Bear Brownie: The Life of a Bear

by Harry Perry Robinson

CHAPTER IV.

THE FOREST FIRE.

Though we had come off so happily from our first encounter with man, none the less we had no desire to see him again. On the contrary, we determined to keep as far away from him as possible. For my part, I confess that thoughts of him were always with me, and every thought made the skin crawl up my back.

Nor was I the only one of the family who was nervous. Father and mother had become so changed that they were gruff and bad-tempered; and all the pleasure and light-heartedness seemed to have gone out of our long rambles. There was no more romping and rolling together down the hillsides. If Kahwa and I grew noisy in our play, we were certain to be stopped with a "Woof, children! be quiet." The fear of man was always with us, and his presence seemed to pervade the whole of the mountains.

Soon, however, a thing happened which for a time at least drove man and everything else out of our minds.

We still lingered around the neighborhood of our home, because, I think, we felt safer there, where we knew every inch of the hills and every bush, and tree, and stone. It had been very hot for weeks, so that the earth was parched dry, and the streams had shrunk till, in places where torrents were pouring but a few weeks ago, there was now no more than a dribble of water going over the stones. During the day we hardly went about at all, but from soon after sunrise to an hour or so before sunset we kept in the shadow of the brushwood along the water's edge.

One evening the sun did not seem to be able to finish setting, but after it had gone down the red glow still stayed in the sky to westward, and instead of fading it glowed visibly brighter as the night went on. All night my father was uneasy, growling and grumbling to himself and continually sniffing the air to westward; but the atmosphere was stagnant and hot and dead all night, with not a breath of wind moving. When daylight came the glow died out of the western sky, but in place of it a heavy gray cloud hung over the farther mountains and hid their tops from sight. We went to bed that morning feeling very uncomfortable and restless, and by mid-day we were up again. And now we knew what the matter was.

A breeze had sprung up from the west, and when I woke after a few hours' sleep—sleep which had been one long nightmare of man and thunder-sticks and broken leg—the air was full of a new smell, very sharp and pungent; and not only was there the smell, but with the breeze the cloud from the west had been rolling towards us, and the whole mountain-side was covered with a thin haze, like a mist, only different from any mist that I had seen. And it was this haze that smelled so strongly. Instead of clearing away, as mist ought to do when the sun grows hot, this one became denser as the day went on, half veiling the sun itself. And we soon found that things—unusual things—were going on in the mountains. The birds were flying excitedly about, and the squirrels chattering, and everything was travelling from west to east, and on all sides we heard the same thing.

"The world's on fire! quick, quick, quick!" screamed the squirrels as they raced along the ground or jumped from tree to tree overhead. "Fire! fire!" called the myrtle-robin as it passed. "Firrrrrre!" shouted the blue jay. A coyote came limping by, yelping that the end of the world was at hand. Pumas passed snarling and growling angrily, first at us, and then over their shoulders at the smoke that rolled behind. Deer plunged up to us, stood for a minute quivering with terror, and plunged on again into the brush. Overhead and along the ground was an almost constant stream of birds and animals, all hurrying in the same direction.

Presently there came along another family of bears, the parents and two cubs just about the size of Kahwa and myself, the cubs whimpering and whining as they ran. The father bear asked my father if we were not going, too; but my father thought not. He was older and bigger than the other bear, and had seen a forest fire when he was a cub, and his father then had saved them by taking to the water.