CHAPTER X
BEARS--AND OTHER THINGS
"Ye see," drawled Jerry, "my marm was alive in them days--bless herheart! Dad was killed on the boom down Rolling River when I was alittle shaver; but marm hung on till I got growed. Ya-as! I mean tillI got clean through growin' and that was long after I voted fusttime," and he chuckled and wagged his head.
"Wal, mebbe I was sixteen; mebbe seventeen. Boys up here in thewoods have to cut their own vittles pretty airly. I was doin' a man'slabor when I was 'leven. Ya-as, Miss! Had to work for me an' marm.
"And marm worked, too. One day I started for Drownville with a bigbundle of aperns marm had sewed for Mis' Juneberry that kep' store atDrownville. She got two bits a dozen for makin' them aperns, Iremember. Wal, it was a wilder country then than it is now, and Inever see a soul, nor heard the sound of an axe in walking fourmiles. Just at the end o' them four miles," continued Long Jerry, hiseyes twinkling, "there was a turn in the road. I swung around it--Iwas travelin' at a good clip--and come facin' up an old she b'arwhich riz up on her hind laigs an' said: 'How-d'-do, Jerry Todd!'jest as plain as ever a bear spoke in its e-tar-nal life!
"Why," said Long Jerry, almost choking with his own laughter, "bythe smile on thet thar b'ar's face and the way she spread her armswide to receive me, it was plain enough how glad she was ter see me."
"I should think you'd have been scared to death!" gasped Ruth,looking down at him.
"Wal, I calculate I was some narvous. I was more narvous in themdays than I be now. Hadn't seen so much of the world. And sure hadn'tseen so much o' b'ars," cackled Jerry. "Not bein' used to b'arsassiety I natcherly balked when that ol' she b'ar appeared solovin'. I had pretty nigh walked right into her arms and there wasn'tmuch chance to make any particular preparations. Fact was, I didn'thave nothin' with me more dangerous than a broken jack-knife, and Idon't know how it might strike you, Miss, but to me that didn't seemto be no implement with which to make a b'ar's acquaintance."
"I should think not!" giggled Ruth. "What _did_ you do?"
"Wal, first of all I give her marm's bundle--ya-as I did! I pitchedthat there bundle of aperns right at her, and the way she growled an'tore at 'em was a caution, now I tell ye! I seen at once what she'ddo to me if she got me, so I left them parts, an' left 'em quick! Istarted off through the woods, hittin' only the high spots, andfancied I could beat the old gal runnin'. But not on your tin-type!No, sir-ree! The old gal jest give a roar, come down on all fourfeet, and started after me at a pace that set me a-thinkin' of my sins.
"Jest as sure as you live, if I'd kept on running she'd had mewithin thirty yards. An' I knew if I climbed a big tree she'd race meto the top of it and get me, too. Ye see, a small-round tree was myonly chance. A b'ar climbs by huggin' their paws around the trunk,and it takes one of right smart size to suit them for climbin'.
"I see my tree all right, and I went for it. Missus B'ar, she comecavortin' an' growlin' along, and it did seem to me as though she'dhave a chunk out o' me afore I could climb out o' reach. It was jestabout then, I reckon," pursued Long Jerry, chuckling again, "when Ibelieve I began to grow tall!
"I stretched my arms up as fur as I could, an' the way I shinnied upthat sapling was a caution to cats, now I tell ye! She riz up theminute she got to the tree and tried to scrape me off with both paws.She missed me by half a fraction of an infinitessimal part of an inch--that's a good word, that 'infinitessimal'; ain't it, Miss? I got itoff of a college perfesser what come up here, and he said he got itstraight-away out of the dictionary."
"It's a good word, Mr. Todd," laughed Ruth, highly delighted at theman and his story.
"Wal!" chuckled Jerry, "we'll say she missed me. I was so scar'tthat I didn't know then whether she had missed me or was chawin' ofme. I felt I was pretty numb like below my waist. And how I didstretch up that tree! No wonder I growed tall after that day," saidJerry, shaking his head. "I stretched ev'ry muscle in my carcass,Miss--I surely did!
"There was that ol she b'ar, on her hind legs and a-roarin' at melike the Mr. Bashan's Bull that they tell about, and scratchin' thebark off'n that tree in great strips. She cleaned the pole, as far upas she could reach, as clean as a bald man's head. She jumped as faras she could, gnashed her teeth, and tried her best to climb thatsapling. Every time she made a jump, or howled, I tried to climbhigher. An', Miss, that was the time I got stretched out so tall, forsure.
