Chapter VIII: The Saving of Boy's Pond (3)

There was no light in the shack, except a faint red gleam from the open draft of the stove, and the gray pallor of the night sky glimmering in through the little window. The woman was so faint with fear that she dared not search for the candles, but leaned panting against the wall and staring at the window as if she expected the bear to look in at her. She was brought to her senses in a moment, however, by the baby beginning to cry. In the race for the shack, he had lost his lump of sugar, and now he realized how uncomfortable he was. The woman seated herself on the bench by the stove and began to nurse him, all the time keeping her eyes on the pale square of the window.

When the door was slammed in his face, the bear had backed away in apprehension and paused to study the shack. But at the sound of the baby's voice he seemed to realize that here, at least, were some individuals of the dreaded man tribe who were not dangerous. He came forward and sniffed loudly along the crack of the door till the woman's heart stood still. He leaned against it, tentatively, till it creaked, but the latch and hinges held. Then he prowled around the shack, examining it carefully, and doubtless expecting to find an open entrance somewhere. In his experience, all caves and dens had entrances. At last the window caught his attention. The woman heard the scratching of his claws on the rough outer boarding as he raised himself. Then the window was darkened by a great black head looking in.

Throwing the baby into the bunk, the woman snatched from the stove a blazing stick, rushed to the window with it, and made a wild thrust at the dreadful face. With a crash the glass flew to splinters, and the black face disappeared. The bear was untouched, but the fiery weapon had taught him discretion. He drew back with an angry growl, and sat down on his haunches as if to see what the woman would do next. She, for her part, after this victory, grew terribly afraid of setting the dry shack on fire; so she hurriedly returned the snapping, sparkling brand to the stove. Thereupon the bear resumed his ominous prowling, round and round the shack, sometimes testing the foundations and the door with massive but stealthy paw, sometimes sniffing loudly at the cracks; and the woman returned to the comforting of the baby.

In time the little one, fed full and cherished, went to sleep. Then, with nothing left to occupy her mind but the terrors of her situation, the woman found those stealthy scratchings and sniffings, and the strain of the silences that fell between, were more than she could endure. At first, she thought of getting a couple of blazing sticks, throwing open the shack door, and deliberately attacking her besieger. But this idea she dismissed as quite too desperate and futile. Then she remembered that bears were fond of sweets. A table in the corner was heaped with great, round cakes of fragrant sugar, the shape of the pans in which they had been cooled. One of these she snatched up, and threw it out of the window. The bear promptly came around to see what had dropped, and fell upon the offering with such ardour that it vanished between his great jaws in half a minute. Then he came straight to the window for more, and the woman served it out to him without delay.

The beast's appetite for maple-sugar was amazing, and as the woman saw the sweet store swiftly disappearing, her fear began to be tempered with indignation. But when her outraged frugality led her to delay the dole, her tormentor came at the window so savagely that she made all haste to supply him, and fell to wondering helplessly what she should do when the sugar was all gone.

As she stood at the window, watching fearfully the vague, monstrous shape of the animal as he pawed and gnawed at the last cake, suddenly, far across the shadowy valley, a red light leaped into the sky. For a moment the woman stared at it with an absent mind, absorbed in her own trouble, yet noticing how black and sharp, like giant spears upthrust in array, the tops of the firs stood out against the glow. For a moment she stood so staring. Then she realized where that wild light came from. With a cry she turned, rushed to the door, and tore it open. But as the dark of the forest confronted her, she remembered! Slamming and latching the door again, she rushed madly back to the window, and stood there clutching the frame with both hands, praying, and sobbing, and raving.

And the bear, having finished the sugar, sat up on his haunches to gaze intently, ears cocked and jaws half open, at that far-off, fiery brightness in the sky of night.

As the keen tongues of flame shot over the treetops, the woman clutched at her senses, and tried to persuade herself that it was the barn, not the house, that was burning. It was, in truth, quite impossible to discern, at that distance, which it was. It was not both; of that she was certain. She also told herself that, if it _was_ the house, it was too early for the children to be asleep; and even if they _were_ asleep, Jake would wake them; and presently some neighbours, who were not more than a mile away, would come to comfort their fears and shelter them. She would not allow herself to harbour the awful thought that the fire might have caught the children in their sleep. Nevertheless, do what she could to fight it away, the hideous suggestion kept clamouring at her brain, driving her to a frenzy. Had she been alone in this crisis, the great beast watching and prowling outside the shack would have had no terrors for her. But the baby! She could not run fast with that burden. She could not leave him behind in the bunk, for the bear would either climb in the window or batter in the door when she was gone. Yet to stand idle and watch those leaping flames--that way lay madness. Again her mind reverted to the blazing brand with which she had driven the bear from the window. If she took one big enough and carried it with her, the bear would probably not dare even to follow her. She sprang eagerly to the stove, but the fire was already dying down. It was nothing but a heap of coals, and in her stress she had not noticed how cold it had grown in the shack. She looked for wood, but there was none. She had forgotten to bring in an armful from the pile over by the sugar-boiler. Well, the plan had been an insane one, hopeless from the first. But, at least, it had been a plan. The failure of it seemed to leave her tortured brain a blank. But the cold--that was an impression that pierced her despair. She went to the bunk, and covered the sleeping baby with warm blankets. As she leaned over him, she heard the bear again, sniffing, sniffing along the crack at the bottom of the door. She almost laughed--that the beast should want anything more after all that sugar! Then she felt herself sinking, and clutched at the edge of the bunk to save herself. She would lie down by the baby! But instead of that she sank upon the floor in a huddled heap.

