The Biography of a Grizzly, Page 4

  "That," said the man who was acting as guide, "is the biggest Grizzly inthe Park; but he is a peaceable sort, or Lud knows what'd happen."

  "That!" said the ranchman, in astonishment, as the Grizzly came hulkingnearer, and loomed up like a load of hay among the piney pillars of theBanquet Hall. "That! It that is not Meteetsee Wahb, I never saw a Bearin my life! Why, that is the worst Grizzly that ever rolled a log in theBig Horn Basin." "It ain't possible," said the other, "for he's hereevery summer, July and August, an' I reckon he don't live so far away."

  "Well, that settles it," said the ranchman; "July and August is just thetime we miss him on the range; and you can see for yourself that he isa little lame behind and has lost a claw of his left front foot. Now Iknow where he puts in his summers; but I did not suppose that the oldreprobate would know enough to behave himself away from home."

  The big Grizzly became very well known during the successive hotelseasons. Once only did he really behave ill, and that was the firstseason he appeared, before he fully knew the ways of the Park.

  He wandered over to the hotel, one day, and in at the front door. Inthe hall he reared up his eight feet of stature as the guests fled interror; then he went into the clerk's office. The man said: "All right;if you need this office more than I do, you can have it," and leapingover the counter, locked himself in the telegraph-office, to wire thesuperintendent of the Park: "Old Grizzly in the office now, seems towant to run hotel; may we shoot?"

  The reply came: "No shooting allowed in Park; use the hose." Which theydid, and, wholly taken by surprise, the Bear leaped over the countertoo, and ambled out the back way, with a heavy _thud-thudding_ of hisfeet, and a rattling of his claws on the floor. He passed through thekitchen as he went, and, picking up a quarter of beef, took it along.

  This was the only time he was known to do ill, though on one occasionhe was led into a breach of the peace by another Bear. This was a largeshe-Blackbear and a noted mischief-maker. She had a wretched, sickly cubthat she was very proud of--so proud that she went out of her way toseek trouble on his behalf. And he, like all spoiled children, was thecause of much bad feeling. She was so big and fierce that she couldbully all the other Blackbears, but when she tried to drive off old Wahbshe received a pat from his paw that sent her tumbling like a football.He followed her up, and would have killed her, for she had broken thepeace of the Park, but she escaped by climbing a tree, from the top ofwhich her miserable little cub was apprehensively squealing at the pitchof his voice. So the affair was ended; in future the Blackbear keptout of Wahb's way, and he won the reputation of being a peaceable,well-behaved Bear. Most persons believed that he came from some remotemountains where were neither guns nor traps to make him sullen andrevengeful.

  III.

  Every one knows that a Bitter-root Grizzly is a bad Bear. TheBitter-root Range is the roughest part of the mountains. The ground iseverywhere cut up with deep ravines and overgrown with dense and tangledunderbrush.

  It is an impossible country for horses, and difficult for gunners, andthere is any amount of good Bear-pasture. So there are plenty of Bearsand plenty of trappers.

  The Roachbacks, as the Bitter-root Grizzlies are called, are a cunningand desperate race. An old Roachback knows more about traps than halfa dozen ordinary trappers; he knows more about plants and roots than awhole college of botanists. He can tell to a certainty just when andwhere to find each kind of grub and worm, and he knows by a whiffwhether the hunter on his trail a mile away is working with guns,poison, dogs, traps, or all of them together. And he has one generalrule, which is an endless puzzle to the hunter: 'Whatever you decideto do, do it quickly and follow it right up.' So when a trapper and aRoachback meet, the Bear at once makes up his mind to run away as hardas he can, or to rush at the man and fight to a finish.

  The Grizzlies of the Bad Lands did not do this: they used to stand ontheir dignity and growl like a thunder-storm, and so gave the huntersa chance to play their deadly lightning; and lightning is worse thanthunder any day. Men can get used to growls that rumble along the groundand up one's legs to the little house where one's courage lives; butBears cannot get used to 45-90 soft-nosed bullets, and that is why theGrizzlies of the Bad Lands were all killed off.

