He threw his enormous bulk back on his haunches, and rose up.—Page 40.
TWIN BABIES.
These twin babies were black. They were black as coal. Indeed, they were blacker than coal, for they glistened in their oily blackness. They were young baby bears; and so exactly alike that no one could, in any way, tell the one from the other. And they were orphans. They had been found at the foot of a small cedar tree on the banks of the Sacramento River, near the now famous Soda Springs, found by a tow-headed boy who was very fond of bears and hunting.
But at the time the twin babies were found Soda Springs was only a wild camp, or way station, on the one and only trail that wound through the woods and up and down mountains for hundreds of miles, connecting the gold fields of California with the pastoral settlements away to thenorth in Oregon. But a railroad has now taken the place of that tortuous old packtrail, and you can whisk through these wild and woody mountains, and away on down through Oregon and up through Washington, Montana, Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and on to Chicago without even once getting out of your car, if you like. Yet such a persistent ride is not probable, for fish, pheasants, deer, elk, and bear still abound here in their ancient haunts, and the temptation to get out and fish or hunt is too great to be resisted.
This place where the baby bears were found was first owned by three men or, rather, by two men and a boy. One of the men was known as Mountain Joe. He had once been a guide in the service of General Fremont, but he was now a drunken fellow and spent most of his time at the trading post, twenty miles down the river. He is now an old man, almost blind, and lives in Oregon City, on a pension received as a soldier of the Mexican war. Theother man’s name was Sil Reese. He, also, is living and famously rich—as rich as he is stingy, and that is saying that he is very rich indeed.
The boy preferred the trees to the house, partly because it was more pleasant and partly because Sil Reese, who had a large nose and used it to talk with constantly, kept grumbling because the boy, who had been wounded in defending the ranch, was not able to work—wash the dishes, make fires and so on, and help in a general and particular way about the so-called “Soda Spring Hotel.” This Sil Reese was certainly a mean man, as has, perhaps, been set down in this sketch before.
The baby bears were found asleep, and alone. How they came to be there, and, above all, how they came to be left long enough alone by their mother for a feeble boy to rush forward at sight of them, catch them up in his arms and escape with them, will always be a wonder. But this one thing is certain, you had about as welltake up two rattlesnakes in your arms as two baby bears, and hope to get off unharmed, if the mother of the young bears is within a mile of you. This boy, however, had not yet learned caution, and he probably was not born with much fear in his make-up. And then he was so lonesome, and this man Reese was so cruel and so cross, with his big nose like a sounding fog-horn, that the boy was glad to get even a bear to love and play with.
They, so far from being frightened or cross, began to root around under his arms and against his breast, like little pigs, for something to eat. Possibly their mother had been killed by hunters, for they were nearly famished. When he got them home, how they did eat! This also made Sil Reese mad. For, although the boy, wounded as he was, managed to shoot down a deer not too far from the house almost every day, and so kept the “hotel” in meat, still it made Reese miserable and envious to seethe boy so happy with his sable and woolly little friends. Reese was simply mean!
Before a month the little black boys began to walk erect, carry stick muskets, wear paper caps, and march up and down before the door of the big log “hotel” like soldiers.
But the cutest trick they learned was that of waiting on the table. With little round caps and short white aprons, the little black boys would stand behind the long bench on which the guests sat at the pine board table and pretend to take orders with all the precision and solemnity of Southern negroes.
Of course, it is to be confessed that they often dropped things, especially if the least bit hot; but remember we had only tin plates and tin or iron dishes of all sorts, so that little damage was done if a dish did happen to fall and rattle down on the earthen floor.
Men came from far and near and oftenlingered all day to see these cunning and intelligent creatures perform.
About this time Mountain Joe fought a duel with another mountaineer down at the trading post, and this duel, a bloodless and foolish affair, was all the talk. Why not have the little black fellows fight a duel also? They were surely civilized enough to fight now!
And so, with a very few days’ training, they fought a duel exactly like the one in which poor, drunken old Mountain Joe was engaged; even to the detail of one of them suddenly dropping his stick gun and running away and falling headlong in a prospect hole.
When Joe came home and saw this duel and saw what a fool he had made of himself, he at first was furiously angry. But it made him sober, and he kept sober for half a year. Meantime Reese was mad as ever, more mad, in fact, than ever before. For he could not endure to see the boy have any friends of any kind. Above all, he didnot want Mountain Joe to stay at home or keep sober. He wanted to handle all the money and answer no questions. A drunken man and a boy that he could bully suited him best. Ah, but this man Reese was a mean fellow, as has been said a time or two before.
As winter came on the two blacks were fat as pigs and fully half-grown. Their appetites increased daily, and so did the anger and envy of Mr. Sil Reese.
“They’ll eat us out o’ house and hum,” said the big, towering nose one day, as the snow began to descend and close up the pack trails. And then the stingy man proposed that the blacks should be made to hibernate, as others of their kind. There was a big, hollow log that had been sawed off in joints to make bee gums; and the stingy man insisted that they should be put in there with a tight head, and a pack of hay for a bed, and nailed up till spring to save provisions.
Soon there was an Indian outbreak.Some one from the ranch, or “hotel,” must go with the company of volunteers that was forming down at the post for a winter campaign. Of course Reese would not go. He wanted Mountain Joe to go and get killed. But Joe was sober now and he wanted to stay and watch Reese.
And that is how it came about that the two black babies were tumbled headlong into a big, black bee gum, or short, hollow log, on a heap of hay, and nailed up for the winter. The boy had to go to the war.
