CHAPTER SIXTEENMORE MYSTERY
While Adele and Everett had been exploring the island, Madge Peterson and Eva had been comfortably seated under the pine-trees, sketching the point of rocks. At first Eva had felt shy and embarrassed, but when she found that Madge was not watching her, she lost her self-consciousness and began to draw, and when the sketch was finished she laughingly exclaimed, “I really ought not to show it to you. I’m afraid I never shall make an artist.”
“Indeed you will,” Madge replied brightly. “You have natural talent, and now I have a beautiful plan to suggest. Have you a guardian or any one especially interested in you?”
Eva shook her head sadly. “No one,” she replied simply.
“Then the matron of the Orphanage is the one whom I must ask if I wish to obtain permission for you to do something, is she not?” Madge questioned.
“Yes, Mrs. Friend is the only mother I have, but she is truly kind. Every one is kind. Adele has been just like a sister, and now you—”
“I hope that you will let me be your friend,” Madge Peterson said. “I sincerely believe that you have a talent for drawing which ought to be cultivated, and if Mrs. Friend is willing I would like you to come to the city every Saturday morning and attend the Art Institute.”
“Miss Peterson!” Eva cried, with glowing eyes. “How wonderful, wonderful that would be!”
“We’ll have beautiful times,” Madge exclaimed, “and I feel sure that Adele has a talent which she, too, would like to cultivate, and you could come together.”
“Adele writes verses,” Eva exclaimed joyously. “She can even make up rhymes while she is talking, and—”
“Beg pardon, miss,” a strange voice interrupted. “Would you loan me your boat for half a minute? Mine broke loose and is drifting out into the lake. I’d be back with both of them in no time, and be ever so much obliged.”
Madge, looking up, saw before her a weather-browned, kindly-faced fisherman, and so she replied pleasantly, “Yes, do take the boat. We will not need it for half an hour at least.”
Then, rising, she said to Eva, “Now, Dryad Fern, let us wander about a bit. I want to show you a pretty view from the other side of the island.”
And so it chanced a few moments later, when Adele and Everett arrived on the scene, they could find neither the girls nor the row-boat.
“Well, this is strange!” Everett exclaimed. “But I believe that it will turn out to be as harmless a mystery as the other.”
“Hark!” Adele said. “I hear the girls calling, and there they come now.”
“Madge, what has become of our boat?” Everett inquired, and Madge, for answer, pointed out toward the lake, where Everett saw two boats approaching the shore. A fisherman was rowing a rather rough-looking craft and towing their own. Madge explained how it had happened, and the lad went down to the water’s edge to assist at the landing.
“Thank ye,” said the fisherman, as he tossed the painter of the little craft to Everett. “Strangers from the city, I take it,” he added, as he looked at the youth’s white flannel suit, with a twinkle under his shaggy eyebrows. “What would ye think now, if ye’d lived on Little Bear Lake, as I have, for upward of fifteen year, and not been away from it?”
“Oh, then you must know the story of the Little Bear!” Eva exclaimed eagerly. “We saw a picture of him over at the inn.”
“Know the story? I should say I do! Why, little gal, that bear was a good friend of mine and the Kid’s. If ye’ve time to row over to my shack, I’ll show ye Little Bear’s skin and tell ye the tale about him. I live in that clump of trees on the mainland yonder.”
“We’d love to go,” Madge replied.
“All aboard!” Everett called, and soon the two boats were crossing the lake.
In a grove of pine-trees the rude shack stood. A three-legged stool was in front of the door through which the party entered. There was very little furniture in the one room, only things that were absolutely necessary, and those were homemade, it was plain to see. Over a rustic bed an Indian blanket was thrown. Three-legged stools, a table, and a stove completed the furnishings.
“I cook on a camp-fire mostly,” the fisherman said. “Stoves are too civilized for the like o’ me, but when it’s winter that stove comes into its own. Many a blustery night Little Bear and I would come in chilled to the bone, and we’d make a crackling fire in that rusty old stove, and glad we were to have it, I kin tell ye!”
