Three Against the Wilderness

by Eric Collier

  The matter of obtaining the coveted photo went unsettled for several days until one afternoon when I observed the bull chewing his cud at the edge of a small meadow only a half-mile from the house. Then I decided to settle the matter for good and get it off my mind, and by hook or by crook get the photo I wanted. And I believed I could with a little assistance from Lillian.

  I brought the matter up in a casual sort of a way, saying, “I believe we could get a photo of Old Cantankerous this afternoon.” Lillian knew exactly what I meant by “getting a photo.” It just meant stalking to within ten or fifteen feet of the bull.

  She wrinkled her nose. “We?”

  “If you’d like to handle the camera while I cover with the gun,” I explained, fumbling a little over the words.

  Maybe I was hoping she’d say, “You won’t get me within forty yards of the brute!” and then perhaps I’d have scuttled the whole idea. But instead she began pulling on her overshoes in a very matter-of-fact way, as if obtaining the photo was as easy as apple pie.

  While she was piling on layers of sweaters and pulling into a pair of stout mackinaw britches—it was twenty below outside—I got her snowshoes from the shed and pummelled their leather harness until it was well softened up. Then I checked the box camera. It held four unused negatives. One would be enough. I then took the rifle down from its peg on the wall and fondled it briefly, passing my hand along its scarred stock. The old gun had been a close companion since 1923. It had provided us our meat. I had shot more coyotes and timber wolves with it than I could possibly keep track of. It had had its fair share of bears, both black and brown. It had faced pouring rain in summer, snow and bitter cold in winter. That old .303 had shared every bit of the wilderness with us and was perhaps a part of the family.

  “Ready?” I asked. And as an aside, I told her, “You look fat as a little Eskimo wench bundled in all those sweaters.” A compliment to which she was deaf.

  But she was all set to go, all one hundred and fifteen pounds of her, and obviously anxious to get the business over with. I stared thoughtfully at the shells in my hand and hoped I wouldn’t have to use one. Then dropped the cartridges into the magazine and stepped onto my snowshoes.

  A packed trapping trail took us within a hundred yards of the meadow. The bull hadn’t moved; he was still out in the open, fifteen yards from the brush. He half turned in his tracks as we came in view, watching us with lazy indifference. The approach across the meadow was difficult and slow, for here the snow was virgin and thirty-six inches deep. It clutched at our snowshoes, and each time we lifted a foot, three pounds of snow came up on the webbing.

  “Think you can manage it?” There was a faint hint of anxiety in my words.

  “I’m doing fine,” she came back steadily.

  With me breaking trail, we moved cautiously to within thirty yards of the bull. He looked as big as a mountain, and was now eyeing us with bold intentness. I stopped and slid a shell into the breech of the gun, and pulled the moosehide mitten from my right hand. Now there was just the thin woollen glove between my finger and the trigger. I glanced speculatively at the bull. As long as he stood with his ears up and mane down, we hadn’t too much to fear from him. Now he was twenty yards from us, and still displaying no outward sign of animosity. I thought, “Maybe this isn’t going to be so bad after all.”

  At this point Lillian must step around in front of me and assume the lead, for the camera had to have a clear field of vision between it and the bull. I stepped aside and allowed her to pass.

  We shuffled forward again, and now there were only fifteen yards between us and the bull. I stopped and asked softly, “How does he look through the finder?”

  “I can try one picture now,” responded Lillian, still without a tremor in her voice. “But another five yards would be better still.”

  Another five yards! That would put her within thirty feet of a bull moose packing as much danger as a case of dynamite. Almost subconsciously, I slipped the safety on my gun. There was no sense in taking any chances.

  “Unbuckle the heel straps of your overshoes,” I suddenly ordered. Free of those straps, she could still move forward but in an emergency could step quickly out of the shoes and dodge. She unbuckled the straps and looked at me as if to say, “What now?”

  My eyes held steadily on the bull. He was watching us with what now seemed to be amicable curiosity. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so hard after all.

