“Worse, these woods are rife with great bears, who are equally interested in the deer, and not inclined to share.”
“So kill the bears!”
“It takes many arrows. A bear pierced by just one or two is an Annoyed Bear, not a Dead Bear, and an Annoyed Bear is worse than a shortage of deer.”
The assistant headman coughed. “An Annoyed Governor might be worse, in the long run, than an Annoyed Bear.”
“Ah, very true,” said Danzaemon. “So, to avoid annoyance on both counts, give us guns and powder, and we will get rid of the bears. And then the deer, and deerskins, will multiply.”
Kodachi Machi (Santa Cruz)
Shigetsuna looked up from the scroll he was reading. “Guns?”
“Guns.” Inawashiro Yoshimichi, the daikun responsible for relations with the eta, grimaced. “I’d prefer to just send a party of samurai to clean out these bears, and then move on. Nothing good can come of giving guns to eta. And the samurai on garrison duty here would normally enjoy a bit of action.”
He spat. “But the samurai would have to spend weeks in the vicinity of the eta-mura. The pollution would weigh heavily upon them.”
Shigetsuna shrugged. “‘Fifty steps, one hundred steps.’ I suppose giving the eta a few guns would be the least evil choice. Of course, they will be too defiled by the usage for a samurai to ever hold them again. Have the triggers painted white, as a warning.” White was the color of death and the supernatural.
Morro Bay,
Late Spring 1636
“Have you ever see a gun so old?” The eta huntsman held up the arquebus.
“Perhaps it belonged to Oda Nobunaga’s father.” Oda Nobunaga was the first of the Great Unifiers of Japan; his father died in 1551. The Portuguse had introduced firearms to Japan in 1542.
“It’s a very pretty club.”
“Enough joking around. Let’s see if it can still shoot.”
It did. Surprisingly well, in fact.
* * *
Gorosaku pointed at the trunk of a nearby cypress tree. There was bear hair on it, white-tipped. A grizzly had given itself a back scratch here.
Hikobei nodded, then crouched. A moment later, he found a bear print at the base of the tree. It was still fresh, perhaps hours old. He looked up at Gorosaku. “Let’s get the others.”
* * *
The local Chumash Indians ate acorns, roots, berries, elk, deer and fish. So did the grizzlies. If Indian women went out to gather acorns, they would set pickets, just as rabbits might have one of their number scanning the sky for hawks. If the men went fishing, they would avoid the spots that the bears favored.
It was rare for the Chumash to hunt grizzlies. They were brave, not suicidal.
But occasionally, the grizzlies hunted them.
* * *
“I am a deer,” White Cloud reminded himself. He wore a deer head mask, and was crouched down. He used his left hand to drag himself forward, his right carried his bow and a few arrows.
The herd noticed him, and recoiled. From a safer distance, they stopped to watch him.
White Cloud had also stopped, and watched them. “I am a deer, I am one of you.”
After a time, he resumed his movement toward the herd.
They reacted again, but this time they didn’t flee quite as far, they weren’t so sure he was a threat. “I look like a deer, sound like a deer, smell like a deer.”
At last, they let him move among them, their thoughts focused on finding the tenderest shoots.
* * *
Another hunter was present, watching the herd, picking out the weakest member. White Cloud. “He looks like a deer, sounds like a deer, smells like a deer. I think he would taste like a deer,” the grizzly perhaps thought to himself. Or perhaps the grizzly, who was well past his prime, thought that White Cloud would be easier to catch.
* * *
The wind shifted, and the herd caught the scent of grizzly. It stampeded, leaving White Cloud in its dust. A moment later and he smelled the grizzly, too, and joined them in flight.
But a grizzly can run twenty-five miles an hour for two miles without faltering.
* * *
“What the hell is that?” said Gorosaku, hearing the sound of breaking branches.
The first deer ran past them before the Japanese could react. They put an arrow into the second, however.
They gawked at White Cloud as he ran toward them. An Indian wearing a deer’s head was quite outside their experience.
Then they heard the roar of the pursuing grizzly.
Three bowmen fired, all at once, as if the arrows were released from the giant bow of some celestial warrior. The grizzly snarled, but kept coming.
Gorosaku fired his arquebus. The range was less than optimal, but the ball struck the bear in the shoulder, and checked the bear momentarily. The bowmen fired again. Gorosaku fell back to reload; the rate of fire on a muzzle loader was nothing to brag about.