HOW THE LITTLE BROTHER SET FREE HIS BIG BROTHERS

Edition and rights: Original English text from Project Gutenberg ebook #31201, marked public domain in the USA. The literary text below is reproduced without AI rewriting.

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In a small hut, right in the middle of the forest, lived a
man, his wife, three sons and a daughter. For some
reason, all the animals seemed to have left that part of
the country, and food grew very scarce; so, one morning,
after a night of snow, when the tracks of beasts might be
easily seen, the three boys started off to hunt.

They kept together for some time, till they reached a
place where the path they had been following split into
two, and one of the brothers called his dog and went to
the left, while the others took the trail to the right. These
had not gone far when their dogs scented a bear, and
drove him out from the thicket. The bear ran across a
clearing, and the elder brother managed to place an arrow
right in his head.

They both took up the bear, and carried it towards
home, meeting the third at the spot where they had
parted from him. When they reached home they threw
the bear down on the floor of the hut saying,

‘Father, here is a bear which we killed; now we can
have some dinner.’

But the father, who was in a bad temper, only said:

‘When I was a young man we used to get two bears
in one day.’

The sons were rather disappointed at hearing this, and
though there was plenty of meat to last for two or three
days, they started off early in the morning down the same
trail that they had followed before. As they drew near
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the fork a bear suddenly ran out from behind a tree, and
took the path on the right. The two elder boys and their
dogs pursued him, and soon the second son, who was also
a good shot, killed him instantly with an arrow. At the
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fork of the trail, on their way home, they met the
youngest, who had taken the left-hand road, and had shot
a bear for himself. But when they threw the two bears
triumphantly on the floor of the hut their father hardly
looked at them, and only said:

‘When I was a young man I used to get three bears
in one day.’

The next day they were luckier than before, and brought
back three bears, on which their father told them that he
had always killed four. However, that did not prevent
him from skinning the bears and cooking them in a way
of his own, which he thought very good, and they all ate an
excellent supper.

Now these bears were the servants of the great bear
chief who lived in a high mountain a long way off. And
every time a bear was killed his shadow returned to the
house of the bear chief, with the marks of his wounds
plainly to be seen by the rest.

The chief was furious at the number of bears the
hunters had killed, and determined that he would find
some way of destroying them. So he called another of his
servants, and said to him:

‘Go to the thicket near the fork, where the boys killed
your brothers, and directly they or the dogs see you
return here as fast as ever you can. The mountain will
open to let you in, and the hunters will follow you. Then
I shall have them in my power, and be able to revenge
myself.’

The servant bowed low, and started at once for the
fork, where he hid himself in the bushes.

By-and-by the boys came in sight, but this time there
were only two of them, as the youngest had stayed at
home. The air was warm and damp, and the snow soft
and slushy, and the elder brother’s bowstring hung loose,
while the bow of the younger caught in a tree and
snapped in half. At that moment the dogs began to bark
loudly, and the bear rushed out of the thicket and set off
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in the direction of the mountain. Without thinking that
they had nothing to defend themselves with, should the
bear turn and attack them, the boys gave chase. The bear,
who knew quite well that he could not be shot, sometimes
slackened his pace and let the dogs get quite close; and
in this way the elder son reached the mountain without
observing it, while his brother, who had hurt his foot, was
still far behind.

As he ran up, the mountain opened to admit the bear,
and the boy, who was close on his heels, rushed in after
him, and did not know where he was till he saw bears
sitting on every side of him, holding a council. The
animal he had been chasing sank panting in their midst,
and the boy, very much frightened, stood still, letting his
bow fall to the ground.

‘Why are you trying to kill all my servants?’ asked
the chief. ‘Look round and see their shades, with arrows
sticking in them. It was I who told the bear to-day how
he was to lure you into my power. I shall take care that
you shall not hurt my people any more, because you will
become a bear yourself.’

At this moment the second brother came up—for the
mountain had been left open on purpose to tempt him
also—and cried out breathlessly: ‘Don’t you see that the
bear is lying close to you? Why don’t you shoot him?’
And, without waiting for a reply, pressed forward to drive
his arrow into the heart of the bear. But the elder one
caught his raised arm, and whispered: ‘Be quiet! can’t
you tell where you are?’ Then the boy looked up and saw
the angry bears about him. On the one side were the
servants of the chief, and on the other the servants of the
chief’s sister, who was sorry for the two youths, and begged
that their lives might be spared. The chief answered that
he would not kill them, but only cast a spell over them, by
which their heads and bodies should remain as they were,
but their arms and legs should change into those of a
bear, so that they would go on all fours for the rest of
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their lives. And, stooping over a spring of water, he
dipped a handful of moss in it and rubbed it over the
arms and legs of the boys. In an instant the transformation
took place, and two creatures, neither beast nor
human, stood before the chief.

Now the bear chief of course knew that the boys’
father would seek for his sons when they did not return
home, so he sent another of his servants to the hiding-place
at the fork of the trail to see what would happen.
He had not waited long, when the father came in sight,
stooping as he went to look for his sons’ tracks in the
snow. When he saw the marks of snow-shoes along
the path on the right he was filled with joy, not knowing
[Pg 139]
that the servant had made some fresh tracks on purpose
to mislead him; and he hastened forward so fast that he
fell headlong into a pit, where the bear was sitting.
Before he could pick himself up the bear had quietly
broken his neck, and, hiding the body under the snow, sat
down to see if anyone else would pass that way.