  “Okay.” I inclined my head. “Another five yards, but not an inch closer.”

  But those five short yards were a distance not to be travelled. The words had barely left my mouth when I heard the old bull grunt. Both his ears whipped back against his neck, his mane bristled, and his eyes rolled to show a bloodshot white.

  My heart started to pound furiously. My lungs grabbed for breath.

  “Quick, shoot now!” I said, meaning the camera.

  Then the old bull charged. A scream forced itself from Lillian’s lips, one that she could not stifle. “Shoot! For God’s sake, shoot yourself,” she cried, meaning the rifle.

  Even in the wink of time it took for the gun to jump into my shoulder, for my eye to look down its sights, he was almost on top of her. Thank God my heart was again beating normally, my breath coming evenly. Here was no time for panic, but for cold calculated action. It had to be a brain shot —that’s what my own brain said. No other could possibly drop him before his front feet began pounding Lillian to a pulp. It had to be a brain shot—nothing else counted now.

  A good many thoughts could have been hammering at my mind in that swift second or two of ordeal. I might have been cursing myself, as of course I later did, for exposing her to this danger in the first place. I might have been thinking of a one-hundred-mile trek with team and sleigh for a doctor, or of how very much alone and shut away from other people we were here. Actually, but a single thought pounded at my head: it has to be a brain shot.

  I deliberately held my fire, knowing full well that there would never be time for me to reload. Somehow I managed to keep pressure off the trigger until he was ten feet from her snowshoes. Then I held the sights steady between his eyes and fired. A brain shot, I said, it has to be a brain shot. And, thank God, a brain shot it was. He was dead when he hit the snow.

  Slowly, and reluctantly, my eyes lifted to meet Lillian’s.

  “I’m sorry,” I began, fumbling for words. Then for the moment I could say no more. The fear that had been in her still clung on in the tenseness of her face, pallor of her cheeks, dilated pupils of her eyes. And it was a fear of which she need never feel shame. To see Old Cantankerous at a distance, chewing his cud, was enough to tingle the roots of one’s hair; to see him ten or fifteen feet away, charging, was a vision of hell itself.

  I looked down at his body, still quivering in death. My thoughts flashed back to the gulch and the yearling, to those others of his kind that he was forever bullying. Then my thoughts looked ahead, to days to come when Lillian or Veasy might be out tending their traps and now without fear of Old Cantankerous. Then I nodded my head. This was all for the best.

  Weeks passed before we ever mentioned the bull again. The roll of film was sent off for processing, and it was almost two months before we received the prints back. Of course it never dawned on me that Lillian might have actually taken a photo of the bull as he was charging, but when I glanced at the prints I saw that she had. There he was, ears back, mane on end, hoofs churning the snow. And though I hated the sight of that photo, I knew it was one I’d never part with.

  A photo-op gone bad: the moose flattens his ears in anger (left), then, mane bristling, turns and charges Lillian, who snapped these photographs despite the terrifying circumstances.

  I passed it over to Lillian. “Look,” I breathed quietly.

  She took it from my hand, then dropped it. For a quick moment the old fear was in her eyes again. “I don’t want to look,” she said, dropping the picture on the floor. Yet somehow, right then the fear was gone.<
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  Chapter 17

  If your home is in the wilderness, you seem to realize the omnipresence of danger to a far greater extent than do those who move forward through life bumped by the elbows of their fellow men. Death is there in the swaying treetop, for who can rightly tell when that tree is likely to crash to earth, snuffing out the life of all on whom it falls? Death is there on the snow-covered lakes and creeks and rivers, for beneath the snow lurks many a treacherous air hole ready to devour instantly all who might stumble into it. Death rides watchful and expectant with the breath of an arctic wind, for intense cold numbs both the willpower and strength of all who have to face it, breeding within them an almost irresistible temptation to sit down and snatch a moment or two of rest. And if they succumb to that temptation? Instead of a few moments of rest, they are likely to sleep the sleep of no awakening.

