CHAPTER XXXI

A STRUGGLE WITH OLD BRUIN

Andy had just begun with ‘Our text shall be--’ when he was interrupted and silenced by a frightful crashing noise of dry roots being broken and branches being snapped off. A sound like the panting and puffing of a frightened and hunted animal came nearer. At the same time came a dull and terrifying grumbling and growling, which made the very tree-trunks tremble.

Something white gleamed forth. A young heifer broke out from the woods into the open space, running the race of a death-hunted animal. A full-grown bear was at her heels, a rough brown beast, with small eyes gleaming wickedly and hungrily out of the shaggy head.

Instantly Andy threw down the book out of which he was just about to preach. Swift as lightning he seized the horn, put it to his lips, and blew with all his strength right into the bear’s ears, just as he ran past the stone after the heifer, which he was on the point of seizing.

The bear staggered backward at the ugly, unexpected noise right in his sensitive ears. It was exactly as if he had received a blow on the head, for the sounds Andy was able to force from the horn were frightful.

The bear rose on his hind legs and put one of his front paws to his ear. Then he caught sight of the boy rascal on the stone and turned his attention to him, while the heifer, bellowing and with tail in air, disappeared into the woods.

If Andy’s position up there on the stone, with the bear reaching furiously up after him with his paws, was anything but pleasant, Maglena’s, who was down below, was not much better.

She did not dare move, and she did not dare scream. Andy shrieked at her, between his roaring into the horn at the bear, to keep quiet so that the beast would not notice that she was there.

‘Be quiet!’ But it is not so easy to be quiet when one is small and alone just a few steps from a hungry, thwarted, growling bear, for whom one would be only a bite, and, besides, when one is frightened to death over a brother who is in a position almost as dangerous, and who is the only thing one owns in all the world.

But Maglena controlled herself and did not scream, though she trembled like an aspen tree when the north wind shakes it.

‘Climb up on the east side!’ shrieked Andy ferociously, in order to frighten the bear with the same voice when he no longer had the strength to blow the horn. Maglena took a few flying leaps toward the stone. Her brother’s words were a command almost as if followed by the lash.

She threw off the birch-bark shoes, stuck toes and fingers into the crevices, tore her skin, broke her nails, was purple in the face with fright and exertion--every moment on the verge of slipping and plunging down again. Andy heard her panting between the bear’s roars. He leaped back, leaned down and caught hold of her, so she got over the steepest part.

Maglena suddenly became strangely strong and brave. In comparison with being down there alone face to face with the bear, she felt safe and protected up here on the stone with Andy beside her. This feeling renewed her strength and put life into her limbs and a voice into her throat.

She had heard that one could scare a bear with shrieks and clamor and a fearless attitude. And Maglena knew well that he was afraid of the look in people’s eyes, so she lay down flat on her stomach, with her head out over the stone and shrieked at the bear, who, at sight of her, stepped backward amazed, and peered up at her with a tragic-comic, almost frightened look in his eyes.

He did not look so dangerous from here either, thought Maglena. When he put his head on the side like that and whined a little, as if he had an earache from the horn’s cracked roaring, he seemed simply dejected and depressed.

‘Be quiet a bit, Andy,’ cried Maglena petulantly; the din had become too much even for her ears. Andy lowered the horn, astonished at his sister’s undaunted voice.

‘Old Fellow, old Bruin,’ said Maglena with her eyes fixed steadily on the bear as she used to do when she wanted to quiet other angry animals. ‘Old Brownie!’ Her voice sounded actually caressing. ‘You mustn’t be mad at us. We are small, we are, and alone, and we haven’t anything to defend ourselves with against you.’

The bear scratched himself behind the ear with his paw, his eyes became less angry. The ringing, caressing voice, and the man-child’s good, steady, strong-willed gaze made him uncertain and doubtful as to whether he should continue to try to get at the boy in return for the delicious heifer he had let slip, or whether he should give up and leave the poor little humans in peace.

The bear lowered himself thoughtfully, ready to stand with all four feet on the ground. Then suddenly, again embittered and _certain_ of what he should do, he raised himself furiously on two.

The boy’s hated horn had pierced his ears again. It made him wild and savage. It was impossible that one who brought about such a fiendish alarm should be allowed to live.

