The Biography of a Grizzly
E >>
Ernest Seton Thompson >> The Biography of a Grizzly
No one had shown him anything but hatred in his lonely, unprotected
life, and he could not tell what this older Bear might do. As he stood
in doubt, he caught sight of the old Grizzly himself slouching along a
hillside, stopping from time to time to dig up the quamash-roots and
wild turnips.
He was a monster. Wahb instinctively distrusted him, and sneaked
away through the woods and up a rocky bluff where he could watch.
Then the big fellow came on Wahb's track and rumbled a deep growl of
anger; he followed the trail to the tree, and rearing up, he tore the
bark with his claws, far above where Wahb had reached. Then he strode
rapidly along Wahb's trail. But the cub had seen enough. He fled back
over the Divide into the Meteetsee Canon, and realized in his dim,
bearish way that he was at peace there because the Bear-forage was so
poor.
As the summer came on, his coat was shed. His skin got very itchy, and
he found pleasure in rolling in the mud and scraping his back against
some convenient tree. He never climbed now: his claws were too long, and
his arms, though growing big and strong, were losing that suppleness of
wrist that makes cub Grizzlies and all Blackbears great climbers. He now
dropped naturally into the Bear habit of seeing how high he could reach
with his nose on the rubbing-post, whenever he was near one.
He may not have noticed it, yet each time he came to a post, after a
week or two away, he could reach higher, for Wahb was growing fast and
coming into his strength.
Sometimes he was at one end of the country that he felt was his, and
sometimes at another, but he had frequent use for the rubbing-tree,
and thus it was that his range was mapped out by posts with his own mark
on them.
One day late in summer he sighted a stranger on his land, a glossy
Blackbear, and he felt furious against the interloper. As the Blackbear
came nearer Wahb noticed the tan-red face, the white spot on his breast,
and then the bit out of his ear, and last of all the wind brought a
whiff. There could be no further doubt; it was the very smell: this was
the black coward that had chased him down the Piney long ago. But how he
had shrunken! Before, he had looked like a giant; now Wahb felt he could
crush him with one paw. Revenge is sweet, Wahb felt, though he did not
exactly say it, and he went for that red-nosed Bear. But the Black one
went up a small tree like a Squirrel. Wahb tried to follow as the other
once followed him, but somehow he could not. He did not seem to know
how to take hold now, and after a while he gave it up and went away,
although the Blackbear brought him back more than once by coughing
in derision. Later on that day, when the Grizzly passed again, the
red-nosed one had gone.
[Illustration]
As the summer waned, the upper forage-grounds began to give out, and
Wahb ventured down to the Lower Meteetsee one night to explore. There
was a pleasant odor on the breeze, and following it up, Wahb came to the
carcass of a Steer. A good distance away from it were some tiny Coyotes,
mere dwarfs compared with those he remembered. Right by the carcass was
another that jumped about in the moonlight in a foolish way. For some
strange reason it seemed unable to get away. Wahb's old hatred broke
out. He rushed up. In a flash the Coyote bit him several times before,
with one blow of that great paw, Wahb smashed him into a limp, furry
rag; then broke in all his ribs with a crunch or two of his jaws. Oh,
but it was good to feel the hot, bloody juices oozing between his teeth!
The Coyote was caught in a trap. Wahb hated the smell of the iron, so he
went to the other side of the carcass, where it was not so strong,
and had eaten but little before _clank_, and his foot was caught in a
Wolf-trap that he had not seen.
But he remembered that he had once before been caught and had escaped by
squeezing the trap. He set a hind foot on each spring and pressed till
the trap opened and released his paw. About the carcass was the smell
that he knew stood for man, so he left it and wandered down-stream; but
more and more often he got whiffs of that horrible odor, so he turned
and went back to his quiet pinon benches. Wahb's third summer had
brought him the stature of a large-sized Bear, though not nearly the
bulk and power that in time were his. He was very light-colored now, and
this was why Spahwat, a Shoshone Indian who more than once hunted him,
called him the Whitebear, or Wahb.
Spahwat was a good hunter, and as soon as he saw the rubbing-tree on the
Upper Meteetsee he knew that he was on the range of a big Grizzly. He
bushwhacked the whole valley, and spent many days before he found a
chance to shoot; then Wahb got a stinging flesh-wound in the shoulder.
He growled horribly, but it had seemed to take the fight out of him; he
scrambled up the valley and over the lower hills till he reached a quiet
haunt, where he lay down.