Meanwhile the mother at home was wondering what
had become of her two sons, and as the hours went on,
and their father never returned, she made up her mind to
go and look for him. The youngest boy begged her to let
him undertake the search, but she would not hear of it,
and told him he must stay at home and take care of his
sister. So, slipping on her snow-shoes, she started on her
way.

As no fresh snow had fallen, the trail was quite easy
to find, and she walked straight on, till it led her up to
the pit where the bear was waiting for her. He grasped
her as she fell and broke her neck, after which he laid
her in the snow beside her husband, and went back to tell
the bear chief.

Hour after hour dragged heavily by in the forest hut,
and at last the brother and sister felt quite sure that in
some way or other all the rest of the family had perished.
Day after day the boy climbed to the top of a tall tree
near the house, and sat there till he was almost frozen,
looking on all sides through the forest openings, hoping
that he might see someone coming along. Very soon all
the food in the house was eaten, and he knew he would
have to go out and hunt for more. Besides, he wished to
seek for his parents.

The little girl did not like being left alone in the hut,
and cried bitterly; but her brother told her that there was
no use sitting down quietly to starve, and that whether he
found any game or not he would certainly be back before the
following night. Then he cut himself some arrows, each
from a different tree, and winged with the feathers of four
different birds. He then made himself a bow, very light
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and strong, and got down his snow-shoes. All this took
some time, and he could not start that day, but early next
morning he called his little dog Redmouth, whom he kept
in a box, and set out.

After he had followed the trail for a great distance he
grew very tired, and sat upon the branch of a tree to rest.
But Redmouth barked so furiously that the boy thought
that perhaps his parents might have been killed under its
branches, and, stepping back, shot one of his arrows at the
root of the tree. Whereupon a noise like thunder shook
it from top to bottom, fire broke out, and in a few minutes
a little heap of ashes lay in the place where it had stood.

Not knowing quite what to make of it all, the boy continued
on the trail, and went down the right-hand fork till
he came to the clump of bushes where the bears used to
hide.

Now, as was plain by his being able to change the
shape of the two brothers, the bear chief knew a good
deal of magic, and he was quite aware that the little boy
was following the trail, and he sent a very small but
clever bear servant to wait for him in the bushes and to
try to tempt him into the mountain. But somehow his
spells could not have worked properly that day, as the
bear chief did not know that Redmouth had gone with his
master, or he would have been more careful. For the
moment the dog ran round the bushes barking loudly, the
little bear servant rushed out in a fright, and set out for
the mountains as fast as he could.

The dog followed the bear, and the boy followed the
dog, until the mountain, the house of the great bear chief,
came in sight. But along the road the snow was so
wet and heavy that the boy could hardly get along, and
then the thong of his snow-shoes broke, and he had to
stop and mend it, so that the bear and the dog got so far
ahead that he could scarcely hear the barking. When
the strap was firm again the boy spoke to his snow-shoes
and said:

[Pg 141]
‘Now you must go as fast as you can, or, if not, I shall
lose the dog as well as the bear.’ And the snow-shoes
sang in answer that they would run like the wind.

As he came along, the bear chief’s sister was looking
out of the window, and took pity on this little brother, as
she had on the two elder ones, and waited to see what
the boy would do, when he found that the bear servant
and the dog had already entered the mountain.

The little brother was certainly very much puzzled
at not seeing anything of either of the animals, which had
vanished suddenly out of his sight. He paused for an
instant to think what he should do next, and while he did so
he fancied he heard Redmouth’s voice on the opposite side
of the mountain. With great difficulty he scrambled over
steep rocks, and forced a path through tangled thickets;
but when he reached the other side the sound appeared to
start from the place from which he had come. Then he
had to go all the way back again, and at the very top,
where he stopped to rest, the barking was directly beneath
him, and he knew in an instant where he was and what
had happened.

‘Let my dog out at once, bear chief!’ cried he. ‘If
you do not, I shall destroy your palace.’ But the bear
chief only laughed, and said nothing. The boy was very
angry at his silence, and aiming one of his arrows at the
bottom of the mountain, shot straight through it.

As the arrow touched the ground a rumbling was
heard, and with a roar a fire broke out which seemed to
split the whole mountain into pieces. The bear chief and
all his servants were burnt up in the flames, but his sister
and all that belonged to her were spared because she had
tried to save the two elder boys from punishment.

As soon as the fire had burnt itself out the little
hunter entered what was left of the mountain, and the
first thing he saw was his two brothers—half bear, half
boy.

‘Oh, help us! help us!’ cried they, standing on their
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hind legs as they spoke, and stretching out their fore-paws
to him.

‘But how am I to help you?’ asked the little brother,
almost weeping. ‘I can kill people, and destroy trees
and mountains, but I have no power over men.’ And the
two elder brothers came up and put their paws on his
shoulders, and they all three wept together.

The heart of the bear chief’s sister was moved when
she saw their misery, and she came gently up behind,
and whispered:

‘Little boy, gather some moss from the spring over
there, and let your brothers smell it.’

With a bound all three were at the spring, and as the
youngest plucked a handful of wet moss, the two others
sniffed at it with all their might. Then the bear-skin fell
away from them, and they stood upright once more.

‘How can we thank you? how can we thank you?’
they stammered, hardly able to speak; and fell at her
feet in gratitude. But the bear’s sister only smiled, and
bade them go home and look after the little girl, who had
no one else to protect her.

And this the boys did, and took such good care of their
sister that, as she was very small, she soon forgot that she
had ever had a father and mother.

[From the Bureau of Ethnology, U.S.]

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