BEARS
The round-up was over, and the boys had all gone to their different
ranges; Nares had left for England, and outside the ranche-house
stood half-a-dozen ponies saddled and bridled, and tied up to the
split-rail fence of the corral. Two more, loaded with flour-sacks,
pots and pans, a sack of beans, and a side of bacon, stood with them.
Amongst the ponies was the old Cradle, and beside him Dick Wharton's
favourite horse. The Bull Pine Firm was just going to start on its
travels, and Texan and 'the Judge,' as two of the other cowboys were
called, had agreed to accompany the expedition and bring back the
ponies after reaching the burnt-wood hills. Old Wharton had
determined only to take ponies thus far, except for a couple of
baggage-animals for which he carried feed, as by so doing the party
would be able to make a short cut through a grassless and difficult
mountain country.
As the party stood round, drinking a stirrup-cup to old Wharton's
success, Texan was heard to remark:
'Say! this pison's pretty strong.'
'What's the matter with the pison, Texan? What in thunder air you
grumbling at now?' said the Judge. 'I reckon it's pretty good rye,
anyways.'
'Well, pard, I ain't going to quarrel with the rye; but I ain't
drunk, am I? There's no skim milk got into my boots yet, is there?'
asked Texan.
'Wal, no,' replied his friend, 'but what are you driving at?'
'Thet's it,' replied Texan, pointing straight overhead, 'but if I
didn't think that it must be the "tangle-legs" that done it, I'd say
that theer were a balloon. It ain't an eagle, anyway.'
They all looked up, and sure enough far overhead was a big round
bubble, as it were, floating rapidly to the north-west. There was no
doubt about it. By using their glasses they could even distinguish
the car of the balloon, but even Snap's glasses (the best of the lot)
could help them no further than that. They could not make out any
figure in the car.
'I guess it's a runaway balloon from Chicago or St. Paul,' said
Wharton, 'and kicky no one's in it, too. I wish I had the dollars
that toy cost, but I reckon no one will ever catch it this side the
Rockies.'
For a time they stood watching this ship of the sky drifting ever
further and further from their sight, and rising, it seemed to them,
ever higher and higher above the earth. At last it faded altogether
from their sight, and the sky looked as calm and unruffled as if no
lost bark had ever rushed through it.
'It's going our way,' said Wharton, 'pretty straight. I wonder, now,
if those superstitious Johnnies one meets sometimes would call that a
lucky or an unlucky omen?'
'A deuced unlucky one,' said Snap, 'if it makes us stand here talking
and star-gazing any longer. We've got fifty miles between us and our
night camp. Let's skip!'
It was a formidable little party which left the ranche that day. Of
course, Snap and Wharton and the two Winthrops were armed for a
winter campaign. Each carried a Winchester repeating-rifle, and old
Wharton would not part with his six-shooter. The boys, not having
been brought up to the use of six-shooters, wisely contented
themselves with their rifles. Their two companions were also armed
with rifles, intending to do a little hunting to supply the ranche
with fresh meat on the way home.
For the first few miles the pack-animals were hurried along briskly,
partly because everyone's spirits were too high to brook of a slower
pace, and partly in order to give those cunning beasts no chance of
returning to the home-ranche. In spite, however, of all precautions,
and the careful arrangement of a diamond hitch by Texan, one of the
ponies managed to get rid of his pack in the first mile. On
starting, this animal, a sorrel, had appeared as fat as a brewer's
horse, and, in spite of Texan's slaps and kicks, in spite of his knee
planted firmly against its barrel, whilst both his strong hands
tugged at the lash-rope, the sorrel's waist refused to contract an
inch. Once he was fairly on his way, his corpulence vanished as if
by magic. With both heels in the air, he shot through his drivers,
plunged amongst some timber, dived under a fallen tree which lay
across the path about three feet from the ground, left part of his
load here--frying-pans without their handles, and kettles with their
sides squeezed in--and then with a roll, a squeal, and a final kick
left pack and pack-saddle on the track, and departed homewards.
