Chapter XVI: Bears

The round-up was over, and the boys had all gone to their different ranges; Nares had left for England, and outside the ranche-house stood half-a-dozen ponies saddled and bridled, and tied up to the split-rail fence of the corral. Two more, loaded with flour-sacks, pots and pans, a sack of beans, and a side of bacon, stood with them. Amongst the ponies was the old Cradle, and beside him Dick Wharton's favourite horse. The Bull Pine Firm was just going to start on its travels, and Texan and 'the Judge,' as two of the other cowboys were called, had agreed to accompany the expedition and bring back the ponies after reaching the burnt-wood hills. Old Wharton had determined only to take ponies thus far, except for a couple of baggage-animals for which he carried feed, as by so doing the party would be able to make a short cut through a grassless and difficult mountain country.

As the party stood round, drinking a stirrup-cup to old Wharton's success, Texan was heard to remark:

'Say! this pison's pretty strong.'

'What's the matter with the pison, Texan? What in thunder air you grumbling at now?' said the Judge. 'I reckon it's pretty good rye, anyways.'

'Well, pard, I ain't going to quarrel with the rye; but I ain't drunk, am I? There's no skim milk got into my boots yet, is there?' asked Texan.

'Wal, no,' replied his friend, 'but what are you driving at?'

'Thet's it,' replied Texan, pointing straight overhead, 'but if I didn't think that it must be the "tangle-legs" that done it, I'd say that theer were a balloon. It ain't an eagle, anyway.'

They all looked up, and sure enough far overhead was a big round bubble, as it were, floating rapidly to the north-west. There was no doubt about it. By using their glasses they could even distinguish the car of the balloon, but even Snap's glasses (the best of the lot) could help them no further than that. They could not make out any figure in the car.

'I guess it's a runaway balloon from Chicago or St. Paul,' said Wharton, 'and kicky no one's in it, too. I wish I had the dollars that toy cost, but I reckon no one will ever catch it this side the Rockies.'

For a time they stood watching this ship of the sky drifting ever further and further from their sight, and rising, it seemed to them, ever higher and higher above the earth. At last it faded altogether from their sight, and the sky looked as calm and unruffled as if no lost bark had ever rushed through it.

'It's going our way,' said Wharton, 'pretty straight. I wonder, now, if those superstitious Johnnies one meets sometimes would call that a lucky or an unlucky omen?'

'A deuced unlucky one,' said Snap, 'if it makes us stand here talking and star-gazing any longer. We've got fifty miles between us and our night camp. Let's skip!'

It was a formidable little party which left the ranche that day. Of course, Snap and Wharton and the two Winthrops were armed for a winter campaign. Each carried a Winchester repeating-rifle, and old Wharton would not part with his six-shooter. The boys, not having been brought up to the use of six-shooters, wisely contented themselves with their rifles. Their two companions were also armed with rifles, intending to do a little hunting to supply the ranche with fresh meat on the way home.

For the first few miles the pack-animals were hurried along briskly, partly because everyone's spirits were too high to brook of a slower pace, and partly in order to give those cunning beasts no chance of returning to the home-ranche. In spite, however, of all precautions, and the careful arrangement of a diamond hitch by Texan, one of the ponies managed to get rid of his pack in the first mile. On starting, this animal, a sorrel, had appeared as fat as a brewer's horse, and, in spite of Texan's slaps and kicks, in spite of his knee planted firmly against its barrel, whilst both his strong hands tugged at the lash-rope, the sorrel's waist refused to contract an inch. Once he was fairly on his way, his corpulence vanished as if by magic. With both heels in the air, he shot through his drivers, plunged amongst some timber, dived under a fallen tree which lay across the path about three feet from the ground, left part of his load here--frying-pans without their handles, and kettles with their sides squeezed in--and then with a roll, a squeal, and a final kick left pack and pack-saddle on the track, and departed homewards.

