter black stuff, which, on being disturbed, got into one's
-throat and eyes and nostrils. So we turned southwards along the edge
-of the track of the fire, and soon found ourselves in a country that
-was entirely new to us, though differing little in general appearance
-from the other places with which we were familiar--the same unbroken
-succession of hills and gulches covered with the dense growth of good
-forest trees. It was, in fact, bears' country; and in it we felt at
-home.
-
-For the most part we travelled in the morning and evening; but the
-summer was gone now, and on the higher mountains it was sometimes
-bitterly cold, so we often kept on moving all day. We were not going
-anywhere in particular: only endeavouring to get away from man,
-and, if possible, to find a region where he had never been. But it
-seemed as if man now was pushing in everywhere. We did not see him,
-but continually we came across the traces of him along the banks of
-the streams. The beavers, and the kingfishers, and the ospreys, of
-course, know everything that goes on along the rivers. Nothing can pass
-upstream or down without going by the beaver-dams, and the beavers
-are always on the watch. You might linger about a beaver-dam all day,
-and except for the smell, which a man would not notice, you would not
-believe there was a beaver near. But they are watching you from the
-cracks and holes in their homes, and in the evening, if they are not
-afraid of you, you will be astonished to see twenty or thirty beavers
-come out to play about what you thought was an empty house. We never
-passed a dam without asking about man, and always it was the same tale.
-Men had been there a week ago, or the day before, or when the moon last
-was full. And the kingfishers and the ospreys told us the same things.
-So we kept on our way southward.
-
-As the days went on I grew to think less of Kahwa; the memory of those
-nights spent in the town, with the lights, and the strange noises, and
-the warm man-smell all about me, began to fade until they all seemed
-more like incidents of a dream than scenes which I had actually lived
-through only a few weeks before. I began to feel more as I used to
-feel in the good old days before the fire, and came again to be a part
-of the wild, wholesome life of the woods. Moreover, I was growing;
-my mother said that I was growing fast. No puma would have dared to
-touch me now, and my unusual experiences about the town had bred in
-me a spirit of independence and self-reliance, so that other cubs of
-my own age whom we met, and who, of course, had lived always with
-their parents, always seemed to me younger than I; and certainly I
-was bigger and stronger than any first-year bear that I saw. On the
-whole, I would have been fairly contented with life had it not been
-for the estrangement which was somehow growing up between my father
-and myself. I could not help feeling that, though I knew not why, he
-would have been glad to have me go away again. So I kept out of his
-way as much as possible, seldom speaking to him, and, of course, not
-venturing to share any food that he found. On the first evening after
-my return he had rolled over an old log, and mother and I went up as a
-matter of course to see what was there; but he growled at me in a way
-that made me stand off while he and mother finished the fungi and the
-beetles. After that I kept my distance. It did not matter much, for I
-was well able to forage for myself. But I would have preferred to have
-him kinder. His unkindness, however, did not prevent him from taking
-for himself anything which he wanted that I had found. One day I came
-across some honey, from which he promptly drove me away, and I had to
-look on while he and mother shared the feast between them.
-
-At last we came to a stream where the beavers told us that no man had
-been seen in the time of any member of their colony then living. The
-stream, which was here wide enough to be a river, came from the west,
-and for two or three days we followed it down eastwards, and found no
-trace or news of man; so we turned back up it again--back past the
-place where we had first struck it--and on along its course for another
-day's journey into the mountains. It was, perhaps, too much to hope
-that we had lighted on a place where man would never come; but at least
-we knew that for a distance of a week's travelling in all directions
-he never yet had been, and it might be many years before he came.
-Meanwhile we should have a chance to live our lives in peace.
-
-Here we stayed, moving about very little, and feeding as much as we
-could; for winter was coming on, and a bear likes to be fat and well
-fed before his long sleep. It rained a good deal now, as it always does
-in the mountains in the late autumn, and as a general rule the woods
-were full of mist all day, in which we went about tearing the roots
-out of the soft earth, eating the late blueberries where we could find
-them, and the cranberries and the elderberries, which were ripe on the
-bushes, now and then coming across a clump of nut-trees, and once in a
-while, the greatest of all treats, revelling in a feast of honey.
-
-One morning, after a cold and stormy night, we saw that the tops of
-the highest mountains were covered with snow. It might be a week or
-two yet before the snow fell over the country as a whole, or it might
-be only a day or two; for the wind was blowing from the north, biting
-cold, and making us feel numb and drowsy. So my father decided that it
-was time to make our homes for the winter. He had already fixed upon
-a spot where a tree had fallen and torn out its roots, making a cave
-well shut in on two sides, and blocked on a third by another fallen
-log; and here, without thinking, I had taken it as a matter of course
-that we should somehow all make our winter homes together. But when
-that morning he started out, with mother after him, and I attempted
-to follow, he drove me away. I followed yet for a while, but he kept
-turning back and growling at me, and at last told me bluntly that I
-must go and shift for myself. I took it philosophically, I think, but
-it was with a heavy heart that I turned away to seek a winter home for
-myself.
-
-It did not take me long to decide on the spot. At the head of a narrow
-gully, where at some time or other a stream must have run, there was a
-tree half fallen, and leaning against the hillside. A little digging
-behind the tree would make as snug and sheltered a den as I could
-want. So I set to work, and in the course of a few hours I had made a
-sufficiently large hollow, and into it I scraped all the leaves and
-pine-needles in the neighbourhood, and, by working about inside and
-turning round and round, I piled them up on all sides until I had a
-nest where I was perfectly sheltered, with only an opening in front
-large enough to go in and out of. This opening I would almost close
-when the time came, but for the present I left it open and lived
-inside, sleeping much of the time, but still continuing for a week or
-ten days to go out in the mornings and evenings for food. But it was
-getting colder and colder, and the woods had become strangely silent.
-The deer had gone down to the lower ground at the first sign of coming
-winter, and the coyotes and the wolves had followed to spend the cold
-months in the foot-hills and on the plains about the haunts of man. The
-woodchucks were already asleep below-ground, and of the birds only the
-woodpeckers and the crossbills, and some smaller birds fluttering among
-the pine-branches, remained. There was a fringe of ice along the edges
-of the streams, and the kingfishers and the ospreys had both flown to
-where the waters would remain open throughout the year. The beavers had
-been very busy for some time, but now, if one went to the nearest dam
-in the evening, there was not a sign of life.
-
-At last the winter came. It had been very cold and gray for a day or
-two, and I felt dull and torpid. And then, one morning towards mid-day,
-the white flakes began to fall. There had been a few little flurries of
-snow before, lasting only for a minute or two; but this was different.
-The great flakes fell slowly and softly, and soon the whole landscape
-began to grow white. Through the opening in my den I watched the snow
-falling for some time, but did not venture out; and as the afternoon
-wore on, and it only fell faster and faster, I saw that it would soon
-pile up and close the door upon me.
-
-There was no danger of its coming in, for I had taken care that the
-roof overhung far enough to prevent anything falling in from above, and
-the den was too well sheltered for the wind to drift the snow inside.
-So I burrowed down into my leaves and pine-needles, and worked them
-up on both sides till only a narrow slit of an opening remained, and
-through this slit, sitting back on my haunches against the rear of the
-little cave, I watched the white wall rising outside. All that night
-and all next day it snowed, and by the second evening there was hardly
-a ray of light coming in. I remember feeling a certain pride in being
-all alone, in the warm nest made by myself, for the first time in my
-life; and I sat back and mumbled at my paw, and grew gradually drowsier
-and drowsier, till I hardly knew when the morning came, for I was very
-sleepy and the daylight scarcely pierced the wall of snow outside.
-And before another night fell I was asleep, while outside the white
-covering which was to shut me in for the next four months at least, was
-growing thicker until it was many feet deep all around, and under it I
-was as safe and snug up there in the heart of the mountains as ever a
-man could be in any house that he might build.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-ALONE IN THE WORLD
-
-
-Have you any idea how frightfully stiff one is after nearly five
-months' consecutive sleep? Of course, a bear is not actually asleep for
-the greater part of the time, but in a deliciously drowsy condition
-that is halfway between sleeping and waking. It is very good. Of
-course, you lose all count and thought of time; days and weeks and
-months are all the same. You only know that, having been asleep, you
-are partly awake again. There is no light, but you can see the wall of
-your den in front of you, and dimly you know that, while all the world
-outside is snow-covered and swept with bitter winds, and the earth is
-gripped solid in the frost, you are very warm and comfortable. Changes
-of temperature do not reach you, and you sit and croon to yourself
-and mumble your paws, and all sorts of thoughts and tangled scraps of
-dreams go swimming through your head until, before you know it, you
-have forgotten everything and are asleep again.
-
-Then again you find yourself awake. Is it hours or days or weeks since
-you were last awake? You do not know, and it does not matter. So you
-croon, and mumble, and dream, and sleep again; and wake, and croon,
-and mumble, and dream. Sometimes you are conscious of feeling stiff,
-and think you will change your position; but, after all, it does not
-matter. Nothing matters; for you are already floating off again, the
-wall of your den grows indistinct, and you are away in dreams once more
-for an hour, or a day, or a week.
-
-At last a day comes when you wake into something more like complete
-consciousness than you have known since you shut yourself up. There
-is a new feeling in the air; a sense of moisture and fresh smells are
-mingling with the warm dry scent of your den. And you are aware that
-you have not changed your position for more than a quarter of a year,
-but have been squatting on your heels, with your back against the wall
-and your nose folded into your paws across your breast; and you want to
-stretch your hind-legs dreadfully. But you do not do it. It is still
-too comfortable where you are. You may move a little, and have a vague
-idea that it might be rather nice outside. But you do not go to see;
-you only take the other paw into your mouth, and, still crooning to
-yourself, you are asleep again.
-
-This happens again and again, and each time the change in the feeling
-of the air is more marked, and the scents of the new year outside
-grow stronger and more pungent. At last one day comes daylight,
-where the snow has melted from the opening in front of you, and
-with the daylight come the notes of birds and the ringing of the
-woodpecker--rat-tat-tat-tat! rat-tat-tat-tat!--from a tree near by. But
-even these signs that the spring is at hand again would not tempt you
-out if it were not for another feeling that begins to assert itself,
-and will not let you rest. You find you are hungry, horribly hungry.
-It is of no use to say to yourself that you are perfectly snug and
-contented where you are, and that there is all the spring and summer to
-get up in. You are no longer contented. It is nearly five months since
-you had your last meal, and you will not have another till you go out
-for yourself and get it. Mumbling your paws will not satisfy you. There
-is really nothing for it but to get up.
-
-But, oh, what a business it is, that getting up! Your shoulders are
-cramped and your back is stiff; and as for your legs underneath you,
-you wonder if they will really ever get supple and strong again.
-First you lift your head from your breast and try moving your neck
-about, and sniff at the walls of your den. Then you unfold your arms,
-and--ooch!--how they crack, first one and then the other! At last you
-begin to roll from one side to the other, and try to stretch each
-hind-leg in turn; then, cautiously letting yourself drop on all fours,
-you give a step, and before you know it you have staggered out into the
-open air.
-
-It is very early in the morning, and the day is just breaking, and all
-the mountain-side is covered with a clinging pearly mist; but to your
-eyes the light seems very strong, and the smell of the new moist earth
-and the resinous scent of the pines almost hurt your nostrils. One side
-of the gully in front of you is brown and bare, but in the bottom, and
-clinging to the other side, are patches of moist and half-melted snow,
-and on all sides you hear the drip of falling moisture and the ripple
-of little streams of water which are running away to swell the creeks
-and rivers in every valley bottom.
-
-You are shockingly unsteady on your feet, and feel very dazed and
-feeble; but you are also hungrier than ever now, with the keen morning
-air whetting your appetite, and the immediate business ahead of you is
-to find food. So you turn to the bank at your side and begin to grub;
-and as you grub you wander on, eating the roots that you scratch up
-and the young shoots of plants that are appearing here and there. And
-all the time the day is growing, and the sensation is coming back to
-your limbs, and your hunger is getting satisfied, and you are wider and
-wider awake. And, thoroughly interested in what you are about, before
-you are aware of it, you are fairly started on another year of life.
-
-That is how a bear begins each spring. It may be a few days later or a
-few days earlier when one comes out; but the sensations are the same.
-You are always just as stiff, and the smells are as pungent, and the
-light is as strong, and the hunger as great. For the first few days you
-really think of nothing but of finding enough to eat. As soon as you
-have eaten, and eaten until you think you are satisfied, you are hungry
-again; and so you wander round looking for food, and going back to your
-den to sleep.
-
-That spring when I came out it was very much as it had been the
-spring before, when I was a little cub. The squirrels were chattering
-in the trees (I wondered whether old Blacky had been burned in the
-fire), and the woodpecker was as busy as ever--rat-tat-tat-tat!
-rat-tat-tat-tat!--overhead. There were several woodchucks--fat,
-waddling things--living in the same gully with me, and they had been
-abroad for some days when I woke up. On my way down to the stream on
-that first morning, I found a porcupine in my path, but did not stop
-to slap it. By the river's bank the little brown-coated minks were
-hunting among the grass, and by the dam the beavers were hard at work
-protecting and strengthening their house against the spring floods,
-which were already rising.
