Part 2

But on days when their tempers were touchy these meetings were apt to be less playful. Instead of surprise they would then exhibit resentment at finding their imaginary solitude invaded; and after a few spiteful slaps with their little paws, they would clinch and bite and claw each other in earnest. Usually they would break away from these clinches quite suddenly and resume their tramp; only, however, to reopen hostilities at an early date. Ben, although the smaller of the two, always seemed to get the better of his brother in the boxing bouts and wrestling matches. He entered into each with an earnestness that seemed to put the larger cub to flight; and yet in spite of the fact that as they grew older their battles seemed to grow more fierce, we thought nothing of the matter, but looked on and laughed at the Lilliputian struggles. But one day when we returned to camp we found George dead in the little trail that circled the stake to which they were tied, while Ben in his rounds stepped over the body of his dead brother at each turn. George’s face and nose were chewed beyond identification and he had been dead several hours.

Ben had now no companions except ourselves and one of the dogs which I had brought along and whose name was Jim; but in spite of this, or because of it, he grew more friendly and playful each day. He would coax Jim to come and romp with him and they would chase each other about until the dog was tired out. Ben seemed to be tireless and would never quit playing until chained up, or until the badgered dog turned on him in earnest. Even then the bear used not to give up hope immediately. After the first really angry snap from Jim, Ben would stand off a few feet and look apologetic. Then, if nothing more happened, he would approach the dog with a kind of experimental briskness; only, however, to turn a back somersault in his haste to get out of the reach of Jim’s teeth. A few minutes later, after Jim had lain down and was apparently asleep, Ben would steal up quietly and, very gently, with just the tip of his paw, would touch his old playfellow to find out if he really meant that the romp was off. And it was the deep growl that always greeted this last appeal that seemed to settle the matter in Ben’s mind. He would then keep out of Jim’s way until the latter felt like having another play.

Ben was very quick to learn and we only had to show him a few times to have him catch on to a new trick. He continued to enjoy cartwheeling down the old root, and one of the other things he took to with the most zest was a sort of juggling act with a ball. This trick, like the other, we discovered by accident, and then worked up into a more elaborate performance. We finally made him a large ball out of a length of rope, sewed it up in a gunny-sack to keep it from unwinding, and he would lie on his back and keep the thing spinning with his four feet by the hour.

Early in July the weather finally became settled. The new snow had melted away, the old snow banks were fast disappearing, the little open park on the side of the mountain above our camp was green with young grass and literally carpeted with flowers. So one morning we rounded up the ponies, saddled and packed them, put the cub into a grain sack, tied up the mouth, placed it on top of one of the packs, tied each of its four corners to one of the lash ropes that held the pack to the horse, and started into the unexplored Clearwater country in the heart of the Bitter Roots.

The horse selected for Ben’s mount was a little tan-colored beast who gave very little trouble on the trail, and whom we called Buckskin. We never had to lead him and he would always follow without watching. He would, when he found good feed, loiter behind until the pack train was nearly out of sight; but then, with a loud neigh, he would come charging along, jumping logs and dashing through thick bushes until the train was again caught up with. The first day’s travel was a dangerous one for the bear on account of the many low-hanging limbs. We were obliged to keep a constant watch lest one of these catch the sack and either sweep it from the pack or crush Ben to death inside it. But with care and good luck we got through safely and, after seven hours of travel, reaching an open side hill with plenty of feed for the horses and a clear cold spring, we went into camp.

While we were unpacking the horses an old trapper and prospector known as Old Jerry came along. He was one of the first men who made their way into that wilderness, and for many years he and his cabin on the Lockasaw Fork of the Clearwater were among the curiosities of the region. We had put Ben, still in his sack, on the ground while we got things settled for the night, and Old Jerry, seeing the sack moving, asked what we had in it. When he heard that it was a Black Bear cub he asked permission to turn it out and have a look at it and we told him to go ahead. After loosening the cord that closed the mouth, he took the sack by the two lower corners and gave it a shake, and out rolled Ben in his favorite toboganning posture of a fluffy ball. The cub seemed to think this a variation of the pine root game, and to the astonishment and delight of Old Jerry continued turning somersaults for ten or fifteen feet. Old Jerry is still alive, and to this day I never meet him that he does not speak of my performing cub.

