A Busy Year at the Old Squires | Page 9

moments. Then he
examined it and looked back at us, nodding. There was moisture on it.
The girls climbed upon a large rock among the spruces. The old Squire,
with one of the guns, took up a position beside a tree about fifty feet
from the "hole." He posted Asa, who was a pretty good shot, beside
another tree not far away. Halstead and I had to content ourselves with
axes for weapons, and kept pretty well to the rear.
Addison was now getting his pepper ready. Expectancy ran high when
at last he blew it down the hole and rushed back. We had little doubt
that an angry bear would break out, sneezing and growling.
But nothing of the sort occurred. Some minutes passed. Addison could
not even hear the faintest sneeze from below. He tiptoed up and blew in
more pepper.
No response.
Cutting a pole, Addison then belabored the snow crust about 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