-
-It was only a couple of hundred yards or so from my den to the stream,
-and for the first few days I hardly went further than that. But it was
-impossible that I should not all the time--that is, as soon as I could
-think of anything except my hunger--be contrasting this spring with
-the spring before, when Kahwa and I had played about the rock and the
-cedar-trees, and I had tumbled down the hill. And the more I thought
-of it, the less I liked being alone. And my father and mother, I knew,
-must be somewhere close by me--for I presumed they had spent the
-winter in the spot that they had chosen--so I made up my mind to go and
-join them again.
-
-It was in the early evening that I went, about a week after I had come
-out of my winter-quarters, and I had no trouble in finding the place;
-but when I did find it I also found things that I did not expect.
-
-'Surely,' I said to myself as I came near, 'that is little Kahwa's
-voice!' There could be no doubt of it. She was squealing just as
-she used to do when she tried to pull me away from the rock by my
-hind-foot. So I hurried on to see what it could mean, and suddenly the
-truth dawned upon me.
-
-My parents had two new children. I had never thought of that
-possibility. I heard my mother's voice warning the cubs that someone
-was coming, and as I appeared the young ones ran and snuggled up to
-her, and stared at me as if I was a stranger and they were afraid of
-me, as I suppose they were. It made me feel awkward, and almost as if
-my mother was a stranger, too; but after standing still a little time
-and watching them I walked up. Mother met me kindly, but, somehow, not
-like a mother meeting her own cub, but like a she-bear meeting any
-he-bear in the forest. The cubs kept behind her and out of the way.
-I spoke to mother and rubbed noses with her, and told her that I was
-glad to see her. She evidently thought well of me, and I was rather
-surprised, when standing beside her, to find that she was not nearly so
-much bigger than I as I had supposed.
-
-[Illustration: AS I APPEARED THE YOUNG ONES RAN AND SNUGGLED UP TO HER.]
-
-But before I had been there more than a minute mother gave me warning
-that father was coming, and, turning, I saw him walking down the
-hillside towards us. He saw me at the same time, and stopped and
-growled. At first, I think, not knowing who I was, he was astonished
-to see my mother talking to a strange bear. When he did recognise me,
-however, I might still have been a stranger, for any friendliness
-that he showed. He sat up on his haunches and growled, and then came
-on slowly, swinging his head, and obviously not at all disposed to
-welcome me. Again I was surprised, to see that he was not as big as
-I had thought, and for a moment wild ideas of fighting him, if that
-was what he wanted, came into my head. I wished to stay with mother,
-and even though he was my father, I did not see why I should go away
-alone and leave her. But, tall though I was getting, I had not anything
-like my father's weight, and, however bitterly I might wish to rebel,
-rebellion was useless. Besides, my mother, though she was kind to
-me, would undoubtedly have taken my father's part, as it was right that
-she should do.
-
-So I moved slowly away as my father came up, and as I did so even the
-little cubs growled at me, siding, of course, with their father against
-the stranger whom they had never seen. Father did not try to attack
-me, but walked up to mother and began licking her, to show that she
-belonged to him. I disliked going away, and thought that perhaps he
-would relent; but when I sat down, as if I was intending to stay, he
-growled and told me that I was not wanted.
-
-I ought by this time to have grown accustomed to being alone, and to
-have been incapable of letting myself be made miserable by a snub, even
-from my father. But I was not; I was wretched. I do not think that even
-on the first night after Kahwa was caught, or on that morning when I
-saw her dead, that I felt as completely forlorn as I did that day when
-I turned away from my mother, and went down the mountain-side back to
-my own place alone. The squirrels chattered at me, and the woodpecker
-rat-tat-tat-ed, and the woodchucks scurried away, and I hated them
-all. What company were they to me? I was lonely, and I craved the
-companionship of my own kind.
-
-But it was to be a long time before I found it. I was now a solitary
-bear, with my own life to live and my own way to make in the world,
-with no one to look to for guidance and no one to help me if I needed
-help; but many regarded me as an enemy, and would have rejoiced if I
-were killed.
-
-In those first days I thought of the surly solitary bear who had taken
-our home while we were away, and whom I had vowed some day to punish;
-and I began to understand in some measure why he was so bad-tempered.
-If we had met then, I almost believe I would have tried to make friends
-with him.
-
-I have said that many animals would have rejoiced had I been killed.
-This is not because bears are the enemies of other wild things, for we
-really kill very little except beetles and other insects, frogs and
-lizards, and little things like mice and chipmunks. We are not as the
-wolves, the coyotes, the pumas, or the weasels, which live on the lives
-of other animals, and which every other thing in the woods regards as
-its sworn foe. Still, smaller animals are mostly afraid of us, and the
-carcase of a dead bear means a feast for a number of hungry things.
-If a bear cannot defend his own life, he will have no friends to do it
-for him; and while, as I have said before, a full-grown bear in the
-mountains has no need to fear any living thing, man always excepted,
-in stand-up fight, it is none the less necessary to be always on one's
-guard.
-
-In my case fear had nothing to do with my hatred of loneliness. Even
-the thought of man himself gave me no uneasiness. I was sure that no
-human beings were as yet within many miles of my home, and I knew
-that I should always have abundant warning of their coming. Moreover,
-I already knew man. He was not to me the thing of terror and mystery
-that he had been a year ago, or that he still was to most of the forest
-folk. I had cause enough, it is true, to know how dangerous and how
-savagely cruel he was, and for that I hated him. But I had also seen
-enough of him to have a contempt for his blindness and his lack of the
-sense of scent. Had I not again and again, when in the town, dodged
-round the corner of a building, and waited while he passed a few yards
-away, or stood immovable in the dark shadow of a building, and looked
-straight at him while he went by utterly unconscious that I was near?
-Nothing could live in the forest for a week with no more eyesight,
-scent, or hearing than a man possesses, and without his thunder-stick
-he would be as helpless as a lame deer. All this I understood, and was
-not afraid that, if our paths should cross again, I should not be well
-able to take care of myself.
-
-But while there was no fear added to my loneliness, the loneliness
-itself was bad enough. Having none to provide for except myself, I
-had no difficulty in finding food. For the first few weeks, I think,
-I did nothing but wander aimlessly about and sleep, still using my
-winter den for that purpose. As the summer came on, however, I began
-to rove, roaming usually along the streams, and sleeping there in the
-cool herbage by the water's edge during the heat of the day. My chief
-pleasure, I think, was in fishing, and I was glad my mother had shown
-me how to do it. No bear, when hungry, could afford to fish for his
-food, for it takes too long; but I had all my time to myself, and
-nearly every morning and evening I used to get my trout for breakfast
-or for supper. At the end of a long hot day, I know nothing pleasanter
-than, after lying a while in the cold running water, to stretch one's
-self out along the river's edge, under the shadow of a bush, and wait,
-paw in water, till the trout comes gliding within striking distance;
-and then the sudden stroke, and afterwards the comfortable meal off
-the cool juicy fish in the soft night air. I became very skilful at
-fishing, and, from days and days of practice, it was seldom indeed that
-I lost my fish if once I struck.
-
-Time, too, I had for honey-hunting, but I was never sure that it was
-worth the trouble and pain. In nine cases out of ten the honey was too
-deeply buried in a tree for me to be able to reach it, and in trying I
-was certain to get well stung for my pains. Once in a while, however,
-I came across a comb that was easy to reach, and the chance of one of
-those occasional finds made me spend, not hours only, but whole days at
-a time, looking for the bees' nests.
-
-Along by the streams were many blueberry-patches, though none so large
-as that which had cost Kahwa her life; but during the season I could
-always find berries enough. And so, fishing and bee-hunting, eating
-berries and digging for roots, I wandered on all through the summer. I
-had no one place that I could think of as a home more than any other.
-I preferred not to stay near my father and mother, and so let myself
-wander, heading for the most part westward, and further into the
-mountains as the summer grew, and then in the autumn turning south
-again. I must have wandered over many hundred miles of mountain, but
-when the returning chill in the air told me that winter was not very
-far away, I worked round so as to get back into somewhat the same
-neighbourhood as I had been in last winter, not more, perhaps, than ten
-miles away.
-
-On the whole, it was an uneventful year. Two or three times I met a
-grizzly, and always got out of the way as fast as I could. Once only I
-found myself in the neighbourhood of man, and I gave him a wide berth.
-Many times, of course--in fact, nearly every day--I met other bears
-like myself, and sometimes I made friends with them, and stayed in
-their company for the better part of a day, perhaps at a berry-patch
-or in the wide shallows of a stream. But there was no place for me--a
-strong, growing he-bear, getting on for two years old--in any of the
-families that I came across. Parents with young cubs did not want me.
-Young bears in their second year were usually in couples. The solitary
-bears that I met were generally he-bears older than I, and, though we
-were friendly on meeting, neither cared for the other's companionship.
-Again and again in these meetings I was struck by the fact that I was
-unusually big and strong for my age, the result, I suppose, as I have
-already said, of the accident that threw me on my own resources so
-young. I never met young bears of my own age that did not seem like
-cubs to me. Many times I came across bears who were one and even two
-years older than myself, but who had certainly no advantage of me in
-height, and, I think, none in weight. But I had no occasion to test
-my strength in earnest that summer, and when winter came, and the
-mountain-peaks in the neighbourhood showed white again against the dull
-gray sky, I was still a solitary animal, and acutely conscious of my
-loneliness.
-
-That year I made my den in a cave which I found high up on a
-mountain-side, and which had evidently been used by bears at some
-time or other, though not for the last year or two. There I made my
-nest with less trouble than the year before, and at the first serious
-snowfall I shut myself up for another long sleep.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-I FIND A COMPANION
-
-
-The next spring was late. We had a return of cold weather long after
-winter ought to have been over, and for a month or more after I moved
-out it was no easy matter to find food enough. The snow had been
-unusually deep, and had only half melted when the cold returned,
-so that the remaining half stayed on the ground a long while, and
-sometimes it took me all my time, grubbing up camas roots, turning
-over stones and logs, and ripping the bark off fallen trees, to find
-enough to eat to keep me even moderately satisfied. Besides the mice
-and chipmunks which I caught, I was forced by hunger to dig woodchucks
-out of their holes, and eat the young ones, though hitherto I had never
-eaten any animal so large.
-
-Somehow, in one way and another, I got along, and when spring really
-came I felt that I was a full-grown bear, and no longer a youngster who
-had to make way for his elders when he met them in the path. Nor was
-it long before I had an opportunity of seeing that other bears also
-regarded me no longer as a cub.
-
-I had found a bees' nest about ten feet up in a big tree, and of course
-climbed up to it; but it was one of those cases of which I have spoken,
-when the game was not worth the trouble. The nest was in a cleft in the
-tree too narrow for me to get my arm into, and I could smell the honey
-a foot or so away from my nose without being able to reach it--than
-which I know nothing more aggravating. And while you are hanging on to
-a tree with three paws, and trying to squeeze the fourth into a hole,
-the bees have you most unpleasantly at their mercy. I was horribly
-stung about my face, both my eyes and my nose were smarting abominably,
-and at last I could stand it no longer, but slid down to the ground
-again.
-
-When I reached the ground, there was another bear standing a few yards
-away looking at me. He had a perfect right to look at me, and he was
-doing me no sort of harm; but the stings of the bees made me furious,
-and I think I was glad to have anybody or anything to vent my wrath
-upon. So as soon as I saw the other bear I charged him. He was an
-older bear than I, and about my size; and, as it was the first real
-fight that I had ever had, he probably had more experience. But I had
-the advantage of being thoroughly angry and wanting to hurt someone,
-without caring whether I was hurt myself or not, while he was feeling
-entirely peaceable, and not in the least anxious to hurt me or anybody
-else. The consequence was that the impetuosity of my first rush was
-more than he could stand. Of course he was up to meet me, and I expect
-that under my coat my skin on the left shoulder still carries the marks
-of his claws where he caught me as we came together.
-
-But I was simply not to be denied, and, while my first blow must have
-almost broken his neck, in less than a minute I had him rolling over
-and over and yelling for mercy. I really believe that, if he had not
-managed to get to his feet, and then taken to his heels as fast as he
-could, I would have killed him. Meanwhile the bees were having fun with
-us both.
-
-It was of no use, however angry I might be, to stop to try and fight
-them; so as soon as the other bear had escaped I made my own way as
-fast as I could out of the reach of their stings, and down to the
-stream to cool my smarting face. As I lay in the water, I remember
-looking back with astonishment to the whole proceeding. Five minutes
-before I had had no intention of fighting anybody, and had had no
-reason whatever for fighting that particular bear. Had I met him in the
-ordinary way, we should have been friendly, and I am not at all sure
-that, if I had had to make up my mind to it in cold blood, I should
-have dared to stand up to him, unless something very important depended
-on it. Yet all of a sudden the thing had happened. I had had my first
-serious fight with a bear older than myself, and had beaten him.
