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Title: The Kindred of the Wild - A Book of Animal Life
Author: Roberts, Charles G. D., Sir
Language: English
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[Illustration: Geese]
The Kindred of the Wild
A Book of Animal Life
[Illustration: Fox]
[Illustration: Otter; The Works of Charles G. D. Roberts]
The Haunters of the Silences $2.00
Red Fox 2.00
The Watchers of the Trails 2.00
The Kindred of the Wild 2.00
Earth’s Enigmas 1.50
The Heart of the Ancient Wood 1.50
The Heart That Knows 1.50
The Prisoner of Mademoiselle 1.50
Barbara Ladd 1.50
The Forge in the Forest 1.50
A Sister to Evangeline 1.50
By the Marshes of Minas 1.50
Cameron of Lochiel (_translated_) 1.50
The Young Acadian .50
The Cruise of the Yacht “Dido” .50
The Haunter of the Pine Gloom .50
The Lord of the Air .50
The King of the Mamozekel .50
The Watchers of the Camp-fire .50
The Return to the Trails .50
The Little People of the Sycamore .50
L. C. Page & Company
New England Building, Boston, Mass.
[Illustration: The Kindred of the Wild, by Charles G. D. Roberts]
THE · KINDRED
OF · THE · WILD
A · BOOK · OF · ANIMAL · LIFE · _by_
CHARLES · G · D · ROBERTS
_Author of_
_The Heart of the Ancient Wood_
_The Forge in the Forest_
_A Sister to Evangeline_
_Poems etc_—
_With many illustrations by
CHARLES LIVINGSTON BULL_
L · C · PAGE · & · COMPANY
PUBLISHERS . . . BOSTON
[Illustration: Hare]
_Copyright, 1900, 1901, 1902, by_ The Outing Publishing Company
_Copyright, 1901, 1902, by_ Frank Leslie Publishing House
_Copyright, 1896, by_ H. S. Stone & Company
_Copyright, 1902, by_ The Criterion Publication Company
_Copyright, 1902, by_ Charles Scribner’s Sons
_Copyright, 1902, by_
L. C. Page & Company
(INCORPORATED)
_All rights reserved_
Published, May, 1902
Tenth Impression, July, 1907
Colonial Press
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
[Illustration: Lynx]
To My People
[Illustration: Deer]
Contents of the Book
[Illustration: Puma]
PAGE
The Animal Story [1] 15
The Moonlight Trails 33
The Lord of the Air 55
Wild Motherhood 93
The Homesickness of Kehonka 117
Savoury Meats 143
The Boy and Hushwing 159
A Treason of Nature 181
The Haunter of the Pine Gloom 199
The Watchers of the Camp-Fire 241
When Twilight Falls on the Stump Lots 273
The King of the Mamozekel 287
In Panoply of Spears 349
[1]Included by permission of the University Society
[Illustration: Owl]
A List of the Full-Page Drawings in the Book
[Illustration: Crouching Lynx]
PAGE
The Animal Story 13
“The sniffings of the baffled bear or tiger” 17
“The inscrutable eyes of all the cats” 25
The Moonlight Trails 31
“All the players were motionless, with ears one way” 37
“It was beyond his reach” 49
The Lord of the Air 53
“He saw his wide-winged mate, too, leave the nest” 57
“Holding the fish firmly in the clutch of one great talon” 65
“Helplessly intertangled in the meshes” 79
“They flocked blackly about with vituperative malice” 83
Wild Motherhood 91
“Led his herd off northward” 95
“Stood for a moment to sniff the air” 99
“Around its rim circled the wary mother” 105
The Homesickness of Kehonka 115
“He would stand motionless, his compact, glossy head high in
air” 125
“Fell with a great splash into the channel of the Tantramar” 133
“The discourager of quests darted stealthily forth” 137
Savoury Meats 141
“Two green eyes, close to the ground” 153
The Boy and Hushwing 157
“He struck the empty air” 165
“Settled himself, much disconcerted, on the back of an old
haircloth sofa” 171
A Treason of Nature 179
“He gave answer at once to the summons” 187
“Started in mad haste down the shore” 189
“He dug his claws deeper into the bark, and bared his fangs
thirstily” 191
The Haunter of the Pine Gloom 197
“The big beast little imagined himself observed” 203
“A great lynx landed on the log” 207
“Presently the lucifee arose and began creeping stealthily
closer” 213
“A silent gray thunderbolt fell upon him” 217
“Yawned hugely, and stretched herself like a cat” 223
“Mounted the carcass with an air of lordship” 229
The Watchers of the Camp-Fire 239
“His big, spreading paws carried him over its surface as if he
had been shod with snow-shoes” 243
“He pushed the ball again, very, very delicately” 249
“Stole noiselessly toward the shining lovely thing” 259
When Twilight Falls on the Stump Lots 271
“She struggled straight toward the den that held her young” 281
The King of the Mamozekel 285
“The calf stood close by, watching with interest” 293
“The mother mallard would float amid her brood” 301
“But they fell short of their intended mark” 309
“Thick piled the snows about the little herd” 319
“Was off through the underbrush in ignominious flight” 335
“It was fear itself that he was wiping out” 343
In Panoply of Spears 347
“The bear eyed him for some moments” 353
“A weasel glided noiselessly up to the door of the den” 369
[Illustration: Eagle]
[Illustration: THE ANIMAL STORY]
The
Kindred of the Wild
Introductory
The Animal Story
Alike in matter and in method, the animal story, as we have it to-day,
may be regarded as a culmination. The animal story, of course, in one
form or another, is as old as the beginnings of literature. Perhaps the
most engrossing part in the life-drama of primitive man was that played
by the beasts which he hunted, and by those which hunted him. They
pressed incessantly upon his perceptions. They furnished both material
and impulse for his first gropings toward pictorial art. When he acquired
the kindred art of telling a story, they supplied his earliest themes;
and they suggested the hieroglyphs by means of which, on carved bone or
painted rock, he first gave his narrative a form to outlast the spoken
breath. We may not unreasonably infer that the first animal story—the
remote but authentic ancestor of “Mowgli” and “Lobo” and “Krag”—was a
story of some successful hunt, when success meant life to the starving
family; or of some desperate escape, when the truth of the narrative was
attested, to the hearers squatted trembling about their fire, by the
sniffings of the baffled bear or tiger at the rock-barred mouth of the
cave. Such first animal stories had at least one merit of prime literary
importance. They were convincing. The first critic, however supercilious,
would be little likely to cavil at their verisimilitude.
Somewhat later, when men had begun to harass their souls, and their
neighbours, with problems of life and conduct, then these same animals,
hourly and in every aspect thrust beneath the eyes of their observation,
served to point the moral of their tales. The beasts, not being in a
position to resent the ignoble office thrust upon them, were compelled to
do duty as concrete types of those obvious virtues and vices of which
alone the unsophisticated ethical sense was ready to take cognisance. In
this way, as soon as composition became a _métier_, was born the fable;
and in this way the ingenuity of the first author enabled him to avoid a
perilous unpopularity among those whose weaknesses and defects his art
held up to the scorn of all the caves.
[Illustration: “THE SNIFFINGS OF THE BAFFLED BEAR OR TIGER.”]
These earliest observers of animal life were compelled by the necessities
of the case to observe truly, if not deeply. Pitting their wits against
those of their four-foot rivals, they had to know their antagonists, and
respect them, in order to overcome them. But it was only the most salient
characteristics of each species that concerned the practical observer. It
was simple to remember that the tiger was cruel, the fox cunning, the
wolf rapacious. And so, as advancing civilisation drew an ever widening
line between man and the animals, and men became more and more engrossed
in the interests of their own kind, the personalities of the wild
creatures which they had once known so well became obscured to them, and
the creatures themselves came to be regarded, for the purposes of
literature, as types or symbols merely,—except in those cases, equally
obstructive to exact observation, where they were revered as temporary
tenements of the spirits of departed kinsfolk. The characters in that
great beast-epic of the middle ages, “Reynard the Fox,” though far more
elaborately limned than those which play their succinct rôles in the
fables of Æsop, are at the same time in their elaboration far more alien
to the truths of wild nature. Reynard, Isegrim, Bruin, and Greybeard have
little resemblance to the fox, the wolf, the bear, and the badger, as
patience, sympathy, and the camera reveal them to us to-day.
The advent of Christianity, strange as it may seem at first glance, did
not make for a closer understanding between man and the lower animals.
While it was militant, fighting for its life against the forces of
paganism, its effort was to set man at odds with the natural world, and
fill his eyes with the wonders of the spiritual. Man was the only thing
of consequence on earth, and of man, not his body, but his soul. Nature
was the ally of the enemy. The way of nature was the way of death. In man
alone was the seed of the divine. Of what concern could be the joy or
pain of creatures of no soul, to-morrow returning to the dust? To
strenuous spirits, their eyes fixed upon the fear of hell for themselves,
and the certainty of it for their neighbours, it smacked of sin to take
thought of the feelings of such evanescent products of corruption. Hence
it came that, in spite of the gentle understanding of such sweet saints
as Francis of Assisi, Anthony of Padua, and Colomb of the Bees, the
inarticulate kindred for a long time reaped small comfort from the
Dispensation of Love.
With the spread of freedom and the broadening out of all intellectual
interests which characterise these modern days, the lower kindreds began
to regain their old place in the concern of man. The revival of interest
in the animals found literary expression (to classify roughly) in two
forms, which necessarily overlap each other now and then, viz., the story
of adventure and the anecdote of observation. Hunting as a recreation,
pursued with zest from pole to tropics by restless seekers after the new,
supplied a species of narrative singularly akin to what the first animal
stories must have been,—narratives of desperate encounter, strange peril,
and hairbreadth escape. Such hunters’ stories and travellers’ tales are
rarely conspicuous for the exactitude of their observation; but that was
not the quality at first demanded of them by fireside readers. The
attention of the writer was focussed, not upon the peculiarities or the
emotions of the beast protagonist in each fierce, brief drama, but upon
the thrill of the action, the final triumph of the human actor. The
inevitable tendency of these stories of adventure with beasts was to
awaken interest in animals, and to excite a desire for exact knowledge of
their traits and habits. The interest and the desire evoked the natural
historian, the inheritor of the half-forgotten mantle of Pliny. Precise
and patient scientists made the animals their care, observing with
microscope and measure, comparing bones, assorting families, subdividing
subdivisions, till at length all the beasts of significance to man were
ticketed neatly, and laid bare, as far as the inmost fibre of their
material substance was concerned, to the eye of popular information.
Altogether admirable and necessary as was this development at large,
another, of richer or at least more spiritual significance, was going on
at home. Folk who loved their animal comrades—their dogs, horses, cats,
parrots, elephants—were observing, with the wonder and interest of
discoverers, the astonishing fashion in which the mere instincts of these
so-called irrational creatures were able to simulate the operations of
reason. The results of this observation were written down, till
“anecdotes of animals” came to form a not inconsiderable body of
literature. The drift of all these data was overwhelmingly toward one
conclusion. The mental processes of the animals observed were seen to be
far more complex than the observers had supposed. Where instinct was
called in to account for the elaborate ingenuity with which a dog would
plan and accomplish the outwitting of a rival, or the nice judgment with
which an elephant, with no nest-building ancestors behind him to instruct
his brain, would choose and adjust the teak-logs which he was set to
pile, it began to seem as if that faithful faculty was being overworked.
To explain yet other cases, which no accepted theory seemed to fit,
coincidence was invoked, till that rare and elusive phenomenon threatened
to become as customary as buttercups. But when instinct and coincidence
had done all that could be asked of them, there remained a great
unaccounted-for body of facts; and men were forced at last to accept the
proposition that, within their varying limitations, animals can and do
reason. As far, at least, as the mental intelligence is concerned, the
gulf dividing the lowest of the human species from the highest of the
animals has in these latter days been reduced to a very narrow
psychological fissure.
Whether avowedly or not, it is with the psychology of animal life that
the representative animal stories of to-day are first of all concerned.
Looking deep into the eyes of certain of the four-footed kindred, we have
been startled to see therein a something, before unrecognised, that
answered to our inner and intellectual, if not spiritual selves. We have
suddenly attained a new and clearer vision. We have come face to face
with personality, where we were blindly wont to predicate mere instinct
and automatism. It is as if one should step carelessly out of one’s back
door, and marvel to see unrolling before his new-awakened eyes the peaks
and seas and misty valleys of an unknown world. Our chief writers of
animal stories at the present day may be regarded as explorers of this
unknown world, absorbed in charting its topography. They work, indeed,
upon a substantial foundation of known facts. They are minutely
scrupulous as to their natural history, and assiduous contributors to
that science. But above all are they diligent in their search for the
motive beneath the action. Their care is to catch the varying, elusive
personalities which dwell back of the luminous brain windows of the dog,
the horse, the deer, or wrap themselves in reserve behind the inscrutable
eyes of all the cats, or sit aloof in the gaze of the hawk and the eagle.
The animal story at its highest point of development is a psychological
romance constructed on a framework of natural science.
[Illustration: “THE INSCRUTABLE EYES OF ALL THE CATS.”]
The real psychology of the animals, so far as we are able to grope our
way toward it by deduction and induction combined, is a very different
thing from the psychology of certain stories of animals which paved the
way for the present vogue. Of these, such books as “Beautiful Joe” and
“Black Beauty” are deservedly conspicuous examples. It is no detraction
from the merit of these books, which have done great service in awakening
a sympathetic understanding of the animals and sharpening our sense of
kinship with all that breathe, to say that their psychology is human.
Their animal characters think and feel as human beings would think and
feel under like conditions. This marks the stage which these works occupy
in the development of the animal story.
The next stage must be regarded as, in literature, a climax indeed, but
not the climax in this genre. I refer to the “Mowgli” stories of Mr.
Kipling. In these tales the animals are frankly humanised. Their
individualisation is distinctly human, as are also their mental and
emotional processes, and their highly elaborate powers of expression.
Their notions are complex; whereas the motives of real animals, so far as
we have hitherto been able to judge them, seem to be essentially simple,
in the sense that the motive dominant at a given moment quite
obliterates, for the time, all secondary motives. Their reasoning powers
and their constructive imagination are far beyond anything which present
knowledge justifies us in ascribing to the inarticulate kindreds. To say
this is in no way to depreciate such work, but merely to classify it.
There are stories being written now which, for interest and artistic
value, are not to be mentioned in the same breath with the “Mowgli”
tales, but which nevertheless occupy a more advanced stage in the
evolution of this genre.
It seems to me fairly safe to say that this evolution is not likely to go
beyond the point to which it has been carried to-day. In such a story,
for instance, as that of “Krag, the Kootenay Ram,” by Mr. Ernest Seton,
the interest centres about the personality, individuality, mentality, of
an animal, as well as its purely physical characteristics. The field of
animal psychology so admirably opened is an inexhaustible world of
wonder. Sympathetic exploration may advance its boundaries to a degree of
which we hardly dare to dream; but such expansion cannot be called
evolution. There would seem to be no further evolution possible, unless
based upon a hypothesis that animals have souls. As souls are apt to
elude exact observation, to forecast any such development would seem to
be at best merely fanciful.
The animal story, as we now have it, is a potent emancipator. It frees us
for a little from the world of shop-worn utilities, and from the mean
tenement of self of which we do well to grow weary. It helps us to return
to nature, without requiring that we at the same time return to
barbarism. It leads us back to the old kinship of earth, without asking
us to relinquish by way of toll any part of the wisdom of the ages, any
fine essential of the “large result of time.” The clear and candid life
to which it re-initiates us, far behind though it lies in the long upward
march of being, holds for us this quality. It has ever the more
significance, it has ever the richer gift of refreshment and renewal, the
more humane the heart and spiritual the understanding which we bring to
the intimacy of it.
[Illustration: THE MOONLIGHT TRAILS]
The Moonlight Trails
There was no wind. The young fir-trees stood up straight and tall and
stiffly pointed from the noiseless white levels of the snow. The
blue-white moon of midwinter, sharply glittering like an icicle, hung
high in a heaven clear as tempered steel.
The young fir-trees were a second growth, on lands once well cleared, but
afterward reclaimed by the forest. They rose in serried phalanxes, with
here and there a solitary sentinel of spruce, and here and there a little
huddling group of yellow birches. The snow-spaces between formed
sparkling alleys, and long, mysterious vistas, expanding frequently into
amphitheatres of breathless stillness and flooding radiance. There was no
trace of that most ghostly and elusive winter haze which represents the
fine breathing of the forest. Rather the air seemed like diamonds held in
solution, fluent as by miracle, and not without strange peril to be
jarred by sound or motion.
Yet presently the exaggerated tension of the stillness was broken, and no
disaster followed. Two small, white, furry shapes came leaping, one
behind the other, down a corridor of radiance, as lightly as if a wind
were lifting and drifting them. It was as if some of the gentler spirits
of the winter and the wild had seized the magic hour for an incarnation.
Leaping at gay leisure, their little bodies would lengthen out to a span
of nearly three feet, then round themselves together so that the soft
pads of their hinder paws would touch the snow within a couple of inches
of the prints from which their fore paws were even then starting to rise.
The trail thus drawn down the white aisle consisted of an orderly
succession of close triplicate bunches of footprints, like no other trail
of the wild folk. From time to time the two harmonious shapes would halt,
sit up on their hindquarters, erect their long, attentive ears, glance
about warily with their bulging eyes which, in this position, could see
behind as well as in front of their narrow heads, wrinkle those cleft
nostrils which were cunning to differentiate every scent upon the sharp
air, and then browse hastily but with a cheerful relish at the spicy
shoots of the young yellow birch. Feeding, however, was plainly not their
chief purpose. Always within a few moments they would resume their
leaping progress through the white glitter and the hard, black shadows.
Very soon their path led them out into a wide glade, fenced all about
with the serried and formal ranks of the young firs. It seemed as if the
blue-white moon stared down into this space with a glassiness of
brilliance even more deluding and magical than elsewhere. The snow here
was crossed by a tangle of the fine triplicate tracks. Doubling upon
themselves in all directions and with obvious irresponsibility, they were
evidently the trails of play rather than of business or of flight. Their
pattern was the pattern of mirth; and some half dozen wild white rabbits
were gaily weaving at it when the two newcomers joined them. Long ears
twinkling, round eyes softly shining, they leaped lightly hither and
thither, pausing every now and then to touch each other with their
sensitive noses, or to pound on the snow with their strong hind legs in
mock challenge. It seemed to be the play of care-free children, almost a
kind of confused dance, a spontaneous expression of the joy of life.
Nevertheless, for all the mirth of it, there was never a moment when two
or more of the company were not to be seen sitting erect, with watchful
ears and eyes, close in the shadow of the young fir-trees. For the night
that was so favourable to the wild rabbits was favourable also to the
fox, the wildcat, and the weasel. And death stalks joy forever among the
kindred of the wild.
From time to time one or another of the leaping players would take
himself off through the fir-trees, while others continued to arrive along
the moonlight trails. This went on till the moon had swung perhaps an
hour’s distance on her shining course; then, suddenly it stopped; and
just for a fleeting fraction of a breath all the players were motionless,
with ears one way. From one or another of the watchers there had come
some signal, swift, but to the rabbits instantly clear. No onlooker not
of the cleft-nose, long-ear clan could have told in what the signal
consisted, or what was its full significance. But whatever it was, in a
moment the players were gone, vanishing to the east and west and south,
all at once, as if blown off by a mighty breath. Only toward the north
side of the open there went not one.
[Illustration: “ALL THE PLAYERS WERE MOTIONLESS, WITH EARS ONE WAY.”]
Nevertheless, the moon, peering down with sharp scrutiny into the
unshadowed northern fringes of the open, failed to spy out any lurking
shape of fox, wildcat, or weasel. Whatever the form in which fate had
approached, it chose not to unmask its menace. Thereafter, for an hour or
more, the sparkling glade with its woven devices was empty. Then,
throughout the rest of the night, an occasional rabbit would go bounding
across it hastily, on affairs intent, and paying no heed to its
significant hieroglyphs. And once, just before moon-set, came a large red
fox and sniffed about the tangled trails with an interest not untinged
with scorn.
II.
The young fir wood covered a tract of poor land some miles in width,
between the outskirts of the ancient forest and a small settlement known
as Far Bazziley. In the best house of Far Bazziley—that of the parish
clergyman—there lived a boy whom chance, and the capricious destiny of
the wild folk, led to take a sudden lively interest in the moonlight
trails. Belonging to a different class from the other children of the
settlement, he was kept from the district school and tutored at home,
with more or less regularity, by his father. His lesson hours, as a rule,
fell when the other boys were busy at their chores—and it was the
tradition of Far Bazziley that boys were born to work, not play. Thus it
happened that the boy had little of the companionship of his fellows.
Being of too eager and adventurous a spirit to spend much of his leisure
in reading, he was thrown upon his own resources, and often found himself
hungry for new interests. Animals he loved, and of all cruelty toward
them he was fiercely intolerant. Great or small, it hurt him to see them
hurt; and he was not slow to resent and resist that kind of discomfort.
On more than one occasion he had thrashed other boys of the settlement
for torturing, with boyish playfulness and ingenuity, superfluous kittens
which thrifty housewives had confided to them to drown. These rough
interferences with custom did him no harm, for the boys were forced to
respect his prowess, and they knew well enough that kittens had some kind
of claim upon civilisation. But when it came to his overbearing
championship of snakes, that was another matter, and he made himself
unpopular. It was rank tyranny, and disgustingly unnatural, if they could
not crush a snake’s back with stones and then lay it out in the sun to
die gradually, without the risk of getting a black eye and bloodied nose
for it.
It was in vain the boy explained, on the incontrovertible authority of
his father, that the brilliant garter-snake, the dainty little green
snake, and indeed all the snakes of the neighbourhood without exception,
were as harmless as lady-bugs. A snake was a snake; and in the eyes of
Far Bazziley to kill one, with such additions of painfulness in the
process as could be devised on the moment, was to obey Biblical
injunction. The boy, not unnaturally, was thrust more and more into the
lonely eminence of his isolation.
But one unfailing resource he had always with him, and that was the hired
man. His mother might be, as she usually was, too absorbed in household
cares to give adequate heed to his searching interrogations. His father
might spend huge blanks of his time in interminable drives to outlying
parts of his parish. But the hired man was always at hand. It was not
always the same hired man. But whether his name were Bill or Tom, Henry
or Mart or Chris, the boy found that he could safely look for some
uniformity of characteristics, and that he could depend upon each in turn
for some teaching that seemed to him more practical and timely than
equations or the conjugation of _nolo_, _nolle_, _nolui_.
At this particular time of the frequenting of the moonlight trails, the
boy was unusually fortunate in his hired man. The latter was a boyish,
enthusiastic fellow, by the name of Andy, who had an interest in the kind
of things which the boy held important. One morning as he was helping
Andy with the barn work, the man said:
“It’s about full moon now, and right handy weather for rabbit-snarin’.
What say if we git off to the woods this afternoon, if your father’ll let
us, an’ set some snares fer to-night, afore a new snow comes and spiles
the tracks?”
The silent and mysterious winter woods, the shining spaces of the snow
marked here and there with strange footprints leading to unknown lairs,
the clear glooms, the awe and the sense of unseen presences—these were
what came thronging into the boy’s mind at Andy’s suggestion. All the
wonderful possibilities of it! The wild spirit of adventure, the hunting
zest of elemental man, stirred in his veins at the idea. Had he seen a
rabbit being hurt he would have rushed with indignant pity to the rescue.
But the idea of rabbit-snaring, as presented by Andy’s exciting words,
fired a side of his imagination so remote from pity as to have no
communication with it whatever along the nerves of sympathy or
association. He was a vigorous and normal boy, and the jewel of
consistency (which is usually paste) was therefore of as little
consequence to him as to the most enlightened of his elders. He threw
himself with fervour into Andy’s scheme, plied him with exhaustive
questions as to the methods of making and setting snares, and spent the
rest of the morning, under direction, in whittling with his pocket-knife
the required uprights and cross-pieces, and twisting the deadly nooses of
fine copper wire. In the prime of the afternoon the two, on their
snowshoes, set off gaily for the wood of the young fir-trees.
Up the long slope of the snowy pasture lots, where the drifted hillocks
sparkled crisply, and the black stumps here and there broke through in
suggestive, fantastic shapes, and the gray rampikes towered bleakly to
the upper air, the two climbed with brisk steps, the dry cold a tonic to
nerve and vein. As they entered the fir woods a fine, balsamy tang
breathed up to greet them, and the boy’s nostrils took eager note of it.
The first tracks to meet their eyes were the delicate footprints of the
red squirrel, ending abruptly at the foot of a tree somewhat larger than
its fellows. Then the boy’s sharp eyes marked a trail very slender and
precise—small, clear dots one after the other; and he had a feeling of
protective tenderness to the maker of that innocent little trail, till
Andy told him that he of the dainty footprints was the bloodthirsty and
indomitable weasel, the scourge of all the lesser forest kin.
The weasel’s trail led them presently to another track, consisting of
those triplicate clusters of prints, dropped lightly and far apart; and
Andy said, “Rabbits! and the weasel’s after them!” The words made a swift
picture in the boy’s imagination; and he never forgot the trail of the
wild rabbit or the trail of the weasel.
Crossing these tracks, they soon came to one more beaten, along which it
was plain that many rabbits had fared. This they followed, one going on
either side of it that it might not be obliterated by the broad trail of
their snowshoes; and in a little time it led them out upon the sheltered
glade whereon the merrymakers of the night before had held their revels.
In the unclouded downpour of the sunlight the tracks stood forth with
emphasised distinctness, a melting, vapourous violet against the
gold-white of the snowy surface; and to the boy’s eyes, though not to the
man’s, was revealed a formal and intricate pattern in the tangled
markings. To Andy it was incomprehensible; but he saw at once that in the
ways leading to the open it would be well to plant the snares. The boy,
on the other hand, had a keener insight, and exclaimed at once, “What fun
they must have been having!” But his sympathy was asleep. Nothing, at
that moment, could wake it up so far as to make him realise the part he
was about to play toward those childlike revellers of the moonlight
trails.
Skirting the glade, and stepping carefully over the trails, they
proceeded to set their snares at the openings of three of the main
alleys; and for a little while the strokes of their hatchets rang out
frostily on the still air as they chopped down fragrant armfuls of the
young fir branches.
Each of the three snares was set in this fashion: First they stuck the
fir branches into the snow to form a thick green fence on both sides of
the trail, with a passage only wide enough for one rabbit at a time to
pass through. On each side of this passageway they drove securely a
slender stake, notched on the inner face. Over the opening they bent down
a springy sapling, securing its top, by a strong cord, to a small wooden
cross-piece which was caught and held in the notches of the two uprights.
From the under side of this cross-piece was suspended the easy-running
noose of copper wire, just ample enough for a rabbit’s head, with the
ears lying back, to enter readily.
By the time the snares were set it was near sundown, and the young
fir-trees were casting long, pointed, purple shadows. With the drawing on
of evening the boy felt stirrings of a wild, predatory instinct. His skin
tingled with a still excitement which he did not understand, and he went
with a fierce yet furtive wariness, peering into the shadows as if for
prey. As he and Andy emerged from the woods, and strode silently down the
desolate slopes of the pasture lots, he could think of nothing but his
return on the morrow to see what prizes had fallen to his snares. His
tenderness of heart, his enlightened sympathy with the four-footed
kindred, much of his civilisation, in fact, had vanished for the moment,
burnt out in the flame of an instinct handed down to him from his
primeval ancestors.
III.
That night the moon rose over the young fir woods, blue-white and
glittering as on the night before. The air was of the same biting
stillness and vitreous transparency. The magic of it stirred up the same
merry madness in the veins of the wild rabbits, and set them to aimless
gambolling instead of their usual cautious browsing in the thickets of
yellow birch. One by one and two by two the white shapes came drifting
down the shadowed alleys and moonlight trails of the fir wood toward the
bright glade which they seemed to have adopted, for the time, as their
playground. The lanes and ways were many that gave entrance to the glade;
and presently some half dozen rabbits came bounding, from different
directions, across the radiant open. But on the instant they stopped and
sat straight up on their haunches, ears erect, struck with consternation.
There at the mouth of one of the alleys a white form jerked high into the
air. It hung, silently struggling, whirling round and round, and at the
same time swaying up and down with the bending of the sapling-top from
which it swung. The startled spectators had no comprehension of the
sight, no signal-code to express the kind of peril it portended, and how
to flee from it. They sat gazing in terror. Then, at the next entrance,
there shot up into the brilliant air another like horror; and at the
next, in the same breath, another. The three hung kicking in a hideous
silence.
The spell was broken. The spectators, trembling under the imminence of a
doom which they could not understand, vanished with long bounds by the
opposite side of the glade. All was still again under the blue-white,
wizard scrutiny of the moon but those three kicking shapes. And these,
too, in a few minutes hung motionless as the fir-trees and the snow. As
the glassy cold took hold upon them they slowly stiffened.
About an hour later a big red fox came trotting into the glade. The
hanging shapes caught his eye at once. He knew all about snares, being an
old fox, for years at odds with the settlement of Far Bazziley. Casting a
sharp glance about, he trotted over to the nearest snare and sniffed up
desirously toward the white rabbit dangling above him. It was beyond his
reach, and one unavailing spring convinced him of the fact. The second
hung equally remote. But with the third he was more fortunate. The
sapling was slender, and drooped its burden closer to the snow. With an
easy leap the fox seized the dangling body, dragged it down, gnawed off
its head to release the noose, and bore away the spoils in triumph,
conscious of having scored against his human rivals in the hunt.
[Illustration: “IT WAS BEYOND HIS REACH.”]
Late in the morning, when the sun was pale in a sky that threatened
snowfall, the boy and Andy came, thrilling with anticipation, to see what
the snares had captured. At the sight of the first victim, the stiff,
furry body hanging in the air from the bowed top of the sapling, the
boy’s nerves tingled with a novel and fierce sense of triumph. His heart
leapt, his eyes flamed, and he sprang forward, with a little cry, as a
young beast might in sighting its first quarry. His companion, long used
to the hunter’s enthusiasm, was less excited. He went to the next snare,
removed the victim, reset the catch and noose; while the boy, slinging
his trophy over his shoulder with the air of a veteran (as he had seen it
done in pictures), hastened on to the third to see why it had failed him.
To his untrained eye the trampled snow, the torn head, and the blood
spots told the story in part; and as he looked a sense of the tragedy of
it began to stir achingly at the roots of his heart. “A fox,” remarked
Andy, in a matter-of-fact voice, coming up at the moment, with his prize
hanging rigidly, by the pathetically babyish hind legs, from the grasp of
his mittened fist.
The boy felt a spasm of indignation against the fox. Then, turning his
gaze upon Andy’s capture, he was struck by the cruel marks of the noose
under its jaws and behind its ears. He saw, for the first time, the
half-open mouth, the small, jutting tongue, the expression of the dead
eyes; and his face changed. He removed his own trophy from his shoulder
and stared at it for some moments. Then two big tears rolled over his
ruddy cheeks. With an angry exclamation he flung the dead rabbit down on
the snow and ran to break up the snares.
“We won’t snare any more rabbits, Andy,” he cried, averting his face, and
starting homeward with a dogged set to his shoulders. Andy, picking up
the rejected spoils with a grin that was half bewilderment, half
indulgent comprehension, philosophically followed the penitent.
[Illustration: THE LORD OF THE AIR]
The Lord of the Air
The chill glitter of the northern summer sunrise was washing down over
the rounded top of old Sugar Loaf. The sombre and solitary peak, bald
save for a ragged veil of blueberry and juniper scrub, seemed to topple
over the deep enshadowed valley at its foot. The valley was brimmed with
crawling vapours, and around its rim emerged spectrally the jagged crests
of the fir wood. On either side of the shrouded valley, to east and west,
stretched a chain of similar basins, but more ample, and less deeply
wrapped in mist. From these, where the vapours had begun to lift, came
radiances of unruffled water.
Where the peak leaned to the valley, the trunk of a giant pine jutted
forth slantingly from a roothold a little below the summit. Its top had
long ago been shattered by lightning and hurled away into the depths; but
from a point some ten or twelve feet below the fracture, one gaunt limb
still waved green with persistent, indomitable life. This bleached stub,
thrust out over the vast basin, hummed about by the untrammelled winds,
was the watch-tower of the great bald eagle who ruled supreme over all
the aerial vicinage of the Squatooks.
When the earliest of the morning light fell palely on the crest of Sugar
Loaf, the great eagle came to his watch-tower, leaving the nest on the
other side of the peak, where the two nestlings had begun to stir
hungrily at the first premonition of dawn. Launching majestically from
the edge of the nest, he had swooped down into the cold shadow, then,
rising into the light by a splendid spiral, with muffled resonance of
wing-stroke, he had taken a survey of the empty, glimmering world. It was
still quite too dark for hunting, down there on earth, hungry though the
nestlings were. He soared, and soared, till presently he saw his
wide-winged mate, too, leave the nest, and beat swiftly off toward the
Tuladi Lakes, her own special hunting-grounds. Then he dropped quietly to
his blanched pine-top on the leaning side of the summit.
[Illustration: “HE SAW HIS WIDE-WINGED MATE, TOO, LEAVE THE NEST.”]