'Guess it ain't much good following that beast,' said Wharton. 'If
you don't mind, Snap, your old Cradle is about the only horse in this
outfit that will carry a pack, and if you'll let us pack the load on
him you can ride my pony. I'll tramp it.'
'Not a bit of it, Wharton,' replied Snap, 'I'm the youngest. I'll
walk.'
'Well, we'll walk and ride in turns,' said the old man. 'I don't
know that there is much more fun in riding a walking horse in this
timber than in tramping it yourself.'
This being arranged, the Cradle took up the load, Snap congratulating
himself that by this arrangement his old favourite would go with him
all the way to winter quarters.
Upon the second evening the party camped early. You soon tire of
beans and bacon, especially when you can see signs of deer on all
sides, and the river looks alive with fish.
At three our friends came to an excellent little prairie of
half-a-dozen acres, all bright and green with grass. Bound this
little forest oasis stood tall bull pines, and across the river,
which was within a stone's throw of the camping-ground, the belt of
burnt-wood, at which Texan and the Judge were to turn back, commenced.
'I'll tell you what, Dick,' said Texan, 'it won't do to cross the
river to-night. We'll say good-bye right here to-morrow morning, and
some of us can just run round about and see if we can get any venison
for dinner, whilst the others fix the camp. I'll do the camp-fixing
myself, if you like. Who else will volunteer?'
Of course everyone said that they would stop and fix the camp; but
eventually it was arranged that Wharton and the Judge should take one
beat to the west of the camp, while Snap, with young Towzer under his
wing, should go towards the east; the other two staying in camp.
The youngest Winthrop begged so hard to go that Snap took compassion
on him, although he would infinitely rather have gone out alone.
The course which Snap and Towzer took led them along a fair-sized
stream, which joined the main river not far from camp. Towzer had on
his first pair of mocassins, and, as the forest was open and the boy
light, he made very little noise as he went. Now and then, though,
you might have seen him flinch and almost come down with an
expression of agony upon his face. He had not yet learnt to feel
with his feet, as it were, before putting them down, and had suddenly
thrown all his weight on some sharp-pointed snag of dead wood, or
merciless flint, which reminded him that an English shooting-boot,
although noisy, has its advantages.
Stooping down by the river, Snap looked long and fixedly at a track.
'The cattle have been along here, haven't they, Snap?' asked Towzer.
'Whose cattle would they be?'
'Cattle don't eat fish, as a rule, Towzer,' replied Snap in a
whisper, for some of the tracks were pretty fresh; 'and look here,
the beasts which made these tracks picked these bones,' and, so
saying, he held up the backbone of a large salmon, picked as clean as
if it had been prepared as an anatomical specimen.
All along the bank of the stream a regular road was beaten down, one
track on another, until at last all was so confused and level that
Towzer's mistake was an easy one to make. But on one side of the
main path Snap had been able to distinguish a few distinct and
separate tracks, and it was as he looked up from one of these that he
said:
'No, these aren't cattle, young 'un; these are bears, and a rare big
gang of them, too.'
Towzer's first expression of delight rather faded away as he looked
behind and round him, where the great bull pines stood grey and
silent on all sides, and the further you peered into them the darker
looked the gloom of the forest. It was not a pleasant idea that the
gloomy, quiet forest might be full of unseen grizzlies.
'Are they grizzlies, do you think, Snap?' asked the boy.
'Can't say for certain,' replied that now experienced hunter, 'but I
expect there are some of all sorts about. You see the river is full
of salmon, which have run up to spawn, and the bears are down here
for the fishing season.'
Leaving the river, Snap and his friend crossed two or three deep
dingles, or, as they would call them in America, little canyons, and
in half an hour's time were creeping very cautiously along the brow
of a ridge through the big trees, on which the light of the sun
gleamed redly. That sun was now low in the skies, and every moment
Snap expected to catch sight of a stately stag tossing his head and
leading his hinds in single file from the timber to the
feeding-grounds.
'Halloo,' whispered he, suddenly holding up his hand as a sign for
silence to Towzer, 'what is the matter with the robber-birds?'