'Guess it ain't much good following that beast,' said Wharton. 'If you don't mind, Snap, your old Cradle is about the only horse in this outfit that will carry a pack, and if you'll let us pack the load on him you can ride my pony. I'll tramp it.'

'Not a bit of it, Wharton,' replied Snap, 'I'm the youngest. I'll walk.'

'Well, we'll walk and ride in turns,' said the old man. 'I don't know that there is much more fun in riding a walking horse in this timber than in tramping it yourself.'

This being arranged, the Cradle took up the load, Snap congratulating himself that by this arrangement his old favourite would go with him all the way to winter quarters.

Upon the second evening the party camped early. You soon tire of beans and bacon, especially when you can see signs of deer on all sides, and the river looks alive with fish.

At three our friends came to an excellent little prairie of half-a-dozen acres, all bright and green with grass. Bound this little forest oasis stood tall bull pines, and across the river, which was within a stone's throw of the camping-ground, the belt of burnt-wood, at which Texan and the Judge were to turn back, commenced.

'I'll tell you what, Dick,' said Texan, 'it won't do to cross the river to-night. We'll say good-bye right here to-morrow morning, and some of us can just run round about and see if we can get any venison for dinner, whilst the others fix the camp. I'll do the camp-fixing myself, if you like. Who else will volunteer?'

Of course everyone said that they would stop and fix the camp; but eventually it was arranged that Wharton and the Judge should take one beat to the west of the camp, while Snap, with young Towzer under his wing, should go towards the east; the other two staying in camp.

The youngest Winthrop begged so hard to go that Snap took compassion on him, although he would infinitely rather have gone out alone.

The course which Snap and Towzer took led them along a fair-sized stream, which joined the main river not far from camp. Towzer had on his first pair of mocassins, and, as the forest was open and the boy light, he made very little noise as he went. Now and then, though, you might have seen him flinch and almost come down with an expression of agony upon his face. He had not yet learnt to feel with his feet, as it were, before putting them down, and had suddenly thrown all his weight on some sharp-pointed snag of dead wood, or merciless flint, which reminded him that an English shooting-boot, although noisy, has its advantages.

Stooping down by the river, Snap looked long and fixedly at a track.

'The cattle have been along here, haven't they, Snap?' asked Towzer. 'Whose cattle would they be?'

'Cattle don't eat fish, as a rule, Towzer,' replied Snap in a whisper, for some of the tracks were pretty fresh; 'and look here, the beasts which made these tracks picked these bones,' and, so saying, he held up the backbone of a large salmon, picked as clean as if it had been prepared as an anatomical specimen.

All along the bank of the stream a regular road was beaten down, one track on another, until at last all was so confused and level that Towzer's mistake was an easy one to make. But on one side of the main path Snap had been able to distinguish a few distinct and separate tracks, and it was as he looked up from one of these that he said:

'No, these aren't cattle, young 'un; these are bears, and a rare big gang of them, too.'

Towzer's first expression of delight rather faded away as he looked behind and round him, where the great bull pines stood grey and silent on all sides, and the further you peered into them the darker looked the gloom of the forest. It was not a pleasant idea that the gloomy, quiet forest might be full of unseen grizzlies.

'Are they grizzlies, do you think, Snap?' asked the boy.

'Can't say for certain,' replied that now experienced hunter, 'but I expect there are some of all sorts about. You see the river is full of salmon, which have run up to spawn, and the bears are down here for the fishing season.'

Leaving the river, Snap and his friend crossed two or three deep dingles, or, as they would call them in America, little canyons, and in half an hour's time were creeping very cautiously along the brow of a ridge through the big trees, on which the light of the sun gleamed redly. That sun was now low in the skies, and every moment Snap expected to catch sight of a stately stag tossing his head and leading his hinds in single file from the timber to the feeding-grounds.

'Halloo,' whispered he, suddenly holding up his hand as a sign for silence to Towzer, 'what is the matter with the robber-birds?'

