Followers of the Trail

by Zoe Meyer

Mokwa, in his mad scramble, had paused a moment for breath. He heard the man's footfalls and the sound filled him with fresh alarm. With a last despairing effort he rose upon his haunches and tugged at the battered pail. This time his efforts were rewarded. A peculiar twist sent it flying, and the bear, free at last, made quick time to the friendly shelter of the spruce thicket, sped by the loud laughter of the Hermit.

"Guess that bear will never bother my sap-buckets again," the man chuckled, as he picked up his bright new pail, battered now past all recognition.

On the day following his harrowing experience in the sugar-maple grove Mokwa was a much chastened bear, but the incident soon faded from his memory and he once more trod the forest trails as if they had been presented to him for his sole use by Dame Nature herself. In the swamp the pointed hoods of skunk cabbage were appearing, the heat generated by their growth producing an open place in the snow about them. The odour from which the name is derived was not at all offensive to the bear who eagerly devoured many of the plants, varying the diet with roots and small twigs swelling with sap.

In the damp hollows the coarse grass was turning green, and before long the swamps were noisy with the shrill voice of the hylas, while the streams once more teemed with fish.

As the season advanced Mokwa grew fat and contented, exerting himself only enough to shuffle from one good feeding ground to another. He would grunt complainingly at any extra exertion, as, for instance, that which was required to reach the small wild sweet apples which he dearly loved, and which were clustered thickly on their small trees at the edge of the forest. At this season Mokwa's diet was almost strictly vegetarian and the smaller creatures of the wilderness, upon which he sometimes preyed, had little to fear from him.

The long summer days drifted by and autumn was not far away. Mokwa grew restless; both his food and surroundings palled upon him. At length, following a vague though persistent inner impulse, he turned his face northward toward the hills which had been his birthplace and from which he had been so strangely carried.

Long before daylight he had taken the trail and, in spite of the protests of his overfed body, had pushed steadily on, pausing at the edge of the tamarack swamp long enough to open with his sharp claws a rotting log that lay in his path, a log which yielded him a meal of fat grubs. Then he shambled on, drawn by some irresistible force. The mist which hung like a white veil over the low ground bordering the swamp was fast dissolving in curling wisps of vapor under the ardent rays of the sun. The forest was alive with bird song; squirrels chattered to him from the trees and the rattle of the kingfisher was in his ears, but Mokwa held a steady course northward, his little eyes fixed on some unseen goal.

About noon he came out upon the bank of the Little Vermilion, not far from the place where he had so narrowly escaped death on the floating ice. The roar of the falls came to him clearly on the still air and the big bear shivered. If he remembered his wild ride, however, the memory was quickly effaced by the discovery of a blueberry thicket, a luscious storehouse that apparently had never been rifled. Mokwa feasted greedily, at first stripping the branches of fruit and leaves alike; but at length, the keen edge of his appetite dulled, he sought only the finest berries, crushing many and ruthlessly tearing down whole bushes in his greed to get a branch of especially choice fruit. Then, his face and paws stained with the juice and his sides uncomfortably distended, he sought a secluded nook in which to sleep off his feast.

Toward evening, when the shadows grew long and the hills were touched with the red and gold of the setting sun, Mokwa again took up the northward trail, to which he held steadily most of the night. Morning found him emerging from a thicket of juniper upon the banks of the river at a place that he instantly recognized as the one from which he had begun his unwilling travels.

Turning sharply to the right, the bear's eager eyes discovered the trunk of a hemlock which had been blasted by lightning. Rearing himself upon his haunches against it, and reaching to his utmost, he prepared to leave his signature where he had so often left it, always above all rivals. Ere his unsheathed claws could leave their mark, however, he paused, gazing at another mark several inches above his own.