CHAPTER V
THE BEAR’S SURPRISE PARTY
“And bang! bing! bang! went Billy’s gun, and that was the end of that bear.”
The words came clearly, distinctly to Dick Crawford swinging along through the cool, green, glorious forest; but as he looked wonderingly around, not a trace of the speaker could he see.
The words had been uttered in a clear, boyish voice, but if a boy had been there, he must have vanished into a hole in the ground, or been spirited away by the woodland brownies, for no sign of a boy could he see anywhere.
Dick stood perfectly still and listened with all his might, but not a human sound could he hear. Other sounds there were in plenty. The soft gurgling of the little brook that wound down the mountain side, and at its deepest part the quick splash of an otter, as, his small head glistening in the light, he swam rapidly across. There was the low murmuring of countless insects, the soft rustle of leaves as a frightened jack-rabbit scurried to his burrow. In the branches of a tree near by he could hear the twitter of a mother bird as she fed her nestlings, and directly over his head, in the spreading branches of a giant oak, two squirrels scolded noisily, very noisily, too noisily it all at once seemed to Dick, and, looking up keenly into the branches over him, he said quietly:
“A very good imitation of a squirrel, fellows! The only fault with it is that it is too good, too awfully good! Come down out of that, and give an account of yourselves.”
At this there was a great commotion overhead, and with, “Ain’t he smart?” “Too smart!” “Altogether too smart for us,” a little group of noisy Scouts slid recklessly down the scraggy trunk of the old oak, and Dick was surrounded.
“We were some tired,” a Scout said to him, “so we thought we would wait for you in the tree. Just as you came in sight Bob was finishing a most exciting bear story.”
“It’s fine and dandy up in that tree,” said Tom. “Let’s go up again for a while.”
Dick looked doubtful, for their time was not their own, and they must give an account of it to the Scout-Master; but Jack told him that they had really been working very hard for two hours, and he thought a twenty minutes’ rest was what the fellows needed. So as Dick gave the word, five boys scrambled and climbed back like monkeys into that tree before you could have said “Jack Robinson!”
Comfortably settled, the talk went back to the all-absorbing topic they were discussing when Dick arrived, and one of the fellows asked Jack what he would do if he should stumble upon a bear.
“If I were well armed,” said Jack, “and knowing, as I do, how to shoot, I would face him and defend myself. If I should meet him to-day, I should race for the nearest hut or cave or anything I could get behind or into, and thank fortune that I was lucky enough to find such a place.”
Some of the Scouts were inclined to think that would be rather cowardly and were for taking their chance of fighting with a club or anything they could lay their hands upon. Jack gave them a gentle reminder of Bruin’s by no means gentle claws and his ferocious nature by running his finger nails energetically down a Scout’s leggings and uttering a most savage growl. At the same moment Dick threw his arms around the nearest fellow and gave him a genuine bear’s hug till he begged for mercy.
After this demonstration, there was a general coming round to Jack’s view. Some of the Scouts hoped they would see a bear, and some hoped they would not; but even those who hoped they would felt way down in the bottom of their hearts that they could manage to live without it. After all, they hadn’t “lost any bear.”
Time was up now, so the Scouts slid nimbly back to solid ground, and they were off to locate and make a list of the different trees. Already that list was a creditable one, but they had an hour yet to work before starting back to camp, and they were anxious to make it long enough to show to the Scout-Master with pride.
Aside from this desire, the trees themselves—the great, noble, splendid trees—appealed to them, and made the study of them an ever-increasing delight.
They had located, marked and listed great sturdy oaks towering seventy, eighty feet toward the sky, and one old giant measured one hundred and twenty feet in height. The Scouts felt very small as they looked up with awe at the towering branches of this monster tree.
Then there were beech trees, with their smooth, ashy gray bark, about the same height as the oaks, but not to be compared with them in usefulness, although as firewood they are perfect, as are the hickory trees. They (the hickory) and the chestnut trees need no description. What boy does not claim a close acquaintance with them?