It was late in the spring when the boy, having neglected to get himself killed, to the great disgust of Mr. Sil Reese, rode down and went straight up to the big black bee gum in the back yard. He put his ear to a knothole. Not a sound. He tethered his mule, came back and tried to shake the short, hollow log. Not a sound or sign or movement of any kind. Then he kicked the big black gum with all his might. Nothing. Rushing to the wood-pile, he caught up an ax and in a moment had the whole endof the big gum caved in, and, to his infinite delight, out rolled the twins!
But they were merely the ghosts of themselves. They had been kept in a month or more too long, and were now so weak and so lean that they could hardly stand on their feet.
“Kill ’em and put ’em out o’ misery,” said Reese, for run from him they really could not, and he came forward and kicked one of them flat down on its face as it was trying hard to stand on its four feet.
The boy had grown some; besides, he was just from the war and was now strong and well. He rushed up in front of Reese, and he must have looked unfriendly, for Sil Reese tried to smile, and then at the same time he turned hastily to go into the house. And when he got fairly turned around, the boy kicked him precisely where he had kicked the bear. And he kicked him hard, so hard that he pitched forward on his face just as the bear had done. He got up quickly, but he did not look back. Heseemed to have something to do in the house.
In a month the babies, big babies now, were sleek and fat. It is amazing how these creatures will eat after a short nap of a few months, like that. And their cunning tricks, now! And their kindness to their master! Ah! their glossy black coats and their brilliant black eyes!
And now three men came. Two of these men were Italians from San Francisco. The third man was also from that city, but he had an amazing big nose and refused to eat bear meat. He thought it was pork.
They took tremendous interest in the big black twins, and stayed all night and till late next day, seeing them perform.
“Seventy-five dollars,” said one big nose to the other big nose, back in a corner where they thought the boy did not hear.
“One hundred and fifty. You see, I’ll have to give my friends fifty each. Yes, it’s true I’ve took care of ’em all winter,but I ain’t mean, and I’ll only keep fifty of it.”
The boy, bursting with indignation, ran to Mountain Joe with what he had heard. But poor Joe had been sober for a long time, and his eyes fairly danced in delight at having $50 in his own hand and right to spend it down at the post.
And so the two Italians muzzled the big, pretty pets and led them kindly down the trail toward the city, where they were to perform in the streets, the man with the big nose following after the twins on a big white mule.
And what became of the big black twin babies? They are still performing, seem content and happy, sometimes in a circus, sometimes in a garden, sometimes in the street. They are great favorites and have never done harm to anyone.
And what became of Sil Reese? Well, as said before, he still lives, is very rich and very miserable. He met the boy—the boy that was—on the street the other dayand wanted to talk of old times. He told the boy he ought to write something about the old times and put him, Sil Reese, in it. He said, with that same old sounding nose and sickening smile, that he wanted the boy to be sure and put his, Sil Reese’s name, in it so that he could show it to his friends. And the boy has done so.
The boy? You want to know what the boy is doing? Well, in about a second he will be signing his autograph to the bottom of this story about his twin babies.
IN SWIMMING WITH A BEAR.
What made these ugly rows of scars on my left hand?
Well, it might have been buckshot; only it wasn’t. Besides, buckshot would be scattered about, “sort of promiscuous like,” as backwoodsmen say. But these ugly little holes are all in a row, or rather in two rows. Now a wolf might have made these holes with his fine white teeth, or a bear might have done it with his dingy and ugly teeth, long ago. I must here tell you that the teeth of a bear are not nearly so fine as the teeth of a wolf. And the teeth of a lion are the ugliest of them all. They are often broken and bent; and they are always of a dim yellow color. It is from this yellow hue of the lion’s teeth that we have the name of one of the most famous early flowers of May: dent de lion, toothof the lion; dandelion. Get down your botany, now, find the Anglo-Asian name of the flower, and fix this fact on your mind before you read further.
I know of three men, all old men now, who have their left hands all covered with scars. One is due to the wolf; the others owe their scars to the red mouths of black bears.
You see, in the old days, out here in California, when the Sierras were full of bold young fellows hunting for gold, quite a number of them had hand-to-hand battles with bears. For when we came out here “the woods were full of ’em.”
Of course, the first thing a man does when he finds himself face to face with a bear that won’t run and he has no gun—and that is always the time when he finds a bear—why, he runs, himself; that is, if the bear will let him.
But it is generally a good deal like the old Crusader who “caught a Tartar” longago, when on his way to capture Jerusalem, with Peter the Hermit.
“Come on!” cried Peter to the helmeted and knightly old Crusader, who sat his horse with lance in rest on a hill a little in the rear. “Come on!”
“I can’t! I’ve caught a Tartar.”
“Well, bring him along.”
“He won’t come.”
“Well, then, come without him.”
“He won’t let me.”
And so it often happened in the old days out here. When a man “caught” his bear and didn’t have his gun he had to fight it out hand-to-hand. But fortunately, every man at all times had a knife in his belt. A knife never gets out of order, never “snaps,” and a man in those days always had to have it with him to cut his food, cut brush, “crevice” for gold, and so on.
Oh! it is a grim picture to see a young fellow in his red shirt wheel about, when he can’t run, thrust out his left hand, draw his knife with his right, and so, breast tobreast, with the bear erect, strike and strike and strike to try to reach his heart before his left hand is eaten off to the elbow!
We have five kinds of bears in the Sierras. The “boxer,” the “biter,” the “hugger,” are the most conspicuous. The other two are a sort of “all round” rough and tumble style of fighters.
The grizzly is the boxer. A game old beast he is, too, and would knock down all the John L. Sullivans you could put in the Sierras faster than you could set them up. He is a kingly old fellow and disdains familiarity. Whatever may be said to the contrary, he never “hugs” if he has room to box. In some desperate cases he has been known to bite, but ordinarily he obeys “the rules of the ring.”