  So the hunters have learned that they never know what a Roachback willdo; but they do know that he is going to be quick about it.

  Altogether these Bitter-root Grizzlies have solved very well the problemof life, in spite of white men, and are therefore increasing in theirown wild mountains.

  Of course a range will hold only so many Bears, and the increase iscrowded out; so that when that slim young Bald-faced Roachback found hecould not hold the range he wanted, he went out perforce to seek hisfortune in the world.

  He was not a big Bear, or he would not have been crowded out; but he hadbeen trained in a good school, so that he was cunning enough to get onvery well elsewhere. How he wandered down to the Salmon River Mountainsand did not like them; how he traveled till he got among the barb-wirefences of the Snake Plains and of course could not stay there; how amere chance turned him from going eastward to the Park, where he mighthave rested; how he made for the Snake River Mountains and found morehunters than berries; how he crossed into the Tetons and looked downwith disgust on the teeming man colony of Jackson's Hole, does notbelong to this history of Wahb. But when Baldy Roachback crossed theGros Ventre Range and over the Wind River Divide to the head of theGraybull, he does come into the story, just as he did into the countryand the life of the Meteetsee Grizzly.

  The Roachback had not found a man-sign since he left Jackson's Hole,and here he was in a land of plenty of food. He feasted on all thedelicacies of the season, and enjoyed the easy, brushless country tillhe came on one of Wahb's sign-posts.

  "Trespassers beware!" it said in the plainest manner. The Roachbackreared up against it.

  "Thunder! what a Bear!" The nose-mark was a head and neck above Baldy'shighest reach. Now, a simple Bear would have gone quietly away afterthis discovery; but Baldy felt that the mountains owed him a living, andhere was a good one if he could keep out of the way of the big fellow.He nosed about the place, kept a sharp lookout for the present owner,and went on feeding wherever he ran across a good thing.

  A step or two from this ominous tree was an old pine stump. In theBitter-roots there are often mice-nests under such stumps, and Baldyjerked it over to see. There was nothing. The stump rolled over againstthe sign-post. Baldy had not yet made up his mind about it; but a newnotion came into his cunning brain. He turned his head on this side,then on that. He looked at the stump, then at the sign, with his littlepig-like eyes. Then he deliberately stood up on the pine root, with hisback to the tree, and put his mark away up, a head at least above thatof Wahb. He rubbed his back long and hard, and he sought some mud tosmear his head and shoulders, then came back and made the mark so big,so strong, and so high, and emphasized it with such claw-gashes in thebark, that it could be read only in one way--a challenge to the presentclaimant from some monstrous invader, who was ready, nay anxious, tofight to a finish for this desirable range.

  Maybe it was accident and maybe design, but when the Roach-backjumped from the root it rolled to one side. Baldy went on down thecanyon, keeping the keenest lookout for his enemy.

  It was not long before Wahb found the trail of the interloper, and allthe ferocity of his outside-the-Park nature was aroused.

  He followed the trail for miles on more than one occasion. But the smallBear was quick-footed as well as quick-witted, and never showed himself.He made a point, however, of calling at each sign-post, and if there wasany means of cheating, so that his mark might be put higher, he did itwith a vim, and left a big, showy record. But if there was no chance forany but a fair register, he would not go near the tree, but looked for afresh tree near by with some log or side-ledge to reach from.

  Thus Wahb soon found the interloper's marks towering far above hisown--a monstrous Bear evidently, that even he could not be sure ofmasteri
ng. But Wahb was no coward. He was ready to fight to a finish anyone that might come; and he hunted the range for that invader. Day afterday Wahb sought for him and held himself ready to fight. He found histrail daily, and more and more often he found that towering record farabove his own. He often smelled him on the wind; but he never saw him,for the old Grizzly's eyes had grown very dim of late years; things buta little way off were blurs to him. The continual menace could not butfill Wahb with uneasiness, for he was not young now, and his teeth andclaws were worn and blunted. He was more than ever troubled with painsin his old wounds, and though he could have risen on the spur of themoment to fight any number of Grizzlies of any size, still the continualapprehension, the knowledge that he must hold himself ready at anymoment to fight this young monster, weighed on his spirits and began totell on his general health.

