hed to
see my mother talking to a strange bear. When he did recognize me,
however, I might still have been a stranger, for any friendliness that
he showed. He sat up on his haunches and growled, and then came on
slowly, swinging his head, and obviously not at all disposed to welcome
me. Again I was surprised, to see that he was not as big as I had
thought, and for a moment wild ideas of fighting him, if that was what
he wanted, came into my head. I wished to stay with mother, and even
though he was my father, I did not see why I should go away alone and
leave her. But, tall though I was getting, I had not anything like my
father's weight, and, however bitterly I might wish to rebel, rebellion
was useless. Besides, my mother, though she was kind to me, would
undoubtedly have taken my father's part, as it was right that she should
do.

So I moved slowly away as my father came up, and as I did so even the
little cubs growled at me, siding, of course, with their father against
the stranger whom they had never seen. Father did not try to attack me,
but walked up to mother and began licking her, to show that she belonged
to him. I disliked going away, and thought that perhaps he would relent;
but when I sat down, as if I was intending to stay, he growled and told
me that I was not wanted.

I ought by this time to have grown accustomed to being alone, and to
have been incapable of letting myself be made miserable by a snub,
even from my father. But I was not; I was wretched. I do not think
that even on the first night after Kahwa was caught, or on that
morning when I saw her dead, that I felt as completely forlorn as I
did that day when I turned away from my mother, and went down the
mountain-side back to my own place alone. The squirrels chattered at
me, and the woodpecker rat-tat-tat-ed, and the woodchuck scurried
away, and I hated them all. What company were they to me? I was
lonely, and I craved the companionship of my own kind.

But it was to be a long time before I found it. I was now a solitary
bear, with my own life to live and my own way to make in the world, with
no one to look to for guidance and no one to help me if I needed help;
but many regarded me as an enemy, and would have rejoiced if I were
killed.

In those first days I thought of the surly solitary bear who had taken
our home while we were away, and whom I had vowed some day to punish;
and I began to understand in some measure why he was so bad-temper