# They Who Walk in the Wilds/The Cave of the Bear

Below a sharp ledge of grey and black rock, swept naked by the winds, the drifted snow fell away in a steep slope, and then rounded off into the aching whiteness of the levels. The pale sun glared icily from the whitish sky, calling forth here and there a thin and steel-sharp glint of bitter radiance upon the dead-white immensity of the snow. The wind, which for weeks had scourged the frozen world, had fallen to the stillness of death; and now, in the grip of the immeasurable cold, the gaunt, solitary fir-trees, towering darkly at wide intervals above the waste, cracked like rifle-shots under the fierce tension of their fibres.
But in the cave beneath the ledge it was not cold. Through the curtain of drifted snow, seven or eight feet in thickness, which covered the narrow entrance, the bitterness of the frost could not penetrate. The snow-curtain was supported by the feathery branches of a young fir sapling, which kept the snow firmly in place yet so light and full of air-spaces that its soft shield was a ​more potent barrier than turf or stone against the savagery of the outer cold.
In the faintly glimmering darkness of the cave there was a musky, vital odour, with vague wafts of warmish air as if some great animal were breathing very slowly in its sleep. Now and again there would be a little drowsy whimper, as of deep content, or an almost imperceptible sound of furry snuggling and suckling unutterably comfortable; and in response there would come a faint stir, with two or three loud breaths from mighty lungs half minded to wake up. The air of the cave would be warmer for a moment, and the vital smell more pungent. Then all would sink again into sleep and silence—but a sleep and silence how unlike that stillness of death that reigned in the Great Frost outside the cave!
If Bob McLaggan had not had a will of tempered steel, if his heart had not been as stout as his muscles were enduring, he would, hours back, have given up the hopeless struggle and sunk down into the snow to his final sleep. And in the following summer, perhaps, some migrant Indian or trapper would have come upon his bones, picked clean by minks and foxes. Not born to the backwoods, and presuming too far upon his ​strength and his acquired woodcraft, he had needlessly challenged the Wilderness in its most implacable mood, and the challenge had been vindictively accepted. Just at that time when the northern winter is often at its deadliest, before yielding to the approach of spring, he had set out from Gilson's Camp, on his snow-shoes, to cut across the Height of Land to Burnt Brook Settlement. This, at best, was a ten hours' tramp; but he was an expert on the snow-shoes, and well seasoned to cold and fatigue. Moreover, having hunted all through that region the previous autumn, he flattered himself that he knew the way as well as any native.
McLaggan journeyed light. He carried with him his sporting rifle, a .303, which suited him for any game from a partridge to a bull-moose. At his belt was slung a little tin kettle, that he might melt snow and refresh himself with hot tea on his journey. And in the haversack on his back, along with a change of raiment, went a loaf of camp bread and a generous "chunk" of cold boiled pork. The rest of his belongings at the camp he left behind him, to be carried by the first team which should be sent in to the settlement.
McLaggan set out in high spirits eager for a taste of civilization after months of the Wilderness winter. He thought of the homely houses of the little, straggling backwoods settlement, of the ​leisurely train which would come hooting and pounding along, the following day, to pick him up at the bleak station and carry him back to the city. As he swung, with the long, loose shambling strides of the skilled snow-shoer, over the well-packed surface of the snow, his head was filled with visions of theatre and dance and smiling, white-armed girls. At this so long perspective, all women looked wonderful to him. In spite of the intense cold—unheeded degrees below zero—he was all aglow with vigour and anticipation, and the swift red blood raced in his veins under the stimulus of the keen and biting air.
He had started from the camp before dawn. The sunrise, pale and iridescent like mother-of-pearl, had found him at the foot of the long, gradual slope which led up to the Height of Land. All morning he had breasted the rise with gay resolution. Toward noon, assured that more than half of his journey lay well behind him, he halted in a little open space surrounded by dense, snow-sheathed fir-trees, and built himself a fire in the snow. Being a good woodsman, he built a small, handy, intimate fire that was convenient for the boiling of his tea-kettle and comfortable to sit by while he smoked and rested after his lunch. He allowed himself a full hour for this noon halt, and enjoyed every minute of it, outstretched luxuriously upon an armful of scattered ​spruce-branches. Then he buried the fire in snow, slipped his moccasined feet into the moose-hide thongs of his snow-shoes, and blithely resumed his march.