-Moreover, I had learned the enormous advantage of being the aggressor
-in a fight, and of throwing yourself into it with your whole soul. As
-it was, though I was astonished at the entire affair and surprised at
-myself, and although the bee-stings still hurt horribly, I was pretty
-well satisfied and rather proud.
-
-Perhaps it was as well that I had that fight then, for the time was
-not far distant when I was to go through the fight of my life. A bear
-may have much fighting in the course of his existence, or he may have
-comparatively little, depending chiefly on his own disposition; but
-at least once he is sure to have one fight on which almost the whole
-course of his life depends. And that is when he fights for his wife.
-Of course he may be beaten, and then he has to try again. Some bears
-never succeed in winning a wife at all. Some may win one and then have
-her taken from them, and have to seek another; but I do not believe
-that any bear chooses to live alone. Every one will once at least make
-an effort to win a companion who will be the mother of his children.
-The crisis came with me that summer, though many bears, I believe,
-prefer to run alone until a year, or even two years, later.
-
-The summer had passed like the former one, rather uneventfully after
-the episode of the bees. I wandered abroad, roaming over a wide tract
-of country, fishing, honey-hunting, and finding my share of roots and
-beetles and berries, sheltering during the heat of the day, and going
-wherever I felt inclined in the cool of the night and morning. I think
-I was disposed to be rather surly and quarrelsome, and more than once
-took upon myself to dispute the path with other bears; but they always
-gave way to me, and I felt that I pretty well had the mountains and the
-forests for my own. But I was still lonely, and that summer I felt it
-more than ever.
-
-The late spring had ruined a large part of the berry crop, and the
-consequence was that, wherever there was a patch with any fruit on it,
-bears were sure to find it out. There was one small sheltered patch
-which I knew, where the fruit had nearly all survived the frosts. I was
-there one evening, when, not far from me, out of the woods came another
-bear of about my size. I was inclined to resent it at first, but then
-I saw that it was a she-bear, and I liked her the moment I obtained a
-good view of her. She saw me, and sat up and looked at me amicably.
-
-[Illustration: SHE SAW ME, AND SAT UP AND LOOKED AT ME AMICABLY.]
-
-I had never tried to make love before, but I knew what was the right
-thing to do; so I approached her slowly, walking sideways, rubbing my
-nose on the ground, and mumbling into the grass to tell her how much
-I admired her. She responded in the correct way, by rolling on the
-ground. So I continued to approach her, and I cannot have been more
-than five or six yards away, when out of the bushes behind her, to
-my astonishment, came another he-bear. He growled at me, and began
-to sniff around at the bushes, to show that he was entirely ready to
-fight if I wanted to. And of course I wanted to. I probably should have
-wanted to in any circumstances, but when the she-bear showed that she
-liked me better than him, by growling at him, I would not have gone
-away, without fighting for her, for all the berries and honey in the
-world. One of the most momentous crises in my life had come, and, as
-all such things do, had come quite unexpectedly.
-
-He was as much in earnest as I, and for a minute we sidled round
-growling over our shoulders, and each measuring the other. There was
-little to choose between us, for, if I was a shade the taller, he was a
-year older than I, and undoubtedly the heavier and thicker. In fighting
-all other animals except those of his kind, a bear's natural weapons
-are his paws, with one blow of which he can crush a small animal, and
-either stun or break the neck of a larger one. But he cannot do any
-one of these three things to another bear as big as himself, and only
-if one bear is markedly bigger than the other can he hope to reach
-his head, so as either to tear his face or give him such a blow as
-will daze him and render him incapable of going on fighting. A very
-much larger bear can beat down the smaller one's arms, and rain such
-a shower of blows upon him as will convince him at once that he is
-overmatched, and make him turn tail and run. When two are evenly
-matched, however, the first interchange of blows with the paws is not
-likely to have much effect either way, and the fight will have to be
-settled by closing, by the use of teeth and main strength. But, as I
-had learned in my fight that day when I had been stung by the bees, the
-moral effect of the first rush may be great, and it was in that that my
-slight advantage in height and reach was likely to be useful, whereas
-if we came to close quarters slowly the thicker and stockier animal
-would have the advantage. So I determined to force the fighting with
-all the fury that I could; and I did.
-
-It was he who gave the first blow. As we sidled up close to one
-another, he let out at me wickedly with his left paw, a blow which,
-if it had caught me, would undoubtedly have torn off one of my ears.
-Most bears would have replied to that with a similar swinging blow
-when they got an opening, and the interchange of single blows at arms'
-length would have gone on indefinitely until one or the other lost his
-temper and closed. I did not wait for that. The instant the first blow
-whistled past my head I threw myself on my hind-quarters and launched
-myself bodily at him, hitting as hard as I could and as fast, first
-with one paw and then with the other, without giving him time to
-recover his wits or get in a blow himself. I felt him giving way as
-the other bear had done, and when we closed he was on his back on the
-ground, and I was on the top of him.
-
-The fight, however, had only begun. I had gained a certain moral
-effect by the ferocity of my attack, but a bear, when he is fighting
-in earnest, is not beaten by a single rush, nor, indeed, until he is
-absolutely unable to fight longer. Altogether we must have fought for
-over an hour. Two or three times we were compelled to stop and draw
-apart, because neither of us had strength left to use either claws or
-jaw. And each time when we closed again I followed the same tactics,
-rushing in and beating him down and doing my best to cow him before we
-gripped; and each time, I think, it had some effect--at least to the
-extent that it gave me a feeling of confidence, as if I was fighting a
-winning fight.
-
-The deadliest grip that one bear can get on another is with his jaws
-across the other's muzzle, when he can crush the whole face in. Once
-he very nearly got me so, and this scar on the side of my nose is the
-mark of his tooth; but he just failed to close his jaws in time.
-And, as it proved then, it is a dangerous game to play, for it leaves
-you exposed if you miss your grip, and in this case it gave me the
-opportunity that I wanted, to get my teeth into his right paw just
-above the wrist. My teeth sank through the flesh and tendons and closed
-upon the bone. In time, if I could hold my grip, I would crush it. His
-only hope lay in being able to compel me to let go, by getting his
-teeth in behind my ear; and this we both knew, and it was my business
-with my right paw to keep his muzzle away.
-
-A moment like that is terrible--and splendid. I have never found myself
-in his position, but I can imagine what it must be. We swayed and fell
-together, and rolled over and over--now he uppermost, and now I; but
-never for a second did I relax my hold. Whatever position we were in,
-my teeth were slowly grinding into the bone of his arm, and again and
-again I felt his teeth grating and slipping on my skull as I clawed and
-pushed blindly at his face to keep him away. More and more desperate
-he grew, and still I hung on; and while I clung to him in dead silence
-he was growling and snarling frantically, and I could hear his tone
-getting higher and higher till, just as I felt the bone giving between
-my teeth, the growling broke and changed to a whine, and I knew that I
-had won.
-
-One more wrench with my teeth, and I felt his arm limp and useless
-in my mouth. Then I let go, and as he cowered back on three legs I
-reared up and fell upon him again, hitting blow after blow with my
-paws, buffeting, biting, beating, driving him before me. Even now he
-had fight left in him; but with all his pluck he was helpless with his
-crippled limb, and slowly I bore him back out of the open patch where
-we had been fighting into the woods, and yard by yard up the hill,
-until at last it was useless for him to pretend to fight any longer,
-and he turned and, as best he could, limping on three legs, ran.
-
-During the whole of the fight the she-bear had not said a word, but sat
-on the ground watching and awaiting the result. While the battle was
-going on I had no time to look at her; but in the intervals when we
-were taking breath, whenever I turned in her direction, she avoided my
-eye and pretended not to know that I was there or that anything that
-interested her was passing. She looked at the sky and the trees, and
-washed herself, or did whatever would best show her indifference. All
-of which only told me that she was not indifferent at all.
-
-Now, when I came back to her, she still pretended not to see me until
-I was close up to her, and when I held out my nose to hers she growled
-as if a stranger had no right to behave in that way. But I knew she did
-not mean it; and I was very tired and sore, with blood running from me
-in a dozen places. So I walked a few yards away from her and lay down.
-In a minute she came over to me and rubbed her nose against mine, and
-told me how sorry she was for having snubbed me, and then began to lick
-my wounds.
-
-She told me how splendidly I had fought; and, mauled though I was, I
-was very proud and happy. She in turn told me all about herself. She
-was older than I by two years, and the bear that I had beaten was a
-year older than myself. She had known him for some three weeks only,
-having met him a few days after her husband and her two children, the
-first she had ever had, had been killed by a thunder-stick. That was
-a long way off over there--pointing eastward--and she had been moving
-away from the neighbourhood of man ever since.
-
-That gave us a new bond of sympathy; and I told her about Kahwa and
-myself, and how lonely I had been for the last two summers. Now, with
-her help, I proposed not to be lonely any more. She saw that I was well
-able to take care of myself and of her, even though I was only three
-years old. If I filled out in proportion to my height and the size of
-my bones, there would not be a bear in the forest that would be able
-to stand up to me by the end of next summer. She told me that she had
-liked me the moment we met, and had hoped every minute of the fight
-that I would win, though, of course, it would not have been proper for
-her to show it. Altogether I was happier than I had been since the old
-days before Kahwa was caught.
-
-As soon as I was fairly rested, we got up and made our way in the
-bright moonlight down to the river, so that I could wash the blood off
-myself and get the water into my wounds. We stayed there for a while,
-and then returned to the patch and made a supper off the berries, and
-later wandered into the woods side by side. She was very kind to me,
-and every caress and every loving thing she did or said was a delight.
-It was all so wonderfully new. And when at last we lay down under the
-stars, so that I could sleep after the strain that I had been through,
-and I knew that she was by me, and that when I woke up I should not be
-lonely any more, it all seemed almost too good to be true. It was as if
-I had suddenly come into a new world and I was a new bear.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-A VISIT TO THE OLD HOME
-
-
-When I awoke I found that it was indeed all true, but I was so
-frightfully stiff that it was not easy to be very happy all at once. I
-slept straight on all through the morning until late in the afternoon.
-My new companion had been awake, and had wandered round a little in the
-early morning, but without awaking me. When I awoke in the afternoon
-she was asleep by my side. I tried to stand up, but every bone in my
-body hurt, every muscle ached, and every joint was so stiff that I
-could almost hear it creak. The fuss that I made in trying to get on
-to my feet disturbed her, and she helped me up. Somehow I managed to
-stagger along, and we went off for a short ramble in search of food. I
-could hardly dig at all, but she shared with me the roots she found,
-and with a few berries we made a sort of a meal; and then I was so
-tired that we lay down again, and I slept right on till daybreak the
-following morning.
-
-After that I felt myself again. It was days before all the stiffness
-wore off, and weeks before my wounds were entirely healed; while, as
-you can see, I carry some of the scars to this day.
-
-For some days the bear that I had beaten hung about, in the hope of
-tempting Wooffa (that was what I called my wife, it being my mother's
-name) to go back to him. But he was a pitiable object, limping about
-with his broken leg, and I never even offered to fight him again. There
-was no need for it. Wooffa did not wish to have anything to say to him,
-and she ignored him for the most part unless he came too near, when
-she growled at him in a way that was not to be misunderstood. I really
-felt sorry for him, remembering my own loneliness, and realizing that
-it was probably worse to lose her and have to go off alone, while she
-belonged to somebody else, than never to have known her at all. After
-a while he recognised that it was hopeless, and we saw him no more. We
-ourselves, indeed, did not stay in the same place, but as long as the
-summer lasted we wandered where we pleased.
-
-We suited each other admirably, Wooffa and I. We had much the same
-tastes, with equal cause to hate man and to wish to keep away from his
-neighbourhood, and we were very nearly of the same size and strength.
-I never knew a bear that had a keener scent, and she was a marvel at
-finding honey. In many ways it is a great advantage for two bears to
-be together, for they have two noses and two sets of eyes and ears,
-and two can turn over a log or a stone that is too heavy for one.
-Altogether, I now lived better and was much more free from care than I
-had been; while above all was the great fact of companionship--the mere
-not being alone. In small ways she used to tyrannize over me, just as
-mother did over father; but I liked it, and neither of us ever found
-any tit-bit which was large enough to share without being willing to go
-halves with the other.
-
-The rest of that summer we spent together, and all the next, and I
-think she was as contented as I. What I had hoped came true, for I
-increased in weight so much that I do not think there was a bear that
-we saw that could have held his own against me in fair fight. Certainly
-there was no pair that could have stood up against Wooffa and me
-together; for though not quite so high at the shoulder as I, she was
-splendidly built and magnificently strong. On her chest she had a white
-spot or streak, of which she was very proud, and which she kept always
-beautifully white and well combed.
