would be scattered about, "sort of promiscuous like," as backwoodsmen
say. But these ugly little holes are all in a row, or rather in two
rows. Now a wolf might have made these holes with his fine white
teeth, or a bear might have done it with his dingy and ugly teeth,
long ago. I must here tell you that the teeth of a bear are not nearly
so fine as the teeth of a wolf. And the teeth of a lion are the
ugliest of them all. They are often broken and bent; and they are
always of a dim yellow color. It is from this yellow hue of the lion's
teeth that we have the name of one of the most famous early flowers of
May: dent de lion, tooth of the lion; dandelion. Get down your
botany, now, find the Anglo-Asian name of the flower, and fix this
fact on your mind before you read further.
I know of three men, all old men now, who have their left hands all
covered with scars. One is due to the wolf; the others owe their scars
to the red mouths of black bears.
You see, in the old days, out here in California, when the Sierras
were full of bold young fellows hunting for gold, quite a number of
them had hand-to-hand battles with bears. For when we came out here
"the woods were full of 'em."
Of course, the first thing a man does when he finds himself face to
face with a bear that won't run and he has no gun--and that is always
the time when he finds a bear--why, he runs, himself; that is, if the
bear will let him.
But it is generally a good deal like the old Crusader who "caught a
Tartar" long ago, when on his way to capture Jerusalem, with Peter
the Hermit.
"Come on!" cried Peter to the helmeted and knightly old Crusader, who
sat his horse with lance in rest on a hill a little in the rear. "Come
on!"
"I can't! I've caught a Tartar."
"Well, bring him along."
"He won't come."
"Well, then, come without him."
"He won't let me."
And so it often happened in the old days out here. When a man "caught"
his bear and didn't have his gun he had to fight it out hand-to-hand.
But fortunately, every man at all times had a knife in his belt. A
knife never gets out of order, never "snaps," and a man in those days
always had to have it with him to cut his food, cut brush, "crevice"
for gold, and so on.
Oh! it is a grim picture to see a young fellow in his red shirt wheel
about, when he can't run, thrust out his left hand, draw his knife
with his right, and so, breast to breast, with the bear erect, strike
and strike and strike to try to reach his heart before his left hand
is eaten off to the elbow!
We have five kinds of bears in the Sierras. The "boxer," the "biter,"
the "hugger," are the most conspicuous. The other two are a sort of
"all round" rough and tumble style of fighters.
The grizzly is the boxer. A game old beast he is, too, and would knock
down all the John L. Sullivans you could put in the Sierras faster
than you could set them up. He is a kingly old fellow and disdains
familiarity. Whatever may be said to the contrary, he never "hugs" if
he has room to box. In some desperate cases he has been known to bite,
but ordinarily he obeys "the rules of the ring."
The cinnamon bear is a lazy brown brute, about one-half the size of
the grizzly. He always insists on being very familiar, if not
affectionate. This is the "hugger."
Next in order comes the big, sleek, black bear; easily tamed, too
lazy to fight, unless forced to it. But when "cornered" he fights
well, and, like a lion, bites to the bone.
After this comes the small and quarrelsome black bear with big ears,
and a white spot on his breast. I have heard hunters say, but I don't
quite believe it, that he sometimes points to this white spot on his
breast as a sort of Free Mason's sign, as if to say, "Don't shoot."
Next in order comes the smaller black bear with small ears. He is
ubiquitous, as well as omniverous; gets into pig-pens, knocks over
your beehives, breaks open your milk-house, eats more than two
good-sized hogs ought to eat, and is off for the mountain top before
you dream he is about. The first thing you see in the morning,
however, will be some muddy tracks on the door steps. For he always
comes and snuffles and shuffles and smells about the door in a
good-natured sort of way, and leaves his card. The fifth member of the
great bear family is not much bigger than an ordinary dog; but he is
numerous, and he, too, is a nuisance.
Dog? Why not set the dog on him? Let me tell you. The California dog
is a lazy, degenerate cur. He ought to be put with the extinct
animals. He devotes his time and his talent to the flea. Not six
months ago I saw a coon, on his way to my fish-pond in the pleasant
moonlight, walk within two feet of my dog's nose and not disturb his
slumbers.
We hope that it is impossible ever to have such a thing as hydrophobia
in California. But as our dogs are too lazy to bite anything, we have
thus far been unable to find out exactly as to that.