Erect and moveless he sat in the growing light, his snowy, flat-crowned
head thrust a little forward, consciously lord of the air. His powerful
beak, long and scythe-edged, curved over sharply at the end in a rending
hook. His eyes, clear, direct, unacquainted with fear, had a certain
hardness in their vitreous brilliancy, perhaps by reason of the sharp
contrast between the bright gold iris and the unfathomable pupil, and the
straight line of the low overhanging brow gave them a savage intensity of
penetration. His neck and tail were of the same snowy whiteness as his
snake-like head, while the rest of his body was a deep, shadowy brown,
close kin to black.
Suddenly, far, far down, winging swiftly in a straight line through the
topmost fold of the mist drift, he saw a duck flying from one lake to
another. The errand of the duck was probably an unwonted one, of some
special urgency, or he would not have flown so high and taken the
straight route over the forest; for at this season the duck of inland
waters is apt to fly low and follow the watercourse. However that may be,
he had forgotten the piercing eyes that kept watch from the peak of old
Sugar Loaf.
The eagle lifted and spread the sombre amplitude of his wings, and glided
from his perch in a long curve, till he balanced above the unconscious
voyager. Then down went his head; his wings shut close, his feathers
hardened till he was like a wedge of steel, and down he shot with
breathless, appalling speed. But the duck was travelling fast, and the
great eagle saw that the mere speed of dropping like a thunderbolt was
insufficient for his purpose. Two or three quick, short, fierce thrusts
of his pinions, and the speed of his descent was more than doubled. The
duck heard an awful hissing in the air above him. But before he could
swerve to look up he was struck, whirled away, blotted out of life.
Carried downward with his quarry by the rush of his descent, the eagle
spread his pinions and rose sharply just before he reached the nearest
tree-tops. High he mounted on still wings with that tremendous impulse.
Then, as the impulse failed, his wings began to flap strongly, and he
flew off with business-like directness toward the eyrie on the other
slope of Sugar Loaf. The head and legs of the duck hung limply from the
clutch of his talons.
The nest was a seemingly haphazard collection of sticks, like a hay-cart
load of rubbish, deposited on a ledge of the mountainside. In reality,
every stick in the structure had been selected with care, and so adeptly
fitted that the nest stood unshaken beneath the wildest storms that swept
old Sugar Loaf. The ground below the ledge was strewn with the faggots
and branches which the careful builders had rejected. The nest had the
appearance of being merely laid upon the ledge, but in reality its
foundations were firmly locked into a ragged crevice which cleft the
ledge at that point.
As the eagle drew near with his prey, he saw his mate winging heavily
from the Tuladis, a large fish hanging from her talons. They met at the
nest’s edge, and two heavy-bodied, soot-coloured, half-fledged nestlings,
with wings half spread in eagerness, thrust up hungry, gaping beaks to
greet them. The fish, as being the choicer morsel, was first torn to
fragments and fed to these greedy beaks; and the duck followed in a few
moments, the young ones gulping their meal with grotesque contortions and
ecstatic liftings of their wings. Being already much more than half the
size of their parents, and growing almost visibly, and expending vast
vitality in the production of their first feathers, their appetites were
prodigious. Not until these appetites seemed to be, for the moment,
stayed, and the eaglets sank back contentedly upon the nest, did the old
birds fly off to forage for themselves, leaving a bloody garniture of
bones and feathers upon the threshold of their home.
The king—who, though smaller than his mate, was her lord by virtue of
superior initiative and more assured, equable daring—returned at once to
his watch-tower on the lake side of the summit. It had become his habit
to initiate every enterprise from that starting-point. Perching
motionless for a few minutes, he surveyed the whole wide landscape of the
Squatook Lakes, with the great waters of Lake Temiscouata gleaming to the
northwest, and the peak of Bald Mountain, old Sugar Loaf’s rival, lifting
a defiant front from the shores of Nictau Lake, far to the south.
The last wisp of vapour had vanished, drunk up by the rising sun, and the
eagle’s eye had clear command of every district of his realm. It was upon
the little lake far below him that his interest presently centred itself.
There, at no great height above the unruffled waters, he saw a fish-hawk
sailing, now tilted to one side or the other on moveless wing, now
flapping hurriedly to another course, as if he were scrupulously
quartering the whole lake surface.
The king recognised with satisfaction the diligence of this, the most
serviceable, though most unwilling, of his subjects. In leisurely fashion
he swung off from his perch, and presently was whirling in slow spirals
directly over the centre of the lake. Up, up he mounted, till he was a
mere speck in the blue, and seemingly oblivious of all that went on
below; but, as he wheeled, there in his supreme altitude, his grim white
head was stretched ever earthward, and his eyes lost no detail of the
fish-hawk’s diligence.
All at once, the fish-hawk was seen to poise on steady wing. Then his
wings closed, and he shot downward like a javelin. The still waters of
the lake were broken with a violent splash, and the fish-hawk’s body for
a moment almost disappeared. Then, with a struggle and a heavy flapping
of wings, the daring fisher arose, grasping in his victorious claws a
large “togue” or gray lake trout. He rose till he was well above the
tree-tops of the near-by shore, and then headed for his nest in the cedar
swamp.
This was the moment for which the eagle had been waiting, up in the blue.
Again his vast wings folded themselves. Again his plumage hardened to a
wedge of steel. Again he dropped like a plummet. But this time he had no
slaughterous intent. He was merely descending out of the heavens to take
tribute. Before he reached the hurrying fish-hawk he swerved upward,
steadied himself, and flapped a menacing wing in the fish-hawk’s face,
heading it out again toward the centre of the lake.
Frightened, angry, and obstinate, the big hawk clutched his prize the
closer, and made futile efforts to reach the tree-tops. But, fleet though
he was, he was no match for the fleetness of his master. The great eagle
was over him, under him, around him, all at once, yet never striking him.
The king was simply indicating, quite unmistakably, his pleasure, which
was that the fish should be delivered up.
Suddenly, however, seeing that the fish-hawk was obstinate, the eagle
lost patience. It was time, he concluded, to end the folly. He had no
wish to harm the fish-hawk,—a most useful creature, and none too abundant
for his kingly needs. In fact, he was always careful not to exact too
heavy a tribute from the industrious fisherman, lest the latter should
grow discouraged and remove to freer waters. Of the spoils of his fishing
the big hawk was always allowed to keep enough to satisfy the
requirements of himself and his nestlings. But it was necessary that
there should be no foolish misunderstanding on the subject.
[Illustration: “HOLDING THE FISH FIRMLY IN THE CLUTCH OF ONE GREAT
TALON.”]
The eagle swung away, wheeled sharply with an ominous, harsh rustling of
stiffened feathers, and then came at the hawk with a yelp and a sudden
tremendous rush. His beak was half open. His great talons were drawn
forward and extended for a deadly stroke. His wings darkened broadly over
the fugitive. His sound, his shadow,—they were doom itself, annihilation
to the frightened hawk.
But that deadly stroke was not delivered. The threat was enough.
Shrinking aside with a scream the fish-hawk opened his claws, and the
trout fell, a gleaming bar of silver in the morning light. On the instant
the eagle half closed his wings, tilted sideways, and swooped. He did not
drop, as he had descended upon the voyaging duck, but with a peculiar
shortened wing-stroke, he flew straight downward for perhaps a hundred
feet. Then, with this tremendous impulse driving him, he shot down like
lightning, caught the fish some twenty feet above the water, turned, and
rose in a long, magnificent slant, with the tribute borne in his talons.
He sailed away majestically to his watch-tower on old Sugar Loaf, to make
his meal at leisure, while the ruffled hawk beat away rapidly down the
river to try his luck in the lower lake.
Holding the fish firmly in the clutch of one great talon, the eagle tore
it to pieces and swallowed it with savage haste. Then he straightened
himself, twisted and stretched his neck once or twice, settled back into
erect and tranquil dignity, and swept a kingly glance over all his
domain, from the far head of Big Squatook, to the alder-crowded outlet of
Fourth Lake. He saw unmoved the fish-hawk capture another prize, and fly
off with it in triumph to his hidden nest in the swamp. He saw two more
ducks winging their way from a sheltered cove to a wide, green reed-bed
at the head of the thoroughfare. Being a right kingly monarch, he had no
desire to trouble them. Untainted by the lust of killing, he killed only
when the need was upon him.
Having preened himself with some care, polished his great beak on the dry
wood of the stub, and stretched each wing, deliberately and slowly, the
one after the other, with crisp rustling noises, till each strong-shanked
plume tingled pleasantly in its socket and fitted with the utmost nicety
to its overlapping fellows, he bethought him once more of the appetites
of his nestlings. There were no more industrious fish-hawks in sight.
Neither hare nor grouse was stirring in the brushy opens. No living
creatures were visible save a pair of loons chasing each other off the
point of Sugar Loaf Island, and an Indian in his canoe just paddling down
to the outlet to spear suckers.
The eagle knew that the loons were no concern of his. They were never to
be caught napping. They could dive quicker than he could swoop and
strike. The Indian also he knew, and from long experience had learned to
regard him as inoffensive. He had often watched, with feelings as near
akin to jealousy as his arrogant heart could entertain, the spearing of
suckers and whitefish. And now the sight determined him to go fishing on
his own account. He remembered a point of shoals on Big Squatook where
large fish were wont to lie basking in the sun, and where sick or
disabled fish were frequently washed ashore. Here he might gather some
spoil of the shallows, pending the time when he could again take tribute
of the fish-hawk. Once more he launched himself from his watch-tower
under the peak of Sugar Loaf, and sailed away over the serried green tops
of the forest.
II.
Now it chanced that the old Indian, who was the most cunning trapper in
all the wilderness of Northern New Brunswick, though he seemed so intent
upon his fishing, was in reality watching the great eagle. He had
anticipated, and indeed prepared for the regal bird’s expedition to those
shoals of the Big Squatook; and now, as he marked the direction of his
flight, he clucked grimly to himself with satisfaction, and deftly landed
a large sucker in the canoe.
That very morning, before the first pallor of dawn had spread over
Squatook, the Indian had scattered some fish, trout and suckers, on the
shore adjoining the shoal water. The point he chose was where a dense
growth of huckleberry and withe-wood ran out to within a few feet of the
water’s edge, and where the sand of the beach was dotted thickly with
tufts of grass. The fish, partly hidden among these tufts of grass, were
all distributed over a circular area of a diameter not greater than six
or seven feet; and just at the centre of the baited circle the Indian had
placed a stone about a foot high, such as any reasonable eagle would like
to perch upon when making a hasty meal. He was crafty with all the
cunning of the woods, was this old trapper, and he knew that a wise and
experienced bird like the king of Sugar Loaf was not to be snared by any
ordinary methods. But to snare him he was resolved, though it should take
all the rest of the summer to accomplish it; for a rich American,
visiting Edmundston on the Madawaska in the spring, had promised him
fifty dollars for a fine specimen of the great white headed and white
tailed eagle of the New Brunswick lakes, if delivered at Edmundston alive
and unhurt.
When the eagle came to the point of shoals he noticed a slight change.
That big stone was something new, and therefore to be suspected. He flew
over it without stopping, and alighted on the top of a dead birch-tree
near by. A piercing scrutiny convinced him that the presence of the stone
at a point where he was accustomed to hop awkwardly on the level sand,
was in no way portentous, but rather a provision of destiny for his
convenience. He sailed down and alighted upon the stone.
When he saw a dead sucker lying under a grass tuft he considered again.
Had the fish lain at the water’s edge he would have understood; but up
among the grasses, that was a singular situation for a dead fish to get
itself into. He now peered suspiciously into the neighbouring bushes,
scanned every tuft of grass, and cast a sweeping survey up and down the
shores. Everything was as it should be. He hopped down, captured the
fish, and was about to fly away with it to his nestlings, when he caught
sight of another, and yet another. Further search revealed two more.
Plainly the wilderness, in one of those caprices which even his old
wisdom had not yet learned to comprehend, was caring very lavishly for
the king. He hastily tore and swallowed two of the fish, and then flew
away with the biggest of the lot to the nest behind the top of old Sugar
Loaf. That same day he came twice again to the point of shoals, till
there was not another fish left among the grass tufts. But on the
following day, when he came again, with hope rather than expectation in
his heart, he found that the supply had been miraculously renewed. His
labours thus were greatly lightened. He had more time to sit upon his
wind-swept watch-tower under the peak, viewing widely his domain, and
leaving the diligent fish-hawks to toil in peace. He fell at once into
the custom of perching on the stone at every visit, and then devouring at
least one fish before carrying a meal to the nest. His surprise and
curiosity as to the source of the supply had died out on the second day.
The wild creatures quickly learn to accept a simple obvious good, however
extraordinary, as one of those beneficences which the unseen powers
bestow without explanation.
By the time the eagle had come to this frame of mind, the old Indian was
ready for the next move in his crafty game. He made a strong hoop of
plaited withe-wood, about seven feet in diameter. To this he fastened an
ample bag of strong salmon-netting, which he had brought with him from
Edmundston for this purpose. To the hoop he fixed securely a stiff birch
sapling for a handle, so that the affair when completed was a monster
scoop-net, stout and durable in every part. On a moonlight night when he
knew that the eagle was safely out of sight, on his eyrie around at the
back of Sugar Loaf, the Indian stuck this gigantic scoop into the bow of
his canoe, and paddled over to the point of shoals. He had never heard of
any one trying to catch an eagle in a net; but, on the other hand, he had
never heard of any one wanting an eagle alive, and being willing to
emphasise his wants with fifty dollars. The case was plainly one that
called for new ideas, and the Indian, who had freed himself from the
conservatism of his race, was keenly interested in the plan which he had
devised.
The handle of the great scoop-net was about eight feet in length. Its
butt the trapper drove slantingly into the sand where the water was an
inch or two deep, bracing it securely with stones. He fixed it at an
angle so acute that the rim of the net lay almost flat at a height of
about four feet above the stone whereon the eagle was wont to perch.
Under the uppermost edge of the hoop the trapper fixed a firm prop,
making the structure steady and secure. The drooping slack of the net he
then caught up and held lightly in place on three or four willow twigs,
so that it all lay flat within the rim. This accomplished to his
satisfaction, he scattered fish upon the ground as usual, most of them
close about the stone and within the area overshadowed by the net, but
two or three well outside. Then he paddled noiselessly away across the
moon-silvered mirror of the lake, and disappeared into the blackness
about the outlet.
On the following morning, the king sat upon his watch-tower while the
first light gilded the leaning summit of Sugar Loaf. His gaze swept the
vast and shadowy basin of the landscape with its pointed tree-tops dimly
emerging above the vapour-drift, and its blank, pallid spaces whereunder
the lakes lay veiled in dream. His golden eye flamed fiercely under the
straight and fierce white brow; nevertheless, when he saw, far down, two
ducks winging their way across the lake, now for a second visible, now
vanishing in the mist, he suffered them to go unstricken. The clear light
gilded the white feathers of his head and tail, but sank and was absorbed
in the cloudy gloom of his wings. For fully half an hour he sat in regal
immobility. But when at last the waters of Big Squatook were revealed,
stripped and gleaming, he dropped from his perch in a tremendous,
leisurely curve, and flew over to the point of shoals.
As he drew near, he was puzzled and annoyed to see the queer structure
that had been erected during the night above his rock. It was
inexplicable. He at once checked his flight and began whirling in great
circles, higher and higher, over the spot, trying in vain to make out
what it was. He could see that the dead fish were there as usual. And at
length he satisfied himself that no hidden peril lurked in the near-by
huckleberry thicket. Then he descended to the nearest tree-top and spent
a good half-hour in moveless watching of the net. He little guessed that
a dusky figure, equally moveless and far more patient, was watching him
in turn from a thicket across the lake.
At the end of this long scrutiny, the eagle decided that a closer
investigation was desirable. He flew down and alighted on the level sand
well away from the net. There he found a fish which he devoured. Then he
found another; and this he carried away to the eyrie. He had not solved
the mystery of the strange structure overhanging the rock, but he had
proved that it was not actively inimical. It had not interfered with his
morning meal, or attempted to hinder him from carrying off his customary
spoils. When he returned an hour later to the point of shoals the net
looked less strange to him. He even perched on the sloping handle,
balancing himself with outspread wings till the swaying ceased. The thing
was manifestly harmless. He hopped down, looked with keen interested eyes
at the fish beside the rock, hopped in and clutched one out with beak and
claw, hopped back again in a great hurry, and flew away with the prize to
his watch-tower on Sugar Loaf. This caution he repeated at every visit
throughout that day. But when he came again on the morrow, he had grown
once more utterly confident. He went under the net without haste or
apprehension, and perched unconcernedly on the stone in the midst of his
banquet. And the stony face of the old Indian, in his thicket across the
lake, flashed for one instant with a furtive grin. He grunted, melted
back into the woods, and slipped away to resume his fishing at the
outlet.
The next morning, about an hour before dawn, a ghostly birch canoe
slipped up to the point of shoals, and came to land about a hundred yards
from the net. The Indian stepped out, lifted it from the water, and hid
it in the bushes. Then he proceeded to make some important changes in the
arrangement of the net.
To the topmost rim of the hoop he tied a strong cord, brought the free
end to the ground, led it under a willow root, and carried it some ten
paces back into the thicket. Next he removed the supporting prop. Going
back into the thicket, he pulled the cord. It ran freely under the willow
root, and the net swayed down till it covered the rock, to rebound to its
former position the moment he released the cord. Then he restored the
prop to its place; but this time, instead of planting its butt firmly in
the sand, he balanced it on a small flat stone, so that the least pull
would instantaneously dislodge it. To the base of the prop he fixed
another cord; and this also he ran under the willow root and carried back
into the thicket. To the free end of this second cord he tied a scrap of
red flannel, that there might be no mistake at a critical moment. The
butt of the handle he loosened, so that if the prop were removed the net
would almost fall of its own weight; and on the upper side of the butt,
to give steadiness and speed of action, he leaned two heavy stones.
Finally, he baited his trap with the usual dead fish, bunching them now
under the centre of the net. Then, satisfying himself that all was in
working order, he wormed his way into the heart of the thicket. A few
leafy branches, cunningly disposed around and above his hiding-place,
made his concealment perfect, while his keen black beads of eyes
commanded a clear view of the stone beneath the net. The ends of the two
cords were between his lean fingers. No waiting fox or hiding grouse
could have lain more immovable, could have held his muscles in more
patient perfect stillness, than did the wary old trapper through the
chill hour of growing dawn.
At last there came a sound that thrilled even such stoic nerves as his.
Mighty wings hissed in the air above his head. The next moment he saw the
eagle alight upon the level sand beside the net. This time there was no
hesitation. The great bird, for all his wisdom, had been lured into
accepting the structure as a part of the established order of things. He
hopped with undignified alacrity right under the net, clutched a large
whitefish, and perched himself on the stone to enjoy his meal.
[Illustration: “HELPLESSLY INTERTANGLED IN THE MESHES.”]
At that instant he felt, rather than saw, the shadow of a movement in the
thicket. Or rather, perhaps, some inward, unaccredited guardian signalled
to him of danger. His muscles gathered themselves for that instantaneous
spring wherewith he was wont to hurl himself into the air. But even that
electric speed of his was too slow for this demand. Ere he could spring,
the great net came down about him with a vicious swish; and in a moment
beating wings, tearing beak, and clutching talons were helplessly
intertangled in the meshes. Before he could rip himself free, a blanket
was thrown over him. He was ignominiously rolled into a bundle, picked
up, and carried off under the old Indian’s arm.
III.
When the king was gone, it seemed as if a hush had fallen over the
country of the Squatooks. When the old pine beneath the toppling peak of
Sugar Loaf had stood vacant all the long golden hours of the morning, two
crows flew up from the fir-woods to investigate. They hopped up and down
on the sacred seat, cawing impertinently and excitedly. Then in a sudden
flurry of apprehension they darted away. News of the great eagle’s
mysterious absence spread quickly among the woodfolk,—not by direct
communication, indeed, except in the case of the crows, but subtly and
silently, as if by some telepathic code intelligible alike to mink and
wood-mouse, kingfisher and lucifee.
When the noon had gone by, and the shadow of Sugar Loaf began to creep
over the edge of the nest, the old mother eagle grew uneasy at the
prolonged absence of her mate. Never before since the nestlings broke the
shell had he been so long away. Never before had she been compelled to
realise how insatiable were the appetites of her young. She flew around
to the pine-tree on the other side of the peak,—and finding it vacant,
something told her it had been long unoccupied. Then she flew hither and
thither over all the lakes, a fierce loneliness growing in her heart.
From the long grasses around the mouth of the thoroughfare between third
and fourth lakes a heron arose, flapping wide bluish wings, and she
dropped upon it savagely. However her wild heart ached, the nestlings
must be fed. With the long limp neck and slender legs of the heron
trailing from her talons, she flew away to the eyrie; and she came no
more to the Squatooks.
[Illustration: “THEY FLOCKED BLACKLY ABOUT WITH VITUPERATIVE MALICE.”]
The knowledge of all the woodfolk around the lakes had been flashed in
upon her, and she knew some mysterious doom had fallen upon her mate.
Thereafter, though the country of the Squatooks was closer at hand and
equally well stocked with game, and though the responsibilities of her
hunting had been doubled, she kept strictly to her old hunting-ground of
the Tuladis. Everything on the north side of old Sugar Loaf had grown
hateful to her; and unmolested within half a mile of the eyrie, the
diligent fish-hawks plied their craft, screaming triumphantly over every
capture. The male, indeed, growing audacious after the king had been a
whole week absent, presumed so far as to adopt the old pine-tree under
the peak for his perch, to the loud and disconcerting derision of the
crows. They flocked blackly about with vituperative malice, driving him
to forsake his seat of usurpation and soar indignantly to heights where
they could not follow. But at last the game palled upon their whimsical
fancies, and they left him in peace to his aping of the king.
Meanwhile, in the village of Edmundston, in the yard of a house that
stood ever enfolded in the sleepless roar of the Falls of Madawaska, the
king was eating out his sorrowful and tameless heart. Around one
steely-scaled leg, just above the spread of the mighty claws, he wore the
ragged ignominy of a bandage of soiled red flannel. This was to prevent
the chafing of the clumsy and rusty dog-chain which secured him to his
perch in an open shed that looked out upon the river. Across the river,
across the cultivated valley with its roofs, and farther across the
forest hills than any human eye could see, his eye could see a dim
summit, as it were a faint blue cloud on the horizon, his own lost realm
of Sugar Loaf. Hour after hour he would sit upon his rude perch,
unstirring, unwinking, and gaze upon this faint blue cloud of his desire.
From his jailers he accepted scornfully his daily rations of fish,
ignoring the food while any one was by, but tearing it and gorging it
savagely when left alone. As week after week dragged on, his hatred of
his captors gathered force, but he showed no sign. Fear he was hardly
conscious of; or, at least, he had never felt that panic fear which
unnerves even kings, except during the one appalling moment when he felt
the falling net encumber his wings, and the trapper’s smothering blanket
shut out the sun from his eyes. Now, when any one of his jailers
approached and sought to win his confidence, he would shrink within
himself and harden his feathers with wild inward aversion, but his eye of
piercing gold would neither dim nor waver, and a clear perception of the
limits of his chain would prevent any futile and ignoble struggle to
escape. Had he shown more fear, more wildness, his jailers would have
more hope of subduing him in some measure; but as it was, being back
country men with some knowledge of the wilderness folk, they presently
gave him up as tameless and left off troubling him with their attentions.
They took good care of him, however, for they were to be well paid for
their trouble when the rich American came for his prize.
At last he came; and when he saw the king he was glad. Trophies he had at
home in abundance,—the skins of lions which he had shot on the Zambesi,
of tigers from Himalayan foot-hills, of grizzlies from Alaskan cañons,
and noble heads of moose and caribou from these very highlands of
Squatook, whereon the king had been wont to look from his dizzy gyres of
flight above old Sugar Loaf. But the great white-headed eagle, who year
after year had baffled his woodcraft and eluded his rifle, he had come to
love so that he coveted him alive. Now, having been apprised of the
capture of so fine and well-known a bird as the king of old Sugar Loaf,
he had brought with him an anklet of thick, soft leather for the
illustrious captive’s leg, and a chain of wrought steel links, slender,
delicate, and strong. On the morning after his arrival the new chain was
to be fitted.
The great eagle was sitting erect upon his perch, gazing at the faint
blue cloud which he alone could see, when two men came to the shed beside
the river. One he knew. It was his chief jailer, the man who usually
brought fish. The other was a stranger, who carried in his hand a long,
glittering thing that jangled and stirred a vague apprehension in his
heart. The jailer approached, and with a quick movement wrapped him in a
coat, till beak and wings and talons alike were helpless. There was one
instinctive, convulsive spasm within the wrapping, and the bundle was
still, the great bird being too proud as well as too wise to waste force
in a vain struggle.
“Seems pretty tame already,” remarked the stranger, in a tone of
satisfaction.
“Tame!” exclaimed the countryman. “Them’s the kind as don’t tame. I’ve
give up trying to tame him. Ef you keep him, an’ feed him, an’ coax him
for ten year, he’ll be as wild as the day Gabe snared him up on Big
Squatook.”
“We’ll see,” said the stranger, who had confidence in his knowledge of
the wild folk.
Seating himself on a broken-backed chair just outside the shadow of the
shed, where the light was good, the countryman held the motionless bundle
firmly across his knees, and proceeded cautiously to free the fettered
leg. He held it in an inflexible grip, respecting those knife-edged
claws. Having removed the rusty dog-chain and the ignominious red flannel
bandage, he fitted dexterously the soft leather anklet, with its three
tiny silver buckles, and its daintily engraved plate, bearing the king’s
name with the place and date of his capture. Then he reached out his hand
for the new steel chain.
The eagle, meanwhile, had been slowly and imperceptibly working his head
free; and now, behind the countryman’s arm, he looked out from the
imprisoning folds of the coat. Fierce, wild, but unaffrighted, his eye
caught the glitter of the chain as the stranger held it out. That glitter
moved him strangely. On a sudden impulse he opened his mighty beak, and
tore savagely at the countryman’s leg.
With a yell of pain and surprise the man attempted to jump away from this
assault. But as the assailant was on his lap this was obviously
impossible. The muscles of his leg stiffened out instinctively,—and the
broken-backed chair gave way under the strain. Arms and legs flew wildly
in the air as he sprawled backward,—and the coat fell apart,—and the
eagle found himself free. The stranger sprang forward to clutch his
treasured captive, but received a blinding buffet from the great wings
undestined to captivity. The next moment the king bounded upward. The air
whistled under his tremendous wing-strokes. Up, up he mounted, leaving
the men to gape after him, flushed and foolish. Then he headed his flight
for that faint blue cloud beyond the hills.
That afternoon there was a difference in the country of the Squatooks.
The nestlings in the eyrie—bigger and blacker and more clamorous they
were now than when he went away—found more abundant satisfaction to their
growing appetites. Their wide-winged mother, hunting away on Tuladi,
hunted with more joyous heart. The fish-hawks on the Squatook waters came
no more near the blasted pine; but they fished more diligently, and their
hearts were big with indignation over the spoils which they had been
forced to deliver up.
The crows far down in the fir-tops were garrulous about the king’s
return, and the news spread swiftly among the mallards, the muskrats, the
hares, and the careful beavers. And the solitude about the toppling peak
of old Sugar Loaf seemed to resume some lost sublimity, as the king
resumed his throne among the winds.
[Illustration: WILD MOTHERHOOD]
Wild Motherhood
The deep snow in the moose-yard was trodden down to the moss, and darkly
soiled with many days of occupancy. The young spruce and birch trees
which lined the trodden paths were cropped of all but their toughest and
coarsest branches; and the wall of loftier growth which fenced the yard
was stripped of its tenderer twigs to the utmost height of the tall
bull’s neck. The available provender was all but gone, and the herd was
in that restlessness which precedes a move to new pastures.
The herd of moose was a small one—three gaunt, rusty-brown, slouching
cows, two ungainly calves of a lighter hue, and one huge, high-shouldered
bull, whose sweep of palmated antlers bristled like a forest. Compared
with the towering bulk of his forequarters, the massive depth of his
rough-maned neck, the weight of the formidable antlers, the length and
thickness of his clumsy, hooked muzzle with its prehensile upper lip, his
lean and frayed hindquarters looked grotesquely diminutive. Surprised by
three days of blinding snowfall, the great bull-moose had been forced to
establish the yard for his herd in an unfavourable neighbourhood; and now
he found himself confronted by the necessity of a long march through snow
of such softness and depth as would make swift movement impossible and
fetter him in the face of his enemies. In deep snow the moose can neither
flee nor fight, at both of which he is adept under fair conditions; and
deep snow, as he knew, is the opportunity of the wolf and the hunter. But
in this case the herd had no choice. It was simply take the risk or
starve.
[Illustration: “LED HIS HERD OFF NORTHWARD.”]
That same night, when the moon was rising round and white behind the
fir-tops, the tall bull breasted and trod down the snowy barriers, and
led his herd off northward between the hemlock trunks and the jutting
granite boulders. He moved slowly, his immense muzzle stretched straight
out before him, the bony array of his antlers laid back level to avoid
the hindrance of clinging boughs. Here and there a hollow under the level
surface would set him plunging and wallowing for a moment, but in the
main his giant strength enabled him to forge his way ahead with a steady
majesty of might. Behind him, in dutiful line, came the three cows; and
behind these, again, the calves followed at ease in a clear trail, their
muzzles not outstretched like that of the leader, but drooping almost to
the snow, their high shoulders working awkwardly at every stride. In
utter silence, like dark, monstrous spectres, the line of strange shapes
moved on; and down the bewildering, ever-rearranging forest corridors the
ominous fingers of long moonlight felt curiously after them. When they
had journeyed for some hours the herd came out upon a high and somewhat
bare plateau, dotted sparsely with clumps of aspen, stunted yellow birch,
and spruce. From this table-land the streaming northwest winds had swept
the snow almost clean, carrying it off to fill the neighbouring valleys.
The big bull, who knew where he was going and had no will to linger on
the way, halted only for a few minutes’ browsing, and then started
forward on a long, swinging trot. At every stride his loose-hung,
wide-cleft, spreading hoofs came sharply together with a flat, clacking
noise. The rest of the line swept dutifully into place, and the herd was
off.
But not all the herd. One of the calves, tempted a little aside by a
thicket of special juiciness and savour, took alarm, and thought he was
going to be left behind. He sprang forward, a powerful but clumsy stride,
careless of his footing. A treacherous screen of snow-crusted scrub gave
way, and he slid sprawling to the bottom of a little narrow gully or
crevice, a natural pitfall. His mother, looking solicitously backward,
saw him disappear. With a heave of her shoulders, a sweep of her long,
hornless head, an anxious flick of her little naked tail, she swung out
of the line and trotted swiftly to the rescue.
There was nothing she could do. The crevice was some ten or twelve feet
long and five or six in width, with sides almost perpendicular. The calf
could just reach its bushy edges with his upstretched muzzle, but he
could get no foothold by which to clamber out. On every side he essayed
it, falling back with a hoarse bleat from each frightened effort; while
the mother, with head down and piteous eyes staring upon him, ran round
and round the rim of the trap. At last, when he stopped and stood with
palpitating sides and wide nostrils of terror, she, too, halted. Dropping
awkwardly upon her knees in the snowy bushes, with loud, blowing breaths,
she reached down her head to nose and comfort him with her sensitive
muzzle. The calf leaned up as close as possible to her caresses. Under
their tenderness the tremblings of his gaunt, pathetic knees presently
ceased. And in this position the two remained almost motionless for an
hour, under the white, unfriendly moon. The herd had gone on without
them.
[Illustration: “STOOD FOR A MOMENT TO SNIFF THE AIR.”]
II.
In the wolf’s cave in the great blue and white wall of plaster-rock,
miles back beside the rushing of the river, there was famine. The
she-wolf, heavy and near her time, lay agonising in the darkest corner of
the cave, licking in grim silence the raw stump of her right foreleg.
Caught in a steel trap, she had gnawed off her own paw as the price of
freedom. She could not hunt; and the hunting was bad that winter in the
forests by the blue and white wall. The wapiti deer had migrated to safer
ranges, and her gray mate, hunting alone, was hard put to it to keep
starvation from the cave.
The gray wolf trotted briskly down the broken face of the plaster-rock,
in the full glare of the moon, and stood for a moment to sniff the air
that came blowing lightly but keenly over the stiff tops of the forest.
The wind was clean. It gave him no tidings of a quarry. Descending
hurriedly the last fifty yards of the slope, he plunged into the darkness
of the fir woods. Soft as was the snow in those quiet recesses, it was
yet sufficiently packed to support him as he trotted, noiseless and
alert, on the broad-spreading pads of his paws. Furtive and fierce, he
slipped through the shadow like a ghost. Across the open glades he
fleeted more swiftly, a bright and sinister shape, his head swinging a
little from side to side, every sense upon the watch. His direction was
pretty steadily to the west of north.
He had travelled long, till the direction of the moon-shadows had taken a
different angle to his path, when suddenly there came a scent upon the
wind. He stopped, one foot up, arrested in his stride. The gray, cloudy
brush of his tail stiffened out. His nostrils, held high to catch every
waft of the new scent, dilated; and the edges of his upper lip came down
over the white fangs, from which they had been snarlingly withdrawn. His
pause was but for a breath or two. Yes, there was no mistaking it. The
scent was moose—very far off, but moose, without question. He darted
forward at a gallop, but with his muzzle still held high, following that
scent up the wind.
