Every young cub, I imagine, gets into about the same amount of trouble and causes about the same worry and anxiety to his parents. I know that little Wahka took the earliest possible opportunity of getting himself stuck full of porcupine quills, and I do not suppose he made any more fuss when his mother pulled them out than I had done under similar circumstances five summers before. He nearly drowned himself by tumbling into the swiftest part of the stream that he could find, and when I laughed at him, shivering and whining, while his mother alternately licked and cuffed him on the head, I could not help thinking of my own misery when I went downhill into the snow.

As I looked at him, so preposterously small, and fluffy, and brown, it was, as I said at the beginning, hard to believe that I was ever quite[148] like that. But I recognised myself in things that he did fifty times a day.

Kahwa, too, was exactly like the other little Kahwa, her aunt who was dead. Wahka would be sitting looking into the air at nothing, as cubs do, when she would steal up behind him and make a sudden grab at his hind-foot. I could remember just how it felt when her teeth caught hold. And he would roll over on his side, squealing, and smack her head until she let go. In a few minutes they were perfectly good friends again hunting squirrels up the trees, and standing down below with open mouths, waiting for them to drop in. I showed them how to play at pulling each other down the hill, and often of an afternoon I would sit with my own back against the tree, and invite them to pull me down. Then it was just as it used to be. Wahka came at me on one side, slowly and doggedly, almost in silence, but intensely in earnest, while on the other side Kahwa rushed on me like a little whirlwind, yapping and snarling, and scuffling all over me with her mouth wide open to grab anything that was within reach—the same ferocious, reckless little spitfire as I had known years ago. They were good children, I think. At all events,[149] Wooffa and I were very proud of them, and she used to spend an astonishing amount of time licking them, and combing them, and smacking their little woolly heads.

Then we began to take them out and teach them how to find food, and what food to eat; that the easiest way to get at a lily bulb is not to scrabble at it with both paws straight down, but to scoop it out with one good scrape from the side; how to wipe off the top of an ant-hill at one smooth stroke; how to distinguish the wild-onion by its smell; and what the young shoots of the white camas look like. They soon learned not to pass any fair-sized stone without turning it over to look for the insects beneath, and also that it is useless to go on turning the same stone over and over again to keep looking at the ‘other side.’ Every fallen log had to be carefully inspected, the bark ripped off where it was rotten to get at the beetles and grubs and wood-lice underneath, and, if it were not too heavy, the log itself should be rolled over. We taught them that, in approaching a log or large stone, one should always sniff well first to see if there is a mouse or chipmunk underneath, and, if there be fresh scent, turn it over with one paw while holding the other ready to strike.

[150]

Mice bothered them dreadfully at first, dodging and zigzagging round their hind-legs, and keeping them hopping in the air, while they grabbed wildly at the little thing that was never where it ought to be when the paw came down to squash it. I shall never forget the first time that Wahka found a chipmunk by himself. He lifted a stone very cautiously, with his nose much too close to it, apparently expecting the chipmunk to run into his mouth, which it did not do; but as soon as the stone was lifted an inch it was out and on to Wahka’s nose, and over his head, down the middle of his back, and off into the wood. Wahka really never saw it at all, and was spinning round and round trying to get at the middle of his own back after the chipmunk was a hundred yards away.

We took the cubs down to the stream and showed them how to root along the edges among the grass and weeds for frogs and snails, and water-beetles and things, and when the trout came upstream we caught some for them, and showed them how to do it; but fishing is a thing that needs too much patience to commend itself to cubs.

Wahka did not have any adventure with a puma, but he had one experience which might have been even more serious. He had wandered[151] away from his mother and myself, just as he had been told hundreds of times not to do, when suddenly there was the noise of a scuffle from his direction, and he was screaming with all his might. I was there in a moment, with his mother close behind me, and saw two huge gray wolves which had already rolled him over, and in another instant would have done for him. We charged them, but they were gone before we reached the spot; and beyond a bad shaking and one scar on his shoulder Wahka was none the worse. He was a thoroughly frightened cub, however, and it would have taken a great deal of persuasion to make him leave his mother’s side for the rest of that day. Indeed, it was necessary to be careful for more than that day, because the wolves hung around us, hoping still to catch either him or Kahwa alone where they could make away with them.

I dislike wolves immensely. In spite of their size and the strength of their jaws, they are cowardly animals, and one wolf will never attack even a much smaller beast than himself alone, if he can get another to help him. Bears are not like that. We want to have our fighting to ourselves. We would much rather have any other[152] bear that is near stand and look on instead of coming to help us—unless, of course, it is a case of husband and wife, and one or other is overmatched. What we do, we do in the open, and prefer that people should understand our intentions clearly, and take us just as we are. A wolf is exactly the opposite. He never does anything openly that he can do in secret. He likes to keep out of sight, and hunt by stealth, owing what he gets to his cunning and to superior numbers, rather than to his own individual fighting spirit.

We recognise that wolves know many things that we do not; though some of them are things that we would not want to know. And they think us fools—but they keep out of our way. There have indeed, I believe, been cases where a number of wolves together have succeeded in killing a bear—not in fair fight, but by dogging and following him for days, preventing his either eating or sleeping, until from sheer exhaustion he has been unable to resist them when they have attacked him in force and pulled him down. This, however, could not happen in the mountains. The wolves are only there in the summer, and then they run in couples, or alone, or at most in families of two old ones and the cubs together. In the[153] autumn they go down to the foot-hills and the plains, and then it is only in hard weather that they collect in packs. At that time the bears are usually in their winter dens, and all the wolves that were ever born could never get a bear out of his den, where they can reach him only in front.

In this case, the wolves which had attacked Wahka seldom showed themselves, but that they were constantly near us, and watching us, we knew. With all their cunning, they could not help getting between us and the wind once in a while, and sometimes, when they were a little distance away, we could hear them quarrelling between themselves over some small animal they had killed, or some scrap of food that they had found in the forest. It is not pleasant being shadowed, whether it is your child or yourself that is being hunted, and we had to be extremely cautious not to let either Kahwa or Wahka out of our sight. Nor was it always easy, in spite of his recent fright, to keep the latter under restraint, for he was an independent, self-reliant youngster, of inexhaustible inquisitiveness.

One day, when we knew the wolves were following us, and we were keeping Wahka well in hand,[154] we met a family of elk,[4] two parents and quite a young fawn, and Wahka must needs go and try to find out all about the fawn. He meant no harm whatever, and had no idea that there was any danger. He only thought the fawn would be a nice thing to play with; and before we could stop him he had trotted straight up to it. Elk are jealous animals, and, like all deer, in spite of their timidity, will fight to protect their young; and with his tremendous antlers and great strength a big stag is a person to be let alone.

Wahka knew nothing about all this, and went straight towards the fawn in the friendliest and most confiding way. Fortunately, the stag was some yards away, and we were able to put Wahka on his guard in time. But it was a narrow escape, and I do not think the stag’s antler missed his tail by half an inch. Wooffa jumped in the stag’s way, and for a minute it looked as if there would be a fight. Of cou............