ed. If
we had met then, I almost believe I would have tried to make friends
with him.

I have said that many animals would have rejoiced had I been killed.
This is not because bears are the enemies of other wild things, for we
really kill very little except beetles and other insects, frogs and
lizards, and little things like mice and chipmunks. We are not as the
wolves, the coyotes, the pumas, or the weasels, which live on the lives
of other animals, and which every other thing in the woods regards as
its sworn foe. Still, smaller animals are mostly afraid of us, and the
carcass of a dead bear means a feast for a number of hungry things. If a
bear cannot defend his own life, he will have no friends to do it for
him; and while, as I have said before, a full-grown bear in the
mountains has no need to fear any living thing, man always excepted, in
stand-up fight, it is none the less necessary to be always on one's
guard.

In my case fear had nothing to do with my hatred of loneliness. Even the
thought of man himself gave me no uneasiness. I was sure that no human
beings were as yet within many miles of my home, and I knew that I
should always have abundant warning of their coming. Moreover, I already
knew man. He was not to me the thing of terror and mystery that he had
been a year ago, or that he still was to most of the forest folk. I had
cause enough, it is true, to know how dangerous and how savagely cruel
he was, and for that I hated him. But I had also seen enough of him to
have a contempt for his blindness and his lack of the sense of scent.
Had I not again and again, when in the town, dodged round the corner of
a building, and waited while he passed a few yards away, or stood
immovable in the dark shadow of a building, and looked straight at him
while he went by utterly unconscious that I was near? Nothing could live
in the forest for a week with no more eyesight, scent, or hearing than a
man possesses, and without his thunder-stick he would be as helpless as
a lame deer. All this I understood, and was not afraid that, if our
paths should cross again, I should not be well able to take care of
myself.

But while there was no fear added to my loneliness, the loneliness
itself was bad enough. Having none to provide for except myself, I had
no difficulty in finding food. For the first few weeks, I think, I did
nothing but wander aimlessly about and sleep, still using my winter den
for that purpose. As the summer ca