The cinnamon bear is a lazy brown brute, about one-half the size of the grizzly. He always insists on being very familiar, if not affectionate. This is the “hugger.”
Next in order comes the big, sleek, blackbear; easily tamed, too lazy to fight, unless forced to it. But when “cornered” he fights well, and, like a lion, bites to the bone.
After this comes the small and quarrelsome black bear with big ears, and a white spot on his breast. I have heard hunters say, but I don’t quite believe it, that he sometimes points to this white spot on his breast as a sort of Free Mason’s sign, as if to say, “Don’t shoot.” Next in order comes the smaller black bear with small ears. He is ubiquitous, as well as omniverous; gets into pig-pens, knocks over your beehives, breaks open your milk-house, eats more than two good-sized hogs ought to eat, and is off for the mountain top before you dream he is about. The first thing you see in the morning, however, will be some muddy tracks on the door steps. For he always comes and snuffles and shuffles and smells about the door in a good-natured sort of way, and leaves his card. The fifth member of the great bear family is notmuch bigger than an ordinary dog; but he is numerous, and he, too, is a nuisance.
Dog? Why not set the dog on him? Let me tell you. The California dog is a lazy, degenerate cur. He ought to be put with the extinct animals. He devotes his time and his talent to the flea. Not six months ago I saw a coon, on his way to my fish-pond in the pleasant moonlight, walk within two feet of my dog’s nose and not disturb his slumbers.
We hope that it is impossible ever to have such a thing as hydrophobia in California. But as our dogs are too lazy to bite anything, we have thus far been unable to find out exactly as to that.
This last-named bear has a big head and small body; has a long, sharp nose and longer and sharper teeth than any of the others; he is a natural thief, has low instincts, carries his nose close to the ground, and, wherever possible, makes his road along on the mossy surface of fallen trees in humid forests. He eats fish—dead anddecaying salmon—in such abundance that his flesh is not good in the salmon season.
It was with this last described specimen of the bear family that a precocious old boy who had hired out to some horse drovers, went in swimming years and years ago. The two drovers had camped to recruit and feed their horses on the wild grass and clover that grew at the headwaters of the Sacramento River, close up under the foot of Mount Shasta. A pleasant spot it was, in the pleasant summer weather.
This warm afternoon the two men sauntered leisurely away up Soda Creek to where their horses were grazing belly deep in grass and clover. They were slow to return, and the boy, as all boys will, began to grow restless. He had fished, he had hunted, had diverted himself in a dozen ways, but now he wanted something new. He got it.
A little distance below camp could be seen, through the thick foliage that hungand swung and bobbed above the swift waters, a long, mossy log that lay far out and far above the cool, swift river.
Why not go down through the trees and go out on that log, take off his clothes, dangle his feet, dance on the moss, do anything, everything that a boy wants to do?
In two minutes the boy was out on the big, long, mossy log, kicking his boots off, and in two minutes more he was dancing up and down on the humid, cool moss, and as naked as the first man, when he was first made.
And it was very pleasant. The great, strong river splashed and dashed and boomed below; above him the long green branches hung dense and luxuriant and almost within reach. Far off and away through their shifting shingle he caught glimpses of the bluest of all blue skies. And a little to the left he saw gleaming in the sun and almost overhead the everlasting snows of Mount Shasta.
Putting his boots and his clothes allcarefully in a heap, that nothing might roll off into the water, he walked, or rather danced on out to where the further end of the great fallen tree lay lodged on a huge boulder in the middle of the swift and surging river. His legs dangled down and he patted his plump thighs with great satisfaction. Then he leaned over and saw some gold and silver trout, then he flopped over and lay down on his breast to get a better look at them. Then he thought he heard something behind him on the other end of the log! He pulled himself together quickly and stood erect, face about. There was a bear! It was one of those mean, sneaking, long-nosed, ant-eating little fellows, it is true, but it was a bear! And a bear is a bear to a boy, no matter about his size, age or character. The boy stood high up. The boy’s bear stood up. And the boy’s hair stood up!
The bear had evidently not seen the boy yet. But it had smelled his boots and clothes, and had got upon his dignity. Butnow, dropping down on all fours, with nose close to the mossy butt of the log, it slowly shuffled forward.
That boy was the stillest boy, all this time, that has ever been. Pretty soon the bear reached the clothes. He stopped, sat down, nosed them about as a hog might, and then slowly and lazily got up; but with a singular sort of economy of old clothes, for a bear, he did not push anything off into the river.
What next? Would he come any farther? Would he? Could he? Will he? The long, sharp little nose was once more to the moss and sliding slowly and surely toward the poor boy’s naked shins. Then the boy shivered and settled down, down, down on his haunches, with his little hands clasped till he was all of a heap.
He tried to pray, but somehow or another, all he could think of as he sat there crouched down with all his clothes off was:
“Now I lay me down to sleep.”
“Now I lay me down to sleep.”
“Now I lay me down to sleep.”
But all this could not last. The bear was almost on him in half a minute, although he did not lift his nose six inches till almost within reach of the boy’s toes. Then the surprised bear suddenly stood up and began to look the boy in the face. As the terrified youth sprang up, he thrust out his left hand as a guard and struck the brute with all his might between the eyes with the other. But the left hand lodged in the two rows of sharp teeth and the boy and bear rolled into the river together.
But they were together only an instant. The bear, of course, could not breathe with his mouth open in the water, and so had to let go. Instinctively, or perhaps because his course lay in that direction, the bear struck out, swimming “dog fashion,” for the farther shore. And as the boy certainly had no urgent business on that side of the river he did not follow, but kept very still, clinging to the moss on the big boulder till the bear had shaken the water from his coat and disappeared in the thicket.
