stump, until even the thicket above it was hidden. Then came the
bitter cold. There were long days and nights when there was not a
breath of wind, and the mercury went down below all readings in the
settlements. In the forests and on the mountains great boulders burst
apart, and in places the frozen ground split open in narrow cracks a
hundred feet long. Life was a bitter, losing fight against cold and
hunger for many of the wood-dwellers; but, six feet underground, the
bear slept safe, at truce with both of these ancient foes of the wild
folk, while the warm vapor of her breath, freezing, sealed the sides
of her cell with solid ice. Not until spring unlocked the door, would
she leave that little room again.
Yet, in January, although the door was still locked by the snow and
barred by the ice, two tiny bearlings found their way in. They were
blind and bare, and both of them could have been held at once on the
palm of a man's hand. Yet Mrs. Bear was convinced that there had never
been such a beautiful and talented pair. She licked their pink little
bodies and nursed them and cuddled them, and the long freezing months
were all too short to show the full measure of her mother-love. As the
weeks went by, they became bigger and bigger. When they were hungry,
which was most of the time, they whimpered and nuzzled like little
puppies, and pushed and hurried and crowded, lest they might starve to
death before they could reach those fountains of warm milk which
flowed so unfailingly for them. When they were both full-fed, Mother
Bear would arch her vast bulk over them, and they would sleep through
the long dreamy, happy hours, wrapped up warm in her soft fur.
Then, one day--the fortieth after their arrival--a great event
occurred. Both the cubs opened their eyes. There was not much to see,
but the old bear licked them ecstatically, much impressed by this new
proof of their genius. From that time on, they grew apace, and every
day waxed stronger and friskier. Sometimes they would stand up and box
like flyweight champions, and clinch and wrestle and tumble around and
over the old bear, until she would sweep them both off their feet
with one turn of her great paw, and they would all cuddle down
together for a long nap.
Then came the Call. Perhaps it was the contralto note of the bluebird
from mid-sky, or the clanging cry of the wild geese going north; or it
might have been the scent of the trailing arbutus that came through
the solid walls of that little room. At any rate, deep underground,
beneath snow and ice and frozen brush, the little family knew that
spring had come. The cubs began to sniff and claw at the ice-bound
walls, and the old bear heaved her great bulk up and circled the
little cell uneasily.
Then, all in an hour, came the thaw. The ice melted and the snow
disappeared, until, one April day, with a slash of her paw the old
bear opened the door, and the whole family stumbled out into the blue
dawn of a spring day. Around then sounded the sweet minor notes of the
white-throated sparrows, and the jingling songs of the snowbirds;
while over on a sun-warmed slope a flock of tree-sparrows, on their
way to the Arctic Circle, sang a chorus like the tinkling of icicles.
The old bear stood long in the bright sunlight, sniffing and staring
with unseeing eyes--then lurched down to a little mountain stream a
hundred yards away, followed in small procession by her cubs. Once
arrived at the brook, she drank and drank and drank, until it seemed
as if her legs would double under her. After she had filled herself to
the bursting-point, the cubs had their first taste of water. It
seemed to them thin, cold, unstable stuff compared with what they had
been drinking. Their birthplace once abandoned, they never returned to
it. Thereafter they slept wherever and whenever the old bear was
sleepy, cuddled in her vast arms and against her warm fur.
That day, as they turned away from the brook, Mother Bear stopped and
stared long at the larger of her two cubs. Unlike the dull black of
his smaller sister, he was a rich cinnamon-brown in color. In years
past there had been a red cub in her family, and once even a
short-lived straw-yellow youngster; but this was her first experience
with a brownie, and the old bear grunted doubtfully as she led the way
up the mountainside.
At last and at last came the golden month of the wild
folk--honey-sweet May, when the birds come back, and the flowers come
out, and the air is full of the sunrise scents and songs of the
dawning year. The woods were white with the long snowy petals of the
shad-blow, and purple with amethyst masses of rhodora, when the old
bear began the education of her cubs. Safety, Food, More Food
comprised the courses in her curriculum. Less and less often did she
nurse them, as she taught them to find a variety of pleasant foods.
