Young Stan Murray turned on his heel
and went into the house for his gun. His breast
boiled with pity and indignation. The hired man,
coming down from the Upper Field, had just told him
that two more of his sheep had been killed by the
bears. The sheep were of fine stock, only lately
introduced to the out-settlements, and they were Stan’s
special charge. These two last made seven that
the bears had taken within six weeks. Stan Murray,
with the robust confidence of his eighteen years, vowed
that the marauder, or marauders, should be brought
to an accounting without more ado, though it should
take him a week to trail them down. He stuffed
some hardtack biscuits and a generous lump of cheese
into his pockets, saw that his Winchester repeater
was duly charged, buckled on his cartridge-belt, and
started for the Upper Field.
The hired man led him to the scene
of the tragedy. The two victims-both
full-grown sheep-had been struck down close
to the edge of the field, within a dozen yards of
each other. Nothing was left of them there but
their woolly skins and big sploshes of darkened blood
on the stiff turf of the pasture. The carcases
had evidently been dragged or carried off into the
dark seclusion of the fir woods which bordered the
top and farther side of the field. It was now
just after midday, and Stan and the hired man agreed,
after examination of all the signs, that the killing
must have taken place early the previous night.
“It’s a long ways from
here them b’ar’ll be by this time, I’m
thinkin’,” said the hired man. Not
a native of the backwoods, he was little versed in
wilderness lore.
“Not at all,” corrected
Murray. “Like as not they’re within
a half mile or so of us now. They wouldn’t
lug those fat sheep far. They’d just eat
what they wanted an’ hide the rest in the bushes.
And they’d come back an’ finish it up
when they’d slept off the first feed. What
would they want to travel for, when they’d got
such a dead easy thing right here?”
“Um-m-m!” grunted the
hired man grudgingly. “Mebbe you’re
right. But I’d like to know who’s
been here afore us, an’ rolled up this
here skin so tidy-like? T’other skin’s
left all of a heap, mebbe because it’s so torn
’tain’t no good to nobody.”
The young woodsman laughed, for all
his vexation of spirit.
“Lot you know about bears, Tom,”
said he. “You see, there’s been two
bears here on this job, curse their dirty hides!
One’s a youngster, an’ don’t know
much about skinning a sheep. He’s just clawed
off the skin any old way, an’ made a mess of
it, as you see. But the other’s an old
hand, evidently, an’ knows what he’s about-an
old she, likely, an’ perhaps mother of the young
one. She’s known how to peel off
the skin, rolling it up that way quite as a man might
do. Now, Tom, you get along back home, an’
take the skins with you. I’m going after
those two, an’ I’m not coming home till
I’ve squared up with ’em over this here
deal.”
For half a mile or more back into
the woods the trail of the marauders was a plain one
to follow. Then Murray found the remnants of the
two victims hidden in a mass of thick underbush, several
yards apart. The tracks of the two bears encircled
the spot, a plain proclamation of ownership to any
other of the wild creatures which might be inclined
to trespass on that domain. And on the trunk
of a tall spruce, standing close beside the hiding-place,
the initiated eyes of young Murray detected another
warning to intruders. The bark at a considerable
height was scored by the marks of mighty claws.
The larger bear, after her meal, had stretched herself
like a cat, rearing herself and digging in her claws
against the trunk. And the great height of her
reach was a pointed announcement that her displeasure
would be a perilous thing to reckon with. As
Stan Murray stood, estimating the stature of his foe,
his eyes began to sparkle. This would be a trophy
worth winning, the hide and head of such a bear.
His wrath against the slayers of his sheep died away
into the emulous zest of the hunter.
The bears, their hunger satisfied,
had gone on straight back into the wilderness, instead
of hanging about the scene of their triumph or crawling
into a neighbouring thicket, as Murray had expected,
to sleep off their heavy feast. Murray thought
he knew all about bears. As a matter of fact,
he did know a lot about them. What he did not
know was that no one, however experienced and sympathetic
an observer, ever does achieve to know all
about them. The bear is at the opposite pole from
the sheep. He is an individualist. He does
not care to do as his neighbour does. He is ever
ready to adapt his habits, as well as his diet, to
the varying of circumstance. He loves to depart
from his rules and confound the naturalists.
When you think you’ve got him, he turns out
to be an old black stump, and laughs in his shaggy
sleeve from some other hidden post of observation.
He makes all the other kindred of the wild, except,
perhaps, the shrewd fox, seem like foolish children
beside him.
For a good hour Murray followed the
trail of the two bears, at times with some difficulty,
as the forest gave way in places to breadths of hard
and stony barren, where the great pads left smaller
trace. At last, to his annoyance, in a patch
of swamp, where the trail was very clear, he realized
that he was now following one bear only, and that the
smaller of the two. He cast assiduously from side
to side, but in vain. He harked back along the
trail for several hundred yards, but he could find
no sign of the other bear, nor of where she had branched
off. And it was just that other that he wanted.
