Bears I Have Met--and Others Part 7

Boston tried to resume the camp-fire stories, but the grizzled hunter was thinking of something else and replied with monosyllables. Soon he arose, made up his pack, threw his rolled blanket over his shoulder and picked up his rifle. Boston, in some surprise, urged him to remain, and reminded him of the arrangement for the next day's hunt. There was a slight movement of Doctor Tom's head, and he seemed about to arise, but the almost imperceptible tension of his limbs instantly relaxed, and he remained apparently indifferent and unheeding.

"Fact is," said the stranger, "I forgot that I'd got to be up to Hood River to-morrow, and I reckon I'll just mosey along to-night so as to make it. I know the trail with my eyes shut." He was about to stride out of camp, when his eye caught Doctor Tom's old musket leaning against the tree. "You don't shoot with this?" he asked with a little, uneasy laugh, as he picked up the ancient piece and toyed with the lock. Boston laughingly replied, "Well, hardly," and the stranger replaced the gun, said "So long," and was lost in the gloom.

It was ten minutes before Doctor Tom moved, and then he got his musket and brought it to the fire. He lifted the hammer, removed the cap, and taking a pin from his waist band worked at the nipple until he extracted a splinter of wood. Then he drew the charge, blew down the barrel to see that it was clear and reloaded the musket. Doctor Tom took some smoked salmon from his pouch, made a cup of coffee and silently ate his supper, and Boston began to comprehend that there was a reason for his refusal to eat while the stranger was in camp. But it was useless to try to make Doctor Tom talk until he had smoked, and Boston waited patiently.

At last Doctor Tom said, abruptly, "You know um?" Boston replied that he did not know the stranger, told briefly how he came into camp, and by adroit questioning drew, in laconic sentences, a story from the taciturn Indian.

The man was a hunter, who had been a famous bear-killer many years ago.

In the days of muzzle-loaders he had two rifles, one of which was always carried for him by an Indian whom he hired for that service. If his first shot failed to kill, he handed the empty rifle to the Indian to exchange for the second weapon, and usually brought down his bear while the Indian was reloading. A member of Doctor Tom's tribe, probably a relative, was gun-bearer for the hunter on one of his expeditions. They ran across a she-bear with cubs and the hunter shot her, but the wound only stung her, and she rushed fiercely upon him.

The second shot did not stop her, and the hunter and the Indian had to turn and run for their lives.

But a Grizzly in a rage can outrun any man in a long race, and the angry she-bear rapidly overhauled her foes. The white man and the Indian ran side by side, although the Indian could have outstripped him. The red man had his knife in hand ready for the moment when the bear should seize one of them. The white man glanced over his shoulder, saw the bear lurching along within one jump of them, seized the Indian by the shoulders and hurled him backward into the very jaws of the furious brute. The white man escaped with his life, and the Indian lived just long enough to tell those who found him, a torn and b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.s of flesh and broken bones, how he had been sacrificed to a coward's love of life.

Doctor Tom told this in his uncouth jargon of English and Chinook, without a tremor, but his black eyes glowed with a gleam of light not reflected from the dying embers of the campfire, and Boston was glad that the stranger had gone. Then he knew why Doctor Tom sat silently apart and would taste no food while the stranger was in camp. The stranger might accept Boston's hospitality and eat salt with him, but the Indian would not acknowledge by any act that he, Doctor Tom, had any interest in that camp, or bind himself by Indian custom to treat the stranger as his guest.

Boston awoke in the still dark hours before dawn and lay thinking over Doctor Tom's story and the demeanor of the man who had wandered into camp. A cry clove through the silence of the night like a lightning flash through a black cloud, and as the gloom becomes deeper after the flash, so the silence seemed more intense and oppressive after that cry. It came from across the canyon, clear and far, a cry of mortal terror.

It is a panther, thought Boston, and he listened for its repet.i.tion or an answer from the mate, but the stillness was unbroken. He turned over to see if Doctor Tom had heard or noticed it, and thought the dark bundle by the side of the log seemed rather small for the sleeping Indian. Boston got up and walked over to the log. Doctor Tom's blanket only was there. Boston looked for the musket; it was in its old place against the tree. His own rifle was undisturbed. Boston concluded that Doctor Tom had gone for water or was off on some incomprehensible Indian freak, the reason of which was not worth a white man's time to puzzle out, rolled up in his blanket again and became oblivious to the realities around him.

