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.