Because Mother Bear knew that disobedience was death, she was a stern
disciplinarian. On their very first walk, Blackie, the littlest of the
family, found it difficult to keep up with the old bear's swinging
gait. Little bears that fall behind often disappear. Accordingly, when
Blackie finally caught up, she received a cuff which, although it
made her bawl, taught her not to lag.
Brownie erred in the opposite direction. Big and strong and confident,
he once pushed ahead of his mother, along a trail that led up a
mountain-gorge where the soft deep mosses held the water like green
sponges. Suddenly, just as he was about to put his small paw into a
great bear-print in the moss, he received a left-hand swing which sent
him spinning off the trail into a tree-trunk, with the breath knocked
clear out of his small body. Then the old bear showed him what may
happen to cubs who think they know more than their mothers. From deep
under the moss, she had caught a whiff of the death-scent of man.
Reaching out beyond the trail, she raised without an effort, on a
derrick-like forepaw, a section of a dead tree-trunk, a foot in
diameter, and sent it squattering down full upon the paw-print. As the
end of the log sank in the moss, there was a fierce snap, and a series
of sharp and dreadful steel teeth clamped deep into the decayed wood.
Rashe Weeden, the trapper, who trapped bears at all seasons of the
year, had dug up a section of moss containing the bear-imprint, and
underneath it had set a hellish double-spring bear-trap. Let man or
beast step ever so lightly on the print which rested on the broad pan
of the trap, and two stiff springs were released. Once locked in the
living flesh, the teeth would cut through muscle and sinew, and crush
the bones of anything living, while the double-spring held them
locked. A vast clog chained to the trap kept the tortured animal from
going far, and a week later the victim would welcome the coming of the
trapper and the swift death he brought.
A few days later the little family saw an object lesson of what humans
do to bears, and what such a trap meant to them. They were following
one of the bear-paths which always lead sooner or later to hillsides
where there are berries and a view and no flies. Suddenly the wind
brought to the ears of the old bear the sound of sobbing. She stopped
and winnowed the air carefully through her sensitive nose. There was
the scent of bear, but no taint of man in the breeze, and she followed
the trail toward where the strange noises came from, around a bend in
the path. More and more slowly, and with every caution, she moved
forward, while her two cubs kept close behind like little shadows. As
the path opened into a little natural clearing, all three of them saw
a horrifying sight. There in front of them lay another smaller,
younger mother-bear. The cruel fanged jaws of a trap were sunk deep
into her shattered left fore-shoulder, while the clog was caught under
a stump. The prisoned animal had tugged and dragged and pulled,
evidently for long days and nights, as the ground was torn up for
yards and yards around her. At last, worn out by exhaustion and the
unceasing, fretting, festering pain of the gripping jaws, the captive
had sunk down hopelessly to the ground, and from time to time cried
out with a shuddering sobbing note. Her glazed, beseeching eyes had a
bewildered look, as if she wondered why this horror had come to her.
At her knees a little cub stood, and whimpered like a sorrowful baby
and then raised his little paws trustingly against the huge bulk of
his mother, who could help him no more. Another cub had climbed into a
little tree overhead, and looked down in wonder at the sorrowful sight
below.
The old bear took one long look while her cubs, terrified, crowded
close up against her. Then she turned, and plunged into the depths of
the nearest thicket. There was nothing to be done for the trapped one,
and she knew that, soon or late, death would stalk along the trail
which she had just left. Later that afternoon, when they were miles
from the place, the old bear's keen ear heard two distant shots from
far away across the mountain-ridges. As the twilight deepened, she led
her little family out in a search for food. All at once there came
from below them a strange little distress-note, which made Mother Bear
stop and look anxiously around to see if both of her cubs were safe.
Again it sounded, much nearer, and then from among the trees a small
dark animal hurried toward them. It was one of the cubs they had seen
earlier in the afternoon, escaped from the death which had overtaken
the others, running wailing and lonely through the darkening woods,
looking for its lost mother. At the sight of Mother Bear, it gave a
little whicker of relief and delight, and ran straight to her and
nuzzled hungrily under her warm fur, quite as if it had a right to be
there. Although the old bear growled a little at first, she was not
proof against the entreating whines of the little newcomer. As for
her own cubs, after carefully sniffing this new sister over and
finding her blacker even than Blackie, with a funny white spot near
the end of her small nose, they decided to recognize her as part of
the family. In another minute Spotty was feeding beside Blackie, and
from that day forward the old bear was trailed by three cubs instead
of two.