This last-named bear has a big head and small body; has a long, sharp
nose and longer and sharper teeth than any of the others; he is a
natural thief, has low instincts, carries his nose close to the
ground, and, wherever possible, makes his road along on the mossy
surface of fallen trees in humid forests. He eats fish--dead and
decaying salmon--in such abundance that his flesh is not good in the
salmon season.
It was with this last described specimen of the bear family that a
precocious old boy who had hired out to some horse drovers, went in
swimming years and years ago. The two drovers had camped to recruit
and feed their horses on the wild grass and clover that grew at the
headwaters of the Sacramento River, close up under the foot of Mount
Shasta. A pleasant spot it was, in the pleasant summer weather.
This warm afternoon the two men sauntered leisurely away up Soda Creek
to where their horses were grazing belly deep in grass and clover.
They were slow to return, and the boy, as all boys will, began to grow
restless. He had fished, he had hunted, had diverted himself in a
dozen ways, but now he wanted something new. He got it.
A little distance below camp could be seen, through the thick foliage
that hung and swung and bobbed above the swift waters, a long, mossy
log that lay far out and far above the cool, swift river.
Why not go down through the trees and go out on that log, take off his
clothes, dangle his feet, dance on the moss, do anything, everything
that a boy wants to do?
In two minutes the boy was out on the big, long, mossy log, kicking
his boots off, and in two minutes more he was dancing up and down on
the humid, cool moss, and as naked as the first man, when he was first
made.
And it was very pleasant. The great, strong river splashed and dashed
and boomed below; above him the long green branches hung dense and
luxuriant and almost within reach. Far off and away through their
shifting shingle he caught glimpses of the bluest of all blue skies.
And a little to the left he saw gleaming in the sun and almost
overhead the everlasting snows of Mount Shasta.
Putting his boots and his clothes all carefully in a heap, that
nothing might roll off into the water, he walked, or rather danced on
out to where the further end of the great fallen tree lay lodged on a
huge boulder in the middle of the swift and surging river. His legs
dangled down and he patted his plump thighs with great satisfaction.
Then he leaned over and saw some gold and silver trout, then he
flopped over and lay down on his breast to get a better look at them.
Then he thought he heard something behind him on the other end of the
log! He pulled himself together quickly and stood erect, face about.
There was a bear! It was one of those mean, sneaking, long-nosed,
ant-eating little fellows, it is true, but it was a bear! And a bear
is a bear to a boy, no matter about his size, age or character. The
boy stood high up. The boy's bear stood up. And the boy's hair stood
up!
The bear had evidently not seen the boy yet. But it had smelled his
boots and clothes, and had got upon his dignity. But now, dropping
down on all fours, with nose close to the mossy butt of the log, it
slowly shuffled forward.
That boy was the stillest boy, all this time, that has ever been.
Pretty soon the bear reached the clothes. He stopped, sat down, nosed
them about as a hog might, and then slowly and lazily got up; but with
a singular sort of economy of old clothes, for a bear, he did not push
anything off into the river.
What next? Would he come any farther? Would he? Could he? Will he? The
long, sharp little nose was once more to the moss and sliding slowly
and surely toward the poor boy's naked shins. Then the boy shivered
and settled down, down, down on his haunches, with his little hands
clasped till he was all of a heap.
He tried to pray, but somehow or another, all he could think of as he
sat there crouched down with all his clothes off was:
"Now I lay me down to sleep."
But all this could not last. The bear was almost on him in half a
minute, although he did not lift his nose six inches till almost
within reach of the boy's toes. Then the surprised bear suddenly stood
up and began to look the boy in the face. As the terrified youth
sprang up, he thrust out his left hand as a guard and struck the brute
with all his might between the eyes with the other. But the left hand
lodged in the two rows of sharp teeth and the boy and bear rolled into
the river together.
But they were together only an instant. The bear, of course, could not
breathe with his mouth open in the water, and so had to let go.
Instinctively, or perhaps because his course lay in that direction,
the bear struck out, swimming "dog fashion," for the farther shore.
And as the boy certainly had no urgent business on that side of the
river he did not follow, but kept very still, clinging to the moss on
the big boulder till the bear had shaken the water from his coat and
disappeared in the thicket.
Then the boy, pale and trembling from fright and the loss of blood,
climbed up the broken end of the log, got his clothes, struggled into
them as he ran, and so reached camp.
