Biography of a Grizzly | Page 8

crunch or two of his jaws. Oh, but it was good to feel the hot, bloody
juices oozing between his teeth!
The Coyote was caught in a trap. Wahb hated the smell of the iron, so
he went to the other side of the carcass, where it was not so strong, and
had eaten but little before _clank_, and his foot was caught in a
Wolf-trap that he had not seen.
But he remembered that he had once before been caught and had
escaped by squeezing the trap. He set a hind foot on each spring and
pressed till the trap opened and released his paw. About the carcass was
the smell that he knew stood for man, so he left it and wandered
down-stream; but more and more often he got whiffs of that horrible
odor, so he turned and went back to his quiet piñon benches. Wahb's
third summer had brought him the stature of a large-sized Bear, though
not nearly the bulk and power that in time were his. He was very
light-colored now, and this was why Spahwat, a Shoshone Indian who
more than once hunted him, called him the Whitebear, or Wahb.
Spahwat was a good hunter, and as soon as he saw the rubbing-tree on
the Upper Meteetsee he knew that he was on the range of a big Grizzly.
He bushwhacked the whole valley, and spent many days before he
found a chance to shoot; then Wahb got a stinging flesh-wound in the
shoulder. He growled horribly, but it had seemed to take the fight out
of him; he scrambled up the valley and over the lower hills till he
reached a quiet haunt, where he lay down.
[Illustration]
His knowledge of healing was wholly instinctive. He licked the wound
and all around it, and sought to be quiet. The licking removed the dirt,
and by massage reduced the inflammation, and it plastered the hair

down as a sort of dressing over the wound to keep out the air, dirt, and
microbes. There could be no better treatment.
But the Indian was on his trail. Before long the smell warned Wahb that
a foe was coming, so he quietly climbed farther up the mountain to
another resting-place. But again he sensed the Indian's approach, and
made off. Several times this happened, and at length there was a second
shot and another galling wound. Wahb was furious now. There was
nothing that really frightened him but that horrible odor of man, iron,
and guns, that he remembered from the day when he lost his Mother;
but now all fear of these left him. He heaved painfully up the mountain
again, and along under a six-foot ledge, then up and back to the top of
the bank, where he lay flat. On came the Indian, armed with knife and
gun; deftly, swiftly keeping on the trail; floating joyfully over each
bloody print that meant such anguish to the hunted Bear. Straight up
the slide of broken rock he came, where Wahb, ferocious with pain,
was waiting on the ledge. On sneaked the dogged hunter; his eye still
scanned the bloody slots or swept the woods ahead, but never was
raised to glance above the ledge. And Wahb, as he saw this shape of
Death relentless on his track, and smelled the hated smell, poised his
bulk at heavy cost upon his quivering, mangled arm, there held until the
proper instant came, then to his sound arm's matchless native force he
added all the weight of desperate hate as down he struck one fearful,
crushing blow. The Indian sank without a cry, and then dropped out of
sight. Wahb rose, and sought again a quiet nook where he might nurse
his wounds. Thus he learned that one must fight for peace; for he never
saw that Indian again, and he had time to rest and recover.
[Illustration]


PART II
I.
The years went on as before, except that each winter Wahb slept less
soundly, and each spring he came out earlier and was a bigger Grizzly,
with fewer enemies that dared to face him. When his sixth year came

he was a very big, strong, sullen Bear, with neither friendship nor love
in his life since that evil day on the Lower Piney.
No one ever heard of Wahb's mate. No one believes that he ever had
one. The love-season of Bears came and went year after year, but left
him alone in his prime as he had been in his youth. It is not good for a
Bear to be alone; it is bad for him in every way. His habitual
moroseness grew with his strength, and any one chancing to meet him
now would have called him a dangerous Grizzly.
He had lived in