By this time he had come out upon the high and comparatively level, though broken, plateau which crowned the Height of Land. There was now no more ascent to climb, and the snow had been packed harder by the winds, so he travelled more swiftly. But two or three times in the course of the afternoon he felt a momentary hesitation as to his path. Such scanty landmarks as had been familiar to him in the autumn were now hardly recognizable under their deep mufflings of snow. The sky had thickened till the sun was no more visible as a guide, and the soft, pearly, diffused light made all things look alike to him. But he felt so sure of his general direction, so confident in his woods-instinct, that it never occurred to him to verify his course.
And then, when the pearly light was just beginning to take on a greyer, more forbidding tinge, when he was just beginning to expect the levels to fall away before him and open up a view of the wide Valley of Burnt Brook, he got a shock which brought him up in the middle of his eager stride. He ran upon a solitary snow-shoe track!
It was his own! He knew, beyond a question, ​the pattern of it. His snow-shoes were of a shape used only by an Indian tribe of the far Northwest.
McLaggan was startled and humiliated. His woodcraft had failed him grossly. He took out his pipe, filled and lit it defiantly, and then studied his surroundings. Yes, he remembered those three tall spruces on the right, too gaunt to carry any cloak of snow. He had passed them about the middle of the afternoon. He was good and lost. "A pretty damn fool!" he laughed bitterly. Of course, he could retrace his tracks back to the camp—the only sensible thing to do! But then, the shame of it! The mockery that would greet him! And the night would be dark, for there was no moon, and the sky was overcast. There would be only the misleading, ghostly glimmer of the—snow to find his way by. Further, in his confidence he had indulged his cheery appetite and consumed every scrap of his supplies for lunch. And in that devouring cold he was already fiercely hungry. There was nothing for it but to make camp for the night, keep up a good fire, and console himself with his pipe. With the first of the morning light he would strike onward again for the settlement; and this time he would be more careful of his direction.
Having no cutting implement with him but his heavy hunting knife, McLaggan's first care was ​a supply of firewood, chiefly dead branches, before the daylight should fail him; and with the knife he hacked down a few birch saplings, to mix with the dry wood and make his fire last longer. Then, using one of his snow-shoes as a shovel, he dug in the snow a trench about four feet deep, three feet wide, and seven or eight feet long. In one end of this trench he deposited an armful of green spruce branches to rest upon. At the other end he started his frugal fire.
In spite of the cold, which by now, with nightfall, had sunk down upon the voiceless world with redoubled intensity, there in the narrow depths of his trench McLaggan was almost warm. But hungry and exhausted as he was, he did not dare to lie down and sleep, lest in his sleep the fire should go out, the awful cold creep in upon him unawares, and his sleep change into death. Hunched over the fire he smoked and endlessly smoked, and in his mind retraced the steps of his journey, trying to decide at what point he had gone astray. At times he would turn his attention to cutting up the green birch sticks into handy lengths for his fire. Or he would vary the programme and cheat his craving appetite by melting some snow in his little kettle and making himself a weak but faintly aromatic tea of the birch twigs. And once in a while, when the deathly stillness seemed to close in too overwhelmingly upon his ​lonely refuge, he suddenly set up a rollicking song. But this would presently come to seem as if it were stirring some slow, vast, implacable resentment in the heart of the terrible solitude; and he would stop abruptly, feeling as if he ought to apologize, and stir his little fire to a livelier blaze. The fire—it was his one friend; and they two were alone together in an infinite loneliness.
And so the long night wore itself away.
With the first of dawn McLaggan sprang up, shook himself, and tightened his belt. He drank some more of his insipid—but at least hot—birch tea. Then piling the last of the wood on the fire, he proceeded to warm himself systematically through and through. But he had to acknowledge to himself, ruefully, that though food could give warmth, warmth was a poor substitute for breakfast. A few minutes later he was under way, and heading, not back toward camp, but, in his obstinacy, for the settlement.
During the night, in thinking over the lay of the land, he had decided just where he had gone wrong. For about an hour he followed his trail of the preceding afternoon. By this time he had reached a space of broken ground, covered with rounded humps, which his old trail skirted on the left. He had taken these humps for thick clumps of bush buried in snow. He now realized that they were a colony of scattered boulders. He re​membered them from the autumn, and knew at once where he was. Burnt Brook Valley was not more than a dozen miles ahead. His heart jumped with relief and exultation. He skirted the broken ground on the right, instead of the left, and broke into the long, loose, shambling trot of the Indian snow-shoe runner. He would be at the settlement before noon—and he thought no more of girls and dances, but of buckwheat cakes and bacon.
