BRINGING HOME THE BEAR.
The horn of Chocorua rose into a sky full of threatening colors and shadows. Its own coloring was sinister, its outlines vague, its height apparently greater than usual. Low, growling thunder came from its ledges and ravines. The forest at its feet, which ended at my door, was silent; no whisper swept through its waiting leaves. In the west as in the north, cloud masses were boiling up into the sky, covering the blue with white, gray, and black, through which now and then shot a ray of gold from the protesting sun. A tempest seemed brewing as a not unwelcome close of a mid-August day.
A tall man emerged from the woods and came striding towards me across the grass. A rifle swung to and fro in his right hand as he walked. It was a repeating rifle, one of those inclusive successors of the fowling-piece, shot-pouch, powder-flask, cap-box, and wad-pocket of this tall man’s boyhood. The stride ended at my side, and the tall man and I spoke of the heat, the drought, and the approaching storm. Just as he was preparing to lope onwards down the ribbon road through the birches, I said:—
“I hear Merrill caught a bear Saturday, and brought it out at Piper’s.”
“That so? How big was it?”
“A small one, a two-year-old, probably. It was in one of his traps and he shot it.”
“Well, I’ve kept up with him this time. I shot one less than an hour ago, and he warn’t in any trap, either.”
I looked at the man wonderingly. There had been no unusual spark in his eye, flush on his bronzed cheek, or spring in his heavy step. He had not boasted, or even spoken of his achievement until I touched his pride by my tale of his rival’s success. Would he have gone home without telling me? I think so. Yet this meeting with a bear, alone, on the high ledges of Chocorua, had been one of the joys of this man’s life. Many a weary hour had he carried his magazine rifle over the ledges, treading softly, keeping eye and ear alert, hoping to see Bruin on his feeding-ground. A year before he had trapped and killed some of the great creatures; but shooting a beast caught in a forty-pound steel trap is tame sport compared with facing a free bear on the open ledges.
Before the hunter left me, we had arranged that soon after sunrise on the following morning he was to pass through my dooryard on his way to the spot where, under those black clouds, poor Bruin was lying dead.
The rage around Chocorua deepened. Boom, boom, of thunder rolled downward from the heights of storm. The peak was swept by masses of rain. Flash after flash lit up the darkening sky behind the grim mountain. Still the nearer forests lay at rest, waiting. Then a golden rift came in the western cloud-bank. One half of the storm rolled past us on the south, drenching Ossipee and Wolfborough, the other half on the north, soaking Conway and Fryeburg; we alone were dry.
The morning of the 13th of August was breathlessly hot. Even the hermit thrushes forgot to sing. A rattle of wheels brought me from breakfast to join the party organized to bring home the bear. A strong, sure-footed horse was drawing a farm wagon which had been the stand-by of an earlier generation, and which, therefore, was made of solid stuff. My tall friend and two of his hunting satellites were in it, and around them were strewn rifle, hatchet, ropes, empty grain-bags, and other apparatus to be used in bringing the dead brute down the mountain. My master of the horse, an alert and muscular Prince Edward Islander, stood by ready to march, so the word was given, and we five, some walking, some in the ancient wagon, started for the mountain.
For a quarter of a mile the road was good, winding through my pasture and belts of white birches. Then we turned from it and plowed through beds of brake and blackberry bushes dripping and glistening with dew. We might as well have waded waist deep in the lake, which would have been warmer though no more wet than that dew-deluged tangle. Next came a ravine filled with spruces, over which towered two immense canoe birches, at whose feet a cold spring bubbled in a sandy pool. The horse wound in and out among the trees, shaking from them showers of cold dew-drops. Small saplings and bushes bowed before the wagon and passed under its axles; large ones were bent away by strong hands, or hacked down. Sometimes the wheels locked against tree-trunks, bringing the horse to a sudden standstill, and almost throwing the passengers to the ground; and sometimes they sank into unseen hollows filled to the brim with ferns, making the wagon careen so that all its contents slid, or struggled not to slide, against its sinking side.
Beyond the ravine and its dripping spruces was a narrow sunny valley pointing straight towards the mountain. Up this valley our party continued its course, the sun drying the dew from our clothes, and flashing many colors in the drops still clinging to brakes and grasses. Fifteen hundred feet above us towered the West Ledges, on which the bear had been shot. As one looks at Chocorua from the south, its peak seems to rest upon the shoulders of two converging ridges, one sloping upward towards it from the southeast, and one from the southwest. Between the two ridges the soft forest drapery of the mountain falls in graceful folds and curves to the level of the lake. We were in one of these folds, climbing towards the steep inner side of the western ridge. On each side of us lofty trees clung to the slopes of the valley. Owls hoot in these woods after twilight and at dawn. Great boulders lie in confusion in the perpetual shadows of the trees, and in the caverns between and under them are dens of porcupines, foxes, and skunks.
