The Youth's Companion Part 4

We listened. The sounds came nearer, and pretty soon we saw through the tree trunks that they were made by a bear. Probably the warm rain had roused him out of his winter den, or else he was starved out, for he looked surly and fierce, as if he felt cross.

He walked leisurely until he was within seven or eight rods of us. Then he stopped and looked at us a minute, but started forward again, and would probably have gone on civilly, had not Ed took our gun, which we kept loaded, and ran after him.

[Ill.u.s.tration (woods-1) Shooting the Bear]

Hearing Ed coming, the bear turned round and ran towards him.

Ed stopped and took aim. The bear at once rose on his hind legs, and fanned the air with his paws.

Ed fired, and fortunately killed him with a single charge of buck-shot.

But I never saw a poorer bear. His hair was rusty, and he was evidently not in good health. The meat we could not eat; the very crows would have pa.s.sed it by.

We wanted, however, candles to study by, and thought we could obtain grease enough from poor bruin to serve this purpose.

So we cut the body up, hair and all,--for his hide absolutely stuck to his bones,--and that night cleared out one of the kettles, and commenced trying out our bear's grease.

The contents of the kettle sizzled there all the evening, giving off anything but an agreeable odor. We were translating the fable of "The Mouse and the Peasant" that night, and _nihil Mehurcule_ is still mixed up in my mind with the odor of that old bear.

By nine o'clock the oil was fried out. We throw the sc.r.a.ps into the fire, and these made, if possible, a still more disagreeable odor as they burned. The whole swamp was full of it.

The hot fat was then poured off into a tin pail, and hung in a little spotted maple near one end of our camp-shed. We used to hang all our tin dishes and ladles here, for the maple had low limbs, which we had cut off so as to leave the stubs for pegs.

Underneath this tree was the great box--an old grain-box from a logging-camp--in which we stored our "salts" as it was made.

In the night.--it must have been after midnight, for the fire was out--I was roused from sleep by Ed, who was moving about the shed. I thought at first that he was walking in his sleep,--for he was a somnambulist,--and gave him a shake.

"Sh!" whispered he. "There's something sniffing round the arch."

We both peered sharply, but it was so dark that we could see nothing.

"It's the mate to that old bear, I guess," Ed whispered. "He's lonely, and wants company."

"More likely he has smelled the fat," said I, "and intends to steal it."

"Perhaps so," said Ed. "I thought we should draw some beast or other to us. Sh! I believe I can see him. Keep still! I'll teach him not to steal from his neighbors."

Ed reached for the gun, which at night always lay loaded at the head of our bunk.

c.o.c.king the gun, he took aim and fired.

There was a yell almost as loud as the report, and it startled me a good deal worse. I once heard a vicious hound when shot make almost just such a noise. It was really a blood-curdling sound.

Vet had been sound asleep. The gun and the yell brought him suddenly to his feet.

"What is it?" he screamed. "What's the matter?"

"Matter?" exclaimed Ed; "that was a wolf! An ugly customer, too."

The creature had ran yelping away, and now the whole swamp resounded to its cries, as it crossed the frozen stream and ran for the mountain-side. What we took for the echoes at first, came back amazingly distinct from the mountains all about us. "Why," cried Vet, "those cries are other wolves answering him!"

It is strange what a distance the smell of burned bones and sc.r.a.ps will be carried to the noses of carnivorous beasts. A hunter in the woods better not burn such refuse unless he wants to draw dangerous game about him. It may be a wild opinion, but I haven't a doubt that the odor of those bones drew wolves twenty-five miles off to us that night.

As soon as Vet spoke, Ed and I both knew there must be other wolves howling. It made us feel almost frightened, there, in the dead of night, for we soon found that the creatures were drawing together and coming nearer, large numbers of them. Ed loaded the gun again.

"But what good will that do if there's a pack of 'em?" Vet exclaimed.

If we had had a log camp with a door, we shouldn't have felt uneasy; but our open shed would not afford us safety. There was no time to be lost, for the wolves were racing and scurrying about the swamp, not half a mile away.

"I'm going into that old stooping hemlock!" said Vet, and he ran for it.

This large mossy hemlock was a few yards to the right of our camp. It leaned down and rested partly in a great elm that stood on the bank of the stream.

Any one could make a run and scramble up the trunk of this tree to the first limbs, twelve or fourteen feet. Ed and I only waited to place two big stones from the arch upon our pork cask, and also to throw our flour-bag and meal-bag upon the roof of the shed. Then we scrambled after Vet.

We got amongst the green boughs, and perched ourselves as comfortably as we could. There was no wind, and the temperature could not have been below freezing, much.

We had but just got into the hemlock when two or three wolves ran by, and were soon scurrying about our "arch" and camp,--going and coming, here and there, uttering, now and then, a quick, eager yelp, like hounds hunting a track.

Though it was pretty dark, we could distinguish their dusky forms. We could hear them eating, too, the bones, sc.r.a.ps and offal we hand thrown out,--quarrelling, snapping and fighting with one another.

[Ill.u.s.tration (woods-2) Trying Oil]

Several times, one or more of them were on the shed-roof. They dragged off the meal-bag, and tugged at the cloths, and dragged the bag about the ground. Then they began to jump into the little spotted maple. This was so near that we could see them better. They tore down the tin dishes, and still kept leaping up.

"Good-by, candles!" muttered Ed. "They're after that pail of bear's grease."

Pretty soon, we heard the pail go down, _thump!_ into the box of "salts," that was, as I have said, underneath it. Then there was a great rush and snapping of the whole pack--twenty to thirty of them, we thought--as they licked it up from among the salts.

They hurried hither and thither around the camp for ten or fifteen minutes longer, then dropped off, one after another, in response to howlings further down the stream.

The next morning, we saw where they had upset the bear-fat into the "salts." The oil had not cooled, and of course it soaked down into the loose salts. In their eagerness to get the warm grease, the rabid brutes had eaten grease and salts together.

"Well," said Ed, "some of 'em will be troubled with dyspepsia after this, that's certain."

This was Wednesday. Friday morning, Vet and I set off to go to the settlement. We followed down Mud Stream five miles, to where it entered the Pen.o.bscot. Here there was, or had recently been, open water, now only partly frozen over.

We could not get upon the river at the forks, and had to follow up the bank thirty or forty rods. We had gone only a few steps when we came upon a dead wolf, lying close down to the water's edge, among brush and drift-stuff.

"Here's one of our friends!" cried Vet, laughing.

We hauled the carca.s.s up to the top of the bank. It was a good-sized wolf, as large as a fox-hound. We felt pretty happy, for the State then paid a bounty of eight dollars on wolf-scalps; and the hide--if we could get it off--would bring two or three dollars more.

Well, we had not gone four rods further when we came upon another wolf, curled up, dead, near the water. And--to cut the story short--we found eight dead wolves lying along that strip of open water.

The "salts" had proved a fatal meal for them.

We were not long going for Ed, and then we skinned the lot. But it was a tough job. We could not help cutting the hides considerably, and in consequence of this, we obtained but eleven dollars for these. We got seventy-six dollars in all, however, and this was a large amount for us in those hard, self-denying days.