"And why ain't them cubs bigger'n they are? That natcherlist laughed until
I thought he'd split when I told him a grizzly bear cub wasn't much
bigger'n a house-cat kitten when born!"
"He was one of the few fools who aren't willing to learn--and yet you
cannot blame him altogether," said Langdon. "Four or five years ago I
wouldn't have believed it, Bruce. I couldn't actually believe it until we
dug out those cubs up the Athabasca--one weighed eleven ounces and the
other nine. You remember?"
"An' they were a week old, Jimmy. An' the mother weighed eight hundred
pounds."
For a few moments they both puffed silently on their pipes.
"Almost--inconceivable," said Langdon then. "And yet it's true. And it
isn't a freak of nature, Bruce--it's simply a result of Nature's
far-sightedness. If the cubs were as large comparatively as a house-cat's
kittens the mother-bear could not sustain them during those weeks when she
eats and drinks nothing herself. There seems to be just one flaw in this
scheme: an ordinary black bear is only about half as large as a grizzly,
yet a black bear cub when born is much larger than a grizzly cub. Now why
the devil that should be--"
Bruce interrupted his friend with a good-natured laugh.
"That's easy--easy, Jimmy!" he exclaimed. "Do you remember last year when
we picked strawberries in the valley an' threw snowballs two hours later up
on the mountain? Higher you climb the colder it gets, don't it? Right
now--first day of July--you'd half freeze up on some of those peaks! A
grizzly dens high, Jimmy, and a black bear dens low.
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