Not until we reached the torrent at the foot of the west ridge was the wagon abandoned and the horse tethered. The forest at this point consists mainly of poplars, birches, and oaks. The bear-slayer led the way through them, and his more muscular satellite followed at his heels, cutting saplings in order to form a path for our descent with the bear. After climbing several hundred feet, we rested. A loud humming filled the air, yet no bees were to be seen. They appeared to be in the higher foliage, attracted by something on the leaves. We examined the lower branches, and then the leaves of low shrubs and plants. They seemed to be covered with dew, but the dew was sticky and proved to be sweet to the taste. As we continued our walk we found that the entire side of the mountain had been sprinkled with heavenly sweetness of the same kind.
The roar of bees had become familiar to our ears. The bear-slayer was bending down a slender beech for the satellite to cut, when suddenly he uttered a cry and sprang backward. “Run, run,” he shouted, and in a moment the Islander and the small satellite were bounding down the mountain-side like chamois. The larger satellite became a football under the bear-slayer’s feet, and I, hearing a second cry of “hornets!” plunged headforemost into the bushes and crawled away under the brakes, thus avoiding both the hornets and the necessity of re-climbing lost ground. The bear-slayer’s retreat was marked by repeated howls of pain which lent further speed to the flying heels of the rear-guard. It was some time before the ignominious stampede was checked and a fresh ascent begun. The bear-slayer had been stung in three places, and the larger satellite declared he had saved himself from a sting by pulling the hornet off his back with his fingers.
Standing among the young trees of the forest were many gray stumps of ancient origin,—decayed relics of forest gentry now displaced by the democracy of poplars and birches. These stumps bore no axe marks; they had fallen at the command of the tornado, not of the lumber thief. On their sides were long scratches which looked like claw marks. Had “Sis Wildcat” been trying her claws there? No; but “Brer Bar” had been. Near by was a small grove of oaks, not one of which was more than a foot in diameter. Their sides were deeply scored by Bruin’s claws, and their highest branches hung down upon the rest of their limbs, broken and dying. There is hardly an oak on Chocorua which has not been climbed by bears in acorn time, and disfigured by the great brutes in their attempts to reach the coveted nuts.
Towering close above the oaks we could see the abrupt faces of the West Ledges. We seemed to be at the foot of a great feudal castle whose gray walls needed scaling ladders to be conquered. Ferns grew in the crevices in the rock; tiny streams of water trickled down its sides and fed mosses and lichens; honeysuckle, mountain ash, wild Solomon’s seal, and striped maple sprang in luxuriant tangles from its feet, and tripped us as we skirted the castle’s base and sought a break in its smooth walls. Presently we found one,—a rift made originally by ice, but long since widened and deepened by other erosive forces. Clinging to tree-trunks or the tough stems of blueberry bushes, we pulled ourselves up the steep ravine and reached the top of the first ledge. The mountain was still unconquered before us, but turning we saw, sunlit and smiling, the world we had left. Curving, undulating forest; warm spots of open pasture; the Hammond farm, from which one of the principal paths starts up Chocorua; my own red-roofed cottage with squares of flax, millet, corn, and buckwheat giving patchwork colors to its clearing; Chocorua ponds and the cottages on Nickerson’s hill, and then the wider world of forest, mountain, river, and lake,—Ossipee, Sandwich Dome, Bearcamp, Winnepesaukee,—blended beauties whose names awaken pleasant memories and whose picture is a joy to look upon,—all these things we saw, and much more which we only half thought about, so eager were we to go on with our quest.
Climbing ledge after ledge, wading through thickets of mountain ash, dogwood, low spruce and blueberry bushes, we gained at last the highest open point on West Ridge. On three sides the land fell away abruptly. On the north the ridge, heavily grown with stunted spruce and poplars, continued toward the peak. It did not go straight towards that proud rock, but sought it by bending westward and then northward in a great bow. The peak, consequently, stood the other side of a vast hollow filled with tangled forest. It was near, and yet appeared unattainable. I thought of the winter day when I had climbed to this point over four feet of packed and frozen snow and seen the Chocorua horn, crusted with ice and flanked by mighty snowdrifts, hanging in the bright blue sky. Then, stimulated by the keen air, I had plunged into the hollow, crossed it, scaled its farther side on hands and knees, gained the foot of the peak, and finally won its slippery summit, no larger than my dining table; and lying there half freezing, had seen the snow-covered world from Casco Bay to the Green Mountains; Monadnock to Dixville Notch. The sun of August did not encourage such exploits, and a dead bear lying hidden near us drew our thoughts away from the heights to the damp thicket close below.