The next day we again put Ben in the sack, but this time we cut a hole in the side of it, so that he could ride with his head out. For a while he was contented with this style of riding, but after some days he got to working on the sack until he was able to crawl through the hole. Then, as we found that he could keep his seat very nicely and would even, when his pony passed under a branch or leaning tree, dodge to one side of the pack and hang there until the danger was past, we adopted his amendment and from this time on never again put him in the sack when on the march. Instead, we arranged to give him a good flat pack to ride on. We put a roll of blankets on each side of the horse, close up to the horns of the pack saddle, and tied them in place. Then the space between was filled with small articles and a heavy canvas thrown over all and cinched in place. And on top of this Ben would pass the day. We tied his lead to the lash rope and he seemed perfectly content, and in fact appeared to enjoy the excitement of being jolted and shaken along through the timber and brush. It kept him on the jump to dodge the limbs and switches that were always threatening to unseat him, but in all of his four months’ riding through the mountains, I never saw him taken unawares. Nor was he ever thrown by a bucking horse. Sometimes he would get down from his seat on top of the pack and sit on the pony’s neck, holding by one paw to the front of the pack. Sometimes he would lie curled up as though asleep. But he was never caught off his guard, and his horse Buckskin seemed not to care how much he climbed about on its back.

Ben soon came to know his own horse, and after Buckskin was packed of a morning would run to the pony’s side and bawl to be lifted to his place on the pack. And once there he spent several minutes each morning inspecting the canvas and the ropes of his pack. Several times during the summer we were obliged to transfer Ben to another mount, but we had to be mighty careful in our arrangements, as we learned to our cost the first time we tried the experiment. This was on a day when we had a difficult mountain to descend, and we thought we would lighten Buckskin’s load by putting Ben on another horse that was carrying less weight. We got him settled on Baldy, as we called the other cayuse, without any trouble, and started out in the usual order; but just as we were on a particularly steep part of the hill, working our way down through a track of burned but still standing timber where the dry dirt and ashes were several inches deep and the dust and heat almost unbearable, there was a sudden commotion in the rear. We turned to see what was happening, and out of a cloud of dust and ashes Baldy bore frantically down upon us. His back was arched and with his head down between his fore-legs he was giving one of the most perfect exhibitions of the old-school style of bucking that any one ever saw.

Now it is useless to try to catch a bucking horse on a steep mountain side. The only thing to be done was to get out of the road and wait until the frightened animal either lost its footing and rolled to the foot of the declivity or reached the bottom right side up and stopped of its own accord. So we jumped to one side. But, just as Ben and his maddened steed enveloped in a cloud of ash dust swept past the balance of the now frightened horses, the pack hit against a dead tree whose root had nearly rotted away and the result completed the confusion. For the force of the shock first dislodged a large section of loosely hanging bark which came down with much noise, striking the head packhorse squarely across the back; and this was almost instantly followed by the falling of the old tree itself, which came down with a crash of breaking limbs and dead branches, and sent up a cloud of dust that completely hid Ben and his cavorting mount as they tore down the mountain. This was too much for the leading pony, who already stood shivering with excitement, and turning sharp to the right he shot off around the side of the mountain.

The other horses were quickly tied up, and while Spencer hurried after the runaway leader I took down through the burned timber after Baldy. Had the latter known how hard it had been to shake that same little bear from the limb of the old tree, he never would have spent so much energy in trying to buck him off the top of the pack. Ben had not looked in the least troubled as he was hurried past us, but had apparently felt himself complete master of the situation. He had, however, almost instantly disappeared from view, and soon even the sound of the bounding pony and the breaking of the dead branches as the pack hit them was no longer to be heard. The only things that marked their course were the deep imprints of the pony’s feet and the dust cloud that was settling down among the dead and blackened timber. Hurrying along this easily followed trail I at last reached the bottom of the gorge and found the tracks still leading up the opposite slope. But the horse had soon tired of the strenuous work of the steep ascent, and after a couple of hundred yards he had come to a standstill in a thick clump of trees and underbrush that had escaped the fire. Ben was still sitting in his place as unconcerned as though nothing had happened, but was liberally covered with ashes and did not seem to be in the best of humors. The pack did not appear to have slipped any and so I undid the lead rope and started back toward where the pack train had been left.

But when only a few yards on the way the pony suddenly bolted ahead, nearly knocking me down as he tried to get past. I brought him to a halt with a few sharp yanks on the rope, and then kept a careful eye to the rear to find out what it was that was startling him. I did not suspect Ben because none of the horses had ever shown the least fear of him, had always allowed him to run about them as they did the dogs, and no one of them had ever even kicked at him. Nevertheless I had noticed that the cub seemed grumpy when we put him on Baldy, and remembered that at first he had bawled and tried to get down. So I kept my eye on him. And the first thing I knew I saw him push out his upper lip, as all bears do when mad and out of humor, reach out stealthily one of his hind legs, and with a sharp stroke drive his catlike claws into Baldy’s rump. So here was the cause of all the trouble. Ben, objecting to the change of programme, had been taking it out on the horse. I at once tied him up so short that he could not reach the horse from the pack, and, although he was in a huff all that day, we had no further trouble with him. Only twice after this, however, did we mount him on any other horse but his own Buckskin.