Presently he struck the trail of the herd. An instant’s scrutiny told his
trained sense that there were calves and young cows, one or another of
which he might hope to stampede by his cunning. The same instant’s
scrutiny revealed to him that the herd had passed nearly an hour ahead of
him. Up went the gray cloud of his tail and down went his nose; and then
he straightened himself to his top speed, compared to which the pace
wherewith he had followed the scent up the wind was a mere casual
sauntering.
When he emerged upon the open plateau and reached the spot where the herd
had scattered to browse, he slackened his pace and went warily, peering
from side to side. The cow-moose, lying down in the bushes to fondle her
imprisoned young, was hidden from his sight for the moment; and so it
chanced that before he discovered her he came between her and the wind.
That scent—it was the taint of death to her. It went through her frame
like an electric shock. With a snort of fear and fury she heaved to her
feet and stood, wide-eyed and with lowered brow, facing the menace.
The wolf heard that snorting challenge, and saw the awkward bulk of her
shoulders as she rose above the scrub. His jaws wrinkled back tightly,
baring the full length of his keen white fangs, and a greenish
phosphorescent film seemed to pass suddenly across his narrowed eyeballs.
But he did not spring at once to the attack. He was surprised. Moreover,
he inferred the calf, from the presence of the cow apart from the rest of
the herd. And a full-grown cow-moose, with the mother fury in her heart,
he knew to be a dangerous adversary. Though she was hornless, he knew the
force of her battering front, the swift, sharp stroke of her hoof, the
dauntless intrepidity of her courage. Further, though his own courage and
the avid urge of his hunger might have led him under other circumstances
to attack forthwith, to-night he knew that he must take no chances. The
cave in the blue and white rocks was depending on his success. His mate,
wounded and heavy with young—if he let himself get disabled in this
hunting she must perish miserably. With prudent tactics, therefore, he
circled at a safe distance around the hidden pit; and around its rim
circled the wary mother, presenting to him ceaselessly the defiance of
her huge and sullen front. By this means he easily concluded that the
calf was a prisoner in the pit. This being the case, he knew that with
patience and his experienced craft the game was safely his. He drew off
some half-dozen paces, and sat upon his haunches contemplatively to weigh
the situation. Everything had turned out most fortunately for his
hunting, and food would no longer be scarce in the cave of the painted
rocks.
[Illustration: “AROUND ITS RIM CIRCLED THE WARY MOTHER.”]
III.
That same night, in a cabin of unutterable loneliness some miles to the
west of the trail from the moose-yard, a sallow-faced, lean backwoodsman
was awakened by the moonlight streaming into his face through the small
square window. He glanced at the embers on the open hearth, and knew that
for the white maple logs to have so burned down he must have been
sleeping a good six hours. And he had turned in soon after the early
winter sunset. Rising on his elbow, he threw down the gaudy patchwork
quilt of red, yellow, blue, and mottled squares, which draped the bunk in
its corner against the rough log walls. He looked long at the thin face
of his wife, whose pale brown hair lay over the bare arm crooked beneath
her cheek. Her lips looked pathetically white in the decolourising rays
which streamed through the window. His mouth, stubbled with a week’s
growth of dark beard, twitched curiously as he looked. Then he got up,
very noiselessly. Stepping across the bare, hard room, whose austerity
the moon made more austere, he gazed into a trundle-bed where a
yellow-haired, round-faced boy slept, with the chubby sprawling legs and
arms of perfect security. The lad’s face looked pale to his troubled
eyes.
“It’s fresh meat they want, the both of ’em,” he muttered to himself.
“They can’t live and thrive on pork an’ molasses, nohow!”
His big fingers, clumsily gentle, played for a moment with the child’s
yellow curls. Then he pulled a thick, gray homespun hunting-shirt over
his head, hitched his heavy trousers up under his belt, clothed his feet
in three pairs of home-knit socks and heavy cowhide moccasins, took down
his rifle, cartridge-pouch, and snowshoes from their nails on the
moss-chinked wall, cast one tender look on the sleepers’ faces, and
slipped out of the cabin door as silently as a shadow.
“I’ll have fresh meat for them before next sundown,” he vowed to himself.
Outside, amid the chips of his chopping, with a rough well-sweep on one
hand and a rougher barn on the other, he knelt to put on his snowshoes.
The cabin stood, a desolate, silver-gray dot in the waste of snow, naked
to the steely skies of winter. With the curious improvidence of the
backwoodsman, he had cut down every tree in the neighbourhood of the
cabin, and the thick woods which might so well have sheltered him stood
acres distant on every side. When he had settled the thongs of his
snowshoes over his moccasins quite to his satisfaction, he straightened
himself with a deep breath, pulled his cap well down over his ears, slung
his rifle over his shoulder, and started out with the white moon in his
face.
In the ancient forest, among the silent wilderness folk, things happen
with the slow inexorableness of time. For days, for weeks, nothing may
befall. Hour may tread noiselessly on hour, apparently working no change;
yet all the time the forces are assembling, and at last doom strikes. The
violence is swift, and soon done. And then the great, still world looks
inscrutable, unhurried, changeless as before.
So, after long tranquillity, the forces of fate were assembling about
that high plateau in the wilderness. The backwoodsman could no longer
endure to see the woman and boy pining for the tonic, vitalising juices
of fresh meat. He was not a professional hunter. Absorbed in the clearing
and securing of a farm in the free forest, he cared not to kill for the
killing’s sake. For his own part, he was well content with his salt pork,
beans and molasses, and corn-meal mush; but when occasion called, he
could handle a rifle as backwoodsmen should. On this night, he was all
hunter, and his quiet, wide-open eye, alert for every woodland sign, had
a fire in it that would have looked strange to the wife and child.
His long strides carried him swiftly through the glimmering glades.
Journeying to the north of east, as the gray wolf had to the north of
west, he too, before long, struck the trail of the moose, but at a point
far beyond that at which the wolf had come upon it. So trampled and
confused a trail it was, however, that for a time he took no note of the
light wolf track among the heavy footprints of the moose. Suddenly it
caught his eye—one print on a smooth spread of snow, emphasised in a pour
of unobstructed radiance. He stopped, scrutinised the trail minutely to
assure himself he had but a single wolf to deal with, then resumed his
march with new zest and springier pace. Hunting was not without its
relish for him when it admitted some savour of the combat.
The cabin stood in the valley lands just back of the high plateau, and so
it chanced that the backwoodsman had not far to travel that night. Where
the trail broke into the open, he stopped, and reconnoitred cautiously
through a screen of hemlock boughs. He saw the big gray wolf sitting
straight up on his haunches, his tongue hanging out, contemplating
securely his intended prey. He saw the dark shape of the cow-moose,
obstinately confronting her foe, her hindquarters backed close up to the
edge of the gully. He caught the fierce and anxious gleam of her eyes, as
she rolled them backward for an instant’s reassuring glance at her young
one. And, though he could not see the calf in its prisoning pit, he
understood the whole situation.
Well, there was a bounty on wolf-snouts, and this fellow’s pelt was worth
considering. As for the moose, he knew that not a broadside of cannon
would scare her away from that hole in the rocks so long as the calf was
in it. He took careful aim from his covert. At the report the wolf shot
into the air, straightened out, and fell upon the snow, kicking dumbly, a
bullet through his neck. As the light faded from his fierce eyes, with it
faded out a vision of the cave in the painted rocks. In half a minute he
lay still; and the cow-moose, startled by his convulsive leaps more than
by the rifle-shot, blew and snorted, eyeing him with new suspicion. Her
spacious flank was toward the hunter. He, with cool but hasty fingers,
slipped a fresh cartridge into the breech, and aimed with care at a spot
low down behind the fore-shoulder.
Again rang out the thin, vicious report, slapping the great silences in
the face. The woodsman’s aim was true. With a cough the moose fell
forward on her knees. Then, with a mighty, shuddering effort, she got up,
turned about, and fell again with her head over the edge of the crevice.
Her awkward muzzle touched and twitched against the neck of the
frightened calf, and with a heavy sigh she lay still.
The settler stepped out from his hiding-place, and examined with deep
satisfaction the results of his night’s hunting. Already he saw the
colour coming back into the pale cheeks of the woman and the child. The
wolf’s pelt and snout, too, he thought to himself, would get them both
some little things they’d like, from the cross-roads store, next time he
went in for corn-meal. Then, there was the calf—no meat like moose-veal,
after all. He drew his knife from its sheath. But, no; he hated
butchering. He slipped the knife back, reloaded his rifle, stepped to the
side of the pit, and stood looking down at the baby captive, where it
leaned nosing in piteous bewilderment at the head of its dead mother.
Again the woodsman changed his mind. He bit off a chew of black tobacco,
and for some moments stood deliberating, stubbly chin in hand. “I’ll save
him for the boy to play with and bring up,” he at last decided.
[Illustration: THE HOMESICKNESS OF KEHONKA]
The Homesickness of Kehonka
The April night, softly chill and full of the sense of thaw, was closing
down over the wide salt marshes. Near at hand the waters of the
Tantramar, resting at full tide, glimmered through the dusk and lapped
faintly among the winter-ruined remnants of the sedge. Far off—infinitely
far it seemed in that illusive atmosphere, which was clear, yet full of
the ghosts of rain—the last of daylight lay in a thin streak, pale and
sharp, along a vast arc of the horizon. Overhead it was quite dark; for
there was no moon, and the tenuous spring clouds were sufficient to shut
out the stars. They clung in mid-heaven, but kept to their shadowy ranks
without descending to obscure the lower air. Space and mystery, mystery
and space, lay abroad upon the vague levels of marsh and tide.
Presently, from far along the dark heights of the sky, came voices,
hollow, musical, confused. Swiftly they journeyed nearer; they grew
louder. The sound—not vibrant, yet strangely far-carrying—was a clamorous
monotony of honk-a-honk, honk-a-honk, honka, honka, honk, honk. It hinted
of wide distance voyaged over on tireless wings, of a tropic winter
passed in feeding amid remote, high-watered meadows of Mexico and Texas,
of long flights yet to go, toward the rocky tarns of Labrador and the
reed beds of Ungava. As the sound passed straight overhead the listener
on the marsh below imagined, though he could not see, the strongly
beating wings, the outstretched necks and heads, the round, unswerving
eyes of the wild goose flock in its V-shaped array, winnowing steadily
northward through the night. But this particular flock was not set, as it
chanced, upon an all-night journey. The wise old gander winging at the
head of the V knew of good feeding-grounds near by, which he was ready to
revisit. He led the flock straight on, above the many windings of the
Tantramar, till its full-flooded sheen far below him narrowed and
narrowed to a mere brook. Here, in the neighbourhood of the uplands, were
a number of shallow, weedy, fresh-water lakes, with shores so choked with
thickets and fenced apart with bogs as to afford a security which his
years and broad experience had taught him to value. Into one of these
lakes, a pale blur amid the thick shadows of the shores, the flock
dropped with heavy splashings. A scream or two of full-throated content,
a few flappings of wings and rufflings of plumage in the cool, and the
voyagers settled into quiet.
All night there was silence around the flock, save for the whispering
seepage of the snow patches that still lingered among the thickets. With
the first creeping pallor of dawn the geese began to feed, plunging their
long black necks deep into the water and feeling with the sensitive inner
edges of their bills for the swelling root-buds of weed and sedge. When
the sun was about the edge of the horizon, and the first rays came
sparkling, of a chilly pink most luminous and pure, through the lean
traceries of the brushwood, the leader raised his head high and screamed
a signal. With answering cries and a tempestuous splashing the flock
flapped for a few yards along the surface of the water. Then they rose
clear, formed quickly into rank, and in their spacious V went honking
northward over the half-lighted, mysterious landscape. But, as it
chanced, not all of the flock set out with that morning departure. There
was one pair, last year’s birds, upon whom had fallen a weariness of
travel. Perhaps in the coils of their brains lurked some inherited memory
of these safe resting-places and secluded feeding-grounds of the Midgic
lakes. However that may have been, they chose to stay where they were,
feeling in their blood no call from the cold north solitudes. Dipping and
bowing, black neck by neck, they gave no heed to the leader’s signal, nor
to the noisy going of the flock. Pushing briskly with the black webs of
their feet against the discoloured water, they swam to the shore and cast
about for a place to build their nest.
There was no urgent hurry, so they chose not on that day nor the next.
When they chose, it was a little bushy islet off a point of land, well
tangled with alder and osier and a light flotsam of driftwood. The nest,
in the heart of the tangle, was an apparently haphazard collection of
sticks and twigs, well raised above the damp, well lined with moss and
feathers. Here, in course of days, there accumulated a shining cluster of
six large white eggs. But by this time the spring freshet had gone down.
The islet was an islet no longer, but a mere adjunct of the point, which
any inquisitive foot might reach dry shod. Now just at this time it
happened that a young farmer, who had a curious taste for all the wild
kindred of wood, and flood, and air, came up from the Lower Tantramar
with a wagon-load of grist for the Midgic mill. While his buckwheat and
barley were a-grinding, he thought of a current opinion to the effect
that the wild geese were given to nesting in the Midgic lakes. “If so,”
said he to himself, “this is the time they would be about it.” Full of
interest, a half-hour’s tramp through difficult woods brought him to the
nearest of the waters. An instinct, an intuition born of his sympathy
with the furtive folk, led him to the point, and out along the point to
that once islet, with its secret in the heart of the tangle. Vain were
the furious hissings, the opposing wings, the wide black bills that
threatened and oppugned him. With the eager delight of a boy he pounced
upon those six great eggs, and carried them all away. “They will soon
turn out another clutch,” said he to himself, as he left the bereaved
pair, and tramped elatedly back to the mill. As for the bereaved pair,
being of a philosophic spirit, they set themselves to fulfil as soon as
possible his prophecy.
On the farm by the Lower Tantramar, in a hogshead half filled with straw
and laid on its side in a dark corner of the tool-shed, those six eggs
were diligently brooded for four weeks and two days by a comfortable gray
and white goose of the common stock. When they hatched, the good gray and
white mother may have been surprised to find her goslings of an olive
green hue, instead of the bright golden yellow which her past experience
and that of her fellows had taught her to expect. She may have marvelled,
too, at their unwonted slenderness and activity. These trivial details,
however, in no way dampened the zeal with which she led them to the goose
pond, or the fidelity with which she pastured and protected them. But
rats, skunks, sundry obscure ailments, and the heavy wheels of the farm
wagon, are among the perils which, the summer through, lie in wait for
all the children of the feathered kin upon the farm; and so it came about
that of the six young ones so successfully hatched from the wild goose
eggs, only two lived till the coming of autumn brought them full plumage
and the power of flight. Before the time of the southward migration came
near, the young farmer took these two and clipped from each the strong
primaries of their right wings. “They seem contented enough, and tame as
any,” he said to himself, “but you never can tell what’ll happen when the
instinct strikes ’em.”
Both the young wild geese were fine males. Their heads and long, slim
necks were black, as were also their tails, great wing feathers, bills,
and feet. Under the tail their feathers were of snowiest white, and all
the other portions of their bodies a rich grayish brown. Each bore on the
side of its face a sharply defined triangular patch of white, mottled
with faint brown markings that would disappear after his first moult. In
one the white cheek patches met under the throat. This was a large,
strongly built bird, of a placid and domestic temper. He was satisfied
with the undistinguished gray companions of the flock. He was content,
like them, to gutter noisily with his discriminating bill along the
shallow edges of the pond, to float and dive and flap in the deeper
centre, to pasture at random over the wet meadow, biting off the short
grasses with quick, sharp, yet gracefully curving dabs. Goose pond and
wet meadow and cattle-trodden barnyard bounded his aspirations. When his
adult voice came to him, all he would say was honk, honk,
contemplatively, and sometimes honk-a-honk when he flapped his wings in
the exhilarating coolness of the sunrise. The other captive was of a more
restless temperament, slenderer in build, more eager and alert of eye,
less companionable of mood. He was, somehow, never seen in the centre of
the flock—he never seemed a part of it. He fed, swam, rested, preened
himself, always a little apart. Often, when the others were happily
occupied with their familiar needs and satisfactions, he would stand
motionless, his compact, glossy head high in air, looking to the north as
if in expectation, listening as if he awaited longed-for tidings. The
triangular white patch on each side of his head was very narrow, and gave
him an expression of wildness; yet in reality he was no more wild, or
rather no more shy, than any others of the flock. None, indeed, had so
confident a fearlessness as he. He would take oats out of the farmer’s
hand, which none of the rest quite dared to do.
[Illustration: “HE WOULD STAND MOTIONLESS, HIS COMPACT, GLOSSY HEAD HIGH
IN AIR.”]
Until late in the autumn, the lonely, uncomraded bird was always silent.
But when the migrating flocks began to pass overhead, on the long
southward trail, and their hollow clamour was heard over the farmstead
night and morning, he grew more restless. He would take a short run with
outspread wings, and then, feeling their crippled inefficiency, would
stretch himself to his full height and call, a sonorous, far-reaching
cry—ke-honk-a, ke-honk-a. From this call, so often repeated throughout
October and November, the farmer named him Kehonka. The farmer’s wife
favoured the more domesticated and manageable brother, who could be
trusted never to stray. But the farmer, who mused deeply over his
furrows, and half wistfully loved the wild kindred, loved Kehonka, and
used to say he would not lose the bird for the price of a steer. “That
there bird,” he would say, “has got dreams away down in his heart. Like
as not, he remembers things his father and mother have seen, up amongst
the ice cakes and the northern lights, or down amongst the bayous and the
big southern lilies.” But all his sympathy failed to make him repent of
having clipped Kehonka’s wing.
During the long winter, when the winds swept fiercely the open marshes of
the Tantramar, and the snow piled in high drifts around the barns and
wood piles, and the sheds were darkened, and in the sun at noonday the
strawy dungheaps steamed, the rest of the geese remained listlessly
content. But not so Kehonka. Somewhere back of his brain he cherished
pre-natal memories of warm pools in the South, where leafy screens grew
rank, and the sweet-rooted water-plants pulled easily from the deep black
mud, and his true kindred were screaming to each other at the oncoming of
the tropic dark. While the flock was out in the barnyard, pulling lazily
at the trampled litter, and snatching scraps of the cattle’s chopped
turnips, Kehonka would stand aloof by the water-trough, his head erect,
listening, longing. As the winter sun sank early over the fir woods back
of the farm, his wings would open, and his desirous cry would go echoing
three or four times across the still
countryside—ke-honk-a—ke-honk-a—ke-honk-a! Whereat the farmer’s wife,
turning her buckwheat pancakes over the hot kitchen stove, would mutter
impatiently; but the farmer, slipping to the door of the cow-stable with
the bucket of feed in his hand, would look with deep eyes of sympathy at
the unsatisfied bird. “He wants something that we don’t grow round here,”
he would say to himself; and little by little the bird’s restlessness
came to seem to him the concrete embodiment of certain dim outreachings
of his own. He, too, caught himself straining his gaze beyond the marsh
horizons of Tantramar.
When the winter broke, and the seeping drifts shrank together, and the
brown of the ploughed fields came through the snow in patches, and the
slopes leading down to the marshland were suddenly loud with running
water, Kehonka’s restlessness grew so eager that he almost forgot to
feed. It was time, he thought, for the northward flight to begin. He
would stand for hours, turning first one dark eye, then the other, toward
the soft sky overhead, expectant of the V-shaped journeying flock, and
the far-off clamour of voices from the South crying to him in his own
tongue. At last, when the snow was about gone from the open fields, one
evening at the shutting-in of dark, the voices came. He was lingering at
the edge of the goose pond, the rest having settled themselves for the
night, when he heard the expected sounds. Honk-a-honk, honk-a-honk,
honka, honka, honk, honk, they came up against the light April wind,
nearer, nearer, nearer. Even his keen eye could not detect them against
the blackness; but up went his wings, and again and again he screamed to
them sonorously. In response to his call, their flight swung lower, and
the confusion of their honking seemed as if it were going to descend
about him. But the wary old gander, their leader, discerned the roofs,
man’s handiwork, and suspected treachery. At his sharp signal the flock,
rising again, streamed off swiftly toward safer feeding-grounds, and left
Kehonka to call and call unanswered. Up to this moment all his
restlessness had not led him to think of actually deserting the farmstead
and the alien flock. Though not of them he had felt it necessary to be
with them. His instinct for other scenes and another fellowship had been
too little tangible to move him to the snapping of established ties. But
now, all his desires at once took concrete form. It was his, it belonged
to himself—that strong, free flight, that calling through the sky, that
voyaging northward to secret nesting-places. In that wild flock which had
for a moment swerved downward to his summons, or in some other flock, was
his mate. It was mating season, and not until now had he known it.
Nature does sometimes, under the pressure of great and concentrated
desires, make unexpected effort to meet unforeseen demands. All winter
long, though it was not the season for such growth, Kehonka’s clipped
wing-primaries had been striving to develop. They had now, contrary to
all custom, attained to an inch or so of effective flying web. Kehonka’s
heart was near bursting with his desire as the voices of the unseen flock
died away. He spread his wings to their full extent, ran some ten paces
along the ground, and then, with all his energies concentrated to the
effort, he rose into the air, and flew with swift-beating wings out into
the dark upon the northward trail. His trouble was not the lack of wing
surface, but the lack of balance. One wing being so much less in spread
than the other, he felt a fierce force striving to turn him over at every
stroke. It was the struggle to counteract this tendency that wore him
out. His first desperate effort carried him half a mile. Then he dropped
to earth, in a bed of withered salt-grass all awash with the full tide of
Tantramar. Resting amid the salt-grass, he tasted such an exultation of
freedom that his heart forgot its soreness over the flock which had
vanished. Presently, however, he heard again the sound that so thrilled
his every vein. Weird, hollow, echoing with memories and tidings, it came
throbbing up the wind. His own strong cry went out at once to meet
it—ke-honk-a, ke-honk-a, ke-honk-a. The voyagers this time were flying
very low. They came near, nearer, and at last, in a sudden silence of
voices, but a great flapping of wings, they settled down in the
salt-grass all about him.
The place was well enough for a night’s halt—a shallow, marshy pool which
caught the overflow of the highest spring tides, and so was not emptied
by the ebb. After its first splashing descent into the water, which
glimmered in pale patches among the grass stems, every member of the
flock sat for some moments motionless as statues, watchful for unknown
menace; and Kehonka, his very soul trembling with desire achieved, sat
motionless among them. Then, there being no sign of peril at hand, there
was a time of quiet paddling to and fro, a scuttling of practised bills
among the grass-roots, and Kehonka found himself easily accepted as a
member of the flock. Happiness kept him restless and on the move long
after the others had their bills tucked under their wings. In the
earliest gray of dawn, when the flock awoke to feed, Kehonka fed among
them as if he had been with them all the way on their flight from the
Mexican plains. But his feeding was always by the side of a young female
who had not yet paired. It was interrupted by many little courtesies of
touching bill and bowing head, which were received with plain favour; for
Kehonka was a handsome and well marked bird. By the time the sky was red
along the east and strewn with pale, blown feathers of amber pink toward
the zenith, his swift wooing was next door to winning. He had forgotten
his captivity and clipped wing. He was thinking of a nest in the wide
emptiness of the North.
[Illustration: “FELL WITH A GREAT SPLASH INTO THE CHANNEL OF THE
TANTRAMAR.”]
When the signal-cry came, and the flock took flight, Kehonka rose with
them. But his preliminary rush along the water was longer than that of
the others, and when the flock formed into flying order he fell in at the
end of the longer leg of the V, behind the weakest of the young geese.
This would have been a humiliation to him, had he taken thought of it at
all; but his attention was all absorbed in keeping his balance. When the
flock found its pace, and the cold sunrise air began to whistle past the
straight, bullet-like rush of their flight, a terror grew upon him. He
flew much better than he had flown the night before; but he soon saw that
this speed of theirs was beyond him. He would not yield, however. He
would not lag behind. Every force of his body and his brain went into
that flight, till his eyes blurred and his heart seemed on the point of
bursting. Then, suddenly, with a faint, despairing note, he lurched
aside, shot downward, and fell with a great splash into the channel of
the Tantramar. With strong wings, and level, unpausing flight, the flock
went on to its North without him.
Dazed by the fall, and exhausted by the intensity of his effort, Kehonka
floated, moveless, for many minutes. The flood-tide, however, racing
inland, was carrying him still northward; and presently he began to swim
in the same direction. In his sick heart glowed still the vision of the
nest in the far-off solitudes, and he felt that he would find there,
waiting for him, the strong-winged mate who had left him behind. Half an
hour later another flock passed honking overhead, and he called to them;
but they were high up, and feeding time was past. They gave no sign in
answer. He made no attempt to fly after them. Hour after hour he swam on
with the current, working ever north. When the tide turned he went
ashore, still following the river, till its course changed toward the
east; whereupon he ascended the channel of a small tributary which flowed
in on the north bank. Here and there he snatched quick mouthfuls of
sprouting grasses, but he was too driven by his desire to pause for food.
Sometimes he tried his wings again, covering now some miles at each
flight, till by and by, losing the stream because its direction failed
him, he found himself in a broken upland country, where progress was slow
and toilsome. Soon after sunset, troubled because there was no water
near, he again took wing, and over dark woods which filled him with
apprehension he made his longest flight. When about spent he caught a
small gleaming of water far below him, and alighted in a little woodland
glade wherein a brook had overflowed low banks.
[Illustration: “THE DISCOURAGER OF QUESTS DARTED STEALTHILY FORTH.”]
The noise of his abrupt descent loudly startled the wet and dreaming
woods. It was a matter of interest to all the furry, furtive ears of the
forest for a half-mile round. But it was in no way repeated. For perhaps
fifteen minutes Kehonka floated, neck erect, head high and watchful, in
the middle of the pool, with no movement except the slight, unseen oaring
of his black-webbed feet, necessary to keep the current from bearing him
into the gloom of the woods. This gloom, hedging him on every side,
troubled him with a vague fear. But in the open of the mid-pool, with two
or three stars peering faintly through the misted sky above him, he felt
comparatively safe. At last, very far above, he heard again that wild
calling of his fellows,—honk-a-honk, honk-a-honk, honka, honka, honk,
honk,—high and dim and ghostly, for these rough woodlands had no appeal
for the journeying flocks. Remote as the voices were, however, Kehonka
answered at once. His keen, sonorous, passionate cry rang strangely on
the night, three times. The flock paid no heed to it whatever, but sped
on northward with unvarying flight and clamour; and as the wizard noise
passed beyond, Kehonka, too weary to take wing, followed eagerly to the
northerly shore of the pool, ran up the wet bank, and stood straining
after it.
His wings were half spread as he stood there, quivering with his passion.
In his heart was the hunger of the quest. In his eyes was the vision of
nest and mate, where the serviceberry thicket grew by the wide sub-arctic
waters. The night wind blew steadily away from him to the underbrush
close by, or even in his absorption he would have noticed the approach of
a menacing, musky smell. But every sense was now numb in the presence of
his great desire. There was no warning for him.
The underbrush rustled, ever so softly. Then a small, delicately moving,
fine-furred shape, the discourager of quests, darted stealthily forth,
and with a bound that was feathery in its blown lightness, seeming to be
uplifted by the wide-plumed tail that balanced it, descended on Kehonka’s
body. There was a thin honk, cut short by keen teeth meeting with a
crunch and a twist in the glossy slim blackness of Kehonka’s neck. The
struggle lasted scarcely more than two heart-beats. The wide wings
pounded twice or thrice upon the ground, in fierce convulsion. Then the
red fox, with a sidewise jerk of his head, flung the heavy, trailing
carcass into a position for its easy carrying, and trotted off with it
into the darkness of the woods.
[Illustration: SAVOURY MEATS]
Savoury Meats
In the bushy thicket the doe stood trembling over the young one to which
she had given birth in the early part of the night. A light wind began to
breathe just before dawn, and in its languid throbbing the slim twigs and
half unfolded leaves from time to time rustled stiffly. Over the
tree-tops, and from the open spaces in the wood, could be seen the first
pallor of approaching day; and one pink thread, a finger long, outlined a
lonely fragment of the horizon. But in the bushy thicket it was dark. The
mother could not see her little one, but kept feeling it anxiously and
lightly with her silken nose. She was waiting till it should be strong
enough to rise and nurse.
As the pink thread became scarlet and crept along a wider arc, and the
cold light spread, there came from a far-off hillside the trailing echo
of a howl. It was the cry of a wolf hunting alone. It hardly penetrated
the depths of the bushy thicket, but the doe heard it, and faced about to
the point whence it came, and stamped angrily with slim, sharp hoof. Her
muzzle was held high, and her nostrils expanded tensely, weighing and
analysing every scent that came on the chill air. But the dread cry was
not repeated. No smell of danger breathed in her retreat. The light stole
at last through the tangled branches. Then the little one struggled to
its feet, its spotted sides still heaving under the stress of their new
expansion; and the doe, with lowered head and neck bent far around,
watched it with great eyes as it pressed its groping mouth against her
udder and learned to feed.
Presently the sides of branch and stem and leaf facing the dawn took on a
hue of pink. A male song-sparrow, not yet feeling quite at home after his
journey from the South, sang hesitatingly from the top of a bush. A pair
of crows squawked gutturally and confidentially in a tree-top, where they
contemplated nesting. Everything was wet, but it was a tonic and
stimulating wetness, like that of a vigorous young swimmer climbing
joyously out of a cool stream. The air had a sharp savour, a smell of
gummy aromatic buds, and sappy twigs, and pungent young leaves. But the
body of the scent, which seemed like the very person of spring, was the
affluence of the fresh earth, broken and turned up to the air by millions
of tiny little thrusting blades. Presently, when the light fell into the
thicket with a steeper slant, the doe stepped away, and left her little
one lying, hardly to be discerned, on a spotted heap of dead leaves and
moss. She stole noiselessly out of the thicket. She was going to pasture
on the sprouting grasses of a neighbouring wild meadow, and to drink at
the amber stream that bordered it. She knew that, in her absence, the
little one’s instinct would teach him to keep so still that no marauder’s
eye would be likely to detect him.
Two or three miles away from the thicket, in the heart of the same
deep-wooded wilderness, stood a long, low-roofed log cabin, on the edge
of a narrow clearing. The yard was strewn with chips, some fresh cut and
some far gone in decay. A lean pig rooted among them, turning up the
black soil that lay beneath. An axe and black iron pot stood on the
battered step before the door. In the window appeared the face of an old
man, gazing blankly out upon the harsh-featured scene.
The room where the old man sat was roughly ceiled and walled with brown
boards. The sunlight streamed in the window, showing the red stains of
rust on the cracked kitchen stove, and casting an oblong figure of
brightness on the faded patchwork quilt which covered the low bed in the
corner. Two years earlier John Hackett had been an erect and powerful
woodsman, strong in the task of carving himself a home out of the
unyielding wilderness. Then his wife had died of a swift consumption. A
few weeks later he had been struck down with paralysis, from which he
partly recovered to find himself grown suddenly senile and a helpless
invalid. On his son, Silas, fell the double task of caring for him and
working the scant, half-subjugated farm.
Streaks and twines of yellowish white were scattered thickly amid the
ragged blackness of the old man’s hair and beard. The strong, gaunt lines
of his features consorted strangely with the piteous weakness that now
trembled in his eyes and on his lower lip. He sat in a big home-made easy
chair, which Silas had constructed for him by sawing a quarter-section
out of a hogshead. This rude frame the lad had lined laboriously with
straw and coarse sacking, and his father had taken great delight in it.
A soiled quilt of blue, magenta, and white squares wrapped the old man’s
legs, as he sat by the window waiting for Silas to come in. His withered
hands picked ceaselessly at the quilt.
“I wish Si’d come! I want my breakfast!” he kept repeating, now
wistfully, now fretfully. His gaze wandered from the window to the stove,
from the stove to the window, with slow regularity. When the pig came
rooting into his line of vision, it vexed him, and he muttered peevishly
to himself.
“That there hog’ll hev the whole place rooted up. I wish Si’d come and
drive him out of that!”
At last Si came. The old man’s face smoothed itself, and a loving light
came into his eyes as the lad adjusted the pillow at his head. The doings
of the hog were forgotten.
Si bustled about to get breakfast, the old man’s eyes following every
movement. The tea was placed on the back of the stove to draw. A plate of
cold buckwheat cakes was brought out of the cupboard and set on the rude
table. A cup, with its handle broken off, was half filled with molasses,
for “sweetenin’,” and placed beside the buckwheat cakes. Then Si cut some
thick slices of salt pork and began to fry them. They “sizzled”
cheerfully in the pan, and to Si, with his vigorous morning appetite, the
odour was rare and fine. But the old man was troubled by it. His hands
picked faster at the quilt.
“Si,” said he, in a quavering voice, that rose and fell without regard to
the force of the words, “I know ye can’t help it, but my stomach’s turned
agin salt pork! It’s been a-comin’ on me this long while, that I couldn’t
eat it no more. An’ now it’s come. Pork, pork, pork,—I can’t eat it no
more, Si! But there, I know ye can’t help it. Ye’re a good boy, a kind
son, Si, and ye can’t help it!”
