CHAPTER X
THE GREAT BEAR-HUNT
The hair-raising story that the young squirrel-hunter told, createdquite an excitement among villagers near by, but on secondconsideration the older and wiser heads were inclined to discredit it.The imaginative Nimrod had probably seen a black stump or darkmoss-covered rock, which, in the excitement of the moment, he did notstop to investigate. He had fired upon the instant and then fledwithout taking further inventory of the place. It was doubtless one ofthose hallucinations that are so common in the woods. Bears had notbeen plentiful in the region for several years, so at first the storywas discredited.
About a week later Grandpa Hezekiah Butterfield, one of the old men ofthe village, went about a mile into the country to a farmhouse to takesupper with an old crony and to talk over old times.
As is usual when two grandpas get to talking over old times, GrandpaButterfield stayed much later than he intended, starting for home atabout eight o'clock. But when he went, he felt well repaid for hisvisit, because he had completely out-talked his companion and moreoverwas carrying back a present of five pounds of honey, which, as the oldman had a sweet tooth, the only tooth he had, was most acceptable.
Just after leaving the farmhouse, the way led through a deep woodswhich overhung the road, making it quite dark in places.
It happened that on this same evening Black Bruin went forth on one ofhis nightly prowls.
It was a moonlight night and the wood-mice were out in force,scampering about and squeaking, having the finest kind of a play. Inthe course of his stalking this small game, Black Bruin came to withina few rods of the road. He was sniffing about an old log which smelledstrongly of mice when a fresh puff of the wind brought him a strongman-scent.
At this dread odor the hair rose upon his neck and fear told him toslip quietly away in the opposite direction from which the scent came.
He was about to obey this instinct when the wind again freshened and anew odor filled his nostrils. It was not as strong as the man-scentand it did not fill him with fear, but with delight. It made his mouthdrip saliva and filled him with an insatiate craving for something, hecould not remember just what.
Then the old sweet smell, that was to him what whisky is to thedrunkard, brought back a familiar picture. It was of a farmhouse withbarns and many out-buildings. There were hens, ducks and turkeys inthe yard and back of the house was a row of beehives that alwaysemitted this ravishing odor.
It was honey, and at the realization Black Bruin could almost hear thelow droning of the hive, or the angry zip, zip of the bees about hisears as he robbed them.
Again the night-wind brought the man-scent and the smell of honey. Theformer filled him with fear and the latter with delight. Again andagain he tested the wind, weighing the two odors, and at last the honeyconquered.
The man might fill him with thorns and prickers from his thunder andlightning stick, but he must have some of that honey.
Grandpa Butterfield was walking leisurely along humming a psalm tune,as was his wont when well pleased with the world, when he thought heheard something behind him in the road.
He stopped and listened, but all was still. Only the usualnight-sounds came to his ears. But when he moved on, he felt sure thatthe footsteps again followed.
At last he reached a point where the moonlight fell across the road.He now felt quite sure that something was coming after him but what, hecould not imagine. Feeling curious, and a bit uneasy, for the road wasa lonely one, he turned and looked behind and there, in the fullmoonlight, not forty feet away, he beheld a huge black bear followingsurely in his footsteps.
There was no deceiving his eye. He had seen too many bears in daysgone by.
Grandpa Butterfield quickened his walk to a trot, which in a dozensteps he increased to as lively a run as a man of seventy years couldmuster.
Black Bruin, feeling, now that the man was running, he was afraid ofhim, and seeing his precious honey rapidly moving away down the road,went in hot pursuit.
By the time the old man had covered a hundred feet, his breath came inquick asthmatic gasps. Craning his stiff neck to see if he haddistanced his pursuer, he saw to his horror that the bear was nottwenty feet behind him. Terror now lent wings to his rheumatic oldlegs, and he sprinted another hundred feet in much quicker time than hehad the first.
But Black Bruin now felt sure that the honey was his. The man creaturewas clearly afraid of him, so he too increased his pace.
Poor Grandpa Butterfield could almost feel the bear's hot breath uponhis back as he ran. Ten seconds more, he told himself, and he would bein the clutches of this brute. His obituary and the account of histragic death would surely be in the county paper next week.
Suddenly his half-paralyzed brain was electrified by a thought. It wasthe honey that the bear was after, and not him. Who ever heard of abear wanting to eat an old dried-up man, who was as tough as leather?
Without a second's delay he pitched the honey into the road behind him,and continued his frantic flight.
