"Two of the pigs are gone, and I see fresh bear's tracks behind the
barn, Ellen. If you want to go after the beast with Thomas and me, put
on your heaviest boots, get a rifle from the rack, and come on," and I
spoke with a degree of animation which turned upon me the gaze of the
entire family, assembled at the breakfast table. I was not then so sated
a huntsman that the prospect of big game could fail to excite me.
"Why, Donald, you are not thinking of taking Ellen bear hunting with
you?"
"And why not, mother? She wishes to go, she handles a rifle well enough,
and there's no danger with three guns against one poor bear."
"Oh, Aunt Rachael, please let me go; I have never seen a bear, and it
must be beautiful in the forest to-day."
"Might as well let her go, mother," put in my father; "the boys will
take care of her, and it will be an experience she will like to tell
when she is an old woman. Besides, it is well enough for her to learn
courage and coolness in facing danger--the women in this valley may need
such qualities in the future, as they have in the past."
"I can't see why you care to go," said little Jean, shuddering
involuntarily, her brown eyes fixed in amazement upon Ellen's eager
countenance.
"May I go, Aunt Rachael?" urged Ellen.
"Well, child, I suppose so, since your heart seems set upon it. Do be
careful, Donald, and get back before sundown."
We followed the print of the bear's feet across the meadow behind the
barn, and then around the curve of a low range of hills to the edge of
the forest, walking Indian file, Ellen between us, and stepping, as I
bade her, in my tracks. The air was so crisp and buoyant that we were
half intoxicated by long, full breaths of it, and went skimming over the
frozen surface as if, like fabled Mercury, we had wings to our heels.
The meadows gleamed and scintillated, and the edge of the hill's
undulating outline shone in opalescent lines, as if the prying rays of
the sun, forcing their way through the thin snow clouds at the eastern
horizon, were disclosing a ledge of hidden jewels. The world all about
us was downy soft, radiantly pure, and familiar fields and hills took on
a strange newness, in which perspective was confused and outlines
blurred; white fields melted into white hills, hills merged into white
sky, and one might, it seemed, walk out of this world into the next
without noting the point of transition.
The forest was stranger still, and even more beautiful. There was but
little snow on the ground, and the dry leaves under it rustled beneath
one's feet with homely, cheerful sound, but overhead stretched a
marvelous canopy of graceful feather laden branches, each giant of the
forest being powdered as carefully as any court dame, and, like her,
gaining a sort of distinction for its beauty by this emphasis to its
height and grace.
"Am I walking too fast for you, Ellen?" I asked soon after we had
started.
"No; but you step too far," she called back merrily. So I shortened my
stride a little, and again insisted on carrying her rifle, getting this
time her consent.
"The forest is like a place enchanted," said Ellen with rapt face, as we
waited at the edge of the woods for Thomas to catch up. "How warm and
snug one could sleep under that low boughed pine, yonder; I'd like to
live in the forest were there no panthers, wolves, or bears."
"But the beasts have possession, and sometimes I almost wonder if we
have a right to drive them with gun and knife out of their inherited
haunts."
"As we do the Indians."
"I have more sympathy for wild beasts than for the red savages; the
beasts are not treacherous, nor cruel for sport."
"Have you lost the bear's track, Don?" interrupted Thomas; "if not, what
are you stopping for?"
"We are admiring the forest--but I have kept my eye on the track, all
right. There it goes off to the left; we'll find him, I suspect, fast
asleep in some hollow log."
My surmise was correct, for the track led us to a large fallen tree a
mile within the forest. The bear, having gorged himself on the pigs, was
curled within for a good nap.
"We'll have to smoke him out," said Thomas, beginning to look about for
dried leaves and twigs. We piled them into the smaller end of the log,
and then lit them with our tinder-boxes, after which we stood about the
larger opening and waited watchfully.
"You shall have the first shot, Ellen," I said. "Stand a little to one
side, and aim either at his throat, or behind one of his ears."
The bear could not stand long the stifling smoke of the pungent leaves,
and with a muffled roar, interrupted by a wheezing cough, he backed
awkwardly out of the tree, then turned to look about him for an avenue
of escape. But his captors, with ready rifles, stood in close range
around him, and behind him burned the log, its murky smoke and lapping
blaze limning weirdly the beast's shaggy bulk, against the white forest.
"Shoot, Ellen!" I called, for she stood as if spellbound, her eyes fixed
upon the crouching, growling animal. She pulled her trigger then, but
with nerveless fingers, and her ball whizzed just above the bear's head,
cutting off one-half of his right ear. With a roar of pain the furious
animal was upon her, the weight of his huge body throwing her down, and
half burying her in the snow. For an instant my brain rocked with
horror; I dared not shoot, for I could not distinguish Ellen's form from
the bear's in the cloud of flying snow which surrounded them, and every
instant I feared to hear a cry of agony, and the crunching of Ellen's
skull between the creature's iron jaws.