Towzer listened. A lot of birds just over the ridge were chattering noisily, like jays in an English covert when the beaters are coming through. Snap signed to the boy to follow, and both crept cautiously to the top of the ridge.

On the very top was a kind of table-land, and, looking through the trees with their backs to the sun, neither of our friends could see anything. Creeping back again, Snap ran along the hill and came up to the top of the ridge again in such a position as to have the noisy jays between himself and the sinking sun. For a moment he could still see nothing. Then a stick cracked under his companion's foot, and the quick movement of a dark mass in amongst the pines caught and arrested his attention. He had never seen a grizzly before, but he needed no one to tell him what the great brute was before him, with its whole body on the alert to detect the source of the sound it had heard.

The sun threw a red glow on the scene, which looked like blood about the body of the deer on which the grizzly was feeding. The brute had his claws on his victim's shoulder, from which he was tearing strips of flesh as he lay muttering and growling by its side. As the twig cracked he rose and sat looking over his shoulder in the direction from which the sound came.

Snap remembered old Wharton's words as he looked at the bear: 'Thet's about his favourite position when he once glimpses you, and don't know whether to come or go; but don't you shoot then, there's nothing to hit but his jaw or his shoulder, and you won't kill him quick enough to be safe that way.' Remembering these words, Snap kept his hand off his rifle and waited until the bear should give him a better chance; but before this happened there was a report, which deafened our hero, right by his ear; the bear spun round with a roar, and then stood tearing at the ground and tossing the earth in the air in a paroxysm of rage.

Snap hardly dared to breathe, but if his words were inaudible his lips seemed to say to the reckless youngster beside him, 'Keep still for your life, he may not see you.'

Neither of the boys was well hidden--in fact, Snap was not hidden at all; but by remaining rigid, as if he was cut out of stone, the short-sighted beast did not distinguish him from the pines around him. Luckily, too, he did not notice the smoke curling from Towzer's rifle.

To the boys the bear was plain enough with his back to the sunlight; but they themselves were in shadow.

'Good heavens, there's another!' cried Towzer, in a whisper so audible that the huge, shaggy beast which the unfortunate boy had wounded dropped on all fours and came a dozen yards towards them, stopping again with his sharp, fierce snout in the air, trying to catch the wind of his unseen enemies.

At that moment Snap gave all up as lost, for not only had he seen the bear which had drawn the exclamation from Towzer, but he had seen two other great grey forms amongst the timber on his right. Gripping the boy's arm with nervous hand, he drew him down beside him:

'Towzer, is there any tree on your left that you could get up in less than ten seconds to save your life?'

Snap's white-drawn face showed that he was in earnest, and Towzer looked desperately round. Like Snap, he had spent many a half-holiday at Fernhall birds'-nesting, and with climbing-irons to help him there were very few trees which he could not have climbed in time; but to climb a tree in ten seconds for your life is quite another matter.

'There, there's the best,' cried Snap out loud, pointing to a young bull pine with a lot of short stumps of branches not far from the ground. Of course, they might break off, and then it would be only a bare pole to swarm; but it was the smallest tree, and the best chance, for all that.

'Now run,' shouted Snap, 'run for your life, and don't look back,' and as he spoke he pushed the boy from him and jumped up.

With a roar that sounded like a curse, it was so human in its rage, the bear saw both boys, and half turned towards the running figure. In that moment Snap's rifle rang out and the bear rolled over.

He knew, without looking, that the others had seen him; and one was charging straight at him, while with low, angry growls the other two had trotted into the open. A glance showed him Towzer halfway up his tree. And yet all this was seen at once without an effort, whilst all his strength and attention was devoted to pumping up another cartridge into his Winchester repeater.

There is only one fault in these excellent weapons, and that is a terrible one. In some of the old-fashioned commoner rifles of this sort the cartridges occasionally get jammed. This had happened now to Snap. His rifle had jammed, the empty cartridge would not come out, and there he stood defenceless with a charging bear almost on the top of him.

