As they started up the left branch, Roger said:
‘Did you hear that? He said he lives alone. Then what could have made that sound?’
‘A cat perhaps,’ said Hal.
But he wondered.
The boys followed the dirt road up Sharatin Mountain. That was the name given to it on the map. The captain had called it a hill. Well, perhaps it was more than a hill and not quite a mountain since its height was less than three thousand feet.
The boy with the gun followed. His name, he said, was Mark.
Hal kept hoping that Mark would tire himself out climbing the steep slope — then he would turn about and go home.
‘I’ll protect you if you get into trouble,’ said Mark.
‘Your protection is the last thing-we want,’ Hal said. ‘If you use that gun, I’ll kick you all the way down hill.’
‘But what’s the use of having a gun if I don’t use it?”
‘Go shoot a hedgehog —or a gopher,’ Hal suggested. ‘But if you value your life, leave the bear alone.’
‘Look!’ exclaimed Roger. ‘Right here beside the road.’
He picked up a jawbone. ‘Some animal was killed here.’
Hal looked closely at the jawbone. ‘That didn’t come from any animal,’ he said. ‘That’s human.’
Near by was a skull, and it certainly was the skull of a man. They found the dead body. On his wrist was a watch.
Mark removed it. ‘I’ll take that,’ he said. ‘Finders keepers.’
‘Wrong,’ said Hal. ‘If you find something that belongs to someone else, you have no right to keep it.’
‘But he won’t have any more use for it.’
‘His folks will probably come to find him. Anything on him belongs to them.’
Grumbling, Mark replaced the watch on the dead man’s wrist. The body was spattered with dried blood. In the blood Hal saw brown hairs.
‘Now we know what happened,’ said Hal. ‘This man was killed by that bear made crazy by the loss of his mate and cubs.’
‘How do you figure that out?’ Roger asked.
‘These hairs came from a brown bear. That’s the Kodiak bear. And the ordinary Kodiak bear is too quiet to attack a man unless he had good reason. This is the work of the bear we are after.’
A little farther on a whole tree had been torn up by the roots and lay on the ground, its leaves still green. Again there were brown hairs that told the story. Then they saw the remains of a black bear. It had been partly eaten. More brown hairs.
A small house had been completely wrecked. Some terribly powerful force had broken the walls and the roof had collapsed. A woman stood by the ruined house, weeping.
‘He was always a good bear,’ the woman said.
‘Never hurt man, woman or child. But now something has got into him. He’s gone plumb crazy.’
They came to a tent. The tent had not been attacked. But when they looked inside, they saw a man lying on the ground. Hal felt his pulse. He was dead.
They came to an empty cabin. Nobody would use it again for a long time. The windows were smashed, the roof torn off, the bunk destroyed, the sheet-iron stove had been flattened and the floor was covered with beans, rice, flour and coffee.
Reaching the top of the mountain, they found the great bear. He was sleeping, his head on the dead body of his mate. It is said that animals do not love. This scene impressed them all, for this showed the deep affection one beast may have for another. Hal and Roger were too old to cry, but tears came to their eyes.
Mark felt differently. He was going to kill this monster. He put his foot on the bear and fired. The bullet went through his foot. Mark howled to high heaven.
The bear did not stir. The bullet had not penetrated his heavy hide. He was so completely lost in misery over the death of his mate that he paid no attention to the boys. He would take care of them later.
Hal felt inclined to give Mark a good beating. Instead, he looked at the injured foot. Luckily, no bones were broken since the bullet had simply gone through the fleshy part of the foot. After all, the bullet had been very small, coming from a low calibre .22 gun.
‘Quit howling like a stuck pig,’ Hal said to Mark. ‘You’re not badly hurt.’
The boys set up their own tent. It was nearly dark now and they hoped that the bear would stay exactly where he was until dawn. Mark crowded into the tent with them. He had no sleeping bag, but the night was not cold.
In the middle of the night Mark heard a rustling outside the tent. It must be the bear. He reached for his trusty pea-shooter, and prepared to be a hero. He was going to save the boys from certain death.
He separated the flaps just enough to get the muzzle of the gun out and he fired. He could see nothing, and he was not to know until morning that he had shot not the bear, but a mountain goat.
Aroused by the report, Hal said, ‘You fire one more shot and I’m going to take that gun away from you.’
Mark fired one more shot. Dawn had come and he ventured out, holding his precious rifle. This time he saw the great bear itself, and there was no mistake. What a great story for the folks back home if he could just kill this monster!
He fired. The small bullet did not penetrate the tremendous hide of the bear. The Kodiak’s skin has an elastic quality and the bullet ricocheted, bounced back, and struck Mark on the jaw.
Hal leaped up, seized the little rifle, and broke it over his knee.
Mark was whining about his dislocated jaw, not to mention his punctured foot.
There was a small village of not more than a hundred people on top of the mountain. After breakfast, Hal went to the village to find help for the banged-up youngster. He entered the tiny one-room post office. The staff consisted of one man only, the old postmaster.
‘We’ve had an accident,’ Hal said. ‘Is there a doctor in town?’
‘No doctor. The nearest doctor is the surgeon down at the Naval Station.’
Hal said, ‘A young fool of a boy has busted himself up. He needs a doctor.’
‘I’ll take him down,’ said the postmaster. ‘I have to go down anyway to get the mail.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ said Hal. ‘That’s mighty good of you.’
