TRUE BEAR STORIES
BY JOAQUIN MILLER,
WITH
INTRODUCTORY NOTES
BY
DR. DAVID STARR JORDAN,
President of Leland Stanford, Jr., University.
TOGETHER WITH A THRILLING ACCOUNT OF THE
CAPTURE OF THE CELEBRATED GRIZZLY "MONARCH."
_FULLY ILLUSTRATED._
CHICAGO AND NEW YORK:
RAND, McNALLY & COMPANY,
PUBLISHERS.
Copyright, 1900, by Rand, McNally & Co.
DEDICATED TO
MY DEAR LITTLE DAUGHTER,
JUANITA MILLER,
FOR WHOSE PLEASURE AND INSTRUCTION I HAVE MANY TIMES
DUG UP THE MOST OF THESE STORIES FROM
OUT THE DAYS OF MY BOYHOOD.
PREFACE.
_My Bright Young Reader_: I was once exactly your own age. Like all
boys, I was, from the first, fond of bear stories, and above all, I
did not like stories that seemed the least bit untrue. I always
preferred a natural and reasonable story and one that would instruct
as well as interest. This I think best for us all, and I have acted on
this line in compiling these comparatively few bear stories from a
long life of action in our mountains and up and down the continent.
As a rule, the modern bear is not a bloody, bad fellow, whatever he
may have been in Bible days. You read, almost any circus season, about
the killing of his keeper by a lion, a tiger, a panther, or even the
dreary old elephant, but you never hear of a tame bear's hurting
anybody.
I suppose you have been told, and believe, that bears will eat boys,
good or bad, if they meet them in the woods. This is not true. On the
contrary, there are several well-authenticated cases, in Germany
mostly, where bears have taken lost children under their protection,
one boy having been reared from the age of four to sixteen by a she
bear without ever seeing the face of man.
I have known several persons to be maimed or killed in battles with
bears, but in every case it was not the bear that began the fight, and
in all my experience of about half a century I never knew a bear to
eat human flesh, as does the tiger and like beasts.
Each branch of the bear family is represented here and each has its
characteristics. By noting these as you go along you may learn
something not set down in the schoolbooks. For the bear is a shy old
hermit and is rarely encountered in his wild state by anyone save the
hardy hunter, whose only interest in the event is to secure the skin
and carcass.
Of course, now and then, a man of science meets a bear in the woods,
but the meeting is of short duration. If the bear does not leave, the
man of books does, and so we seldom get his photograph as he really
appears in his wild state. The first and only bear I ever saw that
seemed to be sitting for his photograph was the swamp, or "sloth,"
bear--Ursus Labiatus--found in the marshes at the mouth of the
Mississippi River. You will read of an encounter with him further on.
I know very well that there exists a good deal of bad feeling between
boys and bears, particularly on the part of boys. The trouble began, I
suppose, about the time when that old she bear destroyed more than
forty boys at a single meeting, for poking fun at a good old prophet.
And we read that David, when a boy, got very angry at a she bear and
slew her single-handed and alone for interfering with his flock. So
you see the feud between the boy and bear family is an old one indeed.
But I am bound to say that I have found much that is pathetic, and
something that is almost half-human, in this poor, shaggy, shuffling
hermit. He doesn't want much, only the wildest and most worthless
parts of the mountains or marshes, where, if you will let him alone,
he will let you alone, as a rule. Sometimes, out here in California,
he loots a pig-pen, and now and then he gets among the bees. Only last
week, a little black bear got his head fast in a bee-hive that had
been improvised from a nail-keg, and the bee-farmer killed him with a
pitchfork; but it is only when hungry and far from home that he
seriously molests us.
The bear is a wise beast. This is, perhaps, because he never says
anything. Next to the giraffe, which you may know never makes any
noise or note whatever, notwithstanding the wonderful length of his
throat, the bear is the most noiseless of beasts. With his nose to the
ground all the time, standing up only now and then to pull a wild plum
or pick a bunch of grapes, or knock a man down if he must, he seems to
me like some weary old traveler that has missed the right road of life
and doesn't quite know what to do with himself. Ah! if he would only
lift up his nose and look about over this beautiful world, as the
Indians say the grizzly bear was permitted to do before he disobeyed
and got into trouble, an account of which you will find further on,
why, the bear might be less a bear.
Stop here and reflect on how much there is in keeping your face well
lifted. The pig with his snout to the ground will be forever a pig;
the bear will be a bear to the end of his race, because he will not
hold up his head in the world; but the horse--look at the horse!
However, our business is with the bear now.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTORY NOTES,
I. A BEAR ON FIRE,
II. MUSIC-LOVING BEARS,
III. MY FIRST GRIZZLY,
IV. TWIN BABIES,
V. IN SWIMMING WITH A BEAR,
VI. A FAT LITTLE EDITOR AND THREE LITTLE BROWNS,
VII. TREEING A BEAR,
VIII. BILL CROSS AND HIS PET BEAR,
IX. THE GREAT GRIZZLY BEAR,
X. AS A HUMORIST,
XI. A GRIZZLY'S SLY LITTLE JOKE,
XII. THE GRIZZLY AS FREMONT FOUND HIM,
XIII. THE BEAR WITH SPECTACLES,
XIV. THE BEAR-SLAYER OF SAN DIEGO,
XV. ALASKAN AND POLAR BEAR,
XVI. MONNEHAN, THE GREAT BEAR-HUNTER OF OREGON,
XVII. THE BEAR "MONARCH"--HOW HE WAS CAPTURED,
INTRODUCTORY NOTES.
