Читать книгу Wild Freedom - Max Brand - Страница 7

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In the last few seconds, fear had been so vitally a part of Tommy that he cast it off slowly. He rubbed his faintly corrugated forehead. He dragged in great, consciously taken breaths. Finally, he was able to step forward without trembling but, at the first sound of his coming, another roar came thundering out of the prison of the bear, and again the big boulder shook as she threw herself furiously against it.

The savage threats made him stop short again, but one glance at the boulder reassured him. It must have weighed hundreds and hundreds of pounds, and, though it was so curiously balanced that the grizzly could thrust it back a little and make it shake, she could never really budge it.

Tommy came to the side of the rock around which the cubs had raced and saw that there was actually an opening a foot and a few inches across, covered with the scratches of the great brute where she had vainly tried to claw out a wider opening.

Her roar had fallen to an ominous growling now, but Tommy, knowing that he was safe, went close and dropped upon his hands and knees to look in. A bears cave is rarely very large, but this one had been made to order for bruin - a shallow place hollowed out of the living rock of the hill. Also, it faced south away from the prevailing winds, which is perfectly in accord with a bears fancy. And the heavy snows of midwinter must have covered the mouth of the cave and given all the necessary warmth. Besides, she had dragged up some brush to close the mouth of the cave.

In a moment, the eyes of Tommy were accustomed to the shadow, and he saw all clearly. There lay the great brute, with the hair worn from hips and flanks. Hair was worn around her shoulders and neck, also, where she had attempted to thrust herself out past the boulder, and there was fresh blood from her attempt of only the moment before. He saw her paws and marked that the claws were broken short or worn away by her efforts to dig through the rock. And her desperate, reddened eyes glared out at him.

As for the cubs, they had regained courage as soon as they returned to the neighborhood of their mother. They began to steal toward the opening from the little cave in order to examine the stranger more carefully, but the mother, with a deep growl, scooped them back with the flip of a forepaw and with a violence that rolled them head over heels. They arose, shaking their heads, whined a little, and then sat up on their haunches, their little forepaws dangling, their sharp ears pricked, and stared at Tommy with insatiable curiosity.

And how his heart went out to them! Bear cubs could be tamed, he knew. He had actually seen a burly yearling chained in the yard of a mountain rancher. And he had heard old trappers tell tales of Adams, king of bear tamers, who had reared bears that fought for him against their own kind and served him as pack animals - even as hunting dogs! And if he had those bright-eyed little fellows in the cavern yonder, what companions they would be!

He sat down with a sigh, cross-legged, and watched them and wondered, while the wise old bear rested her great head on the bruised, bleeding paws and studied him in a reserved silence, as though she realized she had less to fear from this man cub than from terrible man himself.

It would be easy enough. Tommy decided, to lie in wait and capture the little cubs when they ventured out, but if he had them in the cave there would be nothing to feed them. That thick layer of fat which a bear accumulates to sustain it during the hibernation months still left the old mother enough strength to suckle her cubs and sustain herself, and it might be many days before she began to starve. Eventually, however, unless she were freed to forage for herself, she must die, and the cubs must die with her for the lack of milk.

All of this Tommy knew, and the problem weighed heavily upon him. How could his strength avail to move that rock or to widen the opening? And, even if he succeeded, would he not be opening a way so that the great brute might rush out and tear him to pieces?

Still, tentatively, he struck the boulder with the back of the ax. It brought a stunning roar from the old grizzly, so that Tommy involuntarily shrank back; but also he noted that a flake of rock had loosened and fallen under the blow. Tommy studied the monster rock curiously. It was hard as flint in seeming and in fact, but it was so very hard that it was brittle. Its surface had easily defied the tearing claws of the bear, but it proved friable under the stroke of something harder than itself. In fact, as he studied it more closely, he saw that its base, where it had struck other rocks after the fall down the mountain, was powdered to dust.

He tried it again, and with a harder blow, and this time a larger chip was loosened under the impact of the steel. The mother grizzly advanced furiously to the mouth of her choked cave and reached out a long forearm toward him with another roar, but she retreated almost at once and lay crowded back so far as possible in her cave. And Tommy commenced his work seriously.

It was slow progress that he made, at the best, for there must be a huge portion of the rock worn away before the great body of the bear could issue, and all he could do with the heaviest blow was to knock off a thin layer, bit by bit.

There was no roaring from the grizzly now. With her ears sharpened, her head raised, she watched his movements as eagerly as though their significance had finally dawned on her, and Tommy at length ventured to carry his work to the very edge of the aperture which opened between the rock of the boulder and the rock of the mountainside. Now if she could understand at all with her brute intelligence, she would appreciate what he was trying to do, for every flake of stone which he loosened was perceptibly widening the orifice.

When his arms were wearied by the hammering, he scraped the rock fragments away and stood up to stretch the kinks from his back and legs. And as he stood away, the mother lunged forward and sniffed curiously at the place where he had been working. Still she cuffed the cubs into a corner when they attempted to investigate for themselves, but her own fears had so far relaxed that she lowered her burly head to her paws and watched and watched with the reddened little eyes.

Tommy worked until his aching shoulders stopped him, and by that time the shadows were beginning to slope far east among the trees, so he took his last look at the bear family and bade them goodnight. A boy cannot do without names. He had christened the fatter of the cubs "Jack" and the slenderer one "Jerry," so he called their new names to them and then picked up his ax and turned homeward.

Dusk began to gather as he walked, but still there was enough light for him to see and kill another grouse. It was between sunset and dark when he reached the camp with his prize.

Others had been there before him. There would be no need of burial for the body of poor Billy. A scattering of bones was all that was left of him, and Tommy, shuddering, searched the ground and found the trails of great-footed timber wolves and small-toed coyotes. These had devoured the burro, and, led doubtless by their insatiable appetites, they had come to the mouth of his cave and had even succeeded in scratching away half a dozen of the smaller stones.

They had been able to make no entrance, however, and Tommy felt a thrill of pride in his work of fortification. Utter fatigue, however, buried all sense of satisfaction. He could barely keep awake while he half cooked his dinner, and half an hour later, with the fire smoldering just outside the cave and his blankets laid down within its mouth, he was sound asleep, to dream of weird monsters locked in caves from which he liberated them, only to have them fly at his throat. And he did not waken until the sun was over the eastern mountains.