Grasping the barrel with both hands, he had just time to hurl the useless weapon with all his strength at the head of the grizzly and spring to one side. He had a glimpse of a devilish head, with ears laid back, and fiery eyes, and long white fangs gleaming from a shaggy mass of grey fur, going over him at railroad speed. Instinctively he had rolled away as he fell, as a rider rolls from a fallen horse, and the pace of the bear's charge and the downward slope of the ground had taken the heavy beast past the prostrate boy.

In a moment Snap was on his legs again, and, dodging behind the first tree he came to, he scrambled up it.

'Hurry, Snap, hurry!' shrieked Towzer in a voice of agony, and just as our hero drew up his foot he heard a snort almost against his heel, and a tearing sound as a great flake of bark was torn from the stem of the pine by the claws of the bear.

It was a sight to make any man's flesh creep which met the boy's eyes when he looked down from a point of safety some twenty feet up the pine. Reared on end, his huge claws stretching upwards, his red jaws open, muttering and moaning after the prey which had escaped him, one of the bears leaned against the pine to which Snap clung. Two others, growling from time to time, prowled round and round the foot of the tree, and in the middle of the little plateau the wounded bear kept up a succession of moans and growls as it struggled to its feet and fell back again time after time, dying, but bent on vengeance still.

Towzer was safe in his tree. Snap's rifle lay broken on the ground, and Towzer's with a dozen undischarged cartridges in it lay not far from the wounded bear. 'Ah!' Snap thought, 'if I only had that here!' Towzer, of course, in his desperate flight had thrown away his arms. Even had he had a sling to his rifle it would hardly have been possible to climb with it, and without a sling, and with a grizzly's teeth and claws behind, Towzer did well to drop his weapon and trust to speed and Snap's self-devotion.

'Snap,' Towzer called from his tree, 'I don't think much of this. I can't hold on very long. Are those brutes likely to wait long?'

'All night, I should think,' replied Snap.

This seemed too much for Winthrop, and a silence ensued; the boys clinging desperately to their uncomfortable perches, and the bears prowling up and down like sentries on their beat.

This went on for nearly an hour, and there was no change, and seemed likely to be none. The sun's last red glow was on the forest floor; the uncertain light made the great grey forms which went so silently backwards and forwards look even more horrible and monstrous to the eyes of their hapless victims, but two at any rate of the three were still on guard.

'Let's try a shout for help,' said Towzer; 'all together, Snap!'

'Coo-èy! coo-èy!' cried the boys, and as they cried the great grey forms paused in their silent walk, and sent a chorus of hollow growls to swell the sound. Other growls from the forest shadows, too, told the boys that, though they could only see the wounded bear and another, the others were not far off.

By-and-by the moon rose, and a silver light showed the scene in new and horrible distinctness. The one bear was dead. Stark and stiff he lay by his last victim, and silver light and ebon shadow were distributed evenly over the bodies of bear and stag, murderer and murdered.

A breaking bough and a quick scraping sound broke the silence.

'By Jove, that was a shave!' panted Towzer's young voice.

'What are you at, you little idiot?' cried Snap.

'Jolly nearly fell out of this tree,' replied the boy.

'Went to sleep, I suppose?' said Snap in a tone of disgust.

'I don't know about that,' said Towzer, in a piteous tone, 'but I cannot hold on to these clothes-pegs much longer.'

The clothes-pegs were the short stumps of boughs to which the boy had been clinging.

'Snap, couldn't we make a fight of it? I want my supper,' added Towzer, 'and there's only one bear now.'

'How are we to fight? I've got no rifle, and without that you are more likely to satisfy the bear's appetite than your own,' replied Snap.

'Well, I'll tell you what,' said the reckless youngster, 'I can't stay up here all night if you can, and, if you are game to come down and try for that rifle, I am.'