Towzer listened. A lot of birds just over the ridge were chattering
noisily, like jays in an English covert when the beaters are coming
through. Snap signed to the boy to follow, and both crept cautiously
to the top of the ridge.
On the very top was a kind of table-land, and, looking through the
trees with their backs to the sun, neither of our friends could see
anything. Creeping back again, Snap ran along the hill and came up
to the top of the ridge again in such a position as to have the noisy
jays between himself and the sinking sun. For a moment he could
still see nothing. Then a stick cracked under his companion's foot,
and the quick movement of a dark mass in amongst the pines caught and
arrested his attention. He had never seen a grizzly before, but he
needed no one to tell him what the great brute was before him, with
its whole body on the alert to detect the source of the sound it had
heard.
The sun threw a red glow on the scene, which looked like blood about
the body of the deer on which the grizzly was feeding. The brute had
his claws on his victim's shoulder, from which he was tearing strips
of flesh as he lay muttering and growling by its side. As the twig
cracked he rose and sat looking over his shoulder in the direction
from which the sound came.
Snap remembered old Wharton's words as he looked at the bear: 'Thet's
about his favourite position when he once glimpses you, and don't
know whether to come or go; but don't you shoot then, there's nothing
to hit but his jaw or his shoulder, and you won't kill him quick
enough to be safe that way.' Remembering these words, Snap kept his
hand off his rifle and waited until the bear should give him a better
chance; but before this happened there was a report, which deafened
our hero, right by his ear; the bear spun round with a roar, and then
stood tearing at the ground and tossing the earth in the air in a
paroxysm of rage.
Snap hardly dared to breathe, but if his words were inaudible his
lips seemed to say to the reckless youngster beside him, 'Keep still
for your life, he may not see you.'
Neither of the boys was well hidden--in fact, Snap was not hidden at
all; but by remaining rigid, as if he was cut out of stone, the
short-sighted beast did not distinguish him from the pines around
him. Luckily, too, he did not notice the smoke curling from Towzer's
rifle.
To the boys the bear was plain enough with his back to the sunlight;
but they themselves were in shadow.
'Good heavens, there's another!' cried Towzer, in a whisper so
audible that the huge, shaggy beast which the unfortunate boy had
wounded dropped on all fours and came a dozen yards towards them,
stopping again with his sharp, fierce snout in the air, trying to
catch the wind of his unseen enemies.
At that moment Snap gave all up as lost, for not only had he seen the
bear which had drawn the exclamation from Towzer, but he had seen two
other great grey forms amongst the timber on his right. Gripping the
boy's arm with nervous hand, he drew him down beside him:
'Towzer, is there any tree on your left that you could get up in less
than ten seconds to save your life?'
Snap's white-drawn face showed that he was in earnest, and Towzer
looked desperately round. Like Snap, he had spent many a
half-holiday at Fernhall birds'-nesting, and with climbing-irons to
help him there were very few trees which he could not have climbed in
time; but to climb a tree in ten seconds for your life is quite
another matter.
'There, there's the best,' cried Snap out loud, pointing to a young
bull pine with a lot of short stumps of branches not far from the
ground. Of course, they might break off, and then it would be only a
bare pole to swarm; but it was the smallest tree, and the best
chance, for all that.
'Now run,' shouted Snap, 'run for your life, and don't look back,'
and as he spoke he pushed the boy from him and jumped up.
With a roar that sounded like a curse, it was so human in its rage,
the bear saw both boys, and half turned towards the running figure.
In that moment Snap's rifle rang out and the bear rolled over.
He knew, without looking, that the others had seen him; and one was
charging straight at him, while with low, angry growls the other two
had trotted into the open. A glance showed him Towzer halfway up his
tree. And yet all this was seen at once without an effort, whilst
all his strength and attention was devoted to pumping up another
cartridge into his Winchester repeater.
There is only one fault in these excellent weapons, and that is a
terrible one. In some of the old-fashioned commoner rifles of this
sort the cartridges occasionally get jammed. This had happened now
to Snap. His rifle had jammed, the empty cartridge would not come
out, and there he stood defenceless with a charging bear almost on
the top of him.
