Langdon and Bruce crossed the summit into the westward valley in the
afternoon of the day Thor left the clay wallow. It was two o'clock when
Bruce turned back for the three horses, leaving Langdon on a high ridge to
scour the surrounding country through his glasses. For two hours after the
packer returned with the outfit they followed slowly along the creek above
which the grizzly had travelled, and when they camped for the night they
were still two or three miles from the spot where Thor came upon Muskwa.
They had not yet found his tracks in the sand of the creek bottom. Yet
Bruce was confident. He knew that Thor had been following the crests of the
slopes.
"If you go back out of this country an' write about bears, don't make a
fool o' yo'rself like most of the writin' fellows, Jimmy," he said, as they
sat back to smoke their pipes after supper. "Two years ago I took a
natcherlist out for a month, an' he was so tickled he said 'e'd send me a
bunch o' books about bears an' wild things. He did! I read 'em. I laughed
at first, an' then I got mad an' made a fire of 'em. Bears is cur'ous.
There's a mighty lot of interestin' things to say about 'em without making
a fool o' yo'rself. There sure is!"
Langdon nodded.
"One has to hunt and kill and hunt and kill for years before he discovers
the real pleasure in big game stalking," he said slowly, looking into the
fire. "And when he comes down to that real pleasure, the part of it that
absorbs him heart and soul, he finds that after all the big thrill isn't in
killing, but in letting live. I want this grizzly, and I'm going to have
him. I won't leave the mountains until I kill him. But, on the other hand,
we could have killed two other bears to-day, and I didn't take a shot. I'm
learning the game, Bruce--I'm beginning to taste the real pleasure of
hunting. And when one hunts in the right way one learns facts. You needn't
worry. I'm going to put only facts in what I write."
Suddenly he turned and looked at Bruce.
"What were some of the 'fool things' you read in those books?" he asked.
Bruce blew out a cloud of smoke reflectively.
"What made me maddest," he said, "was what those writer fellows said about
bears havin' 'marks.' Good Lord, accordin' to what they said all a bear has
to do is stretch 'imself up, put a mark on a tree, and that country is
his'n until a bigger bear comes along an' licks 'im. In one book I remember
where a grizzly rolled a log up under a tree so he could stand on it an'
put his mark above another grizzly's mark. Think of that!
"No bear makes a mark that means anything. I've seen grizzlies bite hunks
out o' trees an' scratch 'em just as a cat might, an' in the summer when
they get itchy an' begin to lose their hair they stand up an' rub against
trees. They rub because they itch an' not because they're leavin' their
cards for other bears. Caribou an' moose an' deer do the same thing to get
the velvet off their horns.
"Them same writers think every grizzly has his own range, an' they
don't--not by a long shot they don't! I've seen eight full-grown grizzlies
feedin' on the same slide! You remember, two years ago, we shot four
grizzlies in a little valley that wasn't a mile long. Now an' then there's
a boss among grizzlies, like this fellow we're after, but even he ain't
got his range alone. I'll bet there's twenty other bears in these two
valleys! An' that natcherlist I had two years ago couldn't tell a grizzly's
track from a black bear's track, an so 'elp me if he knew what a cinnamon
was!"
He took his pipe from his mouth and spat truculently into the fire, and
Langdon knew that other things were coming. His richest hours were those
when the usually silent Bruce fell into these moods.
"A cinnamon!" he growled. "Think of that, Jimmy--he thought there were such
a thing as a cinnamon bear! An' when I told him there wasn't, an' that the
cinnamon bear you read about is a black or a grizzly of a cinnamon colour,
he laughed at me--an' there I was born an' brung up among bears! His eyes
fair popped when I told him about the colour o' bears, an' he thought I was
feedin' him rope. I figgered afterward mebby that was why he sent me the
books. He wanted to show me he was right.
"Jimmy, there ain't anything on earth that's got more colours than a bear!
I've seen black bears as white as snow, an' I've seen grizzlies almost as
black as a black bear. I've seen cinnamon black bears an' I've seen
cinnamon grizzlies, an' I've seen browns an' golds an' almost-yellows of
both kinds. They're as different in colour as they are in their natchurs
an' way of eatin'.
"I figger most natcherlists go out an' get acquainted with one grizzly, an'
then they write up all grizzlies accordin' to that one. That ain't fair to
the grizzlies, darned if it is! There wasn't one of them books that didn't
say the grizzly wasn't the fiercest, man-eatingest cuss alive. He
ain't--unless you corner 'im. He's as cur'ous as a kid, an' he's
good-natured if you don't bother 'im. Most of 'em are vegetarians, but some
of 'em ain't. I've seen grizzlies pull down goat an' sheep an' caribou, an'
I've seen other grizzlies feed on the same slides with them animals an'
never make a move toward them. They're cur'ous, Jimmy. There's lots you can
say about 'em without makin' a fool o' yourself!"
