THE WANING
[Illustration]
I.
Years went by. Wahb grew no bigger,--there was no need for that,--but he
got whiter, crosser, and more dangerous. He really had an enormous range
now. Each spring, after the winter storms had removed his notice-boards,
he went around and renewed them. It was natural to do so, for, first of
all, the scarcity of food compelled him to travel all over the range.
There were lots of clay wallows at that season, and the itching of his
skin, as the winter coat began to shed, made the dressing of cool, wet
clay very pleasant, and the exquisite pain of a good scratching was one
of the finest pleasures he knew. So, whatever his motive, the result was
the same: the signs were renewed each spring.
At length the Palette Ranch outfit appeared on the Lower Piney, and the
men got acquainted with the 'ugly old fellow.' The Cowpunchers, when
they saw him, decided they 'had n't lost any Bears and they had better
keep out of his way and let him mind his business.'
They did not often see him, although his tracks and sign-boards were
everywhere. But the owner of this outfit, a born hunter, took a keen
interest in Wahb. He learned something of the old Bear's history from
Colonel Pickett, and found out for himself more than the colonel ever
knew.
He learned that Wahb ranged as far south as the Upper Wiggins Fork and
north to the Stinking Water, and from the Meteetsee to the Shoshones.
He found that Wahb knew more about Bear-traps than most trappers do;
that he either passed them by or tore open the other end of the bait-pen
and dragged out the bait without going near the trap, and by accident or
design Wahb sometimes sprang the trap with one of the logs that formed
the pen. This ranch-owner found also that Wahb disappeared from his
range each year during the heat of the summer, as completely as he did
each winter during his sleep.
II.
Many years ago a wise government set aside the head waters of the
Yellowstone to be a sanctuary of wild life forever. In the limits of
this great Wonderland the ideal of the Royal Singer was to be realized,
and none were to harm or make afraid. No violence was to be offered to
any bird or beast, no ax was to be carried into its primitive forests,
and the streams were to flow on forever unpolluted by mill or mine. All
things were to bear witness that such as this was the West before the
white man came.
The wild animals quickly found out all this. They soon learned the
boundaries of this unfenced Park, and, as every one knows, they show a
different nature within its sacred limits. They no longer shun the
face of man, they neither fear nor attack him, and they are even more
tolerant of one another in this land of refuge.
Peace and plenty are the sum of earthly good; so, finding them here,
the wild creatures crowd into the Park from the surrounding country in
numbers not elsewhere to be seen.
The Bears are especially numerous about the Fountain Hotel. In the
woods, a quarter of a mile away, is a smooth open place where the
steward of the hotel has all the broken and waste food put out daily for
the Bears, and the man whose work it is has become the Steward of the
Bears' Banquet. Each day it is spread, and each year there are more
Bears to partake of it. It is a common thing now to see a dozen Bears
feasting there at one time. They are of all kinds--Black, Brown,
Cinnamon, Grizzly, Silvertip, Roach-backs, big and small, families and
rangers, from all parts of the vast surrounding country. All seem to
realize that in the Park no violence is allowed, and the most ferocious
of them have here put on a new behavior. Although scores of Bears roam
about this choice resort, and sometimes quarrel among themselves, not
one of them has ever yet harmed a man.
Year after year they have come and gone. The passing travellers see
them. The men of the hotel know many of them well. They know that they
show up each summer during the short season when the hotel is in use,
and that they disappear again, no man knowing whence they come or
whither they go.
One day the owner of the Palette Ranch came through the Park. During his
stay at the Fountain Hotel, he went to the Bear banquet-hall at high
meal-tide. There were several Blackbears feasting, but they made way for
a huge Silvertip Grizzly that came about sundown.
"That," said the man who was acting as guide, "is the biggest Grizzly in
the Park; but he is a peaceable sort, or Lud knows what'd happen."
"That!" said the ranchman, in astonishment, as the Grizzly came hulking
nearer, and loomed up like a load of hay among the piney pillars of the
Banquet Hall. "That! It that is not Meteetsee Wahb, I never saw a Bear
in my life! Why, that is the worst Grizzly that ever rolled a log in the
Big Horn Basin." "It ain't possible," said the other, "for he's here
every summer, July and August, an' I reckon he don't live so far away."
