CHAPTER I HOW I TUMBLED DOWNHILL

It is not easy for one to believe that he ever was a cub. Of course, I know that I was, and as it was only nine years ago I ought to remember it fairly clearly. None the less, hundreds and hundreds of times I have looked at my own cubs, and said to myself: ‘Surely, I can never have been like that!’

It is not so much a mere matter of size, although it is doubtful if any young bear realizes how small he is. My father and mother seemed enormous to me, but, on the other hand, my sister was smaller than I, and perhaps the fact that I could always box her ears when I wanted to, gave me an exaggerated idea of my own importance. Not that I did it very often, except when she used to bite my hind-toes. Every bear, of course, likes to[2] chew his own feet, for it is one of the most soothing and comforting things in the world; but it is horrid to have anyone else come up behind you, when you are asleep, and begin to chew your feet for you. And that was what Kahwa—that was my sister, my name being Wahka—was always doing, and I simply had to slap her well whenever she did. It was the only way to stop her.

But, as I said, cubhood is not a matter of size only. As I look down at this glossy black coat of mine, it is hard to believe that it was ever a dirty light brown in colour, and all ridiculous wool and fluff, as young cubs’ coats are. But I must have been fluffy, because I remember how my mother, after she had been licking me for any length of time, used to be obliged to stop and wipe the fur out of her mouth with the back of her paw, just as my wife did later on when she licked our cubs. Every time my mother had to wipe her mouth she used to try to box my ears, so that when she stopped licking me, I, knowing what was coming next, would tuck my head down as far as it would go between my legs, and keep it there till she began licking again.

Yes, when I stop to think, I know, from many things, that I must have been just an ordinary cub.[3] For instance, my very earliest recollection is of tumbling downhill.

Like all bears, I was born and lived on the hillside. In the Rocky Mountains, where my home was, there is nothing but hills, or mountains, for miles and miles, so that you can wander on for day after day, always going up one side of a hill and down the other, and up and down again; and at the bottom of almost every valley there is a stream or river, which for most of the year swirls along noisily and full of water. Towards the end of summer, however, the streams nearly dry up, just trickling along in places over their rocky beds, and you can splash about in them almost anywhere. The mountains are covered with trees—gorgeous trees, such as I have never seen anywhere else—with great straight trunks, splendid for practising climbing, shooting away up into the sky before the branches begin. Towards the summits of the bigger mountains the trees become smaller and grow wider apart, and if you go up to one of these and look around you, you can see nothing but a sea of dark-green tree-tops, rolling down into the valley and up the opposite slopes on all sides of you, with here and there the peaks of the highest mountains standing against the sky[4] bare and rocky, with streaks and patches of snow clinging to them all through the summer. Oh, it was beautiful!

In the winter the whole country is covered with snow many feet deep, which, as it falls, slides off the hillsides, and is drifted by the wind into the valleys and hollows till the smaller ones are filled up nearly to the tops of the trees. But bears do not see much of that, for when the first snow comes we get into our dens and go half asleep, and stay hibernating till springtime. And you have no idea how delightful hibernating is, nor how excruciatingly stiff we are when we wake up, and how hungry!

The snow lies over everything for months, until in the early spring the warm west winds begin to blow, melting the snow from one side of the mountains. Then the sun grows hotter and hotter day by day, and helps to melt it until most of the mountain slopes are clear; but in sheltered places and in the bottoms of the little hollows the snow stays in patches till far into the summer. We bears come out from our winter sleep when the snow is not quite gone, when the whole earth everywhere is still wet with it, and the streams, swollen with floods, are bubbling and boiling along[5] so that the air is filled with the noise of them by night and day.

Our home was well up one of the hillsides, where two huge cedar-trees shot up side by side close by a jutting mass of rock. In between the roots of the trees and under the rock was as good a house as a family of bears could want—roomy enough for all four of us, perfectly sheltered, and hidden and dry. Can you imagine how warm and comfy it was when we were all snuggled in there, with our arms round each other, and our faces buried in each other’s fur? Anyone looking in would have seen nothing but a huge ball of black and brown fluff.

It was from just outside the door that I tumbled downhill.

It must have been early in the year, because the ground was still very wet and soft, and the gully at the bottom full of snow. Of course, if I had not been a cub I should never have fallen, for big bears do not tumble downhill. If by any chance anything did start one, and he found he could not stop himself, he would know enough to tuck in his head and paws out of harm’s way; but I only knew that somehow, in romping with Kahwa, I had lost my balance, and was going—goodness[6] knew where! I went all spread out like a squirrel, first on my head, then on my back, then on my tummy, clutching at everything that I passed, slapping the ground with my outstretched paws, and squealing for help. Bump! bang! slap! bump! I went, hitting trees and thumping all the wind out of me against the earth, and at last—souse into the snow!

Wow-ugh![1] How cold and wet it was! And it was deep—so deep, indeed, that I was buried completely out of sight; and I doubt if I should ever have got out alive had not my mother come down and dug me out with her nose and paws. Then she half pushed and half smacked me uphill again, and when I got home I was the wettest, coldest, sorest, wretchedest bear-cub in the Rocky Mountains.

Then, while I lay and whimpered, my mother spent the rest of the day licking me into the semblance of a respectable bearkin again. But I was bruised and nervous for days afterwards.

[7]

That tumble of mine gave us the idea of the game which Kahwa and I used to play almost every day after that. Kahwa would take her stand with her back against the rock by our door, just at the point where the hill went off most steeply, and it was my business to come charging up the hill at her and try to pull her down. What fun it was! Sometimes I was the one to stand against the rock, and Kahwa tried to pull me down. She could not do it; but she was plucky, and used to come at me so ferociously that I often wondered for a minute whether it was only play or whether she was really angry.

Best of all was when mother used to play with us. Then she put her back to the rock, and we both attacked her at once from opposite sides, each trying to get hold of a hind-leg just above the foot. If she put her head down to pretend to bite either of us, the other jumped for her ear. Sometimes we would each get hold of an ear, and hang on as hard as we could, while she pretended we were hurting her dreadfully, growling and shaking her head, and making as much fuss as she could; but if in our excitement either of us did chance to bite a little too hard, we always knew it. With a couple of cuffs, hard enough to make us yelp, she[8] would throw us to one side and the other, and there was no more play for that day. And mother could hit hard when she liked. I have seen her smack father in a way that would have broken all the bones in a cub’s body, and killed any human being outright.

Father did not romp with us as much as mother. He was more serious, but, on the other hand, he did not lose his temper nearly so quickly. She used to get angry with him over nothing, and I think he was afraid of her. And it was just the same later on with me and my wife. I always knew that I could have eaten her up had I wanted to, but, somehow, a bear cannot settle down in earnest to fight his own wife. If she loses her temper, he can pretend to be angry too, but in the end he surely gets the worst of it. I do not know why it is, but a she-bear does not seem to mind how hard she hits her husband, but he always stops just short of hurting her. Perhaps it is the same with human beings.

But to Kahwa and me both father and mother were very gentle and kind in those first helpless days, and I suppose they never punished us unless we deserved it. Later on my father and I had differences, as you will hear. But in that first summer our lives, if uneventful, were very happy.