It was daylight when Boston awoke again. Doctor Tom had not returned.

Boston made a fire, and while cooking breakfast he noticed that the Indian's long knife was gone from the log where he had left it sticking after supper. He halloed to Tom, but received no answer save the echo.

Calmly confident of Doctor Tom's ability to look out for himself, Boston went about his business without more ado, ate his breakfast and was taking a second cup of coffee when Doctor Tom came into camp, silent and grave as usual, but rather paler. He came from the direction of the canyon.

The Indian drank some coffee and then carefully took his left arm with his right hand from the bosom of his s.h.i.+rt, where it had been resting, and said, "Broke um." Boston examined the arm and found that it was badly bruised and broken above the elbow. He heated some water and bathed the arm and then told Tom to brace his breast against a tree and hold on with his right arm. Boston took hold of the left arm on the opposite side of the tree, braced his feet and pulled. Rough splints were soon made and applied, and a big horn of whiskey made Doctor Tom feel more comfortable. While making the splints Boston asked Tom for his knife, having carefully mislaid his own. "Lose um," said Doctor Tom, but he offered no more explanation. When asked how he broke his arm, he replied, "Fall down." Evidently he had fallen down, but there were five odd-looking marks on his throat, and Boston thought of that cry in the night and wondered if the whispering firs could tell of another mystery hidden in the forest; of a menacing shadow d.o.g.g.i.ng the footsteps of a man and grappling with him in the dark.

Boston and Doctor Tom broke camp and started back over the mountain on the Hood River trail. Boston was in the lead, and as he walked along he looked closely for the tracks of the stranger's boots, as he had said he was going to Hood River. There were no tracks. The stranger had not gone over that trail.

CHAPTER XV.

A CAMPFIRE SYMPOSIUM.

"Speaking of bears, Joe," said one of a party of hunters sitting around a campfire at old Fort Tejon, "Old Ari Hopper has had more queer experiences with bears than anybody. He has given up hunting now, but he used to be the greatest bear-killer in the mountains. Ari has a voice like a steam, fog-horn--the effects of drinking a bottle of lye one night by mistake for something else, and when he speaks in an ordinary tone you can hear him several blocks away. You can always tell when Ari comes to town as soon as he strikes the blacksmith's shop up at the cross-roads and says, 'Holloa' to the smith. Ari was out on the Alamo mountain one day and got treed by a big black bear--"

"A black bear on the Alamo?" interrupted Dad. "There ain't nothing but Grizzlies and Cinnamons over there. I was over there once--"

"Hold on, Dad, it's my turn yet. You never heard of a Grizzly climbing a tree, did you?"

"Oh, well, if you've got to have your bear go up a tree, all right.

We'll call it a black bear. Besides, if it's one of Ari's bear stories, anything goes."

"The bear treed Ari," resumed the other, "and just climbed up after him in a hurry. Ari went up as high as he could and then s.h.i.+nned out on a long limb. The bear followed, and Art kept inching out until he got as far as he dared trust his weight. The bear was climbing out after him and the limb was bending too much for safety when Ari yelled at the bear: 'Go back, you d----d fool. You'll break this limb and kill both of us. Want to break your cussed neck, goldarn ye?'

"Well, sir, that bear stopped, looked at Ari, and then down to the ground, and then he just backed along the limb to the trunk, slid down and lit out for the brush. Ari swears that the bear understood him.

Bears have a heap of sabe, but I'm inclined to think that it was Ari's stentorian roar that scared him away."

"That's one of Art's fairy tales," said Joe. "Let Ari tell it, and he has had more bear fights and killed more Grizzlies than anybody, but the fact is that his brother-in-law, Jim Freer, did all the killing.