As summer approached, Mother Bear weaned her family and showed them
how to get their living from the land, as she did. She taught them all
about ants' nests and grubs, and showed them a score or so of sweet
and succulent roots. Only the root of the water-hemlock, with its
swollen, purple-streaked stem which tastes so sweet and is so deadly,
she taught them to avoid, as well as those fierce and fatal sisters
among the mushrooms, the death-angel and the fly-mushroom, whose stems
grow out of a socket, the danger-signal of their family.
Teaching the cubs to enjoy yellow-jackets' nests, one of the
delicacies on bear-menus, was a more difficult affair. At first,
Blackie and Spotty, after being stung on their soft little noses,
would have no further traffic with any such red-hot dainties. Brownie
was made of sterner stuff. After he had once learned how good
yellow-jacket grubs were, he hunted everywhere for the nests. When he
found one, he would dig it out, while the yellow-jackets stung his
nose until the pain became unendurable. Then he would sit up and rub
the end of it with both paws and bawl with all his might, only to
start digging again when the smart became bearable. Sometimes he
would have to stop and squeal frantically three or four times, to
relieve his feelings--but he always finished the very last grub.
When the weather grew warmer, the old bear took all the cubs down to
the edge of a hidden mountain-lake, and there taught them, one by one,
to swim, hiding the others safely on the bank. At first, Mother Bear
would allow each little swimmer to grip the end of her five-inch tail,
and be towed through the water. As soon, however, as they learned the
stroke, they had to paddle for themselves. One warm afternoon lazy
Brownie swam with her to the middle of the lake, and then tried to get
a tow back, only to receive a cuff that sent him two feet under water.
When he came to the surface again, he swam beside his mother as
bravely as if he had been born an otter and not a bear-cub.
When they were still a long distance from the shore, the old bear
raised her big black head out of the water and stared over toward a
little bay half a mile away. Her keen nostrils had caught the scent of
man across the still waters. Then, to his surprise, Brownie was again
given the privilege of a tow, and found himself whirling shoreward at
a tremendous rate. From the far-away inlet a lean, lithe canoe flashed
toward them as fast as Steve O'Donnell, the lumberjack, could paddle.
Steve had come over to the lake to estimate on some lumber, and had
seen the swimming bears. Hurriedly pitching into the canoe the long,
light, almost straight-handled axe, which was the article of faith of
all the woodcutters of that region, he started out to overtake the
fugitives.
Steve was not learned in bear-ways, or he would never have started in
a canoe after a swimming bear, without a rifle. As he came nearer and
nearer, and it became evident to the old bear that she would be
overtaken before she could reach shore, she turned and swam
unhesitatingly toward the canoe, while Brownie made the best of his
way ashore. Steve dropped his paddle and seized his axe, and when the
great head was close beside his craft, struck at it with all his
strength. He had yet to learn that the bear is an unsurpassed boxer,
and that few men are able to land a blow on one, even when swimming.
As his axe whizzed downward, it was suddenly deflected by a left turn,
given with such force that the axe was torn from the man's hands and
disappeared in the deep water. The next instant both the bear's paws
clutched the gunwale of the canoe, and a second later Steve was
swimming for his life in the cold water. Mrs. Bear paid no further
attention to him, but started again for the nearest shore. Overtaking
Brownie, she gave him another tow, and by the time Steve, chilled to
the bone, reached the farther shore, the whole bear family was miles
away.
By midsummer the cubs were half-grown, although they looked mostly
legs. One summer twilight a strange thing happened. The family had
reached one of their safe and pleasant hillsides, when there loomed up
before them a vast black figure among the trees, and out into the
open strode a blackbear of a size that none of the three little cubs
had ever seen before. In their wanderings they had met many other
bears. Most of these the old bear passed unseeingly, in accordance
with bear etiquette. Sometimes, if the stranger came too close, the
hair on Mother Bear's back would begin to bristle, and a deep,
threatening rumble, that seemed to come from underground, would warn
against any nearer approach.
To-night, however, when this newcomer lumbered up to the cubs, who
shrank behind their mother, Mother Bear made no protest. He sniffed at
them thoughtfully, and then said loudly, "Koff--koff--koff--koff."