A few rods farther on, feeling that he was no longer pursued, heglanced back just long enough to see the bear tearing the paper fromthe package and licking out the honey.
That evening at the country grocery the bear-story of thesquirrel-hunter was amply corroborated by Grandpa Butterfield, who wasso winded and spent with running that he could barely gasp out hisdisconnected account of the chase through the woods.
The next morning, with Grandpa Butterfield as a guide, several men wentover the ground, where there was plenty of evidence to substantiate theold man's story. The empty honey-frames were there, and thebear-tracks told as plainly as words that a bear, of unusual size, hadgiven the old man the run of his life through the woods.
Grandpa Butterfield was the hero of the village, both for that day andseveral following, and the long-talked-of bear-hunt was at onceorganized.
There was but one rifle in the village, and that was a 38-55Winchester, the property of the young hunter from the city, who hadfilled Black Bruin's coat with squirrel-shot. So old rusty shotgunswere got out and cleaned up in readiness for the fray. Some of themhad not seen service recently, with the exception of once or twice ayear, when they were used to scare off the crows or to frighten awoodchuck which was making too free with the beans.
Boys hunted up old rusty bullet-moulds and ran bullets, and theshotguns were loaded with slugs and buckshot.
Those who were not fortunate enough even to possess a disreputable oldgun, armed themselves with pitchforks, so that altogether it was amotley armed party that started out one early October morning toannihilate Black Bruin.
The dogs comprising the pack were half-breed hounds and beagles, withtwo or three pure-blood foxhounds.
By rare good fortune a farmer, coming into town early, had seen thebear crossing the road ahead of his team, so that the dogs could beshown the trail at once.
But when the hunters pointed out the hand-shaped track in the road andsaid "seek," the hair rose upon the dogs' backs and they stuck theirtails between their legs and interpreted "seek," as meaning that theywere to seek their own homes by the shortest path. This new rankanimal scent had no attraction for them. They had not lost any bear.In other words, they would not follow.
Here was a difficulty that the hunters had not foreseen, and for a timeit looked as though the hunt was doomed to end then and there.
Finally some one in the party said, "We ought to have taken along BenHolcome's Growler. Growler ain't afraid of the devil himself."
Growler was a mongrel, half-hound and half-bulldog. He had not noseenough to follow alone, but as had been said, he wasn't afraid ofanything. So as there was nothing else to do, a boy was sentcross-lots after Growler, while the hunters waited impatiently.
Growler and the boy at last put in an appearance, and the mongrel wasshown the bear-track in the road.
Growler's hair likewise rose up on his neck, but his lips also partedin a snarl and he started off
on the fresh track, uttering excitedyelps. Growler thought he scented a good fight ahead, and he wouldrather chew on a good adversary any day than upon a piece of beefsteak.
Seeing what was expected of them, and made courageous by Growler'sexample, the pack followed at full cry, and the great bear-hunt was onin earnest.
Black Bruin heard them almost at the outset, where he was digging rootsin the deep woods, and for some reason the sounds annoyed him. He knewthey were made by dogs, for he had often heard the old hound Hecla atthe farmhouse running rabbits in the near-by swamp.
But here, there were half-a-dozen hounds instead of one, and theirbaying was fairly clamorous.
Finally, the pack entered the woods not forty rods away, and BlackBruin began to get uneasy. At last it dawned upon him, as the packdrew still nearer and nearer, that; they were upon his track. Thisthought filled him with both fear and rage. What did these curs wantof him? Had he not killed a dog that was worrying him, while withPedro, with a single blow?
So he crouched in a thicket and waited expectantly. He had not long towait, for in fifteen seconds the pack came up. When they discoveredthe bear so near at hand, however, and saw what menacing game they hadbeen running, the hounds all slunk back to a safe distance, and sat ontheir tails. But not so Growler.
Here was the scrap of his life with an animal three times as large asthe big Newfoundland, whom he was in the habit of worrying. So herushed into the thicket and sprang at Black Bruin's throat.
GROWLER SPRANG AT BLACK BRUIN'S THROAT]
But quick as he was, he was not as quick as his adversary, who rippedopen the side of his head with a lucky blow, and stretched him gaspingupon the ground. Black Bruin then reached down and biting the kickingdog through the neck, finished his troubles in short order.
Growler uttered one agonized cry, and stretched out dead. This wasenough for the rest of the pack, all of whom stuck their tails betweentheir legs and ran for their respective masters.