Grasping the barrel with both hands, he had just time to hurl the
useless weapon with all his strength at the head of the grizzly and
spring to one side. He had a glimpse of a devilish head, with ears
laid back, and fiery eyes, and long white fangs gleaming from a
shaggy mass of grey fur, going over him at railroad speed.
Instinctively he had rolled away as he fell, as a rider rolls from a
fallen horse, and the pace of the bear's charge and the downward
slope of the ground had taken the heavy beast past the prostrate boy.
In a moment Snap was on his legs again, and, dodging behind the first
tree he came to, he scrambled up it.
'Hurry, Snap, hurry!' shrieked Towzer in a voice of agony, and just
as our hero drew up his foot he heard a snort almost against his
heel, and a tearing sound as a great flake of bark was torn from the
stem of the pine by the claws of the bear.
It was a sight to make any man's flesh creep which met the boy's eyes
when he looked down from a point of safety some twenty feet up the
pine. Reared on end, his huge claws stretching upwards, his red jaws
open, muttering and moaning after the prey which had escaped him, one
of the bears leaned against the pine to which Snap clung. Two
others, growling from time to time, prowled round and round the foot
of the tree, and in the middle of the little plateau the wounded bear
kept up a succession of moans and growls as it struggled to its feet
and fell back again time after time, dying, but bent on vengeance
still.
Towzer was safe in his tree. Snap's rifle lay broken on the ground,
and Towzer's with a dozen undischarged cartridges in it lay not far
from the wounded bear. 'Ah!' Snap thought, 'if I only had that
here!' Towzer, of course, in his desperate flight had thrown away
his arms. Even had he had a sling to his rifle it would hardly have
been possible to climb with it, and without a sling, and with a
grizzly's teeth and claws behind, Towzer did well to drop his weapon
and trust to speed and Snap's self-devotion.
'Snap,' Towzer called from his tree, 'I don't think much of this. I
can't hold on very long. Are those brutes likely to wait long?'
'All night, I should think,' replied Snap.
This seemed too much for Winthrop, and a silence ensued; the boys
clinging desperately to their uncomfortable perches, and the bears
prowling up and down like sentries on their beat.
This went on for nearly an hour, and there was no change, and seemed
likely to be none. The sun's last red glow was on the forest floor;
the uncertain light made the great grey forms which went so silently
backwards and forwards look even more horrible and monstrous to the
eyes of their hapless victims, but two at any rate of the three were
still on guard.
'Let's try a shout for help,' said Towzer; 'all together, Snap!'
'Coo-èy! coo-èy!' cried the boys, and as they cried the great grey
forms paused in their silent walk, and sent a chorus of hollow growls
to swell the sound. Other growls from the forest shadows, too, told
the boys that, though they could only see the wounded bear and
another, the others were not far off.
By-and-by the moon rose, and a silver light showed the scene in new
and horrible distinctness. The one bear was dead. Stark and stiff
he lay by his last victim, and silver light and ebon shadow were
distributed evenly over the bodies of bear and stag, murderer and
murdered.
A breaking bough and a quick scraping sound broke the silence.
'By Jove, that was a shave!' panted Towzer's young voice.
'What are you at, you little idiot?' cried Snap.
'Jolly nearly fell out of this tree,' replied the boy.
'Went to sleep, I suppose?' said Snap in a tone of disgust.
'I don't know about that,' said Towzer, in a piteous tone, 'but I
cannot hold on to these clothes-pegs much longer.'
The clothes-pegs were the short stumps of boughs to which the boy had
been clinging.
'Snap, couldn't we make a fight of it? I want my supper,' added
Towzer, 'and there's only one bear now.'
'How are we to fight? I've got no rifle, and without that you are
more likely to satisfy the bear's appetite than your own,' replied
Snap.
'Well, I'll tell you what,' said the reckless youngster, 'I can't
stay up here all night if you can, and, if you are game to come down
and try for that rifle, I am.'