Mother Bear seemed entirely satisfied with this sentiment, and from
that time on the stranger led the little band, and the cubs came to
know that he was none other than Father Bear. Bears mate only every
other year; but often a couple will join forces in the odd year, and
wander together as a family until winter.
Father Bear was a giant among his kind. He would tip the scales at
perhaps five hundred pounds, and stood over three feet high at his
foreshoulders, and was between six and seven feet long. In all the
emergencies and crises of everyday life, he showed himself always a
very present help in every time of trouble. Warier and wiser even than
Mother Bear, he piloted his little family into the wildest and
loneliest corners of all that wild and lonely land. Not for many years
had the old giant met his match. Of panther, Canada lynx, porcupine,
wolf, wolverine, and all the bears, black and brown, for a hundred
miles around, he was the acknowledged overlord. This sense of power
gave him a certain grim confidence, and he hunted and foraged for his
family, with none to hinder save only man, the king of beasts. Crafty
as he was powerful, the old bear fled into his most inaccessible
fastnesses at the slightest taint or trace of that death-bringer.
One curious custom he had. Whenever he approached certain trees in his
usual fifteen-mile range, he would examine them with great care for
several minutes. These trees always stood in a prominent place, and
were deeply scarred and furrowed with tooth-marks and claw-marks.
Father Bear, after looking them all over carefully, would sniff every
recent mark gravely. With his head on one side, he seemed to be
receiving and considering messages from unseen senders. Occasionally
the news that the tree brought seemed to enrage him profoundly.
Thereupon he would claw and chew the unoffending tree frothingly, and
then trot away growling deep in his throat. At other times, he would
raise his ears politely, as if recognizing a friend; or wrinkle his
nose doubtfully but courteously, as a well-bred bear might do who met
a stranger. Always, however, before leaving, he would stand up on his
hind quarters and claw the tree as high as he could reach, at the same
time drawing his teeth across it at right angles to the vertical
claw-marks. The cubs soon learned that these lone, marked trees were
bear-postoffices and that it was the duty of every he-bear of any
real bearhood to leave a message there, with tooth and claw, for
friend and foe to read.
When September came again, the family found themselves ranging far to
the north, in a country which the cubs had never seen before. There
they saw in the soft moss the deep marks of great splay hoofs; while
here and there the bark of the striped maple was torn off in long
strips seven or eight feet from the ground, and always on only one
side, so that the half-peeled tree never died, as did the girdled
trees attacked by the porcupine. One of the slow migrations of the
moose-folk, which take place only at intervals of many years, had set
in. Drifting down from the Far North, scattered herds had invaded the
old bear's northernmost range. Like the witch-hazel, which blooms last
of all the shrubs, the love-moon of the moose rises in the fall. The
males of that folk take hardly the stress and strain of courtship.
Bad-tempered at the best, a bull-moose is a devil unchained in
September. As the hunter's moon waxes in the frosty sky, he neither
rests, eats, or sleeps, but wanders night and day through the woods in
search of a mate. Woe be to man or beast who meets him then!
As the afterglow died out at the end of one of the shortening
September days, the bear family heard faintly from a far-away hillside
a short bellowing "Oh-ah! oh-ah! oh-ah!" Suddenly, not two hundred
yards away, on a hardwood ridge, came back a long ringing, mooing
call, which sounded like "Who-are-you! who-are-you!" It was the
answer of the cow-moose to her distant would-be lover. At the sound,
the ears of the great bear pricked up, and his deep-set, little eyes
twinkled fiercely in the fading light. Without a sound, he shambled
swiftly into the swamp toward the call. Hesitating for a moment,
Mother Bear followed him, and close behind her trailed the usual
procession. The frost in the air and the call, vibrant and pulsing
with warm life, had made the old bear hungry for fresh meat.
Unfortunately for him, as he approached the little ridge, a tiny
breeze sprang up. As the sensitive nostrils of the young cow-moose
caught the scent of danger, she drifted away into the woods like a
shadow, and was gone.