-
-Early in the summer of the year after I had met her, I took her to
-visit my childhood home. It needed a week's steady travelling to get
-there, and when we arrived in the neighbourhood we found the whole
-place so changed that I could hardly find my way. It was more than
-three years since I had seen it, and man had now taken possession of
-the whole country. For the last day or two of our journey we had to
-go very carefully, for men's houses were scattered along the banks
-of every stream, and wherever two streams of any size came together
-there had grown up a small town. In the burnt district many of the
-blackened trees were still standing, but the ground was carpeted with
-brush again, and young trees were shooting up in every direction. The
-beaver-dams were most of them broken, and those which remained were
-deserted. On all sides were the marks of man's handiwork.
-
-At last we came to the beaver-dam, the pool of which had saved my life
-in the fire. There were houses close beside the pool, and a large
-clearing which had been made in the forest was now a grass-field, and
-in that field for the first time I saw cows. We had already passed
-several strings of mules and ponies on the mountain-paths which the
-men had made, each animal carrying a huge bundle lashed on its back;
-and now we met horses dragging carts along the wide road which had
-been made along the border of the stream. Of course, we did not
-venture near the road during the day, but stayed hidden well up on the
-mountain-side, where we could hear the noise of people passing, and in
-the evening we made our way down.
-
-Just as we arrived at the road, going very cautiously, a pair of horses
-dragging a waggon came along. Curious to see it, we stayed close by,
-and peered out from behind the trees; but as they came abreast of us a
-gust of wind blew the scent of us to the horses, and they took fright
-and seemed to go mad in one instant. Plunging and rearing, they tried
-to turn round, backing the waggon off the road into a tree. Then,
-putting their heads down, they started blindly thundering up the road,
-with the waggon swaying and rocking behind them. The man shouted and
-pulled and thrashed them with his whip, but the horses were too mad
-with terror to listen to him. On they dashed until there came a turn in
-the road, when with a crash the waggon collided with a tree. Precisely
-what happened we could not see. Bits of the waggon were strewn about
-the road, while the horses plunged on with what was left of it dangling
-behind them. But in what was left there was no man.
-
-We made our way along the edge of the road to where the crash had taken
-place, and there among the broken wheels and splinters of the waggon we
-found the man lying, half on the road and half in the forest, dead. It
-was some time before we could make up our minds to approach him, but at
-last I touched him with my nose, and then we turned him over with our
-paws. We were still inspecting him, when we heard the sound of other
-men and horses approaching, and before they came in sight we slipped
-off into the wood. We saw the new horses shy just as the former ones
-had done, but whether at the smell of ourselves or of the dead man in
-the road we did not know. The men managed to quiet them, however, and
-got out of the waggon, and after standing over the dead man for a while
-they lifted him and took him away with them.
-
-We loitered about until it was dark, and then tried to make our way
-on to where my old home had been. It could not be half a mile away,
-but that half-mile was beset with houses, and as we drew nearer the
-houses became thicker, until I saw that it would be useless to go on,
-for where the cedar-trees used to grow, where the hill-slope was that I
-had tumbled down, where Blacky the squirrel and Rat-tat used to live,
-was now the middle of a town. At the first sign of dawn we made our way
-back to the beaver-pool, and, crossing the dam again, turned our backs
-for ever on the neighbourhood where I had spent my childhood. It was no
-longer bears' country.
-
-Now for the first time I understood what the coming of man meant to the
-people of the forest and the mountains. I had, indeed, seen a man-town
-before, and the men coming and going up and down the streams, but,
-somehow, it had not occurred to me that where they came they never went
-away again. These men here, however, with their houses, their roads and
-cows and horses--they would never go away. They were wiping out the
-forest: the animals that lived in it had vanished: the very face of the
-mountains was changed, so that I could not tell the spots that I knew
-best; and I was sure that we could never drive them out again. I was
-sorry that I had come to see the old home, and we were a gloomy couple
-as we started on our return journey southwards.
-
-For a long time yet we would have to go cautiously, for man was all
-around us. Along the streams he had been digging, digging, digging,
-endlessly digging, but what he gained by it we could not comprehend;
-for we often watched him at work, and he seemed to take nothing out of
-the ground, nor to eat anything as he dug. When he was not digging, he
-was chopping trees, either to build more houses, to make dams across
-the streams, or to break the wood up into pieces to burn. So wherever
-he came the forest disappeared, and the rivers were disfigured with
-holes and ditches and piles of gravel on which no green thing grew, and
-nothing lived that was good to eat.
-
-In travelling we kept away from the streams as much as possible, moving
-along the hillsides, and only coming down to the water when we wished
-to cross. We had been travelling in this way for some two or three
-nights, when one morning very early we came down to a stream at a point
-close by a clump of buildings. The wind was blowing from them to us,
-and suddenly Wooffa threw herself up on her haunches and gasped one
-word--'Pig!'
-
-I had heard of pig before, and Wooffa had eaten it to her cost; and in
-spite of the cost she agreed with everyone in saying that young pig
-is the very best thing there is to eat in all the world. I had often
-wondered whether some of the best scraps that I had picked up about the
-houses in the town in the old days might not be pig, and now I know
-that they were. But they were cooked and salted pig, and not the fresh
-young pig newly killed, which is the joy of joys to a bear. This it was
-that Wooffa now smelled, and as the scent came to my nostrils I knew
-that it was something new to me and something very good.
-
-The smell came from a sort of pen at one side of the biggest building,
-not unlike that in which Kahwa had been shut up, only the walls were
-not so high. They were too high to look over, however, and there was no
-way of climbing up until Wooffa helped me, and by standing on her back
-I was able to see over. It was a small square pen, the floor deep in
-mud, and at one end was a covered place something like the boxes that
-men keep dogs in; and in the door of this covered place I could see,
-asleep, a large black-and-white sow and five little pigs.
-
-If I got inside, I saw that I could climb on the roof of the covered
-part and get out again; so I did not hesitate, but with one scramble
-I was over and down in the middle of the family. Wouff! what a noise
-they made! But with one smack of my paw I had killed the nearest little
-one, and grabbed it in my mouth, and in a minute I was up on the
-covered roof and out with Wooffa on the grass outside.
-
-We did not stop to eat the pig there, for the others were still
-squealing as if they were all being killed, and we were afraid that
-they would wake the men; so we made off as fast as we could into the
-wood, taking the pig with us. It was as well that we did, for we had
-not gone far before we heard a door bang and a dog barking, and then
-the voices of men shouting to each other. We kept on for a mile or so
-before we stopped, down by the side of a little stream. Then we divided
-the pig fairly, and nothing that I had heard about his goodness had
-been exaggerated. No; there are many good things in the world--honey
-and berries and sugar and cooked things; but pig is above all others.
-
-So good was he that, if I had been by myself, I think I should have
-stayed there, and gone down again next night for another, and probably
-been shot for my pains. But, as Wooffa had told me long ago, it was in
-doing just that very thing that her husband and two children had lost
-their lives. They had found some pigs kept by men just as we had, and
-had taken three the first night. The next night they went and got two
-more; the third night the men were waiting for them, and only Wooffa
-escaped. The smell of the pig when it came to her again after two years
-had for the moment overcome all her fears; but she told me that she had
-been terrified all the time that I was in the sty, and nothing on earth
-would tempt her to risk a second visit.
-
-I have said before that greediness is the undoing of nearly all wild
-animals, and, however much I longed for another taste of pig, I knew
-that she was right. It was better to go without pig and keep alive. So
-we set our faces resolutely in the other direction, and kept on our
-course, vowing that nothing should tempt us to linger in the proximity
-of man. And very glad we both were when we found ourselves at last once
-more in a region where as yet man had not been seen, where we could
-wander abroad as we pleased by night or day, where the good forest
-smells were still untainted, and where we could lie in the water of the
-streams at sunset or fish as long as we pleased without thought of an
-enemy.
-
-It was a beautiful autumn that year, and I think, as I look back to
-it, I was as happy then as ever in my life. There had been a splendid
-crop of berries, in contrast to the year before, and now, with the
-long clear autumn, all signs pointed to a hard winter. So we made
-our preparations for the cold season early, hollowing out our dens
-carefully side by side under the roots of two huge trees, where
-they were well sheltered from the wind, and lining them with sticks
-and leaves. Wooffa in particular spent a long time over hers; and
-afterwards I understood why.
-
-It was still bright autumn weather, when the birds flying southwards
-told us that already snow had fallen to the north, and it was bitterly
-cold. Everyone was talking of the severe winter that was ahead of us,
-and the wolves and the coyotes had gone to the plains. We were glad
-we had made our preparations in good time, for, when the winter came,
-it came, in spite of all that had been said about it, unexpectedly.
-There was no warning of snow upon the higher peaks, but one night the
-north wind blew steadily the long night through, and in the morning the
-winter was on us, settling down on all the country, peak and valley,
-together.
-
-That day we retired into our dens for good. When I came out in the
-spring, Wooffa had not appeared, so I began to scratch away the stuff
-from the opening of her den, and as I did so I heard new noises inside;
-and all at once it dawned upon me that I was a father. Wooffa had
-brought me a little Kahwa and a little Wahka for my own.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-THE TROUBLES OF A FATHER
-
-
-Every young cub, I imagine, gets into about the same amount of trouble
-and causes about the same worry and anxiety to his parents. I know
-that little Wahka took the earliest possible opportunity of getting
-himself stuck full of porcupine quills, and I do not suppose he made
-any more fuss when his mother pulled them out than I had done under
-similar circumstances five summers before. He nearly drowned himself
-by tumbling into the swiftest part of the stream that he could find,
-and when I laughed at him, shivering and whining, while his mother
-alternately licked and cuffed him on the head, I could not help
-thinking of my own misery when I went downhill into the snow.
-
-As I looked at him, so preposterously small, and fluffy, and brown, it
-was, as I said at the beginning, hard to believe that I was ever quite
-like that. But I recognised myself in things that he did fifty times a
-day.
-
-Kahwa, too, was exactly like the other little Kahwa, her aunt who was
-dead. Wahka would be sitting looking into the air at nothing, as cubs
-do, when she would steal up behind him and make a sudden grab at his
-hind-foot. I could remember just how it felt when her teeth caught
-hold. And he would roll over on his side, squealing, and smack her head
-until she let go. In a few minutes they were perfectly good friends
-again hunting squirrels up the trees, and standing down below with
-open mouths, waiting for them to drop in. I showed them how to play at
-pulling each other down the hill, and often of an afternoon I would sit
-with my own back against the tree, and invite them to pull me down.
-Then it was just as it used to be. Wahka came at me on one side, slowly
-and doggedly, almost in silence, but intensely in earnest, while on
-the other side Kahwa rushed on me like a little whirlwind, yapping and
-snarling, and scuffling all over me with her mouth wide open to grab
-anything that was within reach--the same ferocious, reckless little
-spitfire as I had known years ago. They were good children, I think.
-At all events, Wooffa and I were very proud of them, and she used to
-spend an astonishing amount of time licking them, and combing them, and
-smacking their little woolly heads.
-
-Then we began to take them out and teach them how to find food, and
-what food to eat; that the easiest way to get at a lily bulb is not
-to scrabble at it with both paws straight down, but to scoop it out
-with one good scrape from the side; how to wipe off the top of an
-ant-hill at one smooth stroke; how to distinguish the wild-onion by
-its smell; and what the young shoots of the white camas look like.
-They soon learned not to pass any fair-sized stone without turning it
-over to look for the insects beneath, and also that it is useless to
-go on turning the same stone over and over again to keep looking at
-the 'other side.' Every fallen log had to be carefully inspected, the
-bark ripped off where it was rotten to get at the beetles and grubs and
-wood-lice underneath, and, if it were not too heavy, the log itself
-should be rolled over. We taught them that, in approaching a log or
-large stone, one should always sniff well first to see if there is a
-mouse or chipmunk underneath, and, if there be fresh scent, turn it
-over with one paw while holding the other ready to strike.
-
-Mice bothered them dreadfully at first, dodging and zigzagging round
-their hind-legs, and keeping them hopping in the air, while they
-grabbed wildly at the little thing that was never where it ought to be
-when the paw came down to squash it. I shall never forget the first
-time that Wahka found a chipmunk by himself. He lifted a stone very
-cautiously, with his nose much too close to it, apparently expecting
-the chipmunk to run into his mouth, which it did not do; but as soon
-as the stone was lifted an inch it was out and on to Wahka's nose, and
-over his head, down the middle of his back, and off into the wood.
-Wahka really never saw it at all, and was spinning round and round
-trying to get at the middle of his own back after the chipmunk was a
-hundred yards away.
-
-We took the cubs down to the stream and showed them how to root
-along the edges among the grass and weeds for frogs and snails, and
-water-beetles and things, and when the trout came upstream we caught
-some for them, and showed them how to do it; but fishing is a thing
-that needs too much patience to commend itself to cubs.
-
-Wahka did not have any adventure with a puma, but he had one experience
-which might have been even more serious. He had wandered away from his
-mother and myself, just as he had been told hundreds of times not to
-do, when suddenly there was the noise of a scuffle from his direction,
-and he was screaming with all his might. I was there in a moment, with
-his mother close behind me, and saw two huge gray wolves which had
-already rolled him over, and in another instant would have done for
-him. We charged them, but they were gone before we reached the spot;
-and beyond a bad shaking and one scar on his shoulder Wahka was none
-the worse. He was a thoroughly frightened cub, however, and it would
-have taken a great deal of persuasion to make him leave his mother's
-side for the rest of that day. Indeed, it was necessary to be careful
-for more than that day, because the wolves hung around us, hoping still
-to catch either him or Kahwa alone where they could make away with them.
