


Produced by David Widger





IN THE WILDERNESS

By Charles Dudley Warner



CONTENTS:

   HOW I KILLED A BEAR
   LOST IN THE WOODS
   A FIGHT WITH A TROUT
   A-HUNTING OF THE DEER
   A CHARACTER STUDY (Old Phelps)
   CAMPING OUT
   A WILDERNESS ROMANCE
   WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE




I. HOW I KILLED A BEAR

So many conflicting accounts have appeared about my casual encounter
with an Adirondack bear last summer that in justice to the public, to
myself, and to the bear, it is necessary to make a plain statement of
the facts. Besides, it is so seldom I have occasion to kill a bear, that
the celebration of the exploit may be excused.

The encounter was unpremeditated on both sides. I was not hunting for
a bear, and I have no reason to suppose that a bear was looking for me.
The fact is, that we were both out blackberrying, and met by chance, the
usual way. There is among the Adirondack visitors always a great deal of
conversation about bears,--a general expression of the wish to see one
in the woods, and much speculation as to how a person would act if he or
she chanced to meet one. But bears are scarce and timid, and appear only
to a favored few.

It was a warm day in August, just the sort of day when an adventure of
any kind seemed impossible. But it occurred to the housekeepers at our
cottage--there were four of them--to send me to the clearing, on the
mountain back of the house, to pick blackberries. It was rather a series
of small clearings, running up into the forest, much overgrown with
bushes and briers, and not unromantic. Cows pastured there, penetrating
through the leafy passages from one opening to another, and browsing
among the bushes. I was kindly furnished with a six-quart pail, and told
not to be gone long.

Not from any predatory instinct, but to save appearances, I took a
gun. It adds to the manly aspect of a person with a tin pail if he also
carries a gun. It was possible I might start up a partridge; though how
I was to hit him, if he started up instead of standing still, puzzled
me. Many people use a shotgun for partridges. I prefer the rifle: it
makes a clean job of death, and does not prematurely stuff the bird with
globules of lead. The rifle was a Sharps, carrying a ball cartridge (ten
to the pound),--an excellent weapon belonging to a friend of mine, who
had intended, for a good many years back, to kill a deer with it. He
could hit a tree with it--if the wind did not blow, and the atmosphere
was just right, and the tree was not too far off--nearly every time. Of
course, the tree must have some size. Needless to say that I was at that
time no sportsman. Years ago I killed a robin under the most humiliating
circumstances. The bird was in a low cherry-tree. I loaded a big shotgun
pretty full, crept up under the tree, rested the gun on the fence, with
the muzzle more than ten feet from the bird, shut both eyes, and pulled
the trigger. When I got up to see what had happened, the robin was
scattered about under the tree in more than a thousand pieces, no one
of which was big enough to enable a naturalist to decide from it to what
species it belonged. This disgusted me with the life of a sportsman. I
mention the incident to show that, although I went blackberrying armed,
there was not much inequality between me and the bear.

In this blackberry-patch bears had been seen. The summer before, our
<DW52> cook, accompanied by a little girl of the vicinage, was picking
berries there one day, when a bear came out of the woods, and walked
towards them. The girl took to her heels, and escaped. Aunt Chloe was
paralyzed with terror. Instead of attempting to run, she sat down on
the ground where she was standing, and began to weep and scream,
giving herself up for lost. The bear was bewildered by this conduct.
He approached and looked at her; he walked around and surveyed her.
Probably he had never seen a <DW52> person before, and did not know
whether she would agree with him: at any rate, after watching her a few
moments, he turned about, and went into the forest. This is an authentic
instance of the delicate consideration of a bear, and is much more
remarkable than the forbearance towards the African slave of the
well-known lion, because the bear had no thorn in his foot.

When I had climbed the hill,--I set up my rifle against a tree, and
began picking berries, lured on from bush to bush by the black gleam of
fruit (that always promises more in the distance than it realizes when
you reach it); penetrating farther and farther, through leaf-shaded
cow-paths flecked with sunlight, into clearing after clearing. I could
hear on all sides the tinkle of bells, the cracking of sticks, and
the stamping of cattle that were taking refuge in the thicket from the
flies. Occasionally, as I broke through a covert, I encountered a meek
cow, who stared at me stupidly for a second, and then shambled off into
the brush. I became accustomed to this dumb society, and picked on in
silence, attributing all the wood noises to the cattle, thinking nothing
of any real bear. In point of fact, however, I was thinking all the time
of a nice romantic bear, and as I picked, was composing a story about a
generous she-bear who had lost her cub, and who seized a small girl in
this very wood, carried her tenderly off to a cave, and brought her
up on bear's milk and honey. When the girl got big enough to run away,
moved by her inherited instincts, she escaped, and came into the valley
to her father's house (this part of the story was to be worked out, so
that the child would know