NINA AND THE BEARS

All these stories are true, in their essential points. In some of them, however, I have to change or suppress the names of persons and towns, because the characters introduced are still living, and might not like publicity. That is the case in this story.

Ever since the great gold stampede of 1897 into the Klondike, it has been my duty, as it certainly has been my pleasure, to follow the new gold stampedes into different parts of Alaska, and be at the beginning of most of the new gold camps and towns of the great Territory of the Northwest. Of course I began preaching as soon as I arrived at one of these camps, holding my first services on log piles, under the trees, in tents or saloons or lodging houses—wherever I could gather together a congregation.

Always, the next thing was to start a Sunday-school, if there were any children in the camp, or at least a Bible class, if there were only grown people. I always had hymn-books and a baby-organ along, and was sure of finding people to play the organ and sing. The gold-seekers are not all roughs and toughs, as some people think, but just such people as may be seen in the States, and a large proportion of them are Christians.

One of the greatest of these gold stampedes occurred in the heart of Alaska—in the center of a great wilderness until then unexplored. A rich vein of gold was struck deep down in the frozen ground. The news spread, and soon thousands of eager gold-seekers from all parts of Alaska, from the Pacific States, from Canada, and later from all parts of the United States came over the mountains from the coast, down the Yukon from Dawson City, up the Yukon from Nome and from other directions; traveling by steamboat, poling boat and canoe on the rivers, and with dog-sled, horse-sled and hand-sled in the winter over the mountains, and with packs on their backs and guns in their hands in the summer.

Of course I was with the crowd. I never liked to miss the fun of a great scramble like that. When I got to the big new camp I set up my tent and began to prepare a preaching-place and to advertise a meeting for the next Sunday by putting up posters on stumps and trees. I also called the children to come and be organized into a Sunday-school. About twenty children came the first Sunday.

Among them was a pretty little Swedish girl, named Nina. She had blue eyes, flaxen hair and rosy cheeks, and was about twelve years old. She won my heart at once, and soon we were great chums. She was so bright and pleasant and sweet, and such a fearless and intelligent outdoor girl, that one could not help loving her. She was always at Sunday-school and church, always knew her lessons, and sang so heartily and tunefully that people turned their heads to see her, and her sunny smile drew answering smiles even from care-worn faces.

I soon found that among Nina's accomplishments she was already a good shot with both rifle and shotgun; and when the snow began to fall in October I took her with me on a couple of rabbit-hunts, and her glee at getting the biggest bag of snow-shoe rabbits was very enjoyable. Rabbits formed our principal meat-supply that winter.

When the cold weather of November covered the rivers, creeks and lakes with ice and carpeted the hills and valleys with snow, a big stampede occurred away from the town of log houses into which the camp of tents had grown. Almost every one who had a dog-team and sled packed up an outfit of food, blankets, tent and sheet-iron stove, and "mushed" away into the mountains, prospecting for gold. If no dogs were available, two men, or sometimes a man and his wife, would harness themselves to a sled with their outfit aboard, and, depending upon their guns for their meat supply, would cheerily set forth into the trackless wild, following the water-courses until they found a likely-looking creek, when they would halt and build a snug log cabin, and spend the winter prospecting. To those who had courage, some knowledge of woodcraft and love of nature, this adventurous life was very enticing. Thousands of men in Alaska, to this day, spend their summers in the towns, working at their trades or professions, and then, on the approach of winter, invest the money they have earned in an outfit of provisions, tools and ammunition, and bury themselves in the wilderness again. It is a great life; and I have often felt strongly tempted to leave everything and join these brave spirits for a winter's stay in the McKinley range of mountains.

One day, about the middle of November of that year, little Nina came into our house and threw herself into our arms, crying as if her heart would break.

"Why, Nina dear," asked my wife, "what is the matter? Is any one sick or dead?"

"Oh, no," she sobbed, "but I can't come to Sunday-school any more. Papa and Mamma and I are going away off into the mountains to-morrow, and we'll never come back here again."

