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Life Story of a Black Bear

<h2> <a>CHAPTER XIV IN THE HANDS OF MAN</h2> It seemed to me that I waited a long time; but it cannot have been really long, for it was not yet noon when I heard again the barking of dogs, and the voices of men approaching. They walked round and round the trap, and tried to peer through the crevices, and they let off their thunder-sticks, presumably to make me give some sign that I was inside. But I remained crouching in the corner silent. Then I heard them on the roof. A sudden ray of light pierced the half-darkness, and in another moment one of the logs from the roof had been lifted off, and thrown upon the ground outside, and the sunlight poured in upon me. I heard a shout from one of the men, and, looking up out of the corners of my eyes, I saw their heads appearing in the opening above, one behind the other. But I did not move nor give any sign that I was alive. The next thing I knew was that a rope dropped on me from above. It had a loop at the end which fell across my head; and remembering Kahwa, and how she had been dragged away with ropes about her, I raised a paw and pushed the thing aside. Somehow, as I did so, the loop fell over my paw, and when I tried to shake it off it slipped, and ran tight about my wrist, and the men at the other end jerked it till it cut deep into the flesh. Then I lost my temper, and when a second rope fell on me I struck at it angrily with my free paw, but only with the same result. Both my paws were now fast, the two ropes passing out through the roof, one at one side and one at the other; and as the men pulled and jerked on them inch by inch, in spite of all my strength, my arms were gradually stretched out full spread on either side of me, and I was helpless, held up on my hind-legs, unable to drop my fore-feet to the floor, and unable to reach the rope on either side with my teeth. Then I lost all control of myself, and I remember nothing of the struggle that followed, except that everything swam red around me, and I raged blindly, furiously, impotently. In the end another rope was fast to one of my hind-legs, and another round my neck. Then, I know not how, they lifted the log, which Wooffa and I had been unable to budge, away from the door, and, fighting desperately, I was dragged out into the open, and so, yard by yard, down, down the mountain towards their houses. I was utterly helpless. Four of the men walked, two on either side of me, each having hold of the end of a rope, and all the ropes were kept taut. If I stopped, the two dogs that they had with them fell upon my heels and bit, and I could not turn or use a paw to reach them. If I tried to charge at the men on either side, my feet were jerked from under me before I could move a yard. And somewhere close behind me all the while, I knew, walked the last man, with a thunder-stick in his hand, which might speak at any minute. It was nearly evening by the time that they had dragged me the mile or so to where their houses were. As we came near, other men joined us, until there must have been thirty or more; but the original four still held the ropes, and they dragged me into one of the buildings, several times larger than the trap, and, making holes in the walls between the logs, they passed the ends of the ropes through them and made them fast outside, so that I was still held in the same position, with my two arms stretched out on either side of me and the ropes cutting into the flesh. So they left me. They left me for two days and two nights. Often they came in and looked at me and spoke to me, and once the ropes were slackened for a minute or two from the sides, and a large pail of water was pushed within my reach. I think they saw that I was going mad from thirst, as certainly I was. I plunged my face into the water and drank, and as soon as I ceased the ropes were pulled tight and the pail was taken away. It was not until the third day that I had a mouthful to eat, when the same thing was repeated: the ropes were slackened for a while, and both food and drink were pushed up to me. I was allowed a longer time to make the meal, but, as soon as I had finished, the ropes were tightened once more. Two days later I was given another meal; and then two days and another. But I was never given as much food as I wanted, but only enough to keep me alive. By this time I had come to distinguish the men apart, and one I saw was the master of the others. He it was who always brought me my food, and—I am ashamed to confess it—I began to look forward to his coming. Kill him? Yes, gladly would I have killed him, had he put himself within my reach; but I saw that he meant me no harm. The tone of his voice when he spoke to me was not angry. Whenever he spoke he called me ‘Peter,’ and I came to understand that this was the name he had given me. When he came to the door and said ‘Peter,’ I knew that food was coming. I hated him thoroughly; but it seemed that he was all that stood between me and starvation, and, however much he made me suffer, I understood that he did not intend to kill me or wish to let me die. Then I remembered what Kahwa had said about the man who gave her food and used to play with her, and I began to comprehend it. No one ever attempted to play with me, or dared to put themselves within reach of my paws; but after a while this man, the man whom I in my turn now thought of as Peter, when my paws were safely bound and the ropes taut, would come to me and lay his hand upon my head, taking care to keep well away out of reach of my teeth. He rarely came to see me, at any time of the day or night, without bringing me lumps of sugar, which he held out to my mouth on the end of a piece of board so that I could lick them off; and after a while he gave me meals every day, and I was less hungry. Then one day another rope was slipped over my nose, so that I could not bite, and, while all the ropes were stretched to their uttermost and I could not move an inch, Peter put a heavy collar round my neck, to which was fastened a chain that I could neither break nor gnaw. And when that had been firmly fastened round one of the logs in the wall, the ropes were all taken off. Wow-ugh! The relief of it! Both my wrists and one of my ankles where the ropes had been were cut almost to the bone, and horribly painful; but though it was at first excruciating agony to rest my weight on my front-feet, the delight of being able to get on all fours again, and to be able to move around to the full length of the chain, was inexpressible. I had not counted the days, but it must have been over a month since I was captured, and