Mountain Storms (6 page)

C
HAPTER
T
EN

A
LONE
O
NCE
M
ORE

The sight of such a diet gave Tommy a qualm of the stomach, but mother bruin seemed to relish that food immensely. Jack and Jerry, incurable imitators, hurried to join in the fun. Here and there they went, sticking their noses into the train of ants, licking them up, and then ejecting them, to the huge amusement of Tommy, until finally the big bear decided that they were in her way and promptly called them aside.

As always, they pretended that the cuff and tumble had been exactly a part of their plans. Just where they fell, they arose, without a whimper, and began to dig eagerly for imaginary roots. Then both stopped at the same instant and looked keenly at Tommy as though to ask whether or not he had understood. Although he had understood perfectly, he swallowed his mirth—just as he would have done had they been boys of his own age and as keen-witted as he.

The old mother, in the meantime, had come to the end of the ant trail, which terminated in a great hill of newly turned dirt covered with ants. Here she sat down on her haunches. It seemed to Tommy as though she were embarrassed by the riches that were presented to her. But not
Madame
Grizzly! Presently, with a rake of her claws, she opened the hill to its center. Behold the black swarm of the ants! Those that adhered to the bottom of her paw, she promptly licked off. Then the wet paw was laid in the midst of the hill again until the active ants swarmed thickly on it again— then it was raised and cleansed with a few swipes of the long, red tongue. So the game went on until the ants ceased to swarm—hundreds, thousands had been demolished by every stroke of that great tongue. Tommy felt that he had just witnessed the destruction of a great nation.

Now she rose and went on through the bushes, but presently she stopped and veered sharply to the left. It was an old, rotten log that attracted her attention. A tug with a forepaw turned over a weight that a grown man could not have budged.
Madame
was instantly busy, to the horror of Tommy, in eating the fat, white grubs that were exposed.

Truly this was a varied diet! Who would have expected such a monster to pay attention to such small details of her table? But on she went, inveterate scavenger, and presently picked up and gobbled at a mouthful a dead bird—then on again, following the guidance of that matchless nose.

Tommy felt that he was being truly initiated in the ways of the wild.

They dipped into a hollow, in the center of which a streamlet had created a small bog, and here
madame
diverged from her course for the sake of wallowing in the soft, cooling mud. She came out again, shook herself with a vigor that sent the mud flying in all directions, then started up the farther slope, pausing here and there to rip her way down to roots and devour them, then swaying on with her clumsy stride, which covered such an amazing amount of ground.

The strange thing was that the cubs could keep pace, but it seemed to require no particular effort of them, whereas Tommy was completely winded before the first hour had ended. Something must be done. A roll in the grass had cleaned the mud from the bruin's back, and that suggested an expedient to Tommy. He approached her, when she was starting on after a slight pause during which she had ripped a rotten log to pieces and hunted for grubs inside it, to small purpose. When he dropped a hand on her back, she stopped short and swung her great head around. And when, cautiously, he slipped onto her back, she shrugged her shoulders and shook the loose skin so violently that he was promptly knocked on the farther side.

He got up a little bewildered and found her turned about, sniffing him curiously. Once more he tried the experiment, and this time she allowed him to sit astride her without objection. So, strangely mounted, up the slope they went together, swinging on at a gait that covered the ground with an amazing rapidity.

The heart swelled in Tommy. Surely he was the first who had ever been able to mount so strange a charger! To be sure, once or twice she paused and swung her head back at him with a growl of annoyance, but on the whole that burden was too small to impede her, and finally she went on contentedly. When she paused to dig for roots, or when she scented a woodchuck and began to claw through the dirt to rout the little fellow out of his hole, Tommy slipped down from her back and stood aside to watch. But, when she climbed on again up a slope, he resumed his place at her back. There was no objection.

For one thing, food was coming the way of the bruin thick and fast that morning. New scents, mingled scents of food trails, were crowding upon her. Besides, there was deeply engraved in her mind the memory that he had fed her when she was helpless. Freedom and food, the two main essentials of existence, had come to her from his hand, and even the brute intelligence of the bear could not forget.