We petted and soothed her, the best comfort I could give her being the thought of the great hunting adventures that were before her. So the wilderness swallowed up my brave little friend, and for eight years I had no word of her. By that time I was at another large gold camp, in a distant part of the great Yukon Valley.

I was the only minister in a region larger than Pennsylvania. My parish extended from two to five hundred miles in different directions from the camp in which I wintered. That winter I traveled with my dogs between two and three thousand miles, in preaching and exploring trips. Magazines, papers and books sent me by churches, Sunday-schools, Boys' Scouts, and women's missionary societies, I found three hundred miles from my central reading room, in miners' and trappers' cabins and in roadhouses to which I had sent them.

About the middle of the winter I was delighted to get a letter from Nina. It was written from a point about two hundred and fifty miles distant, in that great game-stocked region which lies west of the Alaska Range, of which Mt. McKinley, "The Top of the Continent," is the highest peak. It was a cheery, girlish letter—just such an one as I might have expected from Nina—grown-up. It told me of her marriage, two years before, to a young man whom I had known—one who had loved her when she was a little girl, had followed her and her parents to the western wilderness, waited patiently for her to grow up, and, now that they were married, seemed to her all that was admirable and complete in manhood. It was her one romance and was very sweet and perfect.

Nina and her husband were living in a large cabin on one of the trails that led from the Interior to the Coast. Nina called it a roadhouse, and, though low and dark, with only poles for floor, and pole-bunks for beds, it was fitted for the accommodation of a dozen travelers. Nina was queen of a wide realm. Her cabin was a hundred and twenty-five miles from that of the nearest white woman. They were two hundred miles from the nearest store. They were in the heart of the richest game region of North America—the western foot-hills of the Alaska Range. They were prospectors for gold in the summer; farmers, raising their own potatoes and vegetables and wheat for their chickens; trappers during the winter; hunters all the time; and hotel-keepers during the six months when snow and frozen streams and lakes lured travelers along the lonely trail.

There was in Nina's letter, however, no hint of loneliness; rather a joyful tone of contentment, as one of God's favored creatures; and of comradeship with the things about her—the mountains, the forests and the myriads of animals, small and great. She invited me to come and make them a long visit and have a big hunt. Her letter also spoke of the one need in her life that I could supply—Bibles, books and magazines.

Very few travelers came my way who had passed Nina's that winter, but from most of them I heard of my little chum, and always in terms of enthusiastic praise.

"I am a city man," said a young lawyer from Seattle, "and am in this wild land just long enough to make my stake and get back to the rattle of the street-cars. The 'call of the wild' has no allurement for me. There is just one thing that could make me settle down in Alaska, and that is to find such a mate as that little woman."

"Know her?" repeated a rugged, black-eyed man of thirty whom I had met on the Chilcoot Pass in '97. "Who doesn't? Say; she's a great woman. Why, I'd go out of my way a hundred miles, any time, just to see her smile, and to taste her grouse-pie or roast sheep. Tell you what she did this last trip: As I swung into the edge of their clearin' a pair of sharp-tailed grouse flew up to the top of a dry spruce, a hundred yards from the cabin. Nina was complainin' that she had no makin's of grouse pie in the house, knowin' my likin' for the same. I told her about the two I'd scared up. 'Lend me a shotgun,' I said, 'and I'll go back and try for a shot at them.' We stepped to the door for a look. There set the two grouse on the spruce, lookin' like robins agin the sky. Nina took down a twenty-two rifle from the wall and put some 'extra-long' shells in the magazine. I thought she was goin' to give the gun to me, and I planned to sneak back till I got under the birds before riskin' a shot; but she stood in the doorway and swung the rifle up quick and easy. Crack, crack! and dogged if them chickens didn't come tumblin' right down. I never seen such shootin'. Then she slipped on her snow-shoes and went and got the grouse and made me my pie. She's sure a little bit of 'all right.'"