Si went on turning the slices with an old fork till the quavering voice
stopped. Then he cried, cheerfully:
“Try an’ eat a leetle mite of it, father. This ’ere tea’s _fine_, an’ll
sort of wash it down. An’ while I’m a-working in the back field this
morning I’ll try and think of somethin’ to kinder tickle your appetite!”
The old man shook his head gloomily.
“I can’t eat no more fried pork, Si,” said he, “not if I die fur it! I
know ye can’t help it! An’ it don’t matter, fur I won’t be here much
longer anyways. It’ll be a sight better fur you, Si, when I’m gone—but I
kinder don’t like to leave ye here all alone. Seems like I kinder keep
the house warm fur ye till ye come home! I don’t like to think of ye
comin’ in an’ findin’ the house all empty, Si! But it’s been powerful
empty, with jist you an’ me, sence mother died. It useter be powerful
good, Si, didn’t it, comin’ home and findin’ her a-waitin’ fur us, an’
hot supper ready on the table, an’ the lamp a-shinin’ cheerful? An’ what
suppers she could cook! D’ye mind the pies, an’ the stews, an’ the fried
deer’s meat? I could eat some of that fried deer’s meat now, Si. An’ I
feel like it would make me better. It ain’t no fault of yours, Si, but I
can’t eat no more salt pork!”
Si lifted the half-browned slices of yellow and crimson on to a plate,
poured the gravy over them, and set the plate on the table. Then he
dragged his father’s chair over to the table, helped him to tea and
buckwheat cakes and molasses, and sat down to his own meal. The fried
pork disappeared swiftly in his strong young jaws, while his father
nibbled reluctantly at the cold and soggy cakes. Si cleared the table,
fed the fire, dragged his father back to the sunny window, and then took
down the long gun, with the powder-horn and shot-pouch, which hung on
pegs behind the door.
The old man noticed what he was doing.
“Ain’t ye goin’ to work in the back field, Silas?” he asked, plaintively.
“No, father,” said the lad, “I’m goin’ a-gunnin’. Ef I don’t have some of
that fried deer’s meat fur your supper to-night, like mother useter fix
fur ye, my name ain’t Silas Hackett!”
He set a tin of fresh water on the window ledge within reach of his
father’s hand, gave one tender touch to the pillow, and went out quickly.
The old man’s eyes strained after him till he disappeared in the woods.
Silas walked with the noiseless speed of the trained woodsman. His heart
was big with pity for his father, and heavy with a sense of approaching
loss. But instinctively his eyes took note of the new life beginning to
surge about him in myriad and tumultuous activity. It surged, too, in the
answering current of his strong young blood; and from time to time he
would forget his heaviness utterly for a moment, thrilled through and
through by a snatch of bird song, or a glimpse of rose-red maple buds, or
a gleam of ineffable blueness through the tree-tops, or a strange,
clean-smelling wind that made him stop and stretch his lungs to take it
in. Suddenly he came upon a fresh deer-track.
The sorcery of spring was forgotten. His heaviness was forgotten. He was
now just the hunter, keen upon the trail of the quarry. Bending low,
silent as a shadow, peering like a panther, he slipped between the great
trunks, and paused in the fringe of downy catkined willows that marked
the meadow’s edge. On the other side of the meadow he saw the form of a
doe, drinking. He heard on the wet air the sharp, chiming brawl of the
brook, fretted by some obstruction. He took a careful aim. The doe lifted
her head, satisfied, and ready to return to her young one in the thicket.
A shot rang out across the meadow, and she sprang into the air, to fall
back with her slender muzzle in the stream, her forelegs bent beneath
her, her hind legs twitching convulsively for a moment before they
stiffened out upon the grass.
As Silas staggered homeward he was no longer the keen hunter. He no
longer heard the summons of the spring morning. All he thought of was the
pleasure which would light up the wan and piteous face of the old man in
the chair by the window when the savoury smell of the frying deer’s meat
would fill the dusky air of the cabin. As he crossed the chip-strewn
yard, he saw his father’s face watching for him. He dropped his burden at
the door, and entered, panting and triumphant.
“I’ve got it fur ye, father!” he cried, softly touching the tremulous
hands with his big brown fingers.
“I’m right glad, Si,” quavered the old man, “but I’m a sight gladder to
see ye back! The hours is long when ye’re not by me! Oh, but ye do mind
me of your mother, Si!”
Si took the carcass to the shed, dressed it carefully, and then, after
cutting several thick slices from the haunch, stowed it in the little
black hole of a cellar, beneath the cabin floor. He put some fair
potatoes to boil, and proceeded to fry the juicy steaks which the old man
loved. The fragrance of them filled the cabin. The old man’s eyes grew
brighter, and his hands less tremulous. When the smoking and sputtering
dish was set upon the table, Silas again drew up the big chair, and the
two made a joyous meal. The old man ate as he had not eaten for months,
and the generous warmth of the fresh meat put new life into his withered
veins. His under lip grew firmer, his voice steadier, his brain more
clear. With a gladness that brought tears into his eyes, Silas marked the
change.
“Father,” he cried, “ye look more like yerself than I’ve seen ye these
two years past!”
And the old man replied, with a ring of returning hope in his voice:
“This ’ere deer’s meat’s more’n any medicine. Ef I git well, ever, seems
to me it’ll be according to what I eat or don’t eat, more’n anything
else.”
[Illustration: “TWO GREEN EYES, CLOSE TO THE GROUND.”]
“Whatever ye think’ll help ye, that ye shall hev, father,” declared
Silas, “ef I have to crawl on hands an’ knees all day an’ all night fur
it!”
Meanwhile, in the heart of the bushy thicket, on the spotted heap of
leaves, lay a little fawn, waiting for its mother. It was trembling now
with hunger and chill. But its instinct kept it silent all day long. The
afternoon light died out. Twilight brought a bitter chill to the depths
of the thicket. When night came, hunger, cold, and fear at last overcame
the little one’s muteness. From time to time it gave a plaintive cry,
then waited, and listened for its mother’s coming. The cry was feeble,
but there were keen ears in the forest to catch it. There came a stealthy
crackling in the bushes, and the fawn struggled to its feet with a glad
expectation. Two green eyes, close to the ground, floated near. There was
a pounce, a scuffle—and then the soft, fierce whispering sound of a
wildcat satisfying itself with blood.
[Illustration: THE BOY AND HUSHWING]
The Boy and Hushwing
A hollow, booming, ominous cry, a great voice of shadowy doom, rang out
suddenly and startled the dark edges of the forest. It sounded across the
glimmering pastures, vibrating the brown-violet dusk, and made the lame
old woman in the cabin on the other side of the clearing shiver with
vague fears.
But not vague was the fear which shook the soul of the red squirrel where
he crouched, still for once in his restless life, in the crotch of a
thick spruce-top. Not vague was the fear of the brooding grouse in the
far-off withe-wood thicket, though the sound came to her but dimly and
she knew that the menace of it was not, at the moment, for her. And least
vague of all was the terror of the usually unterrified weasel, from whose
cruel little eyes the red flame of the blood-lust faded suddenly, as the
glow dies out of a coal; for the dread voice sounded very close to him,
and it required all his nerve to hold himself rigidly motionless and to
refrain from the start which would have betrayed him to his death.
“_Whoo-hoo-oo-h’oo-oo!_” boomed the call again, seeming to come from the
tree-tops, the thickets, the sky, and the earth, all at once, so that
creatures many hundred yards apart trembled simultaneously, deeming that
the clutch of fate was already at their necks. But to the Boy, as he let
down the pasture bars with a clatter and turned the new-milked cows in
among the twilight-coloured hillocks, the sound brought no terror. He
smiled as he said to himself: “There’s Hushwing again at his hunting. I
must give him a taste of what it feels like to be hunted.” Then he
strolled across the pasture, between the black stumps, the blueberry
patches, the tangles of wild raspberry; pushed softly through the fringe
of wild cherry and young birch saplings, and crept, soundless as a snake,
under the branches of a low-growing hemlock. Peering out from this covert
he could see, rising solitary at the back of an open glade, the pale and
naked trunk of a pine-tree, which the lightning had shattered.
The Boy’s eyes were keen as a fish-hawk’s, and he kept them fixed upon
the top of the pine trunk. Presently it seemed as if the spirit of the
dusk took shadowy form for an instant. There was a soundless sweeping of
wings down the glade, and the next moment the pine trunk looked about two
feet taller in the Boy’s eyes. The great horned owl—“Hushwing,” the Boy
had christened him, for the ghostly silence of his flight—had returned to
his favourite post of observation, whereon he stood so erect and
motionless that he seemed a portion of the pine trunk itself.
The Boy lay still as a watching lynx, being minded to spy on Hushwing at
his hunting. A moment more, and then came again that hollow summons:
_Whoo-hoo-hoo-who’o-oo_; and the great owl turned his head to listen as
the echo floated through the forest.
The Boy heard, a few paces distant from him, the snap of a twig where a
startled hare stirred clumsily. The sound was faint; indeed so faint that
he was hardly sure whether he heard or imagined it; but to the
wonderfully wide and sensitive drum of the owl’s ear it sounded sharply
away down at the foot of the glade. Ere the Boy could draw a second
breath he saw great wings hovering at the edge of the thicket close at
hand. He saw big, clutching talons outstretched from thick-feathered
legs, while round eyes, fiercely gleaming, flamed upon his in passing as
they searched the bush. Once the great wings backed off, foiled by some
obstruction which the Boy could not see. Then they pounced with
incredible speed. There was a flapping and a scuffle, followed by a loud
squeak; and Hushwing winnowed off down the glade bearing the limp form of
the hare in his talons. He did not stop at the pine trunk, but passed on
toward the deeper woods.
“He’s got a mate and a nest ’way back in the cedar swamp, likely,” said
the Boy, as he got up, stretched his cramped limbs, and turned his face
homeward. As he went, he schemed with subtle woodcraft for the capture of
the wary old bird. He felt impelled to try his skill against the
marauder’s inherited cunning and suspicion; and he knew that, if he
should succeed, there would remain Hushwing’s yet fiercer and stronger
mate to care for the little owlets in the nest.
When Hushwing had deposited his prey beside the nest, in readiness for
the next meal of his ever-hungry nestlings, he sailed off again for a
hunt on his own account. Now it chanced that a rare visitor, a wanderer
from the cliffy hills which lay many miles back of Hushwing’s cedar
swamp, had come down that day to see if there might not be a sheep or a
calf to be picked up on the outskirts of the settlements. It was years
since a panther had been seen in that neighbourhood—it was years, indeed,
since that particular panther had strayed from his high fastnesses, where
game was plentiful and none dared poach on his preserves. But just now a
camp of hunters on his range had troubled him seriously and scattered his
game. Gnawing his heart with rage and fear, he had succeeded so far in
evading their noisy search, and had finally come to seek vengeance by
taking tribute of their flocks. He had traversed the cedar swamp, and
emerging upon the wooded uplands he had come across a cow-path leading
down to the trampled brink of a pond.
“Here,” he thought to himself, “will the cattle come to drink, and I will
kill me a yearling heifer.” On the massive horizontal limb of a willow
which overhung the trodden mire of the margin he stretched himself to
await the coming of the quarry. A thick-leaved beech bough, thrusting in
among the willow branches, effectually concealed him. Only from above was
he at all visible, his furry ears and the crown of his head just showing
over the leafage.
The aerial path of Hushwing, from his nest in the swamp to his
watch-tower on the clearing’s edge, led him past the pool and the
crouching panther. He had never seen a panther, and he had nothing in his
brain-furnishing to fit so formidable a beast. On chance, thinking
perhaps to strike a mink at his fishing on the pool’s brink, he sounded
his _Whoo-hoo-hoo-who’o-oo!_ as he came near. The panther turned his head
at the sound, rustling the leaves, over which appeared his furry
ear-tips. The next instant, to his rage and astonishment, he received a
smart blow on the top of his head, and sharp claws tore the tender skin
about his ears. With a startled snarl he turned and struck upward with
his armed paw, a lightning stroke, at the unseen assailant.
But he struck the empty air. Already was Hushwing far on his way, a
gliding ghost. He was puzzled over the strange animal which he had
struck; but while his wits were yet wondering, those miracles of
sensitiveness, those living telephone films which served him for ears,
caught the scratching of light claws on the dry bark of a hemlock some
ten paces aside from his line of flight. Thought itself could hardly be
more silent and swift than was his turning. The next moment his noiseless
wings overhung a red squirrel, where it lay flattened to the bark in the
crotch of the hemlock. Some dream of the hunt or the flight had awakened
the little animal to an unseasonable activity and betrayed it to its
doom. There was a shrill squeal as those knife-like talons met in the
small, furry body; then Hushwing carried off his supper to be eaten
comfortably upon his watch-tower.
[Illustration: “HE STRUCK THE EMPTY AIR.”]
Meanwhile the Boy was planning the capture of the wise old owl. He might
have shot the bird easily, but wanton slaughter was not his object, and
he was no partisan as far as the wild creatures were concerned. All the
furtive folk, fur and feather alike, were interesting to him, even dear
to him in varying degrees. He had no grudge against Hushwing for his
slaughter of the harmless hare and grouse, for did not the big marauder
show equal zest in the pursuit of mink and weasel, snake and rat? Even
toward that embodied death, the malignant weasel, indeed, the Boy had no
antagonism, making allowance as he did for the inherited blood-lust which
drove the murderous little animal to defy all the laws of the wild
kindred and kill, kill, kill, for the sheer delight of killing. The Boy’s
purpose now in planning the capture of Hushwing was, first of all, to
test his own woodcraft; and, second, to get the bird under his close
observation. He had a theory that the big horned owl might be tamed so as
to become an interesting and highly instructive pet. In any case, he was
sure that Hushwing in captivity might be made to contribute much to his
knowledge,—and knowledge, first-hand knowledge, of all the furtive
kindred of the wild, knowledge such as the text-books on natural history
which his father’s library contained could not give him, was what he
continually craved.
On the following afternoon the Boy went early to the neighbourhood of
Hushwing’s watch-tower. At the edge of a thicket, half concealed, but
open toward the dead pine trunk, was a straggling colony of low blueberry
bushes. Where the blueberry bushes rose some eight or ten inches above
the top of a decaying birch stump he fixed a snare of rabbit wire. To the
noose he gave a diameter of about a foot, supporting it horizontally in
the tops of the bushes just over the stump. The cord from the noose he
carried to his hiding-place of the previous evening, under the
thick-growing hemlock. Then he went home, did up some chores upon which
he depended for his pocket-money, and arranged with the hired man to
relieve him for that evening of his duty of driving the cows back to
pasture after the milking. Just before the afternoon began to turn from
brown amber to rose and lilac he went back to the glade of the pine
trunk. This time he took with him the body of one of the big gray rats
which infested his father’s grain-bins. The rat he fixed securely upon
the top of the stump among the blueberry bushes, exactly under the centre
of the snare. Then he broke off the tops of a berry bush, tied the stubs
together loosely, drew them over, ran the string once around the stump,
and carried the end of the string back to his hiding-place beside the
cord of the snare. Pulling the string gently, he smiled with satisfaction
to hear the broken twigs scratch seductively on the stump, like the claws
of a small animal. Then he lay down, both cords in his hand, and composed
himself to a season of patient waiting.
He had not long to wait, however; for Hushwing was early at his hunting
that night. The Boy turned away his scrutiny for just one moment, as it
seemed to him; but when he looked again there was Hushwing at his post,
erect, apparently part of the pine trunk. Then—_Whoo-hoo-hoo-who’o-oo!_
sounded his hollow challenge, though the sunset colour was not yet fading
in the west. Instantly the Boy pulled his string; and from the stump
among the blueberry bushes came a gentle scratching, as of claws.
Hushwing heard it. Lightly, as if blown on a swift wind, he was at the
spot. He struck. His great talons transfixed the rat. His wings beat
heavily as he strove to lift it, to bear it off to his nestlings. But
what a heavy beast it was, to be sure! The next moment the noose of
rabbit wire closed inexorably upon his legs. He loosed his grip upon the
rat and sprang into the air, bewildered and terrified. But his wings
would not bear him the way he wished to go. Instead, a strange,
irresistible force was drawing him, for all the windy beating of his
pinions, straight to an unseen doom in the heart of a dense-growing
hemlock.
A moment more and he understood his discomfiture and the completeness of
it. The Boy stood forth from his hiding-place, grinning; and Hushwing
knew that his fate was wholly in the hands of this master being, whom no
wild thing dared to hunt. Courageous to the last, he hissed fiercely and
snapped his sharp beak in defiance; but the Boy drew him down, muffled
wing, beak, and talons in his heavy homespun jacket, bundled him under
his arm, and carried him home in triumph.
“You’ll find the rats in our oat-bins,” said he, “fatter than any weasel
in the wood, my Hushwing.”
[Illustration: “SETTLED HIMSELF, MUCH DISCONCERTED, ON THE BACK OF AN OLD
HAIRCLOTH SOFA.”]
The oat-bins were in a roomy loft at one end of the wood-shed. The loft
was lighted by a large square window in the gable, arranged to swing back
on hinges like a door, for convenience in passing the bags of grain in
and out. Besides three large oat-bins, it contained a bin for barley, one
for buckwheat, and one for bran. The loft was also used as a general
storehouse for all sorts of stuff that would not keep well in a damp
cellar; and it was a very paradise for rats. From the wood-shed below
admittance to the loft was gained by a flight of open board stairs and a
spacious trap-door.
Mounting these stairs and lifting the trap-door, the boy carefully undid
the wire noose from Hushwing’s feathered legs, avoiding the keen talons
which promptly clutched at his fingers. Then he unrolled the coat, and
the big bird, flapping his wings eagerly, soared straight for the bright
square of the window. But the sash was strong; and the glass was a marvel
which he had never before encountered. In a few moments he gave up the
effort, floated back to the duskiest corner of the loft, and settled
himself, much disconcerted, on the back of an old haircloth sofa which
had lately been banished from the sitting-room. Here he sat immovable,
only hissing and snapping his formidable beak when the Boy approached
him. His heart swelled with indignation and despair; and, realising the
futility of flight, he stood at bay. As the Boy moved around him he kept
turning his great horned head as if it were on a pivot, without changing
the position of his body; and his round, golden eyes, with their piercing
black pupils, met those of his captor with an unflinching directness
beyond the nerve of any four-footed beast, however mighty, to maintain.
The daunting mastery of the human gaze, which could prevail over the gaze
of the panther or the wolf, was lost upon the tameless spirit of
Hushwing. Noting his courage, the Boy smiled approval and left him alone
to recover his equanimity.
The Boy, as days went by, made no progress whatever in his acquaintance
with his captive, who steadfastly met all his advances with defiance of
hissings and snapping beak. But by opening the bins and sitting
motionless for an hour or two in the twilight the Boy was able to make
pretty careful study of Hushwing’s method of hunting. The owl would sit a
long time unstirring, the gleam of his eyes never wavering. Then suddenly
he would send forth his terrifying cry,—and listen. Sometimes there would
be no result. At other times the cry would come just as some big rat,
grown over-confident, was venturing softly across the floor or down into
the toothsome grain. Startled out of all common sense by that voice of
doom at his ear, he would make a desperate rush for cover. There would be
a scrambling on the floor or a scurrying in the bin. Then the great, dim
wings would hover above the sound. There would be a squeak, a brief
scuffle; and Hushwing would float back downily to devour his prey on his
chosen perch, the back of the old haircloth sofa.
For a fortnight the Boy watched him assiduously, spending almost every
evening in the loft. At length came an evening when not a rat would stir
abroad, and Hushwing’s hunting-calls were hooted in vain. After two hours
of vain watching the Boy’s patience gave out, and he went off to bed,
promising his prisoner a good breakfast in the morning to compensate him
for the selfish prudence of the rats. That same night, while every one in
the house slept soundly, it chanced that a thieving squatter from the
other end of the settlement came along with a bag, having designs upon
the well-filled oat-bins.
The squatter knew where there was a short and handy ladder leaning
against the tool-house. He had always been careful to replace it. He also
knew how to lift, with his knife, the iron hook which fastened—but did
not secure—the gable window on the inside. To-night he went very
stealthily, because, though it was dark, there was no wind to cover the
sound of his movements. Stealthily he brought the ladder and raised it
against the gable of the loft. Noiselessly he mounted, carrying his bag,
till his bushy, hatless head was just on a level with the window-sill.
Without a sound, as he imagined, his knife-edge raised the hook—but there
_was_ a sound, the ghost of a sound, and the marvellous ear of Hushwing
heard it. As the window swung back the thief’s bushy crown appeared just
over the sill. “_Whoo-h’oo-oo!_” shouted Hushwing, angry and hungry,
swooping at the seductive mark. He struck it fair and hard, his claws
gashing the scalp, his wings dealing an amazing buffet.
Appalled by the cry and the stroke, the sharp clutch, the great smother
of wing, the rascal screamed with terror, lost his hold, and fell to the
ground. Nothing was further from his imagination than that his assailant
should be a mere owl. It was rather some kind of a grossly inconsistent
hobgoblin that he thought of, sent to punish him for the theft of his
neighbour’s grain. Leaving the ladder where it fell, and the empty bag
beside it, he ran wildly from the haunted spot, and never stopped till he
found himself safe inside his shanty door. As for Hushwing, he did not
wait to investigate this second mistake of his, but made all haste back
to his nest in the swamp.
The frightened outcry of the thief awoke the sleepers in the house, and
presently the Boy and his father came with a lantern to find out what was
the matter. The fallen ladder, the empty bag, the open window of the
loft, told their own story. When the Boy saw that Hushwing was gone, his
face fell with disappointment. He had grown very fond of his big,
irreconcilable, dauntless captive.
“We owe Master Hushwing a right good turn this night,” said the Boy’s
father, laughing. “My grain’s going to last longer after this, I’m
thinking.”
“Yes,” sighed the Boy, “Hushwing has earned his freedom. I suppose I
mustn’t bother him any more with snares and things.”
Meanwhile, the great horned owl was sitting erect on the edge of his nest
in the swamp, one talon transfixing the torn carcass of a mink, while his
shining eyes, round like little suns, shone happily upon the big-headed,
ragged-feathered, hungry brood of owlets at his feet.
[Illustration: A TREASON OF NATURE]
A Treason of Nature
The full moon of October, deep orange in a clear, deep sky, hung large
and somewhat distorted just over the wooded hills that rimmed the lake.
Through the ancient forest, a mixed growth of cedar, water-ash, black
poplar, and maple, with here and there a group of hemlocks on a knoll,
the light drained down confusedly, a bewildering chaos of bright patches,
lines, and reticulations amid breadths of blackness. On the
half-overshadowed cove, which here jutted in from the lake, the mingling
of light and darkness wrought an even more elusive mystery than in the
wood. For the calm levels just breathed, as it were, with a fading
remembrance of the wind which had blown till sundown over the open lake.
The pulse of this breathing whimsically shifted the reflections, and
caused the pallid water-lily leaves to uplift and appeal like the
glimmering hands of ghosts. The stillness was perfect, save for a
ceaseless, faintly rhythmic h-r-r-r-r-r-ing, so light that only the most
finely attentive ear, concentrated to the effort, might distinguish it.
This was the eternal breathing of the ancient wood. In such a silence
there was nothing to hint of the thronging, furtive life on every side,
playing under the moonlit glamour its uneven game with death. If a twig
snapped in the distance, if a sudden rustle somewhere stirred the moss—it
might mean love, it might mean the inevitable tragedy.
Under a tall water-ash some rods back from the shore of the cove, there
was a sharp, clacking sound, and a movement which caused a huge blur of
lights and shadows to differentiate itself all at once into the form of a
gigantic bull-moose. The animal had been resting quite motionless till
the tickling of some insect at the back of his ear disturbed him.
Lowering his head, he lifted a hind leg and scratched the place with
sharp strokes of his sprawling, deeply cloven hoof; and the two loose
sections of the hoof clacked together between each stroke like castanets.
Then he moved a step forward, till his head and fore-shoulders came out
into the full illumination of a little lane of moonlight pouring in
between the tree-tops.
He was a prince of his kind, as he stood there with long, hooked,
semi-prehensile muzzle thrust forward, his nostrils dilating to savour
the light airs which drifted almost imperceptibly through the forest. His
head, in this attitude,—an attitude of considering watchfulness,—was a
little lower than the thin-maned ridge of his shoulders, over which lay
back the vast palmated adornment of his antlers. These were like two
curiously outlined, hollowed leaves, serrated with some forty prongs; and
their tips, at the point of widest expansion, were little less than six
feet apart. His eyes, though small for the rough-hewn bulk of his head,
were keen, and ardent with passion and high courage. His ears, large and
coarse for one of the deer tribe to possess, were set very low on his
skull—to such a degree, indeed, as to give somehow a daunting touch of
the monstrous to his massive dignity. His neck was short and immensely
powerful, to support the gigantic head and antlers. From his throat hung
a strange, ragged, long-haired tuft, called by woodsmen the “bell.” His
chest was of great depth, telling of exhaustless lung power; and his long
forelegs upbore his mighty fore-shoulders so that their gaunt ridge was
nearly seven feet from the ground. From this height his short back fell
away on a slope to hindquarters disproportionately scant, so that had his
appearance been altogether less imposing and formidable, he might have
looked grotesque from some points of view. In the moonlight, of course,
his colour was just a cold gray; but in the daytime it would have shown a
rusty brown, paling and yellowing slightly on the under parts and inside
the legs.
Having sniffed the air for several minutes without discerning anything to
interest him, the great bull bethought him of his evening meal. With a
sudden blowing out of his breath, he heaved his bulk about and made for
the waterside, crashing down the bushes and making, in sheer wantonness,
a noise that seemed out of keeping with the time and place. Several times
he paused to thrash amid the undergrowth with his antlers. Reaching the
water, he plunged in, thigh-deep, with great splashings, and sent the
startled waves chasing each other in bright curves to the farther shore.
There he stood and began pulling recklessly at the leaves and shoots of
the water-lilies. He was hungry, indeed, yet his mind was little
engrossed with his feeding.
As a rule, the moose, for all his bulk and seeming clumsiness, moves
through the forest as soundlessly as a weasel. He plants his wide hoofs
like thistledown, insinuates his spread of antlers through the tangle
like a snake, and befools his enemies with the nicest craft of the
wilderness.
But this was the rutting season. The great bull was looking for his mate.
He had a wild suspicion that the rest of the world was conspiring to keep
him from her, and therefore he felt a fierce indignation against the rest
of the world. He was ready to imagine a rival behind every bush. He
wanted to find these rivals and fight them to the death. His blood was in
an insurrection of madness, and suspense, and sweetness, and desire. He
cared no more for craft, for concealment. He wanted all the forest to
know just where he was—that his mate might come to be loved, that his
rivals might come to be ground beneath his antlers and his hoofs.
Therefore he went wildly, making all the noise he could; while the rest
of the forest folk, unseen and withdrawn, looked on with disapproval and
with expectation of the worst.
As he stood in the cool water, pulling and munching the lilies, there
came a sound that stiffened him to instant movelessness. Up went his
head, the streams trickling from it silverly; and he listened with every
nerve of his body. It was a deeply sonorous, booming call, with a harsh
catch in it, but softened to music by the distance. It came from some
miles down the opposite shore of the lake. To the great bull’s ears it
was the sweetest music he could dream of—the only music, in fact, that
interested him. It was the voice of his mate, calling him to the
trysting-place.
He gave answer at once to the summons, contracting his flanks violently
as he propelled the sound from his deep lungs. To one listening far down
the lake the call would have sounded beautiful in its way, though
lugubrious—a wild, vast, incomprehensible voice, appropriate to the
solitude. But to a near-by listener it must have sounded both monstrous
and absurd—like nothing else so much as the effort of a young farmyard
bull to mimic the braying of an ass. Nevertheless, to one who could hear
aright, it was a noble and splendid call, vital with all sincerity of
response and love and elemental passion.
[Illustration: “HE GAVE ANSWER AT ONCE TO THE SUMMONS.”]
Having sent forth his reply, he waited for no more. He was consumed with
fierce anxiety lest some rival should also hear and answer the
invitation. Dashing forward into the deep water, he swam at great speed
straight across the cove, leaving a wide wake behind him. The summons
came again, but he could not reply while he was swimming. As soon as he
reached land he answered, and then started in mad haste down the shore,
taking advantage of the open beach where there was any, but for the most
part hidden in the trees, where his progress was loudly marked by the
crashing and trampling of his impatience.
[Illustration: “STARTED IN MAD HASTE DOWN THE SHORE.”]
All the furtive kindred, great as well as small, bold as well as
timorous, gave him wide berth. A huge black bear, pleasantly engaged in
ripping open an ant stump right in his path, stepped aside into the gloom
with a supercilious deferring. Farther down the lake a panther lay out
along a maple limb, and watched the ecstatic moose rush by beneath. He
dug his claws deeper into the bark, and bared his fangs thirstily; but he
had no wish to attempt the perilous enterprise of stopping the moose on
his love errand. From time to time, from that same enchanted spot down
the lake, came the summons, growing reassuringly nearer; and from time to
time the journeying bull would pause in his stride to give answer. Little
flecks of foam blew from his nostrils, and his flanks were heaving, but
his heart was joyous, and his eyes bright with anticipation.
Meanwhile, what was it that awaited him, in that enchanted spot by the
waterside under the full moon, on which the eyes of his eager imagination
were fixed so passionately as he crashed his wild way through the night?
There was the little open of firm gravelly beach, such as all his tribe
affected as their favoured place of trysting. But no brown young cow cast
her shadow on the white gravel, standing with forefeet wide apart and
neck outstretched to utter her desirous call. The beach lay bright and
empty. Just back of it stood a spreading maple, its trunk veiled in a
thicket of viburnum and withe-wood. Back of this again a breadth of
lighted open, carrying no growth but low kalmia scrub. It was a highly
satisfactory spot for the hunter who follows his sport in the calling
season.
[Illustration: “HE DUG HIS CLAWS DEEPER INTO THE BARK, AND BARED HIS
FANGS THIRSTILY.”]
There was no brown young cow anywhere within hearing; but in the covert
of the viburnum, under the densest shadow of the maple, crouched two
hunters, their eyes peering through the leafage with the keen glitter of
those of a beast of prey in ambush. One of these hunters was a mere boy,
clad in blue-gray homespuns, lank and sprawling of limb, the whitish down
just beginning to acquire texture and definiteness on his ruddy but
hawk-like face. He was on his first moose-hunt, eager for a trophy, and
ambitious to learn moose-calling. The other was a raw-boned and grizzled
woodsman, still-eyed, swarthy-faced, and affecting the Indian fashion of
a buckskin jacket. He was a hunter whose fame went wide in the
settlement. He could master and slay the cunning kindred of the wild by a
craft finer than their own. He knew all their weaknesses, and played upon
them to their destruction as he would. In one hairy hand he held a long,
trumpet-like roll of birch-bark. This he would set to his lips at
intervals, and utter through it his deadly perfect mimicry of the call of
the cow-moose in rutting season. Each time he did so, there came
straightway in response the ever-nearing bellow of the great bull
hurrying exultantly to the tryst. Each time he did so, too, the boy
crouching beside him turned upon him a look of marvelling awe, the look
of the rapt neophyte. This tribute the old woodsman took as his bare due,
and paid it no attention whatever.
While yet the approaching bull was apparently so far off that even eyes
so keen as his had no chance of discovering the ambush, the younger
hunter, unused to so long a stillness, got up to stretch his cramped
legs. As he stood forth into the moonlight, a loon far out in the silver
sheen of the lake descried him, and at once broke into a peal of his
startling and demoniacal laughter.
“Git down!” ordered the old woodsman, curtly. “That bird tells all it
sees!” And immediately setting the birchen trumpet to his lips, he
sounded the most seductive call he knew. It was answered promptly, and
this time from so near at hand that the nerves of both hunters were
strung to instant tension. They both effaced themselves to a stillness
and invisibility not excelled by that of the most secret of the furtive
folk. In this stillness the boy, who was himself, by nature and affinity,
of the woodland kin, caught for the first time that subtle, rhythmic
hr-r-r-r-r-ing of the forest pulse; but he took it for merely the rushing
of the blood in his too attentive ears.
Presently this sound was forgotten. He heard a great portentous crashing
in the underbrush. Nearer, nearer it came; and both men drew themselves
together, as if to meet a shock. Their eyes met for one instant, and the
look spoke astonished realisation of the giant approaching bulk. Then the
old hunter called once more. The answer, resonant and vast, but almost
shrill with the ecstasy of passion, blared forth from a dense fir thicket
immediately beyond the moonlit open. The mighty crashing came up, as it
seemed, to the very edge of the glade, and there stopped abruptly. No
towering flight of antlers emerged into the light.
The boy’s rifle—for it was his shot—was at his shoulder; but he lowered
it, and anxiously his eyes sought the face of his companion. The latter,
with lips that made no sound, shaped the words, “He suspects something.”
Then, once more lifting the treacherous tube of birch-bark to his mouth,
he murmured through it a rough but strangely tender note. It was not
utterly unlike that with which a cow sometimes speaks to her calf just
after giving birth to it, but more nasal and vibrant; and it was full of
caressing expectancy, and desire, and question, and half-reproach. All
the yearning of all the mating ardour that has triumphed over insatiable
death, and kept the wilderness peopled from the first, was in that
deceitful voice. As he ceased the call he raised himself stealthily
behind the thick trunk of the maple, lifted a wooden bucket of water to
the height of his shoulder, and poured out a stream, which fell with
noisy splashing on the gravel.