That was the first of a hundred expeditions with the bruin. During the hundred days Tommy felt that the bear must have covered easily thirty miles a day, in spite of all her pauses. She was a tireless traveler, rarely breaking out of her ordinary, scuffling walk, but swinging on at an astonishing rate, even in that walk. An unending hunger urged her to continue that journey so long as she remained unwearied. But weariness seemed to be no part of her makeup. Tommy saw her once work a whole hour digging out a woodchuck on a mountainside, tearing out the loose stones and standing up and piling the stones with her paws as deftly as a man could have done—stones that a man could not have budged. So, tearing out the stones and piling them, digging out the dirt with her powerful claws, she worked down until she had moved a carload of heavy material—and the reward of all that tremendous labor was a single little wood-chuck wriggling out of the dirt—a single mouthful for the big bear.

But it was food, and every mouthful of food was worth working for. Tommy learned something from that—something to stir his gratitude. Wise and patient forager she was, it took a day's work to supply her with provisions, but he, at a stroke, could supply himself with a meal. There was one serious impediment. He could not carry a gun with him when he went traveling with the bruin. If he carried the revolver, she would permit him to attend, but he could not ride her up the hills. The scent of the detested steel would make her rear up, growling terrific threats, if he attempted to come too near. So he left the gun behind him. All he carried was matches. During the day, it was usually possible to rescue part of a rabbit from the grizzly after she had surprised one. It sometimes angered her, to be sure, but Tommy learned to pick his time, and, if it were after she had been foraging long and successfully, she did not seriously object if he purloined so small a part of her spoils.

He took the fishing line with him, also. In fact, that provided some of the choice fun for Tommy, for, when they came to a promising stream, or to a deep, silent little pool,
Madame
Grizzly sat back on her haunches so far from the edge of the water that her shadow would not fall upon it. Then she would call her cubs to her with ominous growls. Sometimes, she would gather them to her side with her strong forelegs, strangely like a human mother would use her arms, and, when all was reduced to silence, she would turn with a pathetic eye of expectation to Tommy. At once he became the hero of the hour.

He would choose his place, attach the line to a small, light rod that he usually carried with him, and drop it into the pool and await results. With what keen anticipation they all watched. Yet, when the fish came shining out of the water, there was no stir on the part of
madame
, and, if the cubs dared to move, she brought them back with a bruising blow of her great forepaws. So she waited until a fish was thrown to her, although, as a matter of fact, Tommy never had the heart to keep the first fish away from her. But she would sit there and gobble a dozen at a time, as fast as he could throw them to her. Great hunter though she was, she had no skill to match against this human cunning. It was small wonder that she now and then allowed this ample provider to take part in her own kills.

In fact, their partnership was perfect. There was only one thing to spoil it, and that was that
madame
was prone to sleep during the middle of the day, and to hunt morning, evening, and in the night. But even to these habits Tommy accustomed himself. After all, cubs need sleep, and, by sleeping when they did, he secured rest enough. He learned to drop flat on his back in the shade of a tree, throw out both arms, and fall instantly to sleep. Five minutes later, he could wake up at the first, silent rising of
madame
and go with her over some arduous trail, running beside her over the level or downhill, and riding on her back when she climbed a slope.

He learned many things during that hundred days. In the first place, he discovered the limits of
madame's
domain. He had always supposed that a grizzly wandered where she would up and down the mountains, but, in this case, he learned that
madame
had boundaries that she never crossed. The eastern limit was the timberline of those bald mountains over which Tommy had climbed. The northern boundary lay beyond several ranges some thirty miles from the Turnbull River. The Turnbull itself was the south line, and the western extremity of her province was about fifty miles from the timberline of the bald mountains down the valley of the Turnbull. That magnificent region she covered in a surprisingly short space of time. To be sure, it consisted of some 1,500 square miles of ground, but
madame
was doing her thirty miles of travel every day, and soon Tommy had seen her cross and recross every bit of her province.

He learned the territory as though a map of it were printed in his mind. He knew every pond, every stream, every mountain and hill. He knew the big trees, the aspen groves, the thickening hedges of lodgepole pines where they climbed the upper ridges, the open places fit for a roll and a romp with the cubs.

The cubs, meantime, were waxing big and strong. When they stood up on their hind legs now and boxed with him, he was soundly beaten. With doubled fists, with keen eyes, with dancing feet, he would circle around them, dealing blows as swift and hard as he could, and they, for a time, would miss, or pretend to miss him, but, when they decided the play had gone on far enough, one lightning and inescapable flick of a forearm would stretch him on his back with a bruised chest.