I asked him if he had seen the magazines and Bibles I had sent her. With a sheepish grin he took out of his pocket a little red Testament, and handed it to me. I saw his name on the fly-leaf with her initials under it.

"First I've carried since I was a kid," he confessed. "And she made me promise to read it! A woman that can be a bright little Christian in a place like that, and a dead game sport, too, can make me do most anything. Joe [Nina's husband] is a lucky guy."

Naturally such reports as these made me all the more anxious to see this queen of the wilderness again. The necessity of taking a seven-hundred-mile trip to the Coast in March gave me the opportunity.

Oh, boys, you'll never know the real joy of living till you take a winter trip with dog-sled in Alaska. The keen, fine air, lung-filling, invigorating; your dogs yelping with eagerness, their feet twinkling, the sled screaming its delight; frost-diamonds sparkling from every branch, frost-symphonies played by the ice-harps under your feet; your own struggle, achievement, triumph, against and over the cold, the difficulties of the trail, the long miles.

It was near the sunset of a beautiful, bright day that I swung into Joe's clearing. For three days I had been headed almost directly towards Dinali—The Great One, and Dinah's Wife (Mt. McKinley and Mt. Foraker). Higher and higher these majestic mountains heaved their mighty shoulders. The country became more broken and rugged. Lesser mountains raised their white heads all around me. Only a few inches of snow covered the ground instead of the six to ten feet that prevailed farther west. The character of the trees had changed—more birch, cottonwood and other deciduous timber; less tamarack, hemlock and swamp spruce.

Signs of abundant life were everywhere. Fox, wolf, lynx and wolverine tracks criss-crossed the snow in all directions; great moose tracks going in a straight line, and the imprint of thousands of caribou hoofs crossing and obliterating each other, but keeping in the same general direction showed the presence of abundance of big game; while grouse, ptarmigan and rabbit tracks were so numerous that my dogs were kept excited and on the "keen jump" every minute.

On the bank of a small river, in a clearing of a couple of acres cut out of a forest of great fir and cedar trees, stood Joe's log-cabin roadhouse. Enough of the big trees had been left standing to shade the house. In front of it were a dozen cozy log dog-kennels, and behind it was a garden enclosed in a picket and wire fence.

As soon as "Leader's" bells gave shrill notice of my arrival the door flew open, a bright little figure in gingham and moccasins, with yellow hair flying and blue eyes sparkling, rushed at me, and I received the first good hug that I had experienced since leaving my wife and daughters in the East a year before.

A cheery voice cried, "Oh, you dear old man, you. I've been watching for you every day for two weeks. I was so afraid you weren't coming!"

Joe's welcome, though not so demonstrative, was none the less hearty. It was worth dog-mushing two hundred and fifty miles to have such a reception. As soon as I stepped into the house I was made keenly aware that I was in the home of hunters and trappers. In all my wide experience of wilderness homes I had never seen one like this. The long, low cabin had two rooms. The smaller was kitchen and dining-room, having a sheet-iron range and home-made tables, shelves and chairs. The larger room had a good sized sheet-iron heating stove in the center, and was almost filled with bunks in tiers of three each, built in double rows the length of the room. A little chamber enclosed with snowy caribou buck-skin, the skins sewn together most skillfully with sinew thread, was Nina's bedroom. The poles which formed the floors had been hewn and laid so carefully that they looked like boards. The tables and shelves were of whipsawed lumber, every article showing painstaking skill.

"Joe and I made the cabin and everything in and about it, all ourselves," Nina boasted.

"What!" I exclaimed, "you two rolled up these heavy logs, without any help?"

"Yes, indeed. We used block-and-tackle. It isn't so hard when you know how; and it was great fun."

"But the lumber for the doors and tables and window-sash—it's so true and smooth and beautiful; how did you get that?" I asked.