all that time I had been bound so that, sleeping or waking, I was always in the same position, sitting on my haunches, with the ropes always pulling at my outstretched arms. For another month and more I was kept in the same building, always chained and with the collar round my neck, until one day they tried to put the ropes on me again; but I was cunning now, and would not let them do it. I simply lay down, keeping my nose and paws in the earth, and, as long as a rope was anywhere near me, refused to move either for food or drink. But a bear is no match for men. They appeared to give up all attempts to put ropes on me, until a few days later they brought a lump of wool on the end of a long stick, and pushed it into my face till I bit at it and worried it. It was soaked in something the smell of which choked me and made me dizzy, and when I could hardly see, somehow they slipped a sack over my head that reeked with the same smell, and the next thing I knew was that I must have been asleep for an hour or more and the ropes were on all my legs again. When they began to drag me out of the building, I resisted at first; but I soon knew it was useless, so I made up my mind to go quietly, and they took me away, down the stream and over mountains for several days and nights, until one evening we came to a town and they dragged me into a box nearly as big as a house, and bigger than the trap in which I had been caught. And soon the box began to move. I know now that I was on the railway. We travelled for days and days, out of the mountains into the plains, where for three days there were no trees or hills, but only the great stretch of flat yellow land. I had no idea that there was so much of the world. From the railway I was put on a boat, and from the boat back on the railway, and from that back on a boat again. For nearly a month we were constantly moving, always as far as I could tell, in the same direction; and yet we never came to the end of the world. During this time Peter was always with me or close at hand. He gave me all my meals, and when other men took the ropes to lead me from the railway to the boat or back again, if I got angry, he spoke to me, and for some reason, though I hardly know why myself, it calmed me. It was not until I had been in the gardens here, in this same cage, for some days that at last he went away and never came back. That was two years ago. When he went away, the new Peter took charge of me, and he has been here ever since. Two years! It is a long time to be shut up in a cage. But I mind it less than I did at first. Why does man do it? I do not understand; nor can I guess what I am wanted for. I stay here in the cage all the time, and Peter brings me meals and cleans the cage, one half at a time, when I am shut up in the other half; and crowds of people come and walk past day after day, and look at me, and give me all sorts of things to eat—some quite ridiculous things, like paper bags and walnut-shells and pocket-handkerchiefs. Peter, I believe, means to be kind to me always, and I think he is proud of me, from the way he brings people to look at me. But how could you expect me to be friendly to man after all that I have suffered at his hands? Even Peter, as I have said, never comes into the same half of the cage with me. I have often wondered what I would do if he did. Twice only have men come within my reach when my paws have been free, and neither of them will ever go too near a bear again. But I am not sure whether I would hurt Peter or not. I like him to scratch my head through the bars. Twice since I have been here they have given me a she-bear as a companion, and she has tried to make friends with me; but they had to take her away again. Let them bring me Wooffa if they think I am lonely. And I am lonely at times—in spring and summer especially, when it is hot and dusty, and I remember how Wooffa and I used to have the cool forests to wander in at nights, and the thick, moist shade of the brush by the water’s edge to lie in during the day. Then I get sick for the scent of the pines, and the touch of the wet bushes, and the feel of the good soft earth under my claws. And sometimes in the heat of the day I hear the scream of an eagle from somewhere round there to the right (it is in a cage, I suppose, like myself, for it calls always from the same place, and I never hear a mate answering), and it all comes back to me—the winding streams and the beaver-dams, with the kingfishers, black and white, darting over the water, and the osprey sitting and screaming from its post on the pine-top. And at night sometimes, when the wolves howl and the deer whistle, or the whine of a puma reaches my ears—all caged, I suppose—the longing for the old life becomes almost intolerable. I yearn for the long mountain-slopes, with the cool night-wind blowing; and the stately rows of trees, black-stemmed and silver-topped in the moonlight; and the noise of the tumbling streams in one’s ears, when all the world was mine to wander in—mine and Wooffa’s. Yes, I want freedom; but I want Wooffa most. And I do not even know, and never shall know now, whether she and Kahwa escaped with their lives that day, when I could not get to her even to lick the blood from her broken leg. But, on the other hand, these thoughts only come when some external sight or sound arouses them in me, and at ordinary times I am content. I have enough to eat, which, after all, is the main thing in life, and am saved the work of finding food for myself. I never know real hunger now, as sometimes I knew it in the old days when the frost was on the ground; and there is no need now to hibernate. My first winter here I started, as a matter of habit, and scratched the sawdust and stuff into a heap in that corner over there. But what was the use, when it never got cold and my meals came every day? My claws are growing horribly long from lack of use, because there is nothing here to dig for; and I know I am getting fat from want of exercise. But it is pleasant enough lying and dreaming of the old days; and, after all, perhaps I have lived my life. There is nothing that I look back upon with shame. It was not my fault that my sister Kahwa died; for I did my best to save her. Even if the later little Kahwa perished, still, I sent one son and a daughter out into the world, fit I think, to hold their own. Above all, I avenged the old insult to my parents. What more could I have done had I had my freedom longer? It is all good to remember, and, except when I long for Wooffa, I am content. THE END <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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