Mattie Mitchell by Gary Collins

he figured,
although he never knew from one year to the next what money
he would receive for his furs. There was one furrier in the Bay of
St. George who always gave him a fair price, and although it was
far to walk—if he couldn’t get a boat ride down the coast with
one of the local fishermen, a rare event—Mattie would take his
furs nowhere else.
    But for now the bear skin would break the draft from his door.
    Mattie relished the story of the bear hunt he planned to tell
the village children. He seldom talked much with the adults,
especially the whites, who for the most part rarely spoke to him
at all. But the children were different, Indian as well as white.
They always came running to hear his “trapline tales” when he
came walking in to the village at the end of each winter. And
Mattie never disappointed them.
    But it hurt him deeply one evening when a young, blue-eyed
white boy with yellow hair, who had been listening with the others,
was called home by the relentless shouts of his mother. Mattie
heard his angry mother say plainly, her voice carrying on the quiet
evening air, “I told you to stay away from dat filthy Injun.”
    With his usual stoic manner, Mattie bore the taunt, like all of
the others he had endured, and said nothing.

    THE STORY OF THIS BEAR HUNT HAD begun nearly a year
ago, on a late spring morning. The days were getting longerand warmer. The snow was beginning to melt. Geese could be
seen flying in wedges against the evening sky, their honking
resounding through the hills as they headed north. The nights
were getting shorter, but they were still cold enough to freeze the
snow.
    It was the time of year when a man could walk over the
crusted snow without need for snowshoes. It was a time relished
by all trappers, since great distances could be covered in a day. It
was nearly time to leave the mountains, but Mattie searched early
each morning for one more thing. He carried his snowshoes on
his back. If he found what he was looking for it would take him
far away, and he had no intention of being forced to walk home
without them on snow weakened by the sun.
    He found exactly what he was looking for on the second
morning of his search. Imprinted in the snow’s surface were the
tracks of a very large black bear. The print that had broken the
crust was bigger than Mattie’s fully spread hand.
    He followed the tracks for just a few minutes. The bear had
passed here not long ago. It had been running from tree to tree
and paying extra attention to several decayed stumps that it had
ripped open. Obviously the bear was very hungry. Mattie had no
intention of following the animal at all, though by its spoor he
knew it was not a nursing mother, but a male. Its hide was at its
worst this time of year and its flesh would be lean and tasteless.
The long winter had sapped the animal of its fat reserves. Mattie
turned and began back-tracking the bear.
    It was easy enough to do. The bear had left a clear but very
twisted trail. There wasn’t one deadfall or one exposed stump
rising up through the snow that the animal hadn’t searched
thoroughly for food. Mattie figured the bear had come out of its
winter den that very morning, and he wanted to find it.
    The tracks led him in a general direction toward a high ridgein the distance. He wanted to leave the spoor and cut straight for
it, but he couldn’t take the chance. Maybe the bear had come
from a different direction altogether. He had been fooled before,
so now he kept on the tracks. Sometimes they circled and crossed
over themselves. He followed them for more than four miles
before he knew he was nearing the den.
    The spoor led up over an imposing slope that faced south. The
warming sun had melted most of the snow away from the place,
exposing a wide, talus rubble that had long ago foundered down.
Mattie climbed up over the rock slide and was soon standing
on a very wide ledge. Over the years, huge boulders had fallen
from