The eager moose could not resist the appeal. His vague suspicions fled.
He burst forth into the open, his eyes full and bright, his giant head
proudly uplifted.
The boy’s large-calibre rifle spoke at that instant, with a bitter,
clapping report, and a shoot of red flame through the viburnum screen.
The tall moose neither saw nor heard it. The leaden death had crashed
through his brain even before his quick sense had time to note the
menace. Swerving a little at the shock, the huge body sank forward upon
the knees and muzzle, then rolled over upon its side. There he lay
unstirring, betrayed by nature in the hour of his anticipation.
With a sudden outburst of voices, the two hunters sprang up, broke from
their ambush, and ran to view the prize. They were no longer of the
secretive kindred of the wilderness, but pleased children. The old
woodsman eyed shrewdly the inimitable spread of the prostrate antlers. As
for the boy, he stared at his victim, breathless, his eyes a-glitter with
the fierce elemental pride of the hunter triumphant.
[Illustration: THE HAUNTER OF THE PINE GLOOMS]
The Haunter of the Pine Gloom
For a moment the Boy felt afraid—afraid in his own woods. He felt that he
was being followed, that there were hostile eyes burning into the back of
his jacket. The sensation was novel to him, as well as unpleasant, and he
resented it. He knew it was all nonsense. There was nothing in these
woods bigger than a weasel, he was sure of that. Angry at himself, he
would not look round, but swung along carelessly through the thicket,
being in haste because it was already late and the cows should have been
home and milked before sundown. Suddenly, however, he remembered that it
was going flat against all woodcraft to disregard a warning. And was he
not, indeed, deliberately seeking to cultivate and sharpen his instincts,
in the effort to get closer to the wild woods folk and know them in their
furtive lives? Moreover, he was certainly getting more and more afraid!
He stopped, and peered into the pine glooms which surrounded him.
Standing motionless as a stump, and breathing with perfect soundlessness,
he strained his ears to help his eyes in their questioning of this
obscure menace. He could see nothing. He could hear nothing. Yet he knew
his eyes and ears were cunning to pierce all the wilderness disguises.
But stay—was that a deeper shadow, merely, far among the pine trunks?
And—did it move? He stole forward; but even as he did so, whatever of
unusual he saw or fancied in the object upon which his eyes were fixed,
melted away. It became but a shadow among other shadows, and motionless
as they—all motionless in the calm of the tranquil sunset. He ran forward
now, impatient to satisfy himself beyond suspicion. Yes—of course—it was
just this gray spruce stump! He turned away, a little puzzled and annoyed
in spite of himself. Thrashing noisily hither and thither through the
underbrush,—quite contrary to his wonted quietude while in the domains of
the wood folk,—and calling loudly in his clear young voice, “Co-petty!
Co-petty! Co-petty! Co-o-o-petty!” over and over, he at length found the
wilful young cow which had been eluding him. Then he drove the herd
slowly homeward, with mellow _tink-a-tonk, tank-tonk_ of the cow-bells,
to the farmyard and the milking.
Several evenings later, when his search for the wilful young cow chanced
to lead him again through the corner of this second growth pine wood, the
Boy had a repetition of the disturbing experience. This time his response
was instant and aggressive. As soon as he felt that sensation of
unfriendly eyes pursuing him, he turned, swept the shadows with his
piercing scrutiny, plunged into the thickets with a rush, then stopped
short as if frozen, almost holding his breath in the tensity of his
stillness. By this procedure he hoped to catch the unknown haunter of the
glooms under the disadvantage of motion. But again he was baffled.
Neither eye nor ear revealed him anything. He went home troubled and
wondering.
Some evenings afterward the same thing happened at another corner of the
pasture; and again one morning when he was fishing in the brook a mile
back into the woods, where it ran through a tangled growth of birch and
fir. He began to feel that he was either the object of a malicious
scrutiny, or that he was going back to those baby days when he used to be
afraid of the dark. Being just at the age of ripe boyhood when
childishness in himself would seem least endurable, the latter
supposition was not to be considered. He therefore set himself to
investigate the mystery, and to pit his woodcraft against the evasiveness
of this troubler of his peace.
The Boy’s confidence in his woodcraft was well founded. His natural
aptitude for the study of the wild kindred had been cultivated to the
utmost of his opportunity, in all the time that could be stolen from his
lesson-hours and from his unexacting duties about his father’s place.
Impatient and boyish in other matters, he had trained himself to the
patience of an Indian in regard to all matters appertaining to the wood
folk. He had a pet theory that the human animal was more competent, as a
mere animal, than it gets the credit of being; and it was his particular
pride to outdo the wild creatures at their own games. He could hide,
unstirring as a hidden grouse. He could run down a deer by sheer
endurance—only to spare it at the last and let it go, observed and
mastered, but unhurt. And he could see, as few indeed among the wild
things could. This was his peculiar triumph. His eyes could discriminate
where theirs could not. Perfect movelessness was apt to deceive the
keenest of them; but his sight was not to be so foiled. He could
differentiate gradually the shape of the brown hare crouching motionless
on its brown form; and separate the yellow weasel from the tuft of yellow
weeds; and distinguish the slumbering night-hawk from the knot on the
hemlock limb. He could hear, too, as well as most of the wild kindred,
and better, indeed, than some; but in this he had to acknowledge himself
hopelessly out-classed by not a few. He knew that the wood-mouse and the
hare, for instance, would simply make a mock of him in any test of ears;
and as for the owl—well, that gifted hearer of infinitesimal sounds would
be justified in calling him stone-deaf.
[Illustration: “THE BIG BEAST LITTLE IMAGINED HIMSELF OBSERVED.”]
The Boy was a good shot, but very seldom was it that he cared to display
his skill in that direction. It was his ambition to “name all the birds
without a gun.” He would know the wild folk living, not dead. From the
feebler of the wild folk he wanted trust, not fear; and he himself had no
fear, on the other hand, of the undisputed Master of the Woods, the big
black bear. His faith, justified by experience, was that the bear had
sense, knew how to mind his own business, and was ready to let other
people mind theirs. He knew the bear well, from patient, secret
observation when the big beast little imagined himself observed. From the
neighbourhood of a bull-moose in rutting season he would have taken pains
to absent himself; and if he had ever come across any trace of a panther
in those regions, he would have studied that uncertain beast with his
rifle always at hand in case of need. For the rest, he felt safe in the
woods, as an initiate of their secrets, and it was unusual for him to
carry in his wanderings any weapon but a stout stick and the sheath-knife
in his belt.
Now, however, when he set himself to discover what it was that haunted
his footsteps in the gloom, he took his little rifle—and in this act
betrayed to himself more uneasiness than he had been willing to
acknowledge.
This especial afternoon he got the hired man to look after the cows for
him, and betook himself early, about two hours before sundown, to the
young pine wood where the mystery had begun. In the heart of a little
thicket, where he was partly concealed and where the gray-brown of his
clothes blended with the stems and dead branches, he seated himself
comfortably with his back against a stump. Experience had taught him
that, in order to hold himself long in one position, the position chosen
must be an easy one. Soon his muscles relaxed, and all his senses rested,
watchful but unstrained. He had learned that tensity was a thing to be
held in reserve until occasion should call for it.
[Illustration: “A GREAT LYNX LANDED ON THE LOG.”]
In a little while his presence was ignored or forgotten by the chipmunks,
the chickadees, the white-throats, and other unafraid creatures. Once a
chipmunk, on weighty business bent, ran over his legs rather than go
around so unoffending an obstacle. The chickadees played antics on the
branches, and the air was beaded sweetly everywhere with their familiar
_sic-a-dee, dee-ee_. A white-throat in the tree right over his head
whistled his mellow _dear, dear eedledee—eedledee—eedledee_, over and
over. But there was nothing new in all this: and at length he began to
grow conscious of his position, and desirous of changing it slightly.
Before he had quite made up his mind to this momentous step there came
upon his ear a beating of wings, and a fine cock grouse alighted on a log
some forty paces distant. He stretched himself, strutted, spread his ruff
and wings and tail, and was about to begin drumming. But before the first
sonorous note rolled out there was a rustle and a pounce. The beautiful
bird bounded into the air as if hurled from a spring; and a great lynx
landed on the log, digging his claws fiercely into the spot where the
grouse had stood. As the bird rocketed off through the trees the lynx
glared after him, and emitted a loud, screeching snarl of rage. His
disappointment was so obvious and childish that the Boy almost laughed
out.
“Lucifee,” said he to himself, giving it the name it went by in all the
back settlements. “That’s the fellow that has been haunting me. I didn’t
think there were any lynxes this side of the mountain. He hasn’t seen me,
that’s sure. So now it’s my turn to haunt him a bit.”
The lucifee, indeed, had for the moment thrown off all concealment, in
his fury at the grouse’s escape. His stub of a tail twitched and his pale
bright eyes looked around for something on which to vent his feelings.
Suddenly, however, a wandering puff of air blew the scent of the Boy to
his nostrils. On the instant, like the soundless melting of a shadow, he
was down behind the log, taking observations through the veil of a leafy
branch.
Though the animal was looking straight toward him, the Boy felt sure he
was not seen. The eyes, indeed, were but following the nose. The lynx’s
nose is not so keen and accurate in its information as are the noses of
most of the other wild folk, and the animal was puzzled. The scent was
very familiar to him, for had he not been investigating the owner of it
for over a week, following him at every opportunity with mingled
curiosity and hatred? Now, judging by the scent, the object of his
curiosity was close at hand—yet incomprehensibly invisible. After
sniffing and peering for some minutes he came out from behind the log and
crept forward, moving like a shadow, and following up the scent. From
bush to tree-trunk, from thicket to stump, he glided with incredible
smoothness and rapidity, elusive to the eye, utterly inaudible; and
behind each shelter he crouched to again take observations. The Boy
thought of him, now, as a sort of malevolent ghost in fur, and no longer
wondered that he had failed to catch a glimpse of him before.
The lynx (this was the first of its tribe the Boy had ever seen, but he
knew the kind by reputation) was a somewhat doggish-looking cat, perhaps
four or five times the weight of an ordinary Tom, and with a very
uncatlike length of leg in proportion to its length of body. Its
hindquarters were disproportionately high, its tail ridiculously short.
Spiky tufts to its ears and a peculiar brushing back of the fur beneath
its chin gave its round and fierce-eyed countenance an expression at once
savage and grotesque. Most grotesque of all were the huge, noiseless pads
of its feet, muffled in fur. Its colour was a tawny, weather-beaten
gray-brown; its eyes pale, round, brilliant, and coldly cruel.
At length the animal, on a stronger puff of air, located the scent more
closely. This was obvious from a sudden stiffening of his muscles. His
eyes began to discern a peculiarity in the pine trunk some twenty paces
ahead. Surely that was no ordinary pine trunk, that! No, indeed, that was
where the scent of the Boy came from—and the hair on his back bristled
fiercely. In fact, it _was_ the Boy! The lucifee’s first impulse, on the
discovery, was to shrink off like a mist, and leave further investigation
to a more favourable opportunity. But he thought better of it because the
Boy was so still. Could he be asleep? Or, perhaps, dead? At any rate, it
would seem, he was for the moment harmless. Curiosity overcoming
discretion, and possibly hatred suggesting a chance of advantageous
attack, the animal lay down, his paws folded under him, contemplatively,
and studied with round, fierce eyes the passive figure beneath the tree.
The Boy, meanwhile, returned the stare with like interest, but through
narrowed lids, lest his eyes should betray him; and his heart beat fast
with the excitement of the situation. There was a most thrilling
uncertainty, indeed, as to what the animal would do next. He was glad he
had brought his rifle.
[Illustration: “PRESENTLY THE LUCIFEE AROSE AND BEGAN CREEPING STEALTHILY
CLOSER.”]
Presently the lucifee arose and began creeping stealthily closer, at the
same time swerving off to the right as if to get behind the tree. Whether
his purpose in this was to escape unseen or to attack from the rear, the
Boy could not decide; but what he did decide was that the game was
becoming hazardous and should be brought to immediate close. He did not
want to be compelled to shoot the beast in self-defence, for, this being
the first lynx he had ever seen, he wanted to study him. So, suddenly,
with the least possible movement of his features, he squeaked like a
wood-mouse, then _quit-quit_-ed like a grouse, then gave to a nicety the
sonorous call of the great horned owl.
The astonished lynx seemed to shrink into himself, as he flattened
against the ground, grown moveless as a stone. It was incredible,
appalling indeed, that these familiar and well-understood voices should
all come from that same impassive figure. He crouched unstirring for so
long that at last the shadows began to deepen perceptibly. The Boy
remembered that he had heard, some time ago, the bells of the returning
cows; and he realised that it might not be well to give his adversary the
advantage of the dark. Nevertheless, the experience was one of absorbing
interest and he hated to close it.
At length the lucifee came to the conclusion that the mystery should be
probed more fully. Once more he rose upon his padded, soundless paws, and
edged around stealthily to get behind the tree. This was not to be
permitted. The Boy burst into a peal of laughter and rose slowly to his
feet. On the instant the lucifee gave a bound, like a great rubber ball,
backward into a thicket. It seemed as if his big feet were all feathers,
and as if every tree trunk bent to intervene and screen his going. The
Boy rubbed his eyes, bewildered at so complete and instantaneous an exit.
Grasping his rifle in readiness, he hurried forward, searching every
thicket, looking behind every stump and trunk. The haunter of the gloom
had disappeared.
[Illustration: “A SILENT GRAY THUNDERBOLT FELL UPON HIM.”]
After this, however, the Boy was no more troubled by the mysterious
pursuit. The lynx had evidently found out all he required to know about
him. On the other hand the Boy was balked in his purpose of finding out
all he wanted to know about the lynx. That wary animal eluded all his
most patient and ingenious lyings-in-wait, until the Boy began to feel
that his woodcraft was being turned to a derision. Only once more that
autumn did he catch a glimpse of his shy opponent, and then by chance,
when he was on another trail. Hidden at the top of a thick-wooded bank he
was watching a mink at its fishing in the brook below. But as it turned
out, the dark little fisherman had another watcher as well. The pool in
the brook was full of large suckers. The mink had just brought one to
land in his triangular jaws and was proceeding to devour it, when a
silent gray thunderbolt fell upon him. There was a squeak and a snarl;
and the long, snaky body of the mink lay as still as that of the fish
which had been its prey. Crouching over his double booty, a paw on each,
the lynx glared about him in exultant pride. The scent of the Boy, high
on the bank above, did not come to him. The fish, as the more highly
prized tidbit, he devoured at once. Then, after licking his lips and
polishing his whiskers, he went loping off through the woods with the
limp body of the mink hanging from his jaws, to eat it at leisure in his
lair. The Boy made up his mind to find out where that lair was hidden.
But his searchings were all vain, and he tried to console himself with
the theory that the animal was wont to travel great distances in his
hunting—a theory which he knew in his heart to be contrary to the customs
of the cat-kindred.
During the winter he was continually tantalised by coming across the
lucifee’s tracks—great footprints, big enough to do for the
trail-signature of the panther himself. If he followed these tracks far
he was sure to find interesting records of wilderness adventure—here a
spot where the lynx had sprung upon a grouse, and missed it, or upon a
hare, and caught it; and once he found the place where the big furry paws
had dug down to the secret white retreat where a grouse lay sleeping
under the snow. But by and by the tracks would cross each other, and make
wide circles, or end in a tree where there was no lucifee to be found.
And the Boy was too busy at home to give the time which he saw it would
require to unravel the maze to its end. But he refused to consider
himself defeated. He merely regarded his triumph as postponed.
Early in the spring the triumph came—though not just the triumph he had
expected. Before the snow was quite gone, and when the sap was beginning
to flow from the sugar maples, he went with the hired man to tap a grove
of extra fine trees some five miles east from the settlement. Among the
trees they had a sugar camp; and when not at the sugar-making, the Boy
explored a near-by burnt-land ridge, very rocky and rich in coverts,
where he had often thought the old lynx, his adversary, might have made
his lair. Here, the second day after his arrival, he came upon a lucifee
track. But it was not the track with which he was familiar. It was
smaller, and the print of the right forefoot lacked a toe.
The Boy grinned happily and rubbed his mittened hands. “Aha!” said he to
himself, “better and better! There is a Mrs. Lucifee. Now we’ll see where
she hides her kittens.”
The trail was an easy one this time, for no enemies had been looked for
in that desert neighbourhood. He followed it for about half a mile, and
then caught sight of a hollow under an overhanging rock, to which the
tracks seemed to lead. Working around to get the wind in his face, he
stole cautiously nearer, till he saw that the hollow was indeed the
entrance to a cave, and that the tracks led directly into it. He had no
desire to investigate further, with the risk of finding the lucifee at
home; and it was getting too late for him to undertake his usual watching
tactics. He withdrew stealthily and returned to the camp in exultation.
In the night a thaw set in, so the Boy was spared the necessity of
waiting for the noon sun to soften the snow and make the walking
noiseless. He set out on the very edge of sunrise, and reached his
hiding-place while the mouth of the cave was still in shadow. On the
usual crisp mornings of sugar season the snow at such an hour would have
borne a crust, to crackle sharply under every footstep and proclaim an
intruding presence to all the wood folk for a quarter of a mile about.
After waiting for a good half-hour, his eyes glued to a small black
opening under the rock, his heart gave a leap of strong, joyous
excitement. He saw the lucifee’s head appear in the doorway. She peered
about her cautiously, little dreaming, however, that there was any cause
for caution. Then she came forth into the blue morning light, yawned
hugely, and stretched herself like a cat. She was smaller than the Boy’s
old adversary, somewhat browner in hue, leaner, and of a peculiarly
malignant expression. The Boy had an instant intuition that she would be
the more dangerous antagonist of the two; and a feeling of sharp
hostility toward her, such as he had never felt toward her mate, arose in
his heart.
[Illustration: “YAWNED HUGELY, AND STRETCHED HERSELF LIKE A CAT.”]
When she had stretched to her satisfaction, and washed her face
perfunctorily with two or three sweeps of her big paw, she went back into
the cave. In two or three minutes she reappeared, and this time with a
brisk air of purpose. She turned to the right, along a well-worn trail,
ran up a tree to take a survey of the country, descended hastily, and
glided away among the thickets.
“It’s breakfast she’s after,” said the Boy to himself, “and she’ll take
some time to find it.”
When she had been some ten minutes gone, the Boy went boldly down to the
cave. He had no fear of encountering the male, because he knew from an
old hunter who had taught him his first wood-lore that the male lucifee
is not popular with his mate at whelping time, having a truly Saturnian
fashion of devouring his own offspring. But there was the possibility,
remote, indeed, but disquieting, of the mother turning back to see to
some neglected duty; and with this chance in view he held his rifle
ready.
Inside the cave he stood still and waited for his eyes to get used to the
gloom. Then he discovered, in one corner, on a nest of fur and dry grass,
a litter of five lucifee whelps. They were evidently very young, little
larger than ordinary kittens, and too young to know fear, but their eyes
were wide open, and they stood up on strong legs when he touched them
softly with his palm. Disappointed in their expectation of being nursed,
they mewed, and there was something in their cries that sounded strangely
wild and fierce. To the Boy’s great surprise, they were quite different
in colour from their gray-brown, unmarked parents, being striped vividly
and profusely, like a tabby or tiger. The Boy was delighted with them,
and made up his mind that when they were a few days older he would take
two of them home with him to be brought up in the ways of civilisation.
Three days later he again visited the den, this time with a basket in
which to carry away his prizes. After waiting an hour to see if the
mother were anywhere about, he grew impatient. Stealing as close to the
cave’s mouth as the covert would permit, he squeaked like a wood-mouse
several times. This seductive sound bringing no response, he concluded
that the old lucifee must be absent. He went up to the mouth of the cave
and peered in, holding his rifle in front of his face in readiness for an
instant shot. When his eyes got command of the dusk, he saw to his
surprise that the den was empty. He entered and felt the vacant nest. It
was quite cold, and had a deserted air. Then he realised what had
happened, and cursed his clumsiness. The old lucifee, when she came back
to her den, had learned by means of her nose that her enemy had
discovered her hiding-place and touched her young with his defiling human
hands, thereupon in wrath she had carried them away to some remote and
unviolated lair. Till they were grown to nearly the full stature of
lucifee destructiveness, the Boy saw no more of his wonderful lucifee
kittens.
Toward the latter part of the summer, however, he began to think that
perhaps he had made a mistake in leaving these fierce beasts to multiply.
He no longer succeeded in catching sight of them as they went about their
furtive business, for they had somehow become aware of his woodcraft and
distrustful of their own shifts. But on all sides he found trace of their
depredations among the weaker creatures. He observed that the rabbits
were growing scarce about the settlement; and even the grouse were less
numerous in the upland thickets of young birch. As all the harmless wood
folk were his friends, he began to feel that he had been false to them in
sparing their enemies. Thereupon, he took to carrying his rifle whenever
he went exploring. He had not really declared war upon the haunters of
the glooms, but his relations with them were becoming distinctly
strained.
At length the rupture came; and it was violent. In one of the upland
pastures, far back from the settlement, he came upon the torn carcass of
a half-grown lamb. He knew that this was no work of a bear, for the
berries were abundant that autumn, and the bear prefers berries to
mutton. Moreover, when a bear kills a sheep he skins it deftly and has
the politeness to leave the pelt rolled up in a neat bundle, just to
indicate to the farmer that he has been robbed by a gentleman. But this
carcass was torn and mangled most untidily; and the Boy divined the
culprits.
It was early in the afternoon when he made his find, and he concluded
that the lucifees were likely to return to their prey before evening. He
hid himself, therefore, behind a log thickly fringed with juniper, not
twenty-five paces from the carcass; and waited, rifle in hand.
[Illustration: “MOUNTED THE CARCASS WITH AN AIR OF LORDSHIP.”]
A little before sunset appeared the five young lucifees, now nearly full
grown. They fell at once to tearing at the carcass, with much jealous
snarling and fighting. Soon afterwards came the mother, with a well-fed,
leisurely air; and at her heels, the big male of the Boy’s first
acquaintance. It was evident that, now that the rabbits were getting
scarce, the lucifees were hunting in packs, a custom very unusual with
these unsocial beasts under ordinary circumstances, and only adopted when
seeking big game. The big male cuffed the cubs aside without ceremony,
mounted the carcass with an air of lordship, glared about him, and
suddenly, with a snarl of wrath, fixed his eyes upon the green branches
wherein the Boy lay concealed. At the same time the female, who had
stopped short, sniffing and peering suspiciously, crouched to her belly,
and began to crawl very softly and stealthily, as a cat crawls upon an
unsuspecting bird, toward the innocent-looking juniper thicket.
The Boy realised that he had presumed too far upon the efficacy of
stillness, and that the lynxes, at this close range, had detected him. He
realised, too, that now, jealous in the possession of their prey, they
had somehow laid aside their wonted fear of him; and he congratulated
himself heartily that his little rifle was a repeater. Softly he raised
it to take aim at the nearest, and to him the most dangerous of his foes,
the cruel-eyed female; but in doing so he stirred, ever so little, the
veiling fringe of juniper. At the motion the big male sprang forward,
with two great bounds, and crouched within ten yards of the log. His stub
of a tail twitched savagely. He was plainly nerving himself to the
attack.
There was no time to lose. Taking quick but careful aim, the Boy fired.
The bullet found its mark between the brute’s eyes, and he straightened
out where he lay, without a kick. At the sound and the flash the female
doubled upon herself as quick as light; and before the Boy could get a
shot at her she was behind a stump some rods away, shrinking small, and
fleeing like a gray shred of vapour. The whelps, too, had vanished with
almost equal skill—all but one. He, less alert and intelligent than his
fellows, tried concealment behind a clump of pink fireweed. But the Boy’s
eyes pierced the screen; and the next bullet, cutting the fireweed
stalks, took vengeance for many slaughtered hares and grouse.
After this the Boy saw no more of his enemies for some months, but though
they had grown still more wary their experience had not made them less
audacious. Before the snow fell they had killed another sheep; and the
Boy was sure that they, rather than any skunks or foxes, were to blame
for the disappearance of several geese from his flock. His primeval
hunting instincts were now aroused, and he was no longer merely the
tender-hearted and sympathetic observer. It was only toward the marauding
lucifees, however, that his feelings had changed. The rest of the wild
folk he loved as well as before, but for the time he was too busy to
think of them.
When the snow came, and footsteps left their tell-tale records, the Boy
found to his surprise that he had but one lucifee to deal with. Every
lynx track in the neighbourhood had a toe missing on the right forefoot.
It was clear that the whelps of last spring had shirked the contest and
betaken themselves to other and safer hunting-grounds; but he felt that
between himself and the vindictive old female it was war to the knife.
Her tracks fairly quartered the outlying fields all about his father’s
farm, and were even to be found now and again around the sheep-pen and
the fowl-house. Yet never, devise he ever so cunningly, did he get a
glimpse of so much as her gray stub tail.
At last, through an open window, she invaded the sheep-pen by night and
killed two young ewes. To the Boy this seemed mere wantonness of cruelty,
and he set his mind to a vengeance which he had hitherto been unwilling
to consider. He resolved to trap his enemy, since he could not shoot her.
Now, as a mere matter of woodcraft, he knew all about trapping and
snaring; but ever since the day, now five years gone, when he had been
heart-stricken by his first success in rabbit-snaring, he had hated
everything like a snare or trap. Now, however, in the interests of all
the helpless creatures of the neighbourhood, wild or tame, he made up his
mind to snare the lucifee. He went about it with his utmost skill, in a
fashion taught him by an old Indian trapper.
Close beside one of his foe’s remoter runways, in an upland field where
the hares were still abundant, the Boy set his snare. It was just a
greatly exaggerated rabbit snare, of extra heavy wire and a cord of
triple strength. But instead of being attached to the top of a bent-down
sapling, it was fastened to a billet of wood about four feet long and
nearly two inches in diameter. This substantial stick was supported on
two forked uprights driven into the snow beside the runway. Then young
fir-bushes were stuck about it carefully in a way to conceal evidence of
his handiwork; and an artful arrangement of twigs disguised the ambushed
loop of wire.
Just behind the loop of wire, and some inches below it, the Boy arranged
his bait. This consisted of the head and skin of a hare, stuffed
carefully with straw, and posed in a lifelike attitude. It seemed,
indeed, to be comfortably sleeping on the snow, under the branches of a
young fir-tree; and the Boy felt confident that the tempting sight would
prevent the wily old lucifee from taking any thought to the surroundings
before securing the prize.
Late that afternoon, when rose and gold were in the sky, and the snowy
open spaces were of a fainter rose, and the shadows took on an ashy
purple under the edges of the pines and firs, the old lucifee came
drifting along like a phantom. She peered hungrily under every bush,
hoping to catch some careless hare asleep. On a sudden a greenish fire
flamed into her wide eyes. She crouched, and moved even more stealthily
than was her wont. The snow, the trees, the still, sweet evening light,
seemed to invest her with silence. Very soundly it slept, that doomed
hare, crouching under the fir-bush! And now, she was within reach of her
spring. She shot forward, straight and strong and true.
Her great paws covered the prey, indeed; but at the same instant a sharp,
firm grip clutched her throat with a jerk, and then something hit her a
sharp rap over the shoulders. With a wild leap backward and aside she
sought to evade the mysterious attack. But the noose settled firmly
behind her ears, and the billet of wood, with a nasty tug at her throat,
leapt after her.
So this paltry thing was her assailant! She flew into a wild rage at the
stick, tearing at it with her teeth and claws. But this made no
difference with the grip about her throat, so she backed off again. The
stick followed—and the grip tightened. Bracing her forepaws upon the wood
she pulled fiercely to free herself; and the wire drew taut till her
throat was almost closed. Her rage had hastened her doom, fixing the
noose where there was no such thing as clawing it off. Then fear took the
place of rage in her savage heart. Her lungs seemed bursting. She began
to realise that it was not the stick, but some more potent enemy whom she
must circumvent or overcome. She picked up the billet between her jaws,
climbed a big birch-tree which grew close by, ran out upon a limb some
twenty feet from the ground, and dropped the stick, thinking thus to rid
herself of the throttling burden.
The shock, as the billet reached the end of its drop, jerked her from her
perch; but clutching frantically she gained a foothold on another limb
eight or ten feet lower down. There she clung, her tongue out, her eyes
filming, her breath stopped, strange colours of flame and darkness
rioting in her brain. Bracing herself with all her remaining strength
against the pull of the dangling stick, she got one paw firmly fixed
against a small jutting branch. Thus it happened that when, a minute
later, her life went out and she fell, she fell on the other side of the
limb. The billet of wood flew up, caught in a fork, and held fast; and
the limp, tawny body, twitching for a minute convulsively, hung some six
or seven feet above its own tracks in the snow.
An hour or two later the moon rose, silvering the open spaces. Then, one
by one and two by two, the hares came leaping down the aisles of pine and
fir. Hither and thither around the great birch-tree they played, every
now and then stopping to sit up and thump challenges to their rivals. And
because it was quite still, they never saw the body of their deadliest
foe, hanging stark from the branch above them.
[Illustration: THE WATCHERS OF THE CAMP FIRE]
The Watchers of the Camp-Fire
For five years the big panther, who ruled the ragged plateau around the
head waters of the Upsalquitch, had been well content with his
hunting-ground. This winter, however, it had failed him. His tawny sides
were lank with hunger. Rabbits—and none too many of them—were but thin
and spiritless meat for such fiery blood as his. His mighty and restless
muscles consumed too swiftly the unsatisfying food; and he was compelled
to hunt continually, foregoing the long, recuperative sleeps which the
tense springs of his organism required. Every fibre in his body was
hungering for a full meal of red-blooded meat, the sustaining flesh of
deer or caribou. The deer, of course, he did not expect on these high
plains and rough hills of the Upsalquitch. They loved the well-wooded
ridges of the sheltered, low-lying lands. But the caribou—for five years
their wandering herds had thronged these plains, where the mosses they
loved grew luxuriantly. And now, without warning or excuse, they had
vanished.
The big panther knew the caribou. He knew that, with no reason other than
their own caprice, the restless gray herds would drift away, forsaking
the most congenial pastures, journey swiftly and eagerly league upon
inconsequent league, and at last rest seemingly content with more
perilous ranges and scanter forage, in a region remote and new.
He was an old beast, ripe in the craft of the hunt; and the caribou had
done just what he knew in his heart they were likely to do. Nevertheless,
because the head waters of the Upsalquitch were much to his liking,—the
best hunting-ground, indeed, that he had ever found,—he had hoped for a
miracle; he had grown to expect that these caribou would stay where they
were well off. Their herds had thriven and increased during the five
years of his guardianship. He had killed only for his needs, never for
the lust of killing. He had kept all four-foot poachers far from his
preserves; and no hunters cared to push their way to the inaccessible
Upsalquitch while game was abundant on the Tobique and the Miramichi. He
knew all these wilderness waters of northern New Brunswick, having been
born not far from the sources of the Nashwaak, and worked his way
northward as soon as he was full-grown, to escape the hated neighbourhood
of the settlements. He knew that his vanished caribou would find no other
pastures so rich and safe as these which they had left. Nevertheless,
they had left them. And now, after a month of rabbit meat, he would
forsake them, too. He would move down westward, and either come upon the
trail of his lost herds, or push over nearer to the St. John valley and
find a country of deer.
[Illustration: “HIS BIG, SPREADING PAWS CARRIED HIM OVER ITS SURFACE AS
IF HE HAD BEEN SHOD WITH SNOW-SHOES.”]
The big panther was no lover of long journeyings, and he did not travel
with the air of one bent on going far. He lingered much to hunt rabbits
on the way; and wherever he found a lair to his liking he settled himself
as if for a long sojourn. Nevertheless he had no idea of halting until he
should reach a land of deer or caribou, and his steady drift to westward
carried him far in the course of a week. The snow, though deep, was well
packed by a succession of driving winds, and his big, spreading paws
carried him over its surface as if he had been shod with snow-shoes.
By the end of a week, however, the continuous travelling on the
unsubstantial diet of rabbit meat had begun to tell upon him. He was
hungry and unsatisfied all the time, and his temper became abominable.
Now and then in the night he was fortunate enough to surprise a red
squirrel asleep in its nest, or a grouse rooting in its thicket; but
these were mere atoms to his craving, and moreover their flesh belonged
to the same pale order as that of his despised rabbits. When he came to a
beaver village, the rounded domes of the houses dotting the snowy level
of their pond, a faint steam of warmth and moisture arising from their
ventilating holes like smoke, he sometimes so far forgot himself as to
waste a few minutes in futile clawing at the roofs, though he knew well
enough that several feet of mud, frozen to the solidity of rock,
protected the savoury flat-tails from his appetite.
Once, in a deep, sheltered river-valley, where a strong rapid and a
narrow deep cascade kept open a black pool of water all through the
winter frost, his luck and his wits working together gained him a
luncheon of fat porcupine. Tempted from its den by the unwonted warmth of
noonday, the porcupine had crawled out upon a limb to observe how the
winter was passing, and to sniff for signs of spring in the air. At the
sight of the panther, who had climbed the tree and cut off its retreat,
it bristled its black and white quills, whirled about on its branch, and
eyed its foe with more anger than terror, confident in its pointed
spines.
