a
clump of reeds that he relished, reared up on his hind legs, and with
his front paws clutched the clump of reeds much as a reaper gathers a
sheaf of wheat. Then he began to eat, bending his head down to find the
most tender stalks. In this position his chest was exposed. I fired.
The ball entered just below the shoulder. The bear staggered and rolled
into the brook. Struggling desperately to rise, he was unable to climb
up either one of the two steep ascents along the bank. At the end of
five minutes the death agonies began and he died uttering growls that,
if tradition is to be believed, would have caused all the bears in the
Californian mountains to congregate.
This
terminated our apprenticeship. We were now full-fledged huntÂers. In
the daytime when we were not too tired, we indulged in the usual type
of hunt. During such expeditions we brought down squirrel, hare, and
partridge. Deer were far rarer than in the vicinity of Sonoma; we
killed only one.
On
the same jaunt on which I took my deer I killed a magnificent white and
blue snake. Lying curled up in a clump of lupins, with his mouth open
among the exquisite blue flowers that capped the bushes, he had
apparently lured a grey squirrel that, fascinated by his magÂnetic eye,
descended noisily from branch to branch. I sent a ball through the head
of the enormous reptile that hissed as he writhed. The spell had
broken, the squirrel bounded instantly from the middle to the upper
branches and from this tree over to a neighboring tree. As for the
serpent, not knowing whether or not he was poisonous I was careful
enough to remain at a distance, but he was much too engrossed to pay
any attention to me. My shot had carried off all the upper part of his
head just behind the eyes. Aluna recognized him as belonging to the boa
family, that is, to non-poisonous reptiles. He was over nine feet long.
The
destruction of this reptile and a meeting with the Tachi Indians who
had laid plans to carry off our wagon and our two horses were the only
extraordinary episodes that occurred during the month passed in the
Californian mountains. Aluna strangled one of these Indians with his
lasso; another was wounded by a shot from our gun. The Indians, on the
other hand, killed one of our horses with an arrow. Fortunately this
was the horse we had just bought, and not Aluna's animal.
The
Indians' arrows are of reeds, tipped with feathers, and measure about a
yard in length, six inches from their tip a smaller reed is
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