-
-I dislike wolves immensely. In spite of their size and the strength of
-their jaws, they are cowardly animals, and one wolf will never attack
-even a much smaller beast than himself alone, if he can get another
-to help him. Bears are not like that. We want to have our fighting
-to ourselves. We would much rather have any other bear that is near
-stand and look on instead of coming to help us--unless, of course, it
-is a case of husband and wife, and one or other is overmatched. What
-we do, we do in the open, and prefer that people should understand our
-intentions clearly, and take us just as we are. A wolf is exactly the
-opposite. He never does anything openly that he can do in secret. He
-likes to keep out of sight, and hunt by stealth, owing what he gets to
-his cunning and to superior numbers, rather than to his own individual
-fighting spirit.
-
-We recognise that wolves know many things that we do not; though some
-of them are things that we would not want to know. And they think us
-fools--but they keep out of our way. There have indeed, I believe,
-been cases where a number of wolves together have succeeded in killing
-a bear--not in fair fight, but by dogging and following him for days,
-preventing his either eating or sleeping, until from sheer exhaustion
-he has been unable to resist them when they have attacked him in force
-and pulled him down. This, however, could not happen in the mountains.
-The wolves are only there in the summer, and then they run in couples,
-or alone, or at most in families of two old ones and the cubs together.
-In the autumn they go down to the foot-hills and the plains, and then
-it is only in hard weather that they collect in packs. At that time the
-bears are usually in their winter dens, and all the wolves that were
-ever born could never get a bear out of his den, where they can reach
-him only in front.
-
-In this case, the wolves which had attacked Wahka seldom showed
-themselves, but that they were constantly near us, and watching us, we
-knew. With all their cunning, they could not help getting between us
-and the wind once in a while, and sometimes, when they were a little
-distance away, we could hear them quarrelling between themselves over
-some small animal they had killed, or some scrap of food that they had
-found in the forest. It is not pleasant being shadowed, whether it is
-your child or yourself that is being hunted, and we had to be extremely
-cautious not to let either Kahwa or Wahka out of our sight. Nor was
-it always easy, in spite of his recent fright, to keep the latter
-under restraint, for he was an independent, self-reliant youngster, of
-inexhaustible inquisitiveness.
-
-One day, when we knew the wolves were following us, and we were keeping
-Wahka well in hand, we met a family of elk,[4] two parents and quite a
-young fawn, and Wahka must needs go and try to find out all about the
-fawn. He meant no harm whatever, and had no idea that there was any
-danger. He only thought the fawn would be a nice thing to play with;
-and before we could stop him he had trotted straight up to it. Elk are
-jealous animals, and, like all deer, in spite of their timidity, will
-fight to protect their young; and with his tremendous antlers and great
-strength a big stag is a person to be let alone.
-
-Wahka knew nothing about all this, and went straight towards the fawn
-in the friendliest and most confiding way. Fortunately, the stag was
-some yards away, and we were able to put Wahka on his guard in time.
-But it was a narrow escape, and I do not think the stag's antler missed
-his tail by half an inch. Wooffa jumped in the stag's way, and for a
-minute it looked as if there would be a fight. Of course it would have
-ended in our killing the stag--and probably also his wife and the fawn
-as well--but one or the other of us would have been likely to have had
-the end of an antler through the ribs before the fight was over.
-
-The stag showed not the slightest intention of running away, though he
-must have known perfectly well that the odds were hopelessly against
-him; but he stood facing Wooffa, with his head down, snorting and
-pawing the ground, and telling her to come on. She was so angry at the
-attack on Wahka that for a moment she was inclined to do it, but I
-spoke to her, and she cooled down, and we moved away, leaving the stag,
-still pawing the ground and shaking his head, in possession of the
-field.
-
-I have already said that we had had warning that the wolves were
-hanging about us that day, and we had not gone far after the meeting
-with the elk before we heard that some sort of trouble was in progress
-behind. It was not difficult to guess what it was; the snarling and
-yapping of the wolves, the breaking of branches, and the clashing of
-the elk's antlers, told the story. The wolves, following us, had made
-up their minds that the fawn would be easier prey and better eating
-than a bear-cub; and the stag, we knew, was doing his best to defend
-his young. We were very much inclined to go down and help the stag; but
-we stood and listened, and suddenly the noise stopped. The silence that
-ensued was too much for our curiosity, and back we went.
-
-As we came near we knew that the fight could not be altogether over,
-for there was still a sound of snarling and the angry stamping of a
-stag, and the sight that at last met our eyes was one that it did us
-good to see.
-
-There was a wide circular open space, in which every living thing had
-been trampled down, and the ground was all scored and furrowed with the
-mark of hoof and antler; and in the middle stood the stag, erect and
-defiant. Before him on the ground lay the body of the he-wolf, covered
-with blood and stamped almost beyond recognition. There was blood--his
-own blood--on the stag's shoulder, and blood on his horns, which was
-not his own. At the edge of the circle, lying down and panting, lay the
-she-wolf, sulky and baffled, and evidently with no mind to go on with
-the combat alone, though the stag challenged her to come on.
-
-When he saw us, the stag perhaps thought that we were new enemies come
-to take up the cause of the remaining wolf, for he signalled to his
-wife, who with the fawn was standing behind him, and they began to move
-slowly away, the deer and fawn going first, and the stag following,
-moving backwards, and keeping his antlers always towards the enemy,
-till they had passed out of the circle of cleared space into the
-trees. The she-wolf lay there till they had passed, turning sulkily to
-snarl at us once in a while, and then, as we stood still and showed no
-sign of approaching or attacking her, she got up and walked over to the
-dead body of her husband, and began turning it over with her nose. Next
-she commenced to lick him, and then, taking the throat in her mouth,
-deliberately began to bite into it! Growling and snarling, she crouched
-over the body, and we left her to her horrid meal.
-
-It was a relief to know that we at least would be no more troubled by
-her or her husband.
-
-On the whole, life went very peaceably with us, as it had done with
-my parents when Kahwa and I were cubs in the days before man came,
-and before the forest fire drove us into his arms. This year we saw
-no sign of man. We had no wish to do so, and took care not to go in
-any direction where we thought we were likely to meet him. Once in
-midsummer we saw the sky to the north of us red for two or three
-nights with flames in the distance, and I wondered for a while whether
-history was going to repeat itself; but the wind blew steadily from
-the south-west, and the fire did not come within many miles of us. It
-must, I guessed, be somewhere in the neighbourhood of the former fire,
-and, of course, it is where man is that forest fires are frequent; for
-man is the only animal that makes fires for himself, and it is from
-his fires that the flames spread to the woods. Sometimes, in very dry
-seasons, the woods ignite of themselves, but that is rare.
-
-Of course, as the summer grew, we moved about and wandered abroad as in
-other years, keeping in the neighbourhood of the streams, sheltering
-during the heat of the day, and roaming over the mountains in the sweet
-cool air of the night and morning. We always kept together, though, of
-course, the little ones clung to their mother more than to me. I was
-a kind father to them, I think, and I believe they liked and admired
-me as much as young cubs ought to like and admire their father; but,
-as is always the case in families like ours, while occasionally one
-of them, generally Kahwa, would wander away from the others with me,
-usually Wooffa and the youngsters kept close together while I moved
-about alone, though within calling distance, in case I should be
-needed. Sometimes the father bear leaves the family altogether during
-the early summer months, and either goes alone or joins other he-bears
-that are solitary like himself; but it is better for the family to stay
-together. Besides, Wooffa and I suited each other admirably as hunting
-companions, and I am not ashamed to confess that I was fond of my
-children.
-
-I began to realize what an anxiety I must have been to my own parents,
-for one or the other of the cubs was always getting into trouble. They
-were sitting one day watching Wooffa and myself trying to turn over
-a big log. We had warned them again and again not to stand below a
-log downhill when we were moving it, but, of course, Kahwa had paid
-no attention, and, as that was the best place from which to watch the
-operation, down she sat and contentedly awaited results. After two or
-three efforts we felt the log begin to move, and then, with one heave
-together, we got it started, and it rolled straight down on Kahwa. We
-had been too busy to notice where she was till we heard her squeal.
-It might very easily have killed her, and as it was her hind-leg was
-firmly caught, with the whole weight of the great log resting on it.
-Her mother boxed her ears, while I managed to move the log enough to
-set her free; but her foot was badly crushed, and she limped more or
-less for the rest of the summer.
-
-On another occasion Wahka put his head into a slit in a hollow tree
-to look for honey, and could not get it out again. I have heard of
-bears being killed in that way, when the hole is some distance from
-the ground. The opening will probably be narrower towards the bottom
-than it is in the middle, and when a bear climbs up to the hole, of
-course he puts his head in at the widest part. Perhaps he slips, and
-his neck slides down to where the slit is narrower. If he loses his
-hold altogether, his whole weight comes on his neck, and he breaks it;
-and even if that does not happen, he may not be able to raise himself
-and force his neck up to the wider opening again, but has to hang there
-caught in a trap until he dies.
-
-In this case Wahka's feet were on the ground, as the hole was quite
-low down, so there was no danger of his being hanged; but he was so
-frightened when he found that he could not pull his head out again that
-it is quite possible that if he had been alone he never would have
-succeeded in getting loose. But his mother smacked him until he lifted
-his head a little to where the hole was an inch or so wider, and he
-was able to pull out. But there was not much hair left on the back of
-his ears by the time he was free.
-
-With all the trouble that they gave us, however, and though I would not
-have let them know it for worlds, and always made a point of noticing
-their existence as little as possible, I was proud of my children.
-Wahka, especially, gave promise of growing into a splendid bear, while
-Kahwa was the very image of her mother, even down to the little white
-streak on her chest, though that did not appear until she got her
-second year's coat.
-
-They were good, straightforward, rollicking youngsters who got all
-the pleasure out of life that there was to be got, and enjoyed
-amazingly everything that was good to eat. I shall never forget the
-first time that we introduced them to a berry-patch; and their first
-wild-raspberries drove them nearly crazy. They would not go to sleep
-all next day, though it was blazing hot, but sat up while we slept, and
-whenever we woke begged to be taken to look for more raspberries.
-
-When winter approached, we returned to the place where we had
-hibernated the previous year. Wooffa hollowed out her den to twice
-its former size, so as to hold herself and both the cubs, and I
-took my old quarters close by. Winter came slowly, and after all our
-preparations were made we were able to be about for a long time, during
-which we did nothing but eat and sleep, and gather strength and fatness
-for the long fast that was coming.
-
-
-FOOTNOTE
-
-[4] The North American elk is the wapiti.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-WIPING OUT OLD SCORES
-
-
-I have said more than once that both Wooffa and I had made up our minds
-that we never wished to see man again. Looking back now, it is hard to
-tell what made us depart from that determination; indeed, I am not sure
-that there was any particular moment at which we did definitely change
-our minds and decide to go into his neighbourhood once more. It was
-rather, I think, that we drifted or wandered into it; but we certainly
-must have known quite well what we were doing.
-
-When we started out in the following spring, with Wahka and Kahwa in
-their second year, we were a formidable family, without much cause to
-be afraid of anything. We had no intention of meddling with a grizzly
-if we happened to meet one, and so long as we kept out of the way of
-thunder-sticks there was nothing to hurt us. At first we wandered
-northward with no definite object, but as we got nearer a great
-curiosity came over me to see the places which I had cause to remember
-so well--the berry-patch and the house where Kahwa had met her death;
-and also, I believe, there was a vague hope of somehow meeting again my
-old enemy and being able to square accounts with him. He had threatened
-me again and again, and I had always had to run from him. Moreover, I
-held him responsible in my mind for Kahwa's death. If he had warned us,
-as decent bears always do warn one another of any danger, when we met
-him that night on our way to the berry-patch, we should never have gone
-on, and Kahwa would not have been captured. He was coming away from the
-patch, and he must have known that the men were there. But for mother's
-help, he would probably have killed father that time when he tried to
-turn us out of our home. Altogether, it was a long list of injuries
-that I had against him, and I nursed the memory of them. Perhaps I
-should meet him some day, and this time I should not run away. Whenever
-I thought of him, I used to get so angry that I would sit up on my
-hind-legs and rub my nose in my chest and growl; and Wooffa knew what
-was in my mind, and growled in sympathy with me.
-
-So it came about that we travelled steadily northward that summer,
-going back over much of the same ground as father, mother, and I had
-travelled when we came away after Kahwa's death. Sometimes we stayed in
-one locality for a week, and then perhaps kept moving for a couple of
-days, until we came to another place which tempted us to loiter. Many
-times we saw man, but he never saw us; for we were old and experienced,
-and had no trouble in keeping out of his way. We found that he did not
-always stay wherever he came. Some houses, which I remembered passing
-three years before, we found empty now and in ruins, with the roofs
-falling in and bushes growing over them. On several streams the beavers
-told us that they had not seen a man for three years.