It was rough play, but the whole life Tommy was leading was rough, and he had grown hard as nails. A grown man could never have adapted himself to such living, but Tommy was just past his twelfth birthday now, and, at twelve, mind and body are almost as fluid as water and will take any sort of shaping. So long as Tommy was happy, he could stand anything.

He was happy, riotously happy! He was beginning to give up hope of being rescued by a traveler this summer or autumn—but the rescue could be put off until the winter and the height of the trapping season, he told himself. Even if someone came, they would hardly have found him at the cave, for he was away from it sometimes a week at a stretch. Besides, what mattered the future? Tommy was twelve!

The autumn came, drowsy with mists, and then chill of nights. His precious corn had grown up, and the ears had turned into maturity and been plucked and laid away in the cave for future use, laid high on a shelf of rock, while Tommy vowed solemnly that no hunger should reduce him to the necessity of eating them, for he knew that, if he stayed in the valley another year, that corn meant bread to him.

Autumn passed then, and in early December the day came when
Madame
Grizzly began to lose her appetite. Tommy was prodigiously worried, but both mother and cubs seemed to be interested in nothing but sleep. Every day was worse than the preceding ones. They were irritable, also, and did not wish to be bothered by his attentions, and finally
madame
began to dig a cave. Tommy knew that she was preparing for the winter's sleep.

She selected a spot among the northern mountains, a hillside that faced the south. There, under a thick matting of roots, she made her excavation. She dragged in a quantity of long, dried grass and shrubs. She assembled more brush at hand, and on a day she retired into it, followed by the cubs, and choked the entrance by drawing in brush after her. Tommy found himself once more left alone.

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

T
HE
G
REAT
A
CCIDENT

It would be late in March or early April before she came out again, he knew. In the meantime, the long white winter had begun in those upper mountains, and Tommy must prepare for a life in the snow.

Yet his heart did not completely fail him. He knew the country in which he was living, he told himself, and he would manage excellently. For one thing, he had laid in a store of nuts during the late autumn. They would help him through the lowest periods of the starving winter. For the rest, he still had ammunition, and it would go hard if he could not keep himself in food. If he could have foreseen what was coming, he would probably have lain down and resigned all hope at once. But providence spares us too much foresight.

His clothes were in tatters, but, as the cold increased, he began to wrap a blanket around him when he went out to hunt. Inside the cave he managed very well. He noticed on the roof of the cave a small section where roots grew down and it made him guess shrewdly that there was a considerable gap in the rock at that point. So he climbed up with the shovel and dug down through the dirt until, to his delight, his shovel struck through into empty air. When he had finished his digging, he had uncovered a hole of rugged outline, two feet across, in the center of his roof. That became his chimney. To be sure, a fire of wet wood or green wood would fill the cave insufferably with smoke, but on the whole the draft worked very well. Usually he had a brisk, bright blaze that kept the cave comfortable, while a thick blanketing of smoke gathered in the top of the cave and slowly poured out through the opening.

So furnished, he could defy the cold, and, when the wind stood in the south, he needed only to block the entrance to the cave with stones. Of course, there were vast, empty stretches when he was neither eating nor sleeping or hunting or cooking. But those periods he filled quite comfortably with reading the only two books that John Parks had put in his pack. Two books make up a small library, and these two could hardly have been better chosen for Tommy. There was a Bible, and there was a copy of Malory, both sadly battered by the packing, but both still readable. To Tommy they were inexhaustible treasures. Malory he knew before in fragments. Now he devoured it whole. As for the Bible, he had felt it to be a great and dreary book fit for old women and Sunday, but, when the conversation-hunger drove him, he opened it perforce—and was suddenly lost in talks of old wars, wild vengeances, strange prophecies, inspired men. There was much of it that he could not follow easily, but he found long passages that were solid entertainment, and many and many a long hour he spent tracing out the words, one by one, with the motion of a grimy little forefinger.

Grimy Tommy certainly was. Suppose a close look is made of him on the day of his tragedy, that fatal accident that nearly snuffed out poor Tommy's life. Hunger wakes him. He sits up in the dim twilight of the winter and the cave combined. He lights a fire, groaning and shivering in the cold. The rising tongue of yellow flame shows first a ragged mop of long hair, partly standing on end and partly falling down across ears and neck. He is huddled in a blanket that for the moment covers his body. The firelight gleams on a berry-brown face, thin, with the cheeks, which should be rounded by childhood, as flat and straight as the cheeks of a grown man. His eyes, sunken under frowning brows, glitter with the firelight; keen, blue eyes as restless as the eyes of
Madame
Grizzly herself.

