From behind Beetle Rock, white thunderheads had piled up over the dome of the sky. The wind flowed among the boulders with a sound as if it were on some sad search, and urgent now. The air had cooled; the earth had the smell of a giant fungus. The mother sniffed over the lichen in front of the den. She found no new scents, so the family entered. Already rain had begun to fall.
The cubs stayed together near the opening, standing away from that mother who had good milk in her and would not give it to them. But now she would! She had dropped back into a sitting position and held her forepaws aside. The two bounded forward, climbed onto her legs, and pressed against her body, their ears level with her shoulders. She drew them even closer, with her forepaws on the fur of their hips. As always, the brown cub was on her left, the black one on the right. The black one’s claws were deep in the hairs of the Bear’s white chest patch.
With the first mouthful of milk the cubs started a small, weird hum, which grew louder as their stomachs filled. It stopped whenever thunder crashed; the cubs would lean tighter against their mother until the terrible sound had rolled away down the canyon, then would begin their nursing again, and their song.
The Bear looked across the top of the black cub’s head towards the rain outside, a fine falling that she felt more than she saw. The Rock slanted so steeply here, with no leaves to catch a patter, that the drops struck almost silently near the cave. But their sound rose from the canyon, a great hushed movement like the wary footfalls of all the animals who ever had lived on this mountain.
Suddenly the Bear tumbled the cubs to the sides, got up on her feet, and stood at the entrance. A wind-swirled column of the rain blew on her face. She turned inside again and lay down.
The cubs’ meal had filled them with more than milk. The black one, especially, burst with giddy bright feelings. He teetered around on his hind legs, now backing up to try to sit on his mother’s sloping side. She reached around and gave him a cuff that tipped him off. Delighted that she would play, he ran forward and began to box with her. Soon she had him down in front of her nose, meeting the blows of his small paws with one of her great ones. The brown cub came into the frolic, and the mother turned over to box with both cubs at once. They squealed with excitement, staggering away, then rushing up to her again. The mother entered easily into their nonsense, which was only the cub form of her own clowning and bluffing with adult bears.
The family played until the mother discovered that sunshine filled the cave opening. Then she ended the game with a show of temper. They must go on, and into a second danger, the vague threat of human beings. Any friskiness would lessen the bears’ caution.
The animal trail wound into the hollow between the stream and the human village. The hollow was as close to the cabins as the mother ever allowed the cubs to go. Perhaps she would not have brought them to this neighborhood at all if Beetle Rock had not been her home during her single years. Then she foraged around the cabins for such ravishing human foods as melons, bacon, and jam. But, tempting as these were, she could resist them when she had cubs to protect.
Human beings, for their part, avoided the hollow. The few who did explore it left their scent, intensified by their fear. The place was one of secrecy and silence. The only green was the ceiling of branches, immensely high. Beneath it the trunks of the trees seemed merely pillars of thickened gloom. Sometimes a snake rustled among dead leaves, but a hawk’s cry, faintly sharp in the sky, was usually the only bird voice. Human creatures who wandered as far down as the dry creek-bed often were swept with a sudden wish to leave, and would hurry back up the slope, through traps of bone-white sticks, and rotting logs. Perhaps the humans sensed the bear odor, without being conscious of it, and were stirred to a primitive terror. Bear scent was as thick in the hollow as the shade was.
For the family’s afternoon rest, the mother chose a fir tree midway between the bear dangers and the human menace. She sent the cubs up into the strong, concealing branches and lay, herself, at the base of the trunk. Thus guarding them, she dared to sleep.
When the Bear awoke, the light was faint and rosy; the family’s day at Beetle Rock soon would end. She took the cubs to the draw along the northern edge of the Rock. From there they would go down the slope to the stream, and on to Round Meadow. As they entered the draw, however, they stopped at a sound of thrashing brush. With the cubs drawn close, the mother waited. The single female galloped by, as fast as if pursued. She vanished into the hollow. Motionless, the Bear listened, and tested the smell of the wind. Then she continued down the draw, now rather hastily. This latest threat had increased her eagerness to leave the Rock.
