The Boy Who Went in Swimming with a Bear.

Auckland Star, Volume XXI, Issue 282, 29 November 1890, Page 3 (Supplement)

The Boy Who Went in Swimming with a Bear.

By Joaquin Miller,

What made tho&e ugly rows of scats on my lefb hand ?

Well, it might have boon buckshot: only ifc wasn't. Besides, buckshot would bo scattered about, ' aort of promiscuous like,' as buck woodsmen say. But these little holes aro all in a row, or rather in two rows. No, a wolf might have made theae holes with his fine white teeth. Or a bear might have dono ib with his dingy and ugly tooth, long, long ago. I musb here tell you that the teeth of a bear are not nearly so fine as thoso oc the wolf. And the teeth of the lion are the ugliest of all them. They aro often broken and bent; and they are always of a dim yellow colour. It is from this yellow hue of the lion's teeth that we have the name of one ot the rr.ost famoua early flowers of early May— dans de Icon ; tooth of the Hon. Get down your Botany now, find the Anglo-Asian name of the flower, and fix this fact on your mind before you read further. I know of three men, all old men now, who have their lefb hands all covered with scars. One is due to the wolf ; the others owe their scars to the red mouths of blank

bears. You see, in the old dayß out here m California, when the Sierras were full ©i bold young fellows hunting for gold, quite a number of them had ha-nd-to-hand battles with bears. For when we came out here 1 the woods were full of 'em.' Of course the first thing a man does when he frnds himself face to "face with a bear that won't run and he has no gun—and that is alvays the time that he finds a bear w hy he runs himself ; that is, if the bear will let him. ~,,., Bub ib is generally a good deal like the old Crusader who ' caught a Tartar ' long ago when on his way to capcure Jerusalem with Peter the Hermit. 1 Come on !' cried Peter to the helmetod and knightiy old Crusader, who sab his horse with lance in rest on a hill a little in \ the rear. • Come on!' ' I can't! I've caught a Tartar.' 1 Well bring him along.' 'He won't come.' • Well, then, come without him !' •He won't leb me.' / And so it happened in the old days out here. When a man 'caught , his bear and didn't have his pun he had to ; fight ib out hand to hand. But fortunately every man at all times had a knife in his belt. A knife never gets out of order, never ' snaps,' and a man in those days always had to have ib with him to cut Ms food, cnb bush, • crevice ' for sold, and so on. Oh ! ib is a grim picture to see a young fellow in his red shirt wheel about, thrust out his left hand, draw his knife with his light, and so breast to breast, with the bear erect, strike and etriko and strike to try to reach his heart before the lofb hand is "eaten off to the elbow. We have five kinds of bear in the Sierras. The 'boxer,' the 'biter,' the 'hugger, , are the naoet conspicuous. The other two are a sort of 'all-round' rough and tumble style of fighter. The grizzly is the boxer; a game old beast he is, too, and would knock down all the John L. Sullivans you could put in the Sierras faster than you could set them up. Ho is a kingly old fellow and disdains familiarity. Whatever may be said to the contrary, he never ' hugs.' In some desperate cases he has been known to bile, but ordinarily he obeys ' the rules of the

ring.' The common bear is a lazy brown brute, about one-half the size of the grizzly, He always insists on being very familiar, if nob affectionate. This is the ' hugger. '

Nexb in order comes the bijr, sleek black bear, easily tamed, too la?y to fight, unless forced to it Bub when • cornered ' he fights well, and, like a lion, bites to the bone.