"Whipsawed and hand-planed it all," she replied. "You see, we came here two years ago this month, just after we were married. The Government was surveying this trail, and we thought we'd build this roadhouse and pick up a few dollars taking care of travelers. But chiefly we chose this place because it was so beautiful and such a game country. Then it has never been prospected for gold.

"Joe and I each had a good dog-team and sled when we were married. We loaded the sleds with tools, hardware, stoves and dishes, glass for the windows, some flour, sugar, beans and a few other groceries, and brought our traps and plenty of ammunition for our guns. It was hard breaking trail through the deep snow on the east side of the Alaska Range, but nice going on this side. We mushed the two hundred and fifty miles from the coast in two weeks; and had some time for trapping before warm weather."

"How do you get 'outside' in the summer time?" I inquired.

"We can't, and we don't need to. We spent that first summer building this house, making garden, gathering berries, drying fish, hunting and getting ready for the winter. Almost all our wants are supplied right here. From the middle of April till the middle of October we don't see a human being, except now and then an Indian, or a stray prospector."

"What a lonesome life!" I exclaimed.

"Now, Doctor, I know you don't mean that," protested Nina. "Why, this is the most companionable place in the world. It is full of friendly creatures. The winter before I was married I spent three months in San Francisco. I nearly died, I was so lonely and homesick. I'd meet thousands of people on the streets every day, and not get a word or smile from one of them. I wouldn't give my little 'Red' for the whole crowd."

"Who's Red?" I asked.

Nina leaned forward and made a squeaking noise with her lips. Instantly a little furry creature of a bright scarlet color, with a short tail, jumped out of a box in the corner, ran to her and up her hand and arm to her shoulder and then down to her knee, where he stood stiffly erect like a soldier at attention. He was so quick and comical in his motions and so full of tricks that he kept us laughing.

"I had three Reds," explained Nina, "but a weasel got two of them before I got the weasel. I have had many other pets besides the wood-mice. There isn't a creature in all the forest that would do me harm unless I hurt it first. And I don't have a grudge against any of them, except the hawks and owls that come after my chickens."

The most striking feature about the cabin, however, was the abundance and variety of furs and other trophies of the chase. Adorning and almost covering one end of the room was an enormous moose head. At the other end was a wonderful caribou head. Over the windows were beautiful heads of the white mountain sheep, the bighorn of the Northwest.

But the pelts! Great bunches of mink, marten, fisher, otter, muskrat and beaver; scores of red fox, with here and there a priceless black or silver fox; lynx, wolf, wolverine and black bear.

"We have four lines of traps, each five miles long," explained Nina; "and Joe and I each take two lines every other day, spending the alternate days caring for the skins. We are making bear traps now, getting ready for Bruin when he comes out of his den. We have about four thousand dollars' worth of furs caught this winter, and we'll make it five before warm weather."

But the most imposing objects of all in the cabin were two tremendous rugs—the skins of the ursus gigas or Kodiak bear—the largest of existing carnivorous mammals. Joe had learned something of taxidermy, and the heads were nicely preserved, the big teeth and claws showing, the skins being lined with red blankets. The largest of these rugs was over twelve feet long, the distance from nose to tail over ten feet, the lateral spread being almost as great. The fur was a rich brown in color, deep, thick and soft.

At my exclamation of wonder and admiration, Joe began eagerly to tell me the story of the rugs; but his wife stopped him.

"Better wait till after supper, Joe," she said.

Ah, that supper! The supreme physical pleasure of it lingers in my memory still. Moose soup with potatoes, turnips, carrots and onions from their garden in it; fresh grayling, caught in the fall and frozen; ruffed grouse pie; roast mountain sheep—the best meat that grows; omelet made of eggs laid that day; moose-nose cheese, delicately pickled; fine sour-dough bread with raspberry jam and currant jelly; pie made of fresh blueberries, the berries having been picked in the fall and preserved by the simple process of pouring water on them and letting them freeze. All of these viands, except the bread, being the products of Nina's labor or marksmanship, made them doubly sweet. Where else in the world could you get a meal like that—or the appetite to devour it all?

