CHAPTER XI THE TROUBLES OF A FATHER

Every young cub, I imagine, gets into about the same amount of trouble and causes about the same worry and anxiety to his parents. I know that little Wahka took the earliest possible opportunity of getting himself stuck full of porcupine quills, and I do not suppose he made any more fuss when his mother pulled them out than I had done under similar circumstances five summers before. He nearly drowned himself by tumbling into the swiftest part of the stream that he could find, and when I laughed at him, shivering and whining, while his mother alternately licked and cuffed him on the head, I could not help thinking of my own misery when I went downhill into the snow.

As I looked at him, so preposterously small, and fluffy, and brown, it was, as I said at the beginning, hard to believe that I was ever quite[148] like that. But I recognised myself in things that he did fifty times a day.

Kahwa, too, was exactly like the other little Kahwa, her aunt who was dead. Wahka would be sitting looking into the air at nothing, as cubs do, when she would steal up behind him and make a sudden grab at his hind-foot. I could remember just how it felt when her teeth caught hold. And he would roll over on his side, squealing, and smack her head until she let go. In a few minutes they were perfectly good friends again hunting squirrels up the trees, and standing down below with open mouths, waiting for them to drop in. I showed them how to play at pulling each other down the hill, and often of an afternoon I would sit with my own back against the tree, and invite them to pull me down. Then it was just as it used to be. Wahka came at me on one side, slowly and doggedly, almost in silence, but intensely in earnest, while on the other side Kahwa rushed on me like a little whirlwind, yapping and snarling, and scuffling all over me with her mouth wide open to grab anything that was within reach—the same ferocious, reckless little spitfire as I had known years ago. They were good children, I think. At all events,[149] Wooffa and I were very proud of them, and she used to spend an astonishing amount of time licking them, and combing them, and smacking their little woolly heads.

Then we began to take them out and teach them how to find food, and what food to eat; that the easiest way to get at a lily bulb is not to scrabble at it with both paws straight down, but to scoop it out with one good scrape from the side; how to wipe off the top of an ant-hill at one smooth stroke; how to distinguish the wild-onion by its smell; and what the young shoots of the white camas look like. They soon learned not to pass any fair-sized stone without turning it over to look for the insects beneath, and also that it is useless to go on turning the same stone over and over again to keep looking at the ‘other side.’ Every fallen log had to be carefully inspected, the bark ripped off where it was rotten to get at the beetles and grubs and wood-lice underneath, and, if it were not too heavy, the log itself should be rolled over. We taught them that, in approaching a log or large stone, one should always sniff well first to see if there is a mouse or chipmunk underneath, and, if there be fresh scent, turn it over with one paw while holding the other ready to strike.

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Mice bothered them dreadfully at first, dodging and zigzagging round their hind-legs, and keeping them hopping in the air, while they grabbed wildly at the little thing that was never where it ought to be when the paw came down to squash it. I shall never forget the first time that Wahka found a chipmunk by himself. He lifted a stone very cautiously, with his nose much too close to it, apparently expecting the chipmunk to run into his mouth, which it did not do; but as soon as the stone was lifted an inch it was out and on to Wahka’s nose, and over his head, down the middle of his back, and off into the wood. Wahka really never saw it at all, and was spinning round and round trying to get at the middle of his own back after the chipmunk was a hundred yards away.

We took the cubs down to the stream and showed them how to root along the edges among the grass and weeds for frogs and snails, and water-beetles and things, and when the trout came upstream we caught some for them, and showed them how to do it; but fishing is a thing that needs too much patience to commend itself to cubs.

Wahka did not have any adventure with a puma, but he had one experience which might have been even more serious. He had wandered[151] away from his mother and myself, just as he had been told hundreds of times not to do, when suddenly there was the noise of a scuffle from his direction, and he was screaming with all his might. I was there in a moment, with his mother close behind me, and saw two huge gray wolves which had already rolled him over, and in another instant would have done for him. We charged them, but they were gone before we reached the spot; and beyond a bad shaking and one scar on his shoulder Wahka was none the worse. He was a thoroughly frightened cub, however, and it would have taken a great deal of persuasion to make him leave his mother’s side for the rest of that day. Indeed, it was necessary to be careful for more than that day, because the wolves hung around us, hoping still to catch either him or Kahwa alone where they could make away with them.

I dislike wolves immensely. In spite of their size and the strength of their jaws, they are cowardly animals, and one wolf will never attack even a much smaller beast than himself alone, if he can get another to help him. Bears are not like that. We want to have our fighting to ourselves. We would much rather have any other[152] bear that is near stand and look on instead of coming to help us—unless, of course, it is a case of husband and wife, and one or other is overmatched. What we do, we do in the open, and prefer that people should understand our intentions clearly, and take us just as we are. A wolf is exactly the opposite. He never does anything openly that he can do in secret. He likes to keep out of sight, and hunt by stealth, owing what he gets to his cunning and to superior numbers, rather than to his own individual fighting spirit.