Her swoon must have passed imperceptibly into the heavy sleep of emotional exhaustion, for she lay unstirring for some hours. The crying of the little one awoke her.

Stiff, half frozen, utterly dazed, she pulled herself up to the bunk, nursed the child, and soothed him again to sleep. Then the accumulation of anguish which had overwhelmed her rolled back upon her understanding. She staggered to the window.

The dreadful illumination across the valley had died down to a faint ruddiness, just seen through the thin tops of the firs. The fire--whether it had been the barn or the house--had burned itself out. Whatever had happened, it was over. As she stood shuddering, unable to think, not daring to think, her eyes rested upon the bear, huge and formless in the gloom, staring at her, not ten feet away. She answered the stare fixedly, no longer aware of fearing him. Then she saw him turn his head suddenly, as if he had heard something. And the next moment he had faded away swiftly and noiselessly into the darkness, like a startled partridge. She heard quick footsteps coming up the trail. A dog's fierce growl broke into a bark of warning. That was Jake's bark! She almost threw herself at the door, and tore it open.

* * * * *

Dave Stone had got back from the settlement earlier than he expected, driving furiously the last two miles of his journey, with his eyes full of the red light of that burning, his heart gripped with intolerable fear. He had found his good barn in flames, but the children safe, the house untouched, the stock rescued. The children, prompt and resourceful as the children of the backwoods have need to be, had loosed the cattle from the stanchions and got them out in time. Neighbours, hurrying up in response to the flaming summons, had found the children watching the blaze enthusiastically from the doorstep, as if it had been arranged for their amusement. Seeing matters so much better than they might have been, Dave was struck with a new apprehension, because Mandy had not returned. It was hardly conceivable that she had failed to see the flames from the window of the shack! Then why had she not come? Followed by Jake, he had taken the camp trail at a run to find out what was the matter.

As he drew near the shack, the darkness of it chilled him with dread. No firelight gleam showed out from the window! And no red glow came from the boiling-shed! The fire had been allowed to die out under the sugar-pot! As the significance of this dawned upon him, his keen woodsman's eyes seemed to detect through the dark a shape of thicker blackness gliding past the shack and into the woods. At the same moment Jake growled, barked shortly, and dashed past him, with the hair bristling along his neck.

The man's blood went to ice, as he sprang to the door of the shack, crying in a terrible voice: "Mandy! Mandy! Where are--" But before the question was out of his mouth, the door leaped open, and Mandy was on his neck, shaking and sobbing.

"The children?" she gasped.

"Why, _they're_ all right, mother!" replied the man cheerfully. "It was only the barn--an' they got the critters out all safe! But what's wrong here? An' what's kep' you? An' didn't you--"

But he was not allowed to finish his questionings, for the woman was crying and laughing and strangling him with her wild clasp. "Oh, Dave!" she managed to exclaim. "It was the bear--as tried to git us--all night long! An' he's et up every crum of the last bilin'."

THE RETURN OF THE MOOSE

"TO the best of my knowledge, ther' ain't been no moose seen this side the river these eighteen year back."

The speaker, a heavy-shouldered, long-legged backwoodsman, paused in his task of digging potatoes, leaned on the handle of his broad-tined digging fork, and bit off a liberal chew from his plug of black tobacco. His companion, digging parallel with him on the next row, paused sympathetically, felt in his trousers' pocket for his own plug of "black jack," and cast a contemplative eye up the wide brown slope of the potato-field toward the ragged and desolate line of burnt woods which crested the hill.

The woods, a long array of erect, black, fire-scarred rampikes, appeared to scrawl the very significance of solitude against the lonely afternoon sky. The austerity of the scene was merely heightened by the yellow glow of a birch thicket at the further upper corner of the potato-field, and by the faint tints of violet light that flowed over the brown soil from a pallid and fading sunset. As the sky was scrawled by the gray-and-black rampikes, so the slope was scrawled by zigzag lines of gray-and-black snake fence, leading down to three log cabins, with their cluster of log barns and sheds, scattered irregularly along a terrace of the slope. A quarter of a mile further down, beyond the little gray dwellings, a sluggish river wound between alder swamps and rough wild meadows.

As the second potato-digger was lifting his plug of tobacco to his mouth, his hand stopped half way, and his grizzled jaw dropped in astonishment. For a couple of seconds he stared at the ragged hill-crest. Then, it being contrary to his code to show surprise, he bit off his chew, returned the tobacco to his pocket, and coolly remarked: "Well, I reckon they've come back."

"What do you mean?" demanded the first speaker, who had resumed his digging.

"There be your moose, after these eighteen year!" said the other.

Standing out clear of the dead forest, and staring curiously down upon the two potato-diggers, were three moose,--a magnificent, black, wide-antlered bull, an ungainly brown cow, and a long-legged, long-eared calf. A potato-field, with men digging in it, was something far apart from their experience and manifestly filled them with interest.