  IV.

  The Roachback's life was one of continual vigilance, always ready torun, doubling and shifting to avoid the encounter that must mean instantdeath to him. Many a time from some hiding-place he watched the greatBear, and trembled lest the wind should betray him. Several times hisvery impudence saved him, and more than once he was nearly cornered ina box-canyon. Once he escaped only by climbing up a long crack in acliff, which Wahb's huge frame could not have entered. But still, in amad persistence, he kept on marking the trees farther into the range.

  At last he scented and followed up the sulphur-bath. He did notunderstand it at all. It had no appeal to him, but hereabouts were thetracks of the owner. In a spirit of mischief the Roachback scratcheddirt into the spring, and then seeing the rubbing-tree, he stoodsidewise on the rocky ledge, and was thus able to put his mark fullyfive feet above that of Wahb. Then he nervously jumped down, and wasrunning about, defiling the bath and keeping a sharp lookout, when heheard a noise in the woods below. Instantly he was all alert. The sounddrew near, then the wind brought the sure proof, and the Roachback, interror, turned and fled into the woods.

  It was Wahb. He had been failing in health of late; his old painswere on him again, and, as well as his hind leg, had seized his rightshoulder, where were still lodged two rifle-balls. He was feeling veryill, and crippled with pain. He came up the familiar bank at a jerkylimp, and there caught the odor of the foe; then he saw the track in themud--his eyes said the track of a _small_ Bear, but his eyes were dimnow, and his nose, his unerring nose, said, "This is the track of thehuge invader." Then he noticed the tree with his sign on it, and therebeyond doubt was the stranger's mark far above his own. His eyes andnose were agreed on this; and more, they told him that the foe was closeat hand, might at any moment come.

  Wahb was feeling ill and weak with pain. He was in no mood for adesperate fight. A battle against such odds would be madness now. So,without taking the treatment, he turned and swung along the bench awayfrom the direction taken by the stranger--the first time since hiscubhood that he had declined to fight.

  That was a turning-point in Wahb's life. If he had followed up thestranger he would have found the miserable little craven trembling,cowering, in an agony of terror, behind a log in a natural trap, awalled-in glade only fifty yards away, and would surely have crushedhim. Had he even taken the bath, his strength and courage would havebeen renewed, and if not, then at least in time he would have met hisfoe, and his after life would have been different. But he had turned.This was the fork in the trail, but he had no means of knowing it.

  He limped along, skirting the lower spurs of the Shoshones, and sooncame on that horrid smell that he had known for years, but neverfollowed up or understood. It was right in his road, and he traced itto a small, barren ravine that was strewn over with skeletons and darkobjects, and Wahb, as he passed, smelled a smell of many differentanimals, and knew by its quality that they were lying dead in thistreeless, grassless hollow. For there was a cleft in the rocks at theupper end, whence poured a deadly gas; invisible but heavy, it filledthe little gulch like a brimming poison bowl, and at the lower end therewas a steady overflow. But Wahb knew only that the air that poured fromit as he passed made him dizzy and sleepy, and repelled him, so thathe got quickly away from it and was glad once more to breathe the pinywind. Once Wahb decided to retreat, it was all too easy to do so nexttime; and the result worked double disaster. For, since the big strangerwas allowed possession of the sulphur-spring, Wahb felt that he wouldrather not go there. Sometimes when he came across the traces of hisfoe, a spurt of his old courage would come back. He would rumble thatthunder-growl as of old, and go painfully lumbering along the trailto settle the thing right then and there. But he never overtook themysterious giant, and his rheumatism, growing worse now that he wasbarred from the cure, soon made him daily less capable of either runningor fighting.

  Sometimes Wahb would sense his foe's approach when he was in a bad placefor fighting, and, without really running, he would yield to a wish tobe on a better footing, where he would have a fair chance. This betterfooting never led him nearer the enemy, for it is well known that theone awaiting has the advantage.

  Some days Wahb felt so ill that it would have been madness to havestaked everything on a fight, and when he felt well or a little better,the stranger seemed to keep away.

