THE BATTLE OF THE BEARS
Much sooner than Johnny expected, the hunchback awoke. Perhaps the pangs
of hunger were making themselves felt. Be that as it may, the night was
not half gone when, each armed with a stout bow and a quiver of arrows,
they stole out into the vivid moonlight.
“Night hunting,” Johnny thought. “Wonder what sort of game will be afoot
at such an hour? Have to be large. Can’t see well enough for snowshoe
rabbit or ptarmigan.”
He was soon enough to know.
* * * * * * * *
As Faye drifted rapidly downstream, now threatened by floating fragments
of ice, and now caught and whirled around by mad swirls of racing water,
she expected every moment to reach the end of life. So long, however, as
the faithful Tico swam at her side she could not give up hope. So, with
the moon painting a mocking golden path to shore and all the starry
reflections dancing about her, she drifted on.
But what was this? Something cut her face. Another. This time came a
stinging blow. Putting up a hand to protect herself, she grasped
something and held on for a second.
“Willows,” she told herself. “Overhanging willows. There’s a chance—”
Again her hand went up. At once it was struck a glancing blow.
“Oh—Oo!” The pain in her wrist for the moment was intense, yet she
persevered. The next attempt was better. Arrested in her mad flight, she
swung round and hung there for a second. Once more her hold was broken.
Not however until her other hand had gone up. Before the current had
gotten her under way, she had gripped a stouter, stiffer branch. With a
supreme effort she threw herself half out of the water to grasp the
branch with her free hand.
The branch was strong. It held her half free from the water. Another
struggle and she was astride the branch. At once the branch was
submerged. But riding so, she was able to look about her and to catch a
few fleeting thoughts as to how the affair would end.
The branch, she discovered, had swung in quite close to shore. There was
a rim of ice before her, but by working her way down the branch she could
reach a position close to other and stronger branches.
“I’ll get hold of those and swing up,” she said aloud.
To her surprise she caught an answering sound.
“Tico!” she called as she caught the dog’s encouraging woof.
By the moonlight she made out his form, dancing on the shore. How had he
made it? She was astonished. But leave it to a dog!
Ten minutes of heart-breaking struggle and her hands gripped a stronger
branch. Even this dipped low, leaving her only abreast of the ridge of
ice. With one hand she gripped the slippery surface. For a second she
held on, then all but plunged head foremost into the tide.
“I must!” she told herself. “It’s my chance. My strength is leaving me.”
Once more she threw herself forward. This time as she felt herself
slipping back she was seized by the collar of her stout mackinaw and
pulled like a rag doll, up, up, up until she lay flat on the ice,
completely exhausted, but safe.
“Good old Tico!” she breathed faintly. “Good Tico!”
The dog licked her cold cheeks.
When strength returned, she crept forward until she found herself on a
bank of soft snow. There she stood up and looked about her. Matters did
not seem much improved. She was on a narrow island in the midst of the
river. The night was cold. It had been thawing during the day. Now it was
freezing.
“Got—got to get these things off.” Her teeth were chattering.
Struggling with her sodden garments, she got them off one by one and,
after wringing them out, hung them on the willows. At last, quite
undressed, she danced about and beat off the dampness that still clung to
her. Such garments as could be managed under the condition she drew on
again.
As her hand touched the pocket of her mackinaw she felt something hard.
“Matches,” she laughed in spite of her despair. “And yet—”
It was a little wooden box of sulphur matches such as are used in the
North. They had been wrapped in oiled cloth.
“Might be a chance,” she told Tico solemnly. “Nothing like hoping.”
After drying her hands on some dead willow leaves that still clung to the
branches, she carefully unwrapped the little box.
“Seems dry.” Her heart beat faster.
With elaborate care she gathered willow leaves and small dry twigs, then
laid on larger branches.
“If it works, Tico! If it only does!”
The first tiny match turned blue, sent up sulphurous fumes and went out.
The second did the same. Hope was ebbing when the blue of the third match
turned to red and the dry leaves were kindled.
“Whoops! Whoopee!” the girl shouted, dancing up and down. “We win! We
win!”
So they did. Fifteen minutes later a roaring flame was mounting toward
the sky. Dry leaves and green willows make a hot fire.
Before this fire, turning round and round like a top, was the girl, while
on willow branches, close as she dared have them, were her steaming
garments.
Johnny Longbow saw the light of that fire against the sky, but a hill lay
between him and the river. He believed the reflection to be a display of
Northern Lights.
They were hunting, he and the hunchback, when he saw that light. A moment
after he saw it the hunchback showed him that which set his blood racing
and drove all thoughts of the light out of his head.
It was strange, this hunting in the moonlight—strange and a bit uncanny.
From over the silver crested hills, the moon shone upon them. Shadows
black as ink were all about them. Every little depression in the snow
seemed a deep well of mystery. Beneath their feet the snow, softened as
it had been by the day’s thaw, gave forth not the slightest sound.
