A STRUGGLE WITH OLD BRUIN
Andy had just begun with ‘Our text shall be--’ when he was interrupted
and silenced by a frightful crashing noise of dry roots being broken
and branches being snapped off. A sound like the panting and puffing
of a frightened and hunted animal came nearer. At the same time came
a dull and terrifying grumbling and growling, which made the very
tree-trunks tremble.
Something white gleamed forth. A young heifer broke out from the woods
into the open space, running the race of a death-hunted animal. A
full-grown bear was at her heels, a rough brown beast, with small eyes
gleaming wickedly and hungrily out of the shaggy head.
Instantly Andy threw down the book out of which he was just about to
preach. Swift as lightning he seized the horn, put it to his lips, and
blew with all his strength right into the bear’s ears, just as he ran
past the stone after the heifer, which he was on the point of seizing.
The bear staggered backward at the ugly, unexpected noise right in
his sensitive ears. It was exactly as if he had received a blow on
the head, for the sounds Andy was able to force from the horn were
frightful.
The bear rose on his hind legs and put one of his front paws to his
ear. Then he caught sight of the boy rascal on the stone and turned his
attention to him, while the heifer, bellowing and with tail in air,
disappeared into the woods.
If Andy’s position up there on the stone, with the bear reaching
furiously up after him with his paws, was anything but pleasant,
Maglena’s, who was down below, was not much better.
She did not dare move, and she did not dare scream. Andy shrieked at
her, between his roaring into the horn at the bear, to keep quiet so
that the beast would not notice that she was there.
‘Be quiet!’ But it is not so easy to be quiet when one is small and
alone just a few steps from a hungry, thwarted, growling bear, for whom
one would be only a bite, and, besides, when one is frightened to death
over a brother who is in a position almost as dangerous, and who is the
only thing one owns in all the world.
But Maglena controlled herself and did not scream, though she trembled
like an aspen tree when the north wind shakes it.
‘Climb up on the east side!’ shrieked Andy ferociously, in order
to frighten the bear with the same voice when he no longer had the
strength to blow the horn. Maglena took a few flying leaps toward the
stone. Her brother’s words were a command almost as if followed by the
lash.
She threw off the birch-bark shoes, stuck toes and fingers into the
crevices, tore her skin, broke her nails, was purple in the face with
fright and exertion--every moment on the verge of slipping and plunging
down again. Andy heard her panting between the bear’s roars. He leaped
back, leaned down and caught hold of her, so she got over the steepest
part.
Maglena suddenly became strangely strong and brave. In comparison
with being down there alone face to face with the bear, she felt safe
and protected up here on the stone with Andy beside her. This feeling
renewed her strength and put life into her limbs and a voice into her
throat.
She had heard that one could scare a bear with shrieks and clamor and
a fearless attitude. And Maglena knew well that he was afraid of the
look in people’s eyes, so she lay down flat on her stomach, with her
head out over the stone and shrieked at the bear, who, at sight of her,
stepped backward amazed, and peered up at her with a tragic-comic,
almost frightened look in his eyes.
He did not look so dangerous from here either, thought Maglena. When he
put his head on the side like that and whined a little, as if he had an
earache from the horn’s cracked roaring, he seemed simply dejected and
depressed.
‘Be quiet a bit, Andy,’ cried Maglena petulantly; the din had become
too much even for her ears. Andy lowered the horn, astonished at his
sister’s undaunted voice.
‘Old Fellow, old Bruin,’ said Maglena with her eyes fixed steadily
on the bear as she used to do when she wanted to quiet other angry
animals. ‘Old Brownie!’ Her voice sounded actually caressing. ‘You
mustn’t be mad at us. We are small, we are, and alone, and we haven’t
anything to defend ourselves with against you.’
The bear scratched himself behind the ear with his paw, his eyes
became less angry. The ringing, caressing voice, and the man-child’s
good, steady, strong-willed gaze made him uncertain and doubtful as
to whether he should continue to try to get at the boy in return for
the delicious heifer he had let slip, or whether he should give up and
leave the poor little humans in peace.
The bear lowered himself thoughtfully, ready to stand with all four
feet on the ground. Then suddenly, again embittered and _certain_ of
what he should do, he raised himself furiously on two.
The boy’s hated horn had pierced his ears again. It made him wild and
savage. It was impossible that one who brought about such a fiendish
alarm should be allowed to live.
‘Oh, Andy, how you spoil things!’ complained Maglena, ready to cry.
