True Bear Stories Part 8

Let us omit the mosquitoes, the miserable babies, nude as nature, and surely very hungry in this beauteous place of fertility. They hung about my door, a "quarters" cabin with gra.s.s knee high through the cracks in the floor, like flies, till they got all my little store of supplies, save a big flask of "provisions" which General Beauregard had given me for Colonel Bloom, as a preventive against the deadly fever. No, it was not whiskey, not all whiskey, at least, for it was bitter as gall with quinine. I had to help the Colonel sample it at first, but I only helped him sample it once. It tasted so vilely that it seemed to me I should, as between the two, prefer fever.

And such a moon! The ragged minister stood whooping up his numerous dogs and gathering his sullen clan of blacks to get that bear and that promised $5.

Away from up toward New Orleans, winding, sweeping, surging, flas.h.i.+ng like a mighty sword of silver, the Father of Waters came through the air, high above our heads and level with the topmost limit of his artificial banks. The blacks were silent, ugly, sullen, and so the preacher asked for and received the five silver dollars in advance.

This made me suspicious, and, out of humor, I went into my cabin and took Colonel Bloom into a corner and told him what had been done. He did not say one word but took a long drink of preventive against the fever, as General Beauregard had advised and provided.

Then we set out for the woods, through weeds that reached to our shoulders, the negroes in a string, slow, silent, sullen and ugly, the brave bear dogs only a little behind the negroes. The preacher kept muttering a monotonous prayer.

But that moon and that mighty sword of silver in the air, the silence, the large solemnity, the queer line of black heads barely visible above the sea of weeds! I was not right certain that I had lost any bear as we came to the edge of the moss-swept cypress woods, for here the negroes all suddenly huddled up and muttered and prayed with one voice. Aye, how they prayed in their piteous monotone! How sad it all was!

The dogs had sat down a few rods back, a line of black dots along the path through the tall weeds, and did not seem to care for anything at all. I had to lay my hand on the preacher's shoulder and ask him to please get on; then they all started on together, and oh, the moon, through the swaying cypress moss, the mighty river above!

It was with great effort that I got them to cross a foot-log that lay across a lagoon only a little way in the moss-hung woods, the brave dogs all the time only a short distance behind us still. It was a hot night and the mosquitoes were terrible in the woods, but I doubt if they bite the blacks as they did me. Surely not, else they would not be even as nearly alive as they are.

Having got them across the lagoon, I gave them each 25 cents more, and this made them want to go home. The dogs had all sat down in a queer row on the foot-log. Such languor, such laziness, such idiotic helplessness I never saw before, even on the Nile. The blacks, as well as the dogs, seemed to be afraid to move now. The preacher again began to mumble a prayer, and the whole pack with him; and then they prayed again, this time not so loudly. And although there was melody of a sort in their united voices, I am certain they used no words, at least no words of any real language.

Suddenly the dogs got up and came across and hid among the men, and the men huddled up close; for right there on the other end of the log, with his broad right foot resting on it, was the s.h.a.ggy little beast we were hunting for. We had found our bear, or rather, he had found us, and it was clear that he meant to come over and interview us at once.

The preacher crouched behind me as I c.o.c.ked and raised my gun, the blacks hid behind the preacher, and I think, though I had not time to see certainly, that the dogs hid behind the blacks.

I fired at the dim white spot on the bear's breast and sent shot after shot into his tattered coat, for he was not ten lengths of an old Kentucky ramrod distant, and he fell dead where he stood, and I went over and dragged him safely up on the higher bank.

Then the wild blacks danced and sang and sang and danced, till one of them slipped and fell into the lagoon. They fished him out and all returned to where I was, with the dead bear, dogs and all in great good spirits. Tying the bear's feet together with a withe they strung him on a pole and we all went back home, the blacks singing all the way some barbaric half French song at the top of their melodious voices.