“Oh!” cried Eva. “Did Little Bear live right here with you? Weren’t you afraid of him? I thought bears were ferocious and ate people up.”
“Well,” said the old fisherman, “I s’pose there are ferocious ones, maybe, but to my thinking there’s no creature more good-natured and kindly-intentioned than a bear. He won’t fight a man unless he sees that the man means to harm him, and the bear’s in the right to fight then, I should say.”
A brown bear-skin was nailed on the wall of the shack. Smoothing the rough fur, the old man said tenderly, “And this here skin is all that’s left now of Little Bear. Sit down, and I’ll tell ye the story.”
“Let’s go outdoors under the pines,” Madge suggested, and so out they went. The weather-tanned old man sat on the three-legged stool, and the four young people made themselves comfortable on the soft pine-needles which formed a thick carpet under the trees.
“Many years ago,” the fisherman began, “no white men lived on this lake,—just Injuns and bear and deer. But one summer a lumber-camp was started where the inn stands to-day, and upwards of twenty white men, armed with axes and guns and knives, built log huts about and began to live in them. The lake shore in those days was covered with great pine-trees, and the concern that owned them wanted them cut down for lumber, but the Injuns had a notion that they owned those pine woods themselves, and many a hard fight there was between the reds and the whites, but the guns beat the arrows in the end, and the Injuns moved away farther north. Bear and deer were thick in those days, and the lumbermen had plenty to eat and all the fish they wanted when they took time to catch them. After a while other white men came and started sheep-raising and farming. They were always big, husky men, who were used to roughin’ it, but one day a covered wagon arrived, and in it was a man and a woman and a baby.
“The man looked pale and sick-like. He’d come to the woods for his health, he said. He offered the wood-cutters all the money he had if they would give food to his wife and child. He himself wasn’t long for this earth, he said, and he was right, for he died that night.
“Those rough men were sorry enough for the woman, and they made her as comfortable as they could. They let her have one of the huts to live in. She tried to pick up strength for the child’s sake, but she just couldn’t do it, and a week later she went to join her man. Then there was that baby boy left in the lumber-camp. The rough men didn’t know what to do with the kid. Some were for sending him to the nearest settlement, ten miles away, but one of them had had a kid of his own once, and he said he’d look out for the young one, so, after that, the men called Jock Henderson the kid’s foster-father.
“I’m slow coming to the bear, maybe ye think, for it’s my way to begin at the beginnin’, but prick up yer ears, for the bear is soon coming.
“Kid Henderson, as they called the baby, was a jolly little fellow, and when the men came home from their work, he toddled around and teased to be tossed up into the air, so one big man and then another would bounce the Kid, and how he would squeal and laugh! Somehow or other, those rough men kept things tidier after that, for having a Kid around made it seem more like home. And, too, they were careful how they talked,—never said a hard word in that baby’s hearing. Truth was, Kid Henderson had crept right into the hearts of those rough lumbermen, and, though not one would have said it, they all loved him like he was their own. That’s why they was so frantic-like when the Kid was stolen. Did the Injuns steal him? Well, wait and you shall hear.
“As I said, the men had all the deer and bear and fish they wanted to eat, but there was one Irishman, Pat Mahoney, who had a hankering for bacon, and bacon he was going to have, he said, if he took a week off to get it. The long and the short of it was that Pat built a pig-pen out of logs, and then he rode to the nearest settlement and came back with a litter of little squealing pigs that were just old enough to get on without the sow. Of course that was a good ways from having bacon, but Pat said those porkers would be good to eat by winter, and, as it was then early spring, the men were willing to believe him. Kid Henderson went wild over those little pigs, and if he had been let, he would have spent all his time in the pen, rolling about and playing with them. And now here comes the bear, not Little Bear, I’ll agree, for it was a huge, big bear that came prowling around the lumber-camp one night, and, smelling pork, he calmly reached over the fence and carried off one of the little pigs. Pat Mahoney was mad, I kin tell ye. He set a trap for old Bruin, but no use, and the next night another little pig was missing.