"Keep still now, Sandy," muttered the first speaker, who was wise in the ways of the wood-folk. "Keep still till they git used to us. Then we'll go for our guns."

The men stood motionless for a couple of minutes, and the moose came further into the open in order to get a better look at them. Then, leaving their potato forks standing in their furrows, the men strode quietly down the field, down the rocky pasture lane, and into the nearest house. Here the man called Sandy got down his gun,--an old muzzle-loading, single-barrelled musket,--and hurriedly loaded it with buckshot; while the other, who was somewhat the more experienced hunter, ran on to the next cabin and got his big Snider rifle. The moose, meanwhile, having watched the men fairly indoors, turned aside and fell to browsing on the tiny poplar saplings which grew along the top of the field.

Saying nothing to their people in the houses, after the reticent backwoods fashion, Sandy and Lije strolled carelessly down the road till the potato-field was hidden from sight by a stretch of young second-growth spruce and fir. Up through this cover they ran eagerly, bending low, and gained the forest of rampikes on top of the hill. Here they circled widely, crouching in the coarse weeds and dodging from trunk to trunk, until they knew they were directly behind the potato-field. Then they crept noiselessly outward toward the spot where they had last seen the moose. The wind was blowing softly into their faces, covering their scent; and their dull gray homespun clothes fitted the colour of the desolation around them.

Now it chanced that the big bull had changed his mind, and wandered back among the rampikes, leaving the cow and calf at their browsing among the poplars. The woodsmen, therefore, came upon him unexpectedly. Not thirty yards distant, he stood eying them with disdainful curiosity, his splendid antlers laid back while he thrust forward his big, sensitive nose, trying to get the wind of these mysterious strangers. There was menace in his small, watchful eyes, and altogether his appearance was so formidable that the hunters were just a trifle flurried, and fired too hastily. The big bullet of Lije's Snider went wide, while a couple of Sandy's buckshot did no more than furrow the great beast's shoulder. The sudden pain and the sudden monstrous noise filled him with rage, and, with an ugly grunting roar, he charged.

"Up a tree, Sandy!" yelled Lije, setting the example. But the bull was so close at his heels that he could not carry his rifle with him. He dropped it at the foot of the tree, and swung himself up into the dead branches just in time to escape the animal's rearing plunge.

Sandy, meanwhile, had found himself in serious plight, there being no suitable refuge just at hand. Those trees which were big enough had had no branches spared by the fire. He had to run some distance. Just as he was hesitating as to what he should do, and looking for a rock or stump behind which he might hide while he reloaded his gun, the moose caught sight of him, forgot about Lije, and came charging through the weeds. Sandy had no more time for hesitation. He dropped his unwieldy musket, and clambered into a blackened and branchy hackmatack, so small that he feared the rush of the bull might break it down. It did, indeed, crack ominously when the headlong bulk reared upon it; but it stood. And Sandy felt as if every branch he grasped were an eggshell.

Seeing that the bull's attention was so well occupied, Lije slipped down the further side of his tree and recaptured his Snider. He had by this time entirely recovered his nerve, and now felt master of the situation. Having slipped in a new cartridge he stood forth boldly and waited for the moose to offer him a fair target. As the animal moved this way and that, he at length presented his flank. The big Snider roared; and he dropped with a ball through his heart, dead instantly. Sandy came down from his little tree, and touched the huge dark form and mighty antlers with admiring awe.

In the meantime, the noise of the firing had thrown the cow and calf into a panic. Since the woods behind them were suddenly filled with such thunders, they could not flee in that direction. But far below them, down the brown slopes and past the gray cabins, they saw the river gleaming among its alder thickets. There was the shelter they craved; and down the fields they ran, with long, shambling, awkward strides that took them over the ground at a tremendous pace. At the foot of the field they blundered into the lane leading down to Sandy's cabin.

Now, as luck would have it, Sandy had that summer decided to build himself a frame house to supplant the old log cabin. As a preliminary, he had dug a spacious cellar, just at the foot of the lane. It was deep as well as wide, being intended for the storage of many potatoes. And, in order to prevent any of the cattle from falling into it, he had surrounded it with a low fence which chanced to be screened along the upper side with a rank growth of burdock and other barnyard weeds.

When the moose cow reached this fence, she hardly noticed it. She was used to striding over obstacles. Just now her heart was mad with panic, and her eyes full of the gleam of the river she was seeking. She cleared the fence without an effort--and went crashing to the bottom of the cellar. Not three paces behind her came the calf.

By this time, of course, all the little settlement was out, and the flight of the cow and calf down the field had been followed with eager eyes. Everyone ran at once to the cellar. The unfortunate cow was seen to have injured herself so terribly by the plunge that, without waiting for the owner of the cellar to return, the young farmer from the third cabin jumped down and ended her suffering with a butcher knife. The calf, however, was unhurt. He stood staring stupidly at his dead mother and showed no fear of the people that came up to stroke and admire him. He seemed so absolutely docile that when Sandy and Lije came proudly down the hill to tell of their achievement, Sandy declared that the youngster should be kept and made a pet of.