Bruce beat the ash out of his pipe as an emphasis to his final remark. As
he reloaded with fresh tobacco, Langdon said:
"You can make up your mind this big fellow we are after is a game-killer,
Bruce."
"You can't tell," replied Bruce. "Size don't always tell. I knew a grizzly
once that wasn't much bigger'n a dog, an' he was a game-killer. Hundreds of
animals are winter-killed in these mount'ins every year, an' when spring
comes the bears eat the carcasses; but old flesh don't make game-killers.
Sometimes it's born in a grizzly to be a killer, an' sometimes he becomes a
killer by chance. If he kills once, he'll kill again.
"Once I was on the side of a mount'in an' saw a goat walk straight into the
face of a grizzly. The bear wasn't going to make a move, but the goat was
so scared it ran plump into the old fellow, and he killed it. He acted
mighty surprised for ten minutes afterward, an' he sniffed an' nosed around
the warm carcass for half an hour before he tore it open. That was his
first taste of what you might call live game. I didn't kill him, an' I'm
sure from that day on he was a big-game hunter."
"I should think size would have something to do with it," argued Langdon.
"It seems to me that a bear which eats flesh would be bigger and stronger
than if he was a vegetarian."
"That's one o' the cur'ous things you want to write about," replied Bruce,
with one of his odd chuckles. "Why is it a bear gets so fat he can hardly
walk along in September when he don't feed on much else but berries an'
ants an' grubs? Would you get fat on wild currants?
"An' why does he grow so fast during the four or five months he's denned up
an' dead to the world without a mouthful to eat or drink?
"Why is it that for a month, an' sometimes two months, the mother gives her
cubs milk while she's still what you might call asleep? Her nap ain't much
more'n two-thirds over when the cubs are born.
"And why ain't them cubs bigger'n they are? That natcherlist laughed until
I thought he'd split when I told him a grizzly bear cub wasn't much
bigger'n a house-cat kitten when born!"
"He was one of the few fools who aren't willing to learn--and yet you
cannot blame him altogether," said Langdon. "Four or five years ago I
wouldn't have believed it, Bruce. I couldn't actually believe it until we
dug out those cubs up the Athabasca--one weighed eleven ounces and the
other nine. You remember?"
"An' they were a week old, Jimmy. An' the mother weighed eight hundred
pounds."
For a few moments they both puffed silently on their pipes.
"Almost--inconceivable," said Langdon then. "And yet it's true. And it
isn't a freak of nature, Bruce--it's simply a result of Nature's
far-sightedness. If the cubs were as large comparatively as a house-cat's
kittens the mother-bear could not sustain them during those weeks when she
eats and drinks nothing herself. There seems to be just one flaw in this
scheme: an ordinary black bear is only about half as large as a grizzly,
yet a black bear cub when born is much larger than a grizzly cub. Now why
the devil that should be--"
Bruce interrupted his friend with a good-natured laugh.
"That's easy--easy, Jimmy!" he exclaimed. "Do you remember last year when
we picked strawberries in the valley an' threw snowballs two hours later up
on the mountain? Higher you climb the colder it gets, don't it? Right
now--first day of July--you'd half freeze up on some of those peaks! A
grizzly dens high, Jimmy, and a black bear dens low. When the snow is four
feet deep up where the grizzly dens, the black bear can still feed in the
deep valleys an' thick timber. He goes to bed mebby a week or two weeks
later than the grizzly, an' he gets up in the spring a week or two weeks
earlier; he's fatter when he dens up an' he ain't so poor when he comes
out--an' so the mother's got more strength to give to her cubs. It looks
that way to me."
"You've hit the nail on the head as sure as you're a year old!" cried
Langdon enthusiastically. "Bruce, I never thought of that!"
"There's a good many things you don't think about until you run across
'em," said the mountaineer. "It's what you said a while ago--such things
are what makes huntin' a fine sport when you've learned huntin' ain't
always killin'--but lettin' live. One day I lay seven hours on a
mountain-top watchin' a band o' sheep at play, an' I had more fun than if
I'd killed the whole bunch."
Bruce rose to his feet and stretched himself, an after-supper operation
that always preceded his announcement that he was going to turn in.
"Fine day to-morrow," he said, yawning. "Look how white the snow is on the
peaks."
"Bruce--"
"What?"
"How heavy is this bear we're after?"
"Twelve hundred pounds--mebby a little more. I didn't have the pleasure of
lookin' at him so close as you did, Jimmy. If I had we'd been dryin' his
skin now!"