Now hunger rouses him. He stands up and goes to the nearest shelf of rock and takes from it two frozen fish, for yesterday he had broken the ice of a pool and had caught several prizes. But suddenly the thought of fish makes his stomach and throat close tight in revolt. He throws them back on the shelf. He steps into a pair of huge shoes—an extra pair of John Parks's shoes, for his own had worn out that summer. He winds the blanket as deftly as an Indian chief. He goes to the entrance of the cave, rolls a stone back, and steps out onto the crackling, hard, frozen surface of the snow.

There he stands, breathing deeply of the fresher air, the color leaping up into his cheeks. He is a tall boy for his age—some three inches short of five feet, big-boned, with the promise of great hulk when he is matured—if he may live to maturity. But nine months of solitary life, solitary work and play in the wilderness, have hardened him like leather. The muscles of those lean, long arms have surprising strength.

He looks about him upon a white world. All the mountains that step away north and east and south are sheeted like ghosts. The plateau is thick with snow, which has blown here and there into mounds and drifts. The level branches of the evergreens are pressed down by thick layers of the heavy snow. A keen wind is blowing. It takes edges of the blanket and tugs them straight out. It pries through the loose folds of the cloth and sends its icy teeth through and through the slender body of the boy. But Tommy only shrugs his shoulders and steps out.

Yonder he enters the forest. Here the walking is better, for he does not have to wade to his knees through the snow. He needs only to pick a course where the trees have sifted the snow to the side, and where the ground is covered with only a thin layer. But, even so, now and again he steps into a little hollow up to the waist. In half an hour he is wet and freezing cold. But still he shrugs his shoulders and sets his teeth. If he lives to a happier day and a greater strength, the world will have to pay him a heavy toll for all this pain.

Now he stops short. His keen eyes have seen three little humps of snow and ice thrust up on a branch halfway to the top of a tall tree. He stands watching them intently, making sure. These are three young partridges, he is sure. They have roosted yonder in the early winter. Snow has covered them in a night. The warmth of their bodies has melted the nearest snow, so that it touches them in no place, and the heavy frost has frozen the outer layer of the snow to an iron-hard consistency. And so their winter house is made.

While he stands there, motionless, his eye catches on something white as the very snow, and moving like an arrow across its surface. It is a weasel, that fierce little wolf that preys on all small life. It darts past almost across his feet, so intent is the terrible killer on the blood trail across the surface of the pure snow. Instantly he is gone. Tommy looks after him with an involuntary shudder. Then he is into the branches of the tree. No matter that those branches are slippery with ice, no matter that the deft feet of Tommy are burdened with those great, oversized shoes; he is climbing to make a kill, and he will not slip.

Up he goes. He lies out on the branch, twining his legs around it. He crumbles the first icehouse. Yes, he was right! He wrings the neck of the poor bird and drops it to the ground, and so with the next, so with the third. But the third is smaller. He will carry it down with him. So he thrusts back a fold of the blanket and stuffs it into his coat pocket. Suddenly he thrills with fear. In that pocket are the matches, and they must not be moistened by this wet body.

He jerks out the bird again, and behold! Down through the air flutters a whole drift of matches that have adhered to its damp feathers. The sharp wind catches them. They blow away in a cloud and disappear among the branches of the next tree.

Poor Tommy! His heart stopped when he saw that dreadful mischance. He dropped the partridge unheeded. He thrust his hand into the pocket—not a match was left!

For the moment, he lay there, half stunned by his fortune. All he can see now is how small was that fire that he started to build before he left the cave. Down the tree he drops like a veritable monkey from branch to branch. He falls from the last one upon his face in the snow. But that is no matter. Neither do the precious birds matter to Tommy. Off he started, racing through the snow. If only the fire will last until he reaches the cave.

But he has come much farther than he dreamed. It seems that he would never be able to cover the distance between. At last, with burning lungs, with blinded eyes, with the blood pounding in his head, he rushes into the mouth of the cave and finds that the floor is black as night. Not one spark of the fire has lived!

Above it he stands, sick and stunned. There are the small branches lying in a little circle, with their center portions burned away, until they were out of touch with one another, and so the flame died in the cold air.

Tommy sinks down upon the sandy floor and presses his hands over his face. This, then, is the sentence of death. On raw meat he might live a little time, but without fire he must surely perish.