  Death momentarily revealed its presence to Lillian when the bull moose bore down upon her. And there was one other occasion at least when for a fleeting moment death hovered but a few feet away from her before turning his back and gazing the other way.

  Lillian was out in the woods at the time, picking blueberries. Veasy, seven years old now, marched along at her heels. August was almost gone and the pea vines and vetches of the timber already smutty with rust. The woods themselves had a quietness and innocent serenity about them that exists in no other place but the deep woods. In berry season Lillian often went into them alone, or with Veasy, into the deep shade of the jack pines where the berries grew plump and lush. Sometimes I went too, although my fingers were slow and clumsy when they tried to pick blueberries. On this particular afternoon I had hitched the team to the mower and was cutting an acre of hay. Veasy and Lillian were alone, the endless forest about them.

  The blueberries were a fruit of the forest that Lillian could not altogether claim as her own. There were others living in the woods who also demanded a share. It was to the heart of the blueberry patches that the ruffed grouse led her chicks. As Lillian’s fingers flew from vine to vine, stripping them of their berries, a dozen mischievous red squirrels were within inches of her hand, helping themselves to the fruit. In blueberry time even the coyote forgot his appetite for meat and became a temporary vegetarian. There were others too who claimed some right to the berries, those who crushed the delicate vines with their own ponderous weight and growled a throaty challenge to any who questioned their right.

  Even in the shade of the pines, the afternoon was hot and sultry. Yesterday it had rained and now steam oozed up from the moss. On hands and knees Lillian moved from vine to vine. A thin cotton blouse covered the upper part of her body, the despised slacks, her legs.

  “You can’t pick berries in a dress,” she told me when, after lunch, I saw her pulling on the slacks and winced a little as she did so. A dozen or so yards from her, Veasy was making a half-hearted effort to fill the tin cup that he had toted along. Like me, Veasy considered that picking blueberries was no job for a man. His lips and cheeks were a smear of purple, for again like me, with every one berry that went into the cup another went into his mouth. But after a while neither cup nor belly would hold more, so with a big sigh of contentment he lay down in the moss and within seconds was fast asleep.

  The sun slipped slowly into the west, and equally slowly the ten-pound lard pail beside Lillian filled to the rim with berries. In her urge to get it chockablock and start back for the cabin in time to get the supper, she moved sixty yards from where Veasy was sleeping. About her all was very still, save for the rattle of berries against the pail and the small talk of the squirrels.

  Her left hand was about to pull a berry-laden vine toward her when her body quickly tensed and she was seized by the realization that now she wasn’t entirely alone, that another was standing close by. Slowly she brought her head around. She stifled the cry that jumped to her throat. There between her and the boy was a monstrous, full-grown bear.

  She doubted that the bear had yet seen her or Veasy. But it too sensed the presence of another, and clumsily came erect on its hind feet, head swaying from side to side, nostrils plucking questioningly at the air. Again a scream was born in Lillian’s throat; again she forced it back. For now she could see that the underbelly of the bear was almost naked of fur, and that its teats were red and raw from the sucking. It too was a mother, and somewhere close by were the cubs.

  With the cubs lay the danger. Usually, any bear will beat a hasty retreat at sight or scent of a human being. But not so in the case of a she-bear with cubs.

  A blur of movement in the bushes a few feet from the boy drew Lillian’s attention. A body took pattern, black, furry and round. Immediately behind it another similar form took shape. Lillian swayed a little on her knees, and her heart pounded as she watched the two cubs.

  The cubs moved within a few feet of Veasy without noticing him, then, rolling over on their backs as bear cubs do when a-berrying, their little fists shot out and began pulling vines to their mouths.

  Their mother dropped back to all fours at sight of the little ones, and she came slowly around in her tracks, staring fixedly at them. A growl suddenly rumbled deep in her throat, and the black mane at her shoulders bristled with brute rage. She had winded Veasy, or Lillian, or perhaps both.