At the foot of the draw, the family followed a trail worn deep by the feet of bears. It avoided obstacles as water might, turning always to the under side of boulders and brush, around knolls and through gullies with ingenious logic. The Bear and her cubs trotted along without a pause, heads low and swinging. Their hunger had grown with the coolness of the evening.
The animal trail descended to the stream, but a little above the water the bears left it for a human path that would take them to Round Meadow. This was a trail cut into the bank, one strangely level and smooth beneath wild feet.
Now beyond the bears the trail passed a granite buttress, a spur extending out from the slope. For a short way the trail was cut into the rock itself. The mother could see only a few steps ahead at this point but, impatient to reach the meadow, she did not break her speed. Suddenly, on the sheer side of the buttress, she met two men and a boy approaching from the opposite direction.
Bears and humans came to an abrupt stop. They were close to each other on the narrow path. The Bear saw surprise and something like fear on the faces and in the postures of the human beings. But their confidence returned quickly. The leading man said:
“Sorry, bear, but you’ll have to get off our trail.”
The words meant nothing to the mother, but the tone conveyed what the man had said. It would not be easy to leave the trail at this place. To do it the Bear and cubs would have to leap a distance twice the length of a grown bear. Why should they, when dominance on a trail was a bear’s great source of self-respect? The Bear met the man’s look with eyes steadier than his own, but with anger kindling in them. Her ears swung back and her ruff began to rise.
“Come on, hurry up!” said the man.
His tone was commanding. He was trying to force her off the trail. But the Bear did not belong to one of the species, like dogs and horses, that have accepted men’s authority. She would intimidate him. She reared, taller now than he, and pulled her lips back from her teeth. She snarled a threat. A degree of real fury possessed her, and swelled into her eyes.
The man’s face paled. The sharpening of his scent proved his fear. It was exciting to her! A sense of her great strength swept her, the knowledge that she could knock him from the trail with one stroke of her paw. The man threw back his head. He made a hoarse, defiant sound. He would not turn on the trail. The Bear raised her paw to attack. Only the presence of the second man restrained her. Might he reach the cubs? Even the Bear’s pride meant less to her than their safety.
At the edge of the trail was a filling of loose rocks. The man in the rear stooped, picked up a handful, and flung them over the leader’s shoulder. Quickly the leader and even the boy began to hit the bears with stones. Human beings had a power which made them superior to bears, even though they were smaller: men could throw. They could wound while still distant from an animal. A bear could strike, which few other wild animals could do, but the motion of throwing was not in its muscles.
The Bear leapt from the trail, down the face of the granite spur, into the brush of the stream bank. She called the cubs to follow. The brown cub jumped at once. The black one hesitated.
Now the mother’s nose was struck with a new scent. She flung up her head. Striding from the water’s edge came the cinnamon male. With a frantic impulse to get the two cubs near her, the Bear roared to the black one. He jumped then, and
came down at the feet of the male, who caught him.
The male bear had the cub in his teeth. He was shaking him as a dog shakes a rat. But the mother had reached them. With long claws extended, she was raking into the male bear’s shoulders. She was ripping into his flesh. He dropped the cub and turned, facing her on his hind feet. Her jaws were wide as she snarled in a way that should distract his anger from the cub to her.
The male backed away for an instant. His arms were longer than the mother’s, and he was stronger, but he was not quite ready to meet a fury so intense. While he paused he was hit on the face with a rock. Astounded, he whirled and discovered two men picking up stones and hurling them from the trail. Another struck him; now one had crashed into his open mouth. He lunged for the white patch on the female’s chest, but she was tearing into his side. The male was too confused to fight. He dropped onto his four feet, leapt down the bank, and fled along the stream. The smashing of branches soon was lost in the light, sweet syllables of the water.
The black cub lay on his side among the grasses where he had fallen. He was not moving. The mother rushed to him and at once began to look for his wounds. He had a bite on his hip, which she licked gently but thoroughly. Next she cleaned a smaller bite on his side. She took him in her arms and sat on the bank, rocking him and moaning her grief and affection.