But Colonel Bloom was afraid that the one who had fallen in the river might take the fever, and so as soon as we got safe back he drank what was left in the bottle General Beauregard had sent him and he went to sleep; while the superst.i.tious blacks huddled together under the great levee and skinned the bear in the silver moonlight, below the mighty river. I gave them each a silver dollar--very bright was the brand new silver from the mint of New Orleans, but not nearly so bright as the moon away down there by the glowing rim of the Mexican seas where the spectacled bear abides in the cla.s.sic land, Barra Tarra, Kingdom of Sancho Panza.

XIV.

THE BEAR-SLAYER OF SAN DIEGO.

Let us now leave the great grizzly and the little marsh bear in spectacles behind us and tell about a boy, a bear-slayer; not about a bear, mind you. For the little fish-eating black bear which he killed and by which he got his name is hardly worth telling about. This bear lives in the brush along the sea-bank on the Mexican and Southern California coast and has huge feet but almost no hair. I don't know any name for him, but think he resembles the "sun bear" (Ursus t.i.ta.n.u.s) more than any other. His habit of rolling himself up in a ball and rolling down hill after you is like that of the porcus or pig bear.

You may not know that a bear, any kind of a bear, finds it hard work running down hill, because of his short arms, so when a man who knows anything about bears is pursued, or thinks he is pursued, he always tries, if he knows himself, to run down hill. A man can escape almost any bear by running down hill, except this little fellow along the foothills by the Mexican seas. You see, he has good bear sense, like the rest of the bear family, and gets along without regard to legs of any sort, sometimes.

This boy that I am going to tell about was going to school on the Mexican side of the line between the two republics, near San Diego, California, when a she bear which had lost her cub caught sight of the boys at play down at the bottom of a high, steep hill, and she rolled for them, rolled right among the little, half-naked fellows, and knocked numbers of them down. But before she could get the dust out of her eyes and get up, this boy jumped on her and killed her with his knife.

The governor remembered the boy for his pluck and presence of mind and he was quite a hero and was always called "The Bear-Slayer" after that.

Some rich ladies from Boston, hearing about his brave act, put their heads together and then put their hands in their pockets and sent him to a higher school, where the following incident took place.

I ought to mention that this little Mexican bear, though he has but little hair on his body, has a great deal on his feet, making him look as if he wore pantalets, little short pantalets badly frayed out at the bottoms.

San Diego is one of the great new cities of Southern California. It lies within only a few minutes' ride of Mexico. There is a pretty little Mexican town on the line between Mexico and California--Tia Juana--p.r.o.nounced Te Wanna. Translated, the name means "Aunt Jane." In the center of one of the streets stands a great gray stone monument, set there by the government to mark the line between the United States and Mexico.

To the south, several hundred miles distant, stretches the long Sea of Cortez, as the conquerors of ancient Mexico once called the Gulf of California. Beyond the Sea of Cortez is the long and rock-bound reach of the west coast of Mexico. Then a group of little Central American republics; then Colombia, Peru and so on, till at last Patagonia points away like a huge giant's finger straight toward the South Pole.

But I must bear in mind that I set out in this story to tell you about "The Bear-Slayer of San Diego," and the South Pole is a long way from the subject in hand.

I have spoken of San Diego as one of the great new cities, and great it is, but altogether new it certainly is not, for it was founded by a Spanish missionary, known as Father Junipero, more than one hundred years ago.

These old Spanish missionaries were great men in their day; brave, patient and very self-sacrificing in their attempts to settle the wild countries and civilize the Indians.

This Father Junipero walked all the way from the City of Mexico to San Diego, although he was more than fifty years old; and finally, after he had spent nearly a quarter of a century in founding missions up and down the coast of California, he walked all the way back to Mexico, where he died.

When it is added that he was a lame man, that he was more than threescore and ten years of age, and that he traveled all the distance on this last journey on foot and alone, with neither arms nor provisions, trusting himself entirely to Providence, one can hardly fail to remember his name and speak it with respect.

