Adele Doring of the Sunnyside Club

by Grace May North

A brown bear-skin was nailed on the wall of the shack. Smoothing the rough fur, the old man said tenderly, “And this here skin is all that’s left now of Little Bear. Sit down, and I’ll tell ye the story.”

“Let’s go outdoors under the pines,” Madge suggested, and so out they went. The weather-tanned old man sat on the three-legged stool, and the four young people made themselves comfortable on the soft pine-needles which formed a thick carpet under the trees.

“Many years ago,” the fisherman began, “no white men lived on this lake,—just Injuns and bear and deer. But one summer a lumber-camp was started where the inn stands to-day, and upwards of twenty white men, armed with axes and guns and knives, built log huts about and began to live in them. The lake shore in those days was covered with great pine-trees, and the concern that owned them wanted them cut down for lumber, but the Injuns had a notion that they owned those pine woods themselves, and many a hard fight there was between the reds and the whites, but the guns beat the arrows in the end, and the Injuns moved away farther north. Bear and deer were thick in those days, and the lumbermen had plenty to eat and all the fish they wanted when they took time to catch them. After a while other white men came and started sheep-raising and farming. They were always big, husky men, who were used to roughin’ it, but one day a covered wagon arrived, and in it was a man and a woman and a baby.

“The man looked pale and sick-like. He’d come to the woods for his health, he said. He offered the wood-cutters all the money he had if they would give food to his wife and child. He himself wasn’t long for this earth, he said, and he was right, for he died that night.

“Those rough men were sorry enough for the woman, and they made her as comfortable as they could. They let her have one of the huts to live in. She tried to pick up strength for the child’s sake, but she just couldn’t do it, and a week later she went to join her man. Then there was that baby boy left in the lumber-camp. The rough men didn’t know what to do with the kid. Some were for sending him to the nearest settlement, ten miles away, but one of them had had a kid of his own once, and he said he’d look out for the young one, so, after that, the men called Jock Henderson the kid’s foster-father.

“I’m slow coming to the bear, maybe ye think, for it’s my way to begin at the beginnin’, but prick up yer ears, for the bear is soon coming.

“Kid Henderson, as they called the baby, was a jolly little fellow, and when the men came home from their work, he toddled around and teased to be tossed up into the air, so one big man and then another would bounce the Kid, and how he would squeal and laugh! Somehow or other, those rough men kept things tidier after that, for having a Kid around made it seem more like home. And, too, they were careful how they talked,—never said a hard word in that baby’s hearing. Truth was, Kid Henderson had crept right into the hearts of those rough lumbermen, and, though not one would have said it, they all loved him like he was their own. That’s why they was so frantic-like when the Kid was stolen. Did the Injuns steal him? Well, wait and you shall hear.

“As I said, the men had all the deer and bear and fish they wanted to eat, but there was one Irishman, Pat Mahoney, who had a hankering for bacon, and bacon he was going to have, he said, if he took a week off to get it. The long and the short of it was that Pat built a pig-pen out of logs, and then he rode to the nearest settlement and came back with a litter of little squealing pigs that were just old enough to get on without the sow. Of course that was a good ways from having bacon, but Pat said those porkers would be good to eat by winter, and, as it was then early spring, the men were willing to believe him. Kid Henderson went wild over those little pigs, and if he had been let, he would have spent all his time in the pen, rolling about and playing with them. And now here comes the bear, not Little Bear, I’ll agree, for it was a huge, big bear that came prowling around the lumber-camp one night, and, smelling pork, he calmly reached over the fence and carried off one of the little pigs. Pat Mahoney was mad, I kin tell ye. He set a trap for old Bruin, but no use, and the next night another little pig was missing.

“Then Pat decided to set up and watch and shoot the intruder when he came prowling around, but something happened before night which made all the men forget about the pigs.

“They always put the Kid in the main hut and barred the door on the outside when they went away to the woods to work, but at noon Jock Henderson would ride back and get the Kid’s lunch and put him to bed for his afternoon nap. The Kid was used to being left alone and he didn’t make a fuss,—just played around on the floor with the rough toys the men had made for him.