Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  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!

  CHAPTER IX

  THERE WERE DREADFUL times ahead for poor Tommy, but, of all that was to come, nothing so stayed with him, nothing was so burned into his consciousness, as the fortnight which followed. Yet it should have been an easy time, for the spring was softening toward summer. All the forest stirred with life. And within a hundred yards of his home cave there lay an ample hunting ground for Tommy. He had no need to range abroad in search of game. It came up to his doorstep, so to speak, and invited the hand which destroyed it. Yet he grew thin and anxious. For one thing, an almost straight diet of meat is not good for a child, and though long walks through the forest hardened him, and the labor of cutting down trees and chopping, them into firewood seasoned his lithe, young muscles; still, as he grew harder he grew thinner. And worry was the poison in his life, the worry of loneliness.

  A boy overflows with talk. He is full of questions as a pine tree is full of needles. But all this chatter of light-hearted words and inquiry was dammed and stopped up in Tommy Parks. And he began to develop a deep wrinkle in the very center of his forehead, a wrinkle which should not have come there for another twenty years.

  Every day was a long agony of waiting - for what, he could not tell. But something must happen, something must flow into the sterile current of this life. That expectation took the form of hearing his father in every echo, his breath in the whisper of the wind among the trees, his footfall in the crackling of every twig, and sometimes Tommy would draw himself up with his small fists gripped, so keen was the suspense.

  And sometimes, too, he felt his brain whirl, his eyes grow misty, as the strain began to tell upon him. Every day was an eternity. It made no difference what he attempted to do. ‘Thought came between him and the labor of his hands.

  There is always a saving grace of some kind. For Tommy, it came in the form of the sprouting of the corn which he had planted. In the rich soil of the sunshiny bank of the stream which trickled across his little tableland, the seed germinated quickly, and then the pale green shoots came feebly above the surface of the ground. Once up to the light, they flourished amazingly. A dozen times a day, Tommy went out to watch them growing, and when he sat at the mouth of his cave, listening and waiting for the men who must some day come to find him and save him, the play of the sun glistening upon the waving young stalks was a perpetual delight to him.

  And every young plant took on a different character in his eyes. There were some that prospered more than others, of course. There was one which was the dwarf, the weakling. And Tommy felt a keen affinity for it. Finally, he discovered that it was being crowded by a small rock on either side, and, when these were removed, it began to prosper like the others - or even more so. There seemed to be a greater energy in it, born of repression. It shot up noticeably every hour, so to speak. And Tommy was delighted by it. Though he kept the ground loose around all the others, that particular stalk he tended with an extra precision.

  It was at the end of that miserable fortnight of silence and dying hope, just after he had lain down in his blankets at the mouth of the cave, that a new adventure came. He had closed his eyes and turned on his side toward the cave when he heard a light, crunching sound on the gravel of the small plateau. That little sound was enough to bring Tommy into a sitting posture, fevered with hope. And as he jerked upright, a great growl turned his blood to ice.

  Six feet from him,
a great grizzly reared up with dreadful arms raised, ready to strike. Through the twilight, and looking up, it seemed to Tommy that the monster was as tall as the trees. And he could not stir. Then, from behind the big bear, two little cubs came running to him, tumbled upon him, rolled him over, licked his face, bit at his hair, with a babel of noise and a flurry of many motions.

  Tommy got staggeringly to his knees, with a wriggling cub under either arm, and he saw that the great bear that had loomed so ominously above him the moment before, had now dropped upon all fours and was digging busily for an unexpected root near the entrance to the cave. The family had come back to him!

  Tears of joy started into the eyes of Tommy. He rolled the cubs gaily in the dirt. He boxed them on the ears and was soundly cuffed in turn. For a wild half hour they played. Then Tommy built up a great fire to celebrate the occasion, and the two little bears came close - staying near his side, since he was the fire master - and sat back on their haunches like two, bright-eyed little boys, to watch every dart of flame, every leap of the fire.

  They had been taught many of the mysteries of the wilderness in that last fortnight, but nothing their mother could show them rivaled the miracle of that living thing which had no life, that fluttering and whispering thing which blossomed out of harmless wood and had a sting which would rankle for hours in the tortured flesh.

  It was not fascinating to the cubs alone, but to the mother bear as well. She, too, came close. She, too, decided that safety lay in being as close to Tommy as possible. She, too, reared back on her haunches and sat up and grunted with satisfaction and unending surprise as the fire warmed her.

  That stomach had been hugely rounded since Tommy last saw her. How many grubs, what quantities of white roots, what millions of ants and bugs, what rabbits, what stalked birds, what hordes of honey, had poured down that insatiable gullet since she started out on her hunting expedition, Tommy could only vaguely surmise. But in the short two weeks she had put herself in excellent condition. The scars of the battering to which she had subjected herself in her efforts to get out of the cave were almost all concealed by the fur, though here and there was a place naked of hair.

  What she had become since she went back to the wilderness, Tommy could not guess, but now, when he stretched out his hand, she jerked her head quickly around to him, to be sure, but she made no indication of suspicion. She even grunted with loud pleasure when he rubbed her behind the ears.

  And even the joy of a fire to watch could not take all of the attention of the cubs away from Tommy. Now and again they would steal bright little glances at him, or flick a paw toward him, as though to make sure that he was not gone.

  A strange, strange picture, the four who sat there around the fire, bathed in the light, with the great, circling darkness behind them! But before long the strange odors wafted from the interior of the cave to the sensitive noses of the bears drew them in for a tour of inspection. Tommy took the last, lean remnant of his bacon and the flour and placed it on a high ledge at the side of the cave to which even the agility of the cubs could not attain. And, though mother bruin reared up and stretched as high as possible toward the fascinating fragrance, she soon abandoned the hopeless effort and went around examining whatever she could find. All was thoroughly probed by three acute noses, each of which was strongly attached to the memory of a separate bear, and, when this was done, the bears were sleepy and curled up within the radius of the firelight.

