MOTHER BROWN BEAR AND THE BULL
FUZZY-WUZZ had grown by now to be as fine a yearling brown bear as you will find in the Sierras.
The quaking aspens along the creek were beginning to turn scarlet when he yielded to a restless feeling that often came, and started on a journey that took him back over the way the Ranger had come the year before, when Fuzzy rode on top of the burro’s pack.
When at last he came to the rapids where he had so nearly drowned, something about the place seemed familiar. As if repeating a lesson he had learned when he was very, very young, he turned and walked up the glacier-smoothed granite slope to where a giant bowlder blocked the mouth of the den. He sniffed. It was the cave in which he had been born.
It was empty now, but from the odor of warm fur he judged that it had not been empty more than a few minutes. With his nose to the ground, he started following up the trail they had left,—a trail pungent of warm fur to his understanding nose.
It led straight to a patch of wild gooseberry bushes, and from there to a flower-dotted mountain meadow where range cattle browsed. Fuzzy hesitated. He never saw a range cow now but he looked for the nearest tree. There was no tree anywhere near.
Just as he was about to turn back, he caught a glimpse of a huge furry form that he knew to be his mother.
Cautiously he approached. Would she be glad to see him, after so long, or had she given him up for drowned, and would she chase him away as she would a strange cub?
He came a little nearer,—then he stared. Waddling along flat-footedly behind her were two wee cubs, brown balls of fur as tiny as he had been when the Ranger found him.
He whimpered joyously. Just then a range bull turned, caught sight of the wee cubs, and doubtless taking them for dogs, charged them with lowered horns.