In this mood he hurried forward for perhaps a half hour; and then, without warning, the jealous Powers of the Wilderness, coldly mocking his over-confidence, touched him, and tripped him up. What looked like a firm level of the snow was but the mask of a pit between two rocks, a pit half filled with juniper bushes and débris and old logs. The spreading tops of the juniper held up the snow, like a roof. The moment McLaggan planted a foot upon it, it gave way, and through he went—head and shoulders and one foot first, while the other foot, in its snow-shoe, kicked ignominiously on top of the hole.
Scratched, torn, and wrenched though he was by the headlong plunge, McLaggan's predominant feeling was that of being choked and smothered. Blindly fumbling, he released his foot from the thongs of the snow-shoe. Then he crawled forth, drew a deep breath, brushed the snow and broken ​twigs from his eyes and mouth, and stretched his arms and legs to assure himself that there were no bones broken. In his relief at finding himself uninjured—for a few bruises and scratches were nothing—he laughed aloud. But as his eyes fell upon his snow-shoes, half buried in the snow, the laughter died on his lips. The wooden framework of one shoe was smashed hopelessly.
The realization of what that meant to him went through his heart with a stab. Without snow-shoes to carry him over the soft surface, the seven or eight miles of five-foot-deep snow which separated him from safety would be for him, without food and in that overwhelming cold, a barrier not to be passed unless by a miracle. That cold was eating up his reserves of vital warmth and strength with the greed of a wolf-pack. Already he felt it creeping into his bones. A wave of exhaustion swept over him. He shook it off savagely, and picked up the broken snow-shoe. His whole weight had come down upon it in the fall, jamming it through some interstice between the logs at the bottom of the hole, and buckling the framework both length-wise and across. The wreck was complete, and under the circumstances final. In the warmth of the camp, with plenty of stout cord and strips of strong wood, he could have mended it in a few hours. But here, and in this temperature! What was the use of thinking about it?
​Already he felt the cold benumbing his wits, so he took his bearings and set out once more. He would, at least, keep going to the last gasp. His knapsack he threw away, a now useless burden in the struggle for life. But the snow-shoes he clung to, with a fleeting notion that he might yet do something with them. A mere feather-weight, he slung them on his back in place of the discarded knapsack. But his rifle, carefully cleared of snow, he carried ready for use. It might provide the miracle that was needed to pull him through. For it was food, and food alone, that could save him.
The snow, except in scant patches where it had drifted thin, lay everywhere from four to five feet deep. At every step McLaggan sank, sometimes only to the knee, more often to the thigh, to the waist. He did not walk, he floundered. At first he could keep straight on for several hundred yards before he would have to pause for breath. The exertion, calling into play every muscle of his body, soon warmed him, but he knew this inner warmth, with nothing to feed it, was only the more quickly exhausting him. He prudently moderated his exertions. He half closed his eyes; he banished all thoughts; he concentrated his will upon economizing every ounce of energy in muscle, nerve, or brain—in brain above all, for there, he knew, lay the springs of his will and his vitality. Nevertheless, within less than an hour he found ​that his enforced halts for rest were growing more and more frequent. A deadly exhaustion was beginning to clutch at him. If only he could get a mouthful of food he could keep it at bay. At every halt he opened his eyes wide and peered eagerly about him, in the hope of glimpsing some winter prowler whom he could shoot. But the wilderness was lifeless. Not even a rabbit-track could he see anywhere upon the stainless levels of the snow. And if there were no rabbits abroad, there was small likelihood of any others of the wild kindred, all hunters of rabbits, crossing his desperate path.
For another hour McLaggan laboured on, his progress growing ever slower and slower. Then he began to lose count and care of time. He would allow himself to think only of keeping his direction and conserving his vital force. Through his half-closed lids he began to see curious coloured lights, and the scattered fir trees under their loads of snow would from time to time seem to stagger grotesquely, then recover themselves and stand erect again with the rigid air of a drunken man who protests he is not drunk. McLaggan found himself laughing foolishly at the action of the trees, and assuring himself that if they had really staggered they must have shed their snow. Then his watchful will prodded his brain sharply to attention; and, thoroughly startled to observe how ​his wits had wandered, he pulled himself together with renewed resolution. A critical glance at his back tracks, however, showed him that it was his wits only, and not his feet, that had wavered. He gathered a handful of bud-tips from a birch sapling, chewed them vigorously, and floundered forward with the feeling of having made a fresh start.