After this comes the small and quarrelsome black bear with big ears. He is übiquitous, gets into your pig pen, knocks over your beehive, breaks open your milk house, eats more than two good-sizqd hogs ought to eafc, and is off for the mountain top before you dream he is about. The first thing you see in the morning, however, will be some muddy tracks on the down seeps. For ho always comes and snuflles and shuffles and .smiles about the door in a good-natured sore of way, after he has eaten up everything in the niillc house. Our fifth member of the great bear family is not much bigger than an ordinary dog. But ho is numerous, and he, too, is a nuisance. Dogs ? The California dog is a lazy, degenerate cur. Ho devotes his time and" his talenD to the floa. Not six months ago I saw a coon, on his wny to my fishpond in the pleasant moonlight, walk within two feet of my dog's nose and not disturb his slumbers. Wo hope that it is impossible to ever have such a thing as hydrophobia in California, But aa our dogs ore too lazy to bite anything we have thus far bean unable to tlnd out exactly as to that. This last-named bear has a bi.se head and small body ; has a long , , sharp nose, and longer and sharper teeth than any of the others. He is a natural thiof, has low inetincts, carries hie nose close to the ground, and wherever possible makes his road along on the mossy surface of fallen trees in humid forests. He eats fish, dead and decaying salmon, in such abundance that his flesh is not good. The latter is no lean meat, and except for the namo and curiosity of it, is unfit for the table. • It was with that lastdescribedspecimen of the bear family that this 14-year-old boy, who had ran away from school and hired out to some horse drovors, went swimming years and years ago. The fcvvo drovers had camped to recruit and feed their horses on the wild graas and clover that grew on the headwaters of the Sacramento River, close up under the foot; of Mount Shasta ; a pleasant epot it was, and in tha pleasant summer weatiier. One warm afternoon the two men sauntered leisurely away up Soda Creek to where their horses were grazing belly deep in grass and clover. They were slow to return ; and the boy, as all boys will, began to grow restless. Ho had fished, ho had hunted, had diverted himself in a dozen waya the weeks past that thay had rested there by the deep, swif b river, under the great sweeping trees, but now ho wanted something new. A little distance below camp could be seen through the thick foliage that hung and swung and bobbed above the swift waters a long, mossy log, that lay far out and far above the cool, swift river. Why not go down through the trees and go out on that log, take oil your clothes, dangle your loot, dance on the moss, do anything, everything that a boy wants to do?

In ten minutes the boy was out smiling on the big, long, mossy lop, kicking his boots off, and in two minutes moro lie was dancing up and down on the humid cool moss ; and as naked as tho first man \vlien ho was first made.

And it was very pleasant. Tho great strong river splashed and dashed and boomed below ; above him the long green branches hung dense and luxuriant and almost] within reach. Far off and away through thoir shifting shingle ho caught glimpses of the bluest of all blue skies. And a little to the left he saw gloaming in the sun and almost overhead the everlasting snows of Mount Shasta.

Putting his boots ami his clothes all carefully in a heap, that nothing might roll oft into the water, he walked or rather danced on out for whore the further end of tho great fallen treo lay lodgod on a huge boulder in the middle of the swift and surging river. Here he sat down on the moss, looking to the other side of the river. Ilia legs dangled down, and he patted his plump thighs with great satisfaction. Then he leaned over and saw some tiny trout. Then flopped over and lay down on his breasb to grot a better look on them. Then he thought he heard something behind him on tho other end of the log!

He pulled himself together quickly, and stood erect, face about. There was a bear ! It was one of fchoae mean, sneaking, longnosed, ant-oating little fellows it is true ; but ib was a bear ! And a bear is a bear to a boy fresh from school, no matter about his size, age, or character. The bear stood up. And the boy's hair stood up ! The bear had evidently nob seen the boy yet. But it simply smelt his boois and clothes and dropping down on all fours, with nose close to the mossy butt of the log, it slowly shuffled forward. That boy was the stillest boy all this time that has ever been. Pretty soon,the bear reached the clothes, nosed them about, as a hog might. But with a eingular sort of economy of old clothes for a bear he did nob push anything off into the river. What next ? Would he comeany farther ? Would he? Could he? Will he. The long, sharp little nose was once more to the moss and sliding slowly arid aurely toward the poor boy's toes. Then the boy shivered I and settled down, down on his haunches with his little hands clasped till he was all of a heap. He tried to pray, but somehow or another all he could possibly think of as he sat there crouched down with all his clothes off vva-s, • Now I lay me down to sleep.' Bub all this could not last. The bear was on him almost instantly ; although he did not lift his nose six inches till almost within reach of the boy's toes. Aa the terrified boy sprang up he thrusb out his left hand as a guard and struck the brute with all hie might m the teeth with the other. But the left hand lodged in the two rows of sharp teeth and boy and bear rolled into the river together. Bab they were together only an instant. The bear, "of course, could not breathe with his mouth open in the water, and so had to let go. Instinctively, or perhaps because his course lay in thab direction, the bear struck out, swimming ' dog fashion' for the farther shore. And as the boy certainly had no urgent business on thab side, he did not follow, bub kept very still, clinging to the moss on the big boulder till the bear had shaken the water from his coat and disappeared in the thicket. Then the boy, pale and trembling from fright and loss of blood, climbed up the broken end of the log, gob his clothes, struggled into them as ho ran, and so reached camp. And he had nob yelled ! And he tied up his hand in a piece of old flour sack all by himself, for the men had nob yet gob back ; and he didn't whimper! And what became of the boy ? you ask. Oh, the boy grew up, as all energetic boys do ; for there seems to be a sort of special providence for such boys. And where is he now ? Out here in California, trapping bear and planting olive trees. And do I know him ? Yes, pretty well. And what is hie name ? Weill they call the old fellow now JoAQPisr Miller.