The Golden Dream: Adventures in the Far West

by R. M. Ballantyne

  CHAPTER TWENTY.

  GRIZZLY-BEAR-CATCHING IN THE MOUNTAINS--NED AND TOM DINE IN THE MIDST OFROMANTIC SCENERY, AND HOLD SAGACIOUS CONVERSE--THE STRANGE DEVICES OFWOODPECKERS.

  Just as day began to peep on the following morning, the camp was rousedby one of the bear-catchers, a Mexican, who had been away to visit thebear-trap during the night, and now came rushing in among the sleepers,shouting--

  "Hoor-roo! boy, him cotch, him cotch! big as twinty mans! fact!"

  At first Ned thought the camp was attacked by savages, and he and Tomsprang to their feet and grasped their rifles, while they sought to rubtheir eyes open hastily. A glance at the other members of the camp,however, shewed that they were unnecessarily alarmed. Croft leisurelystretched his limbs, and then gathered himself slowly into a sittingposture, while the others arose with various degrees of reluctance.

  "Bin long in?" inquired Croft.

  "No, jist cotched," answered the Mexican, who sat down, lit his pipe,and smoked violently, to relieve his impatient feelings.

  "Big 'un?" inquired Croft, again.

  To this the Mexican answered by rolling his eyes and exclaiming "Hoh!"with a degree of vigour that left his hearers to imagine anything theypleased, and then settle it in their minds that the thing so imaginedwas out of all sight short of the mark.

  The excitement of the man at last fully roused the sleepy crew, andCroft sprang up with the agility of a cat.

  "Ho! boys," he cried, proceeding to buckle his garments round him, "upwith you. Ketch the hosses, an' put to. Look alive, will you? greaseyour jints, _do_. Now, strangers, I'll shew you how we ketch a bar inthis lo-cation; bring yer rules, for sometimes he breaks his trap, an'isn't there a spree jist!"

  We need scarcely remark, that the latter part of this speech was made toSinton and his comrade, who were drawing the charges of their revolversand reloading.

  "Is the trap far off?" inquired Ned.

  "Quarter of an hour, or so. Look sharp, lads."

  This exhortation was unnecessary, for the men had already caught threestout horses, all of which were attached to an enormous waggon or van,whose broad wheels accounted for the tracks discovered in the valley onthe previous evening.

  "That's his cage," said the bear-catcher, replying to Ned's look ofinquiry. "It's all lined with sheet-iron, and would hold an ontamedstreak o' lightnin', it would. Now, then, drive ahead."

  The lumbering machine jolted slowly down the hill as he spoke, and whileseveral of the party remained with the horses, Croft and our travellers,with the remainder, pushed on ahead. In less than twenty minutes, theycame to a ravine filled with thick underwood, from the recesses of whichcame forth sounds of fierce ursine wrath that would have deterred mostmen from entering; but Croft knew his game was secure, and led the wayconfidently through the bushes, until he reached a spot on which stoodwhat appeared to be a small log-cabin without door or window. Inside ofthis cabin an enormous grizzly-bear raged about furiously, thrusting hissnout and claws through the interstices of the logs, and causingsplinters to fly all round him, while he growled in tones of the deepestindignation.

  "Oh! ain't he a bit o' thunder?" cried Croft, as he walked round thetrap, gazing in with glittering eyes at every opening between the logs.

  "How in the world did you get him in there?" asked Ned Sinton, as soonas his astonishment had abated sufficiently to loosen his tongue.

  "Easy enough," replied Croft. "If ye obsarve the top o' the trap, ye'llsee the rope that suspended it from the limb o' that oak. Inside therewas a bit o' beef, so fixed up, that when Mister Caleb laid hold of it,he pulled a sort o' trigger, an' down came the trap, shuttin' him inslick, as ye see."

  At this moment the powerful animal struggled so violently that he tiltedhis prison on one side, and well-nigh overturned it.

  "Look out, lads," shouted Croft, darting towards a tree, and cocking hisrifle,--actions in which he was imitated by all the rest of the party,with surprising agility.