Each day’s travel now brought us nearer to the main range, and one day we climbed the last ridge and camped on the border of one of the beautiful summit meadows where grow the camas, the shooting-star, the dog-tooth violet, the spring beauty, and other plants that the grizzlies love. The snow, by now, had disappeared, except the immense banks lying in the deep ravines on the north side of the upper peaks; the marshes were literally cut up by the tracks of deer, elk, and moose; while freshly dug holes and the enormous tracks of grizzlies told us plainly that we had reached the happy hunting ground. And now I began to learn from Ben much about the wonderful instincts of animals. Ben had never, before we captured him, had a mouthful of any food except his mother’s milk. Not only had the family just left the winter den in which the little cubs had been born, but the earth at that time, and for long after, had been covered deep with snow. So that there was nothing for even a grown bear to eat except some of the scant grasses that our horses found along the little open places on the sides of the hills, or the juices and soft slimy substances to be found beneath the bark of the mountain spruce trees in the spring and early summer.

But now, while camped near this mountain meadow, Ben would pull at his leash and even bawl to get loose, and I soon took to letting him go and to following him about to learn what it was that he wished to do. I was amazed to find that he knew every root and plant that the oldest bears knew of and fed upon in that particular range of mountains. He would work around by the hour, paying not the least attention to my presence; eat a bit of grass here, dig for a root there, and never once make a mistake. When he got something that I did not recognize, I would take it away from him and examine it to see what it was, and in this way I learned many kinds of roots that the bears feed on in their wild state. I have seen Ben dig a foot down into the ground and unearth a bulb that had not yet started to send out its shoot. Later, when the time came for the sarvis berries and huckleberries to ripen, he would go about pulling down bushes, searching for berries. And not once in the whole summer did I ever see him pull down a bush that was not a berry bush. This was the more remarkable because he would occasionally examine berry bushes on which there happened to be no berries at the time.

At our next camp we killed a small moose for meat, and the hide was used during the remainder of the trip as a cover for one of the packs. After a few days in the sun it dried as hard as a board and of course took the shape of the pack over which it had been used. And this skin box now became Ben’s home when in camp. It was placed on the ground, Ben’s picket pin driven near it, and he soon learned to raise up one edge and crawl inside. It was funny, when he had done some mischief in camp and we stamped our feet and took after him, to see him fly to the protection of his skin teepee, and raise the edge with one paw so quickly that there was no apparent pause in his flight. Then, safe inside, we would hear him strike the ground with his forefoot and utter angry “whoofs,” daring us to come any nearer. After a few minutes the edge of the hide would be lifted a few inches and a little gray nose would peep out to see if the coast was clear. If no notice was taken of him he would come back into camp, only to get into trouble again and be once more shooed back to cover.

Ben took great pride in this home of his and was an exemplary housekeeper, for no insect was ever permitted to dwell in the coarse hair. At first, when the hide was green, the flies would crowd into the hair and “blow,” or deposit their eggs. These Ben never allowed to hatch. As soon as he was off his pony he would get to work on his house, and with much sniffing and clawing, would dig out and eat every egg to be found. And not one ever escaped his keen little nose. Many times in the night we would hear him sniffing and snuffing away, searching out the fly-blows.

He grew to be more of a pet each day and he still juggled his ball of rope. Indeed, he got to be a great expert at this trick. He knew his own frying-pan from the others, and would set up a hungry bawl as soon as it was brought out. His food in camp was still flour and water, a little sugar, and condensed milk. This we fed him for more than a month, after which we cut out the milk and gave him just flour and water with a pinch of sugar. He did not care about meat and would eat his frying-pan food, or bread, in preference to deer or moose meat. Sometimes, when we killed a grizzly, we would bring in some of the meat and cook it for the dogs. This was the only meat that Ben would touch and very little of that. But although he occasionally consented to dine on bear meat, he showed unmistakable signs of temper whenever a new bear-skin was added to our growing pile of pelts. On these occasions, even before the hide was brought to camp, we would find him on our return in a towering rage. No amount of coaxing would induce him to take a romp. Not even for his only four-footed friend, Jim, would he come out of his huff. He would retreat beneath his moose-skin house, and we could hear him strike the ground, champ his jaws, and utter his blowing “whoofs.” I was never able to make out whether he resented or was made fearful by the killing of his kind, or whether it was the smell of the grizzlies, of which the Black Bear is more or less afraid, that affected him. He still remembered his mother, and on every occasion when he could get to our pile of bear hides he would dig out her skin—the only Black Bear skin in the lot—sniff it all over, and lie on it until dragged away. Indeed he seemed to mourn so much over it, even whimpering and howling every time the wind was in the right direction for him to smell it, that we finally had to keep this hide away from camp.