The bear is the most human of all the beasts. He is not the most
man-like in anatomy, nor the nearest in the line of evolution. The
likeness is rather in his temper and way of doing things and in the
vicissitudes of his life. He is a savage, of course, but most men are
that--wild members of a wild fauna--and, like wild men, the bear is a
clumsy, good-natured blunderer, eating with his fingers in default of
a knife, and preferring any day a mouthful of berries to the
excitement of a fight.
In this book Joaquin Miller has tried to show us the bear as he is,
not the traditional bear of the story-books. In season and out of
season, the bear has been represented always the same bear, "as much
alike as so many English noblemen in evening dress," and always as a
bloody bear.
Mr. Miller insists that there are bears and bears, as unlike one
another in nature and action as so many horses, hogs or goats. This
much they have in common--_bears are never cruel_. They are
generally full of homely, careless kindness, and are very fond of
music as well as of honey, blackberries, nuts, fish and other
delicacies of the savage feast.
The matter of season affects a bear's temper and looks as the time of
the day affects those of a man.
He goes to bed in the fall, when the fish and berry season is over,
fat and happy, with no fight in him. He comes out in spring, just as
good-natured, if not so fat. But the hot sun melts him down. His
hungry hunt for roots, bugs, ants and small game makes him lean and
cross. His claws grow long, his hair is unkempt and he is soon a
shaggy ghost of himself, looking "like a second-hand sofa with the
stuffing coming out," and in this out-at-elbows condition he loses his
own self-respect.
Mr. Miller has strenuously insisted that bears of the United States
are of more than one or two species. In this he has the unqualified
support of the latest scientific investigations. Not long ago
naturalists were disposed to recognize but three kinds of bear in
North America. These are the polar bear, the black bear, and the
grizzly bear, and even the grizzly was thought doubtful, a slight
variation of the bear of Europe.
But the careful study of bears' skulls has changed all that, and our
highest authority on bears, Dr. C. Hart Merriam of the Department of
Agriculture, now recognizes not less than ten species of bear in the
limits of the United States and Alaska.
In his latest paper (1896), a "Preliminary Synopsis of the American
Bears," Dr. Merriam groups these animals as follows:
I. POLAR BEARS.
1. POLAR BEAR: _Thalarctos maritimus_ Linnaeus. Found on all Arctic
shores.
II. BLACK BEARS.
2. COMMON BLACK BEAR (sometimes brown or cinnamon): _Ursus americanus_
Pallas. Found throughout the United States.
3. YELLOW BEAR (sometimes black or brown): _Ursus luteolus_ Griffith.
Swamps of Louisiana and Texas.
4. EVERGLADE BEAR: _Ursus floridanus_ Merriam. Everglades of Florida.
5. GLACIER BEAR: _Ursus emmonsi_ Dall. About Mount St. Elias.
III. GRIZZLY BEARS.
6. THE GRIZZLY BEAR: _Ursus horribilis_ Ord. Found in the western
parts of North America.
Under this species are four varieties: the original _horribilis_, or
Rocky Mountain grizzly, from Montana to the Great Basin of Utah; the
variety _californicus_ Merriam, the California grizzly, from the
Sierra Nevada; variety _horriaeus_ Baird, the Sonora grizzly, from
Arizona and the South; and variety _alascensis_ Merriam, the Alaska
grizzly, from Alaska.
7. THE BARREN GROUND BEAR: _Ursus richardsoni_ Mayne Reid. A kind of
grizzly found about Hudson Bay.
IV. GREAT BROWN BEARS.
8. THE YAKUTAT BEAR: _Ursus dalli_ Merriam. From about Mount St.
Elias.
9. THE SITKA BEAR: _Ursus sitkensis_ Merriam. From about Sitka.
10. THE KADIAK BEAR: _Ursus middendorfi_ Merriam. From Kadiak and the
Peninsula of Alaska.
These three bears are even larger than the grizzly, and the Kadiak
Bear is the largest of all the land bears of the world. It prowls
about over the moss of the mountains, feeding on berries and fish.
The sea-bear, _Callorhinus ursinus_, which we call the fur seal, is
also a cousin of the bear, having much in common with its bear
ancestors of long ago, but neither that nor its relations, the
sea-lion and the walrus, are exactly bears to-day.
Of all the real bears, Mr. Miller treats of five in the pages of this
little book. All the straight "bear stories" relate to _Ursus
americanus_, as most bear stories in our country do. The grizzly
stories treat of _Ursus horribilis californicus_. The lean bear of the
Louisiana swamps is _Ursus luteolus_, and the Polar Bear is
_Thalarctos maritimus_. The author of the book has tried without
intrusion of technicalities to bring the distinctive features of the
different bears before the reader and to instruct as well as to
interest children and children's parents in the simple realities of
bear life.
DAVID STARR JORDAN.
Leland Stanford, Jr., University.
TRUE BEAR STORIES.
I.
A BEAR ON FIRE.
It is now more than a quarter of a century since I saw the woods of
Mount Shasta in flames, and beasts of all sorts, even serpents,
crowded together; but I can never forget, never!