‘Oh, Andy, how you spoil things!’ complained Maglena, ready to cry. ‘Now he’s just as mad or madder, because it hurts his ears, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Can’t you be quiet?’

‘Be quiet when he can take hold in the cracks and be up here in one single leap and make an end of us both at once!’

Andy seized the horn again.

‘But I say you must be quiet,’ whispered Maglena with strangely gleaming eyes. She reached up and jerked the horn away from her brother.

She threw herself down again with her head out over the stone. The light hair, looking like gold in the sunlight, shone about her head, her eyes glowed with kindness and sympathy and agony.

‘Dear, dear old Woolly Coat, old Fellow, Big Father, don’t be mad, but go away. You have the whole woods to be in; you can eat all kinds of berries all summer. In the winter you sleep and don’t have to go all over the country for food.’

The bear became thoughtful again. He sank down on three feet, sat waving his right front paw in the air as if to cool his roused feelings or to gather strength for a new attack.

Andy was absolutely astonished over his sister’s somehow remarkable ability to quiet the wild animal. He realized that the bear flared up at the mere sight of him, and that it was Maglena’s voice and words that calmed the beast. So Andy crept aside and sat down out of sight of the dangerous creature.

‘Sing to him, Maglena,’ he whispered. Andy felt that if Maglena’s talking alone could make such an impression on the bear, her singing would have a still greater effect. ‘Sing,’ he repeated, ‘so we can get away from here before night.’

Maglena was dizzy and beside herself in the struggle to quiet the bear’s roused and angry temper, so that it did not seem stranger to her to sing than to talk, when words, no matter how caressingly or pleadingly spoken, were not enough.

‘You are my rose, my very heart,’

she sang with a voice at first trembling and uncertain. The tears came to Andy’s eyes when he heard her.

‘No one shall us ever part,’

sang Maglena more bravely when she saw the bear take his natural position on four feet, with his head on the side and with wonder rather than anger in his eyes, and stare up at her.

‘Till death has won his will,’

finished Maglena with the sweetest sadness in her voice.

Both her hair and her eyes, which never left the bear, reflected the sun’s golden rays.

‘Old Bruin, old Woolly Coat, Big Father,’ shook himself. He felt disappointed, depressed, and embarrassed. After a moment’s meditation he bowed his head as if ashamed, and plunged away into the woods without following the trail of the heifer.

‘You see, he’s going, poor thing; he’s ashamed because he’s a wild animal and we are people,’ said Maglena. She gazed with a look of real sympathy after the bear, who, away from the power of Maglena’s eyes, galloped away so that the branches crashed under him.

[Illustration: ‘OLD BRUIN, OLD WOOLLY COAT, BIG FATHER,’ SHOOK HIMSELF]

Andy’s spirits rose suddenly. ‘Well, now there is nothing for us to do but to get away from this stone and into the blueberry patch, ’cause I’m terribly hungry.’

‘The berries can be in peace for me. Here I’ll stay all night; I’m as tired as if I’d walked here all the way from Barren Moor in one day,’ answered Maglena, who now with a white face and trembling knees sank down on the mossy stone.

‘Then I’ll go alone and pick berries for you too, for you’re worth that and more too.’

Andy made ready to climb down. He was already over the edge with knees and toes ready to slide down when he heard a beautiful trilling yodeling not more than a quarter of a mile away.

He flew up on the stone again as swiftly as if he had had wings.

‘Maglena, girl! There are people in the woods! How can they find us when we can’t yodel back to them?’

‘Take the horn, boy,’ cried Maglena eagerly; even she had sprung up, all fatigue forgotten.

‘Listen, it’s a dairymaid calling, and one who knows how too.’

Andy took the horn and blew with all his strength--_tru, pi-ri-tu-ut, pruth-tu-hut_.

‘They’re yodeling and calling for the heifer!’

‘Answer, Andy, so we can tell them where she went.’

‘Girl, I’m ashamed, it sounds so awful when I try to blow.’

‘Are people going to be anxious about the cow and maybe lose her if she lies down in the marsh just because you are ashamed? If you hadn’t had the horn when the bear was after her, she’d have been dead now. Blow right away!’

Andy put the horn to his mouth. He called forth such terrible trumpeting and such ear-splitting noises that Maglena had to cover her ears with both hands.

But when he stopped, both yodeling and voices were nearer.