Then the boy, pale and trembling from fright and the loss of blood, climbed up the broken end of the log, got his clothes, struggled into them as he ran, and so reached camp.
And he had not yelled! He tied up his hand in a piece of old flour sack, all by himself, for the men had not yet got back; and he didn’t whimper! And what became of the boy? you ask.
The boy grew up as all energetic boys do; for there seems to be a sort of special providence for such boys.
And where is he now?
Out in California, trapping bear in the winter and planting olive trees in their season.
And do I know him?
Yes, pretty well, almost as well as any old fellow can know himself.
A FAT LITTLE EDITOR AND THREE LITTLE “BROWNS.”
Mount Sinai, Heart of the Sierras—this place is one mile east and a little less than one mile perpendicular from the hot, dusty and dismal little railroad town down on the rocky banks of the foaming and tumbling Sacramento River. Some of the old miners are down there still—still working on the desolate old rocky bars with rockers. They have been there, some of them, for more than thirty years. A few of them have little orchards, or vineyards, on the steep, overhanging hills, but there is no home life, no white women to speak of, as yet. The battered and gray old miners are poor, lonely and discouraged, but they are honest, stout-hearted still, and of a much higher type than those that hang about the towns. It is hot down on the river—toohot, almost, to tell the truth. Even here under Mount Shasta, in her sheets of eternal snow, the mercury is at par.
This Mount Sinai is not a town; it is a great spring of cold water that leaps from the high, rocky front of a mountain which we have located as a summer home in the Sierras—myself and a few other scribes of California.
This is the great bear land. One of our party, a simple-hearted and honest city editor, who was admitted into our little mountain colony because of his boundless good nature and native goodness, had never seen a bear before he came here. City editors do not, as a rule, ever know much about bears. This little city editor is baldheaded, bow-legged, plain to a degree. And maybe that is why he is so good. “Give me fat men,” said Caesar.
But give me plain men for good men, any time. Pretty women are to be preferred; but pretty men? Bah! I must get on with the bear, however, and make a long storya short story. We found our fat, bent-legged editor from the city fairly broiling in the little railroad town, away down at the bottom of the hill in the yellow golden fields of the Sacramento; and he was so limp and so lazy that we had to lay hold of him and get him out of the heat and up into the heart of the Sierras by main force.
Only one hour of climbing and we got up to where the little mountain streams come tumbling out of snow-banks on every side. The Sacramento, away down below and almost under us, from here looks dwindled to a brawling brook; a foamy white thread twisting about the boulders as big as meeting houses, plunging forward, white with fear, as if glad to get away—as if there was a bear back there where it came from. We did not register. No, indeed. This place here on Square Creek, among the clouds, where the water bursts in a torrent from the living rock, we have named Mount Sinai. We own the whole place for one mile square—the tallpine trees, the lovely pine-wood houses; all, all. We proposed to hunt and fish, for food. But we had some bread, some bacon, lots of coffee and sugar. And so, whipping out our hooks and lines, we set off with the editor up a little mountain brook, and in less than an hour were far up among the fields of eternal snow, and finely loaded with trout.
What a bed of pine quills! What long and delicious cones for a camp fire! Some of those sugar-pine cones are as long as your arm. One of them alone will make a lofty pyramid of flame and illuminate the scene for half a mile about. I threw myself on my back and kicked up my heels. I kicked care square in the face. Oh, what freedom! How we would rest after dinner here! Of course we could not all rest or sleep at the same time. One of us would have to keep a pine cone burning all the time. Bears are not very numerous out here; but the California lion is both numerous and large here. The wild-cat, too, isno friend to the tourist. But we were not tourists. The land was and is ours. We would and all could defend our own.
The sun was going down. Glorious! The shades of night were coming up out of the gorges below and audaciously pursuing the dying sun. Not a sound. Not a sign of man or of beast. We were scattered all up and down the hill.
Crash! Something came tearing down the creek through the brush! The fat and simple-hearted editor, who had been dressing the homeopathic dose of trout, which inexperience had marked as his own, sprang up from the bank of the tumbling little stream above us and stood at his full height. His stout little knees for the first time smote together. I was a good way below him on the steep hillside. A brother editor was slicing bacon on a piece of reversed pine bark close by.
“Fall down,” I cried, “fall flat down on your face.”
It was a small she bear, and she was verythin and very hungry, with cubs at her heels, and she wanted that fat little city editor’s fish. I know it would take volumes to convince you that I really meant for the bear to pass by him and come after me and my friend with both fish and bacon, and so, with half a line, I assert this truth and pass on. Nor was I in any peril in appropriating the little brown bear to myself. Any man who knows what he is about is as safe with a bear on a steep hillside as is the best bull-fighter in any arena. No bear can keep his footing on a steep hillside, much less fight. And whenever an Indian is in peril he always takes down hill till he comes to a steep plane, and then lets the bear almost overtake him, when he suddenly steps aside and either knifes the bear to the heart or lets the open-mouthed beast go on down the hill, heels over head.
The fat editor turned his face toward me, and it was pale. “What! Lie down and be eaten up while you lie there andkick up your heels and enjoy yourself? Never. We will die together!” he shouted.