  "Don't fire till it turns over," he cried, sternly, on observing thattwo of the more timid members of his band were about to fire at theanimal's legs, which appeared below the edge of the trap. Fortunately,the bear ceased its efforts just at that critical moment, and the trapfell heavily back to its original position.

  "By good luck!" shouted Croft; "an' here comes the cage. Range up onthe left, boys, and out with the hosses, they won't stand this."

  The terrified animals were removed from the scene, trembling violentlyfrom head to foot, and the whole band, applying their shoulders to thewheels, slowly pushed the vehicle alongside of the trap until the sidesof the two met.

  There was a strong door in the side of the trap, which was now removedby being pulled inwards, revealing to bruin an aperture whichcorresponded to another door opening into the iron-lined cage. Therewere stout iron bars ready to be shot home the instant he condescendedto pass through this entrance; but Caleb, as Croft called him, shewedhimself sadly destitute of an inquiring disposition. He knew that therewas now a hole in his prison-wall, for he looked at it; he knew that ahole either conducted into a place or out of it, for life-longexperience had taught him that; yet he refused to avail himself of theopportunity, and continued to rage round the trap, glaring between thelogs at his foes outside. It is unreasonable to suppose that he wasafraid to go into the hole because it was a _dark_ one, for he was wellaccustomed to such dark dens; besides, no one who looked at him couldfor a moment suppose that he was, or could be, afraid of anything atall. We must, therefore, put his conduct down to sheer obstinacy.

  The men poked him with sticks; shouted at him; roared in his face; threwwater over him; and even tried the effect of a shot of powder at hisflank; but all to no purpose, although their efforts were continuedvigorously for full two hours. The bear would _not_ enter that hole onany account whatever.

  "Try another shot of powder at him," cried Croft, whose patience was nowalmost exhausted.

  The shot was fired at his flank, and was received with a ferociousgrowl, while the strong wood-work of the trap trembled under his effortsto escape.

  "Ain't it vexin'?" said Croft, sitting down on the stump of a tree andwiping the perspiration from his forehead. Ned Sinton and Tom, who haddone their utmost to assist their new acquaintance, sat down beside himand admitted that it _was_ vexing. As if by one impulse, the wholeparty then sat down to rest, and at that moment, having, as it were,valiantly asserted his right of independent action, the bear turnedslowly round and quietly scrambled through the hole. The men sprang up;the massive iron bars were shot into their sockets with a clang; andbruin was a prisoner for life.

  As neither Edward Sinton nor Tom Collins had any particular desire tobecome bear-catchers, they bade their new friends adieu that afternoon,and continued their journey. The road, as they advanced, became moreand more steep and rugged, so that they could only proceed at a walk,and in many places experienced considerable difficulty, and ran nolittle risk, in passing along the faces of cliffs, where the precipicesascended hundreds of feet upwards like walls, on the one hand, anddescended sheer down into an unfathomable abyss, on the other. But theexceeding grandeur of the scenery amply repaid their toils, and the deeproar of that mighty cataract ever sounded in their ears. At length theyreached the head of the valley, and stood under the spray of the fall,which, expanding far above and around the seething caldron whence itsprang, drenched the surrounding country with perpetual showers.

  Here a gap or pass in the mountains was discovered, ascending on theleft, and affording, apparently, an exit from the valley. Up this thetravellers toiled until they cleared the spray of the falls, and thensat down beside a clump of trees to dry their garments in the sunshineand to cook their mid-day meal.

  "What a glorious thing it is, Tom, to wander thus unrestrained amid suchscenes!" said Ned Sinton, as he busied himself roasting a piece ofvenison, which his rifle had procured but half-an-hour before. "Howinfinitely more delightful than travelling in the civilised world, whe
reone is cheated at every turn, and watched and guarded as if robbery, ormurder, or high treason were the only probable objects a traveller couldhave in view."

  "`Comparisons,' my dear fellow--you know the proverb," replied TomCollins; "don't uphold California at the expense of the continent.Besides, there are many in this world who would rather a thousand timeswander by the classic lake of Como, with its theatrical villas and itsenchanting sunshine and perfume, or paddle up the castellated Rhine,than scramble here among wild rocks, and woods, and cataracts, with thechance of meeting an occasional savage or a grizzly-bear."