In response to the spur of his will McLaggan kept going for another hour. But now, under the persistent sapping of his energy by the intense cold, the violence of his exertion was no longer keeping up his internal warmth. He began to persuade himself that it would be best to find a sheltered spot, build a fire, warm himself, and rest. His saner self, however, reminded him angrily that as he had nothing to eat he would only grow weaker and weaker beside his fire till he could no longer gather wood for it, and would then lie down to death beside its ashes. Time, as well as all else in the world, he told himself bitterly, was against him. Well, he would not yield. He would not meet Fate lying down. He would fall fighting, if fall he must.
At this point McLaggan hardly had life enough left to see where he was going. He found himself suddenly confronted by a high ledge of grey and black rock, its steep front shrouded to half its height with snow. Again he had lost his way. ​The shock revived him for a moment. His eyes opened wide. He braced back his shoulders. He would climb the ledge; and perhaps from that post of vantage he might find himself nearer to his destination than he had dared to think. After all, he had been travelling many hours since last night's camp.
A little to the right the ledge offered a chance of easy ascent. Close past the face of it McLaggan went floundering desperately, hugging his new hope and refusing to admit to himself for an instant how piteously frail a one it was. His first steps went deeper than he expected. They found no bottom. With a startled cry he threw himself backwards, but too late to extricate himself. His face blinded in the smother of snow, he shot down feet foremost, landed softly, pitched aside sharply to the left into empty space, and fell in a heap, his exhausted muscles refusing to make any further effort whatsoever.
Lying there with his eyes shut, McLaggan's first dim thought was: "That settles it! Better here than out there in the damned snow!" He just wanted to go to sleep. But once more that indomitable will of his got busy, and prodded his brain awake. It prodded his senses awake. This ​faint warmth enwrapping and reviving him! It was not the fatal illusion of those who are freezing to death. It was something outside himself. He savoured it as he drew in his breath. Then his woods-wise nostrils, long benumbed, suddenly regained their sensitiveness. They sniffed with enlightenment. There was no mistaking that pungent smell! McLaggan realized that he had fallen into the cave of a hibernating bear.
This meant food, strength, salvation! McLaggan's stiff fingers assured themselves that they still clutched his rifle. Stealthily he felt for his knife. It was in his belt. But it was no time for haste or blundering. He stifled the sudden rage of his hunger, silenced his harsh breathing, and listened. He remembered that by this time of year a bear would be nearing the end of its winter sleep and beginning to shake off its torpor. Perhaps this one was awake, and if so, a terrible antagonist at such close quarters! His ears strained intently. He caught a sound of suckling, a faint, small, sleepy whimper of content, a low, slow sound of deep-lunged breathing. The situation was clear to him on the instant. Certainly the owner of the cave was sleeping soundly, not to have been disturbed by his rude invasion of her fond home. McLaggan turned his head towards the direction of the sounds, and presently his eyes managed to distinguish their source.
​McLaggan thought swiftly. He knew bears. He knew that, as a rule, it is only the females heavy with young that "hole up" in this way for the winter. He knew that they frequently gave birth to their cubs before the end of their winter sleep. And he had been told by a wise old Indian guide that under such conditions a bear, unless aroused by violence, was quite stupidly gentle and tractable. He thought of his own present weakness. Well, he would take no risks. He must see to it that one shot would settle the matter instantaneously. For already his last spurt of strength and decision was dying down, and he felt a deadly exhaustion stealing over him.
With rifle ready McLaggan crawled close up to that large, obscure form, put out a cautious naked hand, and touched it. It was the silken, furry head of the suckling cub that he touched. The cub gave a little whimper of content at the touch, mistaking it for the mother's caress. The warmth, the softness, a ridiculous sense of security and shieldedness in contrast to the bitter loneliness of death outside the cave, produced an amazing effect on McLaggan in his weakness. He wanted to hug the warm cub to his heart, and maudlin tears welled to his eyes. But fortunately at the same moment another impulse, not only stronger but saner, seized him. He realized that the cub was swallowing warm milk. With a gasp ​of greed he thrust his face down into the mother's fur, beside the youngster's head. His eager lips found and closed upon the object of their quest, and in a second more he was drawing warm life into his shrunken veins.