"And he's in his prime?"
"Between eight and twelve years old, I'd say, by the way he went up the
slope. An old bear don't roll so easy."
"You've run across some pretty old bears, Bruce?"
"So old some of 'em needed crutches," said Bruce, unlacing his boots. "I've
shot bears so old they'd lost their teeth."
"How old?"
"Thirty--thirty-five--mebby forty years. Good-night, Jimmy!"
"Good-night, Bruce!"
Langdon was awakened some time hours later by a deluge of rain that brought
him out of his blankets with a yell to Bruce. They had not put up their
tepee, and a moment later he heard Bruce anathematizing their idiocy. The
night was as black as a cavern, except when it was broken by lurid flashes
of lightning, and the mountains rolled and rumbled with deep thunder.
Disentangling himself from his drenched blanket, Langdon stood up. A glare
of lightning revealed Bruce sitting in his blankets, his hair dripping down
over his long, lean face, and at sight of him Langdon laughed outright.
[Illustration: "They headed up the creek-bottom, bending over from their
saddles to look at every strip of sand they passed for tracks. They had not
gone a quarter of a mile when Bruce gave a sudden exclamation and
stopped."]
"Fine day to-morrow," he taunted, repeating Bruce's words of a few hours
before. "Look how white the snow is on the peaks!"
Whatever Bruce said was drowned in a crash of thunder.
Langdon waited for another lightning flash and then dove for the shelter of
a thick balsam. Under this he crouched for five or ten minutes, when the
rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The thunder rolled southward, and
the lightning went with it. In the darkness he heard Bruce fumbling
somewhere near. Then a match was lighted, and he saw his comrade looking at
his watch.
"Pretty near three o'clock," he said. "Nice shower, wasn't it?"
"I rather expected it," replied Langdon carelessly. "You know, Bruce,
whenever the snow on the peaks is so white--"
"Shut up--an' let's get a fire! Good thing we had sense enough to cover our
grub with the blankets. Are yo' wet?"
Langdon was wringing the water from his hair. He felt like a drowned rat.
"No. I was under a thick balsam, and prepared for it. When you called my
attention to the whiteness of the snow on the peaks I knew--"
"Forget the snow," growled Bruce, and Langdon could hear him breaking off
dry pitch-filled twigs under a spruce.
He went to help him, and five minutes later they had a fire going. The
light illumined their faces, and each saw that the other was not unhappy.
Bruce was grinning under his sodden hair.
"I was dead asleep when it came," he explained. "An' I thought I'd fallen
in a lake. I woke up tryin' to swim."
An early July rain at three o'clock in the morning in the northern British
Columbia mountains is not as warm as it might be, and for the greater part
of an hour Langdon and Bruce continued to gather fuel and dry their
blankets and clothing. It was five o'clock before they had breakfast, and a
little after six when they started with their two saddles and single pack
up the valley. Bruce had the satisfaction of reminding Langdon that his
prediction had come true for a glorious day followed the thunder shower.
Under them the meadows were dripping. The valley purred louder with the
music of the swollen streamlets. From the mountain-tops a half of last
night's snow was gone, and to Langdon the flowers seemed taller and more
beautiful. The air that drifted through the valley was laden with the
sweetness and freshness of the morning, and over and through it all the sun
shone in a warm and golden sea.
They headed up the creek-bottom, bending over from their saddles to look at
every strip of sand they passed for tracks. They had not gone a quarter of
a mile when Bruce gave a sudden exclamation, and stopped. He pointed to a
round patch of sand in which Thor had left one of his huge footprints.
Langdon dismounted and measured it.
"It's he!" he cried, and there was a thrill of excitement in his voice.
"Hadn't we better go on without the horses, Bruce?"
The mountaineer shook his head. But before he voiced an opinion he got down
from his horse and scanned the sides of the mountains ahead of them through
his long telescope. Langdon used his double-barrelled hunting glass. They
discovered nothing.
"He's still in the creek-bottom, an' he's probably three or four miles
ahead," said Bruce. "We'll ride on a couple o' miles an' find a place good
for the horses. The grass an' bushes will be dry then."
It was easy to follow Thor's course after this, for he had hung close to
the creek. Within three or four hundred yards of the great mass of boulders
where the grizzly had come upon the tan-faced cub was a small copse of
spruce in the heart of a grassy dip, and here the hunters stripped and
hobbled their horses. Twenty minutes later they had come up cautiously to
the soft carpet of sand where Thor and Muskwa had become acquainted. The
heavy rain had obliterated the cub's tiny footprints, but the sand was cut
up by the grizzly's tracks. The packer's teeth gleamed as he looked at
Langdon.