The panther understood and respected that fine array of needle-points,
and ordinarily would have gone his way hungry rather than risk the peril
of getting his paws and nose stuck full of those barbed weapons. But just
now his cunning was very keenly on edge. He crawled within striking
distance of the porcupine, and reached out his great paw, gingerly
enough, to clutch the latter’s unprotected face. Instantly the porcupine
rolled itself into a bristling ball of needle-points and dropped to the
ground below.
The panther followed at a single bound; but there was no need whatever of
hurry. The porcupine lay on the snow, safely coiled up within its citadel
of quills; and the panther lay down beside it, waiting for it to unroll.
But after half an hour of this vain waiting, patience gave out and he
began experimenting. Extending his claws to the utmost, so that the
quill-points should not come in contact with the fleshy pads of his foot,
he softly turned the porcupine over. Now it chanced that the hard, glassy
snow whereon it lay sloped toward the open pool, and the bristling ball
moved several feet down the slope. The panther’s pale eyes gleamed with a
sudden thought. He pushed the ball again, very, very delicately. Again,
and yet again; till, suddenly, reaching a spot where the slope was
steeper, it rolled of its own accord, and dropped with a splash into the
icy current.
As it came to the surface the porcupine straightened itself out to swim
for the opposite shore. But like a flash the panther’s paw scooped under
it, and the long keen claws caught it in the unshielded belly. Unavailing
now were those myriad bristling spear-points; and when the panther
continued his journey he left behind him but a skin of quills and some
blood-stains on the snow, to tell the envious lucifees that one had
passed that way who knew how to outwit the porcupine.
On the following day, about noon, he came across an astonishing and
incomprehensible trail, at the first sight and scent of which the hair
rose along his backbone.
[Illustration: “HE PUSHED THE BALL AGAIN, VERY, VERY DELICATELY.”]
The scent of the strange trail he knew,—and hated it, and feared it. It
was the man-scent. But the shape and size of the tracks at first appalled
him. He had seen men, and the footprints of men; but never men with feet
so vast as these. The trail was perhaps an hour old. He sniffed at it and
puzzled over it for a time; and then, perceiving that the man-scent clung
only in a little depression about the centre of each track, concluded
that the man who had made the track was no bigger than such men as he had
seen. The rest of the trail was a puzzle, indeed, but it presently ceased
to appal. Thereupon he changed his direction, and followed the man’s
trail at a rapid pace. His courage was not strung up to the pitch of
resolving to attack this most dangerous and most dreaded of all
creatures; but his hunger urged him insistently, and he hoped for some
lucky chance of catching the man at a disadvantage. Moreover, it would
soon be night, and he knew that with darkness his courage would increase,
while that of the man—a creature who could not see well in the
dark—should by all the laws of the wilderness diminish. He licked his
lean chops at the thought of what would happen to the man unawares.
For some time he followed the trail at a shambling lope, every now and
then dropping into an easy trot for the easement of the change.
Occasionally he would stop and lie down for a few minutes at full length,
to rest his overdriven lungs, being short-winded after the fashion of his
kind. But when, toward sundown, when the shadows began to lengthen and
turn blue upon the snow, and the western sky, through the spruce-tops,
took upon a bitter wintry orange dye, he noticed that the trail was
growing fresher. So strong did the man-scent become that he expected
every moment to catch a glimpse of the man through the thicket. Thereupon
he grew very cautious. No longer would he either lope or trot; but he
crept forward, belly to the ground, setting down each paw with delicacy
and precaution. He kept turning the yellow flame of his eyes from side to
side continually, searching the undergrowth on every hand, and often
looking back along his own track. He knew that men were sometimes
inconceivably stupid, but at other times cunning beyond all the craft of
the wood folk. He was not going to let himself become the hunted instead
of the hunter, caught in the old device of the doubled trail.
At last, as twilight was gathering headway among the thickets, he was
startled by a succession of sharp sounds just ahead of him. He stopped,
and crouched motionless in his tracks. But presently he recognised and
understood the sharp sounds, especially when they were followed by a
crackling and snapping of dry branches. They were axe-strokes. He had
heard them in the neighbourhood of the lumber camps, before his five
years’ retirement on the head waters of the Upsalquitch. With
comprehension came new courage,—for the wild folk put human wisdom to
shame in their judicious fear of what they do not understand. He crept a
little nearer, and from safe hiding watched the man at his task of
gathering dry firewood for the night. From time to time the man looked
about him alertly, half suspiciously, as if he felt himself watched; but
he could not discover the pale, cruel eyes that followed him unwinking
from the depths of the hemlock thicket.
In a few minutes the panther was surprised to see the man take one of his
heavy snow-shoes and begin digging vigorously at the snow. In a little
while there was a circular hole dug so deep that when the man stood up in
it little more than his head and shoulders appeared over the edge. Then
he carried in a portion of the wood which he had cut, together with a big
armful of spruce boughs; and he busied himself for awhile at the bottom
of the hole, his head appearing now and then, but only for a moment. The
panther was filled with curiosity, but restrained himself from drawing
nearer to investigate. Then, when it had grown so dark that he was about
to steal from his hiding and creep closer, suddenly there was a flash of
light, and smoke and flame arose from the hole, throwing a red, revealing
glare on every covert; and the panther, his lips twitching and his hair
rising, shrank closer into his retreat.
The smoke, and the scent of the burning sticks, killed the scent of the
man in the panther’s nostrils. But presently there was a new scent, warm,
rich, and appetising. The panther did not know it, but he liked it. It
was the smell of frying bacon. Seeing that the man was much occupied over
the fire, the hungry beast made a partial circuit of the camp-fire, and
noiselessly climbed a tree whence he could look down into the mysterious
hole.
From this post of vantage he watched the man make his meal, smoke his
pipe, replenish the fire, and finally, rolling himself in his heavy
blanket, compose himself to sleep. Then, little by little, the panther
crept nearer. He feared the fire; but the fire soon began to die down,
and he despised it as he saw it fading. He crept out upon a massive
hemlock limb, almost overlooking the hole, but screened by a veil of fine
green branches. From this post he could spring upon the sleeper at one
bound,—as soon as he could make up his mind to the audacious enterprise.
He feared the man, even asleep; in fact, he stood in strange awe of the
helpless, slumbering form. But little by little he began to realise that
he feared his own hunger more. Lower and lower sank the fainting fire;
and he resolved that as soon as the sleeper should stir in his sleep,
beginning to awake, he would spring. But the sleeper slept unstirring;
and so the panther, equally unstirring, watched.
II.
A little beyond the camp-fire where the man lay sleeping under those
sinister eyes, rose the slopes of a wooded ridge. The ridge was covered
with a luxuriant second growth of birch, maple, Canada fir, moose-wood,
and white spruce, the ancient forest having fallen years before under the
axes of the lumbermen. Here on the ridge, where the food they loved was
abundant, a buck, with his herd of does and fawns, had established his
winter “yard.” With their sharp, slim hoofs which cut deep into the snow,
if the deer were compelled to seek their food at large they would find
themselves at the mercy of every foe as soon as the snow lay deep enough
to impede their running. It is their custom, therefore, at the beginning
of winter, to select a locality where the food supply will not fail them,
and intersect the surface of the snow in every direction with an
inextricable labyrinth of paths. These paths are kept well trodden,
whatever snow may fall. If straightened out they would reach for many a
league. To unravel their intricacies is a task to which only the memories
of their makers are equal, and along them the deer flee like wraiths at
any alarm. If close pressed by an enemy they will leap, light as birds,
from one deep path to another, leaving no mark on the intervening barrier
of snow, and breaking the trail effectually. Thus when the snow lies
deep, the yard becomes their spacious citadel, and the despair of
pursuing lynx or panther. A herd of deer well yarded, under the
leadership of an old and crafty buck, will come safe and sleek through
the fiercest wilderness winter.
The little herd which occupied this particular yard chanced to be
feeding, in the glimmer of the winter twilight, very near the foot of the
ridge, when suddenly a faint red glow, stealing through the branches,
caught the old buck’s eye. There was a quick stamp of warning, and on the
instant the herd turned to statues, their faces all one way, their
sensitive ears, vibrating nostrils, and wide attentive eyes all striving
to interpret the prodigy. They were a herd of the deep woods. Not one of
them had ever been near the settlements. Not even the wise old leader had
ever seen a fire. This light, when the sun had set and no moon held the
sky, was inexplicable.
But to the deer a mystery means something to be solved. He has the
perilous gift of curiosity. After a few minutes of moveless watching, the
whole herd, in single file, began noiselessly threading the lower
windings of the maze, drawing nearer and nearer to the strange light.
When the first smell of the burning came to their nostrils they stopped
again, but not for long. That smell was just another mystery to be looked
into. At the smell of the frying pork they stopped again, this time for a
longer period and with symptoms of uneasiness. To their delicate nerves
there was something of a menace in that forbidding odour. But even so, it
was to be investigated; and very soon they resumed their wary advance.
A few moments more and they came to a spot where, peering through a cover
of spruce boughs, their keen eyes could see the hole in the snow, the
camp-fire, and the man seated beside it smoking his pipe. It was all very
wonderful; but instinct told them it was perilous, and the old buck
decided that the information they had acquired was sufficient for all
practical purposes of a deer’s daily life. He would go no nearer. The
whole herd stood there for a long time, forgetting to eat, absorbed in
the novelty and wonder of the scene.
The whole herd, did I say? There was one exception. To a certain young
doe that fire was the most fascinating thing in life. It drew her. It
hypnotised her. After a few minutes of stillness she could resist no
longer. She pushed past the leader of the herd and stole noiselessly
toward the shining lovely thing. The old buck signalled her back,—first
gently, then angrily; but she had grown forgetful of the laws of the
herd. She had but one thought, to get nearer to the camp-fire, and drench
her vision in the entrancing glow.
Nevertheless, for all her infatuation, she forgot not her ancestral gift
of prudence. She went noiselessly as a shadow, drifting, pausing,
listening, sniffing the air, concealing herself behind every cover. The
rest of the herd gazed after her with great eyes of resignation, then
left her to her wayward will and resumed their watching of the camp-fire.
When one member of a herd persists in disobeying orders, the rest endure
with equanimity whatever fate may befall her.
[Illustration: “STOLE NOISELESSLY TOWARD THE SHINING LOVELY THING.”]
Step by step, as if treading on egg-shells, the fascinated doe threaded
the path till she came to the lowest limit of the yard. From that point
the path swerved back up the ridge, forsaking the ruddy glow. The doe
paused, hesitating. She was still too far from the object of her
admiration and wonder; but she feared the deep snow. Her irresolution
soon passed, however. Getting behind a thick hemlock, she cautiously
raised herself over the barrier and made straight for the camp-fire.
Packed as the snow was, her light weight enabled her to traverse it
without actually floundering. She sank deep at every step, but had
perfect control of her motions, and made no more sound than if she had
been a bunch of fur blown softly over the surface. Her absorption and
curiosity, moreover, did not lead her to omit any proper precaution of
woodcraft. As she approached the fire she kept always in the dense,
confusing, shifting shadows which a camp-fire casts in the forest. These
fitful shadows were a very effectual concealment.
At last she found herself so close to the fire that only a thicket of
young spruce divided her from the edge of the hole.
Planting herself rigidly, her gray form an indeterminate shadow among the
blotches and streaks of shadow, her wide mild eyes watched the man with
intensest interest, as he knocked out his pipe, mended the fire, and
rolled himself into his blanket on the spruce boughs. When she saw that
he was asleep, she presently forgot about him. Her eyes returned to the
fire and fixed themselves upon it. The veering, diminishing flames held
her as by sorcery. All else was forgotten,—food, foes, and the herd
alike,—as she stared with childlike eagerness at the bed of red coals.
The pupils of her eyes kept alternately expanding and contracting, as the
glow in the coals waxed and waned under the fluctuating breath of passing
airs.
III.
Very early that same morning, a brown and grizzled chopper in Nicholson’s
camp, having obtained a brief leave of absence from the Boss, had started
out on his snow-shoes for a two days’ tramp to the settlements. He had
been seized the night before with a sudden and irresistible homesickness.
Shrewd, whimsical, humourous, kind, ever ready to stand by a comrade,
fearless in all the daunting emergencies which so often confront the
lumbermen in their strenuous calling, these sudden attacks of
homesickness were his one and well-known failing in the eyes of his
fellows. At least once in every winter he was sure to be so seized; and
equally sure to be so favoured by the Boss. On account of his popularity
in the camp, moreover, this favour excited no jealousy. It had come to be
taken as a matter of course that Mac would go home for a few days if one
of his “spells” came upon him. He was always “docked,” to be sure, for
the time of his absence, but as he never stayed away more than a week,
his little holiday made no very serious breach in his roll when pay-day
came.
Though not a hunter, the man was a thorough woodsman. He knew the woods,
and the furtive inhabitants of them; and he loved to study their ways.
Trails, in particular, were a passion with him, and he could read the
varying purposes of the wild things by the changes in their footprints on
the snow. He was learned, too, in the occult ways of the otter, whom few
indeed are cunning enough to observe; and he had even a rudimentary
knowledge of the complex vocabulary of the crow. He had no care to kill
the wild things, great or small; yet he was a famous marksman, with his
keen gray eye and steady hand. And he always carried a rifle on his long,
solitary tramps.
He had two good reasons for carrying the rifle. The first of these was
the fact that he had never seen a panther, and went always in the hope of
meeting one. The stories which he had heard of them, current in all the
lumber camps of northern New Brunswick, were so conflicting that he could
not but feel uncertain as to the terms on which the encounter was likely
to take place. The only point on which he felt assured was that he and
the panther would some day meet, in spite of the fact that the great cat
had grown so scarce in New Brunswick that some hunters declared it was
extinct. The second reason was that he had a quarrel with all lucifees or
lynxes,—“Injun devils,” he called them. Once when he was a baby, just big
enough to sit up when strapped into his chair, a lucifee had come and
glared at him with fierce eyes through the doorway of his lonely
backwoods cabin. His mother had come rushing from the cow-shed, just in
time; and the lucifee, slinking off to the woods, had vented his
disappointment in a series of soul-curdling screeches. The memory of this
terror was a scar in his heart, which time failed to efface. He grew up
to hate all lucifees; and from the day when he learned to handle a gun he
was always ready to hunt them.
On this particular day of his life he had travelled all the morning
without adventure, his face set eagerly toward the west. Along in the
afternoon he was once or twice surprised by a creeping sensation along
his backbone and in the roots of the hair on his neck. He stopped and
peered about him searchingly, with a feeling that he was followed. But he
had implicit faith in his eyesight; and when that revealed no menace he
went onward reassured.
But when the diversion of gathering firewood and digging the hole that
served him for a camp came to an end, and he stooped to build his
camp-fire, that sensation of being watched came over him again. It was so
strong that he straightened up sharply, and scrutinised every thicket
within eyeshot. Thereafter, though he could see nothing to justify his
curious uneasiness, the sensation kept recurring insistently all the time
that he was occupied in cooking and eating his meal. When at last he was
ready to turn in for his brief night’s sleep,—he planned to be afoot
again before dawn,—he heaped his frugal camp-fire a little higher than
usual, and took the quite unwonted precaution of laying his rifle within
instant grasp of his hand.
In spite of these vague warnings, wherein his instinct showed itself so
much more sagacious than his reason, he fell asleep at once. His
wholesome drowsiness, in that clear and vital air, was not to be denied.
But once deep asleep, beyond the vacillation of ordered thought and the
obstinacies of will, his sensitive intuitions reasserted themselves. They
insisted sharply on his giving heed to their warnings; and all at once he
found himself wide awake with not a vestige of sleep’s heaviness left in
his brain.
With his trained woodcraft, however, he knew that it was some peril that
had thus awakened him, and he gave no sign of his waking. Without a
movement, without a change in his slow, deep breathing, he half opened
his eyes and scanned the surrounding trees through narrowed lids.
Presently he caught a glimmer of big, soft, round eyes gazing at him
through a tangle of spruce boughs. _Were_ they gazing at him? No, it was
the fire that held their harmless attention. He guessed the owner of
those soft eyes; and in a moment or two he was able to discern dimly the
lines of the deer’s head and neck.
His first impulse was to laugh impatiently at his own folly. Had he been
enduring all these creepy apprehensions because an inquisitive doe had
followed him? Had his nerves grown so sensitive that the staring of a
chipmunk or a rabbit had power to break his sleep? But while these
thoughts rushed through his brain his body lay still as before, obedient
to the subtle dictates of his instinct. His long study of the wild things
had taught him much of their special wisdom. He swept his glance around
the dim-lit aisle as far as he could without perceptibly turning his
head—and met the lambent blue-green gaze of the watching panther!
Through the thin veil of the hemlock twigs, he saw the body of the
animal, gathered for the spring, and realised with a pang that the long
expected had not arrived in just the form he would have chosen. He knew
better than to reach for his rifle,—because he knew that the least
movement of head or hand would be the signal for the launching of that
fatal leap. There was nothing to do but wait, and keep motionless, and
think.
The strain of that waiting was unspeakable, and under it the minutes
seemed hours. But just as he was beginning to think he could stand it no
longer, a brand in the fire burned through and broke smartly. Flames
leapt up, with a shower of sparks,—and the panther, somewhat startled,
drew back and shifted his gaze. It was but for an instant, but in that
instant the man had laid hold of his rifle, drawn it to him, and got it
into a position where one more swift movement would enable him to shoot.
But not the panther only had been startled by the breaking brand, the
leaping flame. The young doe had leapt backward, so that a great birch
trunk cut off her view of the fire. The first alarm gone by, she moved to
recover her post of vantage. Very stealthily and silently she moved,—but
the motion caught the panther’s eye.
The man noted a change in the direction of the beast’s gaze, a change in
the light of his eyeballs. There was no more hate in them, no more doubt
and dread; only hunger, and eager triumph. As softly as an owl’s wings
move through the coverts, the great beast drew back, and started to
descend from the tree. He would go stalk deer, drink warm deer’s blood,
and leave the dangerous sleeper to his dreams.
But the man considered. Panthers were indeed very few in New Brunswick,
and undeniably interesting. But he loved the deer; and to this particular
doe he felt that he perhaps owed his life. The debt should be paid in
full.
As the panther turned to slip down the trunk of the tree, the man sat up
straight. He took careful but almost instantaneous aim, at a point just
behind the beast’s fore-shoulder. At the report the great body fell limp,
a huddled heap of fur and long bared fangs. The man sprang to his feet
and stirred the camp-fire to a blaze. And the doe, her heart pounding
with panic, her curiosity all devoured in consuming terror, went crashing
off through the bushes.
[Illustration: WHEN TWILIGHT FALLS ON THE STUMP LOTS]
When Twilight Falls on the Stump Lots
The wet, chill first of the spring, its blackness made tender by the
lilac wash of the afterglow, lay upon the high, open stretches of the
stump lots. The winter-whitened stumps, the sparse patches of juniper and
bay just budding, the rough-mossed hillocks, the harsh boulders here and
there up-thrusting from the soil, the swampy hollows wherein a coarse
grass began to show green, all seemed anointed, as it were, to an ecstasy
of peace by the chrism of that paradisal colour. Against the lucid
immensity of the April sky the thin tops of five or six soaring ram-pikes
aspired like violet flames. Along the skirts of the stump lots a fir wood
reared a ragged-crested wall of black against the red amber of the
horizon.
Late that afternoon, beside a juniper thicket not far from the centre of
the stump lots, a young black and white cow had given birth to her first
calf. The little animal had been licked assiduously by the mother’s
caressing tongue till its colour began to show of a rich dark red. Now it
had struggled to its feet, and, with its disproportionately long, thick
legs braced wide apart, was beginning to nurse. Its blunt wet muzzle and
thick lips tugged eagerly, but somewhat blunderingly as yet, at the
unaccustomed teats; and its tail lifted, twitching with delight, as the
first warm streams of mother milk went down its throat. It was a
pathetically awkward, unlovely little figure, not yet advanced to that
youngling winsomeness which is the heritage, to some degree and at some
period, of the infancy of all the kindreds that breathe upon the earth.
But to the young mother’s eyes it was the most beautiful of things. With
her head twisted far around, she nosed and licked its heaving flanks as
it nursed; and between deep, ecstatic breathings she uttered in her
throat low murmurs, unspeakably tender, of encouragement and caress. The
delicate but pervading flood of sunset colour had the effect of blending
the ruddy-hued calf into the tones of the landscape; but the cow’s
insistent blotches of black and white stood out sharply, refusing to
harmonise. The drench of violet light was of no avail to soften their
staring contrasts. They made her vividly conspicuous across the whole
breadth of the stump lots, to eyes that watched her from the forest
coverts.
The eyes that watched her—long, fixedly, hungrily—were small and red.
They belonged to a lank she-bear, whose gaunt flanks and rusty coat
proclaimed a season of famine in the wilderness. She could not see the
calf, which was hidden by a hillock and some juniper scrub; but its
presence was very legibly conveyed to her by the mother’s solicitous
watchfulness. After a motionless scrutiny from behind the screen of fir
branches, the lean bear stole noiselessly forth from the shadows into the
great wash of violet light. Step by step, and very slowly, with the
patience that endures because confident of its object, she crept toward
that oasis of mothering joy in the vast emptiness of the stump lots. Now
crouching, now crawling, turning to this side and to that, taking
advantage of every hollow, every thicket, every hillock, every aggressive
stump, her craft succeeded in eluding even the wild and menacing
watchfulness of the young mother’s eyes.
The spring had been a trying one for the lank she-bear. Her den, in a dry
tract of hemlock wood some furlongs back from the stump lots, was a snug
little cave under the uprooted base of a lone pine, which had somehow
grown up among the alien hemlocks only to draw down upon itself at last,
by its superior height, the fury of a passing hurricane. The winter had
contributed but scanty snowfall to cover the bear in her sleep; and the
March thaws, unseasonably early and ardent, had called her forth to
activity weeks too soon. Then frosts had come with belated severity,
sealing away the budding tubers, which are the bear’s chief dependence
for spring diet; and worst of all, a long stretch of intervale meadow by
the neighbouring river, which had once been rich in ground-nuts, had been
ploughed up the previous spring and subjected to the producing of oats
and corn. When she was feeling the pinch of meagre rations, and when the
fat which a liberal autumn of blueberries had laid up about her ribs was
getting as shrunken as the last snow in the thickets, she gave birth to
two hairless and hungry little cubs. They were very blind, and
ridiculously small to be born of so big a mother; and having so much
growth to make during the next few months, their appetites were
immeasurable. They tumbled, and squealed, and tugged at their mother’s
teats, and grew astonishingly, and made huge haste to cover their bodies
with fur of a soft and silken black; and all this vitality of theirs made
a strenuous demand upon their mother’s milk. There were no more bee-trees
left in the neighbourhood. The long wanderings which she was forced to
take in her search for roots and tubers were in themselves a drain upon
her nursing powers. At last, reluctant though she was to attract the
hostile notice of the settlement, she found herself forced to hunt on the
borders of the sheep pastures. Before all else in life was it important
to her that these two tumbling little ones in the den should not go
hungry. Their eyes were open now—small and dark and whimsical, their ears
quaintly large and inquiring for their roguish little faces. Had she not
been driven by the unkind season to so much hunting and foraging, she
would have passed near all her time rapturously in the den under the pine
root, fondling those two soft miracles of her world.
With the killing of three lambs—at widely scattered points, so as to
mislead retaliation—things grew a little easier for the harassed bear;
and presently she grew bolder in tampering with the creatures under man’s
protection. With one swift, secret blow of her mighty paw she struck down
a young ewe which had strayed within reach of her hiding-place. Dragging
her prey deep into the woods, she fared well upon it for some days, and
was happy with her growing cubs. It was just when she had begun to feel
the fasting which came upon the exhaustion of this store that, in a
hungry hour, she sighted the conspicuous markings of the black and white
cow.
It is altogether unusual for the black bear of the eastern woods to
attack any quarry so large as a cow, unless under the spur of fierce
hunger or fierce rage. The she-bear was powerful beyond her fellows. She
had the strongest possible incentive to bold hunting, and she had lately
grown confident beyond her wont. Nevertheless, when she began her careful
stalking of this big game which she coveted, she had no definite
intention of forcing a battle with the cow. She had observed that cows,
accustomed to the protection of man, would at times leave their calves
asleep and stray off some distance in their pasturing. She had even seen
calves left all by themselves in a field, from morning till night, and
had wondered at such negligence in their mothers. Now she had a confident
idea that sooner or later the calf would lie down to sleep, and the young
mother roam a little wide in search of the scant young grass. Very
softly, very self-effacingly, she crept nearer step by step, following up
the wind, till at last, undiscovered, she was crouching behind a thick
patch of juniper, on the slope of a little hollow not ten paces distant
from the cow and the calf.
By this time the tender violet light was fading to a grayness over
hillock and hollow; and with the deepening of the twilight the faint
breeze, which had been breathing from the northward, shifted suddenly and
came in slow, warm pulsations out of the south. At the same time the
calf, having nursed sufficiently, and feeling his baby legs tired of the
weight they had not yet learned to carry, laid himself down. On this the
cow shifted her position. She turned half round, and lifted her head
high. As she did so a scent of peril was borne in upon her fine nostrils.
She recognised it instantly. With a snort of anger she sniffed again;
then stamped a challenge with her fore hoofs, and levelled the
lance-points of her horns toward the menace. The next moment her eyes,
made keen by the fear of love, detected the black outline of the bear’s
head through the coarse screen of the juniper. Without a second’s
hesitation, she flung up her tail, gave a short bellow, and charged.
The moment she saw herself detected, the bear rose upon her hindquarters;
nevertheless she was in a measure surprised by the sudden blind fury of
the attack. Nimbly she swerved to avoid it, aiming at the same time a
stroke with her mighty forearm, which, if it had found its mark, would
have smashed her adversary’s neck. But as she struck out, in the act of
shifting her position, a depression of the ground threw her off her
balance. The next instant one sharp horn caught her slantingly in the
flank, ripping its way upward and inward, while the mad impact threw her
upon her back.
Grappling, she had her assailant’s head and shoulders in a trap, and her
gigantic claws cut through the flesh and sinew like knives; but at the
desperate disadvantage of her position she could inflict no disabling
blow. The cow, on the other hand, though mutilated and streaming with
blood, kept pounding with her whole massive weight, and with short
tremendous shocks crushing the breath from her foe’s ribs.
[Illustration: “SHE STRUGGLED STRAIGHT TOWARD THE DEN THAT HELD HER
YOUNG.”]
Presently, wrenching herself free, the cow drew off for another battering
charge; and as she did so the bear hurled herself violently down the
slope, and gained her feet behind a dense thicket of bay shrub. The cow,
with one eye blinded and the other obscured by blood, glared around for
her in vain, then, in a panic of mother terror, plunged back to her calf.
Snatching at the respite, the bear crouched down, craving that
invisibility which is the most faithful shield of the furtive kindred.
Painfully, and leaving a drenched red trail behind her, she crept off
from the disastrous neighbourhood. Soon the deepening twilight sheltered
her. But she could not make haste; and she knew that death was close upon
her.
Once within the woods, she struggled straight toward the den that held
her young. She hungered to die licking them. But destiny is as implacable
as iron to the wilderness people, and even this was denied her. Just a
half score of paces from the lair in the pine root, her hour descended
upon her. There was a sudden redder and fuller gush upon the trail; the
last light of longing faded out of her eyes; and she lay down upon her
side.
The merry little cubs within the den were beginning to expect her, and
getting restless. As the night wore on, and no mother came, they ceased
to be merry. By morning they were shivering with hunger and desolate
fear. But the doom of the ancient wood was less harsh than its wont, and
spared them some days of starving anguish; for about noon a pair of foxes
discovered the dead mother, astutely estimated the situation, and then,
with the boldness of good appetite, made their way into the unguarded
den.
As for the red calf, its fortune was ordinary. Its mother, for all her
wounds, was able to nurse and cherish it through the night; and with
morning came a searcher from the farm and took it, with the bleeding
mother, safely back to the settlement. There it was tended and fattened,
and within a few weeks found its way to the cool marble slabs of a city
market.
[Illustration: THE KING OF THE MAMOZEKEL]
The King of the Mamozekel
When the king of the Mamozekel barrens was born, he was one of the most
ungainly of all calves,—a moose-calf.
In the heart of a tamarack swamp, some leagues south from Nictau
Mountain, was a dry little knoll of hardwood and pine undiscovered by the
hunters, out of the track of the hunting beasts. Neither lynx, bear, nor
panther had tradition of it. There was little succulent undergrowth to
tempt the moose and the caribou. But there the wild plum each summer
fruited abundantly, and there a sturdy brotherhood of beeches each autumn
lavished their treasure of three-cornered nuts; and therefore the knoll
was populous with squirrels and grouse. Nature, in one of those whims of
hers by which she delights to confound the studious naturalist, had
chosen to keep this spot exempt from the law of blood and fear which
ruled the rest of her domains. To be sure, the squirrels would now and
then play havoc with a nest of grouse eggs, or, in the absence of their
chisel-beaked parents, do murder on a nest of young golden-wings; but,
barring the outbreaks of these bright-eyed incorrigible marauders,—bad to
their very toes, and attractive to their plumy tail-tips,—the knoll in
the tamarack swamp was a haven of peace amid the fierce but furtive
warfare of the wilderness.
On this knoll, when the arbutus breath of the northern spring was
scenting the winds of all the Tobique country, the king was born,—a
moose-calf more ungainly and of mightier girth and limb than any other
moose-calf of the Mamozekel. Never had his mother seen such a one,—and
she a mother of lordly bulls. He was uncouth, to be sure, in any eyes but
those of his kind,—with his high humped fore-shoulders, his long,
lugubrious, overhanging snout, his big ears set low on his big head, his
little eyes crowded back toward his ears, his long, big-knuckled legs,
and the spindling, lank diminutiveness of his hindquarters. A grotesque
figure, indeed, and lacking altogether in that pathetic, infantile
winsomeness which makes even little pigs attractive. But any one who knew
about moose would have said, watching the huge baby struggle to his feet
and stand with sturdy legs well braced, “There, if bears and bullets miss
him till his antlers get full spread, is the king of the Mamozekel.” Now,
when his mother had licked him dry, his coat showed a dark, very sombre,
cloudy, secretive brown, of a hue to be quite lost in the shadows of the
fir and hemlock thickets, and to blend consummately with the colour of
the tangled alder trunks along the clogged banks of the Mamozekel.
The young king’s mother was perhaps the biggest and most morose cow on
all the moose ranges of northern New Brunswick. She assuredly had no peer
on the barrens of the upper Tobique country. She was also the craftiest.
That was the reason why, though she was dimly known and had been blindly
hunted all the way from Nictau Lake, over Mamozekel, and down to Blue
Mountain on the main Tobique, she had never felt a bullet wound, and had
come to be regarded by the backwoods hunters with something of a
superstitious awe. It was of her craft, too, that she had found this
knoll in the heart of the tamarack swamp, and had guarded the secret of
it from the herds. Hither, at calving time, she would come by cunningly
twisted trails. Here she would pass the perilous hours in safety,
unharassed by the need of watching against her stealthy foes. And when
once she had led her calf away from the retreat, she never returned to
it, save alone, and in another year.
For three days the great cow stayed upon the knoll, feeding upon the
overhanging branch tips of mountain-ash and poplar. This was good fodder,
for buds and twigs were swollen with sap, and succulent. In those three
days her sturdy young calf made such gains in strength and stature that
he would have passed in the herd for a calf of two weeks’ growth. In
mid-afternoon of the third day she led the way down from the knoll and
out across the quaking glooms of the tamarack swamp. And the squirrels in
the budding branches chattered shrill derision about their going.
The way led through the deepest and most perilous part of the swamp; but
the mother knew the safe trail in all its windings. She knew where the
yielding surface of moss with black pools on either side was not afloat
on fathomless ooze, but supported by solid earth or a framework of
ancient tree roots. She shambled onward at a very rapid walk, which
forced the gaunt calf at her heels to break now and then into the
long-striding, tireless trot which is the heritage of his race.
For perhaps an hour they travelled. Then, in a little, partly open glade
where the good sound earth rose up sweet from the morass, and the
mountain-ash, the viburnum, and the moose-wood grew thinly, and the
ground was starred with spring blooms,—painted trillium and wake-robin,
claytonia and yellow dog-tooth and wind-flower,—they stopped. The calf,
tired from his first journeying, nursed fiercely, twitching his absurd
stub of a tail, butting at his mother’s udder with such discomforting
eagerness that she had to rebuke him by stepping aside and interrupting
his meal. After several experiences of this kind he took the hint, and
put curb upon his too robust impatience. The masterful spirit of a king
is liable to inconvenience its owner if exercised prematurely.
By this time the pink light of sunset was beginning to stain the western
curves of branch and stem and bud, changing the spring coolness of the
place into a delicate riot of fairy colour and light, intervolving form.
Some shadows deepened, while others disappeared. Certain leaves and
blossoms and pale limbs stood out with a clearness almost startling,
suddenly emphasised by the level rays, while others faded from view.
Though there was no wind, the changed light gave an effect of noiseless
movement in the glade. And in the midst of this gathering enchantment the
mother moose set herself to forage for her own meal.