  "Go on, my boy," said Ned, with a touch of sarcasm in his tone, "youhaven't read me half a lesson yet. Besides, the `many' you refer to,are there not hundreds, ay, thousands, whose chief enjoyment intravelling is derived from the historical associations called up by thesight of the ruined castles and temples of classic ground--whose delightit is to think that here Napoleon crossed the Alps, as Hannibal didbefore him, (and many a nobody has done after him), that there, withinthese mouldering ruins, the oracles of old gave forth their voice--forgetting, perhaps, too easily, while they indulge in thesereminiscences of the past, that the warrior's end was wholesale murder,and that the oracle spoke only to deceive poor ignorant human nature.Ha! I would not give one hearty dash into pure, uncontaminated naturefor all the famous `tours' put together."

  Ned looked round him as he spoke, with a glow of enthusiasm that neitherbadinage nor philosophy could check.

  "Just look around thee," he continued; "open thine ears, Tom, to themusic of yon cataract, and expand thy nostrils to the wild perfume ofthese pines."

  "I wouldn't, at this moment," quietly remarked Tom, "exchange for it theperfume of that venison steak, of which I pray thee to be moreregardful, else thou'lt upset it into the fire."

  "Oh! Tom--incorrigible!"

  "Not at all, Ned. While you flatter yourself that you have all theenthusiastic study of nature to yourself, here have I succeeded, withinthe last few minutes, in solving a problem in natural history which haspuzzled my brains for weeks past."

  "And, pray thee, what may that be, most sapient philosopher?"

  "Do you see yonder bird clinging to the stem of that tree, and pitchinginto it as if it were its most deadly foe?"

  "I do--a woodpecker it is."

  "Well," continued Tom, sitting down before his portion of the venisonsteak, "that bird has cleared up two points in natural history, whichhave, up till this time, been a mystery to me. The one was, whywoodpeckers should spend their time in pecking the trees so incessantly;the other was, how it happened that several trees I have cut down couldhave had so many little holes bored in their trunks, and an acorn neatlyinserted into each. Now that little bird has settled the question forme. I caught him in the act not ten minutes ago. He flew to that treewith an acorn in his beak, tried to insert it into a hole, which didn'tfit, being too small; so he tried another, which did fit, poked the nutin, small end first, and tapped it scientifically home. Now, why did hedo it? That's the question."

  "Because he wanted to, probably," remarked Ned; "and very likely he laysup a store of food for winter in this manner."

  "Very possibly. I shall make a note of this, for I'm determined to haveit sifted to the bottom. Meanwhile, I'll trouble you for another junkof venison."

  It was many weeks afterwards ere Tom Collins succeeded in sifting thisinteresting point to the bottom; but perhaps the reader may not objectto have the result of his inquiries noted at this point in our story.

  Many of the trees in California, on being stripped of their bark, arefound to be perforated all over with holes about the size of amusket-ball. These are pierced by the woodpecker with such precisionand regularity that one might believe they had been cut out by aship-carpenter. The summer is spent by this busy little bird in makingthese holes and in filling them with acorns. One acorn goes to onehole, and the bird will not try to force the nut into a hole that is toosmall for it, but flutters round the tree until it finds one which fitsit exactly. Thus one by one the holes are filled, and a store of foodis laid up for winter use in a larder which secures it from theelements, and places it within reach of the depositor when the wintersnows have buried all the acorns that lie upon the ground, and put thembeyond the reach of woodpeckers. The birds never encroach on theirstore until the snow has covered the ground, then they begin to drawupon their bank; and it is a curious fact that the bills of these birdsare always honoured, for their instinct enables them to detect the badnuts with unerring certainty, so that their bank is always filled withgood ones. This matter of selecting the good nuts is a mere chance withmen, for often those shells which seem the soundest, are found tocontain a grub instead of a nut. Even the sagacious Indian is anuncertain judge in this respect, but the woodpecker, provided by anall-wise Creator with an unerring instinct, never makes a mistake inselecting its store of food for winter.