One day a little later on, as we were working our way toward the Montana side of the mountains, we arrived after a hard day’s work at the bank of a large stream flowing into the middle fork of the Clearwater River. As the stream to be forded was a swift and dangerous one, and as we had as high a mountain to climb on the other side as the one we had come down, we decided to go into camp and wait till morning to find a practicable ford. In this deep canyon there was no feed for the horses, and not even enough level ground on which to set up our tent. So the horses were tied up to the trees, supper was cooked and eaten, Ben’s “coop,” as we called his skin house, was placed under a tree, and then each of us rolled up in his blankets and was soon lulled to sleep by the roar of the water over the boulders that lined the river’s bed.

We were up and ready for the start before it was fairly light in the deep canyon, and, on account of the dangerous work ahead of us, both in fording the river and in climbing the opposite mountain, we determined to put Ben on a pony that could be led. We were careful, however, to tie him up short enough to prevent any repetition of his former antics. I then mounted my riding horse, a good sure-footed one, and, with the lead rope of Ben’s horse in my hand, started for the other shore. The first two-thirds of the ford was not bad, but the last portion was deep and swift, the footing bad, and the going dangerous. However, by heading my horse diagonally down-stream, and thus going with the current, we succeeded in making the opposite bank in safety and waited for Spencer and Jack to follow. They got along equally well until near the bank on which I stood, when Spencer’s horse slipped on one of the smooth rocks and pitched his rider over his head into the swirling water. With a pole which I had cut in case it should be needed I managed to pull the water-soaked fellow out of the current, however, and when we had seen once more to the security of the packs we started on the steep climb ahead of us. There was not so much as an old game trail to mark our way, and the hill was so steep that we could only make headway by what are known as “switchbacks.” Our one desire now was to get up to where we could find grass for the horses, and a place level enough to pitch a tent and to unpack and give the ponies a few days in which to rest up.

The horse on which Ben had been mounted for the day was called Riley, and, as I have already said, we had selected him for his steady-going qualities and his reliability in leading. But just as we reached a particularly steep place about half-way up the mountain, Riley suddenly stopped and threw his weight back on the lead rope, which was lapped around the horn of my riding saddle, in such a way that the rope parted, the horse lost his balance, and falling backward landed, all four feet in the air, in a hole that had been left by an upturned root. We at once tied up the rest of the horses to prevent them from straying, and, cutting the cinch rope to Riley’s pack, rolled him over and got him to his feet again. We then led him to as level a spot as we could find and once more cinched on the saddle, and, while Spencer brought the various articles that made up the pack, I repacked the horse. All this time nobody had thought of Ben. In the excitement of rescuing the fallen horse he had been completely forgotten, and when Spencer lifted the pack cover, which was the last article of the reversed pack, he called out in consternation, “Here’s Ben, smashed as flat as a shingle.” When we rushed to examine him we found that he still breathed, but that was about all; and after I got the horse packed I wrapped him in my coat, placed him in a sack, and hanging this to the horn of my riding saddle, proceeded up the hill.

In the course of a couple of hours we reached another of those ideal camping spots, a summit marsh, and here we unpacked the horses, turned them loose, set up our tent, and then looked Ben over to see if any bones were broken. His breathing seemed a little stronger, so I put him in the sun at the foot of a large tree and in a few minutes he staggered to his feet. We always carried a can-full of sour dough to make bread with, and Ben was extravagantly fond of this repulsive mixture which he considered a dainty. I now offered him a spoonful of it, and as soon as the smell reached his nostrils he spruced up and began to lap it from the spoon; and from that time on his recovery was rapid. The next day he was as playful as ever and seemed none the worse for his close call.

Spencer had a great way, when we were about camp and Ben was not looking, of suddenly scuffling his feet on the ground and going “Whoof-whoof!” to frighten the cub. This would either send Ben flying up a tree or start him in a mad rush for his moose-skin house before he realized what the noise was. But one evening after this trick had been sprung on the cub several times, we came into camp well after dark, tired, hungry, and not thinking of Ben; and as Spencer passed a large tree there was a sudden and loud scuffling on the ground at his very heels and a couple of genuine “whoof-whoofs” that no one who had ever heard a bear could mistake. Spencer made a wild leap to one side and was well started on a second before he thought of Ben and realized that his pupil had learned a new trick and had incidentally evened things up with his master.