The Wanderers Necklace | Page 9

the ground, which
just here had been swept clear of snow by the wind.
"I see nothing," said Ragnar.
"But I do, brother," I answered; "who study the ways of wild things
while you think I am asleep. Look, that moss has been turned over; for

it is frozen underneath and pressed up into little mounds between the
bear's claws. Also that tiny pool has gathered in the slot of the paw; it is
its very shape. The other footprints do not show because of the rock."
Then I went forward a few paces behind some bushes and called out:
"Here runs the track, sure enough, and, as I thought, the brute has a
split claw; the snow marks it well. Bid the thrall stay with the horses
and come you."
They obeyed, and there on the white snow which lay beyond the bush
we saw the track of the bear stamped as if in wax.
"A mighty beast," said Ragnar. "Never have I seen its like."
"Aye," exclaimed Steinar, "but an ill place to hunt it in," and he looked
doubtfully at the rough gorge, covered with undergrowth, that some
hundred yards farther on became dense birch forest. "I think it would
be well to ride back to Aar, and return to-morrow morning with all
whom we can gather. This is no task for three spears."
By this time I, Olaf, was springing from rock to rock up the gorge,
following the bear's track. For my brother's taunts rankled in me and I
was determined that I should kill this beast or die and thus show
Ragnar that I feared no bear. So I called back to them over my
shoulder:
"Aye, go home, it is wisest; but I go on for I have never yet seen one of
these white ice-bears alive."
"Now it is Olaf who taunts in his turn," said Ragnar with a laugh. Then
they both sprang after me, but always I kept ahead of them.
For the half of a mile or more they followed me out of the scrub into
the birch forest, where the snow, lying on the matted boughs of the
trees and especially of some firs that were mingled with the birch, made
the place gloomy in that low light. Always in front of me ran the huge
slots of the bear till at length they brought me to a little forest glade,
where some great whirling wind had torn up many trees which had but

a poor root-hold on a patch of almost soilless rock.
These trees lay in confusion, their tops, which had not yet rotted, being
filled with frozen snow. On the edge of them I paused, having lost the
track. Then I went forward again, casting wide as a hound does, while
behind came Ragnar and Steinar, walking straight past the edge of the
glade, and purposing to meet me at its head. This, indeed, Ragnar did,
but Steinar halted because of a crunching sound that caught his ear, and
then stepped to the right between two fallen birches to discover its
cause. Next moment, as he told me afterwards, he stood frozen, for
there behind the boughs of one of the trees was the huge white bear,
eating some animal that it had killed. The beast saw him, and, mad with
rage at being disturbed, for it was famished after its long journey on the
floe, reared itself up on its hind legs, roaring till the air shook. High it
towered, its hook-like claws outstretched.
Steinar tried to spring back, but caught his foot, and fell. Well for him
was it that he did so, for otherwise the blow which the bear struck
would have crushed him to a pulp. The brute did not seem to
understand where he had gone--at any rate, it remained upreared and
beating at the air. Then a doubt took it, its huge paws sank until it sat
like a begging dog, sniffing the wind. At this moment Ragnar came
back shouting, and hurled his spear. It stuck in the beast's chest and
hung there. The bear began to feel for it with its paws, and, catching the
shaft, lifted it to its mouth and champed it, thus dragging the steel from
its hide.
Then it bethought it of Steinar, and, sinking down, discovered him, and
tore at the birch tree under which he had crept till the splinters flew
from its trunk. Just then I reached it, having seen all. By now the bear
had its teeth fixed in Steinar's shoulder, or, rather, in his leathern
garment, and was dragging him from under the tree. When it saw me it
reared itself up again, lifting Steinar and holding him to its breast with
one paw. I went mad at the sight,