The bear was evidently a veteran and a fighter, for the black of his coat had become tawny with age. There was confidence in his gait and arrogance in his small, twinkling eyes. He rolled back his lips and disclosed his white teeth. The fire magnified the red of his mouth. The little man had never before confronted the terrible, and he could not wrest it from his breast. “Hah!” he roared. The bear interpreted this as the challenge of a gladiator. He approached warily. As he came near, the boots of fear were suddenly upon the little man’s feet. He cried out and then darted around the campfire. “Ho!” said the bear to himself, “this thing won’t fight—it runs. Well, suppose I catch it.” So upon his features there fixed the animal look of going—somewhere. He started intensely around the campfire. The little man shrieked and ran furiously. Twice around they went.
The hand of heaven sometimes falls heavily upon the righteous. The bear gained.
In desperation the little man flew into the tent. The bear stopped and sniffed at the entrance. He scented the scent of many men. Finally he ventured in.
The little man crouched in a distant corner. The bear advanced, creeping, his blood burning, his hair erect, his jowls dripping. The little man yelled and rustled clumsily under the flap at the end of the tent. The bear snarled awfully and made a jump and a grab at his disappearing game. The little man, now without the tent, felt a tremendous paw grab his coattails. He squirmed and wriggled out of his coat, like a schoolboy in the hands of an avenger. The bear howled triumphantly and jerked the coat into the tent and took two bites, a punch, and a hug before he discovered his man was not in it. Then he grew not very angry, for a bear on a spree is not a black-haired pirate. He is merely a hoodlum. He lay down on his back, took the coat on his four paws and began to play uproariously with it. The most appalling, bloodcurdling whoops and yells came to where the little man was crying in a treetop and froze his blood. He moaned a little speech meant for a prayer and clung convulsively to the bending branches. He gazed with tearful wistfulness at where his comrade, the campfire, was giving dying flickers and crackles. Finally, there was a roar from the tent which eclipsed all roars; a snarl which it seemed would shake the stolid silence of the mountain and cause it to shrug its granite shoulders. The little man quaked and shriveled to a grip and a pair of eyes. In the glow of the embers he saw the white tent quiver and fall with a crash. The bear’s merry play had disturbed the center-pole and brought a chaos of canvas about his head.
Now the little man became the witness of a mighty scene. The tent began to flounder. It took flopping strides in the direction of the lake. Marvelous sounds came from within—rips and tears, and great groans and pants. The little man went into giggling hysterics.
The entangled monster failed to extricate himself before he had frenziedly walloped the tent to the edge of the mountain. So it came to pass that three men, clambering up the hill with bundles and baskets, saw their tent approaching.
It seemed to them like a white-robed phantom pursued by hornets. Its moans riffled the hemlock twigs.
The three men dropped their bundles and scurried to one side, their eyes gleaming with fear. The canvas avalanche swept past them. They leaned, faint and dumb, against trees and listened, their blood stagnant. Below them it struck the base of a great pine tree, where it writhed and struggled. The three watched its convolutions a moment and then started terrifically for the top of the hill. As they disappeared, the bear cut loose with a mighty effort. He cast one disheveled and agonized look at the white thing, and then started wildly for the inner recesses of the forest.
The three fear-stricken individuals ran to the rebuilt fire. The little man reposed by it calmly smoking. They sprang at him and overwhelmed him with interrogations. He contemplated darkness and took a long, pompous puff. “There’s only one of me—and the devil made a twin,” he said.
December, 1892
[The Cosmopolitan, Vol. 14, pp. 241–244.]
* The Sullivan County Sketches.
THE CRY OF A HUCKLEBERRY PUDDING*
A DIM STUDY OF CAMPING EXPERIENCES
A great blaze wavered redly against the blackness of the night in the pines. Before the eyes of his expectant companions, a little man moved with stately dignity as the creator of a huckleberry pudding.