It looked as if we would have a cloudburst that fearful morning. We
three were making our way by slow marches from Soda Springs across the
south base of Mount Shasta to the Modoc lava beds--two English artists
and myself. We had saddle horses, or, rather, two saddle horses and a
mule, for our own use. Six Indians, with broad leather or elkskin
straps across their foreheads, had been chartered to carry the kits
and traps. They were men of means and leisure, these artists, and
were making the trip for the fish, game, scenery and excitement and
everything, in fact, that was in the adventure. I was merely their
hired guide.
This second morning out, the Indians--poor slaves, perhaps, from the
first, certainly not warriors with any spirit in them--began to sulk.
They had risen early and kept hovering together and talking, or,
rather, making signs in the gloomiest sort of fashion. We had hard
work to get them to do anything at all, and even after breakfast was
ready they packed up without tasting food.
The air was ugly, for that region--hot, heavy, and without light or
life. It was what in some parts of South America they call "earthquake
weather." Even the horses sulked as we mounted; but the mule shot
ahead through the brush at once, and this induced the ponies to
follow.
The Englishmen thought the Indians and horses were only tired from the
day before, but we soon found the whole force plowing ahead through
the dense brush and over fallen timber on a double quick.
Then we heard low, heavy thunder in the heavens. Were they running
away from a thunder-storm? The English artists, who had been doing
India and had come to love the indolent patience and obedience of the
black people, tried to call a halt. No use. I shouted to the Indians
in their own tongue. "Tokau! Ki-sa! Kiu!" (Hasten! Quick! Quick!) was
all the answer I could get from the red, hot face that was thrown for
a moment back over the load and shoulder. So we shot forward. In fact,
the horses now refused all regard for the bit, and made their own way
through the brush with wondrous skill and speed.
We were flying from fire, not flood! Pitiful what a few years of
neglect will do toward destroying a forest! When a lad I had galloped
my horse in security and comfort all through this region. It was like
a park then. Now it was a dense tangle of undergrowth and a mass of
fallen timber. What a feast for flames! In one of the very old books
on America in the British Museum--possibly the very oldest on the
subject--the author tells of the park-like appearance of the American
forests. He tells his English friends back at home that it is most
comfortable to ride to the hounds, "since the Indian squats (squaws)
do set fire to the brush and leaves every spring," etc.
But the "squats" had long since disappeared from the forests of Mount
Shasta; and here we were tumbling over and tearing through ten years'
or more of accumulation of logs, brush, leaves, weeds and grass that
lay waiting for a sea of fire to roll over all like a mass of lava.
And now the wind blew past and over us. Bits of white ashes sifted
down like snow. Surely the sea of fire was coming, coming right on
after us! Still there was no sign, save this little sift of ashes, no
sound; nothing at all except the trained sense of the Indians and the
terror of the "cattle" (this is what the Englishmen called our horses)
to give us warning.
In a short time we struck an arroyo, or canyon, that was nearly free
from brush and led steeply down to the cool, deep waters of the
McCloud River. Here we found the Indians had thrown their loads and
themselves on the ground.
They got up in sulky silence, and, stripping our horses, turned them
loose; and then, taking our saddles, they led us hastily up out of the
narrow mouth of the arroyo under a little steep stone bluff.
They did not say a word or make any sign, and we were all too
breathless and bewildered to either question or protest. The sky was
black, and thunder made the woods tremble. We were hardly done wiping
the blood and perspiration from our torn hands and faces where we sat
when the mule jerked up his head, sniffed, snorted and then plunged
headlong into the river and struck out for the deep forest on the
farther bank, followed by the ponies.
The mule is the most traduced of all animals. A single mule has more
sense than a whole stableful of horses. You can handle a mule easily
if the barn is burning; he keeps his head; but a horse becomes insane.
He will rush right into the fire, if allowed to, and you can only
handle him, and that with difficulty if he sniffs the fire, by
blindfolding him. Trust a mule in case of peril or a panic long before
a horse. The brother of Solomon and willful son of David surely had
some of the great temple-builder's wisdom and discernment, for we read
that he rode a mule. True, he lost his head and got hung up by the
hair, but that is nothing against the mule.
As we turned our eyes from seeing the animals safely over, right there
by us and a little behind us, through the willows of the canyon and
over the edge of the water, we saw peering and pointing toward the
other side dozens of long black and brown outreaching noses. Elk!
They had come noiselessly, they stood motionless. They did not look
back or aside, only straight ahead. We could almost have touched the
nearest one. They were large and fat, almost as fat as cows; certainly
larger than the ordinary Jersey. The peculiar thing about them was the
way, the level way, in which they held their small, long
heads--straight out; the huge horns of the males lying far back on
their shoulders. And then for the first time I could make out what
these horns are for--to part the brush with as they lead through the
thicket, and thus save their coarse coats of hair, which is very
rotten, and could be torn off in a little time if not thus protected.
They are never used to fight with, never; the elk uses only his feet.
If on the defense, however, the male elk will throw his nose close to
the ground and receive the enemy on his horns.
Suddenly and all together, and perhaps they had only paused a second,
they moved on into the water, led by a bull with a head of horns like
a rocking-chair. And his rocking-chair rocked his head under water
much of the time. The cold, swift water soon broke the line, only the
leader making the bank directly before us, while the others drifted
far down and out of sight.
