[CHAPTER II]
CUBHOOD DAYS
When they are small, bear-cubs rarely go about alone. The whole family usually keeps together, or, if it separates, it is generally into couples—one cub with each of the parents; or the father goes off alone, leaving both cubs with the mother. A cub toddling off alone in its own woolly, comfortable ignorance would be sure to make all manner of mistakes in what it ate, and it might find itself in very serious trouble in other ways.
Bears, when they live far enough away from man, have absolutely nothing to be afraid of. There are, of course, bigger bears—perhaps bigger ones of our own kind, either black or brown (‘cinnamon,’ as the brown members of our family are called), or, especially, grizzly. But I never heard of a grizzly bear hurting one of us. When I smell a grizzly in the neighbourhood, I confess that it seems wiser to go round the other side of the hill; but that is probably inherited superstition more than anything else. My father and mother did it, and so do I. But I have known several of our cinnamon cousins in my life, and have been friendly enough with them—with the she-bears especially. Apart from these, there lives nothing in the forest that a full-grown black bear has any cause to fear. He goes where he pleases and does what he likes, and nobody ventures to dispute his rights. With a cub, however, it is different.
I had heard my father and mother speak of pumas, or mountain lions, and I knew their smell well enough—and did not like it. But I shall never forget the first one that I saw.
We were out together—father, mother, Kahwa, and I—and it was getting well on in the morning. The sun was up, and the day growing warm, and I, wandering drowsily along with my nose to the ground, had somehow strayed away from the rest, when suddenly I smelled puma very strong. As I threw myself up on my haunches, he came out from behind a tree, and stood facing me only a few yards away. I was simply paralyzed with fear—one of the two or three times in my life when I have been honestly and thoroughly frightened. As I looked at him, wondering what would happen next, he crouched down till he was almost flat along the ground, and I can see him now, his whole yellow body almost hidden behind his head, his eyes blazing, and his tail going slap, slap! from side to side. How I wished that I had a tail!
Then inch by inch he crept towards me, very slowly, putting one foot forward and then the other. I did not know what to do, and so did what proved to be the best thing possible: I sat quite still, and screamed for mother as loud as I could. She must have known from my voice that something serious was the matter, because in a second, just as the puma’s muscles were growing tense for the final spring, there was a sudden crash of broken boughs behind me, a feeling as if a whirlwind was going by, and my mother shot past me straight at the puma. I had no idea that she could go so fast. The puma was up on his hind-legs to meet her, but her impetus was so terrific that it bore him backwards, without seeming to check her speed in the least, and away they went rolling over and over down the hill.
But it was not much of a fight. The puma, willing enough to attack a little cub like me, knew that he was no match for my mother, and while they were still rolling he wrenched himself loose, and was off among the trees like a shadow.
When mother came back to me blood was running over her face, where, at the moment of meeting, the puma had managed to give her one wicked, tearing claw down the side of her nose. So, as soon as my father and Kahwa joined us, we all went down to the stream, where mother bathed her face, and kept it in the cold water for nearly the whole day.