He started for me as fast as his short legs would allow. The bear struck at him with her long, rattling claws. He landed far below me, and when he got up he hardly knew where he was or what he was. His clothes were in shreds, the back and bottom parts of them. The bear caught at his trout and was gone in an instant back with her two little cubs, and a moment later the little family had dined and was away, over the hill. She was a cinnamon bear, not much bigger than a big, yellow dog, and almost as lean and mean and hungry as any wolf could possibly be. We helped our inexperienced little friend slowly down to camp, forgetting all about the bacon and the fish till we came to the little board house, where we had coffee. Of course the editor could not go to the table now. He leaned, or rather sat, against a pine, drank copious cups of coffee and watched the stars, while I heaped up greatpiles of leaves and built a big fire, and so night rolled by in all her starry splendor as the men slept soundly all about beneath the lordly pines. But alas for the fat little editor; he did not like the scenery, and he would not stay. We saw him to the station on his way back to his little sanctum. He said he was satisfied. He had seen the “bar.” His last words were, as he pulled himself close together in a modest corner in the car and smiled feebly: “Say, boys, you won’t let it get in the papers, will you?”
TREEING A BEAR.
Away back in the “fifties” bears were as numerous on the banks of the Willamette River, in Oregon, as are hogs in the hickory woods of Kentucky in nut time, and that is saying that bears were mighty plenty in Oregon about forty years ago.
You see, after the missionaries established their great cattle ranches in Oregon and gathered the Indians from the wilderness and set them to work and fed them on beef and bread, the bears had it all their own way, till they literally overran the land. And this gave a great chance for sport to the sons of missionaries and the sons of new settlers “where rolls the Oregon.”
And it was not perilous sport, either, for the grizzly was rarely encounteredhere. His home was further to the south. Neither was the large and clumsy cinnamon bear abundant on the banks of the beautiful Willamette in those dear old days, when you might ride from sun to sun, belly deep in wild flowers, and never see a house. But the small black bear, as indicated before, was on deck in great force, at all times and in nearly all places.
It was the custom in those days for boys to take this bear with the lasso, usually on horseback.
We would ride along close to the dense woods that grew by the river bank, and, getting between him and his base of retreat, would, as soon as we sighted a bear feeding out in the open plain, swing our lassos and charge him with whoop and yell. His habit of rearing up and standing erect and looking about to see what was the matter made him an easy prey to the lasso. And then the fun of taking him home through the long, strong grass!
As a rule, he did not show fight when once in the toils of the lasso; but in a few hours, making the best of the situation like a little philosopher, he would lead along like a dog.
There were, of course, exceptions to this exemplary conduct.
On one occasion particularly, Ed Parish, the son of a celebrated missionary, came near losing his life by counting too confidently on the docility of a bear which he had taken with a lasso and was leading home.
His bear suddenly stopped, stood up and began to haul in the rope, hand over hand, just like a sailor. And as the other end of the rope was fastened tightly to the big Spanish pommel of the saddle, why of course the distance between the bear and the horse soon grew perilously short, and Ed Parish slid from his horse’s back and took to the brush, leaving horse and bear to fight it out as best they could.
When he came back, with some boys tohelp him, the horse was dead and the bear was gone, having cut the rope with his teeth.
After having lost his horse in this way, poor little Ed Parish had to do his hunting on foot, and, as my people were immigrants and very poor, why we, that is my brother and I, were on foot also. This kept us three boys together a great deal, and many a peculiar adventure we had in those dear days “when all the world was young.”
Ed Parish was nearly always the hero of our achievements, for he was a bold, enterprising fellow, who feared nothing at all. In fact, he finally lost his life from his very great love of adventure. But this is too sad to tell now, and we must be content with the story about how he treed a bear for the present.
We three boys had gone bear hunting up a wooded canyon near his father’s ranch late one warm summer afternoon. Ed had a gun, but, as I said before, my people were very poor, so neither brother nor I as yethad any other arms or implements than the inseparable lasso.
Ed, who was always the captain in such cases, chose the center of the dense, deep canyon for himself, and, putting my brother on the hillside to his right and myself on the hillside to his left, ordered a simultaneous “Forward march.”
After a time we heard him shoot. Then we heard him shout. Then there was a long silence.
Then suddenly, high and wild, his voice rang out through the tree tops down in the deep canyon.
“Come down! Come quick! I’ve treed a bear! Come and help me catch him; come quick! Oh, Moses! come quick, and—and—and catch him!”
My brother came tearing down the steep hill on his side of the canyon as I descended from my side. We got down about the same time, but the trees in their dense foliage, together with the compact underbrush,concealed everything. We could see neither bear nor boy.
This Oregon is a damp country, warm and wet; nearly always moist and humid, and so the trees are covered with moss. Long, gray, sweeping moss swings from the broad, drooping boughs of fir and pine and cedar and nearly every bit of sunlight is shut out in these canyons from one year’s end to the other. And it rains here nearly half of the year; and then these densely wooded canyons are as dark as caverns. I know of nothing so grandly gloomy as these dense Oregon woods in this long rainy season.
I laid my ear to the ground after I got a glimpse of my brother on the other side of the canyon, but could hear nothing at all but the beating of my heart.
Suddenly there was a wild yell away up in the dense boughs of a big mossy maple tree that leaned over toward my side of the canyon. I looked and looked with eagerness, but could see nothing whatever.
Then again came the yell from the top of the big leaning maple. Then there was a moment of silence, and then the cry: “Oh, Moses! Why don’t you come, I say, and help me catch him?” By this time I could see the leaves rustling. And I could see the boy rustling, too.
And just behind him was a bear. He had treed the bear, sure enough!
My eyes gradually grew accustomed to the gloom and density, and I now saw the red mouth of the bear amid the green foliage high overhead. The bear had already pulled off one of Ed’s boots and was about making a bootjack of his big red mouth for the other.
“Why don’t you come on, I say, and help me catch him?”
He kicked at the bear, and at the same time hitched himself a little further along up the leaning trunk, and in doing so kicked his remaining boot into the bear’s mouth.
