The Log School-House on the Columbia Part 6

The flitting of shadowy forms among the pines grew alarming. Nearer and nearer they came, and more and more excited became Mrs. Woods's apprehensions. Gretchen began to cry, through nervous excitement, and with the first rush of tears came to her, as usual, the thought of her violin.

She took up the instrument, tuned it with nervous fingers, and drew the bow across the strings, making them shriek as with pain, and then drifted into the air the music of the Traumerei.

"Fiddling, Gretchen--fiddling in the shadow of death? I don't know but what you are right--that tune, too!"

The music trembled; the haunting strain quivered, rose and descended, and was repeated over and over again.

"There is no movement in the pines," said Mrs. Woods. "It is growing darker. Play on. It does seem as though that strain was stolen from heaven to overcome evil with."

Gretchen played. An hour pa.s.sed, and the moon rose. Then she laid down the violin and listened.

"Oh, Gretchen, he is coming! I know that form. It is Benjamin. He is coming alone. What shall we do? He is--right before the door!"

Gretchen's eye fell upon the musical gla.s.ses, which were among the few things that she had brought from the East and which had belonged to her old German home. She had tuned them early in the evening by pouring water into them, as she had been taught to do in her old German village, and she wet her fingers and touched them to the tender forest hymn:

"Now the woods are all sleeping."

"He has stopped," said Mrs. Woods. "He is listening--play."

The music filled the cabin. No tones can equal in sweetness the musical gla.s.ses, and the trembling nerves of Gretchen's fingers gave a spirit of pathetic pleading to the old German forest hymn. Over and over again she played the air, waiting for the word of Mrs. Woods to cease.

"He is going," said Mrs. Woods, slowly. "He is moving back toward the pines. He has changed his mind, or has gone for his band. You may stop now."

Mrs. Woods watched by the split shutter until past midnight. Then she laid down on the bed, and Gretchen watched, and one listened while the other slept, by turns, during the night. But no footstep was heard. The midsummer sun blazed over the pines in the early morning; birds sang gayly in the dewy air, and Gretchen prepared the morning meal as usual, then made her way to the log school-house.

She found Benjamin there. He met her with a happy face.

"Bad Indian come to your cabin last night," said he. "He mean evil; he hate old woman. She wah-wah too much, and he hate. Bad Indian hear music--violin; he be pleased--evil hawks fly out of him. Good Indian come back. One is tied to the other. One no let the other go. What was that low music I hear? Baby music! Chinook wind in the bushes! Quail--mother-bird singing to her nest! I love that music.

"Say, you play at Potlatch, frighten away the hawks; mother-birds sing. No devil dance. Say, I have been good; no harm old wah-wah. Will you--will you play--play that tin-tin at Potlatch under the big moon?"

A great thought had taken possession of the young Indian's mind, and a great plan--one worthy of a leader of a peace congress. Gretchen saw the plan in part, but did not fully comprehend it. She could only see that his life had become a struggle between good and evil, and that he was now following some good impulse of his better nature.

CHAPTER IV.

MRS. WOODS'S TAME BEAR.

Mrs. Woods was much alone during this summer. Her husband was away from home during the working days of the week, at the saw and s.h.i.+ngle mill on the Columbia, and during the same days Gretchen was much at school.

The summer in the mountain valleys of Was.h.i.+ngton is a long serenity. The deep-blue sky is an ocean of intense light, and the sunbeams glint amid the cool forest shadows, and seem to sprinkle the plains with gold-dust like golden snow. Notwithstanding her hard practical speech, which was a habit, Mrs. Woods loved Nature, and, when her work was done, she often made little journeys alone into the mountain woods.

In one of these solitary excursions she met with a little black cub and captured it, and, gathering it up in her ap.r.o.n like a kitten, she ran with it toward her cabin, after looking behind to see if the mother bear was following her. Had she seen the mother of the cunning little black creature in her ap.r.o.n pursuing her, she would have dropped the cub, which would have insured her escape from danger. But the mother bear did not make an early discovery of the loss in her family. She was probably out berrying, and such experiences of stolen children were wholly unknown to the bear family in Was.h.i.+ngton before this time. The Indians would not have troubled the little cub.

The black bear of the Cascades is quite harmless, and its cubs, like kittens, seem to have a sense of humor unusual among animals. For a white child to see a cub is to desire it to tame for a pet, and Mrs. Woods felt the same childish instincts when she caught up the little creature, which seemed to have no fear of anything, and ran away with it toward her home.

It was Sat.u.r.day evening when she returned, and she found both Mr. Woods and Gretchen waiting to meet her at the door. They were surprised to see her haste and the pivotal turning of her head at times, as though she feared pursuit from some dangerous foe.

Out of breath, she sank down on the log that served for a step, and, opening her ap.r.o.n cautiously, said:

"See here."

"Where did you get that?" said Mr. Woods.

"I stole it."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Raise it."

"What for?"

"For company. I haven't any neighbors."

"But what do you want it for?"

"It is so cunning. It just rolled over in the trail at my feet, and I grabbed it and ran."

"But what if the mother-bear should come after it?" asked Gretchen.

"I would shoot her."

"That would be a strange way to treat your new neighbors," said Mr. Woods.

Mr. Woods put a leather strap around the neck of the little bear, and tied the strap to a log in the yard. The little thing began to be alarmed at these strange proceedings, and to show a disposition to use its paws in resistance, but it soon learned not to fear its captors; its adoption into the s.h.i.+ngle-maker's family was quite easily enforced, and the pet seemed to feel quite at home.

There was some difficulty at first in teaching the cub to eat, but hunger made it a tractable pupil of the berry dish, and Mrs. "Woods was soon able to say:

"There it is, just as good as a kitten, and I would rather have it than to have a kitten. It belongs to these parts."

Poor Mrs. Woods! She soon found that her pet did "belong to these parts,"

and that its native instincts were strong, despite her moral training. She lost her bear in a most disappointing way, and after she supposed that it had become wholly devoted to her.

She had taught it to "roll over" for its dinner, and it had grown to think that all the good things of this world came to bears by their willingness to roll over. Whenever any member of the family appeared at the door, the cub would roll over like a ball, and expect to be fed, petted, and rewarded for the feat.

"I taught it that," Mrs. Woods used to say. "I could teach it anything. It is just as knowing as it is cunning, and lots of company for me out here in the mountains. It thinks more of me than of its old mother. You can educate anything."

As the cub grew, Mrs. Woods's attachment to it increased. She could not bear to see its freedom restrained by the strap and string, and so she untied the string from the log and let it drag it about during the day, only fastening it at night.

"There is no danger of its running away," said she; "it thinks too much of me and the berry dish. I've tamed it completely; it's as faithful to its home as a house-cat, and a great deal more company than a cat or dog or any other dumb animal. The nicest bird to tame is a blue-jay, and the best animal for company is a cub. I do believe that I could tame the whole race of bears if I only had 'em."

Mrs. Woods had a pet blue-jay that she had taken when young from its nest, and it would do many comical things. It seemed to have a sense of humor, like a magpie, and to enjoy a theft like that bird. She finally gave it the freedom of the air, but it would return at her call for food and eat from her hand. The blue-jay is naturally a very wild bird, but when it is tamed it becomes very inquisitive and social, and seems to have a brain full of invention and becomes a very comical pet. Mrs. Woods called her pet bear Little Roll Over.

One day a visitor appeared at the emigrant's cabin. A black she-bear came out of the woods, and, seeing the cub, stood up on her haunches in surprise and seemed to say, "How came you here?" It was evidently the mother of the cub.