"He ain't very far," he whispered. "Shouldn't wonder if he spent the night
pretty close an' he's mooshing on just ahead of us."
He wet a finger and held it above his head to get the wind. He nodded
significantly.
"We'd better get up on the slopes," he said.
They made their way around the end of the boulders, holding their guns in
readiness, and headed for a small coulee that promised an easy ascent of
the first slope. At the mouth of this both paused again. Its bottom was
covered with sand, and in this sand were the tracks of another bear. Bruce
dropped on his knees.
"It's another grizzly," said Langdon.
"No, it ain't; it's a black," said Bruce. "Jimmy, can't I ever knock into
yo'r head the difference between a black an' a grizzly track? This is the
hind foot, an' the heel is round. If it was a grizzly it would be pointed.
An' it's too broad an' clubby f'r a grizzly, an' the claws are too long f'r
the length of the foot. It's a black as plain as the nose on yo'r face!"
"And going our way," said Langdon. "Come on!" Two hundred yards up the
coulee the bear had climbed out on the slope. Langdon and Bruce followed.
In the thick grass and hard shale of the first crest of the slope the
tracks were quickly lost, but the hunters were not much interested in these
tracks now. From the height at which they were travelling they had a
splendid view below them.
Not once did Bruce take his eyes from the creek bottom. He knew that it was
down there they would find the grizzly, and he was interested in nothing
else just at present. Langdon, on the other hand, was interested in
everything that might be living or moving about them; every mass of rock
and thicket of thorn held possibilities for him, and his eyes were questing
the higher ridges and the peaks as well as their immediate trail. It was
because of this that he saw something which made him suddenly grip his
companion's arm and pull him down beside him on the ground.
"Look!" he whispered, stretching out an arm.
From his kneeling posture Bruce stared. His eyes fairly popped in
amazement. Not more than thirty feet above them was a big rock shaped like
a dry-goods box, and protruding from behind the farther side of this rock
was the rear half of a bear. It was a black bear, its glossy coat shining
in the sunlight. For a full half minute Bruce continued to stare. Then he
grinned.
"Asleep--dead asleep! Jimmy--you want to see some fun?"
He put down his gun and drew out his long hunting knife. He chuckled softly
as he felt of its keen point.
"If you never saw a bear run yo'r goin' to see one run now, Jimmy! You stay
here!"
He began crawling slowly and quietly up the slope toward the rock, while
Langdon held his breath in anticipation of what was about to happen. Twice
Bruce looked back, and he was grinning broadly. There was undoubtedly going
to be a very much astonished bear racing for the tops of the Rocky
Mountains in another moment or two, and between this thought and the
picture of Bruce's long lank figure snaking its way upward foot by foot the
humour of the situation fell upon Langdon. Finally Bruce reached the rock.
The long knife-blade gleamed in the sun; then it shot forward and a half
inch of steel buried itself in the bear's rump. What followed in the next
thirty seconds Langdon would never forget. The bear made no movement. Bruce
jabbed again. Still there was no movement, and at the second thrust Bruce
remained as motionless as the rock against which he was crouching, and his
mouth was wide open as he stared down at Langdon.
"Now what the devil do you think of that?" he said, and rose slowly to his
feet. "He ain't asleep--he's dead!"
Langdon ran up to him, and they went around the end of the rock. Bruce
still held the knife in his hand and there was an odd expression in his
face--a look that put troubled furrows between his eyes as he stood for a
moment without speaking.
"I never see anything like that before," he said, slowly slipping his knife
in its sheath. "It's a she-bear, an' she had cubs--pretty young cubs, too,
from the looks o' her.'
"She was after a whistler, and undermined the rock," added Langdon.
"Crushed to death, eh, Bruce?"
Bruce nodded.
"I never see anything like it before," he repeated. "I've wondered why they
didn't get killed by diggin' under the rocks--but I never see it. Wonder
where the cubs are? Poor little devils!"
He was on his knees examining the dead mother's teats.
"She didn't have more'n two--mebby one," he said, rising. "About three
months old."
"And they'll starve?"
"If there was only one he probably will. The little cuss had so much milk
he didn't have to forage for himself. Cubs is a good deal like babies--you
can wean 'em early or you can ha'f grow 'em on pap. An' this is what comes
of runnin' off an' leavin' your babies alone," moralized Bruce. "If you
ever git married, Jimmy, don't you let yo'r wife do it. Sometimes th'
babies burn up or break their necks!"
Again he turned along the crest of the slope, his eyes once more searching
the valley, and Langdon followed a step behind him, wondering what had
become of the cub.
And Muskwa, still slumbering on the rock-ledge with Thor, was dreaming of
the mother who lay crushed under the rock on the slope, and as he dreamed
he whimpered softly.