14 Arctic Adventure (18 page)

Roger began to laugh and Hal joined in as he pulled his legs free and got back into his sleeping bag. Ben, going to sleep again, dreamed that his friend Hal was going about on crutches with one leg missing.

At breakfast, Hal had nothing to say about his somersault over the Ursus horribilis.

Ben talked about grizzlies.

‘If you come anywhere near one, he’ll kill you. Grizzlies have terrible tempers. There’s only one bear more fierce, and that’s the Kodiak bear. Your father wanted a white grizzly. There are very few of them left but some may be found here. The grizzly is humpbacked. He has a pushed-in face. Alaska has perhaps ten thousand grizzlies left but few of them are white. The cubs are very much like boys. They do not reach a good size until they are ten years old. A male grizzly can weigh as much as eight hundred pounds. A lot more than the black bear, which weighs about four hundred. Of course your dad doesn’t want a black bear because there are plenty of them down south. A black bear can do something that a grizzly can’t do. He can climb a tree. The grizzly is too heavy to do anything like that.’

‘What does a grizzly eat?’ asked Roger.

‘He eats you, if he can get you. If he can’t, he dines on chipmunks, mice, marmots, gophers and ground squirrels.’

‘Can he run fast?’

‘Twenty-five miles an hour. Then he gets tired.’

They spent the morning flying about Grayback. They saw squirrels and woodchucks, but no grizzly. It was almost noon before they spotted a big white rock. At least it looked like a rock. Ben was suspicious. He brought the helicopter to a halt fifty feet above the ‘rock’. The rock got up on all four feet and turned his pushed-in face up so that he could look at this strange bird above him.

‘That’s our boy,’ said Ben. ‘His face is ugly but his snow-white body is a beautiful thing to see.’

‘But how are we going to get him?’ Roger asked.

‘I’ll let down a net,’ said Ben. ‘It will lie flat on the ground. Perhaps he will walk into it. Then we’ll pull him up.’

‘How can you pull up eight hundred pounds?’ asked Hal.

‘Not by hand,’ said Ben. ‘By machine. We have a hoist.’

The grizzly showed no desire to walk into the net. They waited patiently for a long time but it was no use.

‘Someone will have to go down and attract him into the net,’ said Ben. ‘I have to stick by the helicopter. It’s up to one of you two.’

Roger spoke up before Hal could. It would be an adventure, and Roger thirsted for adventure.

‘I’ll go down the rope,’ he said.

‘Wait a minute,’ said Ben. He moved the helicopter twenty or thirty feet away so that Roger could descend directly upon the bear.

Roger went down the rope hand over hand. As he reached the ground the grizzly welcomed him with a savage growl. Roger placed himself so that the net would be between him and the bear. He still hung on to the rope so he could climb it at any moment.

The grizzly moved toward him, growling softly. He was hungry, and here was his dinner waiting for him. Now the grizzly was in the middle of the net.

Roger, who had had plenty of experience in climbing a rope, went up about fifteen feet. ‘All right,’ he yelled, ‘haul away.’ Then the net tightened around the bear and he began to go up toward the helicopter.

Roger got there first. Ben shut off the hoist. He had no intention of sharing the cockpit with the horrible grizzly.

He changed the pitch of the rotor and the helicopter approached the airport. The net in which the bear was cradled swung about twenty feet below the aircraft.

Arriving over the airfield, Ben looked for a cargo van with an open hatch on top. When he found one he stopped the helicopter in mid-air directly above the hatch and let the net with the bear in it down into the van. The bear scrambled out of the net and the net was drawn up into the helicopter.

Mission accomplished.

The aircraft came to earth and Hal went to the office to arrange shipment of the van, locked upon the flatbed of a cargo plane, across Canada and the United States to a certain farm, where the Ursus horribilis would receive a hearty welcome from John Hunt.

‘Now we just have to get a Kodiak bear and we’re finished,’ Hal said. He was talking to a captain at the Kodiak Naval Station.

The captain replied, ‘You’ll be finished all right if you tackle a Kodiak bear. He’s a quiet fellow if you leave him alone. But if you interfere with him, you’ll be sorry. Or, rather, you won’t. You’ll be too dead to be sorry.’

‘I’m afraid we have no choice,’ said Hal. ‘Our father is a collector of wild animals for zoos. He has asked us to get a Kodiak bear. We’ve never failed to get him what he asked for.’