-
-We now learned, too, something of the reason of man's coming into the
-mountains. Sometimes men's dogs were lost in the woods, or they made
-friends with coyotes and ran wild; and they told the coyotes all they
-knew, and from them it spread to the other animals. We met one of these
-coyotes who had been friends with a dog, and she told us what the
-dog had told her. It was gold that the men were looking for, yellow,
-shining stuff that was found in the gravel in the river-beds. What men
-wanted with it she had no idea, as the dog himself did not know, and
-it was not good to eat; but they set great store by it, and were always
-looking for it everywhere, following up the streams and scratching and
-digging in the beds. If they found no gold in a stream, they left it
-and went on to another. Where they did find it they built houses and
-stayed, and more men came, and more, until towns grew up, with roads
-and horses and cows as we had seen. In many ways what the coyote told
-us agreed with what we had observed for ourselves, so we presumed it
-was true; though a coyote is too much like a wolf to be safe to trust
-as a general rule.
-
-The next time that we came to a place where the men had been working I
-thought I would like to see some of the wonderful yellow stuff. There
-were mounds of earth, and a long ditch running slantwise away from
-the stream, and nobody seemed to be about; so I scrambled down into
-the ditch to look if any of the yellow stuff was there. I was walking
-slowly along, sniffing at the ground and the sides of the ditch, when
-suddenly out of a sort of cave in one side, and only a few yards
-from me, came a man! Wooffa was just behind me, and the cubs behind
-her, and he was evidently no less astonished than I, and much more
-frightened. With one yell, he clambered up the bank before I could make
-up my mind what to do, and rushed to a small tree or sapling near by,
-and then for the first time I learned that a man could climb. He went
-up fast, too, until he got to the first branches, when he stopped and
-looked down and shouted at us--I suppose with some idea of frightening
-us. But he had no thunder-stick, and we were not in the least afraid;
-so we followed him and looked at the tree. It was too thin for us to
-climb--for a bear has to have something solid to take hold of--or I
-would certainly have gone up after him. As it was, we sat about for a
-while looking at him, and waiting to see if he would come down again;
-but he showed no intention of doing that, and, as we did not know how
-soon other men might come, we left him and went on our way. But I did
-not go investigating empty ditches in the daylight any more.
-
-One thing that completely puzzled us--as completely as it
-terrified--was the thunder-stick. What was it? How came man to be able
-to kill at such distances with it? Above all, at what distance could he
-kill? These questions puzzled me many a time.
-
-It was soon after the adventure in the ditch that for the first time
-we saw a boat. It was coming down the stream with three men in it. At
-first we thought the boat itself to be some kind of an animal, and that
-the long oars waving on either side were its legs or wings; but as it
-came near we saw the men inside, and understood what it was. So we
-stood and watched it. Fortunately, we were out of sight ourselves, or I
-am afraid to think what might have happened.
-
-Just opposite to us, on the very top of a pine-tree on the other bank,
-an osprey which had been fishing was sitting and waiting for the boat
-to go by. As the boat came alongside of us, one of the men, as he sat,
-raised a thunder-stick and pointed it at the osprey, and the bird fell
-dead, even before, as it seemed to us, the thunder-stick had spoken.
-
-Until then we had had no idea that the thunder-stick could kill up in
-the air just as well as along the ground; indeed, we had always agreed
-among ourselves that, in case we should meet a man with a thunder-stick
-and not have time to get away, we would make for the nearest trees and
-climb out of his reach. But what was the use of climbing a tree, when
-we had just seen the osprey killed on the top of one much higher than
-any that we could climb? This incident made man seem more awful than
-before.
-
-We were now within one night's journey of the places that I knew so
-well, and in a country where men were on all sides. We kept crossing
-well-worn trails over the mountains, on which we sometimes saw men,
-and often when we were lying up during the day we heard the noise of
-mule-trains passing, the clangle-clangle-clang of the bell round the
-neck of the leading mule, and the hoarse voices of the men as they
-shouted at them. Now, also, many of the houses were like the one we had
-seen by the pool at the beaver-dam, with clearings round them in which
-cows lived and strange green things were growing.
-
-On the evening of the day on which the osprey had been shot we came to
-one of these. I remembered the house from three years ago, but other
-buildings had been added to it, and round it was a wide open space
-full of stuff that looked like tall waving grass, which I now know was
-wheat. There was a fence all round it, made of posts with barbed wire
-stretched between, and it was the first time that we had seen barbed
-wire. Wahka, with his inquisitiveness, was the first to find out what
-the barbed wire was. He found out with his nose. When he had stopped
-grumbling and rubbing his nose on the ground, and could explain what
-was the matter, I tried it, more cautiously than he had done, but still
-sufficiently to make my nose bleed. We walked nearly all round the
-field, and everywhere was the horrid wire with its vicious spikes. But
-we wanted to get into the field because we were sure that the long,
-waving, yellowing wheat would be good to eat. At last an idea occurred
-to Wooffa, who took the top of one of the posts in her two paws, and
-throwing, her whole weight back, wrenched it clean out of the ground.
-Still the wire held across, and I had to treat the next post in the
-same way, and then the next. Both she and I left tufts of our hair on
-the sharp points, but the wire was now lying on the ground where we
-could step over it; so we waded shoulder-high into the wheat, and
-before we left the field it was gray dawn, and we had each of us, I
-think, eaten more than we had eaten before in all our lives.
-
-We had trampled all over the field munching and munching and munching
-at the wheat-ears, which were full and sweet and just beginning to
-ripen. Then we went down to the stream for a drink, and by the time
-the sun was up we were three or four miles away in the mountains.
-The children pleaded to be allowed to go there again next night, but
-that was a point which we had settled that evening when we had caught
-the pig. Never again would we go back to a place where we had taken
-anything of man's which he could miss, and where he might be prepared
-for a second visit.
-
-So we went cautiously onward the next evening, with the signs of man's
-presence always around us. Almost half the trees had been chopped
-down; there were trails over the mountains in all directions, and
-houses everywhere by the streams, from which men's voices came to us
-until late at night. Silently, in single file, we threaded our way,
-I leading, and Wooffa bringing up the rear. Bears that had not our
-experience would certainly have got into trouble; but I knew man, and
-was not terrified at his smell or the sound of his voice, and knew,
-too, that all that was needed was to keep out of his sight and move
-quietly. Mile by mile we pushed on without mishap, but there were so
-many men, and things had changed so much that, remembering the visit
-to my first home, I doubted whether I should be able to recognise the
-berry-patch when I came to it; when suddenly there it was in front of
-me!
-
-The trees all round it had been cut down, so that it came into view
-sooner than I had expected; but when I looked upon it I saw that it had
-hardly changed. The moon was high overhead, and the patch glistened
-in the light, as of old. Across the middle ran a hard brown roadway
-which was not there in the old days; but otherwise all was the same. I
-was standing almost on the spot from which we had watched Kahwa being
-dragged away, and the scene was nearly as distinct to me as it had been
-at that time.
-
-We did not go down into the patch. The trees around the edges had been
-so much thinned out that it was less easy to approach in safety; so
-we contented ourselves with wandering round and eating such fruit as
-remained on the scattered bushes which grew among the trees on the
-outskirts of the wood. It was already after midnight, and we only
-stayed for an hour or so, and then I led the way back into the hills,
-intending to go and see if our old lair, for which my father and mother
-had had to fight in the former days, was still untouched by man and
-would afford us safe shelter for the coming day. As I did so, my
-thoughts went back to that morning, and I growled to myself; for I was
-thinking of my old enemy, and wondering whether I should ever have
-the opportunity of avenging the old injuries. And, lo! even as I was
-wondering the opportunity came.
-
-Wahka had strayed from the path, and suddenly I heard him growling;
-and a moment later he came running to my side, and out of the brush
-behind him loomed the figure of another bear. I knew him in a moment,
-and it was characteristic of him that he should have attacked a cub
-like Wahka--not, of course, knowing that it was the grandchild of the
-pair whom he had tried to dispossess of their home so long before. As
-he saw the rest of us, he stopped in his pursuit of Wahka, and stood up
-on his hind-legs growling angrily; and as I measured him with my eyes I
-realized how much bigger I must be than my father, for this bear, who
-had towered over my father, was not an inch taller or an ounce heavier
-than I. We were as nearly matched as two bears could be; but I had no
-doubt of my ability to punish him, for I had right on my side, and had
-waited a long time for this moment, and would fight as one fights who
-is filled with rage at old wrongs that are left to him to redress.
-
-And I did not leave him long in any doubt as to my intentions, but
-walked straight towards him, telling him as I did so that I had been
-looking for him, and that the time had come for the settling of old
-scores. He understood who I was, and was just as ready to fight as I.
-
-I am not going to trouble you with an account of another fight. I
-pursued my old plan, and he had been so used to have other bears make
-way for him, and fight only under compulsion, that I think my first
-rush surprised him so much that it gave me even more advantage than
-usual. Big and strong as he was, the issue was never in doubt from the
-start; for I felt within myself that my fury made me irresistible, and
-from the moment that I threw myself on him he never had time to breathe
-or to take the initiative. He was beaten in a few minutes, and he knew
-it; but he fought desperately, and with a savageness that told me that
-if he had won he would have been satisfied with nothing less than my
-life. But he was not to win; and whimpering, growling, bleeding, and
-mad with shame and rage, I drove him back, and it was only a question
-of how far I chose to push my victory.
-
-[Illustration: FROM THE MOMENT I THREW MYSELF ON HIM HE NEVER HAD TIME
-TO BREATHE.]
-
-I let him live; but he went away torn and crippled, with his spirit
-broken and his fighting days over. Never again would he stand to face
-a full-grown bear. For years he had made everything that he met move
-aside from his path in the forest, and he had used his strength always
-for evil, to domineer and to crush and to tyrannize. Thenceforward he
-would know what it was to be made to stand aside for others, to yield
-the right of way, and to whine and fawn on his fellows; for a bear once
-broken in body and spirit, as I broke him, is broken for good.
-
-I was not hurt beyond a few flesh wounds, which Wooffa licked for me
-before we slept; and it was with a curious sense of satisfaction and
-completeness, as if the chief work of my life were now well done, that
-I lay down in the old lair which had so many associations for me, with
-my wife and well-grown children by me, and rested through the heat of
-the following day.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-THE TRAP
-
-
-The old neighbourhood was no place for us to stay in, however
-satisfactory our brief visit to it had been. It was man's country
-now, and there were no other bears in the vicinity. My enemy of the
-night before, being old and cunning and solitary, had managed to live
-there unscathed year after year, after the other bears had all gone
-away or been killed; but for us, a family of four, of whom two were
-inexperienced youngsters not yet two years old, it was different. Many
-times during the day men passed not far from us, and the distant sounds
-of their voices and the chopping of axes was in our ears all day. So
-we remained under cover till well into the night, when man's eyes are
-useless, and then we started out silently, and, as our custom was when
-moving through dangerous country, in single file, with the cubs between
-Wooffa and myself.
-
-The end of that summer was very hot, and partly for the coolness,
-and partly, also, to get as far away from man as possible, we went
-northward and up into higher ranges of the mountains than we usually
-cared to visit.
-
-As we climbed upwards, the trees grew smaller and further apart,
-until, just below the extreme top, they ceased altogether. Above the
-tree-line rose what looked from below like the ordinary rounded summit
-of a mountain with rocky sides, and even at this time of year small
-patches of snow still lingered in the sheltered spots. As we came out
-on the top, however, instead of the rounded summit which we expected,
-the ground broke suddenly away before our feet, and below us, blue and
-still and circular, lay a lake. The mountain was no more than a shell
-or a gigantic cup, filled to within fifty feet of its rocky brim with
-the clearest of water. I had seen a similar lake in the year when I
-roamed alone before I met Wooffa, and my father had told me long ago
-that there were many of these mountain lakes round us, though, of
-course, we could not see them from below.
-
-Here on these lonely summits live the mountain-sheep and mountain-goat.
-Round the edge of the water their feet had beaten a regular trail, and
-in the rough crevices of the bark of the last of the trees, tufts
-of white wool were sticking where the goats had rubbed themselves
-against the trunks. As we stood on the edge of the thin lip of rock, a
-sheep with its great curved horns that had been drinking at the lake
-scrambled in alarm up the further side, and, standing for a minute
-against the skyline opposite, disappeared over the edge; and though we
-lived there for nearly two months, and smelled them often and heard
-them every night, we never saw one again except clear across the whole
-width of the lake. They were probably right in keeping away from us,
-because a young mountain sheep--well, though I had never tasted one, it
-somehow suggested thoughts of pig.
