A Busy Year at the Old Squires | Page 9

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,