"Seems to me," he said to Lije, "that seein' as the moose had been so long away, we hain't treated them jest right when they come back. I feel like we'd ought to make it up to the little feller."

FROM THE TEETH OF THE TIDE

HITHERTO, ever since he had been old enough to leave the den, the mother bear had been leading her fat black cub inland, among the tumbled rocks and tangled spruce and pine, teaching him to dig for tender roots and nose out grubs and beetles from the rotting stumps. To-day, feeling the need of saltier fare, she led him in the opposite direction, down through a cleft in the cliffs, and out across the great, red, glistening mud-flats left bare by the ebb of the terrific Fundy tides.

From the secure warmth of his den the cub had heard, faint and far off, the waves thundering along the bases of the cliffs, when the tide was high and the great winds drew heavily in from sea. The sound had always made him afraid; and to-day, though there was no wind, and the tide was so far out that it made no noise but a soft whisper, silken and persuasive, he held back with babyish timidity, till his mother brought him to his senses with an unceremonious cuff on the side of the head. With a squall of grieved surprise he picked himself up, shaking his head as if he had a bee in his ear, and then made haste to follow obediently, close at his mother's huge black heels.

From the break in the cliffs, where the bears came down, ran a ledge of shelving rocks on a long, gradual slant across the flats toward the edge of low water. The tide was nearing the last of the ebb; and now, the slope of the shore being very gradual, and the difference between high and low water in these turbulent channels something between forty and fifty feet, the lapsing fringes of the ebb, yellow-tawny with silt, were a good three-quarters of a mile away from the foot of the cliffs. The vast spaces between were smooth, oily, copper-red mud, shining and treacherous in the sun with the narrow black outcrop of the ledge drawn across on so gentle a slant that before it reached the water it was running almost on a parallel with the shoreline.

Along the rocky ledge the old bear led the way, pausing to nose at a patch of seaweed here and there or to glance shrewdly into the shallow pools among the rocks. The cub obediently followed her example, though doubtless with no idea of what he might hope to find. But the upper stretches of the ledge, near high-water mark, offered nothing to reward their quest, having been dry for several hours, and long ago thoroughly gone over by earlier foragers. So the bears pushed on down toward the lower stretches, where the ledges were still wet, and the long, black-green weed-masses still dripping, and where the limpet-covered protuberances of rock still oozed and sparkled. With her iron-hard claws the mother bear scraped off a quantity of these limpets, and crushed them between her jaws with relish, swallowing the salty juices. The cub tried clumsily to imitate her, but the limpets defied his too tender claws, so he ran to his mother, thrust her great head aside, and greedily licked up a share of her scrapings. The sea flavour tickled his palate, but the rough, hard shells exasperated him. They hurt his gums, so that he merely rolled them over in his mouth, sucked at them a few moments, then spat them out indignantly. His mother thereupon forsook the unsatisfactory limpets, and went prowling on toward the water's edge in search of more satisfying fare. As they left the limpets, a gaunt figure in gray homespuns, carrying a rifle, appeared on the crest of the cliffs above, caught sight of them, and hurriedly took cover behind an overhanging pine.

The young woodsman's first impulse was to try a long shot at the hulking black shape so conspicuous out on the ledge, against the bright water. He wanted a bearskin, even if the fur was not just then in prime condition. But more particularly he wanted the cub, to tame and play with if it should prove amenable, and to sell, ultimately, for a good amount, to some travelling show. On consideration, he decided to lie in wait among the rocks till the rising tide should drive the bears back to the upland. He exchanged his steel-nosed cartridges for the more deadly mushroom-tipped, filled his pipe, and lay back comfortably against the pine trunk, to watch, through the thin green frondage, the foraging of his intended prey.

The farther they went down the long slant of the ledge, the more interested the bears became. Here the crows and gulls had not had time to capture all the prizes. There were savoury blue-shelled mussels clinging under the tips of the rocks; plump, spiral whelks between the oozy tresses of the seaweed; orange starfish and bristly sea-urchins in the shallow pools. All these dainties had shells that the cub's young teeth could easily crush, and they yielded meaty morsels that made beetles and grubs seem very meagre fare. Moreover, in the salty bitter of this sea-fruit there was something marvelously stimulating to the appetite. From pool to pool the old bear wandered on, lured ever by richer prizes just ahead; and the cub, stuffed till his little stomach was like a black furry ball, no longer frisked and tumbled, but waddled along beside her with eyes of shining expectancy. As long as he was not too full to walk, he was not too full to eat such delicacies as these. The fascinating quest led them on and on till at last they found themselves at the water's edge.

By this time they had travelled a long way from the cleft in the cliffs by which they had come down from the uplands. A good half-mile of shining mud separated them, in a direct line, from the cliff base. And the woodsman on the height, as he watched them, muttered to himself: "Ef that old b'ar don't look out, the tide's a-goin' to ketch her afore she knows what she's about! Most wish I'd 'a' socked it to her afore she'd got so fur out--Jiminy! She's seed her mistake now! The tide's turned."