And he had not yelled! He tied up his hand in a piece of old flour
sack, all by himself, for the men had not yet got back; and he didn't
whimper! And what became of the boy? you ask.
The boy grew up as all energetic boys do; for there seems to be a sort
of special providence for such boys.
And where is he now?
Out in California, trapping bear in the winter and planting olive
trees in their season.
And do I know him?
Yes, pretty well, almost as well as any old fellow can know himself.
VI.
A FAT LITTLE EDITOR AND THREE LITTLE "BROWNS."
Mount Sinai, Heart of the Sierras--this place is one mile east and a
little less than one mile perpendicular from the hot, dusty and dismal
little railroad town down on the rocky banks of the foaming and
tumbling Sacramento River. Some of the old miners are down there
still--still working on the desolate old rocky bars with rockers. They
have been there, some of them, for more than thirty years. A few of
them have little orchards, or vineyards, on the steep, overhanging
hills, but there is no home life, no white women to speak of, as yet.
The battered and gray old miners are poor, lonely and discouraged, but
they are honest, stout-hearted still, and of a much higher type than
those that hang about the towns. It is hot down on the river--too
hot, almost, to tell the truth. Even here under Mount Shasta, in her
sheets of eternal snow, the mercury is at par.
This Mount Sinai is not a town; it is a great spring of cold water
that leaps from the high, rocky front of a mountain which we have
located as a summer home in the Sierras--myself and a few other
scribes of California.
This is the great bear land. One of our party, a simple-hearted and
honest city editor, who was admitted into our little mountain colony
because of his boundless good nature and native goodness, had never
seen a bear before he came here. City editors do not, as a rule, ever
know much about bears. This little city editor is baldheaded,
bow-legged, plain to a degree. And maybe that is why he is so good.
"Give me fat men," said Caesar.
But give me plain men for good men, any time. Pretty women are to be
preferred; but pretty men? Bah! I must get on with the bear, however,
and make a long story a short story. We found our fat, bent-legged
editor from the city fairly broiling in the little railroad town, away
down at the bottom of the hill in the yellow golden fields of the
Sacramento; and he was so limp and so lazy that we had to lay hold of
him and get him out of the heat and up into the heart of the Sierras
by main force.
Only one hour of climbing and we got up to where the little mountain
streams come tumbling out of snow-banks on every side. The Sacramento,
away down below and almost under us, from here looks dwindled to a
brawling brook; a foamy white thread twisting about the boulders as
big as meeting houses, plunging forward, white with fear, as if glad
to get away--as if there was a bear back there where it came from. We
did not register. No, indeed. This place here on Square Creek, among
the clouds, where the water bursts in a torrent from the living rock,
we have named Mount Sinai. We own the whole place for one mile
square--the tall pine trees, the lovely pine-wood houses; all, all.
We proposed to hunt and fish, for food. But we had some bread, some
bacon, lots of coffee and sugar. And so, whipping out our hooks and
lines, we set off with the editor up a little mountain brook, and in
less than an hour were far up among the fields of eternal snow, and
finely loaded with trout.
What a bed of pine quills! What long and delicious cones for a camp
fire! Some of those sugar-pine cones are as long as your arm. One of
them alone will make a lofty pyramid of flame and illuminate the scene
for half a mile about. I threw myself on my back and kicked up my
heels. I kicked care square in the face. Oh, what freedom! How we
would rest after dinner here! Of course we could not all rest or sleep
at the same time. One of us would have to keep a pine cone burning all
the time. Bears are not very numerous out here; but the California
lion is both numerous and large here. The wild-cat, too, is no friend
to the tourist. But we were not tourists. The land was and is ours. We
would and all could defend our own.
The sun was going down. Glorious! The shades of night were coming up
out of the gorges below and audaciously pursuing the dying sun. Not a
sound. Not a sign of man or of beast. We were scattered all up and
down the hill.
Crash! Something came tearing down the creek through the brush! The
fat and simple-hearted editor, who had been dressing the homeopathic
dose of trout, which inexperience had marked as his own, sprang up
from the bank of the tumbling little stream above us and stood at his
full height. His stout little knees for the first time smote together.
I was a good way below him on the steep hillside. A brother editor was
slicing bacon on a piece of reversed pine bark close by.
"Fall down," I cried, "fall flat down on your face."
It was a small she bear, and she was very thin and very hungry, with
cubs at her heels, and she wanted that fat little city editor's fish.