[Illustration]
His knowledge of healing was wholly instinctive. He licked the wound and
all around it, and sought to be quiet. The licking removed the dirt, and
by massage reduced the inflammation, and it plastered the hair down as a
sort of dressing over the wound to keep out the air, dirt, and microbes.
There could be no better treatment.
But the Indian was on his trail. Before long the smell warned Wahb that
a foe was coming, so he quietly climbed farther up the mountain to
another resting-place. But again he sensed the Indian's approach, and
made off. Several times this happened, and at length there was a second
shot and another galling wound. Wahb was furious now. There was nothing
that really frightened him but that horrible odor of man, iron, and
guns, that he remembered from the day when he lost his Mother; but now
all fear of these left him. He heaved painfully up the mountain again,
and along under a six-foot ledge, then up and back to the top of the
bank, where he lay flat. On came the Indian, armed with knife and gun;
deftly, swiftly keeping on the trail; floating joyfully over each bloody
print that meant such anguish to the hunted Bear. Straight up the slide
of broken rock he came, where Wahb, ferocious with pain, was waiting
on the ledge. On sneaked the dogged hunter; his eye still scanned the
bloody slots or swept the woods ahead, but never was raised to glance
above the ledge. And Wahb, as he saw this shape of Death relentless on
his track, and smelled the hated smell, poised his bulk at heavy cost
upon his quivering, mangled arm, there held until the proper instant
came, then to his sound arm's matchless native force he added all the
weight of desperate hate as down he struck one fearful, crushing blow.
The Indian sank without a cry, and then dropped out of sight. Wahb rose,
and sought again a quiet nook where he might nurse his wounds. Thus he
learned that one must fight for peace; for he never saw that Indian
again, and he had time to rest and recover.
[Illustration]
PART II
I.
The years went on as before, except that each winter Wahb slept less
soundly, and each spring he came out earlier and was a bigger Grizzly,
with fewer enemies that dared to face him. When his sixth year came he
was a very big, strong, sullen Bear, with neither friendship nor love in
his life since that evil day on the Lower Piney.
No one ever heard of Wahb's mate. No one believes that he ever had one.
The love-season of Bears came and went year after year, but left him
alone in his prime as he had been in his youth. It is not good for
a Bear to be alone; it is bad for him in every way. His habitual
moroseness grew with his strength, and any one chancing to meet him now
would have called him a dangerous Grizzly.
He had lived in the Meteetsee Valley since first he betook himself
there, and his character had been shaped by many little adventures with
traps and his wild rivals of the mountains. But there was none of the
latter that he now feared, and he knew enough to avoid the first, for
that penetrating odor of man and iron was a never-failing warning,
especially after an experience which befell him in his sixth year.
His ever-reliable nose told him that there was a dead Elk down among the
timber.
[Illustration]
He went up the wind, and there, sure enough, was the great delicious
carcass, already torn open at the very best place. True, there was that
terrible man-and-iron taint, but it was so slight and the feast so
tempting that after circling around and inspecting the carcass from his
eight feet of stature, as he stood erect, he went cautiously forward,
and at once was caught by his left paw in an enormous Bear-trap.
He roared with pain and slashed about in a fury. But this was no
Beaver-trap; it was a big forty-pound Bear-catcher, and he was surely
caught.
Wahb fairly foamed with rage, and madly grit his teeth upon the trap.
Then he remembered his former experiences. He placed the trap between
his hind legs, with a hind paw on each spring, and pressed down with all
his weight. But it was not enough. He dragged off the trap and its clog,
and went clanking up the mountain. Again and again he tried to free his
foot, but in vain, till he came where a great trunk crossed the trail a
few feet from the ground. By chance, or happy thought, he reared again
under this and made a new attempt. With a hind foot on each spring and
his mighty shoulders underneath the tree, he bore down with his titanic
strength: the great steel springs gave way, the jaws relaxed, and he
tore out his foot. So Wahb was free again, though he left behind a great
toe which had been nearly severed by the first snap of the steel.
Again Wahb had a painful wound to nurse, and as he was a left-handed
Bear,--that is, when he wished to turn a rock over he stood on the right
paw and turned with the left,--one result of this disablement was to rob
him for a time of all those dainty foods that are found under rocks or
logs. The wound healed at last, but he never forgot that experience,
and thenceforth the pungent smell of man and iron, even without the gun
smell, never failed to enrage him.