"Well, that settles it," said the ranchman; "July and August is just the
time we miss him on the range; and you can see for yourself that he is
a little lame behind and has lost a claw of his left front foot. Now I
know where he puts in his summers; but I did not suppose that the old
reprobate would know enough to behave himself away from home."
The big Grizzly became very well known during the successive hotel
seasons. Once only did he really behave ill, and that was the first
season he appeared, before he fully knew the ways of the Park.
He wandered over to the hotel, one day, and in at the front door. In
the hall he reared up his eight feet of stature as the guests fled in
terror; then he went into the clerk's office. The man said: "All right;
if you need this office more than I do, you can have it," and leaping
over the counter, locked himself in the telegraph-office, to wire the
superintendent of the Park: "Old Grizzly in the office now, seems to
want to run hotel; may we shoot?"
The reply came: "No shooting allowed in Park; use the hose." Which they
did, and, wholly taken by surprise, the Bear leaped over the counter
too, and ambled out the back way, with a heavy _thud-thudding_ of his
feet, and a rattling of his claws on the floor. He passed through the
kitchen as he went, and, picking up a quarter of beef, took it along.
This was the only time he was known to do ill, though on one occasion
he was led into a breach of the peace by another Bear. This was a large
she-Blackbear and a noted mischief-maker. She had a wretched, sickly cub
that she was very proud of--so proud that she went out of her way to
seek trouble on his behalf. And he, like all spoiled children, was the
cause of much bad feeling. She was so big and fierce that she could
bully all the other Blackbears, but when she tried to drive off old Wahb
she received a pat from his paw that sent her tumbling like a football.
He followed her up, and would have killed her, for she had broken the
peace of the Park, but she escaped by climbing a tree, from the top of
which her miserable little cub was apprehensively squealing at the pitch
of his voice. So the affair was ended; in future the Blackbear kept
out of Wahb's way, and he won the reputation of being a peaceable,
well-behaved Bear. Most persons believed that he came from some remote
mountains where were neither guns nor traps to make him sullen and
revengeful.
III.
Every one knows that a Bitter-root Grizzly is a bad Bear. The
Bitter-root Range is the roughest part of the mountains. The ground is
everywhere cut up with deep ravines and overgrown with dense and tangled
underbrush.
It is an impossible country for horses, and difficult for gunners, and
there is any amount of good Bear-pasture. So there are plenty of Bears
and plenty of trappers.
The Roachbacks, as the Bitter-root Grizzlies are called, are a cunning
and desperate race. An old Roachback knows more about traps than half
a dozen ordinary trappers; he knows more about plants and roots than a
whole college of botanists. He can tell to a certainty just when and
where to find each kind of grub and worm, and he knows by a whiff
whether the hunter on his trail a mile away is working with guns,
poison, dogs, traps, or all of them together. And he has one general
rule, which is an endless puzzle to the hunter: 'Whatever you decide
to do, do it quickly and follow it right up.' So when a trapper and a
Roachback meet, the Bear at once makes up his mind to run away as hard
as he can, or to rush at the man and fight to a finish.
The Grizzlies of the Bad Lands did not do this: they used to stand on
their dignity and growl like a thunder-storm, and so gave the hunters
a chance to play their deadly lightning; and lightning is worse than
thunder any day. Men can get used to growls that rumble along the ground
and up one's legs to the little house where one's courage lives; but
Bears cannot get used to 45-90 soft-nosed bullets, and that is why the
Grizzlies of the Bad Lands were all killed off.
So the hunters have learned that they never know what a Roachback will
do; but they do know that he is going to be quick about it.
Altogether these Bitter-root Grizzlies have solved very well the problem
of life, in spite of white men, and are therefore increasing in their
own wild mountains.
Of course a range will hold only so many Bears, and the increase is
crowded out; so that when that slim young Bald-faced Roachback found he
could not hold the range he wanted, he went out perforce to seek his
fortune in the world.