However, he decided that as the two were working together,
he would probably find the second by keeping on after
the first, rather than by questing at large for a lost
trail. In any case, as he now reminded himself,
it was not a trophy, but vengeance for his slaughtered
sheep that he was out for.
The trail he had been following hitherto
had been hours old. Now, of a sudden, he noticed
with a start that it had become amazingly fresh-so
fresh, indeed, that he felt he might come upon his
quarry at any instant. How did it happen that
the trail had thus grown fresh all at once? Decidedly
puzzled, he halted abruptly and sat down upon a stump
to consider the problem.
At last he came to the conclusion
that, somewhere to his rear, the quarry must have
swerved off to one side or the other, either lain down
for a brief siesta, or made a wide detour, then circled
back into the old trail just a little way in advance
of him. Again, it seemed, he had overshot the
important and revealing point of the trail. He
was nettled, disappointed in himself. His first
impulse was to retrace his steps minutely, and try
to verify this conclusion. Then he reflected that,
after all, he had better content himself with the fact
that he was now close on the heels of the fugitive,
and vengeance, perhaps, almost within his grasp.
To go back, for the mere sake of proving a theory,
would be to lose his advantage. Moreover, the
afternoon was getting on. He decided to push
forward.
But now he went warily, peering to
this side and to that, and scrutinizing every thicket,
every stump and massive bole. He felt that he
had been too confident, and made too much noise in
his going. It was pretty certain that the quarry
would by now be aware of the pursuit, and cunningly
on guard. Twice he had been worsted in
woodcraft. He was determined that the marauders
should not score off him a third time.
For another half-hour he kept on,
moving now as noiselessly as a mink, and watchfully
as a wood-mouse. Yet the trail went on as before,
and he could detect no sign that he was gaining on
the elusive quarry. At last, grown suddenly conscious
of hunger, he sat down upon a mossy stone and proceeded
to munch his crackers and cheese. He was getting
rather out of conceit with himself, and the meal,
hungry though he was, seemed tasteless.
As he sat there, gnawing discontentedly
at his dry fare, he began to feel conscious of being
watched. The short hairs on the back of his neck
tingled and rose. He looked around sharply, but
he could see nothing. Very softly he rose to
his feet. With minutest scrutiny his eyes searched
every object within view. The mingled shadows
of the forest were confusing, of course, but his trained
eyes knew how to differentiate them. Nevertheless,
neither behind, nor before, nor on either side could
he make out any living thing, except a little black-and-white
woodpecker, which peered at him with unwinking curiosity
from a gnarled trunk a dozen feet away. From the
woodpecker his glance wandered upwards and interrogated
the lower branches of the surrounding trees.
At last he made out the gleam of a pair of pale, malevolent
eyes glaring down upon him from a high branch.
Then he made out the shadowy shape, flattened close
to the branch, of a large wild-cat.
Murray disliked the whole tribe of
the wild-cats, as voracious destroyers of game and
cunning depredators upon his poultry, and his rifle
went instantly to his shoulder. But he lowered
it again with a short laugh. He was not bothering
just then with wild-cats. He cursed himself softly
as “getting nervous,” and sat down again
to resume his meal, satisfied that the sensation at
the back of his neck was now explained.
But he had not found the true explanation,
by any means. In fact, he was fooled yet again.
From less than fifty yards ahead of
him a little pair of red-rimmed eyes, half angry and
half curious, were watching his every movement.
Crouching behind two great trunks, his quarry was keeping
him under wary observation, ready to slip onward like
a shadow, keeping to the shelter of the thicket and
bole and rock, the moment he should show the least
sign of taking up the trail again.
Moreover, from a slightly greater
distance to his rear, another pair of little red-rimmed
eyes, less curious and more angry, also held him under
observation. For an hour or more, at least, the
older bear had been trailing him in her turn with
practised cunning. For all her immense bulk,
she had never betrayed herself by so much as the crackling
of a twig; and the unconscious, complacent hunter
was being hunted with a woodcraft far beyond his own.
Whenever he stopped, or paused for the least moment,
she came to a stop herself as instantly as if worked
by the same nerve impulse, and stiffened into such
stony immobility that she seemed at once to melt into
her surroundings, and became invisible in the sense
of being indistinguishable from them. Among mossy
rocks she seemed to become a rock, among stumps a
stump, among thickets a portion of the dark, shaggy
undergrowth.
Having finished his crackers and cheese,
Murray got up, brushed the crumbs from his jacket,
flicked a hard flake of bark contemptuously at the
wild-cat-which darted farther up the tree
with an angry growl-and once more took
up the trail. He was beginning now to wonder if
he was going to accomplish anything before the light
should fail him, and he hurried on at a swifter pace.
A few hundred yards farther, to his considerable gratification,
the trail swept around in a wide curve towards the
right, and made back towards the Settlement. “Perhaps,”
he thought, “that fool of a bear does not know,
after all, that I am on his track, and is going back
for the remainder of his supper.”
Encouraged by this idea, he pushed on faster still.
