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[Illustration: HOW I TUMBLED DOWNHILL.]




  THE LIFE STORY OF
  A BLACK BEAR


  BY
  H. PERRY ROBINSON


  LONDON
  ADAM·&·CHARLES·BLACK
  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