Our artists, meantime, had dug up pencil and pad and begun work. But
an Indian jerked the saddles, on which the Englishmen sat, aside, and
the work was stopped. Everything was now packed up close under the
steep little ledge of rocks. An avalanche of smaller wild animals,
mostly deer, was upon us. Many of these had their tongues hanging from
their half-opened mouths. They did not attempt to drink, as you would
suppose, but slid into the water silently almost as soon as they came.
Surely they must have seen us, but certainly they took no notice of
us. And such order! No crushing or crowding, as you see cattle in
corrals, aye, as you see people sometimes in the cars.
And now came a torrent of little creeping things: rabbits, rats,
squirrels! None of these smaller creatures attempted to cross, but
crept along in the willows and brush close to the water.
They loaded down the willows till they bent into the water, and the
terrified little creatures floated away without the least bit of noise
or confusion. And still the black skies were filled with the solemn
boom of thunder. In fact, we had not yet heard any noise of any sort
except thunder, not even our own voices. There was something more
eloquent in the air now, something more terrible than man or beast,
and all things were awed into silence--a profound silence.
And all this time countless creatures, little creatures and big, were
crowding the bank on our side or swimming across or floating down,
down, down the swift, woodhung waters. Suddenly the stolid leader of
the Indians threw his two naked arms in the air and let them fall,
limp and helpless at his side; then he pointed out into the stream,
for there embers and living and dead beasts began to drift and sweep
down the swift waters from above. The Indians now gathered up the
packs and saddles and made a barricade above, for it was clear that
many a living thing would now be borne down upon us.
The two Englishmen looked one another in the face long and
thoughtfully, pulling their feet under them to keep from being trodden
on. Then, after another avalanche of creatures of all sorts and sizes,
a sort of Noah's ark this time, one of them said to the other:
"Beastly, you know!"
"Awful beastly, don't you know!"
As they were talking entirely to themselves and in their own language,
I did not trouble myself to call their attention to an enormous yellow
rattlesnake which had suddenly and noiselessly slid down, over the
steep little bluff of rocks behind us, into our midst.
But now note this fact--every man there, red or white, saw or felt
that huge and noiseless monster the very second she slid among us. For
as I looked, even as I first looked, and then turned to see what the
others would say or do, they were all looking at the glittering eyes
set in that coffin-like head.
The Indians did not move back or seem nearly so much frightened as
when they saw the drift of embers and dead beasts in the river before
them; but the florid Englishmen turned white! They resolutely arose,
thrust their hands in their pockets and stood leaning their backs hard
against the steep bluff. Then another snake, long, black and
beautiful, swept his supple neck down between them and thrust his red
tongue forth--as if a bit of the flames had already reached us.
Fortunately, this particular "wisest of all the beasts of the field,"
was not disposed to tarry. In another second he had swung to the
ground and was making a thousand graceful curves in the swift water
for the further bank.
The world, even the world of books, seems to know nothing at all about
the wonderful snakes that live in the woods. The woods rattlesnake is
as large as at least twenty ordinary rattlesnakes; and Indians say it
is entirely harmless. The enormous black snake, I know, is entirely
without venom. In all my life, spent mostly in the camp, I have seen
only three of those monstrous yellow woods rattlesnakes; one in
Indiana, one in Oregon and the other on this occasion here on the
banks of the McCloud. Such bright eyes! It was hard to stop looking at
them.
Meantime a good many bears had come and gone. The bear is a good
swimmer, and takes to the water without fear. He is, in truth, quite a
fisherman; so much of a fisherman, in fact, that in salmon season here
his flesh is unfit for food. The pitiful part of it all was to see
such little creatures as could not swim clinging all up and down and
not daring to take to the water.
Unlike his domesticated brother, we saw several wild-cats take to the
water promptly. The wild-cat, you must know, has no tail to speak of.
But the panther and Californian lion are well equipped in this respect
and abhor the water.
I constantly kept an eye over my shoulder at the ledge or little bluff
of rocks, expecting to see a whole row of lions and panthers sitting
there, almost "cheek by jowl" with my English friends, at any moment.
But strangely enough, we saw neither panther nor lion; nor did we see
a single grizzly among all the bears that came that way.
We now noticed that one of the Indians had become fascinated or
charmed by looking too intently at the enormous serpent in our midst.
The snake's huge, coffin-shaped head, as big as your open palm, was
slowly swaying from side to side. The Indian's head was doing the
same, and their eyes were drawing closer and closer together. Whatever
there may be in the Bible story of Eve and the serpent, whether a
figure or a fact, who shall say?--but it is certainly, in some sense,
true.
An Indian will not kill a rattlesnake. But to break the charm, in this
case, they caught their companion by the shoulders and forced him back
flat on the ground. And there he lay, crying like a child, the first
and only Indian I ever saw cry. And then suddenly boom! boom! boom! as
if heaven burst. It began to rain in torrents.
And just then, as we began to breathe freely and feel safe, there came
a crash and bump and bang above our heads, and high over our heads
from off the ledge behind us! Over our heads like a rocket, in an
instant and clear into the water, leaped a huge black bear, a ball of
fire! his fat sides in flame. He sank out of sight but soon came up,
spun around like a top, dived again, then again spun around. But he
got across, I am glad to say. And this always pleases my little girl,
Juanita. He sat there on the bank looking back at us quite a time.