“I know how to make’m,” he said in a confident voice, “just exactly right.”
The others looked at him with admiration as they sat down to eat.
After a time, a pudgy man whose spoon was silent, said: “I don’t like this much.”
“What?” cried the little man, threateningly.
“I don’t seem to get on with it,” said the pudgy man. He looked about for support in the faces of his companions. “I don’t like it, somehow,” he added slowly.
“Fool!” roared the little man, furiously. “You’re mad because you didn’t make it. I never saw such a beast.”
The pudgy man wrapped himself in a great dignity. He glanced suggestingly at the plates of the two others. They were intact.
“Ho,” cried the little man, “you’re all idiots.”
He saw that he must vindicate his work. He must eat it. He sat before them and, with ineffable bliss lighting his countenance, ate all of the huckleberry pudding. Then he laid aside his plate, lighted his pipe, and addressed his companions as unappreciative blockheads.
The pipe, the fire, and the song of the pines soothed him after a time, and he puffed tranquilly. The four men sat staring vacantly at the blaze until the spirits of the tent at the edge of the fire circle, in drowsy voices, began to call them. Their thoughts became heavily fixed on the knee-deep bed of hemlock. One by one they arose, knocked ashes from their pipes, and treading softly to the open flaps, disappeared. Alone, the campfire spluttered valiantly for a time, opposing its music to the dismal crooning of the trees that accented the absence of things congenial and alive. A curious moon peered through locked branches at imperturbable bundles of blankets which lay in the shadows of the tent.
The fragrant blackness of the early night passed away, and gray ghost-mists came winding slowly up from the marshes and stole among the wet tree trunks. Wavering leaves dotted with dewdrops glowed in a half-light of impending dawn. From the tent came sounds of heavy sleeping. The bundles of blankets clustered on the hemlock twigs.
Suddenly from off in the thickets of the gloom, there came a cry. It seemed to crash on the tent. It smote the bundles of blankets. There was instant profound agitation, a whirling chaos of coverings, legs, and arms; then, heads appeared. The men had heard the voice of the unknown, crying in the wilderness, and it made their souls quaver.
They had slumbered through the trees’ song of loneliness and the lay of isolation of the mountain grass. Hidden frogs had muttered ominously since nightfall, and distant owls, undoubtedly perched on lofty branches and silhouetted by the moon, had hooted. There had been an endless hymning by leaves, blades, and unseen live things, through which these men, who adored Wagner, had slept.
But a false note in the sounds of night had convulsed them. A strange tune had made them writhe.
The cry of the unknown instantly awoke them to terror. It is mightier than the war yell of the dreadful, because the dreadful may be definite. But this whoop strikes greater fear from hearts because it tells of formidable mouths and great, grasping claws that live in impossibility. It is the chant of a phantom force which imagination declares invincible, and awful to the sight.
In the tent, eyes aglitter with terror gazed into eyes. Knees softly smote each other, and lips trembled.
The pudgy man gave vent to a tremendous question. “What was that?” he whispered.
The others made answer with their blanched faces. The group, waiting in the silence that followed their awakening, wriggled their legs in the agony of fright. There was a pause which extended through space. Comets hung and worlds waited. Their thoughts shot back to that moment when they had started upon the trip, and they were filled with regret that it had been.
“Oh, goodness, what was that?” repeated the pudgy man, intensely.
Suddenly, their faces twitched and their fingers turned to wax. The cry was repeated. Its burden caused the men to huddle together like drowning kittens. They watched the banshees of the fog drifting lazily among the trees. They saw eyes in the gray obscurity. They heard a thousand approaching footfalls in the rustling of the dead leaves. They groveled.
Then, they heard the unknown stride to and fro in the forest, giving calls, weighted with challenge, that could make cities hearing, fear. Roars went to the ends of earth, and snarls that would appall armies turned the men in the tent to a moaning mass with forty eyes. The challenges changed to wailings as of a fever-torn soul. Later, there came snorts of anger that sounded cruel, like the noise of a rampant bull on a babies’ playground. Later still, howls, as from an abandoned being, strangling in the waters of trouble.