"I must risk it," I swiftly concluded; and with quick intake of my
breath, I raised my rifle to my shoulder, stepped back a pace, and took
the aim of my life. Providence guided the ball, which severed the
beast's spinal column just at the base of his brain. In another instant
I was dragging his shuddering bulk from Ellen's body, lest he crush her
in the death struggle.
Ellen was as pallid as the snow she lay upon, and as motionless. Her
long lashes made a light shadow on the waxen cheeks, and the dark
ringlets dropping over the brow were like charcoal by contrast with its
marble. When I lifted her head upon my arm, I saw a ragged wound upon
her neck, just behind her right ear, and from it ran trickling a crimson
rill, down the soft throat to the still bosom. Her clothes were torn
from her right shoulder, and there the flesh showed marks of the
animal's teeth in the midst of an ugly bruise.
Thomas had dropped white and limp upon a log, and, great boy as he was,
began to cry.
"She's dead, Don, she's dead! Oh, why did we let her come--what shall we
do?"
"Hush," I said angrily; "she's not dead, only stunned, I hope," and I
gathered handfuls of snow, which I rubbed gently upon her forehead and
cheek, and then forced between her lips a few drops of gin from my
pocket flask. Seeing that she swallowed the gin mechanically, I poured a
good spoonful upon her tongue, and chafed her hands vigorously till she
opened her eyes and recognized the faces bending over her.
"Where's the bear, Donald?" she asked, as quietly as if she had just
wakened from a vivid dream.
"Dead," I answered cheerfully; "you shall have the skin for a rug."
"But I didn't kill him," in disappointed tones. "I got frightened and
aimed badly--I'd never do for a man, after all."
"You'd make a better man than Thomas; he began to cry as soon as he saw
you were hurt, and you haven't yet complained of the scratches the bear
gave you."
"They sting some," she said with a grimace, putting her hand to her
wound, and sliding it down to her shoulder. "Why, Donald, my clothes are
torn," and a faint flush tinged her cheeks, while she tried to sit up
and to pull her shredded garment together.
"The bear bit you there; it is well mother made you put on this buckskin
jacket over your pelisse. Does the place hurt you much?" and I knelt
beside her to examine her shoulder more carefully.
"It aches, while the hurt on my neck smarts," and she flushed again, and
shrank from the touch of my fingers on her bare flesh.
And I, too, was suddenly embarrassed, while a new thrill went through
me. "The shoulder bone is not crushed," I said, after a careful
examination which gave Ellen some pain, "nor is the wound very deep;
doubtless, though, it will hurt a good deal, besides making your
shoulder stiff and helpless for a while. We must bandage the wound
somehow, till we can get home, and we must find a way to exclude the
cold air from it."
Thomas, who had sat by, flushed and silent since I had chidden him for
blubbering, picked up the torn jacket I had stripped from Ellen's
shoulders, and disappeared behind the tree. Presently he came back with
his own flannel shirt and a bunch of linen strips across his arm,
himself reclad in the torn jacket, which had been pinned together, after
some sort, with small thorns.
"I beg your pardon, Thomas," I said, grasping his hand as I took the
bandages from it.
"'Twas the sight of her so white and still," replied Thomas, looking yet
mortified and hurt.
"Thank you, dear Thomas," said Ellen, smiling upon him; "your tears were
only symptoms of a tender heart. I'm glad you were sorry for me; Donald
did not care enough to cry."
Now that was very unkind of Ellen, for I had been sick with fright and
apprehension for her, and would have rather been torn in pieces by the
beast, myself, than to have carried home in my arms that still, white
form. But I made no response to Ellen's accusation; I only set my lips,
and plastered and bandaged her wounds as best I could.
Our homeward journey was very unlike the cheerful tramp of the morning,
for Ellen tottered as she walked, and I had need to support her with my
arm, while Thomas carried the guns and powder-horns. The snow no longer
gleamed and sparkled, for the afternoon light was hazy and dull, and the
sky a cold, smeary gray. Forest, field and hill were but the component
parts of a commonplace winter landscape, and bear hunting something else
than a glorious adventure through an enchanted forest.
And I was not the same, nor Ellen. She was become all at once a woman,
shy, reserved, conscious of my touch, leaning on my arm no more than
necessity required. And I, though half vexed at the change in her, and
grieved that I had lost so congenial a comrade--for I knew intuitively
that our intercourse would never again be so unrestrained--nevertheless
found her more interesting, more alluring because of this very change
which put a distance between us, and which had in it a touch of
mystery:--as the forest had been that morning the fairer, for that
unnameable magic with which nature veils herself in her stiller haunts.