We recognise that wolves know many things that we do not; though some of them are things that we would not want to know. And they think us fools—but they keep out of our way. There have indeed, I believe, been cases where a number of wolves together have succeeded in killing a bear—not in fair fight, but by dogging and following him for days, preventing his either eating or sleeping, until from sheer exhaustion he has been unable to resist them when they have attacked him in force and pulled him down. This, however, could not happen in the mountains. The wolves are only there in the summer, and then they run in couples, or alone, or at most in families of two old ones and the cubs together. In the[153] autumn they go down to the foot-hills and the plains, and then it is only in hard weather that they collect in packs. At that time the bears are usually in their winter dens, and all the wolves that were ever born could never get a bear out of his den, where they can reach him only in front.

In this case, the wolves which had attacked Wahka seldom showed themselves, but that they were constantly near us, and watching us, we knew. With all their cunning, they could not help getting between us and the wind once in a while, and sometimes, when they were a little distance away, we could hear them quarrelling between themselves over some small animal they had killed, or some scrap of food that they had found in the forest. It is not pleasant being shadowed, whether it is your child or yourself that is being hunted, and we had to be extremely cautious not to let either Kahwa or Wahka out of our sight. Nor was it always easy, in spite of his recent fright, to keep the latter under restraint, for he was an independent, self-reliant youngster, of inexhaustible inquisitiveness.

One day, when we knew the wolves were following us, and we were keeping Wahka well in hand,[154] we met a family of elk,[4] two parents and quite a young fawn, and Wahka must needs go and try to find out all about the fawn. He meant no harm whatever, and had no idea that there was any danger. He only thought the fawn would be a nice thing to play with; and before we could stop him he had trotted straight up to it. Elk are jealous animals, and, like all deer, in spite of their timidity, will fight to protect their young; and with his tremendous antlers and great strength a big stag is a person to be let alone.

Wahka knew nothing about all this, and went straight towards the fawn in the friendliest and most confiding way. Fortunately, the stag was some yards away, and we were able to put Wahka on his guard in time. But it was a narrow escape, and I do not think the stag’s antler missed his tail by half an inch. Wooffa jumped in the stag’s way, and for a minute it looked as if there would be a fight. Of course it would have ended in our killing the stag—and probably also his wife and the fawn as well—but one or the other of us would have been likely to have had the end of an antler through the ribs before the fight was over.

The stag showed not the slightest intention of [155]running away, though he must have known perfectly well that the odds were hopelessly against him; but he stood facing Wooffa, with his head down, snorting and pawing the ground, and telling her to come on. She was so angry at the attack on Wahka that for a moment she was inclined to do it, but I spoke to her, and she cooled down, and we moved away, leaving the stag, still pawing the ground and shaking his head, in possession of the field.

I have already said that we had had warning that the wolves were hanging about us that day, and we had not gone far after the meeting with the elk before we heard that some sort of trouble was in progress behind. It was not difficult to guess what it was; the snarling and yapping of the wolves, the breaking of branches, and the clashing of the elk’s antlers, told the story. The wolves, following us, had made up their minds that the fawn would be easier prey and better eating than a bear-cub; and the stag, we knew, was doing his best to defend his young. We were very much inclined to go down and help the stag; but we stood and listened, and suddenly the noise stopped. The silence that ensued was too much for our curiosity, and back we went.

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As we came near we knew that the fight could not be altogether over, for there was still a sound of snarling and the angry stamping of a stag, and the sight that at last met our eyes was one that it did us good to see.

There was a wide circular open space, in which every living thing had been trampled down, and the ground was all scored and furrowed with the mark of hoof and antler; and in the middle stood the stag, erect and defiant. Before him on the ground lay the body of the he-wolf, covered with blood and stamped almost beyond recognition. There was blood—his own blood—on the stag’s shoulder, and blood on his horns, which was not his own. At the edge of the circle, lying down and panting, lay the she-wolf, sulky and baffled, and evidently with no mind to go on with the combat alone, though the stag challenged her to come on.

When he saw us, the stag perhaps thought that we were new enemies come to take up the cause of the remaining wolf, for he signalled to his wife, who with the fawn was standing behind him, and they began to move slowly away, the deer and fawn going first, and the stag following, moving backwards, and keeping his antlers always towards the enemy, till they had passed out of the circle[157] of cleared space into the trees. The she-wolf lay there till they had passed, turning sulkily to snarl at us once in a while, and then, as we stood still and showed no sign of approaching or attacking her, she got up and walked over to the dead body of her husband, and began turning it over with her nose. Next she commenced to lick him, and then, taking the throat in her mouth, deliberately began to bite into it! Growling and snarling, she crouched over the body, and we left her to her horrid meal.

