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CHAPTER III A BEAR'S "PIPE" IN WINTER AFTER
ice-cutting came wood-cutting.
It was now the latter part of January
with weather still unusually cold. There were about three feet of snow
on the
ground, crusted over from a thaw which had occurred during the first of
the
month. In those days we burned from forty to fifty cords of wood in a
year. There was
a wood-lot of a hundred
acres along the brook on the east side of the farm, and other forest
lots to
the north of it. Only the best old-growth maple, birch and beech were
cut for
fuel — great trees two and three feet in diameter. The trunks
were cut into eight-foot
lengths, rolled on the ox-sleds with levers, and then hauled home to
the yard
in front of the wood-house, where they lay in four huge piles till
March, when
all hands turned to, with axes and saws, and worked it up. It was
zero weather that week, but
bright and clear, with spicules of frost glistening on every twig; and
I
recollect how sharply the tree trunks snapped those frost snaps which
make
"shaky" lumber in Maine. Addison,
Halstead and I, with one of
the old Squire's hired men, Asa Doane, went to the wood-lot at eight
o'clock
that morning and chopped smartly till near eleven. Indeed, we were
obliged to
work fast to keep warm. Addison
and I then stuck our axes in
a log and went on the snow crust up to the foot of a mountain, about
half a
mile distant, where the hardwood growth gave place to spruce. We wanted
to dig
a pocketful of spruce gum. For several days Ellen and Theodora had been
asking
us to get them some nice "purple" gum. As we were
going from one spruce to
another, Addison stopped suddenly and pointed to a little round hole
with hard
ice about it, near a large, overhanging rock across which tree had
fallen.
"Sh!" he exclaimed. "I believe that's a bear's
breath-hole!" We
reconnoitered the place at a safe
distance. "That may be Old Three Paws himself," Addison said.
"If it is, we must put an end to him." For "Old Three Paws"
was a bear that had given trouble in the sheep pastures for years. After a
good look all round, we went
home to dinner, and at table talked it over. The old Squire was a
little
incredulous, but admitted that there might be a bear there. "I will
tell
you how you can find out," he said. "Take a small looking-glass with
you and hold it to the hole. If there is a bear down there, you will
see just a
little film of moisture on the glass from his breath." We loaded
two guns with buckshot.
Our plan was to wake the bear up, and shoot him when he broke out
through the
snow. Bears killed a good many sheep at that time; the farmers did not
regard
them as desirable neighbors. The ruse
which Addison hit on for
waking the bear was to blow black pepper down the hole through a hollow
sunflower stalk. He had an idea that this would set the bear sneezing.
In view
of what happened, I laugh now when I remember our plans for waking that
bear. Directly
after dinner we set off for
the wood-lot with our guns and pepper. Cold as it was, Ellen and
Theodora went
with us, intending to stand at a very safe distance. Even grandmother
Ruth
would have gone, if it had not been quite so cold and snowy. Although
minus one
foot, Old Three Paws was known to be a savage bear, that had had more
than one
encounter with mankind. While the
rest stood back, Addison
approached on tiptoe with the looking-glass, and held it to the hole
for some
moments. Then he examined it and looked back at us, nodding. There was
moisture
on it. The girls
climbed upon a large rock
among the spruces. The old Squire, with one of the guns, took up a
position
beside a tree about fifty feet from the "hole." He posted Asa, who
was a pretty good shot, beside another tree not far away. Halstead and
I had to
content ourselves with axes for weapons, and kept pretty well to the
rear. Addison
was now getting his pepper
ready. Expectancy ran high when at last he blew it down the hole and
rushed
back. We had little doubt that an angry bear would break out, sneezing
and
growling. But
nothing of the sort occurred.
Some minutes passed. Addison could not even hear the faintest sneeze
from
below. He tiptoed up and blew in more pepper. No
response. Cutting a
pole, Addison then
belabored the snow crust about the hole with resounding whacks — still
with no
result. After this
we approached less
cautiously. Asa broke up the snow about the hole and cleared it away,
uncovering a considerable cavity which extended back under the
partially raised
root of the fallen tree. Halstead brought a shovel from the wood-piles;
and
Addison and Asa cut away the roots of the old tree, and cleared out the
frozen
turf and leaves to a depth of four or five feet, gradually working down
where
they could look back beneath the root. We had begun to doubt whether we
would
find anything there larger than a woodchuck. At last
Addison got down on hands
and knees, crept in under the root, and lighted several matches. "There's
something back in
there," he said. "Looks black, but I cannot see that it moves." Asa
crawled in and struck a match or
two, then backed out. "I believe it's a bear!" he exclaimed, and he
wanted to creep in with a gun and fire; but the old Squire advised
against that
on account of the heavy charge in so confined a space. Addison
had been peeling dry bark
from a birch, and crawling in again, lighted a roll of it. The smoke
drove him
out, but he emerged in excitement. "Bears!" he cried. "Two bears
in there! I saw them!" Asa took a
pole and poked the bears
cautiously. "Dead, I guess," said he, at last. "They don't
move." Addison
crept in again, and actually
passed his hand over the bears, then backed out, laughing. "No, they
are
not dead!" he exclaimed. "They are warm. But they are awfully sound
asleep." "Let's
haul them out!"