I know it would take volumes to convince you that I really meant for
the bear to pass by him and come after me and my friend with both fish
and bacon, and so, with half a line, I assert this truth and pass on.
Nor was I in any peril in appropriating the little brown bear to
myself. Any man who knows what he is about is as safe with a bear on a
steep hillside as is the best bull-fighter in any arena. No bear can
keep his footing on a steep hillside, much less fight. And whenever an
Indian is in peril he always takes down hill till he comes to a steep
plane, and then lets the bear almost overtake him, when he suddenly
steps aside and either knifes the bear to the heart or lets the
open-mouthed beast go on down the hill, heels over head.
The fat editor turned his face toward me, and it was pale. "What! Lie
down and be eaten up while you lie there and kick up your heels and
enjoy yourself? Never. We will die together!" he shouted.
He started for me as fast as his short legs would allow. The bear
struck at him with her long, rattling claws. He landed far below me,
and when he got up he hardly knew where he was or what he was. His
clothes were in shreds, the back and bottom parts of them. The bear
caught at his trout and was gone in an instant back with her two
little cubs, and a moment later the little family had dined and was
away, over the hill. She was a cinnamon bear, not much bigger than a
big, yellow dog, and almost as lean and mean and hungry as any wolf
could possibly be. We helped our inexperienced little friend slowly
down to camp, forgetting all about the bacon and the fish till we came
to the little board house, where we had coffee. Of course the editor
could not go to the table now. He leaned, or rather sat, against a
pine, drank copious cups of coffee and watched the stars, while I
heaped up great piles of leaves and built a big fire, and so night
rolled by in all her starry splendor as the men slept soundly all
about beneath the lordly pines. But alas for the fat little editor; he
did not like the scenery, and he would not stay. We saw him to the
station on his way back to his little sanctum. He said he was
satisfied. He had seen the "bar." His last words were, as he pulled
himself close together in a modest corner in the car and smiled
feebly: "Say, boys, you won't let it get in the papers, will you?"
VII.
TREEING A BEAR.
Away back in the "fifties" bears were as numerous on the banks of the
Willamette River, in Oregon, as are hogs in the hickory woods of
Kentucky in nut time, and that is saying that bears were mighty plenty
in Oregon about forty years ago.
You see, after the missionaries established their great cattle ranches
in Oregon and gathered the Indians from the wilderness and set them to
work and fed them on beef and bread, the bears had it all their own
way, till they literally overran the land. And this gave a great
chance for sport to the sons of missionaries and the sons of new
settlers "where rolls the Oregon."
And it was not perilous sport, either, for the grizzly was rarely
encountered here. His home was further to the south. Neither was the
large and clumsy cinnamon bear abundant on the banks of the beautiful
Willamette in those dear old days, when you might ride from sun to
sun, belly deep in wild flowers, and never see a house. But the small
black bear, as indicated before, was on deck in great force, at all
times and in nearly all places.
It was the custom in those days for boys to take this bear with the
lasso, usually on horseback.
We would ride along close to the dense woods that grew by the river
bank, and, getting between him and his base of retreat, would, as soon
as we sighted a bear feeding out in the open plain, swing our lassos
and charge him with whoop and yell. His habit of rearing up and
standing erect and looking about to see what was the matter made him
an easy prey to the lasso. And then the fun of taking him home through
the long, strong grass!
As a rule, he did not show fight when once in the toils of the lasso;
but in a few hours, making the best of the situation like a little
philosopher, he would lead along like a dog.
There were, of course, exceptions to this exemplary conduct.
On one occasion particularly, Ed Parish, the son of a celebrated
missionary, came near losing his life by counting too confidently on
the docility of a bear which he had taken with a lasso and was leading
home.
His bear suddenly stopped, stood up and began to haul in the rope,
hand over hand, just like a sailor. And as the other end of the rope
was fastened tightly to the big Spanish pommel of the saddle, why of
course the distance between the bear and the horse soon grew
perilously short, and Ed Parish slid from his horse's back and took to
the brush, leaving horse and bear to fight it out as best they could.
When he came back, with some boys to help him, the horse was dead and
the bear was gone, having cut the rope with his teeth.
After having lost his horse in this way, poor little Ed Parish had to
do his hunting on foot, and, as my people were immigrants and very
poor, why we, that is my brother and I, were on foot also. This kept
us three boys together a great deal, and many a peculiar adventure we
had in those dear days "when all the world was young."