"Well," began Joe, when, sated, I lay back in the easy-chair curiously fashioned of moose horns, while the young couple washed the dishes, "I'm mighty proud of them rugs. They're Nina's, both of 'em, and I reckon there's no other girl in the world would of tackled the job she did, and got away with it. It scares me every time I think of it, and I don't know whether I'd oughter scold her or pet her up."

"Nonsense!" protested his wife; "you know you'd have done exactly as I did if you'd been here."

"Maybe I would," he retorted, "but I wouldn't of let you take that risk."

Five Kodiak Bears

The bear to the right is twice the size of a Grizzly

"It was the first of last November," he resumed. "I'd taken the two sleds and all the dogs, as soon as I thought the ice was strong enough, and I'd gone two hundred miles to the store at Ophir to lay in our winter's outfit. The ice towards the coast wasn't strong enough to make safe mushin', and Nina was all alone here for more'n three weeks. I knowed she would make the reg'lar round of the traps and keep things goin' just as usual. She's never learned to be afraid—that girl.

"Well, one mornin' she was gettin' breakfast, when she heard a little noise outside. She opened the door, and there, within twenty-five feet of her, were three big Kodiak bears. Two of them stood up on their hin' feet when she opened the door, while the other kept smellin' around for grub."

"Goodness, Nina!" I exclaimed. "What was your first thought when you saw the big brutes so close?"

"Well," she answered, smiling, "my first thought was, 'What beautiful rugs those are on the backs of the bears! I want those rugs.'"

"Yes," Joe went on, "and so she stepped slowly back, inch by inch into the house, and softly closed the door so as not to scare the bears—they as big as a house and her such a leetle mite of a thing. She took down that 30-40 Winchester, there, and filled the magazine full (it chambers ten); and then she done a plumb foolish thing. I know darned well what I'd 'a' done. I'd 'a' poked the moss out between the logs, there, and stuck my rifle through and had some 'vantage."

"What did Nina do?" I asked.

"Why, she threw the door wide open and stepped right out in front of it. Up came all three bears, this time, on their hind feet. Nina's lightnin' on the snap shot, and before the big he-bear was straightened up he got it right between the eyes. Down he tumbled, and the other two was out of sight around the kennel there before she could throw another shell into the gun and aim." Joe pointed to a log dog-house about two rods in front of the door.

"Nina raced pell-mell past the kennel to get another shot, and there she saw the big she-bear, standin' up behind the dog-house, awaitin' for her, not a gun's length away. Nina swung around and fired pointblank into the bear's breast. It went down on all-fours and came for her with open mouth. There was nothing for it but to keep on shootin'. She worked the lever of her gun mighty fast. She put five bullets into the beast before she quieted it. She never saw the third bear again."

"Why, Nina!" I cried, as soon as I could get my breath. "You foolish child! Your escape was miraculous! It frightens me to hear Joe tell of it. Weren't you dreadfully scared when you saw that great brute jump at you like that?"

"Oh, no," laughed the girl. "I was too busy to get scared. But I was awfully provoked because the other one got away."

Other details of Nina's great adventure followed—how it took her three days to skin the two bears, she having to climb a tree to adjust the block and tackle so as to move the heavy carcases; and how Joe "blubbered" when he got home and saw them, and knew the peril his beloved had encountered.

Nina is an exceptional woman, but still she is truly a type. There is something in "that great, big, broad land, way up yonder," that stiffens the moral fiber, enlarges the spirit and makes the people unafraid. The white settlers of Alaska, while by no means all saints, are as a class the strongest, bravest and most resourceful people I know. I have not heard from my brave little chum for several years. I presume she is still living her joyous, fearless, Christian life in what John Muir used to call my "beautiful, fruitful wilderness." Here's to her; God bless her!

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