Читать книгу Wild Freedom - Max Brand - Страница 10

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What that two weeks of labor meant for Tommy, no one could have told - he, least of all. But for two mortal weeks he was so enthralled in body and spirit that he hardly had time to think back to the father he had lost, or to the strange and gloomy future. Or, if sorrow for the dead John Parks, or the dread of what was to come, now and then darted through his mind with a pang, the pain was short-lived. Weariness leaves not much room in the spirit for anything but itself and the longing for sleep - and a weary boy he was long before the closing of every day. And if he were not weary, he was in the thick of his work or resting momentarily from it or sitting soberly beside the scarred head of mother bruin or romping wildly with the cubs.

They had grown prodigiously during the two weeks. One could hardly recognize in them the soft little balls of fur which Tommy had first seen. They had grown, indeed, like their mother's appetite, and that was the despair of the boy. They skirted here and there all around the clearing. A thousand things came to their senses - things which remained invisible to Tommy.

Sometimes, he would see them, of one accord, start digging the soft dirt where there was nothing on the surface, and presently they would be snuffing in the dirt like little pigs, and champing at white, soft roots. The strangely sensitive noses had told them that the roots were there, perhaps, and century- old instincts which needed no supplementary instructions told them that the roots, once found, would be good to the taste. Not that they actually ate any quantity of them. Mother's milk was their food, and would be for weeks and weeks to come, but they loved the taste of things, of nearly all things, so it seemed. They would chew grass or bark with avidity and eject it with equal disgust. An end of Tommy's coat was a morsel to be tested, at the least, as poor Tommy learned to his despair. They scratched at the bag which held his small and dwindling supply of com meal. And they persisted in coming after him and digging up the grains of corn which Tommy found in a separate bag and bethought himself to plant.

Finally, in despair, he had taken all that remained of that precious seed and carried it back to his own home grounds. There, along the banks of the little rivulet that flowed across his plateau, he planted the corn, with high hopes for what it might bring forth for him in the autumn.

But even his home place was not secure from these ready prowlers. They loved Tommy with a perfect and beautiful love. When he was absent, they wailed for him in unison. And, when he took his daily trips back to the home cave to see that all was well, to replace whatever stones had been scratched from the entrance by some prowler, or to open the cave and examine the condition of his total worldly possessions, the cubs formed the habit of following him some distance down the way.

At first they would turn and scamper back to the mother as soon as the distance made them uncomfortable or the tall woods oppressed them, or, most of all, the sullen commands of bruin herself overawed them. But every day they went a little farther until they reached a point when they were more afraid of going back alone than of going ahead into unexplored country with Tommy. And so it was, to his unspeakable delight, that they one day went with him clear to the home cave.

They began to grow homesick and hungry at once, and they whimpered most of the way back to their mother; but, having followed him once, they could not resist the lure each succeeding day. They returned always to take a severe cuffing and scolding from bruin, but what little bear can remember a beating from one day to the next? Jack and Jerry certainly could not!

Bruin was wildly jealous at first, but her jealousy diminished. If Jack and Jerry depended upon the boy for fun and romping which she could not give them, she depended upon him for the very food which sustained her life, and, though her appetite was even more rapidly outgrowing his ability to supply her with provisions, a small oasis is better than a complete desert.

Moreover, the time of liberation was approaching. Little by little the solid rock had been eaten away by the hammering. Perhaps it was because he had gained strength from practice; perhaps it was because he had studied out little systems of attack; but it seemed to Tommy that the rock began to grow softer and to break away more and more readily until, finally, every stroke gave him a chip.

Yet he still thought that the hole must be far too small when, one morning after he had done a scant hour's work, bruin approached the gap and deliberately thrust herself through up to the shoulders. There she stuck, and, when she drew back, growling, Tommy attacked the rock with a freshened hope. He knelt in the entrance itself. He shortened his hold on the hammer, and the rock fell before him in chunks. Some of those fragments landed with cruel force on the, head and body of bruin, but she refused to move back. With a fascinated interest she watched and held up a great paw to shield her face from the flying fragments, just as a man will shelter his eyes against the glare of sunlight.

Tommy laughed at her as he worked, and he worked until his trembling arms could not lift the hammer again. Then he stepped back. He was weak all over from the exertion. His head swam, his legs sagged beneath him; it seemed that surely he could never again attack that stubborn rock. Bruin, in the meantime, stepped to the gap, sniffed at the place where he had recently been hammering, with her head cocked wisely to one side, and then deliberately wedged into the gap.

And at the first effort her shoulders came clear through!

The head of Tommy cleared instantly. He forgot his weakness. Bruin, grunting with satisfaction, lunged forward again, and suddenly she was in the open, her sides scratched and bleeding, to be sure, by the sharp projections of the rock. But what did that matter, compared with the freedom she had gained?