Finally he washed his face, like a cat, then quietly went away. The
rattlesnake was the last to cross.
[Illustration: Into the water leaped a black bear.--Page 26.]
The beautiful yellow beast was not at all disconcerted, but with the
serenest dignity lifted her yellow folds, coiled and uncoiled slowly,
curved high in the air, arched her glittering neck of gold, widened
her body till broad as your two hands, and so slid away over the water
to the other side through the wild white rain. The cloudburst put out
the fire instantly, showing that, though animals have superhuman
foresight, they don't know everything before the time.
"Beastly! I didn't get a blawsted sketch, you know."
"Awful beastly! Neither did I, don't you know."
And that was all my English friends said. The Indians made their
moaning and whimpering friend who had been overcome by the snake pull
himself together and they swam across and gathered up the "cattle."
Some men say a bear cannot leap; but I say there are times when a bear
can leap like a tiger. This was one of the times.
II.
MUSIC-LOVING BEARS.
No, don't despise the bear, either in his life or his death. He is a
kingly fellow, every inch a king; a curious, monkish, music-loving,
roving Robin Hood of his somber woods--a silent monk, who knows a
great deal more than he tells. And please don't go to look at him and
sit in judgment on him behind the bars. Put yourself in his place and
see how much of manhood or kinghood would be left in you with a muzzle
on your mouth, and only enough liberty left to push your nose between
two rusty bars and catch the peanut which the good little boy has
found to be a bad one and so generously tosses it to the bear.
Of course, the little boy, remembering the experience of about forty
other little boys in connection with the late baldheaded Elijah, has a
prejudice against the bear family, but why the full-grown man should
so continually persist in caging this shaggy-coated, dignified, kingly
and ancient brother of his, I cannot see, unless it is that he knows
almost nothing at all of his better nature, his shy, innocent love of
a joke, his partiality for music and his imperial disdain of death.
And so, with a desire that man may know a little more about this
storied and classic creature which, with noiseless and stately tread,
has come down to us out of the past, and is as quietly passing away
from the face of the earth, these fragmentary facts are set down. But
first as to his love of music. A bear loves music better than he loves
honey, and that is saying that he loves music better than he loves his
life.
We were going to mill, father and I, and Lyte Howard, in Oregon, about
forty years ago, with ox-teams, a dozen or two bags of wheat, threshed
with a flail and winnowed with a wagon cover, and were camped for the
night by the Calipoola River; for it took two days to reach the mill.
Lyte got out his fiddle, keeping his gun, of course, close at hand.
Pretty soon the oxen came down, came very close, so close that they
almost put their cold, moist noses against the backs of our necks as
we sat there on the ox-yokes or reclined in our blankets, around the
crackling pine-log fire and listened to the wild, sweet strains that
swept up and down and up till the very tree tops seemed to dance and
quiver with delight.
Then suddenly father seemed to feel the presence of something or
somebody strange, and I felt it, too. But the fiddler felt, heard, saw
nothing but the divine, wild melody that made the very pine trees
dance and quiver to their tips. Oh, for the pure, wild, sweet,
plaintive music once more! the music of "Money Musk," "Zip Coon," "Ol'
Dan Tucker" and all the other dear old airs that once made a thousand
happy feet keep time on the puncheon floors from Hudson's bank to the
Oregon. But they are no more, now. They have passed away forever with
the Indian, the pioneer, and the music-loving bear. It is strange how
a man--I mean the natural man--will feel a presence long before he
hears it or sees it. You can always feel the approach of a--but I
forget. You are of another generation, a generation that only reads,
takes thought at second hand only, if at all, and you would not
understand; so let us get forward and not waste time in explaining the
unexplainable to you.
Father got up, turned about, put me behind him like, as an animal will
its young, and peered back and down through the dense tangle of the
deep river bank between two of the huge oxen which had crossed the
plains with us to the water's edge; then he reached around and drew me
to him with his left hand, pointing between the oxen sharp down the
bank with his right forefinger.
A bear! two bears! and another coming; one already more than half way
across on the great, mossy log that lay above the deep, sweeping
waters of the Calipoola; and Lyte kept on, and the wild, sweet music
leaped up and swept through the delighted and dancing boughs above.
Then father reached back to the fire and thrust a long, burning bough
deeper into the dying embers and the glittering sparks leaped and
laughed and danced and swept out and up and up as if to companion with
the stars. Then Lyte knew. He did not hear, he did not see, he only
felt; but the fiddle forsook his fingers and his chin in a second, and
his gun was to his face with the muzzle thrust down between the oxen.
And then my father's gentle hand reached out, lay on that long, black,
Kentucky rifle barrel, and it dropped down, slept once more at the
fiddler's side, and again the melodies; and the very stars came down,
believe me, to listen, for they never seemed so big and so close by
before. The bears sat down on their haunches at last, and one of them
kept opening his mouth and putting out his red tongue, as if he really
wanted to taste the music. Every now and then one of them would lift
up a paw and gently tap the ground, as if to keep time with the music.
And both my papa and Lyte said next day that those bears really wanted
to dance.
And that is all there is to say about that, except that my father was
the gentlest gentleman I ever knew and his influence must have been
boundless; for who ever before heard of any hunter laying down his
rifle with a family of fat black bears holding the little snow-white
cross on their breasts almost within reach of its muzzle?