Then, some ten minutes later, he had
reason to regret his haste. Crossing a patch
of soft, open ground, his attention was caught by the
fact that the footprints he was following had miraculously
increased in size. Examination proved that this
was no illusion. And now, for the first time,
an unpleasant feeling crept over him. Apparently
he was being played with. The second bear, it
was evident, had slipped in and taken the place of
the first, copying an old game of the hunted foxes.
Murray suddenly felt himself alone
and outwitted. If it had been earlier in the
day, he would not have cared; but now it would soon
be night. He had no great dread of bears, as
a rule. He was willing to tackle several of them
at once, as long as he had his Winchester and a clear
chance to use it-but after dark he would
be at a grievous disadvantage. If the trail had
still been leading away from home, he would probably
have turned back and planned for an early start again
next morning. But as his enemy was going in the
right direction, he decided to follow on as fast as
possible, and see if he might not succeed in obtaining
a decision before dark.
The trail was now almost insolently
clear, and he followed it at a lope. He gained
no glimpse of the quarry even at this pace; but at
least he had the satisfaction of knowing, from the
increased heaviness of the footprints and the lengthening
of the stride, that he was forcing his adversary to
make haste. Presently it appeared that this was
displeasing to the adversary. The trail went
off to the left, at a sharp angle, and made for a
dense cedar swamp, which Murray had no desire to adventure
into at that late hour. He decided to give up
the chase for the day and keep straight for home.
By this time Murray felt that his
knowledge of bears was not quite so profound as he
had fancied it to be. Nevertheless, he was sure
of one thing. He was ready to gamble on it that,
as soon as they realized he had given up trailing
them, they would turn and trail him. The idea
was more or less depressing to him in his present
mood. He did not greatly care, however, so long
as it was fairly light. He did not think that
his adversaries would have the rashness to attack
him even after dark, the black bear having a very
just appreciation of man’s power. Still,
there was the chance, and it gave him something to
think of. He made a hurried estimate of the distance
he had yet to go, and it was with a distinct sense
of relief he concluded that he would make the open
fields before the closing in of dark.
The woods at this point were somewhat
thick, an abundant second growth of spruce and fir.
Presently they fell away before him, revealing a few
acres of windy grass-land surrounding a deserted cabin.
At the sight of the space of open ground Murray was
seized with a new idea. His face brightened,
his self-confidence returned. The bears had, so
far, outdone him thoroughly in woodcraft. Well,
he would now show them that he was their master in
tactics.
He ran staggeringly out into the field,
and fell as if exhausted. He lay for a few seconds,
to make sure he was observed by his antagonists, then
picked himself up, raced on across the open as fast
as he could, and plunged into the thick woods on the
opposite side.
As soon as he was hidden, he turned
and looked behind him. The growth of bushes and
rank herbage which fringed the other side of the clearing
whence he had come was waving and tossing with the
movement of heavy bodies. For a few moments he
thought that his pursuers, grown bold with his flight,
would break forth from their concealment and follow
across the clearing. In that case he might count
on bagging them both.
But no, they were too wary still for
that. Presently the tossing of the bushes began
to separate, and moved rapidly both to right and left
along the skirts of the clearing. A smile of
triumph spread over Murray’s face.
“My turn at last!” he
muttered, and ran noiselessly, keeping well hidden,
down toward the left-hand corner of the field.
He had an idea that it was the bigger bear which was
coming to meet him in that direction, because the
movement of the bushes had seemed the more violent
on that side. He was himself again fully now,
the zest of the hunter swallowing up all other emotions.
Just at the corner of the field, behind
a heap of stones half buried in herbage, he hid himself,
and lay motionless, with his rifle at his shoulder
and finger on the trigger. He could hear the bear
coming, for she was running more carelessly now, under
the impression that the enemy was in full flight.
Dry branches snapped, green branches swished and rustled,
and occasionally his straining ears caught the sound
of a heavy but muffled footfall.
She was almost upon him, however,
before he could actually get a view of her. She
came out into a space between two clumps of young fir
trees, not twenty-five yards from his hiding-place,
and was just passing him diagonally, offering a perfect
mark. Murray’s finger closed, softly and
steadily, on the trigger. The heavy, soft-nosed
bullet crashed through her neck, and she dropped,
collapsing on the instant into nothing more than a
heap of rusty-black fur.
Immensely elated, his dear sheep avenged,
and his standing as a hunter vindicated at last, young
Murray strode over and examined his splendid prize.
It was by far the biggest black bear he had ever seen.
To the other of the pair he gave not a thought; he
knew that the crack of his rifle would have cured
it of any further curiosity it might have had about
himself. He took out his handkerchief, tied it
to the end of a stick, and stuck the stick into the
ground beside the heap of fur, to serve both as a
mark and as a warning to possible trespassers.
Then he made haste home, to fetch a lantern and the
hired man, for he would not leave so splendid a skin
all night to the mercies of fox and fisher and weasel
and other foragers of the dark.