The Youths Companion | Page 8

across the saddle. Some of the juice trickled out, and going under the saddle, not only took the hair off, but made terrible sores, which it was found well-nigh impossible to heal. The liquid corroded our iron kettles very rapidly.
All through November, December and January we worked industriously, and studied our Latin. In summer the swamp would have been unhealthy and dangerous to life; but in winter, with the mud and water-holes frozen solidly, it was a warm, comfortable location, for it lay in a great valley, inclosed by high mountain ridges, that were covered by dense growths of pine and spruce. It fairly seemed as if the great fires which we built every afternoon warmed up the whole swamp.
Our smoke would often almost hide the sun when the weather was calm. Very little wind at any time found its way into our sheltered valley. The winter fortunately was a mild one. The snow was not more than a foot deep, and rains occasionally fell, leaving an icy crust.
One of these rain storms came during the last days of January. It thawed for two days, and then became cold on the following night. Next morning, while we were getting breakfast, boiling potatoes and baking biscuits in our tin baker, we heard out in the woods, to the east of our camp, sounds as if some animal was walking on the snow and breaking through the crust.
We listened. The sounds came nearer, and pretty soon we saw through the tree trunks that they were made by a bear. Probably the warm rain had roused him out of his winter den, or else he was starved out, for he looked surly and fierce, as if he felt cross.
He walked leisurely until he was within seven or eight rods of us. Then he stopped and looked at us a minute, but started forward again, and would probably have gone on civilly, had not Ed took our gun, which we kept loaded, and ran after him.
[Illustration (woods-1) Shooting the Bear]
Hearing Ed coming, the bear turned round and ran towards him.
Ed stopped and took aim. The bear at once rose on his hind legs, and fanned the air with his paws.
Ed fired, and fortunately killed him with a single charge of buck-shot.
But I never saw a poorer bear. His hair was rusty, and he was evidently not in good health. The meat we could not eat; the very crows would have passed it by.
We wanted, however, candles to study by, and thought we could obtain grease enough from poor bruin to serve this purpose.
So we cut the body up, hair and all,--for his hide absolutely stuck to his bones,--and that night cleared out one of the kettles, and commenced trying out our bear's grease.
The contents of the kettle sizzled there all the evening, giving off anything but an agreeable odor. We were translating the fable of "The Mouse and the Peasant" that night, and nihil Mehurcule is still mixed up in my mind with the odor of that old bear.
By nine o'clock the oil was fried out. We throw the scraps into the fire, and these made, if possible, a still more disagreeable odor as they burned. The whole swamp was full of it.
The hot fat was then poured off into a tin pail, and hung in a little spotted maple near one end of our camp-shed. We used to hang all our tin dishes and ladles here, for the maple had low limbs, which we had cut off so as to leave the stubs for pegs.
Underneath this tree was the great box--an old grain-box from a logging-camp--in which we stored our "salts" as it was made.
In the night.--it must have been after midnight, for the fire was out--I was roused from sleep by Ed, who was moving about the shed. I thought at first that he was walking in his sleep,--for he was a somnambulist,--and gave him a shake.
"Sh!" whispered he. "There's something sniffing round the arch."
We both peered sharply, but it was so dark that we could see nothing.
"It's the mate to that old bear, I guess," Ed whispered. "He's lonely, and wants company."
"More likely he has smelled the fat," said I, "and intends to steal it."
"Perhaps so," said Ed. "I thought we should draw some beast or other to us. Sh! I believe I can see him. Keep still! I'll teach him not to steal from his neighbors."
Ed reached for the gun, which at night always lay loaded at the head of our bunk.
Cocking the gun, he took aim and fired.
There was a yell almost as loud as the report, and it startled me a good deal worse. I once heard a vicious hound when shot make almost just such a noise. It was really a blood-curdling sound.
Vet had been sound asleep.