The cub opened his eyes. Eager, excited at this sign that he lived, the mother licked his face. The cub stirred in her arms. His consciousness returned quickly.
The Bear called the brown cub and he came out from beneath a mountain lilac where he had hid. Now the mother was anxious to get the young ones into a tree. She took them to a pine, sent the brown cub first up the trunk, then followed with the black one. The tree had strong limbs, two close together where the bears could rest. When the mother had the cubs in this high refuge, she examined her own wounds. She had only scratches on a paw and the tear on her chest, which was under her jaw and impossible to lick; but no matter. Again she put her arms around the black cub. The brown one lay on the branch beside them.
The Bear could hear the human beings starting away along the trail, far below. The male had disappeared downstream. If he returned, the canyon wind would bring the mother his scent. Little by little she relaxed. She would wait here until midnight, when the moon would rise. Then she would take the cubs on to Round Meadow, where they would stop for food, but only briefly. By morning they would be in a deeper forest.
Both cubs seemed to be dozing, when suddenly the black one’s paw flew out to give his brother a cuff. The brown one returned a sleepy blow. The mother’s paw went down to separate the young bears, but she did not scold them.
WHAT HAPPENED TO
The Lizard
By June seventeenth the sun was no longer a brightness that merely promised heat. On Beetle Rock that day it had the firm, full strength of summer. It brooded the snakes’ eggs, and it dried the wings of the insects, born in a motherless world. It eased the aching leg of the wounded Grouse, and it sweetened the tempers of the mule deer bucks, nervous with their itchy antlers. It prepared the dust baths of the ground squirrels. It made the granite feel as deeply warm as something living.
Perhaps the Lizard received the most direct help from the summer sun. It loosened his muscles and quickened his nerves — as if it said, “Now run, spring up the tree trunks, catch your flies, dart in and out of shadows. Strut the splendor of your throat-spot. Let your bright, inquisitive eyes see as much as many eyes see from one June to another.”
The summer on Beetle Rock was still a mountain summer, and it ended on June seventeenth, as every day, at dusk. The cold of winter started flowing down from the snow fields while the sun was still above the western ridge. By the time the sky was black and each star shone with separate brilliance, pools of icy air were lying in the nests and burrows. The birds had fluffed their feathers, and naked young were crawling farther into their mothers’ fur. The Rock was lifeless under the feet of the bears.
Even then the blood was warm in the veins of the birds and mammals, in the downy fledglings and the mice with the thinnest pelts. But the Lizard had no way of withdrawing from the cold. His flesh and bones gave up the heat just as the granite did. By dawn of June eighteenth the temperature in the Lizard’s crevice was forty-two degrees. And the temperature of the Lizard, too, was forty-two degrees.
Usually the Lizard slept until the sun was high. He woke on June eighteenth, however, while the day was still but a gray mesh over the sky. He had been roused by a jarring of his mossy bed. But apparently no image of snake, owl, skunk, or other enemy had stirred his fear, for he made no shrinking movement and his scales did not grow bright.
The Steller Jay was screaming that a predator was on the Rock. Presently four other jays flew to its tree to aid with their shrill voices. Birds, squirrels, deer, and many other animals were alarmed by the warning of the jays, but the Lizard’s eyes showed only their usual curiosity and trust. In the dim light of the crevice his companion lizard slept.
Softly the light went out. The Lizard turned his head toward the slit where his crevice opened. It was filled with the crouching body of a wildcat. Exposed by the jays as she was creeping to the Grouse’s roost, the cat was hiding now until the noisy birds should turn their attention somewhere else.
The Lizard gripped the moss beneath his feet. For instinct told him that death might flash from this mound of gently breathing fur. He watched the cat and saw her paw uncurl. Although he was almost as quiet as the granite, he became more conspicuous with every instant, for excitement made his scales as bright as they would be at the height of his midday warmth.
The cat had eluded the jays. Now they were merely scolding, not attacking, the predator. And finally they were silent. Still the shadow of the huge round body covered the Lizard and his mate.
