IX

      THE BIG BEAR OF KADIAK

       Table of Contents

      The three now started up the creek toward the barabbara, their steps perhaps a little quicker than when they came down-stream. Rob was scanning the mountain-side carefully, and looking as well at the sign along the creek bank.

      “That’s where he lives, up in that cañon across the creek, very likely,” he said, at length. “Here’s where he crossed in the shallow water, and last night he fished all along this bank. My! I’ll bet he’s full of bones to-day. It’s the first run of fish, and he was so hungry he ate pretty near everything except the backbone.” He pointed to a dozen skeletons of salmon that lay half hidden in the grass. The latter was trampled down as though cows had been in pasture there.

      “I don’t know,” said Jesse, soberly. “I always wanted to kill a bear, and there’s three of us now and we’ve got guns; but I don’t believe I ever wanted to kill a bear quite as big as this one. Why, he could smash in the door of our house in the night and eat us up if he wanted to.”

      “We’ll eat him, that’s what we’ll do,” said John, decisively. “I only wish we had a kettle or a frying-pan or something.”

      “Seems to me you’d better get the bear first,” said Jesse. “But we might look in among the traps in the back of the hut and see what we can find. These hunters nearly always leave some kind of cooking things at their camps.”

      Sure enough, when the boys entered the barabbara to look after their rifles, and began to rummage among the piles of klipsies which they found thrown back under the eaves, they unearthed a broken cast-iron frying-pan and, what caused them even greater delight, a little, dirty sack, which contained perhaps three or four pounds of salt. They sat on the grass of the floor and looked at one another with broad smiles. “If everything keeps up as lucky as this,” said Jesse, “we’ll be ready to keep house all right pretty soon. But ought we to use these things that don’t belong to us?”

      “Surely we may,” answered Rob. “It is always the custom in a wild country for any one who is lost and in need to take food when he finds it, and to use a camp as though it were his own. Of course we mustn’t waste anything or carry anything off, but while we’re here we’ll act as though this place were ours, and if any one finds us here we’ll pay for what we use. That’s the Alaska way, as you know.”

      “You’re not going out after that big bear, are you?” asked Jesse, anxiously, of Rob.

      “Of course; we’re all going! What are these new rifles for — just look, brand-new high-power Winchesters, every one — and any one of these guns will shoot as hard for us as for a grown man.”

      They sat for some time in the hut discussing various matters. At last John crawled to the door and looked out. He was rather a matter-of-fact boy in his way, and there seemed no special excitement in his voice as he remarked: “Well, Rob, there comes your bear.”

      The others hurried to the door. Sure enough, upon the bare mountain slope beyond the lagoon, nearly half a mile away, there showed plainly enough the body of an enormous bear, large as a horse. It was one of the great Kadiak bears, which are the biggest of all the world.

      “Cracky!” said Jesse; “he looks pretty big to me. Do you suppose he’ll find us here in the house?”

      Rob, the oldest of the three, who had been on one or two hunts with his father, looked serious as he watched this giant animal advancing down the hill-side with its long, reaching stride. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation. “Look!” said he; “there’s two more just come out of the brush. It’s an old she bear and her cubs coming down to fish!”

      All could now see the three bears, the great, yellow-gray mother, huge and shaggy, and the two cubs, darker in color and, of course, much smaller, although each was as large as the ordinary black bear of the United States. Certainly it was an exciting moment as the boys looked at these great creatures now so close at hand.

      Presently the old bear seemed to suspect something, for she stopped and sat up on her haunches, swinging from side to side a head which was fully as long as the arm of any one of the boys.

      “She probably smells the smoke,” whispered Rob. “Oh, I hope she won’t get scared and run away! No, there she comes; it’s the first salmon run, and they’re all hungry for fish.”

      They watched the bears until at last they disappeared in the brush which lined the creek on the farther side. Rob kept his eye intently fixed on the place where they had disappeared, but made no motion to leave the hut until finally all three of the bears once more appeared, this time splashing across the creek.

      “She knows the tide as well as we do,” muttered he. “It won’t be long now before the fish begin to move up the creek again. Now, come on, fellows, if you’re not afraid!”

      Rob looked around at John, who had his new rifle in his hand, but looked none too eager, now that the opportunity had come to use it. Jesse’s lip, it must be confessed, trembled a little bit, and he was pale. The first sight of a large bear has been known to unsettle the nerves of many a grown man, and it was not to be wondered at that it should disturb one of Jesse’s years. There was, perhaps, in the wild and remote situation in which they found themselves something which gave them courage. They had escaped such dangers of the sea that now the danger of the land seemed less by comparison. Moreover, they all had the hunting instinct, and were accustomed to seeing big game brought in by their relatives and friends. Had an older person been with them, no doubt they would all have been frightened; but there is something strange in the truth that when one is thrown on one’s own resources courage comes when needed — as it did now to these three castaways.

      Without any further speech Rob passed out at the door and stood waiting for the others to follow. Each was silent as he held his way down the creek.

      For some distance they did not need to conceal themselves; then their leader took them along the edge of the creek, where their heads would not show above the grass. Thus following down the stream, and carefully peering over the banks at each bend, they worked along until they were perhaps three or four hundred yards above the big salmon pool and near to a flat piece of water which extended above it. Rob raised a warning finger.

      “Listen!” he hissed.

      They could hear it now distinctly — heavy splashing in the water, broken with low, grumbling whines in a deep, throaty voice, something like what one may hear in a circus at feeding-time. Once in a while a squeak or a bawl came from one of the cubs. Rob laughed. From his position near the top of the bank he could now see the picture before him.

      The old mother was sitting on her haunches out in the middle of the stream, with a cub on either side of her. She was trying to teach them to fish. Once in a while she would make a sudden, cat-like stroke with her long forearm, and almost always would throw out a fine salmon on the bank. Toward this the cubs would start in their hunger, but the old lady, reproving them for their eagerness, would then cuff them soundly on the head, knocking them sprawling over in the water, to their very great disgust. Once in a while one of them, his ears tight to his head, would sit down in the water, lift up his nose and complain bitterly at this hard treatment. Then again he would make a half-hearted stroke at some of the fish which he could see swimming about him; but his short claws would not hold like the long, curved ones of his mother, and no fish rewarded the efforts