CHAPTER V

A DANGEROUS NEIGHBOR

The hunt became more and more profitable and enjoyable, as spring animated everything.  In the morning at the break of day the forest was full of voices, strange and undiscernible to the inhabitant of the town.  There the heathcock clucked and sang his song of love, as he sat on the top branches of the cedar and admired the grey hen scratching in the fallen leaves below.  It was very easy to approach this full-feathered Caruso and with a shot to bring him down from his more poetic to his more utilitarian duties.  His going out was an euthanasia, for he was in love and heard nothing.  Out in the clearing the blackcocks with their wide-spread spotted tails were fighting, while the hens strutting near, craning and chattering, probably some gossip about their fighting swains, watched and were delighted with them.  From the distance flowed in a stern and deep roar, yet full of tenderness and love, the mating call of the deer; while from the crags above came down the short and broken voice of the mountain buck.  Among the bushes frolicked the hares and often near them a red fox lay flattened to the ground watching his chance.  I never heard any wolves and they are usually not found in the Siberian regions covered with mountains and forest.

But there was another beast, who was my neighbor, and one of us had to go away.  One day, coming back from the hunt with a big heathcock, I suddenly noticed among the trees a black, moving mass.  I stopped and, looking very attentively, saw a bear, digging away at an ant-hill.  Smelling me, he snorted violently, and very quickly shuffled away, astonishing me with the speed of his clumsy gait.  The following morning, while still lying under my overcoat, I was attracted by a noise behind my den.  I peered out very carefully and discovered the bear.  He stood on his hind legs and was noisily sniffing, investigating the question as to what living creature had adopted the custom of the bears of housing during the winter under the trunks of fallen trees.  I shouted and struck my kettle with the ax.  My early visitor made off with all his energy; but his visit did not please me.  It was very early in the spring that this occurred and the bear should not yet have left his hibernating place.  He was the so-called “ant-eater,” an abnormal type of bear lacking in all the etiquette of the first families of the bear clan.

I knew that the “ant-eaters” were very irritable and audacious and quickly I prepared myself for both the defence and the charge.  My preparations were short.  I rubbed off the ends of five of my cartridges, thus making dum-dums out of them, a sufficiently intelligible argument for so unwelcome a guest.  Putting on my coat I went to the place where I had first met the bear and where there were many ant-hills.  I made a detour of the whole mountain, looked in all the ravines but nowhere found my caller.  Disappointed