“Oh, Moses, Moses! Why don’t you come? I’ve got a bear, I tell you.”
“Where is it, Ed?” shouted my brother on the other side.
But Ed did not tell him, for he had not yet got his foot from the bear’s mouth, and was now too busy to do anything else but yell and cry “Oh, Moses!”
Then my brother and I shouted out to Ed at the same time. This gave him great courage. He said something like “Confound you!” to the bear, and getting his foot loose without losing the boot he kicked the bear right on the nose. This brought things to a standstill. Ed hitched along a little higher up, and as the leaning trunk of the tree was already bending under his own and the bear’s weight, the infuriated brute did not seem disposed to go further. Besides, as he had been mortally wounded, he was probably growing too weak to do much now.
My brother got to the bottom of the canyon and brought Ed’s gun to where Istood. But, as we had no powder or bullets, and as Ed could not get them to us, even if he would have been willing to risk our shooting at the bear, it was hard to decide what to do. It was already dusk and we could not stay there all night.
“Boys,” shouted Ed, at last, as he steadied himself in the forks of a leaning and overhanging bough, “I’m going to come down on my laz rope. There, take that end of it, tie your laz ropes to it and scramble up the hill.”
We obeyed him to the letter, and as we did so, he fastened his lasso firmly to the leaning bough and descended like a spider to where we had stood a moment before. We all scrambled up out of the canyon together and as quickly as possible.
When we went back next day to get our ropes we found the bear dead near the root of the old mossy maple. The skin was a splendid one, and Ed insisted that my brother and I should have it, and we gladly accepted it.
My brother, who was older and wiser than I, said that he made us take the skin so that we would not be disposed to tell how he had “treed a bear.” But I trust not, for he was a very generous-hearted fellow. Anyhow, we never told the story while he lived.
BILL CROSS AND HIS PET BEAR.
When my father settled down at the foot of the Oregon Sierras with his little family, long, long years ago, it was about forty miles from our place to the nearest civilized settlement.
People were very scarce in those days, and bears, as said before, were very plenty. We also had wolves, wild-cats, wild cattle, wild hogs, and a good many long-tailed and big-headed yellow Californian lions.
The wild cattle, brought there from Spanish Mexico, next to the bear, were most to be feared. They had long, sharp horns and keen, sharp hoofs. Nature had gradually helped them out in these weapons of defense. They had grown to be slim and trim in body, and were as supple and swift as deer. They were the deadly enemiesof all wild beasts; because all wild beasts devoured their young.
When fat and saucy, in warm summer weather, these cattle would hover along the foothills in bands, hiding in the hollows, and would begin to bellow whenever they saw a bear or a wolf, or even a man or boy, if on foot, crossing the wide valley of grass and blue camas blossoms. Then there would be music! They would start up, with heads and tails in the air, and, broadening out, left and right, they would draw a long bent line, completely shutting off their victim from all approach to the foothills. If the unfortunate victim were a man or boy on foot, he generally made escape up one of the small ash trees that dotted the valley in groves here and there, and the cattle would then soon give up the chase. But if it were a wolf or any other wild beast that could not get up a tree, the case was different. Far away, on the other side of the valley, where dense woods lined the banks of the windingWillamette river, the wild, bellowing herd would be answered. Out from the edge of the woods would stream, right and left, two long, corresponding, surging lines, bellowing and plunging forward now and then, their heads to the ground, their tails always in the air and their eyes aflame, as if they would set fire to the long gray grass. With the precision and discipline of a well-ordered army, they would close in upon the wild beast, too terrified now to either fight or fly, and, leaping upon him, one after another, with their long, sharp hoofs, he would, in a little time, be crushed into an unrecognizable mass. Not a bone would be left unbroken. It is a mistake to suppose that they ever used their long, sharp horns in attack. These were used only in defense, the same as elk or deer, falling on the knees and receiving the enemy on their horns, much as the Old Guard received the French in the last terrible struggle at Waterloo.
Bill Cross was a “tender foot” at the timeof which I write, and a sailor, at that. Now, the old pilgrims who had dared the plains in those days of ’49, when cowards did not venture and the weak died on the way, had not the greatest respect for the courage or endurance of those who had reached Oregon by ship. But here was this man, a sailor by trade, settling down in the interior of Oregon, and, strangely enough, pretending to know more about everything in general and bears in particular than either my father or any of his boys!
He had taken up a piece of land down in the pretty Camas Valley where the grass grew long and strong and waved in the wind, mobile and beautiful as the mobile sea.
The good-natured and self-complacent old sailor liked to watch the waving grass. It reminded him of the sea, I reckon. He would sometimes sit on our little porch as the sun went down and tell us boys strange, wild sea stories. He had traveled far and seen much, as much as any mancan see on water, and maybe was not a very big liar, for a sailor, after all. We liked his tales. He would not work, and so he paid his way with stories of the sea. The only thing about him that we did not like, outside of his chronic idleness, was his exalted opinion of himself and his unconcealed contempt for everybody’s opinion but his own.
“Bill,” said my father one day, “those black Spanish cattle will get after that red sash and sailor jacket of yours some day when you go down in the valley to your claim, and they won’t leave a grease spot. Better go horseback, or at least take a gun, when you go down next time.”
“Pshaw! Squire. I wish I had as many dollars as I ain’t afeard of all the black Spanish cattle in Oregon. Why, if they’re so blasted dangerous, how did your missionaries ever manage to drive them up here from Mexico, anyhow?”
Still, for all that, the very next time that he saw the old sailor setting out at his snailpace for his ranch below, slow and indolent as if on the deck of a ship, my father insisted that he should go on horseback, or at least take a gun.