cried Asa; and they now sent me to the wood-sled for two or three small
trace-chains. Asa then crawled in and slipped a chain about the body of
one of
the bears. The other two chains were hooked on; and then they slowly
hauled the
bear out, the old Squire standing by with gun cocked — for we expected
every
moment that the animal would wake. But even
when out on the snow crust
the creature lay as inert as a dead bear. It was small. "Only a
yearling," the old Squire said. None of us were now much afraid of
them,
and the other one was drawn out in the same way. Their hair was glossy
and as
black as jet. Possibly they would have weighed seventy-five pounds
each.
Evidently they were young bears that had never been separated, and that
accounted for their denning up together; old bears rarely do this. We put
them on the wood-sled and
hauled them home. They lay in a pile of hay on the stable floor all
night,
without a sign of waking up; and the next morning we hauled them to the
cellar
of the west barn. Under this barn, which was used mainly for sheep and
young
cattle, there were several pigsties, now empty. The dormant young bears
were
rolled into one of these sties and the sty filled with dry leaves, such
as we
used for bedding in the barns. About a
fortnight afterward a young
doctor named Truman, from the village, desired very much to see the
bears in
their winter sleep. He got into the sty, uncovered them, and repeatedly
pricked
one of them with a needle, or penknife, without fairly waking it. But
salts of
ammonia, held to the nostrils of the other one, produced an unexpected
result.
The creature struck out spasmodically with one paw and rolled suddenly
over.
Doctor Truman jumped out of the sty quite as suddenly. "He's alive, all
right," said the doctor. The bears
were not disturbed again,
and remained there so quietly that we nearly forgot them. It was now
the second
week of March, and up to this time the weather had continued cold; but
a thaw
set in, with rain for two or three days, the temperature rising to
sixty
degrees, and even higher. On the
third night of the thaw, or
rather, in the early morning, a great commotion broke out at the west
barn. It
waked the girls first, their room being on that side of the farmhouse.
At about
two o'clock in the morning Ellen came to our door to rouse Addison and
me. "There's a
fearful racket up at
the west barn," she said, in low tones. "You had better see what's
wrong." Addison
and I threw on our clothes,
went down quietly, so as not to disturb the old Squire, and were
getting our
lanterns ready, when he came from his room; for he, too, had heard the
disturbance. We then sallied forth and approached the end door of the
barn. Inside,
the young cattle were
bellowing and bawling. Below, in the barn cellar, sheep were bleating,
and a
shoat was adding its raucous voice to the uproar. Above it all,
however, we
could hear eight old turkeys and a peacock that were wintering in the
west
barn, "quitting" and "quuttering" aloft, where they roosted
on the high beams. The young
cattle, seventeen head,
were tied facing the barn floor. All of them were on their feet,
pulling back
at their stanchions in a great state of alarm. But the real trouble
seemed now
to be aloft in the dark roof of the barn, among the turkeys. Addison
held up
the lantern. Nothing could be seen so far up there in the dark, but
feathers
came fluttering down, and the old peacock was squalling, "Tap-pee-yaw!"
over and over. We fixed a
lantern on the end of a
long bean-pole and thrust it high up. Its light revealed those two
young bears
on one of the high beams of the barn! One of
them had the head of a turkey
in his mouth, and was apparently trying to bolt it; and we discovered
later
that they had had trouble with the shoat down in the cellar. The shoat
was
somewhat scratched, but had stood them off. Several of
the sheep had their
fleeces torn, particularly one old Cotswold ram, which also had a
bleeding
nose. Evidently the barn had been the scene of a protracted fracas. The
bears
must have climbed for the turkeys as a last resort. How they reached
the beam
we did not know, unless by swarming up one of the bare posts of the
barn. To drive
them down, Addison climbed
on a scaffold and thrust the lantern close up to the one with the
turkey's head
in its mouth. The bear struck at the lantern with one paw, started
back, but
lost its claw-hold on the beam and fell, turkey and all, eighteen or
twenty
feet to the barn floor. The old
Squire and I sprang aside in
great haste; but so far as we could see, the bear never stirred after
it struck
the floor. Either the fall broke its neck, or else the turkey's head
choked it
to death. When
menaced with the lantern, the
other bear slid down one of the barn posts, tail first, and was driven
into a
horse stall at the far end of the barn. There we succeeded in shutting
it up,
and in the morning gave it a breakfast of corn-meal dough and apples,
which it
devoured with great avidity. We had no
particular use for a bear,
and a week later sold this youngster to Doctor Truman. He soon tired of
his new
pet, however, and parted with it to a friend who kept a summer hotel in
the
White Mountains. |