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Out in the middle of the berry-patch, in the brilliant moonlight, was poor Kahwa with four men. They had fastened ropes around her, and two of them at the end of one rope on one side, and two at the end of one on the other, were dragging her across the middle of the patch.
Many times, of course in fact, nearly every day I met other bears like myself, and sometimes I made friends with them, and stayed in their company for the better part of a day, perhaps at a berry-patch or in the wide shallows of a stream. But there was no place for me a strong, growing he-bear, getting on for two years old in any of the families that I came across.
Very cautiously I crept near enough to get a view of the house from behind, and as I came in sight of the corner where Kahwa had fallen I saw her for the second time just as on that wretched evening at the berry-patch surrounded by a group of three or four men.
She said: "The girl will come to the berry-patch every day until we go there for her, provided the Indians with whom she lived would let her go, that she might be there to-morrow, and she might not come till the next day. The girl is willing to go with you, and we will go to the berry-patch to-morrow and wait till she comes."
After a little hesitation he decided to follow the man, and crept stealthily along in the shadow of the trees and buildings until he found himself at the edge of the berry-patch that was in the rear of the outbuildings. But there he paused irresolutely, for Thomas had completely disappeared. The Major was puzzled, but decided to watch for the man's return.
It had cut a deep wound in her neck, and she had saved herself only by plunging into the woods. If we had known all this at the time, I doubt if we should have gone back to the berry-patch as we did on the very next night. On our way to the patch we met the bad-tempered bear coming away from it.
Then, in the night we wandered abroad finding lily roots, and the sweet ferns, and camas, and mushrooms, with another visit to the river in the early morning and perhaps a trout to wind up with before the sun drove us under cover again. And above all there was the berry-patch.
Curled up in Madeline's strong arms she cried a little and laughed a good deal, never noticing that Madeline was crying, too. For just beyond the berry-patch there was a heap of big stones, which made everything that Bob and Madeline had feared in that dreadful time of suspense seem very reasonable and Betty's escape from harm little short of a miracle.
Juicy caterpillars a lot of them: enough to eat up a whole berry-patch if the crows hadn't found them; nutty-flavored grasshoppers a lot of them, too; so many, in fact, that it looked very much as if crows were the reason the grasshoppers were so nearly wiped out that year that they didn't have a chance to trouble the farmers' crops; and now and then a dainty egg was served them in the most tempting crow-fashion, that is, right from the beak of the parent.
You can satisfy your hunger in such a berry-patch in ten minutes, while out in the field you must pick for half an hour, and in the forest thrice as long, before you can fill a small tin cup. Yet, after all, it is questionable whether men have really bettered God's CHEF D'OEUVRE in the berry line. They have enlarged it and made it more plentiful and more certain in its harvest.
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