'How do you mean? The bear would get you before you could get to it.
Look at him watching you now. Nice, pleasant face for a photograph,
hasn't he?' added Snap.
In spite of the danger and the eeriness of the whole thing, Towzer
laughed as he saw the great brute sitting half upright on its hams,
its ears cocked sharply up to listen.
'I don't suppose the old brute will understand English,' said Towzer,
'so look here! My tree is an easy one to get up. I can almost swing
myself out of a bear's reach from the ground. If you will be ready
I'll come down and draw the brute after me. Whilst he hunts me to my
tree you dash in and get my rifle. If you are quick and lucky you'll
get back before he twigs you. Why, it will be just like prisoner's
base, when we were first-form boys at the Dame's school.
'Yes,' muttered Snap, 'with our lives for forfeit if we are caught!
Well, all right, Towzer,' he cried aloud, 'are you sure you can get
back safely?'
'Yes, never mind me,' sang out Towzer; 'look here!'
And, sliding down, the boy just touched the ground, and as the bear
rose swung himself back again, chuckling, 'Don't you wish you may get
it?'
'All right, then, if you have made up your mind let us do it now;
give me a moment to slide down close to the ground,' shouted Snap;
'keep the bear looking at you for a moment.'
'All right,' answered the young 'un, rattling about amongst the
bushes with his leg as he hung from the lowest bough of his tree.
The bear was up, and coming slowly towards Towzer, growling horribly.
The boy's blood ran cold, but he had given his word to Snap, and he
did not mean to go back.
'Now!' shouted Snap.
At the cry the bear turned round towards Snap, and as he did so
Towzer dropped to the ground and ran forward into the open with a
shout.
For a moment the bear hesitated, then, with a roar that shook the
pines, dashed at him. Towzer turned, and never in all his life, not
even when he made his celebrated 'run-in' for the school-house with
the football under his arm, did he go so fast or dodge so nimbly as
he did that night.
As Towzer turned, Snap's lithe figure slipped noiselessly through the
moonlight, and, not daring to look at anything else, dashed straight
at the rifle.
Did the dead bear move, or was it only fancy? Fancy, surely! And
now he had his hand on the rifle and turned to see a ghastly sight.
Towzer stretched up at his bough and missed it. The bear was just
behind, there was no time for another effort, and the boy was driven
past his one chance of safety. Catching at the trunk of a big bull
pine, Towzer swung round it, dodged the bear, and once more tried for
his tree. This time he reached the bough, but even then, blown as he
was, the bear must have reached and pulled him down, had not a ball
from Snap's rifle broken the brute's spine as he reared up on end to
make his attack.
Utterly spent, Towzer dropped back beside the bear and staggered
across to where Snap still lay, his rifle resting on the body of the
first bear, from behind which he had just fired. Together the boys
sat and looked at one another, too shaken and tired to speak.
At last, Towzer, looking anxiously round, said, 'Those others won't
come back, will they?'
'I don't know; if they do, I hope they will put us out of our misery
quickly. I didn't know that I had any nerves before, but they are
jumping like peas in a frying-pan to-night. Let's go.'
And very cautiously they went, creeping through the dim aisles of the
forest, starting at every sound, and far more frightened at the
meeting than was even the big stag which met them face to face just
before they got clear of the timber. They never even thought of
firing at him, although he was so fair a shot, and his great sides
shook with inches of fat, until the camp-fire shone through the
trees, and then it was too late to remember that they had gone out
for venison and come back without any.
'Well, Towzer, I suppose we must put up with beans and bacon again
to-night--unless,' with a grin, 'you'd care to go down and catch us a
salmon, or fetch a steak from the dead stag up there,' said Snap,
pointing back over his shoulder.
But Towzer had had enough sport for one day, and did not volunteer;
and, indeed, it was not necessary, for the others had killed a hind,
and the boys told their story in short, broken sentences, with a
savoury rib in one hand and a pannikin of tea in the other. They
almost thought bear-shooting good sport by the time they had finished
supper.