This new city, San Diego, with its most salubrious clime, is set all over and about with waving green palms, with golden oranges, red pomegranates, great heavy bunches of green and golden bananas, and silver-laden olive orchards. The leaf of the olive is of the same soft gray as the breast of the dove. As if the dove and the olive branch had in some sort kept companions.h.i.+p ever since the days of the deluge.

San Diego is nearly ten miles broad, with its base resting against the warm, still waters of the Pacific Ocean. The most populous part of the city is to the south, toward Mexico. Then comes the middle part of San Diego City. This is called "the old town," and here it was that Father Junipero planted some palm trees that stand to this day--so tall that they almost seem to be dusting the stars with their splendid plumes.

Here also you see a great many old adobe houses in ruins, old forts, churches, fortresses, barracks, built by the Mexicans nearly a century ago, when Spain possessed California, and her gaudy banner floated from Oregon to the Isthmus of Darien.

The first old mission is a little farther on up the coast, and the new college, known as the San Diego College of Letters, is still farther on up the warm sea bank. San Francisco lies several hundred miles on up the coast beyond Los Angeles. Then comes Oregon, then Was.h.i.+ngton, one of the newest States, and then Canada, then Alaska, and at last the North Pole, which, by the way, is almost as far as the South Pole from my subject: The Bear-Slayer of San Diego.

He was a little Aztec Indian, brown as a berry, slim and slender, very silent, very polite and not at all strong.

It was said that he had Spanish blood in his veins, but it did not show through his tawny skin. It is to be conceded, however, that he had all the politeness and serene dignity of the proudest Spanish don in the land.

He was now, by the kind favor of those good ladies who had heard of his daring address in killing the bear with his knife, a student of the San Diego College of Letters, where there were several hundred other boys of all grades and ages, from almost all parts of the earth.

A good many boys came here from Boston and other eastern cities to escape the rigors of winter. I remember one boy in particular from Philadelphia. He was a small boy with a big nose, very bright and very brave. He was not a friend of the little Aztec Indian, the Bear-Slayer of San Diego. The name of this boy from Philadelphia was Peterson; the Boston boys called him Bill Peterson. His name, perhaps, was William P. Peterson; William Penn Peterson, most likely. But this is merely detail, and can make but little difference in the main facts of the case.

As I said before, these college grounds are on the outer edge of the city. The ocean shuts out the world on the west, but the huge chaparral hills roll in on the east, and out of these hills the jack-rabbits come down in perfect avalanches at night, and devour almost everything that grows.

Wolves howl from these hills of chaparral at night by hundreds, but they are only little bits of s.h.a.ggy, gray coyotes and do little or no harm in comparison with the innumerable rabbits. For these big fellows, on their long, bent legs, and with ears like those of a donkey, can cut down with their teeth a young orchard almost in a single night.

The new college, of course, had new grounds, new bananas, oranges, olives, all things, indeed, that wealth and good taste could contribute in this warm, sweet soil. But the rabbits! You could not build a fence so high that they would not leap over it.

"They are a sort of Jumbo gra.s.shopper," said the smart boy from Boston.

The head gardener of the college campus and environment grew desperate.

"Look here, sir," he said to the president, "these big-eared fellows are lazy and audacious things. Why can't they live up in the chaparral, as they did before we came here to plant trees and try to make the world beautiful? Now, either these jack-rabbits must go or we must go."

"Very well," answered the president. "Offer a reward for their ears and let the boys destroy them."

"How much reward can I offer?"

"Five cents apiece, I think, would do," answered the head of the college, as he pa.s.sed on up the great stone steps to his study.

The gardener got the boys together that evening and said, "I will give you five cents apiece for the ears of these dreadful rabbits."

"That makes ten cents for each rabbit, for each rabbit has two ears!"

shouted the smart boy from Boston.