The Prairie Chief by R. M. Ballantyne (list of ebook readers .TXT) 📖

net fast to this limb of the tree. After doing so, he examined the priming of his gun, made a few other needful arrangements, and then gave himself up to the enjoyment of the hour, smiling benignly to the moon, which happened to creep out from behind a mountain peak at the time, as if on purpose to irradiate the scene.

“It has always seemed to me,” muttered the hunter, as well as a large mouthful of the prairie hen would permit—for he was fond of muttering his thoughts when alone; it felt more sociable, you see, than merely thinking them—“It has always seemed to me that contentment is a grand thing for the human race. Pity we hasn’t all got it!”

Inserting at this point a mass of the hunk, which proved a little too large for muttering purposes, he paused until the road was partially cleared, and then went on—“Of course I don’t mean that lazy sort o’ contentment that makes a man feel easy an’ comfortable, an’ quite indifferent to the woes an’ worries of other men so long as his own bread-basket is stuffed full. No, no. I means that sort o’ contentment that makes a man feel happy though he hasn’t got champagne an’ taters, pigeon-pie, lobscouse, plum-duff, mustard an’ jam at every blow-out; that sort o’ contentment that takes things as they come, an’ enjoys ’em without grumpin’ an’ growlin’ ’cause he hasn’t got somethin’ else.”

Another hunk here stopping the way, a somewhat longer silence ensued, which would probably have been broken as before by the outpouring of some sage reflections, but for a slight sound which caused the hunter to become what we may style a human petrifaction, with a half-chewed morsel in its open jaws, and its eyes glaring.

A few seconds more, and the sound of breaking twigs gave evidence that a visitor drew near. Little Tim bolted the unchewed morsel, hastily sheathed his hunting-knife, laid one hand on the end of his line, and waited.

He had not to wait long, for out of the woods there sauntered a grizzly bear of such proportions that the hunter at first thought the moonlight must have deceived him.

“Sartinly it’s the biggest that I’ve ever clapped eyes on,” he thought but he did not speak or move. So anxious was he not to scare the animal, that he hardly breathed.

Bruin seemed to entertain suspicions of some sort, for he sniffed the tainted air once or twice, and looked inquiringly round. Coming to the conclusion, apparently, that his suspicions were groundless, he walked straight up to the lump of buffalo-meat and sniffed it. Not being particular, he tried it with his tongue.

“Good!” said the bear—at least if he did not say so, he must have thought so, for next moment he grasped it with his teeth. Finding it tethered hard and fast, he gathered himself together for the purpose of exercising main force.

Now was Little Tim’s opportunity. Slipping a cord by which the net was suspended to the four stakes, he caused it to descend like a curtain over the bear. It acted most successfully, insomuch that the animal was completely enveloped.

Surprised, but obviously not alarmed, Bruin shook his head, sniffed a little, and pawed the part of the net in front of him. The hunter wasted no time. Seeing that the net was all right, he pulled with all his might on the main rope, which partly drew the circumference of the net together. Finding his feet slightly trammelled, the grizzly tried to move off, but of course trod on the net, tripped, and rolled over. In so doing he caught sight of the hunter, who was now enabled to close the mouth of the net-purse completely.

Being by that time convinced, apparently, that he was the victim of foul play, the bear lost his temper, and tried to rise. He tripped as before, came down heavily on his side, and hit the back of his head against a stone. This threw him into a violent rage, and he began to bounce.

At all times bouncing is ineffectual and silly, even in a grizzly bear. The only result was that he bruised his head and nose, tumbled among stones and stumps, and strained the rope so powerfully that the limb of the tree to which it was attached was violently shaken, and Little Tim was obliged to hold on to avoid being shaken off.

Experience teaches bears as well as fools. On discovering that it was useless to bounce, he sat down in a disconsolate manner, poked as much as he could of his nose through one of the meshes, and sniggered at Little Tim, who during these outbursts was naturally in a state of great excitement. Then the bear went to work leisurely to gnaw the mesh close to his mouth.

The hunter was not prepared for this. He had counted on the creature struggling with its net till it was in a state of complete exhaustion, when, by means of additional ropes, it could be so wound round and entangled in every limb as to be quite incapable of motion. In this condition it might be slung to a long pole and carried by a sufficient number of men to the small, but immensely strong, cage on wheels which the agent had brought with him.

Not only was there the danger of the bear breaking loose and escaping, or rendering it necessary that he should be shot, but there was another risk which Little Tim had failed at first to note. The scene on which he had decided to play out his little game was on the gentle slope of a hill, which terminated in a precipice of considerable height, and each time the bear struggled and rolled over in his network purse, he naturally gravitated towards the precipice, over which he was certain to go if the rope which held him to the tree should snap.

The hunter had just become thoroughly alive to this danger when, with a tremendous struggle, the bear burst two of the meshes in rear, and his hind-quarters were free.

Little Tim seized his gun, feeling that the crisis had come. He was loath to destroy the creature, and hesitated. Instead of backing out of his prison, as he might easily have done, the bear made use of his free hind legs to make a magnificent bound forward. He was checked, of course, by the rope, but Tim had miscalculated the strength of his materials. A much stronger rope would have broken under the tremendous strain. The line parted like a piece of twine, and the bear, rolling head over heels down the slope, bounded over the precipice, and went hurling out into space like a mighty football!

There was silence for a few seconds, then a simultaneous thud and bursting cry that was eminently suggestive.

“H’m! It’s all over,” sighed Little Tim, as he slid down the branch to the ground.

And so it was. The bear was effectually killed, and the poor hunter had to return to the Indian village crestfallen.

“But hold on, stranger,” he said, on meeting the agent; “don’t you give way to despair. I said there was lots of ’em in these parts. You come with me up to a hut my son’s got in the mountains, an’ I’ll circumvent a b’ar for you yet. You can’t take the cart quite up to the hut but you can git near enough, at a place where there’s a Injin’ friend o’ mine as’ll take care of ye.”

The agent agreed, and thus it came to pass that at the time of which we now write, Little Tim was doing his best to catch a live bear, but, not liking to be laughed at even by his son in the event of failure, he had led him and his bride to suppose that he had merely gone out hunting in the usual way.

It was on this expedition that Little Tim had set forth when Whitewing was expected to arrive at Tim’s Folly—as the little hut or fortress had come to be named—and it was the anxiety of his friends and kindred at his prolonged absence which resulted, as we have seen, in the formation and departure of a search expedition.