“Great Scott!” roared the pudgy man, “I can’t stand this.”
He wriggled to his feet and tottered out to the dying fire. His companions followed. They had reached the cellar of fear. They were now resolved to use weapons on the great destruction. They would combat the inevitable. They peered among the trees, wherefrom a hundred assaulting shadows came. The unknown was shrieking.
Of a sudden, the pudgy man screamed like a wounded animal.
“It’s got Billie,” he howled. They discovered that the little man was gone.
To listen or to wait is the most tense of occupations. In their absorption they had not seen that a comrade was missing.
Instantly, their imaginations perceived his form in the clutch of a raging beast.
“Come on,” shouted the pudgy man. They grasped bludgeons and rushed valiantly into the darkness. They stumbled from gloom to gloom in a mad rush for their friend’s life. The keynote of terror kept clanging in their ears and guided their scrambling feet. Tangled thickets tripped them. Saplings buffeted heroically, and stones turned away. Branches smote their heads so that it appeared as if lightning had flapped its red wings in their faces.
Once, the pudgy man stopped. The unknown was just ahead.
The dim lights of early dawn came charging through the forest. The gray and black of mist and shadow retreated before crimson beams that had advanced to the treetops.
The men came to a stand, waving their heads to glance down the aisles of the wilderness.
“There he is,” shouted the pudgy man. The party, rushing forward, came upon the form of the little man, quivering at the foot of a tree. His blood seemed to be turned to salt. From out his wan, white face his eyes shone with a blue light. “Oh, thunderation,” he moaned. “Oh, thunderation.”
“What!” cried his friends. Their voices shook with anxiety.
“Oh, thunderation,” repeated he.
“For the love of Mike, tell us, Billie,” cried the pudgy man, “what is the matter.”
“Oh, thunderation,” wailed the little man. Suddenly he rolled about on the ground and gave vent to a howl that rolled and pealed over the width of the forest. Its tones told of death and fear and unpaid debts. It clamored like a song of forgotten war, and died away to the scream of a maiden. The pleadings of fire-surrounded children mingled with the calls of wave-threatened sailors. Two barbaric tribes clashed together on a sunburnt plain; a score of barekneed clansmen crossed claymores amid gray rocks; a woman saw a lover fall; a dog was stabbed in an alley; a steel knight bit dust with bloody mouth; a savage saw a burning home.
The rescuing party leaned weakly against trees. After the little man had concluded, there was a silence.
Finally, the pudgy man advanced. He struggled with his astonished tongue for a moment. “Do you mean to say, Billie,” he said at last, “that all that tangled chaos emanated from you?”
The little man made no reply, but heaved about on the ground, moaning: “Oh, thunderation.”
The three men contemplating him suddenly felt themselves swell with wrath. They had been terrorized to no purpose. They had expected to be eaten. They were not. The fact maddened them. The pudgy man voiced the assembly.
“You infernal little jay, get up off’n the ground and come on,” he cried. “You make me sick.”
“Oh, thunderation,” replied the little man.
The three men began to berate him. They turned into a babble of wrath.
“You scared us to death.”
“What do you wanta holler that way for?”
“You’re a bloomin’ nuisance. For heaven’s sake, what are you yellin’ about?”
The little man staggered to his feet. Anger took hold of him. He waved his arms eloquently.
“That pudding, you fools,” he cried.
His companions paused and regarded him.
“Well,” said the pudgy man, eventually, “what in blazes did you eat it for then?”
“Well, I didn’t know,” roared the other, “I didn’t know that it was that way.”
“You shouldn’t have eaten it, anyhow. There was the sin. You shouldn’t have eaten it anyway.”
“But I didn’t know,” shouted the little man.