-
-At one side there was a break in the rocky wall or rim of the cup, and
-through this the water trickled, to swell gradually, as it went on
-down the mountain, into a stream, which, joining with other streams,
-somewhere became, no doubt, a river. At the point where the water
-flowed out of the lake, the hillside was strewn with huge boulders and
-fragments of rock down to below the timber-line, and here among these
-rocks, where the brush grew over them and the stream tumbled by, was
-an ideal place to spend the remaining hot weather; and here we stayed.
-Man, we were sure, had never been here, nor was he likely to come, and
-we wandered carelessly and without a shadow of fear.
-
-Before the cold weather came our family broke up. We did not quarrel;
-but it is in the course of nature that young bears, when they are able
-to take care of themselves, should go out into the world. Wahka was no
-longer a cub, and there is not room in one family for two full-grown
-he-bears. On the other hand, Wooffa and Kahwa had not of late got on
-well together. My wife, as is the way of women, was a little jealous
-of my affection for Kahwa, and--well, sometimes I am bound to say that
-I thought Wooffa spent rather too much time with Wahka and forgot my
-existence. So on all accounts it was better that we should separate. I
-had been driven away by my father when I was a year younger than Wahka
-was now, but I do not blame him; for the disappearance of Kahwa--the
-first Kahwa--and living away from home and nightly wanderings in the
-town, had made a breach between us. Now, at the separation from my son,
-there was no bad feeling, and one day by common consent he and Kahwa
-went away not to return. I had no apprehension that they would not be
-able to take care of themselves; and as for me, Wooffa was company
-enough, and we were both glad to have each other all to ourselves again.
-
-Soon after the children had gone, the chill in the wind gave warning
-that winter was not far away, and we began to move down towards the
-lower levels; for on the mountain-tops it is too exposed and cold, and
-the snow stays too long to make them a good winter home. As we looked
-up a few days later to the peak which we had left, we saw it standing
-out against the dull sky, not yellow-grey and rocky as we had left
-it, but all gleaming white and snow-covered. For a day or two more we
-followed the streams down to the lower country, and then made our dens
-beneath the roots of two upturned trees close together. And again, as
-two years before, Wooffa spent much time and great care over the lining
-of hers, making it very snug and soft and warm.
-
-And next spring there were two more little ones--another woolly brown
-Wahka, and another Kahwa, just as woolly and just as brown--to look
-after and teach, and protect from porcupines and pumas and wolves, and
-make fit for the struggle of life.
-
-I am not going to attempt to tell you any stories of the early days
-of the new cubs, for the events of a bear's babyhood are always much
-alike, and it is not easy, looking back, to distinguish one's later
-children from one's first; and I should probably only tell over again
-stories of the Wahka and Kahwa of two years before. They were healthy,
-vigorous cubs, the new little ones, and they tumbled and played and
-were smacked, and blundered their way along somehow.
-
-But it was a terrible year, with late snows long after spring ought to
-have begun; and then it rained and rained all the summer. There was no
-berry crop, insects of all kinds had been killed by the late cold and
-were very scarce, every stream stayed in flood, so that the fish never
-came up properly, and there was none of the usual hunting along the
-exposed herbage as the streams went down in the summer heat. It was, as
-I said, a terrible year, and food was hard to get for a whole family.
-We were driven to all sorts of shifts, and then, to make matters worse,
-long before the usual time for winter came, bitter frosts set in.
-Driven by hunger and the necessity of finding food for the little ones
-we did what we had thought never to do again, and once more went down
-to the neighbourhood of man.
-
-We were not the only ones that did so, for the animals were nearly all
-driven out of the mountains, and the bears, especially, congregated
-about the settlements of man in search of food. Wherever we went we
-found the same thing, the bears coming out at night to hunt round
-the houses for food; and many stories we heard of their being shot
-when greedily eating meat that had been placed out for them, or when
-sniffing round a house or trying to take a pig. Now, too, man brought
-a new weapon beside his thunder-stick--huge traps with steel jaws that
-were baited with meat and covered with sticks and twigs and earth, so
-that a bear could not see them; but when he went to take the meat the
-great toothed jaws closed round his leg, and then he found that the
-trap was chained to a neighbouring log which he had to drag round with
-him till the men came out and killed him with their thunder-sticks.
-
-Having been told all about it, when we came one day to a large piece of
-a young pig lying on the ground, I made the others stand away while I
-scratched cautiously round and pushed sticks against the pig, carefully
-keeping my own paws out of the way. Even as it was, when the steel jaws
-came together with a snap that made the whole trap leap into the air as
-if it was alive, they passed so near my nose that I shudder now when I
-think of it. But we ate the pig. And that happened two or three times,
-until the men took the trap away from that particular place.
-
-Another time I had a narrow escape on approaching a house at night.
-We had been there several times, and usually picked up some scraps
-of stuff that was good. I always went down first alone to see if all
-was safe, leaving the others in the shelter of the woods, and on this
-occasion I was creeping stealthily up to the house, when suddenly,
-from behind a pile of chopped wood, a thunder-stick spoke and I felt a
-sudden pain in my shoulder. I was only grazed, however, and scrambled
-back to Wooffa and the cubs in safety. But we did not visit that house
-any more, and I heard that a few days after another bear that went down
-just as I had gone was killed by a thunder-stick from behind the same
-pile of wood.
-
-In the long-run, however, a bear is no match for man. It was a
-dangerous life that we were living, and we knew it; but both Wooffa
-and I had had more than ordinary experience of man, and we believed
-we could always escape him. Besides, what else were we to do? It is
-doubtful if we could have lived in the mountains that winter, and we
-had our cubs to look after. In the old days before man came, when, as
-once in many years, the weather drove us from the mountains, we could
-have gone down to the foot-hills and the plains, and found food there;
-but man now barred our way, and the only thing that we could do was to
-go where he was, and live on such food as we could get. Much of that
-food was only what was thrown away, but much of it also we deliberately
-stole. More than one cornfield we visited, and in the fenced enclosures
-round his houses we found strange vegetables that were good to eat; but
-we had to break down fences to get them. We stole pigs, too, and twice
-when dogs attacked us we had to kill the dogs. Once we found half a
-sheep, which had been killed by man, lying on the ground, as if man had
-forgotten it. We ate it, and were all dreadfully ill afterwards. Then
-we knew that it had been poisoned and put out for us; but, fortunately,
-the poison was not enough to kill four of us, though, I suppose, if any
-one of us had eaten the whole, that one would have died. After that we
-never touched large pieces of meat which we found lying about.
-
-It was, as I have said, a dangerous life, and we knew it; but we were
-driven to it, and we trusted to our experience, our cunning, and our
-strength, to pull us through somehow.
-
-Winter came, and we ought to have gone to our dens, but we were not
-fit for it. We were too poorly fed and thin, and hunger would probably
-have driven us out in midwinter. It was better to stay out now. So we
-stayed, keeping for the most part in the immediate neighbourhood of
-a number of men's houses along a certain stream. It was not a town,
-though there was one a few miles further down the stream; but for a
-distance of a mile or more on both sides of the water there were houses
-every hundred yards or so, and all day long men were at work digging
-and working in the ground along by the water looking for gold. We had
-kept all other bears away from the place, and, living in the mountains
-during the day, we used to come down at night, never going near the
-same house on two nights in succession, but being sometimes on one side
-of the stream, which was easily crossed, and sometimes on the other,
-and paying our visits wherever we thought we were least likely to be
-expected. Some nights we would not go near the houses at all, but would
-content ourselves with such food as we could find in the woods, though
-now in the bitter cold it was hard to find anything.
-
-Early one morning, after one of these nights when we had kept away
-from the houses, we came across a trap. It evidently was a trap,
-because there was the bait put out temptingly in plain sight, not on
-the ground this time, but about a foot from the ground, tied to a
-stick. The curious thing about it was, however, that the whole affair
-was inside some sort of a house; or, rather, there were the three walls
-and roof of a small house, but there was no front to it--that was all
-open; and there, well inside, was the bait. I did not know why men had
-been at so much pains to build the house round the trap, but I had no
-doubt that if I approached the bait with proper caution, and scratched
-at it, the steel jaws would spring out as usual from somewhere, and
-then we could eat the meat. And we were all four distressingly hungry.
-
-[Illustration: IT WAS EVIDENTLY A TRAP.]
-
-So I told the others to stay behind while I went into the house and
-sprung the trap and brought the meat out to them. I went in, and began
-to scratch about on the ground where I supposed the usual trap to be;
-but there was nothing there but the hard, dry earth. This puzzled me,
-but the lump of meat tied to the stake was an obvious fact; and I was
-hungry. At last, since, scratch as I would, no steel jaws appeared
-from anywhere, nor was there any place where they could be concealed,
-nothing remained but to take the meat boldly. I reached for it with my
-paw, but it was firmly tied; so I took it in my mouth and pulled. As I
-did so I heard a sudden movement behind me. A log had fallen behind me,
-almost blocking up the door. Well, I would move that away when I had
-the meat, I thought, and, seizing it firmly in my mouth, I tore it from
-its fastenings and turned to take it to the others waiting outside.
-But the log across the door was bigger than I thought; it completely
-blocked my passage, and when I gave it a push it did not yield.
-
-Still, I had no uneasiness. I pushed harder at the log, but it did not
-move. I tried to pull it inward, but it remained unshaken. I sniffed
-all along it and round it, and round the other walls of the small
-house, and was puzzled as to what to do next. So I called to Wooffa,
-who came outside and began sniffing round, too. Remembering how I had
-released Kahwa from her pen, I told Wooffa to lift the latch; but there
-was no latch, she said. This was growing tiresome, and then, all of a
-sudden, it dawned on me.
-
-_This_ was the trap--this room! There was no steel thing with jaws;
-no poisoned meat; nothing but this house, which itself was the trap,
-left open at one side so that I might walk in, and so arranged that as
-I pulled at the meat the heavy log dropped, shutting the open door, and
-dropped in such a way that the strength of ten bears would not move it.
-This was the trap, and I--I was caught!
-
-That I was really, hopelessly, and finally caught I could not, of
-course, believe at first. There was some mistake--some way out of it.
-I had outwitted man so often that it was not to be thought of that he
-had won at last. And round and round the small space I went again and
-again, always coming back to the cracks above the fallen log to scratch
-and strain at them without the smallest result. Outside Wooffa was
-doing the same. I was inclined to lose my temper with her at first,
-believing that if I was outside in her place I could surely find some
-way of making an opening; but I saw that she was trying as hard to let
-me out as I was to get out myself. And then I heard the cubs beginning
-to whimper, as they comprehended vaguely what had happened, and saw
-their mother's fruitless efforts and her evident distress.
-
-Then I began to rage. I remember taking the meat in my mouth and,
-without eating a morsel, rending it into small bits. I found the stick
-to which it had been tied and broke it with my jaws into a hundred
-pieces. I attacked the walls and the door furiously, beating them with
-my paws blow after blow that would have broken a bear's neck, and
-tearing at the logs with my teeth till my gums were cut so that my
-mouth ran blood. And outside, as they heard me raging within, not the
-cubs only but Wooffa also whimpered and tore the ground with teeth and
-claws.
-
-We might as well have stormed at the sky or the mountains. The house
-stood, none the worse, and I was as far from freedom as ever. By this
-time the night had passed and dawn had come. I could smell it, and
-see through the chinks that the air was lightening outside. And then
-outside I heard a new sound, a sound that filled me with rage and
-fear--the barking of a dog.
-
-Nearer it came and nearer, and I heard the voice of a man calling;
-but the dog was much nearer than the man, evidently running ahead
-of him, and evidently also coming straight for the trap. In another
-minute the dog had caught sight of the bears outside, for I heard the
-snarling rush of an angry dog, and with it Wahka growling as the dog
-attacked him. The shouting of the man's voice grew nearer, and then,
-mingled with the noise of the fight between Wahka and the dog, I heard
-the angry 'wooffing' of Wooffa's voice. The dog's voice changed as it
-turned to attack this more formidable enemy, but suddenly its barking
-ended in a yelp, followed by another and another, which slowly faded
-away into what I knew were its death-cries. What could any dog expect
-who dared to face such a bear as Wooffa fighting for her children?
-
-But the last of the dog's death-cries were drowned by the most awful of
-all sounds, the voice of the thunder-stick; and my heart leaped as I
-heard Wahka cry out in what I knew was mortal agony. Then came Wooffa's
-voice again, and in such tones that I pitied anyone who stood before
-her. Again the thunder-stick spoke, and I heard what I knew was Wooffa
-charging. I heard her growling in her throat in what was almost a roar,
-and the crashing of bushes and the shouts of the man's voice, and more
-crashing of bushes, which died away in the distance down the hillside.
-Then all was silent except where somewhere in the rear of the house,
-little Kahwa whimpered miserably to herself.
-
-All this I heard, and most of it I understood, standing motionless
-and helpless inside the trap, powerless to help my wife and children
-when in such desperate straits within a few yards of me. As the silence
-fell and the tension was relaxed, I fell to raging again, with a fury
-tenfold greater than before, tearing and beating at the walls, rending
-great lumps of fur out of myself with my claws, biting my paws till the
-blood ran, and filling the air with my cries of helpless anger. At last
-through the noise that I was making I heard Wooffa's voice. She had
-returned, and was speaking to me from outside. Brokenly--for she was
-out of breath, and in pain--she told me the story.
