Followers of the Trail | Page 8

though persistent inner impulse, he turned his face northward toward the hills which had been his birthplace and from which he had been so strangely carried.
Long before daylight he had taken the trail and, in spite of the protests of his overfed body, had pushed steadily on, pausing at the edge of the tamarack swamp long enough to open with his sharp claws a rotting log that lay in his path, a log which yielded him a meal of fat grubs. Then he shambled on, drawn by some irresistible force. The mist which hung like a white veil over the low ground bordering the swamp was fast dissolving in curling wisps of vapor under the ardent rays of the sun. The forest was alive with bird song; squirrels chattered to him from the trees and the rattle of the kingfisher was in his ears, but Mokwa held a steady course northward, his little eyes fixed on some unseen goal.
About noon he came out upon the bank of the Little Vermilion, not far from the place where he had so narrowly escaped death on the floating ice. The roar of the falls came to him clearly on the still air and the big bear shivered. If he remembered his wild ride, however, the memory was quickly effaced by the discovery of a blueberry thicket, a luscious storehouse that apparently had never been rifled. Mokwa feasted greedily, at first stripping the branches of fruit and leaves alike; but at length, the keen edge of his appetite dulled, he sought only the finest berries, crushing many and ruthlessly tearing down whole bushes in his greed to get a branch of especially choice fruit. Then, his face and paws stained with the juice and his sides uncomfortably distended, he sought a secluded nook in which to sleep off his feast.
Toward evening, when the shadows grew long and the hills were touched with the red and gold of the setting sun, Mokwa again took up the northward trail, to which he held steadily most of the night. Morning found him emerging from a thicket of juniper upon the banks of the river at a place that he instantly recognized as the one from which he had begun his unwilling travels.
Turning sharply to the right, the bear's eager eyes discovered the trunk of a hemlock which had been blasted by lightning. Rearing himself upon his haunches against it, and reaching to his utmost, he prepared to leave his signature where he had so often left it, always above all rivals. Ere his unsheathed claws could leave their mark, however, he paused, gazing at another mark several inches above his own.
The hair rose along his back and his little eyes gleamed red while he growled deep in his chest; yet, stretch as he would, he could not quite reach the signature of the other bear. Mokwa dropped to all fours, rage filling his breast at this indication of a rival in what he considered his own domain. He hurried on, keenly alert, growing more and more incensed at every fresh trace of the interloper. Here he came upon evidences of a meal which the rival had made upon wake-robin roots. Satisfied before he had devoured all he had dug, some of the roots still lay scattered about, but, though Mokwa was hungry, he disdained the crumbs from the other's table. He dined, instead, upon a fat field mouse which he caught napping beside its runway. Again he pressed on, his anger steadily fanned by fresh evidences of the hated rival who seemed always just ahead.
Mokwa slept that night in his old den, but the next morning found him once more on the trail of the enemy, a trail which was still fresh. He had not gone far when his rival was, for the time being, forgotten, while he sniffed eagerly at a new odour which drifted to his sensitive nostrils. It was the scent of honey, a delicacy which a bear prizes above all else. At that moment, as if to confirm the evidence of his nose, a bee flew by, followed by another and another, all winging their way back to the hive. The red gleam faded from Mokwa's eyes as he followed their flight; then he broke into a shuffling run as he came within sight of the tree to which the bees were converging from all directions.
About half way up the great trunk Mokwa's eyes discovered a hole which he knew at once to be the mouth of the hive. He quickly climbed the tree on the side opposite the hole, peering cautiously around until he had reached a point directly opposite the hive. Then, craftily reaching one paw around the tree, with his claws he ripped off a great section of bark, disclosing