The moon came up by and by, and the chin of the weary fiddler sank
lower and lower, till all was still. The oxen lay down and ruminated,
with their noses nearly against us. Then the coal-black bears melted
away before the milk-white moon, and we slept there, with the sweet
breath of the cattle, like incense, upon us.
But how does a bear die? Ah, I had forgotten. I must tell you of
death, then. Well, we have different kinds of bears. I know little of
the Polar bear, and so say nothing positively of him. I am told,
however, that there is not, considering his size, much snap or grit
about him; but as for the others, I am free to say that they live and
die like gentlemen.
I shall find time, as we go forward, to set down many incidents out of
my own experience to prove that the bear is often a humorist, and
never by any means a bad fellow.
Judge Highton, odd as it may seem, has left the San Francisco bar for
the "bar" of Mount Shasta every season for more than a quarter of a
century, and he probably knows more about bears than any other
eminently learned man in the world, and Henry Highton will tell you
that the bear is a good fellow at home, good all through, a brave,
modest, sober old monk.
A monkish Robin Hood
In his good green wood.
III.
MY FIRST GRIZZLY.
One of Fremont's men, Mountain Joe, had taken a fancy to me down in
Oregon, and finally, to put three volumes in three lines, I turned up
as partner in his Soda Springs ranch on the Sacramento, where the
famous Shasta-water is now bottled, I believe. Then the Indians broke
out, burned us up and we followed and fought them in Castle rocks, and
I was shot down. Then my father came on to watch by my side, where I
lay, under protection of soldiers, at the mouth of Shot Creek canyon.
As the manzanita berries began to turn the mountain sides red and the
brown pine quills to sift down their perfumed carpets at our feet, I
began to feel some strength and wanted to fight, but I had had enough
of Indians. I wanted to fight grizzly bears this time. The fact is,
they used to leave tracks in the pack trail every night, and right
close about the camp, too, as big as the head of a barrel.
Now father was well up in woodcraft, no man better, but he never fired
a gun. Never, in his seventy years of life among savages, did that
gentle Quaker, school-master, magistrate and Christian ever fire a
gun. But he always allowed me to have my own way as a hunter, and now
that I was getting well of my wound he was so glad and grateful that
he willingly joined in with the soldiers to help me kill one of these
huge bears that had made the big tracks.
Do you know why a beast, a bear of all beasts, is so very much afraid
of fire? Well, in the first place, as said before, a bear is a
gentleman, in dress as well as address, and so likes a decent coat. If
a bear should get his coat singed he would hide away from sight of
both man and beast for half a year. But back of his pride is the fact
that a fat bear will burn like a candle; the fire will not stop with
the destruction of his coat. And so, mean as it was, in the olden
days, when bears were as common in California as cows are now, men
used to take advantage of this fear and kindle pine-quill fires in and
around his haunts in the head of canyons to drive him out and down and
into ambush.
Read two or three chapters here between the lines--lots of plans,
preparations, diagrams. I was to hide near camp and wait--to place the
crescent of pine-quill fires and all that. Then at twilight they all
went out and away on the mountain sides around the head of the canyon,
and I hid behind a big rock near by the extinguished camp-fire, with
my old muzzle-loading Kentucky rifle, lifting my eyes away up and
around to the head of the Manzanita canyon looking for the fires. A
light! One, two, three, ten! A sudden crescent of forked flames, and
all the fight and impetuosity of a boy of only a dozen years was
uppermost, and I wanted a bear!
All alone I waited; got hot, cold, thirsty, cross as a bear and so
sick of sitting there that I was about to go to my blankets, for the
flames had almost died out on the hills, leaving only a circle of
little dots and dying embers, like a fading diadem on the mighty
lifted brow of the glorious Manzanita mountain. And now the new moon
came, went softly and sweetly by, like a shy, sweet maiden, hiding
down, down out of sight.
Crash! His head was thrown back, not over his shoulder, as you may
read but never see, but down by his left foot, as he looked around and
back up the brown mountain side. He had stumbled, or rather, he had
stepped on himself, for a bear gets down hill sadly. If a bear ever
gets after you, you had better go hill and go down hill fast. It will
make him mad, but that is not your affair. I never saw a bear go down
hill in a good humor. What nature meant by making a bear so short in
the arms I don't know. Indians say he was first a man and walked
upright with a club on his shoulder, but sinned and fell. As evidence
of this, they show that he can still stand up and fight with his fists
when hard pressed, but more of this later on.
This huge brute before me looked almost white in the tawny twilight as
he stumbled down through the steep tangle of chaparral into the
opening on the stony bar of the river.
He had evidently been terribly tangled up and disgusted while in the
bush and jungle, and now, well out of it, with the foamy, rumbling,
roaring Sacramento River only a few rods beyond him, into which he
could plunge with his glossy coat, he seemed to want to turn about and
shake his huge fists at the crescent of fire in the pine-quills that
had driven him down the mountain. He threw his enormous bulk back on
his haunches and rose up, and rose up, and rose up! Oh, the majesty of
this king of our continent, as he seemed to still keep rising! Then
he turned slowly around on his great hinder feet to look back; he
pushed his nose away out, then drew it back, twisted his short, thick
neck, like that of a beer-drinking German, and then for a final
observation he tiptoed up, threw his high head still higher in the air
and wiggled it about and sniffed and sniffed and--bang!