[Illustration: BULL MOOSE AND BLACKBEAR]
When the bear reached the ridge, he could not be convinced that she
had escaped. Everywhere lingered the warm delicious scent, so fresh
that his great jaws dripped as he glided silently and swiftly through
the thickets. Then, as he hunted, suddenly, silently, a vast bulk
heaved into view, looming high and huge and black above the saplings
and against the last red streak of the darkening sky. The cubs shrank
close to their mother, and she discreetly retired into the far
background, as into the clearing strode an enormous black beast with a
brown head and white legs, and with a long tassel of hair swinging
from its throat. Seven feet high at the shoulder, and more than ten
feet from tail to muzzle, stood the great bull-moose. The antlers
measured seven feet from tip to tip. With their vast, flat, palmated
spread, with eight curved, sharp prongs in front, a strong man could
not have carried them. Yet the moose switched them as easily as a girl
might settle her hat with a toss of her head.
At the sight of the prowling blackbear, all the devilish temper of the
thwarted, seeking, brooding bull broke loose. His deep-set, wicked
little eyes burned red, and with a roaring bellow he whirled up his
vast bulk over the bear. Ordinarily the bear would not have waited for
any trouble with a bull-moose in the month of September. To-night,
however, he was on his own range. Behind him watched his mate and his
cubs. The moose was a stranger and a trespasser. Morever, the
blood-hunger had seized upon the bear, and a bear that sees red is one
of the most dangerous opponents on earth. Throwing himself back upon
his massive haunches, he prepared for a fight to the finish. A moose
more experienced in bear-ways would have relied chiefly on his
antlers, whose sharp, twisted prongs would cut and tear, while the
immense flat plates of spreading horn were shields against any
effective counter-stroke. This particular bull-moose, however, had
never before met any opponent other than a moose who would await his
attack, and he did not know what a deadly infighter a bear is. His
only thought was to settle the battle before the other could escape.
With a bellowing squeal of rage, he pivoted on his hind legs and
struck two pile-driving blows, one after the other, with his ponderous
keen-edged hoofs. Such a blow would have disemboweled a wolf, or
killed a man, or even have shattered the huge bulk of another moose,
if once they had landed full and fair.
Just as the moose struck, the bear slipped forward and, sudden as the
smashing leads came, they were not so swift as the lightning-like
parries. As each fatal hoof came whizzing down, it was met at its side
by a deft snap of a powerful shaggy forearm, and glanced harmlessly
off the bear's mighty shoulders. The force of the leads and the drive
of the parries threw the bull off his balance, and for a moment he
staggered forward on his knees, pushing against the ground with
antlers and forelegs, to regain his balance.
That tiny tick of time, however, was all that the old bear needed.
With the dreadful coughing roar that a bear gives when fighting for
his life, he pivoted toward the right on his humped-up haunches.
Swinging back his enormous left paw, armed with a cestus of steel-like
claws, he delivered the crashing, smashing swing that only a bear can
give, one of the most terrible blows known to beasts or man. Every
ounce of strength in the ridged forepaw, every atom of force and
spring from the coiled masses of humped muscles of the enormous hind
quarters, went into that mighty blow. It landed full and fair on the
long neck, just back of the flat cheek-bone. The weight of the moose
approached a ton. Yet that dreadful shattering smash whirled the great
head around like a feather. There was a snap, a rending crack, and
the whole vast beast toppled over on his side, and, with one long
convulsive shudder, lay dead, his neck broken under the impact of that
terrible counter. The old bear rolled forward, but the black bulk
never quivered as he towered over his fallen foe, still the king of
his range.
All that fall the five kept together. Then, one day in November, their
leader disappeared. Mother Bear showed no anxiety, for she knew that
late to bed and early to rise is the motto of all he-bears, and that
her mate had left her only because he intended to stay up for weeks
after his family were asleep for the winter. Far up on the
mountainside the four found a dry cave with a tiny entrance, and spent
the winter there together.
When spring came again, the cubs were cubs no longer. Without Mother
Bear's bulk or shagginess, yet all three of them were sleek, powerful,
full-grown bears instead of the sprawly, leggy cubs of the season
before. Brownie was still the largest, but Spotty, the starved,
whimpering little cub of a year ago, was a close second to him. Not so
massive nor so powerful, yet she had a supple, sure swiftness that
made her his equal in their unceasing hunts for food. Hurry as he
would, a slim black nose with a silver spot near the end would often
be thrust in just ahead of him. There must have been some charm about
that spot, because Brownie never got angry, although usually any
interference with a bear's food is a fighting act.