THE CALIFORNIA LION
Mother Brown Bear had a reason for running away and making the cubs
follow, for by the time she was willing to stop, their shivering bodies
were all in a glow of warmth, and what with a few good shakings of her
wet fur, and a little help from their mother’s rough tongue, and the
sunny June breeze, they were soon dry and fluffy, and ready for
anything.
The next day Mother Brown Bear again took them swimming, and they found
they liked it. The day after, she decided to go fishing, for the streams
were full of trout, and she loved trout even better than the roots and
mushrooms that she could find near home. This time she towed the cubs
across the river. Chinook took her stub of a tail in his teeth to help
him as he swam, and Snookie took his tail.
When they had reached the riffles where the fishing was good, Mother
Brown Bear simply stood there like a floating log with one barbed paw
held under water, ready to spear any fish that swam too near. With her
sharp claws she could impale the slippery fellows, and toss them to
shore, where the cubs sat watching. They still drank milk, but with
their sharp little teeth they sampled everything their mother ate, to
see what it was like. They were having great fun this afternoon. In the
clear water they could see the shining bodies of the finny ones darting
along, and taking Mother Brown Bear for just a big brown log. Then she
would send a fish flapping to shore, and the cubs would try to catch the
slippery fellow.
The three bears had started late that day, and it was getting on towards
sunset. The high peaks to the westward had already cut off the ruddy
globe of light and left deep shadows creeping upon them, when Mother
Brown Bear, crunching her fish on the river bank, caught a strange
message on the wind that swept downstream. Her nose began to wriggle.
“What is it?” questioned Chinook softly through his nose.
“Hush!” breathed Mother Brown Bear, and the fur rose along her spine, as
her nerves tensed with anger. The cubs, feeling her mood, crept closer,
the fur rising frightened along their tiny spines.
Away down along the river bank a moving gray-brown shadow stirred the
salmon-berry bushes and made a faint lapping sound as it drank at a
pool. As the night wind blew to their inquiring nostrils, it telegraphed
that here was a huge foe. It told Mother Brown Bear distinctly that down
there, fishing, was Cougar, the California mountain lion, most dreaded
of all her enemies. She might have stood him off in single combat, had
he ever been so rash as to attack a grown bear, but here were the cubs,
so little and helpless! The only reason Cougar would ever have for
coming near would be if he wanted bear cub for breakfast. Many moons
ago, while exploring a distant mountain range, she had seen him lying in
wait for rabbits, and when she located her den in the gulch, she had
supposed that he still lived many miles from the spot. But here he was,
as she could see by peering from behind a boulder, crouched on the
shelving bank of the river with one paw dangling, barbed and ready to
spear a fish. Perhaps it had been a poor rabbit year and he had moved
into her territory. That would never do! From now on, she must keep
close watch of the cubs. Perhaps he need never learn that she had these
furry children to protect. If they went quietly now downstream, with the
wind blowing from him to them, they might cross the river lower down.
Then if he should cross their trail, he would lose their scent at the
point where they entered the water. But once let the giant cat learn of
the den by the cascades, and he would be watching it, like a cat at a
mouse hole, for the first moment when she had to leave her children
unprotected.
Now a bear, for all his weight, can pad along as softly as any other
mouser when he wants to, and this time, at least, the little family got
safely home without discovery. But when the great, tawny-brown cat had
caught his supper and eaten it, he decided to see what might be farther
downstream, and thus he happened upon the bear-scented footprints that
the three had left behind them.
“Ah, ha!” sniffed Cougar, who was longer than a man is tall. “Juicy,
tender young bear cubs! Just wait till I can catch one! What a feast it
will be!” and he licked his whiskered lips in pleased anticipation.
But when he came to the point where the bears had crossed the river, he
lost their trail, and though he sniffed about for a long time, he could
not find what had become of them. Cats hate getting wet, and he wouldn’t
have swum the river except in a real emergency.
Now it happened that the Ranger was after that very mountain lion, for
Cougar had been killing elk and deer, and these were Uncle Sam’s woods,
where deer are protected except for a little while each fall. But when
Cougar had moved from his old den on the other side of the mountain, the
Ranger had lost track of him.
One day, though, the Ranger’s Boy, on his way over the Pass with a
pack-horse to the Logging Camp where they bought flour and coffee, heard
something that sounded almost like a man sawing wood. It was away off up
the mountainside. The Boy listened, and if his mother hadn’t expected
him back by supper time, he would have climbed the slope to see who it
could be. If he had done so, he wouldn’t have caught so much as a
glimpse of the purring lion, who would have run at the first whiff of a
human being. But if the Boy had had his father’s pocket telescope with
him, he would have seen, stretched out flat on a shelving rock ledge,
which his fur almost matched, the long, slender, pantherlike animal, as
heavy as a grown man, with his small head nodding drowsily in the
sunshine because he had been up all night exploring. And in his dreams
Cougar licked his lips, for he was dreaming of nosing out the den where
Mother Brown Bear had her cubs.