Winter came, and we ought to have gone to our dens, but we were not fit for it. We were too poorly fed and thin, and hunger would probably have driven us out in midwinter. It was better to stay out now. So we stayed, keeping for the most part in the immediate neighbourhood of a number of men’s houses along a certain stream. It was not a town, though there was one a few miles further down the stream; but for a distance of a mile or more on both sides of the water there were houses every hundred yards or so, and all day long men were at work digging and working in the ground along by the water looking for gold. We had kept all other bears away from the place, and, living in the mountains during the day, we used to come down at night, never going near the same house on two nights in succession, but being sometimes on one side of the stream, which was easily crossed, and sometimes on the other, and paying our visits wherever we thought we were least likely to be expected. Some nights we would not go near the houses at all, but would content ourselves with such food as we could find in the woods, though now in the bitter cold it was hard to find anything.

Early one morning, after one of these nights when we had kept away from the houses, we came across a trap. It evidently was a trap, because there was the bait put out temptingly in plain sight, not on the ground this time, but about a foot from the ground, tied to a stick. The curious thing about it was, however, that the whole affair was inside some sort of a house; or, rather, there were the three walls and roof of a small house, but there was no front to it—that was all open; and there, well inside, was the bait. I did not know why men had been at so much pains to build the house round the trap, but I had no doubt that if I approached the bait with proper caution, and scratched at it, the steel jaws would spring out as usual from somewhere, and then we could eat the meat. And we were all four distressingly hungry.

IT WAS EVIDENTLY A TRAP.

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So I told the others to stay behind while I went into the house and sprung the trap and brought the meat out to them. I went in, and began to scratch about on the ground where I supposed the usual trap to be; but there was nothing there but the hard, dry earth. This puzzled me, but the lump of meat tied to the stake was an obvious fact; and I was hungry. At last, since, scratch as I would, no steel jaws appeared from anywhere, nor was there any place where they could be concealed, nothing remained but to take the meat boldly. I reached for it with my paw, but it was firmly tied; so I took it in my mouth and pulled. As I did so I heard a sudden movement behind me. A log had fallen behind me, almost blocking up the door. Well, I would move that away when I had the meat, I thought, and, seizing it firmly in my mouth, I tore it from its fastenings and turned to take it to the others waiting outside. But the log across the door was bigger than I thought; it completely blocked my passage, and when I gave it a push it did not yield.

Still, I had no uneasiness. I pushed harder at the log, but it did not move. I tried to pull it inward, but it remained unshaken. I sniffed all along it and round it, and round the other walls of the small house, and was puzzled as to what to do next. So I called to Wooffa, who came outside and began sniffing round, too. Remembering how I had released Kahwa from her pen, I told Wooffa to lift the latch; but there was no latch, she said. This was growing tiresome, and then, all of a sudden, it dawned on me.

This was the trap—this room! There was no steel thing with jaws; no poisoned meat; nothing but this house, which itself was the trap, left open at one side so that I might walk in, and so arranged that as I pulled at the meat the heavy log dropped, shutting the open door, and dropped in such a way that the strength of ten bears would not move it. This was the trap, and I—I was caught!

That I was really, hopelessly, and finally caught I could not, of course, believe at first. There was some mistake—some way out of it. I had outwitted man so often that it was not to be thought of that he had won at last. And round and round the small space I went again and again, always coming back to the cracks above the fallen log to scratch and strain at them without the smallest result. Outside Wooffa was doing the same. I was inclined to lose my temper with her at first, believing that if I was outside in her place I could surely find some way of making an opening; but I saw that she was trying as hard to let me out as I was to get out myself. And then I heard the cubs beginning to whimper, as they comprehended vaguely what had happened, and saw their mother’s fruitless efforts and her evident distress.