‘Yes, but you’ve never tried to take the biggest bear in the world.’

‘Really the biggest?’

‘Really. Let me tell you about Alaskan bears. The male blue bear weighs 200 pounds. The black bear, 400. The grizzly, 800. The polar bear, 1,000. The Kodiak bear, 2,000. That’s an average figure. Some weigh 1,500, some weigh 3,000. But the average is 2,000 pounds — twice the weight of any other bear on earth. He’s not only the biggest in the world, he’s almighty strong.’

‘But you say he’s quiet.’

‘When he’s let be. But there’s one on that hill just behind the Naval Station that is mad enough to chew your head off.’

‘Why?’

‘A hunter shot his mate. Then somebody stole his two cubs. The big fellow went berserk. He’s ready to eat anyone who comes near him. He was very fond of his mate and his young ones. Now he’s just a big ball of wild, slashing fury. He’s killing every person he can get his teeth into.’

A young fellow not in uniform, who had been listening, broke in with, ‘Oh boy! What he needs is a bullet from this new gun of mine. Can I go with you?’

‘No thanks,’ Hal said.

‘But you can’t stop me.’

‘No, I can’t stop you. But if you get killed don’t expect me to bury you.’

At the foot of the mountain the road split into two

branches. Which should they take? Hal rapped at the

door of a farmhouse. The door was opened by a surly

fellow who said sharply:

‘What do you want?’

‘Which road do we take to get to the top of the mountain?’

‘The one on the left,’ snapped the farmer. ‘But don’t go up there.’

Hal said, ‘We know about the bear who has lost his mate and his cubs. Has he done any damage here?’

‘Killed twenty of my cattle,’ said the farmer roughly.

‘Have you any idea who stole his cubs?’

The farmer’s face flushed. ‘How the devil would I know anything about that? I live here alone. I don’t get any news and that’s the way I like it. I can’t stand here wasting time on three kids. I told you which road to take. Now, get along. I’m busy.’

Just before the door slammed shut, the boys heard a small sound from inside.

As they started up the left branch, Roger said:

‘Did you hear that? He said he lives alone. Then what could have made that sound?’

‘A cat perhaps,’ said Hal.

But he wondered.

The boys followed the dirt road up Sharatin Mountain. That was the name given to it on the map. The captain had called it a hill. Well, perhaps it was more than a hill and not quite a mountain since its height was less than three thousand feet.

The boy with the gun followed. His name, he said, was Mark.

Hal kept hoping that Mark would tire himself out climbing the steep slope — then he would turn about and go home.

‘I’ll protect you if you get into trouble,’ said Mark.

‘Your protection is the last thing-we want,’ Hal said. ‘If you use that gun, I’ll kick you all the way down hill.’

‘But what’s the use of having a gun if I don’t use it?”

‘Go shoot a hedgehog —or a gopher,’ Hal suggested. ‘But if you value your life, leave the bear alone.’

‘Look!’ exclaimed Roger. ‘Right here beside the road.’

He picked up a jawbone. ‘Some animal was killed here.’

Hal looked closely at the jawbone. ‘That didn’t come from any animal,’ he said. ‘That’s human.’

Near by was a skull, and it certainly was the skull of a man. They found the dead body. On his wrist was a watch.

Mark removed it. ‘I’ll take that,’ he said. ‘Finders keepers.’

‘Wrong,’ said Hal. ‘If you find something that belongs to someone else, you have no right to keep it.’

‘But he won’t have any more use for it.’

‘His folks will probably come to find him. Anything on him belongs to them.’

Grumbling, Mark replaced the watch on the dead man’s wrist. The body was spattered with dried blood. In the blood Hal saw brown hairs.

‘Now we know what happened,’ said Hal. ‘This man was killed by that bear made crazy by the loss of his mate and cubs.’

‘How do you figure that out?’ Roger asked.

‘These hairs came from a brown bear. That’s the Kodiak bear. And the ordinary Kodiak bear is too quiet to attack a man unless he had good reason. This is the work of the bear we are after.’

A little farther on a whole tree had been torn up by the roots and lay on the ground, its leaves still green. Again there were brown hairs that told the story. Then they saw the remains of a black bear. It had been partly eaten. More brown hairs.

A small house had been completely wrecked. Some terribly powerful force had broken the walls and the roof had collapsed. A woman stood by the ruined house, weeping.