Selecting a slim young birch-tree, whose top was thick with twigs and
greening buds, she pushed against it with her massive chest till it bent
nearly to the ground. Then straddling herself along it, she held it down
securely between her legs, moved forward till the succulent top was
within easy reach, and began to browse with leisurely jaws and selective
reachings out of her long, discriminating upper lip. The calf stood close
by, watching with interest, his legs sympathetically spread apart, his
head swung low from his big shoulders, his great ears swaying slowly
backward and forward, not together, but one at a time. When the mother
had finished feeding, there were no buds, twigs or small branches left on
the birch sapling; and the sunset colours had faded out of the glade.
With dusk a chilly air breathed softly through the trees, and the mother
led the way into a clump of thick balsam firs near the edge of the good
ground. In the heart of the thicket she lay down for the night, facing
away from the wind; and the calf, quick in perception as in growth, lay
down close beside her in the same position. He did not know at the time
the significance of the position, but he had a vague sense of its
importance. He was afterward to learn that enemies were liable to
approach his lair in the night, and that as long as he slept with his
back to the wind, he could not be taken unawares. The wind might be
trusted to bring to his marvellous nostrils timely notice of danger from
the rear; while he could depend upon his eyes and his spacious,
sensitive, unsleeping ears to warn him of anything ascending against the
wind to attack him in front.
[Illustration: “THE CALF STOOD CLOSE BY, WATCHING WITH INTEREST.”]
At the very first suggestion of morning the two light sleepers arose. In
the dusk of the fir thicket the hungry calf made his meal. Then they came
forth into the grayness of the spectral spring dawn, and the great cow
proceeded as before to breast down a birch sapling for fodder. Before the
sun was fairly up, they left the glade and resumed their journey across
the swamp.
It was mid-morning of a sweet-aired, radiant day when they emerged from
the swamp. Now, through a diversified country of thick forests and open
levels, the mother moose swung forward on an undeviating trail,
perceptible only to herself. Presently the land began to dip. Then a
little river appeared, winding through innumerable alders, with here and
there a pond-like expansion full of young lily-leaves; and the future
king of the Mamozekel looked upon his kingdom. But he did not recognise
it. He cared nothing for the little river of alders. He was tired, and
very hungry, and the moment his mother halted he ran up and nursed
vehemently.
II.
Delicately filming with the first green, and spicy-fragrant, were the
young birch-trees on the slopes about the Mamozekel water. From tree-top
to tree-top, across the open spaces, the rain-birds called to each other
with long falls of melody and sweetly insistent iteration. In their
intervals of stillness, which came from time to time as if by some secret
and preconcerted signal, the hush was beaded, as it were, with the tender
and leisurely staccatos of the chickadees. The wild kindreds of the
Tobique country were all happily busy with affairs of spring.
While the great cow was pasturing on birch-twigs, the calf rested, with
long legs tucked under him, on the dry, softly carpeted earth beneath the
branches of a hemlock. At this pleasant pasturage the mother moose was
presently joined by her calf of the previous season, a sturdy
bull-yearling, which ran up to her with a pathetic little bleat of
delight, as if he had been very desolate and bewildered during the days
of her strange absence. The mother received him with good-natured
indifference, and went on pulling birch-tips. Then the yearling came over
and eyed with curiosity the resting calf,—the first moose-calf he had
ever seen. The king, unperturbed and not troubling himself to rise,
thrust forward his spacious ears, and reached out a long inquiring nose
to investigate the newcomer. But the yearling was in doubt. He drew back,
planted his fore hoofs firmly, and lowered and shook his head,
challenging the stranger to a butting bout. The old moose, which had kept
wary eye upon the meeting, now came up and stood over her young, touching
him once or twice lightly with her upper lip. Then, swinging her great
head to one side, she glanced at the yearling, and made a soft sound in
her throat. Whether this were warning or mere pertinent information, the
yearling understood that his smaller kinsman was to be let alone, and not
troubled with challenges. With easy philosophy, he accepted the
situation, doubtless not concerned to understand it, and turned his
thoughts to the ever fresh theme of forage.
Through the spring and summer the little family of three fed never far
from the Mamozekel stream; and the king grew with astonishing speed. Of
other moose families they saw little, for the mother, jealous and
overbearing in her strength, would tolerate no other cows on her
favourite range. Sometimes they saw a tall bull, with naked forehead,
come down to drink or to pull lily-stems in the still pools at sunset.
But the bull, feeling himself discrowned and unlordly in the absence of
his antlers, paid no attention to either cows or calves. While waiting
for autumn to restore to his forehead its superb palmated adornments, he
was haughty and seclusive.
By the time summer was well established in the land, the moose-calf had
begun to occupy himself diligently with the primer-lessons of life.
Keeping much at his mother’s head, he soon learned to pluck the tops of
tall seeding grasses; though such low-growing tender herbage as cattle
and horses love, he never learned to crop. His mother, like all his
tribe, was too long in the legs and short in the neck to pasture close to
the ground. He was early taught, however, what succulent pasturage of
root and stem and leaf the pools of Mamozekel could supply; and early his
sensitive upper lip acquired the wisdom to discriminate between the
wholesome water-plants and such acrid, unfriendly growths as the
water-parsnip and the spotted cowbane. Most pleasant the little family
found it, in the hot, drowsy afternoons, to wade out into the leafy
shallows and feed at leisure belly-deep in the cool, with no sound save
their own comfortable splashings, or the shrill clatter of a kingfisher
winging past up-stream. Their usual feeding hours were just before
sunrise, a little before noon, and again in the late afternoon, till
dark. The rest of the time they would lie hidden in the deepest thickets,
safe, but ever watchful, their great ears taking in and interpreting all
the myriad fluctuating noises of the wilderness.
The hours of foraging were also—for the young king, in particular, whose
food was mostly provided by his mother—the hours of lesson and the hours
of play. In the pride of his growing strength he quickly developed a
tendency to butt at everything and test his prowess. His yearling brother
was always ready to meet his desires in this fashion, and the two would
push against each other with much grunting, till at last the elder,
growing impatient, would thrust the king hard back upon his haunches, and
turn aside indifferently to his browsing. Little by little it became more
difficult for the yearling to close the bout in this easy way; but he
never guessed that in no distant day the contests would end in a very
different manner. He did not know that, for a calf of that same spring,
his lightly tolerated playfellow was big and strong and audacious beyond
all wont of the wide-antlered kindred.
The young king was always athrill with curiosity, full of interest in all
the wilderness folk that chanced to come in his view. The shyest of the
furtive creatures were careless about letting him see them, both his
childishness and his race being guarantee of good will. Very soon,
therefore, he became acquainted, in a distant, uncomprehending fashion,
with the hare and the mink, the wood-mouse and the muskrat; while the
mother mallard would float amid her brood within a yard or two of the
spot where he was pulling at the water-lilies.
One day, however, he came suddenly upon a porcupine which was crossing a
bit of open ground,—came upon it so suddenly that the surly little beast
was startled and rolled himself up into a round, bristling ball. This was
a strange phenomenon indeed! He blew upon the ball, two or three hard
noisy breaths from wide nostrils. Then he was so rash as to thrust at it,
tentatively rather than roughly, with his inquisitive nose,—for he was
most anxious to know what it meant. There was a quiver in the ball; and
he jumped back, shaking his head, with two of the sharp spines sticking
in his sensitive upper lip.
[Illustration: “THE MOTHER MALLARD WOULD FLOAT AMID HER BROOD.”]
In pain and fright, yet with growing anger, he ran to his mother where
she was placidly cropping a willow-top. But she was not helpful. She knew
nothing of the properties of porcupine quills. Seeing what was the
matter, she set the example of rubbing her nose smartly against a stump.
The king did likewise. Now, for burrs, this would have been all very
well; but porcupine quills—the malignant little intruders throve under
such treatment, and worked their way more deeply into the tender tissues.
Smarting and furious, the young monarch rushed back with the purpose of
stamping that treacherous ball of spines to fragments under his sharp
hoofs. But the porcupine, meanwhile, had discreetly climbed a tree,
whence it looked down with scornful red eyes, bristling its barbed
armory, and daring the angry calf to come up and fight. For days
thereafter the young king suffered from a nose so hot and swollen that it
was hard for him to browse, and almost impossible for him to nurse. Then
came relief, as the quills worked their way through, one dropping out,
and the other getting chewed up with a lily-root. But the young moose
never forgot his grudge against the porcupine family; and catching one,
years after, in a poplar sapling, he bore the sapling down and trod his
enemy to bits. In his wrath, however, he did not forget the powers and
properties of the quills. He took good care that none should pierce the
tender places of his feet.
Some weeks after his meeting with the porcupine, when his nose and his
spirits together had quite recovered, he made a new acquaintance. The
moose family had by this time worked much farther up the Mamozekel, into
a region of broken ground, and steep up-thrusts of rock. One day, while
investigating the world at a little distance from his mother and brother,
he saw a large, curious-looking animal at the top of a rocky slope. It
was a light brown-gray in colour, with a big, round face, high-tufted
ears, round, light, cold eyes, long whiskers brushed back from under its
chin, very long, sharp teeth displayed in its snarlingly open jaws, and
big round pads of feet. The lynx glared at the young king, scornfully
unacquainted with his kingship. And the young king stared at the lynx
with lively, unhostile interest. Then the lynx cast a wary glance all
about, saw no sign of the mother moose (who was feeding on the other side
of the rock), concluded that this was such an opportunity as he had long
been looking for, and began creeping swiftly, stealthily, noiselessly,
down the slope of rocks.
Any other moose-calf, though of thrice the young king’s months, would
have run away. But not so he. The stranger seemed unfriendly. He would
try a bout of butting with him. He stamped his feet, shook his lowered
head, snorted, and advanced a stride or two. At the same time, he uttered
a harsh, very abrupt, bleating cry of defiance, the infantile precursor
of what his mighty, forest-daunting bellow was to be in later years. The
lynx, though he well knew that this ungainly youngster could not
withstand his onslaught for a moment, was nevertheless astonished by such
a display of spirit; and he paused for a moment to consider it. Was it
possible that unguessed resources lay behind this daring? He would see.
It was a critical moment. A very few words more would have sufficed for
the conclusion of this chronicle, but for the fact that the young king’s
bleat of challenge had reached other ears than those of the great lynx.
The old moose, at her pasturing behind the rock, heard it too. Startled
and anxious, she came with a rush to find out what it meant; and the
yearling, full of curiosity, came at her heels. When she saw the lynx,
the long hair on her neck stood up with fury, and with a roar she
launched her huge, dark bulk against him. But for such an encounter the
big cat had no stomach. He knew that he would be pounded into paste in
half a minute. With a snarl, he sprang backward, as if his muscles had
been steel springs suddenly loosed; and before his assailant was half-way
up the slope, he was glaring down upon her from the safe height of a
hemlock limb.
This, to the young king, seemed a personal victory. The mother’s efforts
to make him understand that lynxes were dangerous had small effect upon
him; and the experience advanced him not at all in his hitherto unlearned
lesson of fear.
Even he, however, for all his kingly heart, was destined to learn that
lesson,—was destined to have it so seared into his spirit that the
remembrance should, from time to time, unnerve, humiliate, defeat him,
through half the years of his sovereignty.
It came about in this way, one blazing August afternoon.
The old moose and the yearling were at rest, comfortably chewing the cud
in a spruce covert close to the water. But the king was in one of those
restless fits which, all through his calfhood, kept driving him forward
in quest of experience. The wind was almost still; but such as there was
blew up stream. Up against it he wandered for a little way, and saw
nothing but a woodchuck, which was a familiar sight to him. Then he
turned and drifted carelessly down the wind. Having passed the spruce
thicket, his nostrils received messages from his mother and brother in
their quiet concealment. The scent was companion to him, and he wandered
on. Presently it faded away from the faintly pulsing air. Still he went
on.
Presently he passed a huge, half-decayed windfall, thickly draped in
shrubbery and vines. No sooner had he passed than the wind brought him
from this dense hiding-place a pungent, unfamiliar scent. There was
something ominous in the smell, something at which his heart beat faster;
but he was not afraid. He stopped at once, and moved back slowly toward
the windfall, sniffing with curiosity, his ears alert, his eyes striving
to pierce the mysteries of the thicket.
He moved close by the decaying trunk without solving the enigma. Then, as
the wind puffed a thought more strongly, he passed by and lost the scent.
At once he swung about to pursue the investigation; and at the same
instant an intuitive apprehension of peril made him shudder, and shrink
away from the windfall.
He turned not an instant too soon. What he saw was a huge, black, furry
head and shoulders leaning over the windfall, a huge black paw, with
knife-like claws, lifting for a blow that would break his back like a
bulrush. He was already moving, already turning, and with his muscles
gathered. That saved him. Quick as a flash of light he sprang, wildly.
Just as quickly, indeed, came down the stroke of those terrific claws.
But they fell short of their intended mark. As the young moose sprang
into the air, the claws caught him slantingly on the haunch. They went
deep, ripping hide and flesh almost to the bone,—a long, hideous wound.
Before the blow could be repeated, the calf was far out of reach,
bleating with pain and terror. The bear, much disappointed, peered after
him with little red, malicious eyes, and greedily licked the sweet blood
from his claws.
The next instant the mother moose burst from her thicket, the long hair
of her neck and shoulders stiffly erect with rage. She had understood
well enough that agonised cry of the young king. She paused but a second,
to give him a hasty lick of reassurance, then charged down upon the
covert around the windfall. She knew that only a bear could have done
that injury; and she knew, without any help from ears, eyes, or nose,
that the windfall was just the place for a bear’s lying-in-wait. With an
intrepidity beyond the boldest dreams of any other moose-cow on the
Mamozekel, she launched herself crashing into the covert.
[Illustration: “BUT THEY FELL SHORT OF THEIR INTENDED MARK.”]
But her avenging fury found no bear to meet it. The bear knew well this
mighty moose-cow, having watched her from many a hiding-place, and
shrewdly estimated her prowess. He had effaced himself, melting away
through the underwood as noiselessly and swiftly as a weasel. Plenty of
the strong bear scent the old moose found in the covert, and it stung her
to frenzy. She stamped and tore down the vines, and sent the rotten wood
of the windfall flying in fragments. Then she emerged, powdered with
débris, and roared and glared about for the enemy. But the wily bear was
already far away, well burdened with discretion.
III.
In a few weeks the king’s healthy flesh, assiduously licked by his
mother, healed perfectly, leaving long, hairless scars upon his hide,
which turned, in course of time, from livid to a leaden whitish hue. But
while his flesh healed perfectly, his spirit was in a different case.
Thenceforward, one great fear lurked in his heart, ready to leap forth at
any instant—the fear of the bear. It was the only fear he knew, but it
was a terrible one; and when, two months later, he again caught that
pungent scent in passing a thicket, he ran madly for an hour before he
recovered his wits and stole back, humiliated and exhausted, to his
mother’s pasture-grounds.
In the main, however, he was soon his old, bold, investigating self, his
bulk and his sagacity growing vastly together. Ere the first frosts had
crimsoned the maples and touched the birches to a shimmer of pale gold,
he could almost hold his own by sheer strength against his yearling
brother’s weight, and sometimes, for a minute or two, worst him by feint
and strategy. When he came, by chance, in the crisp, free-roving weather
of the fall, upon other moose-calves of that year’s birth, they seemed
pygmies beside him, and gave way to him respectfully as to a yearling.
About this time he experienced certain qualms of loneliness, which
bewildered him and took much of the interest out of life. His mother
began to betray an unexpected indifference, and his childish heart missed
her caresses. He was not driven away, but he was left to himself; while
she would stride up and down the open, gravelly meadows by the water,
sniffing the air, and at times uttering a short, harsh roar which made
him eye her uneasily. One crisp night, when the round October moon
wrought magic in the wilderness, he heard his mother’s call answered by a
terrific, roaring bellow, which made his heart leap. Then there was a
crashing through the underbrush; and a tall bull strode forth into the
light, his antlers spreading like oak branches from either side of his
forehead. Prudence, or deference, or a mixture of the two, led the young
king to lay aside his wonted inquisitiveness and withdraw into the
thickets without attracting the notice of this splendid and formidable
visitor. During the next few days he saw the big bull very frequently,
and found himself calmly ignored. Prudence and deference continued their
good offices, however, and he was careful not to trespass on the big
stranger’s tolerance during those wild, mad, magical autumn days.
One night, about the middle of October, the king saw from his thicket a
scene which filled him with excitement and awe, swelled his veins almost
to bursting, and made his brows ache, as if the antlers were already
pushing to birth beneath the skin. It all came about in this fashion. His
mother, standing out in the moonlight by the water, had twice with
outstretched muzzle uttered her call, when it was answered not only by
her mate, the tall bull, approaching along the shore, but by another
great voice from up the hillside. Instantly the tall bull was in a rage.
He rushed up to the cow, touched her with his nose, and then, after a
succession of roars which were answered promptly from the hillside, he
moved over to the edge of the open and began thrashing the bushes with
his antlers. A great crashing of underbrush arose some distance away, and
drew near swiftly; and in a few minutes another bull burst forth
violently into the open. He was young and impetuous, or he would have
halted a moment before leaving cover, and stealthily surveyed the
situation. But not yet had years and overthrows taught him the ripe moose
wisdom; and with a reckless heart he committed himself to the combat.
The newcomer had barely the chance to see where he was, before the tall
bull was upon him. He wheeled in time, however, and got his guard down;
but was borne back upon his haunches by the terrific shock of the charge.
In a moment or two he recovered the lost ground, for youth had given him
strength, if not wisdom; and the tall bull, his eyes flame-red with
wrath, found himself fairly matched by this shorter, stockier antagonist.
The night forthwith became tempestuous with gruntings, bellowings, the
hard clashing of antlers, the stamping of swift and heavy feet. The thin
turf was torn up. The earthy gravel was sent flying from the furious
hoofs. From his covert the young king strained eager eyes upon the fight,
his sympathies all with the tall bull whom he had regarded reverently
from the first moment he saw him. But as for the cow, she moved up from
the waterside and looked on with a fine impartiality. What concerned her
was chiefly that none but the bravest and strongest should be her mate,—a
question which only fighting could determine. Her favour would go with
victory.
As it appeared, the rivals were fairly matched in vigour and valour. But
among moose, as among men, brains count in the end. When the tall bull
saw that, in a matter of sheer brawn, the sturdy stranger might hold him,
he grew disgusted at the idea of settling such a vital question by mere
butting and shoving. The red rage faded in his eyes, and a colder light
took its place. On a sudden, when his foe had given a mighty thrust, he
yielded, slipped his horns from the lock, and jumped nimbly aside. The
stranger lunged forward, almost stumbling to his knees.
This was the tall bull’s opportunity. In a whirlwind of fury he thrust
upon the enemy’s flank, goring him, and bearing him down. The latter,
being short and quick-moving, recovered his feet in a second, and wheeled
to present his guard. But the tall bull was quick to maintain the
advantage. He, too, had shifted ground; and now he caught his antagonist
in the rear. There was no resisting such an attack. With hind legs weakly
doubling under him, with the weight of doom descending upon his
defenceless rump, the rash stranger was thrust forward, bellowing madly,
and striving in vain to brace himself. His humiliation was complete. With
staring eyes and distended nostrils he was hustled across the meadow and
over the edge of the bank. With a huge splash, and carrying with him a
shower of turf and gravel, he fell into the stream. Once in the water,
and his courage well cooled, he did not wait for a glance at his snorting
and stamping conqueror on the bank above, but waded desperately across,
dripping, bleeding, crushed in spirit,—and vanished into the woods. In
the thicket, the king’s heart swelled as if the victory had been his own.
By and by, when the last of the leaves had fluttered down with crisp
whisperings from the birch and ash, maple and poplar, and the first
enduring snows were beginning to change the face of the world, the tall
bull seemed to lay aside his haughtiness. He grew carelessly good-natured
toward the young king and the yearling, and frankly took command of the
little herd. As the snow deepened, he led the way northward toward the
Nictau Lake and chose winter quarters on the wooded southward slopes of
Bald Mountain, where there were hemlock groves for shelter and an
abundance of young hardwood growth for browsing.
This leisurely migration was in the main uneventful, and left but one
sharp impression on the young king’s memory. On a wintry morning, when
the sunrise was reaching long pink-saffron fingers across the thin snow,
a puff of wind brought with it from a tangle of stumps and rocks a breath
of that pungent scent so hateful to a moose’s nostrils. The whole herd
stopped; and the young king, his knees quaking under him and his eyes
staring with panic, crowded close against his mother’s flank. The tall
bull stamped and bellowed his defiance to the enemy,—but the enemy, being
discreet, made no reply whatever. It is probable, indeed, that he was
preparing his winter quarters, and getting too drowsy to hear or heed the
angry challenge; but if he did hear it no doubt he noiselessly withdrew
himself till the dangerous travellers had gone by. In a few minutes the
herd resumed its march,—the king keeping close to his mother’s side,
instead of in his proper place in the line.
The big-antlered bull now chose his site for the “yard,” with “verge and
room enough” for all contingencies. The “yard” was an ample acreage of
innumerable winding paths, trodden ever deeper as the snows accumulated.
These paths led to every spot of browse, every nook of shelter, at the
same time twisting and crossing in a maze of intricacies. Thick piled the
snows about the little herd, and the northern gales roared over the
hemlocks, and the frost sealed the white world down into silence. But it
was such a winter as the moose kin loved. No wolves or hunters came to
trouble them, and the months passed pleasantly. When the days were
lengthening and the hearts of all the wild folk beginning to dream of the
yet unsignalled spring, the young king was astonished to see the great
antlers of his leader fall off. Seeing that their owner left them lying
unregarded on the snow, he went up and sniffed at them wonderingly, and
pondered the incident long and vainly in his heart.
[Illustration: “THICK PILED THE SNOWS ABOUT THE LITTLE HERD.”]
When the snows shrank away, departing with a sound of many waters, and
spring returned to the Tobique country, the herd broke up. First the
dis-antlered bull drifted off on his own affairs. Then the two-year-old
went, with no word of reason or excuse. Though a well-grown young bull,
he was now little larger or heavier than the king; and the king was now a
yearling, with the stature and presence of a two-year-old. In a playful
butting contest, excited by the joy of life which April put into their
veins, he worsted his elder brother; and this, perhaps, though taken in
good part, hastened the latter’s going.
A few days later the old cow grew restless. She and the king turned their
steps backward toward the Mamozekel, feeding as they went. Soon they
found themselves in their old haunts, which the king remembered very
well. Then one day, while the king slept without suspicion of evil, the
old cow slipped away stealthily, and sought her secret refuge in the
heart of the cedar swamp. When the king awoke, he found himself alone in
the thicket.
All that day he was most unhappy. For some hours he could not eat, but
strayed hither and thither, questing and wondering. Then, when hunger
drove him to browse on the tender birch-twigs, he would stop every minute
or two to call in his big, gruff, pathetic bleat, and look around eagerly
for an answer. No answer came from the deserting mother, by this time far
away in the swamp.
But there were ears in the wilderness that heard and heeded the call of
the desolate yearling. A pair of hunting lynxes paused at the sound,
licked their chops, and crept forward with a green light in their wide,
round eyes.
Their approach was noiseless as thought,—but the king, on a sudden, felt
a monition of their coming. Whirling sharply about, he saw them lurking
in the underbrush. He recognised the breed. This was the same kind of
creature which he had been ready to challenge in his first calfhood. No
doubt, it would have been more prudent for him to withdraw; but he was in
no mood for concession. His sore heart made him ill-tempered. His lonely
bleat became a bellow of wrath. He stamped the earth, shook his head as
if thrashing the underbrush with imaginary antlers, and then charged
madly upon the astonished cats. This was no ordinary moose-calf, they
promptly decided; and in a second they were speeding away with great
bounds, gray shadows down the gray vistas of the wood. The king glared
after them for a moment, and then went back to his feeding, greatly
comforted.
It was four days before his mother came back, bringing a lank calf at her
heels. He was glad to see her, and contentedly renewed the companionship;
but in those four days he had learned full self-reliance, and his
attitude was no longer that of the yearling calf. It had become that of
the equal. As for the lank little newcomer, he viewed it with careless
complaisance, and no more dreamed of playing with it than if it had been
a frog or a chipmunk.
The summer passed with little more event for the king than his swift
increase in stature. One lesson then learned, however, though but vaguely
comprehended at the time, was to prove of incalculable value in after
years. He learned to shun man,—not with fear, indeed, for he never
learned to fear anything except bears,—but with aversion, and a certain
half-disdainful prudence. It was as if he came to recognise in man the
presence of powers which he was not anxious to put to trial, lest he
should be forced to doubt his own supremacy.
It was but a slight incident that gave him the beginning of this valuable
wisdom. As he lay ruminating one day beside his mother and the gaunt
calf, in a spruce covert near the water, a strange scent was wafted in to
his nostrils. It carried with it a subtle warning. His mother touched him
with her nose, conveying a silent yet eloquent monition, and got upon her
feet with no more sound than if she had been compact of thistle-down.
From their thicket shelter the three stared forth, moveless and
unwinking, ears forward, nostrils wide. Then a canoe with two men came
into view, paddling lazily, and turning to land. To the king, they looked
not dangerous; but every detail of them—their shape, motion, colour, and,
above all, their ominous scent—stamped itself in his memory. Then, to his
great surprise, his mother silently signalled the gravest and most
instant menace, and forthwith faded back through the thicket with
inconceivably stealthy motion. The king and the calf followed with like
care,—the king, though perplexed, having faith in his mother’s wise
woodcraft. Not until they had put good miles between themselves and
strange-smelling newcomers did the old moose call a halt; and from all
this precaution the king realised that the mysterious strangers were
something to be avoided by moose.
That summer the king saw nothing more of the man-creatures,—and he
crossed the scent of no more bears. His great heart, therefore, found no
check to its growing arrogance and courage. When the month of the falling
leaves and the whirring partridge-coveys again came round, he felt a new
pugnacity swelling in his veins, and found himself uttering challenges,
he knew not why, with his yet half infantile bellow. When, at length, his
mother began to pace the open meadow by the Mamozekel, and startle the
moonlit silences with her mating call, he was filled with strange anger.
But this was nothing to his rage when the calls were answered by a
wide-antlered bull. This time the king refused to slink obsequiously to
cover. He waited in the open; and he eyed the new wooer in a fashion so
truculent that at length he attracted notice.
For his dignity, if not for his experience, this was most unfortunate.
The antlered stranger noted his size, his attitude of insolence, and
promptly charged upon him. He met the charge, in his insane audacity, but
was instantly borne down. As he staggered to his feet he realised his
folly, and turned to withdraw,—not in terror, but in acknowledgment of
superior strength. Such a dignified retreat, however, was not to be
allowed him. The big bull fell upon him again, prodding him cruelly. He
was hustled ignominiously across the meadow, and into the bushes. Thence
he fled, bleating with impotent wrath and shame.
In his humiliation he fled far down along the river, through alder swamps
which he had never traversed, by pools in which he had never pulled the
lilies. Onward he pressed, intent on placing irrevocably behind him the
scene of his chagrin.
At length he came out upon the fair river basin where the Mamozekel, the
Serpentine, and the Nictau, tameless streams, unite to form the main
Tobique. Here he heard the call of a young cow,—a voice thinner and
higher than his mother’s deep-chested notes. With an impulse which he did
not understand, he pushed forward to answer the summons, no longer
furtive, but noisily trampling the brush. Just then, however, a pungent
smell stung his nostrils. There, not ten paces distant, was a massive
black shape standing out in the moonlight. Panic laid grip upon his
heart, chilling every vein. He wheeled, splashed across the shallow
waters of the Nictau, and fled away northward on tireless feet.
That winter the king yarded alone, like a morose old bull, far from his
domain of the Mamozekel. In the spring he came back, but restricted his
range to the neighbourhood of the Forks. And he saw his mother no more.
That summer he grew his first antlers. As antlers, indeed, they were no
great thing; but they started out bravely, a massive cylindrical bar
thrusting forth laterally, unlike the pointing horns of deer and caribou,
from either side of his forehead. For all this sturdy start, their
spiking and palmation did not amount to much; but he was inordinately
proud of them, rubbing off the velvet with care when it began to itch,
and polishing assiduously at the hardened horn. By the time the October
moon had come round again to the Tobique country, he counted these first
antlers a weapon for any encounter; and, indeed, with his bulk and craft
behind them, they were formidable.
It was not long before they were put to the test. One night, as he stood
roaring and thrashing the bushes on the bluff overlooking the Forks, he
heard the call of a young cow a little way down the shore. Gladly he
answered. Gladly he sped to the tryst. Strange ecstasies, the madness of
the night spell, and the white light’s sorcery made his heart beat and
his veins run sweet fire. But suddenly all this changed; for another
roar, a taunting challenge, answered him; and another bull broke from
covert on the other side of the sandy level where stood the young cow
coquettishly eyeing both wooers.
The new arrival was much older than the king, and nobly antlered; but in
matter of inches the young king was already his peer. In craft,
arrogance, and self-confident courage the king had an advantage that
outweighed the deficiency in antlers. The fury of his charge spelled
victory from the first; and though the battle was prolonged, the issue
was decided at the outset, as the interested young cow soon perceived. In
about a half-hour it was all over. The wise white moon of the wilderness
looked down understandingly upon the furrowed sandspit, the pleased young
cow, and the king making diffident progress with his first wooing. Some
distance down the river-bank, she caught glimpses of the other bull,
whose antlers had not saved him, fleeing in shame, with bleeding flanks
and neck, through the light-patched shadows of the forest.
IV.
During the next four years the king learned to grow such antlers as had
never before been seen in all the Tobique country. So tall, impetuous,
and masterful he grew, that the boldest bulls, recognising the vast
reverberations of his challenge, would smother their wrath and slip
noiselessly away from his neighbourhood. Rumours of his size and his
great antlers in some way got abroad among the settlements; but so crafty
was he in shunning men,—whom he did not really fear, and whom he was wont
to study intently from safe coverts,—that there was never a hunter who
could boast of having got a shot at him.
Once, and once only, did he come into actual, face to face conflict with
the strange man-creature. It was one autumn evening, at the first of the
season. By the edge of a little lake, he heard the call of a cow. Having
already found a mate, he was somewhat inattentive, and did not answer;
but something strange in the call made him suspicious, and he stole
forward, under cover, to make an observation. The call was repeated,
seeming to come from a little, rushy island, a stone’s throw from shore.
This time there came an answer,—not from the king, but from an eager bull
rushing up from the outlet of the lake. The king listened, with some lazy
interest, to the crashing and slashing of the impetuous approach,
thinking that if the visitor were big enough to be worth while he would
presently go out and thrash him. When the visitor did appear, however,
bursting from the underbrush and striding boldly down to the water’s
edge, a strange thing happened. From the rushy island came a spurt of
flame, a sharp detonating report. The bull jumped and wheeled in his
tracks. Another report, and he dropped without a kick. As he lay in the
pale light, close to the water, a canoe shot out from the rushy island
and landed some distance from the body. Two men sprang out. They pulled
up the canoe, leaving their rifles in it, and ran up to skin the prize.
The king in his hiding-place understood. This was what men could do,—make
a strange, menacing sound, and kill moose with it. He boiled with rage at
this exhibition of their power, and suddenly took up the quarrel of the
slain bull. But by no means did he lay aside his craft. Noiselessly he
moved, a vast and furtive shadow, down through the thickets to a point
where the underbrush nearly touched the water. This brought him within a
few yards of the canoe, wherein the hunters had left their rifles. Here
he paused a few moments, pondering. But as he pondered, redder and redder
grew his eyes; and suddenly, with a mad roar, he burst from cover and
charged.
Had the two men not been expert woodsmen, one or the other would have
been caught and smashed to pulp. But their senses were on the watch. Cut
off as they were from the canoe and from their weapons, their only hope
was a tree. Before the king was fairly out into view, they had understood
the whole situation, sprung to their feet, and sped off like hares. Just
within the nearest fringe of bushes grew a low-hanging beech-tree; and
into this they swung themselves, just as the king came raging beneath. As
it was, one of them was nearly caught when he imagined himself quite
safe. The king reared his mighty bulk against the trunk and with his
keen-spiked antlers reached upward fiercely after the fugitives, the
nearest of whom was saved only by a friendly branch which intervened.
For nearly an hour the king stamped and stormed beneath the branches,
while the trapped hunters alternately cursed his temper and wondered at
his stature. Then, with a swift change of purpose, he wheeled and charged
on the canoe. In two minutes the graceful craft was reduced to raw
material,—while the hunters in the tree-top, sputtering furiously, vowed
vengeance. All the kit, the tins, the blankets, the boxes, were battered
shapeless, and the rifles thumped well down into the wet sand. In the
midst of the cataclysm, one of the rifles somehow went off. The noise and
the flash astonished the king, but only added to his rage and made him
more thorough in his work of destruction. When there was nothing left
that seemed worth trampling upon, he returned to the tree,—on which he
had kept eye all the time,—and there nursed his wrath all night. At the
first of dawn, however, he came to the conclusion that the shivering
things in the tree were not worth waiting for. He swung off, and sought
his favourite pasturage, a mile or two away; and the men, after making
sure of his departure, climbed down. They nervously cut some steaks from
the bull which they had killed, and hurried away, crestfallen, on the
long tramp back to the settlements.