Many experiences had taught him that it is better to run if he only
smelled the hunter or heard him far away, but to fight desperately if
the man was close at hand. And the cow-boys soon came to know that the
Upper Meteetsee was the range of a Bear that was better let alone.
II.
One day after a long absence Wahb came into the lower part of his
range, and saw to his surprise one of the wooden dens that men make for
themselves. As he came around to get the wind, he sensed the taint that
never failed to infuriate him now, and a moment later he heard a loud
_bang_ and felt a stinging shock in his left hind leg, the old stiff
leg. He wheeled about, in time to see a man running toward the new-made
shanty. Had the shot been in his shoulder Wahb would have been helpless,
but it was not.
Mighty arms that could toss pine logs like broomsticks, paws that with
one tap could crush the biggest Bull upon the range, claws that could
tear huge slabs of rock from the mountain-side--what was even the deadly
rifle to them!
When the man's partner came home that night he found him on the reddened
shanty floor. The bloody trail from outside and a shaky, scribbled note
on the back of a paper novel told the tale.
It was Wahb done it. I seen him by the spring and wounded him. I tried
to git on the shanty, but he ketched me. My God, how I suffer! JACK. It
was all fair. The man had invaded the Bear's country, had tried to take
the Bear's life, and had lost his own. But Jack's partner swore he would
kill that Bear.
He took up the trail and followed it up the canon, and there bushwhacked
and hunted day after day. He put out baits and traps, and at length one
day he heard a _crash, clatter, thump_, and a huge rock bounded down a
bank into a wood, scaring out a couple of deer that floated away like
thistle-down. Miller thought at first that it was a land-slide; but he
soon knew that it was Wahb that had rolled the boulder over merely for
the sake of two or three ants beneath it.
The wind had not betrayed him, so on peering through the bush Miller
saw the great Bear as he fed, favoring his left hind leg and growling
sullenly to himself at a fresh twinge of pain. Miller steadied himself,
and thought, "Here goes a finisher or a dead miss." He gave a sharp
whistle, the Bear stopped every move, and, as he stood with ears acock,
the man fired at his head.
But at that moment the great shaggy head moved, only an infuriating
scratch was given, the smoke betrayed the man's place, and the Grizzly
made savage, three-legged haste to catch his foe.
Miller dropped his gun and swung lightly into a tree, the only large one
near. Wahb raged in vain against the trunk. He tore off the bark with
his teeth and claws; but Miller was safe beyond his reach. For fully
four hours the Grizzly watched, then gave it up, and slowly went off
into the bushes till lost to view. Miller watched him from the tree, and
afterward waited nearly an hour to be sure that the Bear was gone. He
then slipped to the ground, got his gun, and set out for camp. But Wahb
was cunning; he had only _seemed_ to go away, and then had sneaked back
quietly to watch. As soon as the man was away from the tree, too far to
return, Wahb dashed after him. In spite of his wounds the Bear could
move the faster. Within a quarter of a mile--well, Wahb did just what
the man had sworn to do to him.
Long afterward his friends found the gun and enough to tell the tale.
The claim-shanty on the Meteetsee fell to pieces. It never again was
used, for no man cared to enter a country that had but few allurements
to offset its evident curse of ill luck, and where such a terrible
Grizzly was always on the war-path.
III.
Then they found good gold on the Upper Meteetsee. Miners came in pairs
and wandered through the peaks, rooting up the ground and spoiling the
little streams--grizzly old men mostly, that had lived their lives in
the mountain and were themselves slowly turning into Grizzly Bears;
digging and grubbing everywhere, not for good, wholesome roots, but for
that shiny yellow sand that they could not eat; living the lives of
Grizzlies, asking nothing but to be let alone to dig.
[Illustration]
They seemed to understand Grizzly Wahb. The first time they met, Wahb
reared up on his hind legs, and the wicked green lightnings began to
twinkle in his small eyes. The elder man said to his mate:
"Let him alone, and he won't bother you."
"Ain't he an awful size, though?" replied the other, nervously.
Wahb was about to charge, but something held him back--a something that
had no reference to his senses, that was felt only when they were still;
a something that in Bear and Man is wiser than his wisdom, and that
points the way at every doubtful fork in the dim and winding trail.
Of course Wahb did not understand what the men said, but he did feel
that there was something different here. The smell of man and iron was
there, but not of that maddening kind, and he missed the pungent odor
that even yet brought back the dark days of his cubhood.
