Transcriber's Note
Illustration markers have been moved near to the text they illustrate.
All variant spellings and variant hyphenation have been preserved.
However, punctuation has been corrected where necessary.
[Illustration: HOW I TUMBLED DOWNHILL.]
THE LIFE STORY OF
A BLACK BEAR
BY
H. PERRY ROBINSON
LONDON
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_!