He was not a big Bear, or he would not have been crowded out; but he had
been trained in a good school, so that he was cunning enough to get on
very well elsewhere. How he wandered down to the Salmon River Mountains
and did not like them; how he traveled till he got among the barb-wire
fences of the Snake Plains and of course could not stay there; how a
mere chance turned him from going eastward to the Park, where he might
have rested; how he made for the Snake River Mountains and found more
hunters than berries; how he crossed into the Tetons and looked down
with disgust on the teeming man colony of Jackson's Hole, does not
belong to this history of Wahb. But when Baldy Roachback crossed the
Gros Ventre Range and over the Wind River Divide to the head of the
Graybull, he does come into the story, just as he did into the country
and the life of the Meteetsee Grizzly.
The Roachback had not found a man-sign since he left Jackson's Hole,
and here he was in a land of plenty of food. He feasted on all the
delicacies of the season, and enjoyed the easy, brushless country till
he came on one of Wahb's sign-posts.
"Trespassers beware!" it said in the plainest manner. The Roachback
reared up against it.
"Thunder! what a Bear!" The nose-mark was a head and neck above Baldy's
highest reach. Now, a simple Bear would have gone quietly away after
this discovery; but Baldy felt that the mountains owed him a living, and
here was a good one if he could keep out of the way of the big fellow.
He nosed about the place, kept a sharp lookout for the present owner,
and went on feeding wherever he ran across a good thing.
A step or two from this ominous tree was an old pine stump. In the
Bitter-roots there are often mice-nests under such stumps, and Baldy
jerked it over to see. There was nothing. The stump rolled over against
the sign-post. Baldy had not yet made up his mind about it; but a new
notion came into his cunning brain. He turned his head on this side,
then on that. He looked at the stump, then at the sign, with his little
pig-like eyes. Then he deliberately stood up on the pine root, with his
back to the tree, and put his mark away up, a head at least above that
of Wahb. He rubbed his back long and hard, and he sought some mud to
smear his head and shoulders, then came back and made the mark so big,
so strong, and so high, and emphasized it with such claw-gashes in the
bark, that it could be read only in one way--a challenge to the present
claimant from some monstrous invader, who was ready, nay anxious, to
fight to a finish for this desirable range.
Maybe it was accident and maybe design, but when the Roach-back
jumped from the root it rolled to one side. Baldy went on down the
canyon, keeping the keenest lookout for his enemy.
It was not long before Wahb found the trail of the interloper, and all
the ferocity of his outside-the-Park nature was aroused.
He followed the trail for miles on more than one occasion. But the small
Bear was quick-footed as well as quick-witted, and never showed himself.
He made a point, however, of calling at each sign-post, and if there was
any means of cheating, so that his mark might be put higher, he did it
with a vim, and left a big, showy record. But if there was no chance for
any but a fair register, he would not go near the tree, but looked for a
fresh tree near by with some log or side-ledge to reach from.
Thus Wahb soon found the interloper's marks towering far above his
own--a monstrous Bear evidently, that even he could not be sure of
mastering. But Wahb was no coward. He was ready to fight to a finish any
one that might come; and he hunted the range for that invader. Day after
day Wahb sought for him and held himself ready to fight. He found his
trail daily, and more and more often he found that towering record far
above his own. He often smelled him on the wind; but he never saw him,
for the old Grizzly's eyes had grown very dim of late years; things but
a little way off were blurs to him. The continual menace could not but
fill Wahb with uneasiness, for he was not young now, and his teeth and
claws were worn and blunted. He was more than ever troubled with pains
in his old wounds, and though he could have risen on the spur of the
moment to fight any number of Grizzlies of any size, still the continual
apprehension, the knowledge that he must hold himself ready at any
moment to fight this young monster, weighed on his spirits and began to
tell on his general health.
IV.
The Roachback's life was one of continual vigilance, always ready to
run, doubling and shifting to avoid the encounter that must mean instant
death to him. Many a time from some hiding-place he watched the great
Bear, and trembled lest the wind should betray him. Several times his
very impudence saved him, and more than once he was nearly cornered in
a box-canyon. Once he escaped only by climbing up a long crack in a
cliff, which Wahb's huge frame could not have entered. But still, in a
mad persistence, he kept on marking the trees farther into the range.