"The bear, with wide-open mouth, kept on a-jumpin' an' ev'ry timeshe jumped I clumb a little higher, I was so busy lookin' down at herthat I never looked up to see how fur I was gettin' toward the top,so, all of a suddent-like, the tree top begun to bend over with mean' sumpin' snapped. 'Twarn't my galluses, neither!" crowed LongJerry, very much delighted by his own tale. "I knowed that, allright. Sna-a-ap! she went again, and I begun to go down.
"I swanny! but that was a warm time for me, Miss--it sure was. Therewas that ol' she b'ar with her mouth as wide open as a church door--or, so it looked to Jerry Todd. They say a feller that's drowndin'thinks over all his hull endurin' life when he's goin' down. Ibelieve it. Sure I do. 'Twarn't twenty feet from the top o' that treeto the ground, but I even remembered how I stole my sister Jane's ragbaby when I couldn't more'n toddle around marm's shanty--that'sright!--an' berried of it in the hog-pen. Every sin that wasregistered to my account come up before me as plain as the wart onJim Biggle's nose!"
"Oh, Mr. Todd!" cried Ruth. "Falling right on that awful bear?"
"That's what I was doin', Miss--and it didn't take me long to do it,neither, I reckon. Mebbe the b'ar warn't no more ready to receive methan I was to drap down on her. I heard her give a startled _whuff_,and she come on all four paws. The next thing I done was to landsquare on her back--I swanny! that was a crack. Purty nigh drove myspine up through the top of my head, it did. And the ol' b'ar must ha'been mighty sorry arterwards that she was right there to receive me.She give a most awful grunt, shook me off onto the ground and kitedout o' that as though she'd been sent for in a hurry! I swanny! Inever did see a b'ar run so fast," and Long Jerry burst into anuproarious laugh.
"But that, I reckon, is the time I got so stretched out an' begun togrow so tall, Miss," he added. "Stretchin' an' strainin' to git awayfrom that ol' she b'ar was what done it."
Ruth was delighted with the guide; but she was very tired, too, andwhen the maids came in she was only too glad to fall in with thesuggestion of bed. She was put to sleep in a great, plainly furnishedroom, where there were three other beds--a regular dormitory. It waslike one of the Prime sleeping rooms at Briarwood Hall.
And how Ruth did sleep that night after her adventurous day! The sunshone broadly on the clearing about the camp when she first openedher eyes. Mary put her head in at the door and said:
"Your breakfast will be spoilt, Miss Ruth, or I wouldn't disturbyou. All the men's ate long ago and Janey's fussin' in the kitchen.Besides, the folks will be over from Scarboro in an hour. Mr. Cameronjust telephoned and asked how you were."
"Oh, I feel fine!" cried the girl from the Red Mill, joyfully.
But when she hopped out of bed she found herself dreadfully stiffand lame; the jouncing she had received while riding with the boycalling himself Fred Hatfield, and the catamount, on the timber cart,and later her first long walk on snow-shoes, had together strainedher muscles and lamed her limbs to a degree. Old Aunt Alvirah'soft-repeated phrase fitted her condition, and she grimly repeated it:
"Oh, my back and oh, my bones!"
But the prospect of the other girls, coming--and Tom and hisfriends, too--and the fun in store for them all at Snow Camp, soonmade Ruth Fielding forget small troubles. Besides, the muscles ofyouth are elastic and the weariness soon went out of her bones.Before the party arrived from Scarboro she had opportunity of goingall about the great log lodge, and getting acquainted with all itheld and all that surrounded it.
The great hall on the lower floor was arranged so as to have a broadopen fireplace at either end. These fires were kept burning day andnight and the great heaps
of glowing logs made the hall, and most ofthe upper rooms, very comfortable indeed. The walls of this hall werehung with snowshoes, Canadian toboggans--so light, apparently, thatthey would not hold one man, let alone four, but very, very stronglybuilt--guns, Indian bows and sheaf of arrows, fish-spears, and aconglomeration of hunting gear for much of which Ruth Fielding didnot even know the names, let alone their uses.
Outside the snow had been cleared away immediately around the greatlog house and a wide path was cut through the drifts down to a smalllake, or pond. In coming from Rattlesnake Hill the night before withthe old hermit, and the boy who called himself Fred Hatfield, theyhad come down a long incline in sight of the camp. Now, Ruth saw thata course had been made level upon that hillside, banked up on eitherside with dykes of snow, and water poured over the whole to make aperfect slide. There was a starting platform at the top and thecourse was more than half a mile in length, Long Jerry told her.
But when she had seen all these things sleigh bells were heard andRuth ran out to welcome her friends.
Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp; Or, Lost in the Backwoods Page 10
