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Updated: June 13, 2025
I paddled swiftly to the point, landed and crept to a rock from which I could just see the fallen tree. Mooween was coming. "My bear this time," I thought, as a twig snapped faintly. Then Koskomenos swept into the woods, hovering over the brush near the butt of the old tree, looking down and rattling klrrrik, clear out! klrrr-ik, clear out!
When they had gone I tried the strange call again. Instantly it was answered close at hand. The creature was coming. I stole out into the middle of the opening, and sat very still on a fallen log. Ten minutes passed in intense silence. Then a twig snapped behind me. I turned and there was Mooween, just coming into the opening.
Above him the owls watch by night and the hawks by day; around him not a prowler of the wilderness, from Mooween the bear down through a score of gradations, to Kagax the bloodthirsty little weasel, but will sniff under every old log in the hope of finding a wood mouse; and if he takes a swim, as he is fond of doing, not a big trout in the river but leaves his eddy to rush at the tiny ripple holding bravely across the current.
It would be senseless to attempt to surprise him now; besides, I had no weapon of any kind. "To-morrow, about this time, I shall be coming back; then look out, Mooween," I thought as I marked the place and stole away to my canoe.
As yet he had no idea what peril had threatened him; though, like all wild creatures, he had obeyed the first clang of a danger note on the instant. Not a creature in the woods, from Mooween down to Tookhees the wood mouse, but has learned from experience that, in matters of this kind, it is well to jump to cover first and investigate afterwards.
Mooween rose to his hind legs, and looked him steadily in the eye, like the trained boxer that he is. Down came the club with a sweep to have felled an ox. There was a flash from Mooween's paw; the club spun away into the woods; and Simmo just escaped a fearful return blow by dropping to the ground and rolling out of reach, leaving his cap in Mooween's claws.
Still, this was a young bear, as was also one other upon whom I tried the same experiment, with the same result. Had he been older and bigger, it might have been different. In that case I have found that a good rule is to go your own way unobtrusively, leaving Mooween to his devices. All animals, whether wild or domestic, respect a man who neither fears nor disturbs them.
Mooween, on his part, is always looking for you when once he has learned that you have moved into his woods. But not from any desire to see you! He is like a lazy man looking for work, and hoping devoutly that he may not find it. A bear has very little curiosity less than any other of the wood folk.
Could it be I shot my canoe forward yes, it was Chigwooltz, still sitting by the green stone, with his eye, like Bunsby's, on the coast of Greenland. In thirty-two hours, to my knowledge, he had not stirred. Mooween the bear crept nearer; he was crouching now like a cat, stealing along in the soft mud behind Chigwooltz so as to surprise him.
It is only when Mooween meets some new object, or some circumstance entirely outside of his training, that instinct and native wit are set to work; and then you see for the first time some trace of hesitation on the part of this self-confident prowler of the big woods. Once I startled him on the shore, whither he had come to get the fore quarters of a deer that had been left there.
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