At this stage it was beyond McLaggan's power, or wish, to think. The reaction was too exquisite. He drank, and drank, snuggled against the cub. He was warm at last. He was comfortable beyond the utmost dream of comfort. One foolish hand moved up confidingly like a baby's and clutched into the deep fur on the mother's flank. McLaggan, there between the bear's great paws, was dozing off to sleep.
Presently the mother stirred. This unwonted drain upon her resources began to reach her consciousness with its tidings of something out of the ordinary. She lifted her head in a drowsy fashion, craned it about, and sniffed inquiringly at the cub. It was nursing, and whimpered a contented response to her caress. Plainly it was all right. Her great muzzle passed it over, and came in contact with McLaggan's face, glued to one of her teats.
She drew back her muzzle. This was so surprising that she almost woke up. But the hibernating drowsiness was still thick in her veins, clouding her brain. She sniffed at McLaggan again. She did not quite like the smell of him. But on ​the other hand she liked well what he was doing. It seemed at once to establish a claim upon her. She was a very big and healthy bear, who in her previous essays in maternity had always achieved twins; and now this one rather puny offspring of hers was not fully absorbing her superabundant milk. McLaggan's greedy demands were comfortable to her. And he was so obviously harmless and friendly. She adopted him complacently. She licked the back of his head for a few seconds, so vigorously that she pushed his cap off; and McLaggan, waking just sufficiently to think he was in a propitious but preposterous dream, clutched her fur more securely and renewed his blessed meal.
Still dimly puzzled, but too drowsy to consider the matter further, the bear gave a satisfied woof and settled back to sleep again.
When McLaggan, after hours of deep slumber, woke up again, his first conscious thought was that he felt quite well and strong, but somewhat wearied by dreams. By this time it was night in the world, and the darkness of the cave was absolute. At first McLaggan thought he was in his bunk at the camp. Feeling his face and hands buried in warm, breathing fur, he decided that he was still dreaming, and he lay very quiet, with his eyes shut, striving to keep his hold upon such a curious and interesting dream that he might remember ​it in all details. But under this effort his brain flashed clear; and with a jump of his heart he realized exactly where he was. The trained prudence of the woodsman, however, saved that jump of the heart from translating itself to the muscle. For a moment he felt a chill of fear. Very softly he felt for his rifle. Yes, there it was, close at his side, where he had let go of it in order to feed more greedily. He relinquished it again at once, with a curious qualm as if he had been caught in an act of treachery. At least, there was no need of doing anything detestable for the moment. The furry pillow beneath his head was heaving so slowly that he knew the bear was sound asleep. The cub, too, no longer nursing, was asleep. He touched it, and its little paws were folded over its nose. Then he noticed a slight chilly feeling on the back of his head and neck. He felt the place with his hand, and realized that the bear had recently been licking him. She had licked the hair firmly in the wrong direction, and left it moist. At this evidence of the great beast's complacency towards his intruding helplessness, when she might so easily—and justly—have crunched his neck with one lazy snap of her jaws, a wave of gratitude surged up in his heart, followed by a spasm of disgust as he thought of the hateful deed to which he should probably be driven. Every fibre of him now shrank from such a deed. Perhaps ​if he could have a smoke some way of escape from it might be revealed to him!
But the lighting of a match, the pungent smell of the pipe! There would be risk of rousing his strange hostess, to a too discriminating wakefulness! However, his confidence grew as he thought of how assiduously she had licked the back of his head. That, he reflected, was nothing short of adoption. He had been accepted and admitted to full cub-ship. He allowed himself to stroke the old bear's head and scratch it softly around the ears; and he was rewarded by a sleepy woof of satisfaction.
He sat up, and, leaning back luxuriously against the bear's stomach, proceeded to fill his pipe, feeling very safe and comfortable. Then, rising carefully to his feet without disturbing the cub which had been nestled against him, he groped his way to the exit, which he discovered by plunging his hand into the snow. Here, with his back to the bear, and concealing the flame of the match beneath his coat, he lit the pipe, and stood there blowing every mouthful of the smoke carefully forth through the snow. But here by the opening of the cave he was sharply reminded of the terrors of the outer cold. By the time he had finished his pipe he was chilled to the bone. Gratefully he turned back to his warm retreat and snuggled down again between the old bear's paws. The ​cub had resumed its nursing. He promptly followed its example; and having made a good meal he dozed off to sleep again, telling himself it would be time enough in the morning to face decisions. His first need, surely, was to recover his strength!