This incident, however, did not have the effect which it might have been
expected to have. It did not make the king despise men. On the contrary,
he now knew them to be dangerous, and he also knew that their chief power
lay in the long dark tubes which spit fire and made fierce sounds. It was
enough for him that he had once worsted them. Ever afterward he gave them
wide berth. And the tradition of him would have come at last to be
doubted in the settlements, but for the vast, shed antlers occasionally
found lying on the diminished snows of March.
But all the time, while the king waxed huge and wise, and overthrew his
enemies, and begot great offspring that, for many years after he was
dead, were to make the Mamozekel famous, there was one grave
incompleteness in his sovereignty. His old panic fear of bears still
shamed and harassed him. The whiff of a harmless half-grown cub,
engrossed in stuffing its greedy red mouth with blueberries, was enough
to turn his blood to water and send him off to other feeding-grounds. He
chose his ranges, indeed, first of all for their freedom from the dreaded
taint, and only second for the excellence of their pasturage. This one
unreasoning fear was the drop of gall which went far toward embittering
all the days of his singularly favoured life. It was as if the wood-gods,
after endowing him so far beyond his fellows, had repented of their
lavishness, and capriciously poisoned their gifts.
One autumn night, just at the beginning of the calling season, this
weakness of his betrayed the king to the deepest humiliation which had
ever befallen him. He was then nearly seven years old; and because his
voice was known to every bull in the Tobique country, there was never
answer made when his great challenge went stridently resounding over the
moonlit wastes. But on this particular night, when he had roared perhaps
for his own amusement, or for the edification of his mate who browsed
near by, rather than with any expectation of response, to his
astonishment there came an answering defiance from the other side of the
open. A big, wandering bull, who had strayed up from the Grand River
region, had never heard of the king, and was more than ready to put his
valour to test. The king rushed to meet him. Now it chanced that between
the approaching giants was an old ash-tree growing out of a thicket. In
this thicket a bear had been grubbing for roots. When he heard the king’s
first roar, he started to steal away from the perilous proximity; but the
second bull’s answer, from the direction in which he had hoped to
retreat, stopped him. In much perturbation he climbed the ash-tree to a
safe distance, and curled himself into a black, furry ball, in a fork of
the branches.
The night was still, and no scents wafting to sensitive nostrils. With
short roars, and much thrashing of the underbrush, the two bulls drew
near. When the king was just about abreast of the bear’s hiding-place,
his arrogance broke into fury, and he charged upon the audacious
stranger. Just as he did so, and just as his foe sprang to meet him, a
wilful night-wind puffed lightly through the branches. It was a very
small, irresponsible wind; but it carried sharply to the king’s nostrils
the strong, fresh taint of bear.
[Illustration: “WAS OFF THROUGH THE UNDERBRUSH IN IGNOMINIOUS FLIGHT.”]
The smell was so strong, it seemed to the king as if the bear must be
fairly on his haunches. It was like an icy cataract flung upon him. He
shrank, trembled,—and the old wounds twinged and cringed. The next
moment, to the triumphant amazement of his antagonist, he had wheeled
aside to avoid the charge, and was off through the underbrush in
ignominious flight. The newcomer, who, for all his stout-heartedness, had
viewed with concern the giant bulk of his foe, stopped short in his
tracks and stared in bewilderment. So easy a victory as this was beyond
his dreams,—even beyond his desires. However, a bull moose can be a
philosopher on occasion, and this one was not going to quarrel with good
luck. In high elation he strode on up the meadow, and set himself, not
unsuccessfully, to wooing the deserted and disgusted cow.
His triumph, however, was short-lived. About moon-rise of the following
night the king came back. He was no longer thinking of bears, and his
heart was full of wrath. His vast challenge came down from the near-by
hills, making the night resound with its short, explosive thunders. His
approach was accompanied by the thrashing of giant antlers on the trees,
and by a crashing as if the undergrowths were being trodden by a
locomotive. There was grim omen in the sounds; and the cow, waving her
great ears back and forward thoughtfully, eyed the Grand River bull with
shrewd interest. The stranger showed himself game, no whit daunted by
threatenings and thunder. He answered with brave roarings, and manifested
every resolution to maintain his conquest. But sturdy and valorous though
he was, all his prowess went for little when the king fell upon him,
thrice terrible from the memory of his humiliation. There was no such
thing as withstanding that awful charge. Before it the usurper was borne
back, borne down, overwhelmed, as if he had been no more than a yearling
calf. He had no chance to recover. He was trampled and ripped and thrust
onward, a helpless sprawl of unstrung legs and outstretched, piteous
neck. It was luck alone,—or some unwonted kindness of the
wood-spirits,—that saved his life from being trodden and beaten out in
that hour of terror. It was close to the river-bank that he had made his
stand; and presently, to his great good fortune, he was thrust over the
brink. He fell into the water with a huge splash. When he struggled to
his feet, and moved off, staggering, down the shallow edges of the
stream, the king looked over and disdained to follow up the vengeance.
Fully as he had vindicated himself, the king was never secure against
such a humiliation so long as he rested thrall to his one fear. The
threat of the bear hung over him, a mystery of terror which he could not
bring himself to face. But at last, and in the season of his weakness,
when he had shed his antlers, there came a day when he was forced to face
it. Then his kingliness was put to the supreme trial.
He was now at the age of nine years, in the splendour of his prime. He
stood over seven feet high at the shoulders, and weighed perhaps thirteen
hundred pounds. His last antlers, those which he had shed two months
before, had shown a gigantic spread of nearly six feet.
It was late April. Much honeycombed snow and ice still lingered in the
deeper hollows. After a high fashion of his own, seldom followed among
the moose of the Tobique region, the king had rejoined his mate when she
emerged from her spring retreat with a calf at her flank. He was too
lordly in spirit to feel cast down or discrowned when his head was shorn
of its great ornament; and he never felt the spring moroseness which
drives most bull moose into seclusion. He always liked to keep his little
herd together, was tolerant to the yearlings, and even refrained from
driving off the two-year-olds until their own aggressiveness made it
necessary.
On this particular April day, the king was bestriding a tall poplar
sapling, which he had borne down that he might browse upon its tender,
sap-swollen tips. By the water’s edge the cow and the yearling were
foraging on the young willow shoots. The calf, a big-framed, enterprising
youngster two weeks old, almost as fine a specimen of young moosehood as
the king had been at his age, was poking about curiously to gather
knowledge of the wilderness world. He approached a big gray-white
boulder, whose base was shrouded in spruce scrub, and sniffed
apprehensively at a curious, pungent taint that came stealing out upon
the air.
He knew by intuition that there was peril in that strange scent; but his
interest overweighed his caution, and he drew close to the spruce scrub.
Close, and yet closer; and his movement was so unusual that it attracted
the attention of the king, who stopped browsing to watch him intently. A
vague, only half-realised memory of that far-off day when he himself, a
lank calf of the season, went sniffing curiously at a thicket, stirred in
his brain; and the stiff hair along his neck and shoulder began to
bristle. He released the poplar sapling, and turned all his attention to
the behaviour of the calf.
The calf was very close to the green edges of the spruce scrub, when he
caught sight of a great dark form within, which had revealed itself by a
faint movement. More curious than ever, but now distinctly alarmed, he
shrank back, turning at the same time, as if to investigate from another
and more open side of the scrub.
The next instant a black bulk lunged forth with incredible swiftness from
the green, and a great paw swung itself with a circular, sweeping motion,
upon the retreating calf. In the wilderness world, as in the world of
men, history has a trick of repeating itself; and this time, as on that
day nine years before, the bear was just too late. The blow did not reach
its object till most of its force was spent. It drew blood, and knocked
the calf sprawling, but did no serious damage. With a bleat of pain and
terror, the little animal jumped to its feet and ran away.
The bear would have easily caught him before he could recover himself;
but another and very different voice had answered the bleat of the calf.
At the king’s roar of fury the bear changed his plans and slunk back into
hiding. In a moment the king came thundering up to the edge of the
spruces. There, planting his fore-feet suddenly till they ploughed the
ground, he stopped himself with a mighty effort. The smell of the bear
had smitten him in the face.
The moment was a crucial one. The pause was full of fate. Turning his
head in indecision, he caught a cry of pain from the calf as it ran to
its mother; and he saw the blood streaming down its flank. Then the
kingliness of his heart arose victorious. With a roar, he breasted
trampling into the spruce scrub, heedless at last of the dreaded scent.
The bear, meanwhile, had been seeking escape. He had just emerged on the
other side of the spruces, and was slipping off to find a secure tree. As
the king thundered down upon him, he wheeled with a savage growl, half
squatted back, and struck out sturdily with that redoubtable paw. But at
the same instant the king’s edged hoofs came down upon him with the
impact of a battering ram. They smashed in his ribs. They tore open his
side. They hurled him over so that his belly was exposed. He was at a
hopeless disadvantage. He had not an instant for recovery. Those avenging
hoofs, with the power of a pile-driver behind them, smote like lightning.
The bear struck savagely, twice, thrice; and his claws tore their way
through hide and muscle till the king’s blood gushed scarlet over his
prostrate foe’s dark fur. Then, the growls and the claw-strokes ceased;
and the furry shape lay still, outstretched, unresisting.
[Illustration: “IT WAS FEAR ITSELF THAT HE WAS WIPING OUT.”]
For a moment or two the king drew off, and eyed the carcass. Then the
remembrance of all his past terror and shame surged hotly through him. He
pounced again upon the body, and pounded it, and trampled it, and ground
it down, till the hideous mass bore no longer a resemblance to any thing
that ever carried the breath of life. It was not his enemy only, not only
the assailant of the helpless calf, that he was thus completely blotting
from existence, but it was fear itself that he was wiping out.
At last, grown suddenly tired of rage, and somewhat faint from the red
draining of his veins, the king turned away and sought his frightened
herd. They gathered about him, trembling with excitement,—the
light-coated cow, the dark yearling, the lank, terrified calf. They
stretched thin noses toward him, questioning, wondering, troubled at his
hot, streaming wounds. But the king held his head high, heeding neither
the wounds nor the herd. He cast one long, proud look up the valley of
the Mamozekel, his immediate, peculiar domain. Then he looked southward
over the lonely Serpentine, northward across the dark-wooded Nictau, and
westward down the flood of the full, united stream. He felt himself
supreme now beyond challenge over all the wild lands of Tobique.
For a long time the group stood so, breathing at last quietly, still with
that stillness which the furtive kindreds know. There was no sound save
the soft, ear-filling roar of the three rivers, swollen with freshet,
rushing gladly to their confluence. The sound was as a background to the
cool, damp silence of the April wilderness. Some belated snow in a shaded
hollow close at hand shrank and settled, with a hushed, evasive whisper.
Then the earliest white-throat, from the top of a fir-tree, fluted across
the pregnant spring solitudes the six clear notes of his musical and
melancholy call.
[Illustration: IN PANOPLY OF SPEARS]
In Panoply of Spears
There was a pleasant humming all about the bee-tree, where it stood
solitary on the little knoll upon the sunward slope of the forest. It was
an ancient maple, one side long since blasted by lightning, and now
decayed to the heart; while the other side yet put forth a green bravery
of branch and leaf. High up under a dead limb was a hole, thronged about
with diligent bees who came and went in long diverging streams against
the sun-steeped blue. A mile below, around the little, straggling
backwoods settlement, the buckwheat was in bloom; and the bees counted
the longest day too short for the gathering of its brown and fragrant
sweets.
In fine contrast to their bustle and their haste was a moveless dark
brown figure clinging to a leafy branch on the other and living side of
the tree. From a distance it might easily have been taken for a big
bird’s-nest. Far out on the limb it sat, huddled into a bristling ball.
Its nose, its whole head indeed, were hidden between its fore paws, which
childishly but tenaciously clutched at a little upright branch. In this
position, seemingly so precarious, but really, for the porcupine, the
safest and most comfortable that could be imagined, it dozed away the
idle summer hours.
From the thick woods at the foot of the knoll emerged a large black bear,
who lifted his nose and eyed shrewdly the humming streams of workers
converging at the hole in the bee-tree. For some time the bear stood
contemplative, till an eager light grew in his small, cunning,
half-humourous eyes. His long red tongue came out and licked his lips, as
he thought of the summer’s sweetness now stored in the hollow tree. He
knew all about that prosperous bee colony. He remembered when, two years
before, the runaway swarm from the settlement had taken possession of the
hole in the old maple. That same autumn he had tried to rifle the
treasure-house, but had found the wood about the entrance still too sound
and strong for even such powerfully rending claws as his. He had gone
away surly with disappointment, to scratch a few angry bees out of his
fur, and wait for the natural processes of decay to weaken the walls of
the citadel.
On this particular day he decided to try again. He had no expectation
that he would succeed; but the thought of the honey grew irresistible to
him as he dwelt upon it. He lumbered lazily up the knoll, reared his dark
bulk against the trunk, and started to climb to the attack.
But the little workers in the high-set hive found an unexpected protector
in this hour of their need. The dozing porcupine woke up, and took it
into his head that he wanted to go somewhere else. Perhaps in his dreams
a vision had come to him of the lonely little oat-field in the clearing,
where the young grain was plumping out and already full of milky
sweetness. As a rule he preferred to travel and feed by night. But the
porcupine is the last amid the wild kindreds to let convention interfere
with impulse, and he does what seems good to the whim of the moment. His
present whim was to descend the bee-tree and journey over to the
clearing.
The bear had climbed but seven or eight feet, when he heard the scraping
of claws on the bark above. He heard also the light clattering noise,
unlike any other sound in the wilderness. He knew it at once as the sound
of the loose-hung, hollow quills in a porcupine’s active tail; and
looking up angrily, he saw the porcupine curl himself downward from a
crotch and begin descending the trunk to meet him.
The bear weighed perhaps four hundred or five hundred pounds. The
porcupine weighed perhaps twenty-five pounds. Nevertheless, the bear
stopped; and the porcupine came on. When he saw the bear, he gnashed his
teeth irritably, and his quills, his wonderful panoply of finely barbed
spears, erected themselves all over his body till his usual bulk seemed
doubled. At the same time his colour changed. It was almost as if he had
grown suddenly pale with indignation; for when the long quills stood up
from among his blackish-brown fur they showed themselves all white save
for their dark keen points. Small as he was in comparison with his
gigantic opponent, he looked, nevertheless, curiously formidable. He
grunted and grumbled querulously, and came on with confidence,
obstinately proclaiming that no mere bear should for a moment divert him
from his purpose.
[Illustration: “THE BEAR EYED HIM FOR SOME MOMENTS.”]
Whether by instinct, experience, or observation, the bear knew something
about porcupines. What would honey be to him, with two or three of those
slender and biting spear-points embedded in his nose? As he thought of
it, he backed away with increasing alacrity. He checked a rash impulse to
dash the arrogant little hinderer from the tree and annihilate him with
one stroke of his mighty paw,—but the mighty paw cringed, winced, and
drew back impotent, as its sensitive nerves considered how it would feel
to be stuck full, like a pin-cushion, with inexorably penetrating points.
At last, thoroughly outfaced, the bear descended to the ground, and stood
aside respectfully for the porcupine to pass.
The porcupine, however, on reaching the foot of the trunk, discovered an
uncertainty in his mind. His whim wavered. He stopped, scratched his ears
thoughtfully first with one fore paw and then with the other, and tried
his long, chisel-like front teeth, those matchless gnawing machines, on a
projecting edge of bark. The bear eyed him for some moments, then
lumbered off into the woods indifferently, convinced that the bee-tree
would be just as interesting on some other day. But before that other day
came around, the bear encountered Fate, lying in wait for him, grim and
implacable, beneath a trapper’s deadfall in the heart of the tamarack
swamp. And the humming tribes in the bee-tree were left to possess their
honeyed commonwealth in peace.
Soon after the bear had left the knoll, the porcupine appeared to make up
his mind as to what he wanted to do. With an air of fixed purpose he
started down the knoll, heading for the oat-field and the clearing which
lay some half-mile distant through the woods. As he moved on the ground,
he was a somewhat clumsy and wholly grotesque figure. He walked with a
deliberate and precise air, very slowly, and his legs worked as if the
earth were to them an unfamiliar element. He was about two and a half
feet long, short-legged, solid and sturdy looking, with a nose curiously
squared off so that it should not get in the way of his gnawing. As he
confronted you, his great chisel teeth, bared and conspicuous, appeared a
most formidable weapon. Effective as they were, however, they were not a
weapon which he was apt to call into use, save against inanimate and
edible opponents; because he could not do so without exposing his weak
points to attack,—his nose, his head, his soft, unprotected throat. His
real weapon of offence was his short, thick tail, which was heavily armed
with very powerful quills. With this he could strike slashing blows, such
as would fill an enemy’s face or paws with spines, and send him howling
from the encounter. Clumsy and inert it looked, on ordinary occasions;
but when need arose, its muscles had the lightning action of a strong
steel spring.
As the porcupine made his resolute way through the woods, the manner of
his going differed from that of all the other kindreds of the wild. He
went not furtively. He had no particular objection to making a noise. He
did not consider it necessary to stop every little while, stiffen himself
to a monument of immobility, cast wary glances about the gloom, and sniff
the air for the taint of enemies. He did not care who knew of his coming;
and he did not greatly care who came. Behind his panoply of biting spears
he felt himself secure, and in that security he moved as if he held in
fee the whole green, shadowy, perilous woodland world.
A wood-mouse, sitting in the door of his burrow between the roots of an
ancient fir-tree, went on washing his face with his dainty paws as the
porcupine passed within three feet of him. Almost any other forest
traveller would have sent the timid mouse darting to the depths of his
retreat; but he knew that the slow-moving figure, however terrible to
look at, had no concern for wood-mice. The porcupine had barely passed,
however, when a weasel came in view. In a flash the mouse was gone, to
lie hidden for an hour, with trembling heart, in the furthest darkness of
his burrow.
Continuing his journey, the porcupine passed under a fallen tree. Along
the horizontal trunk lay a huge lynx, crouched flat, movelessly watching
for rabbit, chipmunk, mink, or whatever quarry might come within his
reach. He was hungry, as a lynx is apt to be. He licked his chaps, and
his wide eyes paled with savage fire, as the porcupine dawdled by beneath
the tree, within easy clutch of his claws. But his claws made no least
motion of attack. He, too, like the bear, knew something about
porcupines. In a few moments, however, when the porcupine had gone on
some ten or twelve feet beyond his reach, his feelings overcame him so
completely that he stood up and gave vent to an appalling scream of rage.
All the other wild things within hearing trembled at the sound, and were
still; and the porcupine, startled out of his equipoise, tucked his nose
between his legs, and bristled into a ball of sharp defiance. The lynx
eyed him venomously for some seconds, then dropped lightly from the
perch, and stole off to hunt in other neighbourhoods, realising that his
reckless outburst of bad temper had warned all the coverts for a quarter
of a mile around. The porcupine, uncurling, grunted scornfully and
resumed his journey.
Very still, and lonely and bright the clearing lay in the flooding
afternoon sunshine. It lay along beside a deeply rutted, grass-grown
backwoods road which had been long forgotten by the attentions of the
road-master. It was enclosed from the forest in part by a dilapidated
wall of loose stones, in part by an old snake fence, much patched with
brush. The cabin which had once presided over its solitude had long
fallen to ruin; but its fertile soil had saved it from being forgotten. A
young farmer-lumberman from the settlement a couple of miles away held
possession of it, and kept its boundaries more or less intact, and made
it yield him each year a crop of oats, barley, or buckwheat.
Emerging from the woods, the porcupine crawled to the top of the stone
wall and glanced about him casually. Then he descended into the cool,
light-green depths of the growing oats. Here he was completely hidden,
though his passage was indicated as he went by the swaying and commotion
among the oat-tops.
The high plumes of the grain, of course, were far above the porcupine’s
reach; and for a healthy appetite like his it would have been tedious
work indeed to pull down the stalks one by one. At this point, he
displayed an ingenious resourcefulness with which he is seldom credited
by observers of his kind. Because he is slow in movement, folk are apt to
conclude that he is slow in wit; whereas the truth is that he has fine
reserves of shrewdness to fall back on in emergency. Instead of pulling
and treading down the oats at haphazard, he moved through the grain in a
small circle, leaning heavily inward. When he had thus gone around the
circle several times, the tops of the grain lay together in a convenient
bunch. This succulent sheaf he dragged down, and devoured with relish.
When he had abundantly satisfied his craving for young oats, he crawled
out upon the open sward by the fence, and carelessly sampled the bark of
a seedling apple-tree. While he was thus engaged a big, yellow dog came
trotting up the wood-road, poking his nose inquisitively into every bush
and stump in the hope of finding a rabbit or chipmunk to chase. He
belonged to the young farmer who owned the oat-field; and when, through
the rails of the snake fence, he caught sight of the porcupine, he was
filled with noisy wrath. Barking and yelping,—partly with excitement, and
partly as a signal to his master who was trudging along the road far
behind him,—he clambered over the fence, and bore down upon the
trespasser.
The porcupine was not greatly disturbed by this loud onslaught, but he
did not let confidence make him careless. He calmly tucked his head under
his breast, set his quills in battle array, and awaited the event with
composure.
Had he discovered the porcupine in the free woods, the yellow dog would
have let him severely alone. But in his master’s oat-field, that was a
different matter. Moreover, the knowledge that his master was coming
added to his zeal and rashness; and he had long cherished the ambition to
kill a porcupine. He sprang forward, open-jawed,—and stopped short when
his fangs were just within an inch or two of those bristling and defiant
points. Caution had come to his rescue just in time.
For perhaps half a minute he ran, whining and baffled, around the
not-to-be daunted ball of spines. Then he sat down upon his haunches,
lifted up his muzzle, and howled for his master to come and help him.
As his master failed to appear within three seconds, his impatience got
the better of him, and he again began running around the porcupine,
snapping fiercely, but never coming within two or three inches of the
militant points. For a few moments these two or three inches proved to be
a safe distance. Such a distance from the shoulders, back, and sides was
all well enough. But suddenly, he was so misguided as to bring his teeth
together within a couple of inches of the armed but quiescent tail. This
was the instant for which the porcupine had been waiting. The tail
flicked smartly. The big dog jumped, gave a succession of yelping cries,
pawed wildly at his nose, then tucked his tail between his legs,
scrambled over the fence, and fled away to his master. The porcupine
unrolled himself, and crawled into an inviting hole in the old stone
wall.
About ten minutes later a very angry man, armed with a fence-stake,
appeared at the edge of the clearing with a cowed dog at his heels. He
wanted to find the porcupine which had stuck those quills into his dog’s
nose. Mercifully merciless, he had held the howling dog in a grip of iron
while he pulled out the quills with his teeth; and now he was after
vengeance. Knowing a little, but not everything, about porcupines, he
searched every tree in the immediate neighbourhood, judging that the
porcupine, after such an encounter, would make all haste to his natural
retreat. But he never looked in the hole in the wall; and the yellow dog,
who had come to doubt the advisability of finding porcupines, refused
firmly to assist in the search. In a little while, when his anger began
to cool, he gave over the hunt in disgust, threw away the fencestake, bit
off a goodly chew from the fig of black tobacco which he produced from
his hip-pocket, and strode away up the grassy wood-road.
For perhaps half an hour the porcupine dozed in the hole among the
stones. Then he woke up, crawled out, and moved slowly along the top of
the wall.
There was a sound of children’s voices coming up the road; but the
porcupine, save for a grumble of impatience, paid no attention. Presently
the children came in sight,—a stocky little boy of nine or ten, and a
lank girl of perhaps thirteen, making their way homeward from school by
the short cut over the mountain. Both were barefooted and barelegged,
deeply freckled, and with long, tow-coloured locks. The boy wore a shirt
and short breeches of blue-gray homespun, the breeches held up
precariously by one suspender. On his head was a tattered and battered
straw; and in one hand he swung a little tin dinner-pail. The girl wore
the like blue-gray homespun for a petticoat, with a waist of bright red
calico, and carried a limp pink sunbonnet on her arm.
“Oh, see the porkypine!” cried the girl, as they came abreast of the
stone wall.
“By gosh! Let’s kill it!” exclaimed the stocky little boy, starting
forward eagerly, with a prompt efflorescence of primitive instincts. But
his sister clutched him by the arm and anxiously restrained him.
“My lands, Jimmy, you musn’t go near a porkypine like that!” she
protested, more learned than her brother in the hoary myths of the
settlements. “Don’t you know he can fling them quills of his’n at you,
an’ they’ll go right through an’ come out the other side?”
“By gosh!” gasped the boy, eyeing the unconcerned animal with
apprehension, and edging off to the furthermost ditch. Hand in hand,
their eyes wide with excitement, the two children passed beyond the stone
wall. Then, as he perceived that the porcupine had not seemed to notice
them, the boy’s hunting instinct revived. He stopped, set down the tin
dinner-pail, and picked up a stone.
“No, you don’t, Jimmy!” intervened the girl, with mixed emotions of
kindliness and caution, as she grabbed his wrist and dragged him along.
“Why, Sis?” protested the boy, hanging back, and looking over his
shoulder longingly. “Jest let me fling a stone at him!”
“No!” said his sister, with decision. “He ain’t a-hurtin’ us, an’ he’s
mindin’ his own business. An’ I reckon maybe he can fling quills as fur
as you can fling stones!”
Convinced by this latter argument, the boy gave up his design, and
suffered his wise sister to lead him away from so perilous a
neighbourhood. The two little figures vanished amid the green glooms
beyond the clearing, and the porcupine was left untroubled in his
sovereignty.
II.
That autumn, late one moonlight night, the porcupine was down by a little
forest lake feasting on lily pads. He occupied a post of great advantage,
a long, narrow ledge of rock jutting out into the midst of the lilies,
and rising but an inch or two above the water. Presently, to his great
indignation, he heard a dry rustling of quills behind him, and saw
another porcupine crawl out upon his rock. He faced about, bristling
angrily and gnashing his teeth, and advanced to repel the intruder.
The intruder hesitated, then came on again with confidence, but making no
hostile demonstrations whatever. When the two met, the expected conflict
was by some sudden agreement omitted. They touched blunt noses, squeaked
and grunted together for awhile till a perfect understanding was
established; then crawled ashore and left the lily pads to rest, broad,
shiny, and unruffled in the moonlight, little platters of silver on the
dark glass of the lake.
The newcomer was a female; and with such brief wooing the big porcupine
had taken her for his mate. Now he led her off to show her the unequalled
den which he had lately discovered. The den was high in the side of a
heap of rocks, dry in all weathers, and so overhung by a half-uprooted
tree as to be very well concealed from passers and prowlers. Its entrance
was long and narrow, deterrent to rash investigators. In fact, just after
the porcupine had moved in, a red fox had discovered the doorway and
judged it exactly to his liking; but on finding that the occupant was a
porcupine, he had hastily decided to seek accommodation elsewhere. In
this snug house the two porcupines settled contentedly for the winter.
The winter passed somewhat uneventfully for them, though for the rest of
the wood-folk it was a season of unwonted hardship. The cold was more
intense and more implacable than had been known about the settlements for
years. Most of the wild creatures, save those who could sleep the bitter
months away and abide the coming of spring, found themselves face to face
with famine. But the porcupines feared neither famine nor cold. The brown
fur beneath their quills was thick and warm, and hunger was impossible to
them with all the trees of the forest for their pasturage. Sometimes,
when the cold made them sluggish, they would stay all day and all night
in a single balsam-fir or hemlock, stripping one branch after another of
leaf and twig, indifferent to the monotony of their diet. At other times,
however, they were as active and enterprising as if all the heats of
summer were loosing their sinews. On account of the starvation-madness
that was everywhere ranging the coverts, they were more than once
attacked as they crawled lazily over the snow; but on each occasion the
enemy, whether lynx or fox, fisher or mink, withdrew discomfited, with
something besides hunger in his hide to think about.
Once, in midwinter, they found a prize which added exquisite variety to
their bill of fare. Having wandered down to the outskirts of the
settlements, they discovered, cast aside among the bushes, an empty
firkin which had lately contained salt pork. The wood, saturated with
brine, was delicious to the porcupines. Greedily they gnawed at it,
returning night after night to the novel banquet, till the last sliver of
the flavoured wood was gone. Then, after lingering a day or two longer in
the neighbourhood, expecting another miracle, they returned to their
solitudes and their hemlock.
When winter was drawing near its close, but spring had not yet sent the
wilderness word of her coming, the porcupines got her message in their
blood. They proclaimed it abroad in the early twilight from the tops of
the high hemlocks, in queer, half-rhythmical choruses of happy grunts and
squeaks. The sound was far from melodious, but it pleased every one of
the wild kindred to whose ears it came; for they knew that when the
porcupines got trying to sing, then the spring thaws were hurrying up
from the south.
At last the long desired one came; and every little rill ran a brawling
brook in the fulness of its joy. And the ash-buds swelled rich purple;
and the maples crimsoned with their misty blooms; and the skunk cabbage
began to thrust up bold knobs of emerald, startling in their brightness,
through the black and naked leaf-mould of the swamp. And just at this
time, when all the wild kindred, from the wood-mouse to the moose, felt
sure that life was good, a porcupine baby was born in the snug den among
the rocks.
[Illustration: “A WEASEL GLIDED NOISELESSLY UP TO THE DOOR OF THE DEN.”]
It was an astonishingly big baby,—the biggest, in proportion to the size
of its parents, of all the babies of the wild. In fact it was almost as
big as an average bear cub. It was covered with long, dark brown, silky
fur, under which the future panoply of spear-points was already beginning
to make way through the tender skin. Its mother was very properly proud,
and assiduous in her devotion. And the big father, though seemingly quite
indifferent, kept his place contentedly in the den instead of going off
sourly by himself to another lair as the porcupine male is apt to do on
the arrival of the young.
One evening about dusk, when the young porcupine was but three days old,
a weasel glided noiselessly up to the door of the den, and sniffed. His
eyes, set close together and far down toward his malignant, pointed nose,
were glowing red with the lust of the kill. Fierce and fearless as he
was, he knew well enough that a porcupine was something for him to let
alone. But this, surely, was his chance to feed fat an ancient grudge;
for he hated everything that he could not hope to kill. He had seen the
mother porcupine feeding comfortably in the top of a near-by poplar. And
now he made assurance doubly sure by sniffing at her trail, which came
out from the den and did not return. As for the big male porcupine, the
prowler took it for granted that he had followed the usage of his kind,
and gone off about other business. Like a snake, he slipped in, and found
the furry baby all alone. There was a strong, squeaking cry, a moment’s
struggle; and then the weasel drank eagerly at the blood of his easy
prey. The blood, and the fierce joy of the kill, were all he wanted, for
his hunting was only just begun.
The assassin stayed but a minute with his victim, then turned swiftly to
the door of the den. But the door was blocked. It was filled by an
ominous, bristling bulk, which advanced upon him slowly, inexorably,
making a sharp, clashing sound with its long teeth. The big porcupine had
come home. And his eyes blazed more fiercely red than those of the
weasel.
The weasel, fairly caught, felt that doom was upon him. He backed away,
over the body of his victim, to the furthest depth of the den. But,
though a ruthless murderer, the most cruel of all the wild kindred, he
was no coward. He would evade the slow avenger if he could; but if not,
he would fight to the last gasp.
Against this foe the porcupine scorned his customary tactics, and
depended upon his terrible, cutting teeth. At the same time he knew that
the weasel was desperate and deadly. Therefore he held his head low,
shielding his tender throat. When he reached the wider part of the den,
he suddenly swung sidewise, thus keeping the exit still blocked.
Seeing now that there was no escape, the weasel gathered his forces for
one last fight. Like lightning he sprang, and struck; and being, for
speed, quite matchless among the wild folk, he secured a deadly hold on
the porcupine’s jaw. The porcupine squeaked furiously and tried to shake
his adversary off. With a sweep of his powerful neck, he threw the weasel
to one side, and then into the air over his head.
The next instant the weasel came down, sprawling widely, full upon the
stiffly erected spears of the porcupine’s back. They pierced deep into
his tender belly. With a shrill cry he relaxed his hold on the avenger’s
jaw, shrank together in anguish, fell to the ground, and darted to the
exit. As he passed he got a heavy slap from the porcupine’s tail, which
filled his face and neck with piercing barbs. Then he escaped from the
den and fled away toward his own lair, carrying his death with him.
Before he had gone a hundred yards one of the quills in his belly reached
a vital part. He faltered, fell, stretched his legs out weakly, and died.
Then a red squirrel, who had been watching him in a quiver of fear and
hate, shot from his hiding-place, ran wildly up and down his tree, and
made the woods ring with his sharp, barking chatter of triumph over the
death of the universal enemy.
In the midst of the squirrel’s shrill rejoicings the porcupine emerged
from his den. He seemed to hesitate, which is not the way of a porcupine.
He looked at his mate, still foraging in the top of her poplar, happily
unaware for the present of how her little world had changed. He seemed to
realise that the time of partings had come, the time when he must resume
his solitude. He turned and looked at his den,—he would never find
another like it! Then he crawled off through the cool, wet woods, where
the silence seemed to throb sweetly with the stir and fulness of the sap.
And in a hollow log, not far from the bee-tree on the knoll, he found
himself a new home, small and solitary.
THE END.
Transcriber’s Notes
--Retained publisher information from the printed copy (the electronic
edition is in the public domain in the country of publication).
--Corrected some palpable typos.
--Relocated the frontispiece illustration to the associated page.
--In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
_underscores_.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Kindred of the Wild - A Book of Animal Life" ***
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