Then the cat was gone.
The Lizard’s feet relaxed, but his eyes remained wide and alert. After such a fright he had little chance of returning to the comfort of his sleep. Soon new sounds proved that other creatures were awake and beginning their day. A chickaree was touring the branches of a Jeffrey pine to see if one cone might have been overlooked. The prick of his feet on the bark was inconceivably brisk. The Grouse was beginning to murmur in her pine tree roost. An explosion of feathers, followed by a long soft whistle, meant that she had gone sailing down the slope. A robin sang with as much contentment as though the sun already beat upon his wings. Only an olive-sided flycatcher seemed to greet the morning with a doubt. His notes came faintly from across the canyon, but apparently they pleaded for reassurance.
The Lizard made no move to join the active ones. He was too stiff even to crawl back farther in the crevice where he could better have escaped the dawn breeze, so perverse in the way it sought out every cranny in the Rock and every hollow in a creature’s body. As each lick of its cold tongue sent his temperature lower still, the Lizard closed his eyes. He must wait until the slit of light turned yellow, when he would know that if he forced his legs to carry him outside, the sun would be above the trees, and warm.
When he had felt the worst that the breeze could do, he opened his eyes again. Ahead of him on the moss was the lizard who shared his den. He lay and watched her.
Only a few weeks had passed since she had arrived, unexpected, in his territory. Up over the fallen fir log she had appeared, moving with her tantalizing female jumps, her back arched and her head held low. Instantly a whole new set of the Lizard’s instincts had matured. He had thrown himself before his visitor, raising his body on his forelegs to overwhelm her with the splendor of his blue throat-spot. She had not seemed impressed and had started to leave, with an exaggerated bouncey gait. This unconcern only provoked him more. Rapidly bobbing his head, the Lizard had advanced until he was close enough to grasp her neck.
He knew her well now. He knew her female coloring, her dull sides and the light cross-blotching on her back. He knew her passive ways — her willingness to stay within their own plot and he
r tendency to run instead of fight when another lizard trespassed. She was comfortably familiar to him, or she had been until he watched her on the morning of June eighteenth. On that day she looked different. She looked uneasy. He sensed that she was suffering, for he had an animal’s quick awareness of abnormal health.
The Lizard lay and assimilated his misery. Meanwhile the canyon burst with promise of relief for the six-inch creature in the granite crack. Already the sun had lighted the top of the opposite ridge, had lifted out the upper rows of pines from the layered mists. Soon the shadows would fall away. Sunshine would fill the valley. Then it would stream across the trees on the eastern edge of Beetle Rock. The oval leaves of the manzanita brush would turn from gray to yellow. Splinters of light would slide along the wind-stirred needles of the pines. Specks of hornblende in the granite would flash in the Lizard’s eyes — at last he would be warm! Then he would be prepared for any danger and any pleasure that might spring upon him.
The Lizard crept from under the ledge. Stiffly he moved along the fissure in the rock. His appetite would not be keen until he was warm all through, but already he was hungry enough to be interested in a ladybird beetle clinging to a stem of cliff-brake. He could have reached her by jumping only twice his length, but he was not eager for lively action yet. So he noted where she was and let her continue her sleep a little longer.
He had come to a pocket of crumbling needles and shreds of cones and he burrowed part way under them to wait for the sun. He would have liked to doze, but there were so many quick claws clicking on the granite, so many cut twigs falling and woodpeckers tapping that he was kept alert in spite of his low temperature. It had risen anyway to fifty-eight degrees.
The sun was climbing behind a sugar pine. When it reached the thinner foliage of the top it broke through, and all the terraces of Beetle Rock were washed with cheering color. The Lizard came out from his shallow burrow and lay on the bare granite. Layer by layer his body was penetrated with warmth. His muscles regained their spring. He blinked, and flipped his tail. He lifted himself and drank some dew from the cliff-brake fronds. When he saw that the ladybird had begun to crawl up the stem, he gathered himself for a jump.
One Day On Beetle Rock Page 8
