“Neither one nor the other. It is merely an accidental marking which some young individuals of the brown bear chance to have, and it scarcely ever remains beyond the age of cubhood. It is only very young bears that are met with of this colour; and the white ring disappears as they get older. It is true that hunters now and then meet with an odd ringed bear of tolerable size and age; but all agree that he is the brown bear, and not a distinct kind. The same remarks apply to the ‘silver’ bear; and hunters say that in a litter of three cubs they have found all three colours—the common brown, the ‘ringed,’ and the ‘silver,’—while the old mother herself was a true ursus arctos.”
“Well, since papa only binds us to the brown and black, it will be a nice thing if we could fall in with a skin of the ringed and silver varieties. It would please him all the better. I wonder now what sort is this fellow we are following? By the size of his tracks he must be a wopper!”
“No doubt an old male,” rejoined Alexis; “but if I am not mistaken, we shall soon be able to determine that point. The spar gets fresher and fresher. He must have passed here but a very short while ago; and I should not wonder if we were to find him in this very ravine.”
“See!” exclaimed Ivan, whose eyes had been lifted from the trail, and bent impatiently forward;—“see! by the great Peter! yonder’s a hole, under the root of that tree. Why might it not be his cave?”
“It looks like enough. Hush! let us keep to the trail, and go up to it with caution—not a word!”
All three, now scarce breathing—lest the sound should be heard—stole silently along the trail. The fresh-fallen snow, still soft as eider-down, enabled them to proceed without making the slightest noise; and without making any, they crept up, till within half-a-dozen paces of the tree.
Ivan’s conjecture was likely to prove correct. There was a line of tracks leading up the bank; and around the orifice of the cavity the snow was considerably trampled down—as if the bear had turned himself two or three times before entering. That he had entered, the hunters did not entertain a doubt: there were no return tracks visible in the snow—only the single line that led up to the mouth of the cave, and this seemed to prove conclusively that Bruin was “at home.”