-
-Wahka was dead, and the dog. The latter she had killed with her paw;
-the former had been slain by the first stroke of the thunder-stick.
-Then she had charged at the man, who, however, was a long way off. The
-thunder-stick had spoken again, and had broken her leg. As she fell,
-the man had turned to run; she had followed, but he had a start, and,
-with her broken leg, she could not have caught him without chasing
-him right up to his house. But he had thrown the thunder-stick away
-as he ran, and that she had found and chewed into small pieces before
-returning to me. And now her leg was utterly useless, here was Kahwa a
-helpless cub: what was she to do?
-
-There was only one thing for her to do: to make good her own escape
-with Kahwa if possible. But how about me? she asked. I must remain.
-There was no alternative, and she could do no good by staying. With
-her broken leg, she could not help me against the men, who would
-undoubtedly return in force, and she would only be sacrificing Kahwa's
-life and her own. She must go, and at once.
-
-She knew in her heart that it was the only thing, and very reluctantly,
-for Kahwa's sake, she consented. There was no time for long farewells;
-and there was no need of them, for we knew that we loved each other,
-and, whatever came, each knew that the other would carry himself or
-herself staunchly as a bear should.
-
-So she went, and I heard her stumbling along with her broken leg, and
-Kahwa whining as she trotted by her mother's side. I knew that, even if
-they escaped with their lives, I should in all probability never hear
-of it. I listened till the last sound had died away and it was so still
-outside that it seemed as if everything in the forest must be dead. My
-rage had passed away, and in its place was an unspeakable loneliness
-and despair; and I sat myself up in the furthest corner of the narrow
-house, with my back against the wall and my face to the door, and, with
-my muzzle buried in my chest, awaited the return of the enemy.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-IN THE HANDS OF MAN
-
-
-It seemed to me that I waited a long time; but it cannot have been
-really long, for it was not yet noon when I heard again the barking of
-dogs, and the voices of men approaching. They walked round and round
-the trap, and tried to peer through the crevices, and they let off
-their thunder-sticks, presumably to make me give some sign that I was
-inside. But I remained crouching in the corner silent.
-
-Then I heard them on the roof. A sudden ray of light pierced the
-half-darkness, and in another moment one of the logs from the roof had
-been lifted off, and thrown upon the ground outside, and the sunlight
-poured in upon me. I heard a shout from one of the men, and, looking
-up out of the corners of my eyes, I saw their heads appearing in the
-opening above, one behind the other. But I did not move nor give any
-sign that I was alive.
-
-The next thing I knew was that a rope dropped on me from above. It had
-a loop at the end which fell across my head; and remembering Kahwa, and
-how she had been dragged away with ropes about her, I raised a paw and
-pushed the thing aside. Somehow, as I did so, the loop fell over my
-paw, and when I tried to shake it off it slipped, and ran tight about
-my wrist, and the men at the other end jerked it till it cut deep into
-the flesh. Then I lost my temper, and when a second rope fell on me I
-struck at it angrily with my free paw, but only with the same result.
-Both my paws were now fast, the two ropes passing out through the
-roof, one at one side and one at the other; and as the men pulled and
-jerked on them inch by inch, in spite of all my strength, my arms were
-gradually stretched out full spread on either side of me, and I was
-helpless, held up on my hind-legs, unable to drop my fore-feet to the
-floor, and unable to reach the rope on either side with my teeth.
-
-Then I lost all control of myself, and I remember nothing of the
-struggle that followed, except that everything swam red around me, and
-I raged blindly, furiously, impotently. In the end another rope was
-fast to one of my hind-legs, and another round my neck. Then, I know
-not how, they lifted the log, which Wooffa and I had been unable to
-budge, away from the door, and, fighting desperately, I was dragged out
-into the open, and so, yard by yard, down, down the mountain towards
-their houses.
-
-I was utterly helpless. Four of the men walked, two on either side of
-me, each having hold of the end of a rope, and all the ropes were kept
-taut. If I stopped, the two dogs that they had with them fell upon my
-heels and bit, and I could not turn or use a paw to reach them. If I
-tried to charge at the men on either side, my feet were jerked from
-under me before I could move a yard. And somewhere close behind me all
-the while, I knew, walked the last man, with a thunder-stick in his
-hand, which might speak at any minute.
-
-It was nearly evening by the time that they had dragged me the mile or
-so to where their houses were. As we came near, other men joined us,
-until there must have been thirty or more; but the original four still
-held the ropes, and they dragged me into one of the buildings, several
-times larger than the trap, and, making holes in the walls between the
-logs, they passed the ends of the ropes through them and made them fast
-outside, so that I was still held in the same position, with my two
-arms stretched out on either side of me and the ropes cutting into the
-flesh. So they left me. They left me for two days and two nights. Often
-they came in and looked at me and spoke to me, and once the ropes were
-slackened for a minute or two from the sides, and a large pail of water
-was pushed within my reach. I think they saw that I was going mad from
-thirst, as certainly I was. I plunged my face into the water and drank,
-and as soon as I ceased the ropes were pulled tight and the pail was
-taken away. It was not until the third day that I had a mouthful to
-eat, when the same thing was repeated: the ropes were slackened for a
-while, and both food and drink were pushed up to me. I was allowed a
-longer time to make the meal, but, as soon as I had finished, the ropes
-were tightened once more. Two days later I was given another meal; and
-then two days and another. But I was never given as much food as I
-wanted, but only enough to keep me alive. By this time I had come to
-distinguish the men apart, and one I saw was the master of the others.
-He it was who always brought me my food, and--I am ashamed to confess
-it--I began to look forward to his coming.
-
-Kill him? Yes, gladly would I have killed him, had he put himself
-within my reach; but I saw that he meant me no harm. The tone of his
-voice when he spoke to me was not angry. Whenever he spoke he called
-me 'Peter,' and I came to understand that this was the name he had
-given me. When he came to the door and said 'Peter,' I knew that food
-was coming. I hated him thoroughly; but it seemed that he was all that
-stood between me and starvation, and, however much he made me suffer,
-I understood that he did not intend to kill me or wish to let me die.
-Then I remembered what Kahwa had said about the man who gave her food
-and used to play with her, and I began to comprehend it. No one ever
-attempted to play with me, or dared to put themselves within reach of
-my paws; but after a while this man, the man whom I in my turn now
-thought of as Peter, when my paws were safely bound and the ropes taut,
-would come to me and lay his hand upon my head, taking care to keep
-well away out of reach of my teeth. He rarely came to see me, at any
-time of the day or night, without bringing me lumps of sugar, which he
-held out to my mouth on the end of a piece of board so that I could
-lick them off; and after a while he gave me meals every day, and I was
-less hungry.
-
-Then one day another rope was slipped over my nose, so that I could
-not bite, and, while all the ropes were stretched to their uttermost
-and I could not move an inch, Peter put a heavy collar round my neck,
-to which was fastened a chain that I could neither break nor gnaw. And
-when that had been firmly fastened round one of the logs in the wall,
-the ropes were all taken off.
-
-Wow-ugh! The relief of it! Both my wrists and one of my ankles where
-the ropes had been were cut almost to the bone, and horribly painful;
-but though it was at first excruciating agony to rest my weight on
-my front-feet, the delight of being able to get on all fours again,
-and to be able to move around to the full length of the chain, was
-inexpressible. I had not counted the days, but it must have been over a
-month since I was captured, and all that time I had been bound so that,
-sleeping or waking, I was always in the same position, sitting on my
-haunches, with the ropes always pulling at my outstretched arms.
-
-For another month and more I was kept in the same building, always
-chained and with the collar round my neck, until one day they tried
-to put the ropes on me again; but I was cunning now, and would not let
-them do it. I simply lay down, keeping my nose and paws in the earth,
-and, as long as a rope was anywhere near me, refused to move either
-for food or drink. But a bear is no match for men. They appeared to
-give up all attempts to put ropes on me, until a few days later they
-brought a lump of wool on the end of a long stick, and pushed it into
-my face till I bit at it and worried it. It was soaked in something the
-smell of which choked me and made me dizzy, and when I could hardly
-see, somehow they slipped a sack over my head that reeked with the
-same smell, and the next thing I knew was that I must have been asleep
-for an hour or more and the ropes were on all my legs again. When they
-began to drag me out of the building, I resisted at first; but I soon
-knew it was useless, so I made up my mind to go quietly, and they
-took me away, down the stream and over mountains for several days and
-nights, until one evening we came to a town and they dragged me into a
-box nearly as big as a house, and bigger than the trap in which I had
-been caught. And soon the box began to move. I know now that I was on
-the railway. We travelled for days and days, out of the mountains into
-the plains, where for three days there were no trees or hills, but only
-the great stretch of flat yellow land. I had no idea that there was so
-much of the world.
-
-From the railway I was put on a boat, and from the boat back on the
-railway, and from that back on a boat again. For nearly a month we
-were constantly moving, always as far as I could tell, in the same
-direction; and yet we never came to the end of the world. During this
-time Peter was always with me or close at hand. He gave me all my
-meals, and when other men took the ropes to lead me from the railway to
-the boat or back again, if I got angry, he spoke to me, and for some
-reason, though I hardly know why myself, it calmed me. It was not until
-I had been in the gardens here, in this same cage, for some days that
-at last he went away and never came back. That was two years ago. When
-he went away, the new Peter took charge of me, and he has been here
-ever since.
-
-Two years! It is a long time to be shut up in a cage. But I mind it
-less than I did at first. Why does man do it? I do not understand; nor
-can I guess what I am wanted for. I stay here in the cage all the
-time, and Peter brings me meals and cleans the cage, one half at a
-time, when I am shut up in the other half; and crowds of people come
-and walk past day after day, and look at me, and give me all sorts
-of things to eat--some quite ridiculous things, like paper bags and
-walnut-shells and pocket-handkerchiefs. Peter, I believe, means to
-be kind to me always, and I think he is proud of me, from the way he
-brings people to look at me. But how could you expect me to be friendly
-to man after all that I have suffered at his hands? Even Peter, as I
-have said, never comes into the same half of the cage with me. I have
-often wondered what I would do if he did. Twice only have men come
-within my reach when my paws have been free, and neither of them will
-ever go too near a bear again. But I am not sure whether I would hurt
-Peter or not. I like him to scratch my head through the bars.
-
-Twice since I have been here they have given me a she-bear as a
-companion, and she has tried to make friends with me; but they had to
-take her away again. Let them bring me Wooffa if they think I am lonely.
-
-And I am lonely at times--in spring and summer especially, when it is
-hot and dusty, and I remember how Wooffa and I used to have the cool
-forests to wander in at nights, and the thick, moist shade of the brush
-by the water's edge to lie in during the day. Then I get sick for the
-scent of the pines, and the touch of the wet bushes, and the feel of
-the good soft earth under my claws. And sometimes in the heat of the
-day I hear the scream of an eagle from somewhere round there to the
-right (it is in a cage, I suppose, like myself, for it calls always
-from the same place, and I never hear a mate answering), and it all
-comes back to me--the winding streams and the beaver-dams, with the
-kingfishers, black and white, darting over the water, and the osprey
-sitting and screaming from its post on the pine-top. And at night
-sometimes, when the wolves howl and the deer whistle, or the whine of
-a puma reaches my ears--all caged, I suppose--the longing for the old
-life becomes almost intolerable. I yearn for the long mountain-slopes,
-with the cool night-wind blowing; and the stately rows of trees,
-black-stemmed and silver-topped in the moonlight; and the noise of the
-tumbling streams in one's ears, when all the world was mine to wander
-in--mine and Wooffa's.
-
-Yes, I want freedom; but I want Wooffa most. And I do not even know,
-and never shall know now, whether she and Kahwa escaped with their
-lives that day, when I could not get to her even to lick the blood from
-her broken leg.
-
-But, on the other hand, these thoughts only come when some external
-sight or sound arouses them in me, and at ordinary times I am content.
-I have enough to eat, which, after all, is the main thing in life, and
-am saved the work of finding food for myself. I never know real hunger
-now, as sometimes I knew it in the old days when the frost was on the
-ground; and there is no need now to hibernate. My first winter here I
-started, as a matter of habit, and scratched the sawdust and stuff into
-a heap in that corner over there. But what was the use, when it never
-got cold and my meals came every day?
-
-My claws are growing horribly long from lack of use, because there
-is nothing here to dig for; and I know I am getting fat from want of
-exercise. But it is pleasant enough lying and dreaming of the old days;
-and, after all, perhaps I have lived my life. There is nothing that I
-look back upon with shame. It was not my fault that my sister Kahwa
-died; for I did my best to save her. Even if the later little Kahwa
-perished, still, I sent one son and a daughter out into the world, fit
-I think, to hold their own. Above all, I avenged the old insult to my
-parents. What more could I have done had I had my freedom longer?
-
-It is all good to remember, and, except when I long for Wooffa, I am
-content.
-
-
-THE END
-
-
-BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
-
-
-
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