So, with bows unstrung and quivers swinging at their sides, they advanced
upon a low hill. Mounting this, they dropped down upon the other side.
They were half way down the slope when the hunchback, stopping dead in
his tracks, braced his bow and nocked an arrow. He stood there, a
grotesque statue in the moonlight.
“What has he seen?” the boy asked himself. Then, without knowing the
reason for it, he put the lower end of his bow against his instep and
bent it. After that he selected a broadhead from his quiver. Still he saw
nothing, heard nothing.
“It’s strange,” he thought, “Strange and—”
His thoughts broke short off. Down in the center of the valley, not fifty
yards before them where the shadow of the hill plunged all in midnight
blackness, something had stirred. After that had come a grunt.
“Like a pig,” Johnny thought. “But of course—”
Again his thoughts broke off. A head had risen above the shadow line, a
great grizzly head with a red, lolling tongue. This was no pig.
One instant it was there, the next it was gone. But the boy had seen
enough to set his heart racing. Squatting down with one knee on the snow,
he swung his bow into place and waited.
He had not long to wait. The creature, a great northern grizzly bear, was
moving now. She was coming out of the shadows. Johnny’s breath came hard
as he saw the size of her. His heart stopped beating altogether when he
realized that she was leading two half grown cubs.
“Bows and arrows,” he thought. Never had they seemed such frail weapons
as now, yet he was prepared to do his best.
As these thoughts passed through his mind, the three bears moved out into
the field of light.
Johnny felt a light pressure on his arm. He understood. They were to
shoot. Once more his heart raced. Yet his hand was steady as he drew his
bow. By instinct he seemed to understand that he was to shoot at the
larger of the two cubs. The hunchback would aim at the great beast’s
heart.
“Here’s hoping!” Johnny’s whole body stiffened. His arrow flew, and with
it another.
In an instant there was tumult in the bears’ camp. Having neither seen
nor smelled their enemies, both the cubs and the old one blamed his
companion for the pain that had leaped upon them from the dark. At once
they fell upon one another. Such growling and roaring, such cuffing and
scratching Johnny had not known in his life.
It was all so ludicrous that he wanted to roll in the snow with laughter.
Yet there was a more serious side. Neither of the bears had received a
mortal wound. Tumbling about as they were now, there was little chance
for a good shot. How long would it be before they discovered their
mistake and came charging up the hill? Nocking a second arrow, he awaited
the next turn of events.
* * * * * * * *
From her island fastness Faye Duncan heard the noise of battle, and
shuddered. Growling savagely, the dog marched back and forth in the snow.
But neither girl nor dog knew what it was all about.
One thought was uppermost in the girl’s mind. She must get off the island
and rejoin her companions. But how was this to be done? She had saved her
Indian friends from a similar predicament, but now there was no yarn to
bring a rawhide rope to her. Besides, the rope was now far back in the
camp of women and children.
A little ice was passing. Mere fragments, these would not support her
weight. She was interested to note, however, that swinging round a sharp
bend, the current brought these fragments very near the bank.
“If only they were large enough to support my weight!” she thought.
But the fire was burning low. The night chill was creeping in. Her
clothing was not yet dry.
* * * * * * * *
“More wood,” she thought as she twisted away at a tough willow branch.
In the meantime the battle of bears was slowing down. Seeing an opening,
the hunchback sent a second arrow crashing into the ribs of the old
grizzly. Was it this arrow that suggested a foe from without? As the
bear’s great head turned about, the bristle hair on her neck and
shoulders began to rise.
Johnny saw it as in a dream. He woke from the dream with a start when the
grizzly, at a pace not exceeded by the fastest horse, charged straight up
the hill.
For this the hunchback was prepared. He had lain five of his best arrows,
tipped with points of volcanic glass, side by side in the snow. Now, as
if shot from some new form of repeating blowgun, one by one these arrows
went crashing into the charging monster.
As for Johnny, his usually alert mind seemed frozen. Only after the
hunchback’s third arrow had found its mark with the beast still plowing
forward did he get into action. Then, realizing that his arrow, a good
broadhead with razor edge, was in place, he wondered where to aim.
There was no time to be lost. Instinctively he picked the beast’s lolling
red mouth. Twang! The arrow sped. The next instant, to his vast
astonishment, he saw the beast rear high, utter one wild roar and drop
backward dead.
Three shots from the hunchback’s bow silenced the two younger bears
forever. Then it was time for investigation. The arrow that Johnny shot
had entered the bear’s mouth, had pierced the thin bone at the top and
had entered the brain.
As the hunchback realized this, he turned and looked at Johnny. A smile
overspread his face and he patted the boy clumsily on the shoulder.
After that, leaving the old bear where she lay, he partially skinned one
of the cubs and, after slinging a good hundred pounds of meat across his
shoulder, beckoned the boy to follow.