While bear and cub had their noses and paws busy in a little dry pool, on a sudden a long, shallow, muddy-crested wave had come hissing up over their feet and filled the pool to the brim with its yellow flood. Lifting her head sharply, the old bear glanced at the far-off cliffs, and at the mounting tide. Instantly realizing the peril, she started back at a slow, lumbering amble up the long, long path by which they had come; and the cub started too at a brave gallop--not behind her, for he was too much afraid of the hissing yellow wave, but close at her side, between her sheltering form and the shore. He felt that she could in some way ward off or subdue the cold and terrifying monster.

For perhaps two minutes the cub struggled on gamely, although, owing to the fact that at this point their path was almost parallel with the water, the fugitives made no perceptible gain, and the rising wave was on their heels every instant. Then the greedy feeding produced its effect. The little fellow's wind gave out completely. With a whimper of pain and fright he dropped back upon his haunches and waited for his mother to save him.

The old bear turned, bounced back, and cuffed him so bruskly that he found breath enough to utter a loud squall and go stumbling forward for another score of yards. Then he gave out, and sank upon his too-distended stomach, whimpering piteously.

This time the mother seemed to perceive that his case was serious, and her anxious wrath subsided. She licked him assiduously for a few seconds, whining encouragement, till at last he got upon his feet again, trembling. The yellow flood was now lapping on the ledge all about them. But a rod or two farther on the rocks bulged up a couple of feet above the surrounding slope. Thrusting the exhausted youngster ahead of her with nose and paws, the old bear gained this point of temporary vantage; and then, worried and frightened, sat down upon her haunches and stared all around her, as if trying to decide what should be done. The cub lay flat, with legs outstretched and mouth wide open, panting.

The tide, meanwhile, was mounting so swiftly that in a few moments the rise of rocks had become almost an island. The ledge was covered before them as well as behind, and the only way still open lay straight over the glistening mud. The old bear looked at it, and whined, knowing its treacheries. And the woodsman, watching with eager interest from the cliffs, muttered:

"Take to it, ye old bug-eater! Ther' ain't nawthin' else left fer ye to do'!"

This was apparently the conclusion of the old bear herself; for now, after licking and nuzzling the cub for a few seconds till he stood up, she stepped boldly off the rock and started out over the coppery flats. The cub, having apparently recovered his wind, followed briskly--probably much heartened by the fact that his progress was in a direction away from the alarming waves.

There was desperate need of haste, for when they left the rocky lift the tide was already slipping around upon the flats beyond it. Nevertheless, the old bear moved with deliberation. She could not hurry the cub; and she had to choose her path. By some instinct, or else by some peculiar keenness of observation, she seemed to detect the "honey-pots," or deep pockets of slime, that lay concealed beneath the uniformly shining surface of the mud; for here she would make an aimless detour, losing many precious seconds, and there she would side-step suddenly, for several paces, and shift her course to a new parallel. Outside the "honey-pots," the mud was soft and tenacious to a depth varying from a few inches to a couple of feet, but with a hard clay foundation beneath the slime. Through this clinging red ooze the old bear, with her huge strength, made her way without difficulty; but the cub, in a few moments, began to find himself terribly hampered. His fur collected the mud. His little paws sank easily, but at each step it grew harder to withdraw them. At last, chancing to stagger aside from his mother's spacious tracks, he sank to his belly in the rim of a "honey-pot."

Panic-stricken, he floundered vainly, his nose high in the air and his eyes shut tight, while his mother, unconscious of what had happened, ploughed doggedly onward. Presently he opened his eyes. His mother was now perhaps ten or a dozen feet ahead, apparently deserting him. Right behind, lapping up to his very tail, was the crawling wave. A heart-broken bawl burst from his throat.

At that cry the old bear came dashing back, red mud half-way up her flanks and plastered all over her shaggy chest. Taking in the situation at a glance, she seized the cub by the nape of the neck with her teeth, and tried to drag him free. But he squealed so lamentably that she realized that the hide would yield before the mud would. The attempt had taken time, however; and the tide was now well up in the fur of his back. Thrusting her paw down beneath his haunches, she tore him clear with a mighty wrench and a loud sucking of the baffled mud. That stroke sent him head over heels some ten feet nearer safety. By the time he had picked himself up, pawing fretfully at the mud that bedaubed his face and half blinded him, his mother was close behind him, nosing him along and lifting him forward skilfully with her fore paws.

The slope of the flats was now so gradual as to be almost imperceptible; and the tide, therefore, seemed to be racing in with fiercer haste, as if in wrath at being so long balked of its prey. Engrossed in her efforts to push the cub forward, the mother now lost some of her fine discrimination in regard to "honey-pots." She pushed the cub straight into one; but jerked him back unceremoniously before the mud had time to get any grip upon him. Pausing for a moment to scrutinize the oozy expanse, she thrust the little animal furiously along to the left, searching for a safe passage. Before she could find one, however, the tide was upon them, their feet splashing in the thin yellow wavelets.

A broken soap-box, tossed overboard from some ship, came washing up, and stranded just before them. With a whimper of delight, as if he thought the box a safe refuge, the cub scrambled upon it; but his mother ruthlessly tumbled him off and hustled him onward, floundering and splashing.

"Ye'll hev to swim fer it, Old Woman!" growled the now excited watcher behind the pine-tree on the cliff.