At last he scented and followed up the sulphur-bath. He did not
understand it at all. It had no appeal to him, but hereabouts were the
tracks of the owner. In a spirit of mischief the Roachback scratched
dirt into the spring, and then seeing the rubbing-tree, he stood
sidewise on the rocky ledge, and was thus able to put his mark fully
five feet above that of Wahb. Then he nervously jumped down, and was
running about, defiling the bath and keeping a sharp lookout, when he
heard a noise in the woods below. Instantly he was all alert. The sound
drew near, then the wind brought the sure proof, and the Roachback, in
terror, turned and fled into the woods.
[Illustration]
It was Wahb. He had been failing in health of late; his old pains
were on him again, and, as well as his hind leg, had seized his right
shoulder, where were still lodged two rifle-balls. He was feeling very
ill, and crippled with pain. He came up the familiar bank at a jerky
limp, and there caught the odor of the foe; then he saw the track in the
mud--his eyes said the track of a _small_ Bear, but his eyes were dim
now, and his nose, his unerring nose, said, "This is the track of the
huge invader." Then he noticed the tree with his sign on it, and there
beyond doubt was the stranger's mark far above his own. His eyes and
nose were agreed on this; and more, they told him that the foe was close
at hand, might at any moment come.
Wahb was feeling ill and weak with pain. He was in no mood for a
desperate fight. A battle against such odds would be madness now. So,
without taking the treatment, he turned and swung along the bench away
from the direction taken by the stranger--the first time since his
cubhood that he had declined to fight.
That was a turning-point in Wahb's life. If he had followed up the
stranger he would have found the miserable little craven trembling,
cowering, in an agony of terror, behind a log in a natural trap, a
walled-in glade only fifty yards away, and would surely have crushed
him. Had he even taken the bath, his strength and courage would have
been renewed, and if not, then at least in time he would have met his
foe, and his after life would have been different. But he had turned.
This was the fork in the trail, but he had no means of knowing it.
He limped along, skirting the lower spurs of the Shoshones, and soon
came on that horrid smell that he had known for years, but never
followed up or understood. It was right in his road, and he traced it
to a small, barren ravine that was strewn over with skeletons and dark
objects, and Wahb, as he passed, smelled a smell of many different
animals, and knew by its quality that they were lying dead in this
treeless, grassless hollow. For there was a cleft in the rocks at the
upper end, whence poured a deadly gas; invisible but heavy, it filled
the little gulch like a brimming poison bowl, and at the lower end there
was a steady overflow. But Wahb knew only that the air that poured from
it as he passed made him dizzy and sleepy, and repelled him, so that
he got quickly away from it and was glad once more to breathe the piny
wind. Once Wahb decided to retreat, it was all too easy to do so next
time; and the result worked double disaster. For, since the big stranger
was allowed possession of the sulphur-spring, Wahb felt that he would
rather not go there. Sometimes when he came across the traces of his
foe, a spurt of his old courage would come back. He would rumble that
thunder-growl as of old, and go painfully lumbering along the trail
to settle the thing right then and there. But he never overtook the
mysterious giant, and his rheumatism, growing worse now that he was
barred from the cure, soon made him daily less capable of either running
or fighting.
Sometimes Wahb would sense his foe's approach when he was in a bad place
for fighting, and, without really running, he would yield to a wish to
be on a better footing, where he would have a fair chance. This better
footing never led him nearer the enemy, for it is well known that the
one awaiting has the advantage.
Some days Wahb felt so ill that it would have been madness to have
staked everything on a fight, and when he felt well or a little better,
the stranger seemed to keep away.
Wahb soon found that the stranger's track was most often on the Warhouse
and the west slope of the Piney, the very best feeding-grounds. To avoid
these when he did not feel equal to fighting was only natural, and as he
was always in more or less pain now, it amounted to abandoning to the
stranger the best part of the range.
Weeks went by. Wahb had meant to go back to his bath, but he never did.
His pains grew worse; he was now crippled in his right shoulder as well
as in his hind leg.
The long strain of waiting for the fight begot anxiety, that grew to be
apprehension, which, with the sapping of his strength, was breaking
down his courage, as it always must when courage is founded on muscular
force. His daily care now was not to meet and fight the invader, but to
avoid him till he felt better.