The men did not move, so Wahb rumbled a subterranean growl, dropped down
on his four feet, and went on.
Late the same year Wahb ran across the red-nosed Blackbear. How that
Bear did keep on shrinking! Wahb could have hurled him across the
Graybull with one tap now.
But the Blackbear did not mean to let him try. He hustled his fat, podgy
body up a tree at a rate that made him puff. Wahb reached up nine feet
from the ground, and with one rake of his huge claws tore off the bark
clear to the shining white wood and down nearly to the ground; and the
Blackbear shivered and whimpered with terror as the scraping of those
awful claws ran up the trunk and up his spine in a way that was horribly
suggestive.
What was it that the sight of that Blackbear stirred in Wahb? Was it
memories of the Upper Piney, long forgotten; thoughts of a woodland rich
in food?
Wahb left him trembling up there as high as he could get, and without
any very clear purpose swung along the upper benches of the Meteetsee
down to the Graybull, around the foot of the Rimrock Mountain; on, till
hours later he found himself in the timber-tangle of the Lower Piney,
and among the berries and ants of the old times.
He had forgotten what a fine land the Piney was: plenty of food, no
miners to spoil the streams, no hunters to keep an eye on, and no
mosquitos or flies, but plenty of open, sunny glades and sheltering
woods, backed up by high, straight cliffs to turn the colder winds.
There were, moreover, no resident Grizzlies, no signs even of passing
travelers, and the Blackbears that were in possession did not count.
Wahb was well pleased. He rolled his vast bulk in an old Buffalo-wallow,
and rearing up against a tree where the Piney Canon quits the Graybull
Canon, he left on it his mark fully eight feet from the ground.
In the days that followed he wandered farther and farther up among the
rugged spurs of the Shoshones, and took possession as he went. He found
the signboards of several Blackbears, and if they were small dead trees
he sent them crashing to earth with a drive of his giant paw. If they
were green, he put his own mark over the other mark, and made it clearer
by slashing the bark with the great pickaxes that grew on his toes.
The Upper Piney had so long been a Blackbear range that the Squirrels
had ceased storing their harvest in hollow trees, and were now using the
spaces under flat rocks, where the Blackbears could not get at them; so
Wahb found this a land of plenty: every fourth or fifth rock in the pine
woods was the roof of a Squirrel or Chipmunk granary, and when he turned
it over, if the little owner were there, Wahb did not scruple to flatten
him with his paw and devour him as an agreeable relish to his own
provisions. And wherever Wahb went he put up his sign-board:
Trespassers beware!
It was written on the trees as high up as he could reach, and every one
that came by understood that the scent of it and the hair in it were
those of the great Grizzly Wahb.
If his Mother had lived to train him, Wahb would have known that a good
range in spring may be a bad one in summer. Wahb found out by years of
experience that a total change with the seasons is best. In the early
spring the Cattle and Elk ranges, with their winter-killed carcasses,
offer a bountiful feast. In early summer the best forage is on the warm
hill-sides where the quamash and the Indian turnip grow. In late
summer the berry-bushes along the river-flat are laden with fruit, and
in autumn the pine woods gave good chances to fatten for the winter. So
he added to his range each year. He not only cleared out the Blackbears
from the Piney and the Meteetsee, but he went over the Divide and killed
that old fellow that had once chased him out of the Warhouse Valley.
And, more than that, he held what he had won, for he broke up a camp
of tenderfeet that were looking for a ranch location on the Middle
Meteetsee; he stampeded their horses, and made general smash of the
camp. And so all the animals, including man, came to know that the
whole range from Frank's Peak to the Shoshone spurs was the proper
domain of a king well able to defend it, and the name of that king was
Meteetsee Wahb.
Any creature whose strength puts him beyond danger of open attack is apt
to lose in cunning. Yet Wahb never forgot his early experience with the
traps. He made it a rule never to go near that smell of man and iron,
and that was the reason that he never again was caught.
So he led his lonely life and slouched around on the mountains, throwing
boulders about like pebbles, and huge trunks like matchwood, as he
sought for his daily food. And every beast of hill and plain soon came
to know and fly in fear of Wahb, the one time hunted, persecuted Cub.