This time, being deeply at ease in his mind, McLaggan slept long. He woke up very hungry, and at once, by prompt instinct, applied himself thirstily to the copious source of nourishment which had already served him so well. Then, opening his eyes, he found that the cave was full of a faint, glimmering, bluish light, and he realized how long he must have slept. His watch had stopped long ago, forgotten, but it must be well past noon, and a brilliant day in the icy world, to send so much light into his refuge. He looked at the sleeping, shaggy bear. He looked at the sleek little cub, suckling, and snuffling, and kneading its mother's breast with its baby paws. He thought of the ancient story of the viper, which stung the man who had warmed it to life in his bosom. "Not for me, thank you!" he muttered. "I'll fill my skin right up to the neck with your good milk, old girl, and see if I can't make Burnt Brook on that. It can't be far now, and thanks to your hearty hospitality I feel quite fit."
Having swallowed all the milk that he could hold, McLaggan was again filling his pipe, when through the curtain of snow he caught a faint ​sound of human voices. Instantly jamming on his cap, and snatching up his rifle and snow-shoes, he dived through the snow, crashed through the branches of the bush, and struggled, spluttering and blowing, to the top of the hole. Before he could get the snow out of his eyes, his ears were greeted with a cry of "Well, I'll be damned! Here he is!"
Two of the "hands" from the camp, Long Jackson and Baldy Davis, grinning broadly with relief through the icicles on their moustaches, and steaming from their nostrils like locomotives, stood before him.
"What's been the matter, Mac?" demanded Baldy Davis.
"Got lost, like a damn fool," answered McLaggan. "Fell in a hole. Broke my snow-shoes. Thank God you've come. But what fetched you along this way?"
"The Boss wanted you to see to something or other for him at the settlement, and phoned in to Curtis's last night. When they said you hadn't turned up, he knowed something was wrong. So he sent Long Jackson an' me out on yer trail afore daylight this mornin', in a hurry; an' you bet we've done some travellin'."
"Thought we'd find you stiff," broke in Jackson. "But you don't look dead. What you been doin'?"
​"Hugging up to a sleepy-old bear, to keep warm, bless her," explained McLaggan. "Got any grub with you? I want a square feed, and a tin of tea."
"A bear?" cried Davis eagerly, snatching at his gun and starting to slip off his snow-shoes. "Where is he? In that hole?"
"No, you don't, Baldy," snapped McLaggan, sharp as a whip-lash, grabbing Davis savagely by the wrist. "No, you don't! See?"
Then, noticing Davis's astonishment, he continued more mildly: "You see, Baldy, that old bear's my pal. She adopted me, that she did, when I was just all in. Why, she's licked my back hair all the wrong way, so hard I don't know as I'll ever get it to lay straight again."
"My mistake. I apologize," responded Davis good-humouredly.
Long Jackson, a woodsman and trapper of experience who had been wont to study the wild kindreds even more intently than he hunted them, divined all McLaggan's experience in a flash.
"I see," said he, nodding his head. "An old she-bear, an' cubs, eh? Too sleepy to know the difference, eh? An' I'll bet you stole the cubs' rations, eh, Mac?"
"Only one cub—and me!" laughed McLaggam "There was plenty for the two of us. But right now I'd like something solider than warm milk."
"We'll move round yonder into the sun, an' ​build a fire, an' have a feed," said Jackson. "Baldy an' me's needing it most as much as you. Here's an extra pair o' snow-shoes we brought along, case of an accident. We're not more'n two hours from the settlement now."
Snug beside the deeply trenched fire, with bread and bacon between his ribs and a tin of scalding tea in his hand, McLaggan unfolded his adventures.
"So now, you see," he concluded, "I'm a bear by adoption and grace. Do you wonder I've got a soft spot in my heart for the old girl?"
"I guess," said Baldy Davis, chewing thoughtfully on his pipe-stem, "ye'd better not say anything at all about it, not to nobody, Mac. There's all kind of folks in at the settlement; an' like as not there'd be some skunk stinkin' mean enough to come right out here after that bear's pelt."
"Baldy's right," grunted Jackson.
McLaggan meditated, scowling darkly. Then he got up, took a snow-shoe, and carefully shovelled back the snow into the hole till there was no sign to distinguish it.
"That's a damn good notion of yours, Baldy," said he. "Mum's the word, till the snow's off. If I got wind of any blasted sinner messing round after that there bear, before she's out an' around and able to take care of herself, I'd break his neck for him, that I would."