Thus that first little retreat grew into one long retreat. Wahb had to
go farther and farther down the Piney to avoid an encounter. He was
daily worse fed, and as the weeks went by was daily less able to crush a
foe.
He was living and hiding at last on the Lower Piney--the very place
where once his Mother had brought him with his little brothers. The life
he led now was much like the one he had led after that dark day. Perhaps
for the same reason. If he had had a family of his own all might have
been different. As he limped along one morning, seeking among the barren
aspen groves for a few roots, or the wormy partridge-berries that were
too poor to interest the Squirrel and the Grouse, he heard a stone
rattle down the western slope into the woods, and, a little later, on
the wind was borne the dreaded taint. He waded through the ice-cold
Piney,--once he would have leaped it,--and the chill water sent through
and up each great hairy limb keen pains that seemed to reach his very
life. He was retreating again--which way? There seemed but one way
now--toward the new ranch-house.
But there were signs of stir about it long before he was near enough to
be seen. His nose, his trustiest friend, said, "Turn, turn and seek the
hills," and turn he did even at the risk of meeting there the dreadful
foe. He limped painfully along the north bank of the Piney, keeping in
the hollows and among the trees. He tried to climb a cliff that of old
he had often bounded up at full speed. When half-way up his footing gave
way, and down he rolled to the bottom. A long way round was now the only
road, for onward he must go--on--on. But where? There seemed no choice
now but to abandon the whole range to the terrible stranger.
And feeling, as far as a Bear can feel, that he is fallen, defeated,
dethroned at last, that he is driven from his ancient range by a Bear
too strong for him to face, he turned up the west fork, and the lot was
drawn. The strength and speed were gone from his once mighty limbs;
he took three times as long as he once would to mount each well-known
ridge, and as he went he glanced backward from time to time to know
if he were pursued. Away up the head of the little branch were the
Shoshones, bleak, forbidding; no enemies were there, and the Park was
beyond it all--on, on he must go. But as he climbed with shaky limbs,
and short uncertain steps, the west wind brought the odor of Death
Gulch, that fearful little valley where everything was dead, where the
very air was deadly. It used to disgust him and drive him away, but now
Wahb felt that it had a message for him; he was drawn by it.
[Illustration] line of flight, and he hobbled slowly toward the place.
He went nearer, nearer, until he stood upon the entering ledge. A
Vulture that had descended to feed on one of the victims was slowly
going to sleep on the untouched carcass. Wahb swung his great grizzled
muzzle and his long white beard in the wind. The odor that he once had
hated was attractive now. There was a strange biting quality in the
air. His body craved it. For it seemed to numb his pain and it promised
sleep, as it did that day when first he saw the place.
Far below him, to the right and to the left and on and on as far as the
eye could reach, was the great kingdom that once had been his; where he
had lived for years in the glory of his strength; where none had dared
to meet him face to face. The whole earth could show no view more
beautiful. But Wahb had no thought of its beauty; he only knew that it
was a good land to live in; that it had been his, but that now it was
gone, for his strength was gone, and he was flying to seek a place where
he could rest and be at peace.
Away over the Shoshones, indeed, was the road to the Park, but it was
far, far away, with a doubtful end to the long, doubtful journey. But
why so far? Here in this little gulch was all he sought; here were peace
and painless sleep. He knew it; for his nose, his never-erring nose,
said, "_Here! here now!_"
He paused a moment at the gate, and as he stood the wind-borne fumes
began their subtle work. Five were the faithful wardens of his life, and
the best and trustiest of them all flung open wide the door he long had
kept. A moment still Wahb stood in doubt. His lifelong guide was silent
now, had given up his post. But another sense he felt within. The Angel
of the Wild Things was standing there, beckoning, in the little vale.
Wahb did not understand. He had no eyes to see the tear in the Angel's
eyes, nor the pitying smile that was surely on his lips. He could not
even see the Angel. But he _felt_ him beckoning, beckoning. A rush of
his ancient courage surged in the Grizzly's rugged breast. He turned
aside into the little gulch. The deadly vapors entered in, filled his
huge chest and tingled in his vast, heroic limbs as he calmly lay down
on the rocky, herbless floor and as gently went to sleep, as he did that
day in his Mother's arms by the Graybull, long ago.
[Illustration]