Ed Parish was nearly always the hero of our achievements, for he was a
bold, enterprising fellow, who feared nothing at all. In fact, he
finally lost his life from his very great love of adventure. But this
is too sad to tell now, and we must be content with the story about
how he treed a bear for the present.
We three boys had gone bear hunting up a wooded canyon near his
father's ranch late one warm summer afternoon. Ed had a gun, but, as I
said before, my people were very poor, so neither brother nor I as
yet had any other arms or implements than the inseparable lasso.
Ed, who was always the captain in such cases, chose the center of the
dense, deep canyon for himself, and, putting my brother on the
hillside to his right and myself on the hillside to his left, ordered
a simultaneous "Forward march."
After a time we heard him shoot. Then we heard him shout. Then there
was a long silence.
Then suddenly, high and wild, his voice rang out through the tree tops
down in the deep canyon.
"Come down! Come quick! I've treed a bear! Come and help me catch him;
come quick! Oh, Moses! come quick, and--and--and catch him!"
My brother came tearing down the steep hill on his side of the canyon
as I descended from my side. We got down about the same time, but the
trees in their dense foliage, together with the compact underbrush,
concealed everything. We could see neither bear nor boy.
This Oregon is a damp country, warm and wet; nearly always moist and
humid, and so the trees are covered with moss. Long, gray, sweeping
moss swings from the broad, drooping boughs of fir and pine and cedar
and nearly every bit of sunlight is shut out in these canyons from one
year's end to the other. And it rains here nearly half of the year;
and then these densely wooded canyons are as dark as caverns. I know
of nothing so grandly gloomy as these dense Oregon woods in this long
rainy season.
I laid my ear to the ground after I got a glimpse of my brother on the
other side of the canyon, but could hear nothing at all but the
beating of my heart.
Suddenly there was a wild yell away up in the dense boughs of a big
mossy maple tree that leaned over toward my side of the canyon. I
looked and looked with eagerness, but could see nothing whatever.
Then again came the yell from the top of the big leaning maple. Then
there was a moment of silence, and then the cry: "Oh, Moses! Why don't
you come, I say, and help me catch him?" By this time I could see the
leaves rustling. And I could see the boy rustling, too.
And just behind him was a bear. He had treed the bear, sure enough!
My eyes gradually grew accustomed to the gloom and density, and I now
saw the red mouth of the bear amid the green foliage high overhead.
The bear had already pulled off one of Ed's boots and was about making
a bootjack of his big red mouth for the other.
"Why don't you come on, I say, and help me catch him?"
He kicked at the bear, and at the same time hitched himself a little
further along up the leaning trunk, and in doing so kicked his
remaining boot into the bear's mouth.
"Oh, Moses, Moses! Why don't you come? I've got a bear, I tell you."
"Where is it, Ed?" shouted my brother on the other side.
But Ed did not tell him, for he had not yet got his foot from the
bear's mouth, and was now too busy to do anything else but yell and
cry "Oh, Moses!"
Then my brother and I shouted out to Ed at the same time. This gave
him great courage. He said something like "Confound you!" to the bear,
and getting his foot loose without losing the boot he kicked the bear
right on the nose. This brought things to a standstill. Ed hitched
along a little higher up, and as the leaning trunk of the tree was
already bending under his own and the bear's weight, the infuriated
brute did not seem disposed to go further. Besides, as he had been
mortally wounded, he was probably growing too weak to do much now.
My brother got to the bottom of the canyon and brought Ed's gun to
where I stood. But, as we had no powder or bullets, and as Ed could
not get them to us, even if he would have been willing to risk our
shooting at the bear, it was hard to decide what to do. It was already
dusk and we could not stay there all night.
"Boys," shouted Ed, at last, as he steadied himself in the forks of a
leaning and overhanging bough, "I'm going to come down on my laz rope.
There, take that end of it, tie your laz ropes to it and scramble up
the hill."
We obeyed him to the letter, and as we did so, he fastened his lasso
firmly to the leaning bough and descended like a spider to where we
had stood a moment before. We all scrambled up out of the canyon
together and as quickly as possible.
When we went back next day to get our ropes we found the bear dead
near the root of the old mossy maple. The skin was a splendid one, and
Ed insisted that my brother and I should have it, and we gladly
accepted it.