And more than one Blackbear paid with his life for the ill-deed of that
other, long ago. And many a cranky Bobcat flying before him took to a
tree, and if that tree were dead and dry, Wahb heaved it down, and tree
and Cat alike were dashed to bits. Even the proud-necked Stallion,
leader of the mustang band, thought well for once to yield the road. The
great, grey Timberwolves, and the Mountain Lions too, left their new
kill and sneaked in sullen fear aside when Wahb appeared. And if, as he
hulked across the sage-covered river-flat sending the scared Antelope
skimming like birds before him, he was faced perchance, by some burly
Range-bull, too young to be wise and too big to be afraid, Wahb smashed
his skull with one blow of that giant paw, and served him as the Range-
cow would have served himself long years ago.
The All-mother never fails to offer to her own, twin cups, one gall, and
one of balm. Little or much they may drink, but equally of each. The
mountain that is easy to descend must soon be climbed again. The
grinding hardship of Wahb's early days, had built his mighty frame. All
usual pleasures of a grizzly's life had been denied him but _power_
bestowed in more than double share. So he lived on year after year,
unsoftened by mate or companion, sullen, fearing nothing, ready to
fight, but asking only to be let alone--quite alone. He had but one
keen pleasure in his sombre life--the lasting glory in his matchless
strength--the small but never failing thrill of joy as the foe fell
crushed and limp, or the riven boulders grit and heaved when he turned
on them the measure of his wondrous force.
IV.
Everything has a smell of its own for those that have noses to smell.
Wahb had been learning smells all his life, and knew the meaning of most
of those in the mountains. It was as though each and every thing had a
voice of its own for him; and yet it was far better than a voice, for
every one knows that a good nose is better than eyes and ears together.
And each of these myriads of voices kept on crying, "Here and such am
I."
The juniper-berries, the rosehips, the strawberries, each had a soft,
sweet little voice, calling, "Here we are--Berries, Berries."
The great pine woods had a loud, far-reaching voice, "Here are we, the
Pine-trees," but when he got right up to them Wahb could hear the low,
sweet call of the pinon-nuts, "Here are we, the Pinon-nuts."
And the quamash beds in May sang a perfect chorus when the wind was
right: "Quamash beds, Quamash beds."
And when he got among them he made out each single voice.
Each root had its own little piece to say to his nose: "Here am I, a
big Quamash, rich and ripe," or a tiny, sharp voice, "Here am I, a
good-for-nothing, stringy little root."
And the broad, rich russulas in the autumn called aloud, "I am a fat,
wholesome Mushroom," and the deadly amanita cried, "I am an Amanita.
Let me alone, or you'll be a sick Bear." And the fairy harebell of the
canon-banks sang a song too, as fine as its threadlike stem, and as soft
as its dainty blue; but the warden of the smells had learned to report
it not, for this, and a million other such, were of no interest to Wahb.
So every living thing that moved, and every flower that grew, and every
rock and stone and shape on earth told out its tale and sang its little
story to his nose. Day or night, fog or bright, that great, moist nose
told him most of the things he needed to know, or passed unnoticed those
of no concern, and he depended on it more and more. If his eyes and ears
together reported so and so, he would not even then believe it until his
nose said, "Yes; that is right."
But this is something that man cannot understand, for he has sold the
birthright of his nose for the privilege of living in towns.
While hundreds of smells were agreeable to Wahb, thousands were
indifferent to him, a good many were unpleasant, and some actually put
him in a rage.
He had often noticed that if a west wind were blowing when he was at the
head of the Piney Canon there was an odd, new scent. Some days he did
not mind, it, and some days it disgusted him; but he never followed it
up. On other days a north wind from the high Divide brought a most awful
smell, something unlike any other, a smell that he wanted only to get
away from.
Wahb was getting well past his youth now, and he began to have pains in
the hind leg that had been wounded so often. After a cold night or a
long time of wet weather he could scarcely use that leg, and one day,
while thus crippled, the west wind came down the canon with an odd
message to his nose. Wahb could not clearly read the message, but it
seemed to say, 'Come,' and something within him said, 'Go.' The smell
of food will draw a hungry creature and disgust a gorged one. We do not
know why, and all that any one can learn is that the desire springs from
a need of the body. So Wahb felt drawn by what had long disgusted him,
and he slouched up the mountain path, grumbling to himself and slapping
savagely back at branches that chanced to switch his face.
The odd odor grew very strong; it led him where he had never been
before--up a bank of whitish sand to a bench of the same color, where
there was unhealthy-looking water running down, and a kind of fog coming
out of a hole. Wahb threw up his nose suspiciously--such a peculiar
smell! He climbed the bench.