It was after many summers and winters had been tied together in bundles that one bright September morning Shasta left the cave and made for a tall rock, overlooking the gorge of the stream. When he reached it, he squatted down and watched what might happen below. No one saw him there—the little brown thing on the rock; and no one minded him, which was even more important, because he perched above the level of the run-ways, and of the creatures whose noses are always asking questions of the lower air.
But some one whom Shasta did not know, and who was wiser than all the other wise folk of the forest, was also out for a walk that wonderful autumn morning, and on soft and padded feet came softly down the mountain slopes above Shasta's airy perch. And this was Gomposh, the old black bear.
Gomposh was very old and of a wonderful blackness. When he walked out in the sun the light upon his fur rippled in silver waves. As for his years, not even Goohooperay, the white owl, could tell you how many they were, much less Gomposh himself.
It was not any sound Gomposh made that told Shasta of his presence, but suddenly, without any warning to his eyes, or ears, or nose, Shasta knew. And this was owing to that unexplained sixth sense which the wild animals possess, and which Shasta, after his long dwelling among them, shared to a remarkable degree. He turned round all of a sudden, and there, not fifty feet away, stood Gomposh the Old in all the wonder of his black, black fur.
For the first moment Shasta felt afraid. Here was another bear—smaller, indeed, than the grizzly, but none the less a bear! And now, if the black bear meant mischief, escape was impossible because the rock was too steep for any foothold on the outer face of it, and between its inner side and the open mountain stood the bear. Then, in some odd way which he did not understand, the fear passed, and he knew that this time he was in no danger at all, and that the newcomer with the black robe would do him no harm.
Gomposh waited for a while, observing Shasta with his little wise eyes and making notes of him inside his big wise head. Then, very deliberately and slowly, he came down the slope towards Shasta and sat down on his haunches before him on the rock. For a minute or two neither of them spoke, except in that secret language of eye and nose which makes unnecessary so much of the jabber that we humans call speech. But presently Shasta began to ask questions in wolf-language and Gomposh made answers in the same. And the sense of what they said was as follows, though the actual words were not our human words at all, but deeper and sweeter in the meaning of them, and much nearer to the truth.
VERY DELIBERATELY AND SLOWLY, HE CAME DOWN THE SLOPE
TOWARDS SHASTA AND SAT DOWN ON HIS HAUNCHES
"Shall we be brothers, you and I?" Shasta asked, a little timidly, for he was feeling shy. Gomposh looked at him kindly out of his little pig-like eyes.