'How do you mean? The bear would get you before you could get to it. Look at him watching you now. Nice, pleasant face for a photograph, hasn't he?' added Snap.

In spite of the danger and the eeriness of the whole thing, Towzer laughed as he saw the great brute sitting half upright on its hams, its ears cocked sharply up to listen.

'I don't suppose the old brute will understand English,' said Towzer, 'so look here! My tree is an easy one to get up. I can almost swing myself out of a bear's reach from the ground. If you will be ready I'll come down and draw the brute after me. Whilst he hunts me to my tree you dash in and get my rifle. If you are quick and lucky you'll get back before he twigs you. Why, it will be just like prisoner's base, when we were first-form boys at the Dame's school.

'Yes,' muttered Snap, 'with our lives for forfeit if we are caught! Well, all right, Towzer,' he cried aloud, 'are you sure you can get back safely?'

'Yes, never mind me,' sang out Towzer; 'look here!'

And, sliding down, the boy just touched the ground, and as the bear rose swung himself back again, chuckling, 'Don't you wish you may get it?'

'All right, then, if you have made up your mind let us do it now; give me a moment to slide down close to the ground,' shouted Snap; 'keep the bear looking at you for a moment.'

'All right,' answered the young 'un, rattling about amongst the bushes with his leg as he hung from the lowest bough of his tree.

The bear was up, and coming slowly towards Towzer, growling horribly. The boy's blood ran cold, but he had given his word to Snap, and he did not mean to go back.

'Now!' shouted Snap.

At the cry the bear turned round towards Snap, and as he did so Towzer dropped to the ground and ran forward into the open with a shout.

For a moment the bear hesitated, then, with a roar that shook the pines, dashed at him. Towzer turned, and never in all his life, not even when he made his celebrated 'run-in' for the school-house with the football under his arm, did he go so fast or dodge so nimbly as he did that night.

As Towzer turned, Snap's lithe figure slipped noiselessly through the moonlight, and, not daring to look at anything else, dashed straight at the rifle.

Did the dead bear move, or was it only fancy? Fancy, surely! And now he had his hand on the rifle and turned to see a ghastly sight. Towzer stretched up at his bough and missed it. The bear was just behind, there was no time for another effort, and the boy was driven past his one chance of safety. Catching at the trunk of a big bull pine, Towzer swung round it, dodged the bear, and once more tried for his tree. This time he reached the bough, but even then, blown as he was, the bear must have reached and pulled him down, had not a ball from Snap's rifle broken the brute's spine as he reared up on end to make his attack.

Utterly spent, Towzer dropped back beside the bear and staggered across to where Snap still lay, his rifle resting on the body of the first bear, from behind which he had just fired. Together the boys sat and looked at one another, too shaken and tired to speak.

At last, Towzer, looking anxiously round, said, 'Those others won't come back, will they?'

'I don't know; if they do, I hope they will put us out of our misery quickly. I didn't know that I had any nerves before, but they are jumping like peas in a frying-pan to-night. Let's go.'

And very cautiously they went, creeping through the dim aisles of the forest, starting at every sound, and far more frightened at the meeting than was even the big stag which met them face to face just before they got clear of the timber. They never even thought of firing at him, although he was so fair a shot, and his great sides shook with inches of fat, until the camp-fire shone through the trees, and then it was too late to remember that they had gone out for venison and come back without any.

'Well, Towzer, I suppose we must put up with beans and bacon again to-night--unless,' with a grin, 'you'd care to go down and catch us a salmon, or fetch a steak from the dead stag up there,' said Snap, pointing back over his shoulder.

But Towzer had had enough sport for one day, and did not volunteer; and, indeed, it was not necessary, for the others had killed a hind, and the boys told their story in short, broken sentences, with a savoury rib in one hand and a pannikin of tea in the other. They almost thought bear-shooting good sport by the time they had finished supper.