“You should have known,” they stormed. “You’ve made idiots of us. You scared us to death with your hollerin’.”
As he reeled toward the camp, they followed him, railing like fishwives.
The little man turned at bay.
“Exaggerated fools,” he yelled. “Fools, to apply no salve but moral teaching to a man with the stomachache.”
December 23, 1892
[The University Herald, Syracuse, New York, Vol. 21, pp. 51–54.]
* The Sullivan County Sketches.
AN EXPLOSION OF SEVEN BABIES*
A SULLIVAN COUNTY EPISODE
A little man was sweating and swearing his way through an intricate forest. His hat was pushed indignantly to the far rear of his head, and upon his perspiring features there was a look of conscious injury.
Suddenly he perceived ahead of him a high stone wall against which waves of bushes surged. The little man fought his way to the wall and looked over it.
A brown giantess was working in a potato patch. Upon a bench, under the eaves of a worn-out house, seven babies were wailing and rubbing their stomachs.
“Ho!” said the little man to himself. He stood, observant, for a few moments. Then he climbed painfully over the wall and came to a stand in the potato patch. His eyes wandered to the seven babies wailing and rubbing their stomachs. Their mournful music fascinated him.
“Madam,” he said, as he took off his hat and bowed, “I have unfortunately lost my way. Could you direct—” He suddenly concluded: “Great Scott!”
He had turned his eyes from the seven babies to the brown giantess and saw upon her face the glare of a tigress. Her fingers were playing convulsively over her hoe handle, and the muscles of her throat were swollen and wriggling. Her eyes were glowing with fury. She came forward with the creeping motion of an animal about to spring.
The little man gave a backward leap. Tremendous astonishment enwrapped him and trepidation showed in his legs.
“G-good heavens, madam,” he stuttered. He threw up one knee and held his spread fingers before his face. His mouth was puckered to an amazed whistle.
The giantess stood before him, her hands upon her hips, her lips curled in a snarl. She followed closely as the little man retreated backward step by step toward the fence, his eyes staring in bewilderment.
“For the love of Mike, madam, what ails you?” he spluttered. He saw here an avenger. Wherefore he knew not, but he momentarily expected to be smitten to a pulp.
“Beast!” roared the giantess, suddenly. She reached forth and grasped the arm of the palsied little man, who cast a despairing glance at the high stone wall.
She twisted him about and then, raising a massive arm, pointed to the row of seven babies, who, as if they had gotten a cue, burst out like a brass band.
“Well, what the devil—” roared the little man.
“Beast!” howled
the giantess. “It made’m sick! They ate ut! That dum flypaper!”
The babies began to frantically beat their stomachs with their fists.
“Villain!” shrieked the giantess. The little man felt the winding fingers crush the flesh and bones of his arm. The giantess began to roar like a dragon. She bent over and braced herself. Then her iron arms forced the little man to his knees.
He knew he was going to be eaten. “Gawd,” he moaned.
He arrived at the critical stage of degradation. He would resist. He touched some hidden spring in his being and went off like a firework. The man became a tumult. Every muscle in his body he made perform a wriggling contortion. The giantess plunged forward and kneaded him as if he were bread unbaked.
From over the stone wall came the swishing sound of moving bushes, unheard by the combatants. Presently the face of a pudgy man, tranquil in its wrinkles, appeared. Amazement instantly smote him in his tracks and he hung heavily to the stones.
From the potato patch arose a cloud of dust, pregnant with curses. In it he could dimly see the little man in a state of revolution. His legs flashed in the air like a pinwheel. The pudgy man stared with gleaming eyes at the kaleidoscope. He climbed upon the wall to get a better view. Some bellowing animal seemed to have his friend in its claws.
It soon became evident to the little man that he could not eternally revolve and kick in such a manner. He felt his blood begin to dry up and his muscles turn to paste. Those talons were squeezing his life away. His mangled arms were turning weak. He was about to be subdued.