“Then Pat decided to set up and watch and shoot the intruder when he came prowling around, but something happened before night which made all the men forget about the pigs.
“They always put the Kid in the main hut and barred the door on the outside when they went away to the woods to work, but at noon Jock Henderson would ride back and get the Kid’s lunch and put him to bed for his afternoon nap. The Kid was used to being left alone and he didn’t make a fuss,—just played around on the floor with the rough toys the men had made for him.
“Well, the noon of the day after the second pig had been stolen, Jock Henderson went home the same as usual, but when he got near, he saw that the hut-door was standing wide open. This was curious, being as the men had barred it on the outside so’s the Kid nowise could open it.
“Jock sprang into the hut and looked all around. The Kid wasn’t there! ‘Injuns!’ Jock thought on the instant, but his heart went cold when he saw what the tracks really was. Not Injuns. No, sir; they war bear-tracks! Looked as though a big bear had stood up to scratch his back on the rough bark of that door and had pushed off the bar. Then, of course, the door had opened and Jock Henderson knew the rest. The big bear had gone off with the little Kid, just as it had with the pigs.
“Jock leaped on his horse and followed the bear-tracks. There’d been a rain the night before and the tracks was easy to find. They led up into the hills. Jock knew he was running an awful risk, going right up into the bear’s den, especially if it was a mother-bear with young; but Jock didn’t care anything about his own life if he could only save the Kid. He tied his horse in a pine wood because most horses won’t go anywhere near a bear, and then, taking his gun, he started through the brush and slowly made his way up the hill.
“He lost the bear-tracks when the ground became rocky, and he was just going to change his course when he heard a low growl. Instantly Jock whirled in that direction, and he saw a huge bear rearing up to its full height and ready to attack him. There were no trees around, and Jock knew that his only safety lay in hitting the bear’s heart. If he missed, the enraged critter would plunge on him and tear him to pieces.
“Jock Henderson was a good shot, but his nerve was pretty much shaken. He took aim and fired. The bear stood so still for a second that Jock feared he had missed it entirely, but in another moment the big fellow fell in a heap on the ground.
“Then Jock looked about for some sign of the little Kid, but he didn’t find any. Maybe he’d come too late, he was just thinking, when suddenly he saw something which brought tears of joy into his eyes. He had rounded a heap of rocks, and there, in the doorway of a cave, lay the Kid, with his head on the woolly back of a little brown bear, and they were both sound asleep. The old mother-bear had spared the life of the little child, as bears often do, and a feeling of tenderness came into Jock’s heart for the poor mother-bear, but of course he had to kill her to save his own life.
“Then the lumberman took a strap from around his waist and he made a muzzle, which he put over the nose of the sleeping cub. Then he lifted the boy on one arm and took the tiny cub under the other, and down the hill he went. The small bear was soon awake and struggling for its freedom. Then the Kid woke up, and finding he was safe in his foster-father’s arms, he said: ‘Nice bear took Kiddie. Nice bear didn’t hurt Kiddie.’
“Meanwhile the other men wondered why Jock did not return to the woods that afternoon, and they was all anxious and watching for him when he appeared with the Kid and the little cub bear. When they heard the story, many an eye was wet, and the Kid had to tell over and over how the nice bear took him, but ‘nice bear didn’t hurt Kiddie,’ he would always say with that winnin’ smile of his.
“Right then and there the men made up their minds that there wouldn’t anything get another chance to steal their Kid, and after that they never left him alone again. If it was fair weather, he was taken to the camp, and he liked nothing better; while in bad weather the men took turns staying behind and lookin’ after him, and so the years passed and the little boy and bear grew up together. Then something happened,” said the old man with a far-away look in his eyes. “Well, like as not it was best that it did.”