  Wahb soon found that the stranger's track was most often on the Warhouseand the west slope of the Piney, the very best feeding-grounds. To avoidthese when he did not feel equal to fighting was only natural, and as hewas always in more or less pain now, it amounted to abandoning to thestranger the best part of the range.

  Weeks went by. Wahb had meant to go back to his bath, but he never did.His pains grew worse; he was now crippled in his right shoulder as wellas in his hind leg.

  The long strain of waiting for the fight begot anxiety, that grew to beapprehension, which, with the sapping of his strength, was breakingdown his courage, as it always must when courage is founded on muscularforce. His daily care now was not to meet and fight the invader, but toavoid him till he felt better.

  Thus that first little retreat grew into one long retreat. Wahb had togo farther and farther down the Piney to avoid an encounter. He wasdaily worse fed, and as the weeks went by was daily less able to crush afoe.

  He was living and hiding at last on the Lower Piney--the very placewhere once his Mother had brought him with his little brothers. The lifehe led now was much like the one he had led after that dark day. Perhapsfor the same reason. If he had had a family of his own all might havebeen different. As he limped along one morning, seeking among the barrenaspen groves for a few roots, or the wormy partridge-berries that weretoo poor to interest the Squirrel and the Grouse, he heard a stonerattle down the western slope into the woods, and, a little later, onthe wind was borne the dreaded taint. He waded through the ice-coldPiney,--once he would have leaped it,--and the chill water sent throughand up each great hairy limb keen pains that seemed to reach his verylife. He was retreating again--which way? There seemed but one waynow--toward the new ranch-house.

  But there were signs of stir about it long before he was near enough tobe seen. His nose, his trustiest friend, said, "Turn, turn and seek thehills," and turn he did even at the risk of meeting there the dreadfulfoe. He limped painfully along the north bank of the Piney, keeping inthe hollows and among the trees. He tried to climb a cliff that of oldhe had often bounded up at full speed. When half-way up his footing gaveway, and down he rolled to the bottom. A long way round was now the onlyroad, for onward he must go--on--on. But where? There seemed no choicenow but to abandon the whole range to the terrible stranger.

  And feeling, as far as a Bear can feel, that he is fallen, defeated,dethroned at last, that he is driven from his ancient range by a Beartoo strong for him to face, he turned up the west fork, and the lot wasdrawn. The strength and speed were gone from his once mighty limbs;he took three times as long as he once would to mount each well-knownridge, and as he went he glanced backward from time to time to knowif he were pursued. Away up the head of the little branch were theShoshones, bleak, forbidding; no enemies were there, and the Par
k wasbeyond it all--on, on he must go. But as he climbed with shaky limbs,and short uncertain steps, the west wind brought the odor of DeathGulch, that fearful little valley where everything was dead, where thevery air was deadly. It used to disgust him and drive him away, but nowWahb felt that it had a message for him; he was drawn by it.

  line of flight, and he hobbled slowly toward the place.He went nearer, nearer, until he stood upon the entering ledge. AVulture that had descended to feed on one of the victims was slowlygoing to sleep on the untouched carcass. Wahb swung his great grizzledmuzzle and his long white beard in the wind. The odor that he once hadhated was attractive now. There was a strange biting quality in theair. His body craved it. For it seemed to numb his pain and it promisedsleep, as it did that day when first he saw the place.

  Far below him, to the right and to the left and on and on as far as theeye could reach, was the great kingdom that once had been his; where hehad lived for years in the glory of his strength; where none had daredto meet him face to face. The whole earth could show no view morebeautiful. But Wahb had no thought of its beauty; he only knew that itwas a good land to live in; that it had been his, but that now it wasgone, for his strength was gone, and he was flying to seek a place wherehe could rest and be at peace.

  Away over the Shoshones, indeed, was the road to the Park, but it wasfar, far away, with a doubtful end to the long, doubtful journey. Butwhy so far? Here in this little gulch was all he sought; here were peaceand painless sleep. He knew it; for his nose, his never-erring nose,said, "_Here! here now!_"