‘He was always a good bear,’ the woman said.

‘Never hurt man, woman or child. But now something has got into him. He’s gone plumb crazy.’

They came to a tent. The tent had not been attacked. But when they looked inside, they saw a man lying on the ground. Hal felt his pulse. He was dead.

They came to an empty cabin. Nobody would use it again for a long time. The windows were smashed, the roof torn off, the bunk destroyed, the sheet-iron stove had been flattened and the floor was covered with beans, rice, flour and coffee.

Reaching the top of the mountain, they found the great bear. He was sleeping, his head on the dead body of his mate. It is said that animals do not love. This scene impressed them all, for this showed the deep affection one beast may have for another. Hal and Roger were too old to cry, but tears came to their eyes.

Mark felt differently. He was going to kill this monster. He put his foot on the bear and fired. The bullet went through his foot. Mark howled to high heaven.

The bear did not stir. The bullet had not penetrated his heavy hide. He was so completely lost in misery over the death of his mate that he paid no attention to the boys. He would take care of them later.

Hal felt inclined to give Mark a good beating. Instead, he looked at the injured foot. Luckily, no bones were broken since the bullet had simply gone through the fleshy part of the foot. After all, the bullet had been very small, coming from a low calibre .22 gun.

‘Quit howling like a stuck pig,’ Hal said to Mark. ‘You’re not badly hurt.’

The boys set up their own tent. It was nearly dark now and they hoped that the bear would stay exactly where he was until dawn. Mark crowded into the tent with them. He had no sleeping bag, but the night was not cold.

In the middle of the night Mark heard a rustling outside the tent. It must be the bear. He reached for his trusty pea-shooter, and prepared to be a hero. He was going to save the boys from certain death.

He separated the flaps just enough to get the muzzle of the gun out and he fired. He could see nothing, and he was not to know until morning that he had shot not the bear, but a mountain goat.

Aroused by the report, Hal said, ‘You fire one more shot and I’m going to take that gun away from you.’

Mark fired one more shot. Dawn had come and he ventured out, holding his precious rifle. This time he saw the great bear itself, and there was no mistake. What a great story for the folks back home if he could just kill this monster!

He fired. The small bullet did not penetrate the tremendous hide of the bear. The Kodiak’s skin has an elastic quality and the bullet ricocheted, bounced back, and struck Mark on the jaw.

Hal leaped up, seized the little rifle, and broke it over his knee.

Mark was whining about his dislocated jaw, not to mention his punctured foot.

There was a small village of not more than a hundred people on top of the mountain. After breakfast, Hal went to the village to find help for the banged-up youngster. He entered the tiny one-room post office. The staff consisted of one man only, the old postmaster.

‘We’ve had an accident,’ Hal said. ‘Is there a doctor in town?’

‘No doctor. The nearest doctor is the surgeon down at the Naval Station.’

Hal said, ‘A young fool of a boy has busted himself up. He needs a doctor.’

‘I’ll take him down,’ said the postmaster. ‘I have to go down anyway to get the mail.’

‘Thanks a lot,’ said Hal. ‘That’s mighty good of you.’

He sat down and wrote a note. It was addressed to Captain Sam Harkness and it read, ‘Sending you a boy who has shot himself twice while trying to kill the Kodiak bear. Have Navy Surgeon fix him up and send him home before he makes a bigger fool of himself. I will pay any charges.’ And he signed it, ‘Hal Hunt.’

So Mark was transported to the Naval Station and Hal fervently hoped that he would never see him again.

Hal went to the police station. The little village had only one policeman.

‘Would you go down the hill with us,’ Hal said, ‘to the farmhouse where the road divides?’

‘That’s Spike Burns’s place,’ said the policeman. ‘He’s a rough customer. What do you want to see him for?’

‘This Kodiak bear that has gone crazy because he lost his mate and his cubs — there’s nothing we can do about the mate. She’s dead as a door nail. But if we could give him back his cubs, perhaps he would quiet down.’

‘What has that to do with Spike?’ asked the policeman.

‘Perhaps nothing. Perhaps a good deal. When we talked with him we heard a sound inside that might have been made by a cat, or a bird — or by those cubs.’ ‘You think he was the one who stole the cubs?’

‘It’s just a guess. I can’t barge into his house and make a search. But you can because you’re a cop.’