He sat down and wrote a note. It was addressed to Captain Sam Harkness and it read, ‘Sending you a boy who has shot himself twice while trying to kill the Kodiak bear. Have Navy Surgeon fix him up and send him home before he makes a bigger fool of himself. I will pay any charges.’ And he signed it, ‘Hal Hunt.’
So Mark was transported to the Naval Station and Hal fervently hoped that he would never see him again.
Hal went to the police station. The little village had only one policeman.
‘Would you go down the hill with us,’ Hal said, ‘to the farmhouse where the road divides?’
‘That’s Spike Burns’s place,’ said the policeman. ‘He’s a rough customer. What do you want to see him for?’
‘This Kodiak bear that has gone crazy because he lost his mate and his cubs — there’s nothing we can do about the mate. She’s dead as a door nail. But if we could give him back his cubs, perhaps he would quiet down.’
‘What has that to do with Spike?’ asked the policeman.
‘Perhaps nothing. Perhaps a good deal. When we talked with him we heard a sound inside that might have been made by a cat, or a bird — or by those cubs.’ ‘You think he was the one who stole the cubs?’
‘It’s just a guess. I can’t barge into his house and make a search. But you can because you’re a cop.’
‘O.K.,’ said the policeman. ‘Here we go.’
Roger joined them and they went down the road to the farmhouse. The policeman carried a search warrant. They rapped, and Spike came to the door. He was highly displeased to see the policeman. ‘What’s up?’ he said.
‘May we come in and look around?’ said the cop.
‘You may not. You have no authority to do anything like that.’
‘Here’s the authority,’ said
the policeman, and he handed Spike the search warrant.
Reluctantly Spike let them in. They searched the house quite thoroughly and found nothing.
Then there was that sound again. ‘What was that?’ said the policeman.
‘Just one of the doors. It creaks,’ said Spike.
‘Perhaps it’s this door,’ said the policeman, and he opened the door of a closet. And there they were, the two cubs.
‘You’ll get a heavy fine for this,’ said the policeman. ‘Why in the world did you steal these cubs?’
‘Well,’ said Spike, ‘I was just going to fatten them up and then kill and eat them. A man must live, you know. Besides, the bear killed twenty of my cattle.’
The policeman said, ‘You’ll live long enough to pay handsomely for what you’ve done. Pick ‘em up, boys.’
Hal took up one squirming little fellow in his arms, and Roger took the other. They climbed the hill and found the bear occupied in tearing down their tent. The great bear growled when he saw them coming. He was ready now to add them to his list of victims.
But when he saw the cubs his manner changed. They were set down gently in front of him. He licked both of them from stem to stern. He looked up at the boys and his eyes said, ‘Thank you.’ Most male bears pay no attention to their cubs. They leave that to the mother. But here there was no mother. And the great Kodiak was not only larger and stronger than others, but also more intelligent. When he lost his mate, he poured out his love on these little brats.
There was one telephone in town and that was in the postmaster’s shack.
Hal telephoned to Captain Harkness. ‘We’ve got the big bear,’ he said. ‘He’s torn things up pretty badly, but he has his cubs now. You wouldn’t believe what a difference that has made. The happiest and sweetest old bear you ever saw.’
‘How are you going to transport him?’ the captain asked. ‘Can we help? There’s no war on at the moment and we have a lot of planes standing idle. You can use one if you wish.’
‘That’s just fine,’ said Hal. ‘The only thing is, how do we get the bear and his cubs down to you?’
‘No need to do that. We’ll send a transport plane up there. Is there any sort of a runway?’
‘Not a real runway, but there’s a long straight stretch that might serve.’
‘I’ll have a transport up there in half an hour.’
They did better than that. In twenty minutes a transport plane settled down on top of Mount Sharatin. The Navy had all sorts of planes, and the ‘transport plane’ was a boxlike affair quite strong enough to carry a 2,000-pound bear and his cubs, plus two boys whose work was done. The pilot was a brisk young fellow who had never seen New York and was delighted to have this chance.
‘But how are you going to get the three bears into the plane?’ he wanted to know.
‘Very simple,’ said Hal.
He picked up the two cubs and put them aboard. The big bear promptly followed them. The sliding door at the rear was let down.
‘Got room for us too?’ asked Hal.
‘Sure. Right up in front with me,’ said the pilot.
The great box, ten feet wide and as high as a room, trundled bumpily over the ground to the edge of a cliff and then launched out into space. At first it fell dizzily. But soon it was under control and came down at the airport to pick up Nanook. This done, it rose into the sky, passed over the harbour and above the reef called Albatross Bank, where dozens of the great birds were fishing for salmon. Then in an almost direct line it flew over Juneau, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Toronto, over the skyscrapers of New York to come down at last on the Hunt Wild Animal Farm.
John Hunt looked with amazement at the great Kodiak bear.
‘I always knew’, he said, ‘that the Kodiak was huge. But he’s bigger than I ever imagined. A number of zoos have asked for him. I’m not going to give him to the zoo that offers the most money, but to the zoo that can care for him best and bring up those cubs to be as great as he is.’
He looked at his sons with great pride.
‘You fellows deserve the best. These three bears will bring at least fifty thousand dollars. You’ve both told me you want to be naturalists. All right — that money will go into a trust for you so you can get the education you need to be wildlife scientists. You already know the outside of your animals. The time will come when you will know them inside out.’
14 Arctic Adventure Page 15