‘Now he’s just as mad or madder, because it hurts his ears, and he
doesn’t know what he’s doing. Can’t you be quiet?’
‘Be quiet when he can take hold in the cracks and be up here in one
single leap and make an end of us both at once!’
Andy seized the horn again.
‘But I say you must be quiet,’ whispered Maglena with strangely
gleaming eyes. She reached up and jerked the horn away from her brother.
She threw herself down again with her head out over the stone. The
light hair, looking like gold in the sunlight, shone about her head,
her eyes glowed with kindness and sympathy and agony.
‘Dear, dear old Woolly Coat, old Fellow, Big Father, don’t be mad, but
go away. You have the whole woods to be in; you can eat all kinds of
berries all summer. In the winter you sleep and don’t have to go all
over the country for food.’
The bear became thoughtful again. He sank down on three feet, sat
waving his right front paw in the air as if to cool his roused feelings
or to gather strength for a new attack.
Andy was absolutely astonished over his sister’s somehow remarkable
ability to quiet the wild animal. He realized that the bear flared up
at the mere sight of him, and that it was Maglena’s voice and words
that calmed the beast. So Andy crept aside and sat down out of sight of
the dangerous creature.
‘Sing to him, Maglena,’ he whispered. Andy felt that if Maglena’s
talking alone could make such an impression on the bear, her singing
would have a still greater effect. ‘Sing,’ he repeated, ‘so we can get
away from here before night.’
Maglena was dizzy and beside herself in the struggle to quiet the
bear’s roused and angry temper, so that it did not seem stranger to
her to sing than to talk, when words, no matter how caressingly or
pleadingly spoken, were not enough.
‘You are my rose, my very heart,’
she sang with a voice at first trembling and uncertain. The tears came
to Andy’s eyes when he heard her.
‘No one shall us ever part,’
sang Maglena more bravely when she saw the bear take his natural
position on four feet, with his head on the side and with wonder rather
than anger in his eyes, and stare up at her.
‘Till death has won his will,’
finished Maglena with the sweetest sadness in her voice.
Both her hair and her eyes, which never left the bear, reflected the
sun’s golden rays.
‘Old Bruin, old Woolly Coat, Big Father,’ shook himself. He felt
disappointed, depressed, and embarrassed. After a moment’s meditation
he bowed his head as if ashamed, and plunged away into the woods
without following the trail of the heifer.
‘You see, he’s going, poor thing; he’s ashamed because he’s a wild
animal and we are people,’ said Maglena. She gazed with a look of real
sympathy after the bear, who, away from the power of Maglena’s eyes,
galloped away so that the branches crashed under him.
[Illustration: ‘OLD BRUIN, OLD WOOLLY COAT, BIG FATHER,’ SHOOK
HIMSELF]
Andy’s spirits rose suddenly. ‘Well, now there is nothing for us to do
but to get away from this stone and into the blueberry patch, ’cause
I’m terribly hungry.’
‘The berries can be in peace for me. Here I’ll stay all night; I’m as
tired as if I’d walked here all the way from Barren Moor in one day,’
answered Maglena, who now with a white face and trembling knees sank
down on the mossy stone.
‘Then I’ll go alone and pick berries for you too, for you’re worth that
and more too.’
Andy made ready to climb down. He was already over the edge with
knees and toes ready to slide down when he heard a beautiful trilling
yodeling not more than a quarter of a mile away.
He flew up on the stone again as swiftly as if he had had wings.
‘Maglena, girl! There are people in the woods! How can they find us
when we can’t yodel back to them?’
‘Take the horn, boy,’ cried Maglena eagerly; even she had sprung up,
all fatigue forgotten.
‘Listen, it’s a dairymaid calling, and one who knows how too.’
Andy took the horn and blew with all his strength--_tru, pi-ri-tu-ut,
pruth-tu-hut_.
‘They’re yodeling and calling for the heifer!’
‘Answer, Andy, so we can tell them where she went.’
‘Girl, I’m ashamed, it sounds so awful when I try to blow.’
‘Are people going to be anxious about the cow and maybe lose her if she
lies down in the marsh just because you are ashamed? If you hadn’t had
the horn when the bear was after her, she’d have been dead now. Blow
right away!’
Andy put the horn to his mouth. He called forth such terrible
trumpeting and such ear-splitting noises that Maglena had to cover her
ears with both hands.
But when he stopped, both yodeling and voices were nearer.