Jack and Jerry, too, seemed to realize how great this moment was. They galloped before her and stood up and cuffed at her face with their little paws. But the grizzly, with a grunt and a growl, turned about and confronted Tommy. All the friendliness which she seemed to have felt for him while she was hopelessly imprisoned now vanished, apparently. Tommy, with a beating heart, stepped forward with extended hand, speaking softly. But she stopped him with a warning snarl, a terrible, indrawn breath, showing those great, yellow fangs as she did so.

The next instant she had wheeled and was ambling swiftly away toward the familiar shadows of the woods. Jack and Jerry scampered in her rear. In another moment she was lost in the undergrowth. The cubs turned and whined at Tommy as though bidding him follow, also; but a deep-throated growl from the front made them turn about and scurry away. In scarcely a minute from the instant of her liberation she was gone, and Tommy stood still and listened to the diminishing crackling of the twigs. He stood still, and the tears trickled slowly down his face; for, after all, he was only twelve, and this desertion was more than he could stand.

The keen, steady heat of the sun burning through the shoulders of his shirt roused him at last. Labor had swollen his hands with blood. Long labor had weakened them. It seemed to Tommy that he had barely the strength to gather up his belongings and make his pack again. And when he had started on the back trail toward his cave, he was so weak that he had to sit down for a rest every two or three hundred yards.

It was a melancholy march, indeed, that trip back to the camp. He felt in a single rush the reflex of the excitement which had been supporting him for the past two weeks. The old sorrow, the old fear which had been lurking in the back of his brain all that time, now stepped out and took possession of him. And again and again the emotion of self-pity came so stingingly upon him that the tears welled up into his eyes.

He fought them away, at last. He forced himself to raise his head and to step on more lightly, for if he gave way completely to the weakness, he felt that it would overwhelm him in a wave of unbearable strength. But how changed everything was! All these days he had been walking gaily back and forth along this trail. He had come to know each runlet that crossed the way, each clearing, each denser growth of trees. All had become familiar and kind to him by constant seeing, but now the familiarity was gone. The trees wore altered faces. The wind swept through the treetops with an ominous strength.

A chilling thought possessed him. He had been so confident that his blazed trails would soon lead a trapper or traveler to him, and full two weeks had passed without a sign of a deliverer. Might not the entire summer and autumn pass in just that manner? And, in such case, what would he do when the bleak winter dropped upon this country, when the snow fell many feet in depth, and when the cruel northers howled around the peaks and cuffed the forest until it groaned? How strongly that wind blew, he could see evidenced on every hand. Yonder was a tree with a broken top. And here was a mighty pine knocked over simply because it had stood by itself in an exposed place. How dark and cold and cheerless the cave would be through that long, winter season!

The heart of Tommy was failing him completely, and, as always when he was sad, the picture of his dead father grew up in his mind as vividly as if John Parks were walking just behind him - as if at any moment he would hear the familiar voice, feel the hand dropped upon his shoulder.

And he built strange fancies, kind and cruel at once. He imagined John Parks returning, weak and pale, with a tale of how he had been carried down the current, battered and torn by the sharp rocks, but how he had managed to reach the bank; how he had lain delirious and sick for days; how he had managed to kill a grouse, perhaps, and so obtain food. And so, at last, he was come back to Tommy. All the horror was simply a great, gloomy adventure.

Such thoughts came to Tommy as he walked home this day. And before he reached the clearing there was established in his mind an undying hope that once again, before the end, he would find John Parks.

The minds of children move strangely. Delicate, small things which quite escape the attention of their elders, to them are all in all. A tree in the dark of night may seem to them ominous as the villain of the play; a smile may shock them through and through with happiness; and a frown may lock up a lasting sorrow in their hearts. However cruelly casual they may be themselves, they are keenly aware of all the moods of others. And to poor Tommy, lost in that wilderness, every mountain head that reared above the Turnbull valley was as dreadful as a threatening man about to descend upon him, or holding a threat of perpetual danger above his head. So he took this weird hope for the return of his father into his inmost soul, and it cheered him wonderfully. It was like the flame of a match cherished painfully in a wind - the last match of a store, lighted precariously. So it was that he kept that thought of his father apart in a quiet place of his mind, to be turned to in moments of dread and sorrow.

All was well in the clearing. Other prowling beasts of prey had been there, to be sure, drawn by the odor of the strong bacon, perhaps, or lured by the man smell where there was no man. The rocks at the entrance to the cave had been partially scratched away. But no harm was done.

Tommy removed the stones and found all well inside the cave. And that night he had not the courage to go abroad foraging for food. He let the very squirrels chatter unheeded in the trees above his head. He ate bacon and fried corn meal and went to bed hopelessly, wearily. And his last thought before he closed his eyes was of Jack and Jerry. What merry, merry companions they would have been for him! But now they were gone forever from him into the wilderness, and when he encountered them next they would not remember him. All that he had done for them had been thrown away!