As the creeping flood by this time overspread the ooze for a couple of yards ahead of them, the mother could no longer discriminate as to what lay beneath it. She could do nothing now but dash ahead blindly. Catching up the cub between her jaws, in a grip that made him squeal, she launched herself straight toward shore, hardly daring to let her feet rest an instant where they touched. Fortune favoured her in this rush. She got ahead of the tide. She gained upon it, perhaps twice her body's length. Then she paused, to drop the cub. But the pause was fatal. She began to sink instantly. She had come upon a "honey-pot" of stiffer consistency than the rest, which had sustained her while she was in swift motion, but now, in return for that support, clutched her in a grip the more inexorable. With all her huge strength she strained to wrench herself clear. But in vain. She had no purchase. There was nothing to put forth her strength upon. In her terror and despair she squealed aloud, with her snout high in air as if appealing to the blank, blue, empty sky. The cub, terror-stricken, strove to clamber upon her back.

That harsh cry of hers, however, was but the outburst of one moment's weakness. The next moment the indomitable old bear was striving silently and systematically to release herself. She would wrench one great fore arm clear, lift it high, and feel about for a solid foundation beneath the ooze. Failing in this, she would yield that paw to the enemy again, tear the other loose, and feel about for a foothold in another direction. At the same time she drew out her body to its full length, and lay flat, so that she might gain as much support as possible by distributing her weight. Because of this sagacity, and because the mire at this point had more substance than in most of the other "honey-pots," she made a good fight, and almost, but not quite, held her own. By the time the tide had once more overtaken her she had sunk but a little way, and was still far from giving up the unequal struggle.

Yet for all the great beast's strength, and valour, and devotion, there could have been but one end to that brave battle, and mother and cub would have disappeared, in a few minutes more, under the stealthy, whispering onrush of the flood, had not the whimsical Providence--or Hazard--of the Wild come curiously to their aid. Among the jetsam of those restless Fundy tides almost anything that will float may appear, from a matchbox to a barn. What appeared just now was a big spruce log, escaped from the boom on some river emptying into the bay. It came softly wallowing in, lipped by the little waves, and passed close by the nose of the old bear, where she struggled with the water up to her shoulders.

Quick as thought she flashed up a heavy paw, caught the log by one end, and pulled the butt under her chest. The purchase thus gained enabled her to free the other paw--and in a few seconds more the weight of the fore part of her body was on the end of the log, forcing it down to the mud. Greedy as that mud was, it was yet incapable of engulfing a full-grown spruce timber quickly enough to defeat the bear's purpose. Stretching far forward on the submerged log, she strained her muscles to their utmost, and slowly drew her hind quarters free from the deadly grip that held them. Then, seizing in her jaws the cub, which was swimming and whimpering beside her, she carefully felt her way farther along the log, and sat down upon it to rest, clutching the youngster closely in one great fore arm.

Not till the tide had risen nearly to her neck did the mother move again. She was recovering her strength. Utterly daunted by the peril of the "honey-pots," she chose rather to trust the tide itself. At last, catching the cub again by the back of the neck, she swam for the shore. The tide was now within a couple of hundred yards from the bases of the cliffs, and lapping upon solid, sun-baked clay. The strong flood helping her, she swam fast, though laboriously by reason of the burden in her teeth. Soon her hinder feet struck ground--but she was afraid to trust it, and nervously drew them up beneath her. A few moments more and she felt undeniably firm footing; whereupon she plunged forward with a rush, and never paused, even to drop the squirming cub, till she was above high-water mark.

When, at last, she set the little beast down, she was in such a hurry to get away from the shore and back into the secure green woods that she would not trust him to follow her, as usual, but drove him on ahead, as fast as he could move, toward the cleft in the cliffs. As they turned up the rugged trail her haste relaxed, and she went more slowly, but still driving the cub ahead of her, that she might be quite sure that the "honey-pots" would not reach up and clutch at him again.

As the muddy, weary, bedraggled, pathetic-looking pair passed within tempting range of the pine-tree on the cliff-top, the woodsman instinctively threw forward his rifle. But the next moment he dropped it, with a slight flush, and gave a quick glance around him as if he feared that unseen eyes might have taken note of the gesture.

"Hell!" he muttered, "I'd 'a' been no better'n a _murderer_, 'f I'd 'a' gone an' plugged the Old Girl _now_!"

THE FIGHT AT THE WALLOW

I

FAR to the northeast of Ringwaak Hill, just beyond that deep, far-rimmed lake which begets the torrent of the Ottanoonsis, rise the bluff twin summits of Old Walquitch, presiding over an unbroken and almost untrodden wilderness. Some way up the southeasterly flank of the loftier and more butting of the twin peaks ran a vast, open shelf, or terrace, a kind of barren, whose swampy but austere soil bore no growth but wiry bush. The green tips of this bushy growth were a favoured "browse" of the caribou, who, though no lovers of the heights, would often wander up from their shaggy and austere plains in quest of this aromatic forage. But this lofty mountainside barren had yet another attraction for the caribou. Close at its edge, just where a granite buttress fell away steeply toward the lake, a tiny, almost imperceptible spring, stained with iron and pungent with salt, trickled out from among the roots of a dense, low thicket. Past the bare spot made by these oozings, and round behind the thicket, led a dim trail, worn by the feet of caribou, moose, bear, deer, and other stealthy wayfarers. And to this spring, when the moon of the falling leaves brought in the season of love and war, the caribou bulls were wont to come, delighting to form their wallow in the pungent, salty mud.

