It was still early when we got back to our hut, not more than mid-day, in fact; but the weather was of the roughest, and our uprising had been an early one, so that we were not sorry to pass the rest of the day in cleaning our bear’s skin and preparing his flesh for our evening meal. And fresh-killed bear’s meat takes a considerable time in preparation, and when the animal happens to be as old and wiry as the beast killed to-day, not forty cooks with forty rolling-pins could ever beat his flesh into a reasonable degree of tenderness.
The Cossacks on the station won’t eat bear’s flesh, though they only get meat once a week here; and partly for that reason, and partly because with their single-barrelled rifles they consider the risk too great, they never molest the bears. So little in fact do they know of their comparative harmlessness, that they gave me quite an ovation when I came back loaded with spoils to-day, and for the moment I figured as quite a Nimrod to an admiring audience of eleven semi-savages.
I had heard a great deal in time past about the excellence of bear’s hams, and the delicacy of bear’s paws stewed, but I felt that another of the pleasant illusions of my youth had been destroyed when I encountered to-night the mass of boiled black whipcord, which, in spite of its unpleasant flavour, was undoubtedly real bear’s ham. As for the paws, Stepan and myself baked them à la mode in a little subterranean oven; but on unearthing them we could find nothing but skin and leather, with bones and bony sinews, and certainly nothing to eat. Even our dogs did not seem to make much of them.
In spite of the poor quality of our food, we made, however, the heartiest of suppers, having been strangers to meat for nearly a week; and with a storm raging outside which seemed to threaten a repetition of the disastrous flood that swept our cottage away last year, we slept the sleep of the weary but successful.
The next day, Saturday, was a red-letter day for me. Rising rather later than usual, we tried the other side of our bay of mountains, and, in spite of the noisy wind, with great success. Hardly had we forced our way through the growth of briars at the bottom of the hill into the chestnuts above when Stepan, turning round, beckoned me to stop, knelt down, and aiming deliberately, fired at something which the bushes concealed from me. On going up to him I found that he had fired at a boar standing end on to him some thirty yards off, and, as might be expected, with his extraordinary weapon, had only succeeded in frightening the beast.
Angry at the luck which had given Stepan such a chance to throw away, I pushed noisily through the thickets, never dreaming of finding any more game, at any rate for another half mile. Yet hardly had we gone three dozen paces from the spot whence the last shot was fired, when our ears caught the sound of a bear’s even step close to us, and approaching still closer. Slipping silently behind a couple of trees, we waited with our hearts in our mouths. Softly and deliberately the steps drew near, with a sound closely resembling the step of a man slowly picking his way through the forest. Every now and then the bear paused to give a loud snuff of inquiry, which, luckily for us, the constant shifting of the wind in these narrow valleys completely baffled. At last I got a glimpse of her passing slowly through the bushes, and stopping every now and then to pick up the fallen chestnuts in a leisurely way as she paced along. I waited for a minute or two until I could see her grey shoulder plainly through the rhododendrons. Then I pulled, and wheeling round with a short sharp cry, she disappeared in the higher covert, followed in her retreat by a snap-shot from my second barrel, which evidently did not take effect.
Uncertain whether the bear was killed outright or only wounded, Stepan and myself were somewhat shy of following her into her stronghold. At first we both tried climbing trees, hoping to get a view of her thus; but finding that of no avail I persuaded Stepan to follow me at a distance in a careful survey of the place in which we had last seen her. Poor beast, she had not gone far; the moment she was out of our sight her strength failed her, and when we found her she was lying stone dead, not sixty yards from the spot where the bullet had reached her.
‘Express’ rifles are terribly destructive little weapons. This second bear was totally unlike the one killed the day before, at least in colour: for while he was black, her coat, a very fine one, was of a soft light brown, so light as to be almost grey.
On examination we found that she was a yearling, and was returning from her morning’s work, the ruin of half a fine chestnut-tree, when we met her. Some of the boughs she had managed to break were almost as thick as a man’s waist. On looking at her fore-arm after Stepan had skinned her, I could not but reflect that the stories one meets with from time to time, of hand-to-hand conflicts with bears, require a large grain of salt for the swallowing.
Leaving Stepan to finish the skinning, I wandered on somewhat higher up the hillside. I had not left him a quarter of an hour when I again heard the peculiarly soft regular tread of a bear above me, and after waiting patiently for about five minutes, I caught a glimpse for a moment of the head of an exact counterpart of the bear then under Stepan’s hands. Unluckily for me, she sighted me at the same moment, and with a loud sniff plunged straight downhill at a pace that, even had the covert not concealed her, would have rendered my chance of hitting her extremely problematical. I saw from the direction she had taken that she would pass almost over Stepan, and I hurried on to be able to lend him a hand in case he only wounded her. But I waited in vain for the report of my man’s mighty blunderbuss. Sitting engaged in the sanguinary task of disrobing our dead bear he had suddenly become aware of what appeared to him either the shade or the enraged sister of the deceased charging furiously down upon him; and oppressed with a consciousness of his guilt, Stepan fled red-handed from the avenger, leaving his gun to take care of itself.