“Pooh, pooh! I wouldn’t be bothered with a horse or a gun. Say, I’m goin’ to bring your boys a pet bear some day.”
And so, cocking his little hat down over his right eye and thrusting his big hands into his deep pockets almost to the elbows, he slowly and lazily whistled himself down the gradual slope of the foothills, waist deep in the waving grass and delicious wild flowers, and soon was lost to sight in the great waving sea.
Two things may be here written down. He wouldn’t ride a horse because he couldn’t, and for the same reason he wouldn’t use a gun. Again let it be written down, also, that the reason he was going away that warm autumn afternoon was that there was some work to do. These facts were clear to my kind and indulgent father; but of course we boys never thoughtof it, and laid our little shoulders to the hard work of helping father lift up the long, heavy poles that were to complete the corral around our pioneer log cabin, and we really hoped and half believed that he might bring home a little pet bear.
This stout log corral had become an absolute necessity. It was high and strong, and made of poles or small logs stood on end in a trench, after the fashion of a primitive fort or stout stockade. There was but one opening, and that was a very narrow one in front of the cabin door. Here it was proposed to put up a gate. We also had talked about port-holes in the corners of the corral, but neither gate nor port-holes were yet made. In fact, as said before, the serene and indolent man of the sea always slowly walked away down through the grass toward his untracked claim whenever there was anything said about port-holes, posts or gates.
Father and we three little boys had only got the last post set and solidly “tamped”in the ground as the sun was going down.
Suddenly we heard a yell; then a yelling, then a bellowing. The yelling was heard in the high grass in the Camas Valley below, and the bellowing of cattle came from the woody river banks far beyond.
Then up on the brown hills of the Oregon Sierras above us came the wild answer of the wild black cattle of the hills, and a moment later, right and left, the long black lines began to widen out; then down they came, like a whirlwind, toward the black and surging line in the grass below. We were now almost in the center of what would, in a little time, be a complete circle and cyclone of furious Spanish cattle.
And now, here is something curious to relate. Our own cows, poor, weary, immigrant cows of only a year before, tossed their tails in the air, pawed the ground, bellowed and fairly went wild in the splendid excitement and tumult. One touch of nature made the whole cow world kin!
Father clambered up on a “buck-horse”and looked out over the stockade; and then he shouted and shook his hat and laughed as I had never heard him laugh before. For there, breathless, coatless, hatless, came William Cross, Esq., two small wolves and a very small black bear! They were all making good time, anywhere, anyway, to escape the frantic cattle. Father used to say afterwards, when telling about this little incident, that “it was nip and tuck between the four, and hard to say which was ahead.” The cattle had made quite a “round-up.”
They all four straggled in at the narrow little gate at about the same time, the great big, lazy sailor in a hurry, for the first time in his life.
But think of the coolness of the man, as he turned to us children with his first gasp of breath, and said, “Bo—bo—boys, I’ve bro—bro—brought you a little bear!”
The wolves were the little chicken thieves known as coyotes, quite harmless, as a rule, so far as man is concerned, butthe cattle hated them and they were terrified nearly to death.
The cattle stopped a few rods from the stockade. We let the coyotes go, but we kept the little bear and named him Bill Cross. Yet he was never a bit cross, despite his name.
THE GREAT GRIZZLY BEAR.
(Ursus Ferox.)
“The Indians have unbounded reverence for this bear. When they kill one, they make exculpating speeches to it, smoke tobacco to it, call it grandfather, ancestor, etc.”P. Martin Duncan, M. B., F. R. S., F. G. S.Kings College, London.
“The Indians have unbounded reverence for this bear. When they kill one, they make exculpating speeches to it, smoke tobacco to it, call it grandfather, ancestor, etc.”
P. Martin Duncan, M. B., F. R. S., F. G. S.
Kings College, London.
The Indians with whom I once lived in the Californian Sierras held the grizzly bear in great respect and veneration. Some writers have said that this was because they were afraid of this terrible king of beasts. But this is not true. The Indian, notwithstanding his almost useless bow and arrow in battles with this monster, was not controlled by fear. He venerated the grizzly bear as his paternal ancestor. And here I briefly set down the Modoc and Mount Shasta Indians’ account of their own creation.
They, as in the Biblical account of the creation of all things, claim to have found the woods, wild beasts, birds and all things waiting for them, as did Adam and Eve.
The Indians say the Great Spirit made this mountain first of all. Can you not see how it is? they say. He first pushed down snow and ice from the skies through a hole which he made in the blue heavens by turning a stone round and round, till he made this great mountain; then he stepped out of the clouds onto the mountain-top, and descended and planted the trees all around by putting his finger on the ground. The sun melted the snow, and the water ran down and nurtured the trees and made the rivers. After that he made the fish for the rivers out of the small end of his staff. He made the birds by blowing some leaves, which he took up from the ground, among the trees. After that he made the beasts out of the remainder of his stick, but made the grizzly bear out of the big end, and made him master over all the others. Hemade the grizzly so strong that he feared him himself, and would have to go up on top of the mountain out of sight of the forest to sleep at night, lest the grizzly, who, as will be seen, was much more strong and cunning then than now, should assail him in his sleep. Afterwards, the Great Spirit, wishing to remain on earth and make the sea and some more land, converted Mount Shasta, by a great deal of labor, into a wigwam, and built a fire in the center of it and made it a pleasant home. After that, his family came down, and they all have lived in the mountain ever since. They say that before the white man came they could see the fire ascending from the mountain by night and the smoke by day, every time they chose to look in that direction. They say that one late and severe springtime, many thousand snows ago, there was a great storm about the summit of Mount Shasta, and that the Great Spirit sent his youngest and fairest daughter, of whom he was very fond, up to the hole in the top,bidding her to speak to the storm that came up from the sea, and tell it to be more gentle or it would blow the mountain over. He bade her do this hastily, and not put her head out, lest the wind should catch her in the hair and blow her away. He told her she should only thrust out her long red arm and make a sign, and then speak to the storm without.