You never heard of Ari going bear hunting without Jim. When they'd find any bears Ari would go up a tree and Jim would stand his ground and do up the bear. Jim never gets excited in a scrimmage, and he's a dead shot. He'll stand in his tracks and wait for a bear, and when the brute gets near him he'll raise his rifle as steadily as though he were at a turkey shoot and put the bullet in the exact spot every time. If that had been the piebald Grizzly of the Piru that treed Art, he wouldn't have scared him out of the tree."

"What's the piebald Grizzly?" inquired Dad in an incredulous tone. "I never heard of no such bear as that."

"Oh, you needn't think I'm lying. I wouldn't lie about bears."

"How about deer?"

"Well, that's different. I never knew a hunter or any chap that likes a gun and a tramp in the mountains who wouldn't lie about a deer except Jim Bowers. He doesn't lie worth a cent. Why Bowers will go out after venison, come back without a darned thing, and then tell how many deer he shot at and missed. I've known him to miss a sleeping deer at thirty yards and come into camp and tell all about it. When I do a thing like that I come back and lie about it. I swear I haven't seen a deer all day long."

"If you told the truth," said Dad, "we'd hear nothing but deer stories--the missing kind--all night."

"That's all right, but I'm telling about bears now. This bear I speak of is a big Grizzly that some people call Old Clubfoot. Jim Freer knows him better than anybody, I reckon. Jim got caught in a mountain fire over on the Frazier one day, and he had to hunt for water pretty lively. He found a pool about five yards across down in a gully, and he jumped in there and laid down in the water. He hadn't more than got settled when the big piebald bear came tearing along ahead of the fire and plunged into the same pool. It was no time to be particular about bedfellows, and the bear lay right down alongside of Jim in the water.

They laid there pretty near half an hour as sociable as old maids at a tea party, and neither one offered to touch the other. The bear kept one eye on Jim and Jim kept both eyes on the bear, and as soon as the fire had pa.s.sed Jim crawled out and scooted for camp, leaving the Grizzly in soak."

"Did you ever see that piebald Pinto of the Piru?" inquired Dad.

"Did I ever see him? Well, I had the d---dest time with him I ever had in my life except the day I was chased by a spotted mountain lion on Pine Mountain. I was hunting deer over on the Mutaw when I saw Old Clubfoot in the brush and fired at him. He turned and rushed towards me and I had just time enough to get up a tree. The tree was a pinon about a foot thick and would have been a safe refuge from any other bear, and I felt all right perched about twenty feet from the ground.

But Old Clubfoot is different from other bears. He's a persistent, wicked old cuss, and would just as soon sit down at the foot of a tree and starve a man out as hunt sheep. He came up to the tree, looked it all over, sized it up, and then stood on his hind legs and took a good hold of the trunk with his arms. He couldn't quite reach me, and at first I thought he was going to climb up, which made me laugh, but I didn't laugh long. The old bear began to shake that tree until it rocked like a reed in a gale, and I had all I could do to hold on with arms and legs. It's a fact that he pretty nearly made me seasick. He shook the tree for about ten minutes, and when he saw that it was a little too stout and that he couldn't shake me down, he began tearing the trunk at the base with his teeth and claws. The way he made the bark and splinters fly was something surprising. He gnawed about half way through, and there was a wicked glitter in his little green eyes as he stood up to take another grip on the tree. I saw that he'd shake me down sure that time, and I got ready to take the last desperate chance for life. Looking around, I noticed a barranca, or gully, twenty feet wide about a hundred yards away, and I determined to make for that. If I could reach the bank, jump across and get to some heavy timber on the other side, I would be all right. Twenty feet is a big jump and I knew the bear couldn't make it. It was doubtful if I could, but a man will do some astonis.h.i.+ng things when he's at the head of a procession of that sort. When the Grizzly began to shake, I took a firm hold on the big limb with my hands and swung clear of the trunk. He made that tree snap like a whip, and as it swayed over toward the barranca I threw my feet out ahead and I let go. I shot through the air like a stone out of a sling, and struck the ground nearly fifty yards from the tree. It was that fifty yards that saved me, for by the time I had picked myself up and started on a run the bear was coming h.e.l.litywhoop. I ran like a scared wolf and I think my momentum would have carried me across the barranca if the bank had been firm, but the earth caved under me as I took off for the leap, and down I went into the gully under a ma.s.s of loose earth. I reckon there was about a ton of dirt on top of me, and I was in danger of being smothered under it. I couldn't move a limb and I'd have pa.s.sed in my chips right there and been reckoned among the mysterious disappearances if it hadn't been for the bear. The piebald Grizzly of the Piru saved my life."