I shot at him from ambush, with his back toward me, shot at his back!
For shame! Henry Highton would not have done that; nor, indeed, would
I or any other real sportsman do such a thing now; but I must plead
the "Baby Act," and all the facts, and also my sincere penitence, and
proceed.
The noble brute did not fall, but let himself down with dignity and
came slowly forward. Hugely, ponderously, solemnly, he was coming. And
right here, if I should set down what I thought about--where father
was, the soldiers, anybody, everybody else, whether I had best just
fall on my face and "play possum" and put in a little prayer or two
on the side, like--well, I was going on to say that if I should write
all that flashed and surged through my mind in the next three seconds,
you would be very tired. I was certain I had not hit the bear at all.
As a rule, you can always see the "fur fly," as hunters put it; only
it is not fur, but dust, that flies.
But this bear was very fat and hot, and so there could have been no
dust to fly. After shuffling a few steps forward and straight for the
river, he suddenly surged up again, looked all about, just as before,
then turned his face to the river and me, the tallest bear that ever
tiptoed up and up and up in the Sierras. One, two, three steps--on
came the bear! and my gun empty! Then he fell, all at once and all in
a heap. No noise, no moaning or groaning at all, no clutching at the
ground, as men have seen Indians and even white men do; as if they
would hold the earth from passing away--nothing of that sort. He lay
quite still, head down hill, on his left side, gave just one short,
quick breath, and then, pulling up his great right paw, he pushed his
nose and eyes under it, as if to shut out the light forever, or,
maybe, to muffle up his face as when "great Cæsar fell."
And that was all. I had killed a grizzly bear; nearly as big as the
biggest ox.
IV.
TWIN BABIES.
These twin babies were black. They were black as coal. Indeed, they
were blacker than coal, for they glistened in their oily blackness.
They were young baby bears; and so exactly alike that no one could, in
any way, tell the one from the other. And they were orphans. They had
been found at the foot of a small cedar tree on the banks of the
Sacramento River, near the now famous Soda Springs, found by a
tow-headed boy who was very fond of bears and hunting.
But at the time the twin babies were found Soda Springs was only a
wild camp, or way station, on the one and only trail that wound
through the woods and up and down mountains for hundreds of miles,
connecting the gold fields of California with the pastoral settlements
away to the north in Oregon. But a railroad has now taken the place
of that tortuous old packtrail, and you can whisk through these wild
and woody mountains, and away on down through Oregon and up through
Washington, Montana, Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and on to Chicago
without even once getting out of your car, if you like. Yet such a
persistent ride is not probable, for fish, pheasants, deer, elk, and
bear still abound here in their ancient haunts, and the temptation to
get out and fish or hunt is too great to be resisted.
[Illustration: He threw his enormous bulk back on his haunches, and
rose up.--Page 40.]
This place where the baby bears were found was first owned by three
men or, rather, by two men and a boy. One of the men was known as
Mountain Joe. He had once been a guide in the service of General
Fremont, but he was now a drunken fellow and spent most of his time at
the trading post, twenty miles down the river. He is now an old man,
almost blind, and lives in Oregon City, on a pension received as a
soldier of the Mexican war. The other man's name was Sil Reese. He,
also, is living and famously rich--as rich as he is stingy, and that
is saying that he is very rich indeed.
The boy preferred the trees to the house, partly because it was more
pleasant and partly because Sil Reese, who had a large nose and used
it to talk with constantly, kept grumbling because the boy, who had
been wounded in defending the ranch, was not able to work--wash the
dishes, make fires and so on, and help in a general and particular way
about the so-called "Soda Spring Hotel." This Sil Reese was certainly
a mean man, as has, perhaps, been set down in this sketch before.
The baby bears were found asleep, and alone. How they came to be
there, and, above all, how they came to be left long enough alone by
their mother for a feeble boy to rush forward at sight of them, catch
them up in his arms and escape with them, will always be a wonder. But
this one thing is certain, you had about as well take up two
rattlesnakes in your arms as two baby bears, and hope to get off
unharmed, if the mother of the young bears is within a mile of you.
This boy, however, had not yet learned caution, and he probably was
not born with much fear in his make-up. And then he was so lonesome,
and this man Reese was so cruel and so cross, with his big nose like a
sounding fog-horn, that the boy was glad to get even a bear to love
and play with.
They, so far from being frightened or cross, began to root around
under his arms and against his breast, like little pigs, for something
to eat. Possibly their mother had been killed by hunters, for they
were nearly famished. When he got them home, how they did eat! This
also made Sil Reese mad. For, although the boy, wounded as he was,
managed to shoot down a deer not too far from the house almost every
day, and so kept the "hotel" in meat, still it made Reese miserable
and envious to see the boy so happy with his sable and woolly little
friends. Reese was simply mean!
Before a month the little black boys began to walk erect, carry stick
muskets, wear paper caps, and march up and down before the door of the
big log "hotel" like soldiers.
But the cutest trick they learned was that of waiting on the table.
With little round caps and short white aprons, the little black boys
would stand behind the long bench on which the guests sat at the pine
board table and pretend to take orders with all the precision and
solemnity of Southern negroes.
Of course, it is to be confessed that they often dropped things,
especially if the least bit hot; but remember we had only tin plates
and tin or iron dishes of all sorts, so that little damage was done if
a dish did happen to fall and rattle down on the earthen floor.