The child hastened to the top and did as she was bid, and was about to return, but having never yet seen the ocean, where the wind was born and made his home, when it was white with the storm, she stopped, turned and put her head out to look that way, when lo! the storm caught in her long red hair, and blew her out and away down and down the mountain side. Here she could not fix her feet in the hard, smooth ice and snow, and so slid on and on down to the dark belt of firs below the snow rim.
Now, the grizzly bears possessed all the wood and all the land down to the sea atthat time, and were very numerous and very powerful. They were not exactly beasts then, although they were covered with hair, lived in caves and had sharp claws; but they walked on two feet, and talked, and used clubs to fight with, instead of their teeth and claws, as they do now.
At this time, there was a family of grizzlies living close up to the snows. The mother had lately brought forth, and the father was out in quest of food for the young, when, as he returned with his club on his shoulder and a young elk in his left hand, under his arm, he saw this little child, red like fire, hid under a fir-bush, with her long hair trailing in the snows, and shivering with fright and cold. Not knowing what to make of her, he took her to the old mother, who was very learned in all things, and asked her what this fair and frail thing was that he had found shivering under a fir-bush in the snow. The old mother grizzly, who had things prettymuch her own way, bade him leave the child with her, but never mention it to anyone, and she would share her breast with her, and bring her up with the other children, and maybe some great good would come of it.
The old mother reared her as she promised to do, and the old hairy father went out every day, with his club on his shoulder, to get food for his family, till they were all grown up and able to do for themselves.
“Now,” said the old mother Grizzly to the old father Grizzly, as he stood his club by the door and sat down one day, “our oldest son is quite grown up and must have a wife. Now, who shall it be but the little red creature you found in the snow under the black fir-bush.” So the old father Grizzly kissed her, said she was very wise, then took up his club on his shoulder and went out and killed some meat for the marriage feast.
They married and were very happy, andmany children were born to them. But, being part of the Great Spirit and part of the grizzly bear, these children did not exactly resemble either of their parents, but partook somewhat of the nature and likeness of both. Thus was the red man created; for these children were the first Indians.
All the other grizzlies throughout the black forests, even down to the sea, were very proud and very kind, and met together, and, with their united strength, built for the lovely little red princess a wigwam close to that of her father, the Great Spirit. This is what is now called “Little Mount Shasta.”
After many years, the old mother Grizzly felt that she soon must die, and, fearing that she had done wrong in detaining the child of the Great Spirit, she could not rest till she had seen him and restored to him his long-lost treasure and asked his forgiveness.
With this object in view, she gatheredtogether all the grizzlies at the new and magnificent lodge built for the princess and her children, and then sent her eldest grandson to the summit of Mount Shasta in a cloud, to speak to the Great Spirit and tell him where he could find his long-lost daughter.
When the Great Spirit heard this, he was so glad that he ran down the mountain side on the south so fast and strong that the snow was melted off in places, and the tokens of his steps remain to this day. The grizzlies went out to meet him by thousands; and as he approached they stood apart in two great lines, with their clubs under their arms, and so opened a lane through which he passed in great state to the lodge where his daughter sat with her children.
But when he saw the children, and learned how the grizzlies that he had created had betrayed him into the creation of a new race, he was very wroth, and frowned on the old mother Grizzly till shedied on the spot. At this, the grizzlies all set up a dreadful howl; but he took his daughter on his shoulder and, turning to all the grizzlies, bade them hold their tongues, get down on their hands and knees and so remain till he returned. They did as they were bid, and he closed the door of the lodge after him, drove all the children out into the world, passed out and up the mountain and never returned to the timber any more.
So the grizzlies could not rise up any more, or make a noise, or use their clubs, but ever since have had to go on all-fours, much like other beasts, except when they have to fight for their lives; then the Great Spirit permits them to stand up and fight with their fists like men.
That is why the Indians about Mount Shasta will never kill or interfere in any way with a grizzly. Whenever one of their number is killed by one of these kings of the forest, he is burned on the spot, and all who pass that way for years cast a stoneon the place till a great pile is thrown up. Fortunately, however, grizzlies are not now plentiful about the mountain.
In proof of the story that the grizzly once stood and walked erect and was much like a man, they show that he has scarcely any tail, and that his arms are a great deal shorter than his legs, and that they are more like a man than any other animal.
AS A HUMORIST.
Not long ago, about the time a party of Americans were setting out for India to hunt the tiger, a young banker from New York came to California to hunt what he rightly considered the nobler beast.
He chartered a small steamer in San Francisco Bay and taking with him a party of friends, as well as a great-grandson of Daniel Boone, a famous hunter, for a guide, he sailed up the coast to the redwood wilderness of Humboldt. Here he camped on the bank of a small stream in a madrona thicket and began to hunt for his bear. He found his bear, an old female with young cubs. As Boone was naturally in advance when the beast was suddenly stumbled upon, he had to do the fighting, and this gave the banker from the States a chance to scramble up a small madrona.Of course he dropped his gun. They always do drop their guns, by some singularly sad combination of accidents, when they start up a tree with two rows of big teeth in the rear, and it is hardly fair to expect the young bear-hunter from New York to prove an exception. Poor Boone was severely maltreated by the savage old mother grizzly in defense of her young. There was a crashing of brush and a crushing of bones, and then all was still.