The bear-slayer was telling his story: “I was coming along here, sort of softly, thinking it was just the kind of place for a bear, when just as I got to this open ledge I heard a hustling round in that snarl of bushes. I stopped short and listened and peeped in. There was something black and hairy rubbing round in the blueberry bushes,—you can see how thick the berries are in there. Well, I thought, I must be careful; there are lots of folks berrying, and I should hate to put one of these pills into a woman picking blueberries. It would settle her right off. So I peeked round, till I was dead sure it was a bear, and then I let drive—at what I could see. The ball hit him in his side not far back of his shoulder, and he gave an awful roar and started out this way. I climbed up on this big boulder, five feet out of harm’s way, and waited. He was letting out roars and then drawing awful deep breaths. You could hear those gasps a mile. I could not see him, he was in so thick in the bushes. But then he began to drag himself off towards old Coroway and I started after him. I heard him go kerchunk down this ledge, and then I caught sight of his head and let him have another, and a third ball, but they didn’t seem to stop him a bit, just glanced off his skull, I s’pose. Well, he got down ’most a hundred feet before I could get a sight at his side again, but when I did, I put one in where it stopped his gasping and kicking.”
During this narrative we had followed the hunter through the network of trees, bushes, and brambles, tracing the track made by the bear in his agony. Branches were broken, leaves crushed, moss stained, and rocks torn up. As we descended the north slope towards the dark ravine which the bear had sought, the sunlight grew dim and the air cold. Suddenly I saw the bear. At the foot of a slippery ledge, over which hung dripping wet moss, lying upon a deep bed of sphagnum, was a gaunt black form. Dead and still as it was, it sent a thrill through me. I seemed to see the being for whom this wild region had been created. The horn-blowing, pistol-firing, peanut-eating tourist is out of place in the rugged ravines of Chocorua. Even the bronzed, gray-shirted native with his magazine rifle is not in tune with the solemn music of this wilderness. But in the dead creature on the moss I saw the real owner of forest and ledge, mountain pool and hidden lake. He looked weary and worn, as though life had been full of hunger and terror. The small, keen, wicked eyes were closed; the cruel teeth were locked tight, the broad feet were cut by his last struggles on the ledges, and his thin hair, showing the hide below it, was flecked with blood which had oozed from four bullet wounds.
We five men gathered around the dead bear and looked at him, felt of him, counted his nails, tried to open his set jaws, guessed at his weight, discussed his character, wondered at his ability to maintain life in such a region, and marveled especially at the nature of his kind to bring forth young in late winter and to rear them in the chill and foodless months of February and March. With great interest we sought through his capacious stomach to see what he had eaten, and found quarts of ripe blueberries, scarlet cherries, and what we at first took to be grubs dug from decaying stumps. Closer examination showed that Bruin had swallowed the whole of a hornet’s nest, for the perfect insects, hundreds of their undeveloped young in the brood-cells, and the gray, papery nest were all recognized. This bear certainly knew how to pick ripe blueberries and not to pick green ones. I saw but one green berry in the quarts which he had gathered.
Drawing the bear’s fore and hind feet on each side together, the hunter strapped them firmly. He next tied the head to the feet, so that it should not drag, and then passed two maple poles through the loops made by the two pairs of lashed feet, and called upon the larger satellite and the Islander to shoulder their burden. They did so, and the homeward march began, the bearers groaning. Possibly a hundred yards had been traversed before the Islander tripped and fell, pulling the bear down upon his prostrate form, and receiving also the weight of the heavy satellite. The hunter took his place under the poles, and fifty yards more were gained. Then the hunter, with a resounding exclamation, flung down the poles and whipped out his hunting-knife. With difficulty he was dissuaded from skinning and quartering Bruin on the spot. The plan which induced him to stay his hand was suggested by one of the party who had read of what he called an “Indian wagon.” Under his direction two long poles were cut and the bear was lashed on top of them near their heavy ends. The satellites then stood between the light ends, as horses stand between the shafts, and began dragging the bear down the steep side of the mountain. They had not gone fifty feet before the weight of the bear turned the poles over and left the satellites sprawling in the bushes. Once more knives were drawn and skinning threatened.
The next proposal was to wrap Bruin in grain bags so as to protect his skin, and then to drag and roll him down to where traveling would be easier. The bear slayer consented to try this experiment, and two large short bags were drawn over the body, one from its head, the other from its tail. Other bags were laid under the body, and, thus protected, it was dragged, bumping and rolling, down several hundred yards to the foot of the ledges. Short cross-sticks were then inserted in the lashings, which were tied round the bear’s legs, and four of us, two on each side, or two in front and two behind, raised the body by these sticks and bore it through the winding path we had cleared while ascending. The lesser satellite, carrying the rifle, hatchet, and other luggage, brought up the rear, and urged on the party by jeering remarks and snatches of song. In spite of repeated cautions from the bear-slayer, whose stings still smarted, we narrowly escaped walking into the hornet’s nest a second time.
More than six hours had elapsed since our departure from home when our little procession wound out of the woods into my dooryard. Raspberry vinegar never was more gratefully swallowed, and never was dead emperor received with more respect than poor Bruin by the crowds which flocked to view his remains during the afternoon of that hot August day. One bought his nails, another his teeth, a third his thinly haired skin, while pieces of his flesh, prepared for future cooking, were carried away in various directions. As when sugar is spilled upon the ground, ants come from every quarter to gather up the grains and draw them away, so dead Bruin drew gossips and idlers from all parts of the town, eager to pick up bits of his body or stories of his melancholy end.