It was a relief to know that we at least would be no more troubled by her or her husband.

On the whole, life went very peaceably with us, as it had done with my parents when Kahwa and I were cubs in the days before man came, and before the forest fire drove us into his arms. This year we saw no sign of man. We had no wish to do so, and took care not to go in any direction where we thought we were likely to meet him. Once in midsummer we saw the sky to the north of us red for two or three nights with flames in the distance, and I wondered for a while whether history was going to repeat itself; but the wind blew steadily from the south-west, and the fire did not come within many miles of[158] us. It must, I guessed, be somewhere in the neighbourhood of the former fire, and, of course, it is where man is that forest fires are frequent; for man is the only animal that makes fires for himself, and it is from his fires that the flames spread to the woods. Sometimes, in very dry seasons, the woods ignite of themselves, but that is rare.

Of course, as the summer grew, we moved about and wandered abroad as in other years, keeping in the neighbourhood of the streams, sheltering during the heat of the day, and roaming over the mountains in the sweet cool air of the night and morning. We always kept together, though, of course, the little ones clung to their mother more than to me. I was a kind father to them, I think, and I believe they liked and admired me as much as young cubs ought to like and admire their father; but, as is always the case in families like ours, while occasionally one of them, generally Kahwa, would wander away from the others with me, usually Wooffa and the youngsters kept close together while I moved about alone, though within calling distance, in case I should be needed. Sometimes the father bear leaves the family altogether during the early[159] summer months, and either goes alone or joins other he-bears that are solitary like himself; but it is better for the family to stay together. Besides, Wooffa and I suited each other admirably as hunting companions, and I am not ashamed to confess that I was fond of my children.

I began to realize what an anxiety I must have been to my own parents, for one or the other of the cubs was always getting into trouble. They were sitting one day watching Wooffa and myself trying to turn over a big log. We had warned them again and again not to stand below a log downhill when we were moving it, but, of course, Kahwa had paid no attention, and, as that was the best place from which to watch the operation, down she sat and contentedly awaited results. After two or three efforts we felt the log begin to move, and then, with one heave together, we got it started, and it rolled straight down on Kahwa. We had been too busy to notice where she was till we heard her squeal. It might very easily have killed her, and as it was her hind-leg was firmly caught, with the whole weight of the great log resting on it. Her mother boxed her ears, while I managed to move the log enough to set her free; but her foot was badly crushed,[160] and she limped more or less for the rest of the summer.

On another occasion Wahka put his head into a slit in a hollow tree to look for honey, and could not get it out again. I have heard of bears being killed in that way, when the hole is some distance from the ground. The opening will probably be narrower towards the bottom than it is in the middle, and when a bear climbs up to the hole, of course he puts his head in at the widest part. Perhaps he slips, and his neck slides down to where the slit is narrower. If he loses his hold altogether, his whole weight comes on his neck, and he breaks it; and even if that does not happen, he may not be able to raise himself and force his neck up to the wider opening again, but has to hang there caught in a trap until he dies.

In this case Wahka’s feet were on the ground, as the hole was quite low down, so there was no danger of his being hanged; but he was so frightened when he found that he could not pull his head out again that it is quite possible that if he had been alone he never would have succeeded in getting loose. But his mother smacked him until he lifted his head a little to where the hole[161] was an inch or so wider, and he was able to pull out. But there was not much hair left on the back of his ears by the time he was free.

With all the trouble that they gave us, however, and though I would not have let them know it for worlds, and always made a point of noticing their existence as little as possible, I was proud of my children. Wahka, especially, gave promise of growing into a splendid bear, while Kahwa was the very image of her mother, even down to the little white streak on her chest, though that did not appear until she got her second year’s coat.

They were good, straightforward, rollicking youngsters who got all the pleasure out of life that there was to be got, and enjoyed amazingly everything that was good to eat. I shall never forget the first time that we introduced them to a berry-patch; and their first wild-raspberries drove them nearly crazy. They would not go to sleep all next day, though it was blazing hot, but sat up while we slept, and whenever we woke begged to be taken to look for more raspberries.

When winter approached, we returned to the place where we had hibernated the previous year. Wooffa hollowed out her den to twice its former size, so as to hold herself and both the cubs, and[162] I took my old quarters close by. Winter came slowly, and after all our preparations were made we were able to be about for a long time, during which we did nothing but eat and sleep, and gather strength and fatness for the long fast that was coming.