The bald twin peaks of Old Walquitch were ghostly white in the flood of the full moon, just risen, and swimming like a globe of witch's fire over the far, dark, wooded horizon. But the bushy shelf and the spring by the thicket, were still in shadow. Along the trail to the spring, moving noiselessly, yet with a confident dignity, came a paler shadow, the shape of a huge, gray-white caribou bull with wide-spreading antlers.

At the edge of the spring the bull stopped and began sniffing the sharp-scented mud. Apparently he found no sign of a rival having passed that way before him, or of a cow having kept tryst there. Lifting his splendid head he stared all about him in the shadow, and up at the bare, illuminated fronts of the twin peaks.

As the light spread down the mountain to the edge of the shelf, and the moon rose into his view, he "belled" harshly several times across the dark wastes outspread below him.

Receiving no answer to his defiance, the great bull turned his attention again to the ooze around the spring. After sniffing it all over he fell to furrowing it excitedly with the two lowermost branches of his antlers,--short, broad, palmated projections thrust out low over his forehead, and called by woodsmen "the ploughs." Every few seconds he would toss his head fiercely, like an ordinary bull, and throw the ooze over his shoulders. Then he pawed the cool, strong-smelling stuff to what he seemed to consider a fitting consistency, sniffed it over again, and raised his head to "bell" a fresh challenge across the spacious solitudes. Receiving no answer, he snorted in disgust, flung himself down on the trampled ooze, and began to wallow with a sort of slow and intense vehemence, grunting massively from time to time with volcanic emotion.

The wallow was now in the full flood of the moonlight. In that mysterious illumination the caribou, encased in shining ooze, took on the grotesque and enormous aspect of some monster of the prediluvian slimes. Suddenly his wallowing stopped, and his antlers, dripping mud, were lifted erect. For a few moments he was motionless as a rock, listening. He had caught the snapping of a twig, in the trail below the edge of the shelf. The sound was repeated; and he understood. Blowing smartly, as if to clear the mud from about his nostrils, he lurched to his feet, stalked forth from the wallow, and stood staring arrogantly along the trail by which he had come. The next moment another pair of antlers appeared; and then another bull, tall but lean, and with long, spiky, narrow horns, mounted over the edge of the shelf, and halted to eye the apparition before him.

The newcomer was of a darker hue than the lord of the wallow, and of much slimmer build,--altogether less formidable in appearance. But he looked very fit and fearless as, after a moment's supercilious survey of his rival's ooze-dripping form, he came mincing forward to the attack. The two, probably, had never seen each other before; but in rutting season all caribou bulls are enemies at sight.

The white bull--no longer white now, but black and silver in the moonlight--stood for some seconds quite motionless, his head low, his broad and massive antlers thrust forward, his feet planted firmly and apart. Ominous in his stillness, he waited till his light-stepping and debonair adversary was within twenty feet of him. Then, with an explosive blowing through his nostrils, he launched himself forward to the attack.

Following the customary tactics of his kind, the second bull lowered his antlers to receive the charge. But in the last fraction of a breath before the crash, he changed his mind. Leaping aside with a lightning alertness more like the action of a red buck than that of a caribou, he just evaded the shock. At the same time two of the spiky prongs of one antler ripped a long gash down his opponent's flank.

Amazed at this departure from the usual caribou tactics, and smarting with the anguish of that punishing stroke, the white bull whirled in his tracks, and charged again, blind with fury. The slim stranger had already turned, and awaited him again, with lowered antlers in readiness, close by the edge of the wallow. This time he seemed determined to meet the shock squarely according to the rules of the game--which apparently demand that the prowess of a caribou bull shall be determined by his pushing power. But again he avoided, leaping aside as if on springs; and again his sharp prongs furrowed his enemy's flank. With a grunt of rage the latter plunged on into the wallow, where he slipped forward upon his knees.

Had the newcomer been a little more resourceful he might now have taken his adversary at a terrible disadvantage, and won an easy victory. But he hesitated, being too much enamoured of his own method of fighting; and in the moment of hesitation opportunity passed him by. The white bull, recovering himself with suddenly awakened agility, was on his feet and on guard again in an instant.

These two disastrous experiences, however, had added wariness and wisdom to the great bull's fighting rage. His wound, his momentary discomfiture, had opened his arrogant eyes to the fact that his antagonist was a dangerous one. He stood vigilant and considering for a few seconds, no longer with his feet planted massively for a resistless rush, but balanced, and all his forces gathered well in hand; while his elusive foe stepped lightly and tauntingly from side to side before him, threateningly.

When the white bull made up his mind to attack again, instead of charging madly to swab his foe off the earth, he moved forward at a brisk stride, ready to check himself on the instant and block the enemy's side stroke. Within a couple of yards of his opponent he stopped short. The latter stood motionless, antlers lowered as before, apparently quite willing to lock horns. But the white bull would not be lured into a rush. Fiercely impatient he stamped the ground with a broad, clacking forehoof.