Hearing the cries of men near at hand, Black Bruin slunk out of thethicket and off into the deep woods, but not soon enough to escape afusillade of buckshot which whizzed about him as he ran, a few of thembiting deep into his flesh.
But he was soon lost to sight, and as the pack would not follow, nowthat Growler was no more, the hunt was finally abandoned for that day.
The next day a bulldog and a bull terrier were procured to take theplace of Growler, and the hunt was resumed. But being made wary bythis experience, Black Bruin "laid low" and they could not start him.
Each morning for three days they scoured the country, beating the woodsand loosing the hounds at all points where the bear had been recentlyseen, but without success.
The fourth morning a farmer came to town in great haste. The bear hadkilled a calf the night before and he had discovered the partly eatencarcass buried in the woods near by. Here was the bait that would lurethe thief into their hands.
So hunters and hounds went at once to the carcass, where a rather freshtrail was found. Half an hour's pursuit again routed out the bear.Once he took to the open, and the young hunter from the city with theWinchester sent a bullet through his paw, laming him considerably.This would never do, so he doubled back to the woods.
He did not fear this yelping, baying pack as he did the men that werealso following him. He now knew that the thunder and lightning thatthey carried could bite and sting as nothing else could.
For half an hour Black Bruin ran hither and thither, doubling in andout. Finally he remembered his tree-climbing habit and in an evilmoment clambered up a tall spruce. In five minutes' time after hescratched up the tree, men and dogs had surrounded his foolish refuge,and his fate seemed sealed.
The last of the party to arrive was the young man with the Winchester,for whom all had been waiting. One shot from him would end the hunt.
They discovered Black Bruin about thirty feet from the ground in athick whorl of limbs.
The young rifleman was much excited. This would be his first bear.His name would be in the local paper, and he would have a great storyto tell when he got back to the city.
Experience would have taught him to draw his bead finer than he did,and also to have lowered his rear sight, which was set for two hundredyards; but taking careless aim, and thinking he could not miss at suchshort range, he pressed the trigger.
There was a sharp crack from the rifle, and the bullet ploughed a deepwound in Black Bruin's scalp, but glanced from his thick skull and wentsinging through the tree-tops.
The blow of the bullet upon the skull dazed the bear for a moment, andhe loosed his hold and came tumbling down through the interlaced limbs.
But the hard bump that he got at the foot of the tree, brought him tohis senses with a jerk. Right among the yelping, snarling pack he hadfallen, and in sheer desperation he struck out right and left.
Two of the hounds went yelping to the rear. Then an excited boyleveled a double-barreled shotgun at the bear and discharged bothbarrels.
At the same instant the best hound in the pack jumped into range androlled over kicking upon the ground. He had received the full charge.
Half-blinded and dazed by the blow upon his head, and made frantic bythe yelping of the pack, the shouts of the men and the roar of theirthunder, Black Bruin put all his remaining strength into flight.
Not knowing or seeing which way he went, he fled straight toward thehunter with the Winchester with mouth wide open.
Horrified at the sight, which the hunter interpreted as a desperatecharge upon the part of the bear, the city Nimrod delivered one wildshot and then fled for his life, as he thought.
This stampeded the entire hunt, and the terrified men fled as fast astheir legs could carry them until they left the spot far behind.
It was a question whether the frantic beast tried harder to get awayfrom the hunters, or they from him.
In the village grocery the stories that were told that night made thesmall boy's hair stand up with fright and his blood run cold with fear.
As for Black Bruin, with his wounded paw upon which he limpedpainfully, and with his bleeding scalp, he concluded that the part ofthe country in which he had made his home for several months, was noplace for him, so before another sunrise he put many miles betweenhimself and the scene of his narrow escape from the hunters.
Nor did this one night's journey calm his fear. Night after night hefled, always going in the same direction, which, as he fled northward,carried him farther and farther into the wilderness.
At last in a wild country of rugged mountains and deep, thickly woodedvalleys, where the habitat of man seemed far distant, he ceased hisflight.
There in the wilderness, where lumbermen alone penetrated, Black Bruindenned up and slept away his fifth winter. His bed was made deep underthe top of a fallen hemlock, where the snow drifted above him andcovered him with soft white blankets. The only evidence that the outerworld had that a bear was sleeping beneath was a small hole in the snowkept open by the warm breath of the sleeper.