Men came from far and near and often lingered all day to see these
cunning and intelligent creatures perform.
About this time Mountain Joe fought a duel with another mountaineer
down at the trading post, and this duel, a bloodless and foolish
affair, was all the talk. Why not have the little black fellows fight
a duel also? They were surely civilized enough to fight now!
And so, with a very few days' training, they fought a duel exactly
like the one in which poor, drunken old Mountain Joe was engaged; even
to the detail of one of them suddenly dropping his stick gun and
running away and falling headlong in a prospect hole.
When Joe came home and saw this duel and saw what a fool he had made
of himself, he at first was furiously angry. But it made him sober,
and he kept sober for half a year. Meantime Reese was mad as ever,
more mad, in fact, than ever before. For he could not endure to see
the boy have any friends of any kind. Above all, he did not want
Mountain Joe to stay at home or keep sober. He wanted to handle all
the money and answer no questions. A drunken man and a boy that he
could bully suited him best. Ah, but this man Reese was a mean fellow,
as has been said a time or two before.
As winter came on the two blacks were fat as pigs and fully
half-grown. Their appetites increased daily, and so did the anger and
envy of Mr. Sil Reese.
"They'll eat us out o' house and hum," said the big, towering nose one
day, as the snow began to descend and close up the pack trails. And
then the stingy man proposed that the blacks should be made to
hibernate, as others of their kind. There was a big, hollow log that
had been sawed off in joints to make bee gums; and the stingy man
insisted that they should be put in there with a tight head, and a
pack of hay for a bed, and nailed up till spring to save provisions.
Soon there was an Indian outbreak. Some one from the ranch, or
"hotel," must go with the company of volunteers that was forming down
at the post for a winter campaign. Of course Reese would not go. He
wanted Mountain Joe to go and get killed. But Joe was sober now and he
wanted to stay and watch Reese.
And that is how it came about that the two black babies were tumbled
headlong into a big, black bee gum, or short, hollow log, on a heap of
hay, and nailed up for the winter. The boy had to go to the war.
It was late in the spring when the boy, having neglected to get
himself killed, to the great disgust of Mr. Sil Reese, rode down and
went straight up to the big black bee gum in the back yard. He put his
ear to a knothole. Not a sound. He tethered his mule, came back and
tried to shake the short, hollow log. Not a sound or sign or movement
of any kind. Then he kicked the big black gum with all his might.
Nothing. Rushing to the wood-pile, he caught up an ax and in a moment
had the whole end of the big gum caved in, and, to his infinite
delight, out rolled the twins!
But they were merely the ghosts of themselves. They had been kept in a
month or more too long, and were now so weak and so lean that they
could hardly stand on their feet.
"Kill 'em and put 'em out o' misery," said Reese, for run from him
they really could not, and he came forward and kicked one of them flat
down on its face as it was trying hard to stand on its four feet.
The boy had grown some; besides, he was just from the war and was now
strong and well. He rushed up in front of Reese, and he must have
looked unfriendly, for Sil Reese tried to smile, and then at the same
time he turned hastily to go into the house. And when he got fairly
turned around, the boy kicked him precisely where he had kicked the
bear. And he kicked him hard, so hard that he pitched forward on his
face just as the bear had done. He got up quickly, but he did not look
back. He seemed to have something to do in the house.
In a month the babies, big babies now, were sleek and fat. It is
amazing how these creatures will eat after a short nap of a few
months, like that. And their cunning tricks, now! And their kindness
to their master! Ah! their glossy black coats and their brilliant
black eyes!
And now three men came. Two of these men were Italians from San
Francisco. The third man was also from that city, but he had an
amazing big nose and refused to eat bear meat. He thought it was pork.
They took tremendous interest in the big black twins, and stayed all
night and till late next day, seeing them perform.
"Seventy-five dollars," said one big nose to the other big nose, back
in a corner where they thought the boy did not hear.
"One hundred and fifty. You see, I'll have to give my friends fifty
each. Yes, it's true I've took care of 'em all winter, but I ain't
mean, and I'll only keep fifty of it."
The boy, bursting with indignation, ran to Mountain Joe with what he
had heard. But poor Joe had been sober for a long time, and his eyes
fairly danced in delight at having $50 in his own hand and right to
spend it down at the post.
And so the two Italians muzzled the big, pretty pets and led them
kindly down the trail toward the city, where they were to perform in
the streets, the man with the big nose following after the twins on a
big white mule.
And what became of the big black twin babies? They are still
performing, seem content and happy, sometimes in a circus, sometimes
in a garden, sometimes in the street. They are great favorites and
have never done harm to anyone.
And what became of Sil Reese? Well, as said before, he still lives, is
very rich and very miserable. He met the boy--the boy that was--on the
street the other day and wanted to talk of old times. He told the boy
he ought to write something about the old times and put him, Sil
Reese, in it. He said, with that same old sounding nose and sickening
smile, that he wanted the boy to be sure and put his, Sil Reese's
name, in it so that he could show it to his friends. And the boy has
done so.
The boy? You want to know what the boy is doing? Well, in about a
second he will be signing his autograph to the bottom of this story
about his twin babies.
V.
IN SWIMMING WITH A BEAR.
What made these ugly rows of scars on my left hand?