Just at this moment, as if in response to the challenge of the hoof, the stranger charged like lightning. But almost in the same motion he swerved aside, seeking again to catch his adversary on the flank. Swift and cunning as he was, however, the white bull was this time all readiness. He whirled, head down. With a sharp, dry crash the two sets of antlers came together, and locked.

That this should have happened was the irremediable mistake of the slim stranger. In that close encounter, fury against fury, force against force fairly pitted, his speed and his agility counted for nothing. For a few seconds, indeed, in sheer desperation he succeeded in withstanding his heavier and more powerful foe. With hind feet braced far back, haunches strained, flank heaving and quivering, the two held steady, staccato grunts and snorts attesting the ferocity of their efforts. Then the hind foot of the younger bull slipped a little. With a convulsive wrench he recovered his footing; and again the struggle hung at poise. But it was only for a few moments. Suddenly, as if he had felt his opportunity approach, the white bull threw all his strength into a mightier thrust. The legs of his adversary seemed to crumple up like paper beneath him.

This would have been the end of the young bull's battlings and wooings; but as his good luck would have it, it was at the very edge of the shelf that he collapsed. Disengaging his victorious antlers, the conqueror thrust viciously and evisceratingly at the victim's exposed flank. The latter was just struggling to rise, with precarious foothold on the loose-turfed brink of the steep. As he writhed away wildly from the goring points, the bushes and turf crumbled away, and he fell backwards, rolling and crashing till he brought up, battered but whole, in a sturdy thicket of young firs. Regaining his feet he slunk off hurriedly into the dark of the woods. And the victor, standing on the brink in the white glare of the moonlight, "belled" his triumph hoarsely across the solemn spaces of the night.

II

A sound of footfalls, hesitating but apparently making no attempt at concealment, came from the bend of the trail beyond the wallow; and the great white bull wheeled savagely to see what was approaching. As he glared, however, the angry ridge of hair cresting his neck sank amiably. A young cow, attracted by his calls and the noise of the battle, was coming around the thicket.

At the edge of the thicket, not a dozen paces from the black ooze-bed of the wallow, the cow paused coyly, as if doubtful of her welcome. She murmured in her throat, a sort of rough allurement which seemed to the white bull's ears extraordinarily enticing. He answered, very softly, and stepped forward a pace or two, inviting rather than pursuing. Reassured, the young cow advanced confidently and eagerly to meet him.

At this moment, out from the heart of the thicket plunged a towering black form, with wide, snarling jaw's agleam in the moonlight. It seemed to launch itself through the air, as if from a height. One great, taloned paw struck the young cow full on the neck, a crashing blow, shattering the vertebrae through all their armour of muscle. With a groan the stricken cow sank down, her outstretched muzzle smothered in the ooze of the wallow; and the monstrous bulk of the bear fell upon her, tearing the warm flesh hungrily.

In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the most hot-headed and powerful bull of the caribou will shrink from trying conclusions with a full grown black bear. The duel, as a rule, is too cruelly one-sided. The bear, on the other hand, knows that a courageous bull is no easy victim; and the monster ambuscaded in the thicket had been waiting for one or both of the rivals to be disabled before making his attack. The approach of the young cow had been an unexpected favour of the Powers that order the wilderness; and in clutching his opportunity he had scornfully and absolutely put the white bull out of the reckoning.

But this bull was the exceptional one, the one that confounds generalizations, and confirms the final supremacy of the unexpected. He was altogether fearless, indifferent to odds, and just now flushed with overwhelming victory. Moreover, he was aflame with mating ardour; and the mate of his desire had just been brutally struck down before his eyes. For a moment or two he stood bewildered, not daunted, but amazed by the terrific apparition and the appalling event. Then a mad fire raged through all his veins, his great muscles swelled, the stiff hair on his neck and shoulders stood straight up, his eyes went crimson--and without a sound he charged across the wallow.

When the bulls of the caribou kin fight each other, the weapons of their sole dependence are their antlers. But when they fight alien enemies they are wont to hold their heads high and strike with the battering, knife-edged weapons of their fore-hoofs. The bear, crouched upon his quivering prey, was too absorbed and too scornful to look for any assault. The bull was upon him, therefore, before he had time to guard his exposed flank. From the corner of his eye, he saw a big glistening shape which reared suddenly above him, and, clever boxer that he was, he threw up a ponderous forearm to parry the blow. But he was too late. With all the force of some seven hundred pounds of rage, avenging rage, behind him, these great hoofs, with their cutting edges, came down upon his side, smashing in several ribs, and gashing a wide wound down into his loins. The shock was so terrific that his own counter stroke, usually so swift and unerring, went wild altogether, and he was sent rolling clear of the body of his prey.

Instantly upon delivering his stroke, the white bull had pranced lightly aside, knowing well enough the swift and deadly effectiveness of a bear's paw. But he struck yet again, almost, it seemed, in the same breath, and just as the bear was struggling up upon his haunches. Frantically, out of his astonishment, fury, and pain, the bear attempted to guard. He succeeded, indeed, in warding off those deadly hoofs from his flank; but he caught an almost disabling blow on the point of the left shoulder, putting his left forearm out of business. With a squawling grunt he swung about upon his haunches, bringing his right toward the enemy, and sat up, savagely but anxiously defensive.