  Lillian wanted to cry aloud, to waken Veasy, as if such an act could conceivably shield him from the deadly danger that had now arrived. But again she held back all impulse to cry aloud and instead her lips began moving in silent prayer. For if Veasy should suddenly wake up, rubbing his eyes, and begin glancing about him, his very movement would attract the bear. Intent upon protecting her cubs, the she-bear would charge.

  Realization of that told Lillian what must be done. Somehow she must try to draw the bear’s every attention without waking Veasy. Slowly, steadily, then, she came up from her crouched position in the moss, compelling both mind and muscles to the task. At her sudden movement the bear swung around and faced her. Holding her own eyes on the bear, trying desperately hard to keep her every movement slow and steady, Lillian began backing away. Now the bear was upright again, jaws hanging open, yellow spittle frothing its lips. Backward Lillian went, cautiously, an inch or two at a time. But her eyes never lost their fix on the bear. Then the cubs saw her, and they raised their little snouts from the blueberries and rolled over from their backs, whining a little as their nostrils sought the scent of their mother. Then they saw her, and with short whoofs of delight they moved into her flanks. Again the she-bear came down to all fours. Her mane dropped, and the flare of anger left her eyes. She greeted the two cubs with a soft cough of affection and licked their woolly coats. Then, without another glance at Lillian or Veasy, the three bears turned away and loped off through the forest.

  Despite the mental agony that Lillian must surely have undergone during those few fearful moments of her encounter with the bear, she took Veasy back into the selfsame berry patch the next day and the next, and continued to visit it until she had close to a hundred quarts of berries sealed down for the winter. Not until the last jar was sealed did she casually tell me of the incident.

  “Why didn’t you tell me at the time?” I exploded, on hearing her out.

  “What good would that have done?” she countered.

  “Well, I might have gone along with you the next time, and maybe got a shot at the bear.”

  “A she-bear with cubs?” She arched her eyebrows. “And what would become of the cubs without the mother? You would have had to shoot them too.” That was the fantastic quality of Lillian—even amid such great danger, she still cared whether a she-bear with cubs was killed.

  “You should have told me anyway,” I argued grumpily.

  Veasy was working at his arithmetic, but now he laid down his pencil, shoved back in his chair and began listening to the argument.

  “Carry on with your work, Veasy,” Lillian bade him sharply. Then, carefully folding a dish towel that really didn’t need folding, she placed it back on its hanger, patted her hair and said
primly, “You didn’t tell me about Veasy and the wolves, did you?”

  Again Veasy dropped his pencil, and this time Lillian didn’t get after him about it. “Why didn’t you tell me about the wolves?” she persisted.

  “Wolves?” Looking suspiciously at Veasy, I asked, “Did you tell your mother about that?”

  Veasy stared me straight in the face. “You never told me not to.”

  My eyes went back to Lillian. A slight smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Let’s just hear why you didn’t tell me about the wolves.” She said it mockingly this time.

  I huffed my shoulders. “What was the use of telling you about that? Had I done so, every time Veasy went down the lake to look at his traps you’d be here fretting and worrying about timber wolves trailing behind in his tracks.”

  Lillian had me in a corner. She rejoined, “That’s why I didn’t tell you of the bear incident at the time. Had I done so, every time I went picking blueberries you’d be fretting about us getting mauled to death by bears.”

  Perhaps Veasy should never have been out on the ice, tending traps alone, in the first place. It happened the previous winter, in January. Veasy wasn’t quite seven, wouldn’t be for another six months. Still, he knew how to set the traps even if he couldn’t pry their springs down with his hands. Instead he scuffed the snow from a windfall or rock, placed the trap on it and depressed the springs with his foot. And held a foot on them until he’d set the trigger on the pan, and they were now ready to catch things, even his own fingers, if they happened to bump the pan. No doubt this had happened, but if so, he kept the secret to himself.