Black Bruin | Page 6

an old double-barreled gun, and drawing the shot in one barrel, rammed home a Minie ball that just fitted the bore. This was a rude makeshift for a rifle, but it was the best he could do.
Hastily slipping on his overcoat and cap, and tenderly kissing his wife, he passed out into the darkness, on his hazardous and almost hopeless mission. But before taking the trail, he went to the shed and aroused an old hound who was sleeping upon a door-mat inside.
"Here, Hecla," he called. "Come along. You may be of some help to me to-night."
Then tying a long piece of rope to the hound's collar, that she might not follow too fast, he said, "Here, Hecla, good dog," indicating the beast's track in the snow. "Sic, Si-c-c-c-c."
As the strong bear scent fumed into the old hound's nostrils, the hair rose upon her neck and she stood uncertain.
"Si-c-c-c-c," repeated the man sternly.
Reluctantly the hound took the trail, the man following close behind. Across the mowing and into the pasture, and straight for the deep woods, the track led.
The man groaned as he thought of the hopelessness of his task;--to follow a full-grown bear into the deep woods at night, and recover safely from its clutches a little child.
This was his only hope, though, so setting his teeth, and remembering the pale face of his wife, the terror in her eyes, and his promise to bring their boy back safely, he kept on swiftly and bravely.
Fifteen minutes brought man and dog to the woods, and without hesitation they plunged into its depths. It was not so easy going here as it had been in the open. The rope was always getting tangled in the underbrush, and a stop every few minutes to unloose it had to be made.
Sometimes the man plunged up to his waist in the snow where it lay deep in some hollow. Sometimes it was a dead limb lying across his path that sent him sprawling. Occasionally the underbrush lashed his face and tore his skin. But these were little things. Somewhere in the interminable woods a great brute of a bear was perhaps at this very moment--he dared not finish the thought, he could only groan.
For half an hour they floundered forward, now slipping and sliding, and now falling, but always up and on again.
At last, when the man was almost winded, and his breath was coming in quick gasps, a faint, far-off cry floated down to him through the ghostly aisles of the naked wind-swept forest. At first it was so faint as to be almost unintelligible, but as they pressed on, it grew louder and clearer, until the man recognized the pitiful wailing of a baby.
"Thank God!" he gasped, "my boy is still alive."
By this time the old hound had fairly warmed up to the chase and was tugging on the rope and whining eagerly.
To let the dog go on now might frighten the bear and thus defeat the whole undertaking, so the man tied her to a sapling, and, bidding her keep quiet, crept cautiously forward.
A hundred feet farther on, the cries from the child grew louder. A moment more and he caught sight of the bear leaning up against a large beech, holding the baby in her strong arms.
To the agonized father's great surprise the bear's attitude looked almost maternal; she seemed indeed to be trying in her brute way to soothe the infant. She caressed its face with her nose, and lapped it with her long, soft red tongue. If it had been one of her own cubs she could not have shown more concern.
So much the frantic father noted, while he stood irresolute, uncertain what to do next. The bear would have been an easy shot by daylight, if there had been no baby to consider. But there was that little bundle of humanity, the man's own flesh and blood, and a bullet in order to pierce the bear's heart must strike within a few inches of the baby's head. The task that King Gessler set William Tell, was child's play compared with this. To shoot might mean to kill his own child, and not to shoot might mean a still more terrible death for the infant.
The child's wails now grew louder and more frequent. The old bear became uneasy; in another moment she might flee farther into the woods, or worse than that, might silence the little one with a blow or a crunch of her powerful jaws.
The desperate man raised his gun. The fitful moonlight shimmered and danced upon the barrel, and the shadows from the tree-tops alternated with the dancing moonbeams. He could see the sight but dimly and, added to all this, was the thought that the gun was not a rifle, with an accurate bullet,