Black Bruin Part 17

Then Black Bruin stretched his nose high in air and sniffed the fresh untamed winds. They were sweet with the scent of the southern pine.

Suggestions of the persimmon fruit were also there and the tantalizing odor of witch-hazel and other sweet scents that the bear knew not. There was a clump of underbrush just ahead and into it Black Bruin crashed.

Weeds swished as he pa.s.sed and the brush whipped his face. With bushes parting and gra.s.ses and weeds bending at his coming, the old sense of freedom came surging back to the escaped prisoner and he stretched out his strong muscles, which had been so long cramped in the cage, and shuffled up the side of the mountain at his best pace. Through thickets and brambles he crashed with a wild exultation; up precipitate crags he labored with feverish excitement and frenzy that grew with each moment.

He sniffed at the rustling fronds and mosses as he pa.s.sed, with wild delight. How fresh, how new, how satisfying the wilderness was!

Now racing through deep gulches, and now scrambling up steep bluffs with sheer delight of motion, he fled.

At last the moon set and the stars faded and from the heart of the c.u.mberland Mountains, near the top of one of its most jagged and unfrequented spurs, Black Bruin beheld his first sunrise in southern skies.

Slowly the east warmed and glowed until at last the golden disk mounted over the top of a twin peak and gilded the mountain upon which Black Bruin stood with a flood of golden sunlight. Birds began to twitter strange songs in the tree-tops and thickets and the high peak sang for joy at the sun's coming.

At this auspicious moment, Black Bruin reared upon his hind legs and placing his forepaws high upon the trunk of a sentinel pine, raked a deep scar in the bark. This was his hall-mark;--the sign by which he took possession of the mountain and the surrounding lowlands, just as the discoverers did of old.

This land was to be his, where he would dwell and seek his meat and mate, and live the life of a wild beast to the end of his days.