"Did he dig you out?" asked Dad, grinning.

"That's what he did."

"And then he ate you up, I suppose?"

"No; I'm coming to that. The bear came tumbling down into the barranca on top of the dirt and he began to dig right away. He was as good as a steam paddy, and in a few moments I was able to get a breath of air. I was wondering-which would be the worse, smothering or being chewed up by a bear, when he raked the dirt off my head and I saw daylight. I shut my eyes, thinking I would play dead as a last ruse, when I heard a roar and a rush. There was a trembling of the ground, a dull, heavy shock, and I felt something warm on my face. At the same moment I heard a growl of rage and surprise from the bear and felt relieved of his weight above me. A terrific racket followed. As soon as I could free myself from the dirt, I crawled out cautiously and saw a strange thing. A big black bull, the boss of the Mutaw ranch, had charged on the Grizzly and knocked him over just in time to save me. One of his horns had gored the bear's neck, and it was the warm blood that I felt on my face. They were old enemies, each bore scars of wounds inflicted by the other, and they were having a battle royal down there in the barranca."

"Which licked?" inquired Dad, eagerly.

"I don't know. I'd had enough bear fight for one day, and I lit out for camp and left them clawing and charging and tearing up the ground.

I didn't see any necessity for remaining as referee of that scrimmage.

You remember, father, that I came into camp covered with blood, and that you thought I had been monkeying with a mountain lion."

"Ye-es, I recollect the circ.u.mstances, but I never heard about the bear and bull episode before. I seem to have sort of a dim notion that you were packing a deer home on your back and fell into a barranca with it and lost it in a mud slough, but perhaps I'm mistaken. You forgot to tell me the facts, I guess."

"Shouldn't wonder," said Dad; "Joe does sometimes forget to tell the facts, but he wouldn't lie about a bear."

"I haven't forgotten the facts about your bear trap in Sonoma,"

retorted Joe.

"I allow that little accident never lost anything by your telling.

'Taint worth telling nohow. You'd better turn in and go to sleep and not be telling durn lies about folks that's old enough to be your great-grandfather, but ain't too old yet to give ye a licking, b'gos.h.!.+

Don't ye go to fergittin' that I'm a constable, and can arrest people who use language cal'lated to provoke a breach of the peace."

"Dad was a devil of a bear catcher," continued Joe, "and once he built a big trap up in Sonoma. The door weighed about three hundred pounds, and it took two men and a crowbar to lift it. Dad had fixed it so that no bear in Sonoma could raise it from the inside. It was a bully trap, and when it was all finished Dad set the trigger and went inside to tie the bait on. He forgot to prop the door, and as soon as he monkeyed with the trigger he set it off and down came the door with a bang. It worked beautifully.

"When Dad realized that he had caught himself he was sorry he had made such a solid door. He couldn't think of any way of getting out, and there wasn't n.o.body within five miles. Dad yelled for about an hour and then quit. After a while he heard something coming, and thinking it might be a neighbor riding along the trail, he shouted again.

Peering out between' the logs he saw two bears in the moonlight making straight for the trap, and he stopped his noise. The bears came up, sniffed all around, smelt Dad and the bait and began clawing at the logs to get inside. Then Dad was sorry he hadn't built the trap stronger and used heavier logs. He tried to scare the bears by yelling, but the more he yelled, the harder they dug to get at him, and it wasn't long before he heard a mountain lion answering his shout and coming nearer every minute. The lion came down off the mountain, jumped on top of the trap and began tearing at the log's up there. He got his paw down through the trigger-hole, and Dad had to go to the other end of the trap to keep out of reach. Then the bears got the logs torn so that they could reach in between them in two or three places, and they kept Dad on the jump inside. Before morning there was another lion and three more bears at work on the Dad-trap, and they'd have got him by noon that next day if a party of hunters hadn't come along and scared them away. These are the facts, but Dad used to tell it differently.