  But Tommy was so happy that he could not sleep. If he drowsed now and again, he was quickly awake. Every time he wakened, he had to step over and see how the three reposed. And, each time he came near, the watchful mother opened one eye and grunted recognition of him. And every time he looked at them, they reminded him more and more of dogs - wiser than any dogs that ever lived, and a thousand times more powerful, of course - but still, very doglike in their ways. And every time he looked at them, the more Tommy realized that life with these companions would be possible.

  He fell into a sound sleep just before dawn, and he was wakened, finally, by Jack and Jerry tumbling upon him at the same instant. It was a bright morning, with the pink hardly gone from the horizon, and all the snow-topped mountains more beautiful than Tommy had words to describe.

  He made a quick tour of the dozen bird traps which he kept scattered at favorable places near the home cave, and he came back with half that many prizes. Five of them went to Mrs. Grizzly; one was enough for him. And, while he cooked and ate his own portion, he was consumed with laughter, watching the mother eat while the cubs played with the flying feathers.

  Yet she had finished her five long before he had consumed his one. She sat by and licked her chops enviously while he ended his meal, but, to the surprise and wonder of Tommy, she made no effort to take the meat from him by force. And, indeed, he had noted before that she respected him always, as though she had been duly impressed by the strength which had worn away the imprisoning rock and loosed her.

  After breakfast, she showed signs of uneasiness and a desire to make off, and Tommy noted them with a failing heart. But at length he decided to wall up the mouth of his cave and, when she left, go on a trail with her. That, in short, was exactly what he did. Hurriedly, he tumbled the stones into place, while Jack and Jerry scurried to and fro, sniffing every stone as he stirred it, and making absurd efforts to imitate him. Jerry, in fact, managed to pick up a stone between his forepaws and waddled gravely along with it and dropped it in place, and Tommy laughed until his sides ached at the sight.

  Mother bruin, before he ended, was on the farther side of the clearing, calling to her youngsters impatiently. So the whole party started out to explore, going straight up the hillside. They set a pace for the first mile which Tommy found hard to follow, but at the end of that time the mother slowed her steps. She went slowly, slowly, her nose on the very ground, and Tommy thought that she must be getting the beginning of an important scent. But, when he ran up to her, he found that she was following a thick stream of ants and licking them up carefully as she went.

  CHAPTER X

  THE SIGHT OF such a diet gave Tommy a qualm of the stomach, but mother bruin seemed to relish that food immensely. Jack and Jerry, incurable imitators, hurried to join in the fun. Here and there they went, sticking their noses into the train of ants, licking them up, and then ejecting them, to the huge amusement of Tommy, until finally the big bear decided that they were in her way and promptly cuffed them aside.

  As always, they pretended that the cuff and tumble had been exactly a part of their plans. Just where they fell, they arose, without a whimper, and began to dig eagerly for imaginary roots. Then both stopped at the same instant and looked keenly at Tommy as though to ask whether or not he had understood. And, though he understood perfectly, he swallowed his mirth - just as he would have done had they been boys of his own age and as keen witted as he.

  The old mother, in the meantime, had come to the end of the ant trail, which terminated in a great hill of newly-turned dirt covered with ants.

  Here she sat down on her haunches. It seemed to Tommy as though she were embarrassed by the riches which were presented to her. But not Madame Grizzly! Presently, with a rake of her claws, she opened the hill to its center. Behold the black swarm of the ants! Those which adhered to the bottom of her paw, she promptly licked off. Then the wet paw was laid in the midst of the hill again until the active ants swarmed thick on it again - when it was raised and cleansed with a few swipes of the long, red tongue. And so the game went on until the ants ceased to swarm - hundreds, thousands had been demolished by every stroke of that great tongue. Tommy felt that he had just witnessed the destruction of a great nation!

  Now she rose and went on through the bushes, but presently she stopped and veered sharply to the left. It was an old, rotten log which attracted her attention. A tug with a forepaw turned over a weight which a grown man could not have budged. And madame was instantly busy, to the horror of Tommy, in eating the fat, white grubs which were exp
osed!

  Truly, this was a varied diet! And who would have expected such a monster to pay attention to such small details of her table? But on she went, inveterate scavenger, and presently picked up and gobbled at a mouthful a dead bird - then on again, following the guidance of that matchless nose.

  Tommy felt that he was being truly initiated in the ways of the wild.

  They dipped into a hollow, in the center of which a streamlet had created a small bog, and here madame diverged from her course for the sake of wallowing in the soft, cooling mud. She came out again, shook herself with a vigor that sent the mud flying in all directions, then started up the farther slope, pausing here and there to rip her way down to roots and devour them, then swaying on with her clumsy stride, which covered such an amazing amount of ground.

  The strange thing was that the cubs could keep pace, but it seemed to require no particular effort of them, whereas Tommy was completely winded before the first hour had ended! Something must be done. A roll in the grass had cleaned the mud from bruin’s back, and that suggested an expedient to Tommy.

  He approached her, when she was starting on after a slight pause during which she had ripped a rotten log to pieces and hunted for grubs inside it, to small purpose. When he dropped a hand on her back, she stopped short and swung her great head around. And when, cautiously, he slipped onto her back she shrugged her shoulders and shook the loose skin so violently that he was promptly knocked sprawling on the farther side.

  He got up a little bewildered and found her turned about sniffing him curiously. Once more he tried the experiment, and this time she allowed him to sit astride her without objection. And, so strangely mounted, up the slope they went together, swinging on at a gait that covered the ground with an amazing rapidity.