Here rose a colony of butternut trees, not so tall, but with large, beautiful leaves measuring from fifteen to thirty inches in length, and the air was redolent with the fragrance of pine and balsam and hemlock.
From group to group of trees the Scouts went, examining, studying, listing, so happily and thoroughly interested in this delightful work that everyone started at a sudden cry of alarm in Tom’s voice.
All turned, and at that moment saw the little fellow run out from a clump of low bushes and fairly flying toward them, call out bravely—not “Help me!” but “Run, boys, run, run! There is a bear coming!” and from the bushes lumbered a bear, really of medium size, but looking to the startled boys at that moment as big as an elephant, and loped along only a few rods behind Tom.
“The nearest tree and up it!” was their first instinct, and Bob Hart and Harry French, who were nearest to Tom, seized him by an arm on either side and pushed and pulled him up with them into the tree. The whole thing had been so sudden and the scare so great that there had been no time for sober thought, but only the blind instinct to seek the first place of refuge. But just as they were settling themselves in the spreading branches, a thought occurred to Jack that made his face whiten and his heart beat faster.
“Say, Dick,” he said, “we all forgot that a bear could climb. We’ve done just exactly what he wanted us to do!”
All the boys were seized with panic. Sure enough, they were trapped. They were only boys, after all, and face to face with a peril that might well have struck terror to grown men; it is no wonder that for a moment they were smitten with panic.
The bear himself soon dispelled any doubt as to his intentions and, swinging along heavily to the foot of the tree, reared on his hind paws and began to climb. There were no weapons in the party, unless you could apply that term to the small, light hatchets that they carried in their belts. Even these were only toys against such an enemy. One or two of the boys snatched at them frantically and threw, but the branches of the tree interfered with their aim and it was only Dick’s hatchet that struck with its blunt end the nose of the bear. Beyond a slight shake of the head, he gave no sign of it hurting him, and steadily kept on climbing.
The boys had pushed their way out along the branches as far from the trunk as possible, and just at this moment the branch on which Harry French was moving suddenly cracked, broke, and he found himself lying face down full length on the ground about twenty feet from the foot of the tree. The bear heard the crash and, seeing one of his enemies thus delivered into his hands, scrambled hastily back down the tree and started toward Harry. There was only one thing for the boy to do, and, being a Scout, he did it; he lay perfectly still.
The bear, surprised at the quiet of the motionless figure, hesitated just a moment, but that was long enough for Jack Danby, who was perched on a branch just overhead, to decide what to do.
His plan was only a forlorn hope and he knew if it failed it probably meant the loss of his life as well as Harry’s, but what could he do? “A Scout is brave.” And he simply could not stay there and see Harry, dear old Harry, attacked without an effort at least being made to save him.
It was a time for desperate measures. With a silent prayer for help, he jumped quickly and landed, as he had schemed to do, squarely upon the bear’s back. Now Jack was no featherweight. Nearly nineteen years old, he was tall and well developed, weighing much more than an ordinary young fellow of his age.
The effect upon the bear was startling. When this weight came crashing down upon him like a thunderbolt, he was seized with consternation, and, forgetting everything else in his panic, he rushed away as fast as his legs could carry him, and that was very fast, for, though a bear’s movements give an impression of clumsiness, he can move like a streak, as many a one has learned to his cost when trying to escape. Jack, who had rolled over and over, jumped up quickly and ran to where Harry still lay, not daring to move. His fall had shaken him badly, but no bones were broken, although now that the danger was over the terrific strain made him tremble like a leaf.
The Scouts had joyfully watched the bear out of sight and, fearing that he might recover from his fright and return, slid down the tree and all started off thankfully for the camp.
Their path led along a natural hedge of high-growing bushes, and suddenly they heard gruff voices on the other side. They caught the name of Flannigan, the foreman, coupled with an oath. The words that followed halted them in their tracks and they stood like statues.