WOOD-FOLK COMEDIES

WOOD-FOLK COMEDIES

The Play of Wild-Animal Life
on a Natural Stage

BY
William J. Long
Author of
“How Animals Talk” “Brier-Patch Philosophy”
“School of the Woods” “Northern Trails” etc.

Illustrated

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON

[1]

WOOD-FOLK COMEDIES

[2]

[3]

PRELUDE: MORNING ON MOOSEHEAD

SUNRISE in the big woods, morning and springtime and fishing weather! For the new day Killooleet the white-throated sparrow has a song of welcome; fishing has its gleeman in Koskomenos the kingfisher, sounding his merry rattle along every shore where minnows are shoaling; and for the springtime even these dumb trees grow eloquent. Yesterday they were gray and dun, as if life had lost its sense of beauty; to-day a mist of tender green appears on every birch tree, a blush of rose color spreads over the hardwood ridges. Woods that all winter have been silent, as if deserted, are now alive with the rustling of eager feet, the flutter of wings, the call of birds returning with joy to familiar nesting places.

Above these quiet voices of rejoicing sounds another note, loud, rhythmic, jubilant, which says[4] that Comedy, light of foot and heart, has once more renewed her lease of the wilderness. High on a towering hemlock a logcock has his sounding board, dry and resonant, where he makes all the hills echo to his lusty drumming. The morning light flames on his scarlet crest as he turns his head alertly, this way for the answer of a mate, that way for the challenge of a rival. Nearer, on the roof of my fishing camp, a downy woodpecker is thumping the metal cover of the stovepipe, a wonderful drum, on which he can easily make more noise than the big logcock.

Every day before sunrise that same little fellow appears on my roof, so punctually that one wonders if he keeps a clock, and bids me “Top o’ the Morning” by sending a fearful din clattering down the stovepipe. It is a love-call to his mate, no doubt; but the Seven Sleepers in my place must be roused by it as by dynamite. This morning he exploded me out of sleep at four-twenty, as usual; and so persistent was his rackety-packety that I lost patience, and threw a stick of wood at him. Away he went, crying “Yip! Yip!” at the meddlesome Philistine who had no heart for love, no ear for music. He was heading briskly for the horizon when, remembering his shy mate, he darted aside to the shell of a white pine, where he drummed out another message, only to meet violent opposition[5] from another Philistine. He had sounded one call, listened for the effect, and was in the midst of another ecstatic vibration when there came a scurry of leaves, a shaking of boughs, and Meeko the red squirrel appeared, threatening death and destruction to all drummers.

Evidently Meeko was planning a nest of his own in that vicinity, and had no mind to tolerate such a noisy fellow as a near neighbor. As he came headlong upon the scene, hurling abuse ahead of him, the woodpecker vanished like a wink, leaving the enemy to threaten the empty air; which he did in a fashion to make one shudder at what might happen if a red squirrel were half as big as his temper. Once I saw a bull-moose accidentally shake a branch on which Meeko happened to be sitting while he ate a mushroom, turning it around in his paws as he nibbled the edges; and the peppery little beast followed the sober great beast two or three hundred yards, running just above the antlered head, calling down the wrath of squirrel-heaven on all the tribe of moose. Now, in greater rage because the object of it was so small, he whisked all over the pine, declaring it, kilch-kilch! to be his property, and warning all woodpeckers, zit-zit! to keep forever away from it. Hardly had he ended his demonstration of squirrel rights and gone away, swearing,[6] to his interrupted affairs when another hammering, louder and more jubilant, began on the pine shell.

Here was defiance as well as trespass, and Meeko came rushing back to deal with it properly. Sputtering like a lighted fuse he darted up the pine and took a flying leap after the drummer, determined this time to make an end of him or chase him clean out of the woods. Into a thicket of spruce he went, shrilling his battle yell. Out of the thicket flashed the woodpecker, unseen, and doubled back to the starting point. There a curious thing happened, one which strengthened my impression that all birds have more or less ventriloquial power to make their calling sound near or far at will. The woodpecker lit on precisely the same spot he had used before, and hammered it with the same rapidity and rhythm; but now his drum sounded faintly, distantly, as if on the other side of the ridge. Growing bolder he changed his note, put more hallelujah into it, and was in the midst of a glorious rub-a-dub when Meeko came tearing back through the spruce thicket and hunted him away.

So the little comedy ran on, charge and retreat, till a second Meeko appeared and held the fort, while the first ran after the drummer. Now, as I watch the play, there is triumphant squirrel talk on the pine shell, and the woodpecker is again drumming lustily on the stovepipe cover.

[7]Farther back in the woods sounds the roll of another drum, a muffled brum, brum, brum, which you must hear many times before you learn to locate it accurately. Of all forest sounds it is the vaguest, the most mysterious, the hardest to associate with distance or direction. Now it comes to you from above, like a dim echo of distant thunder, and suddenly you understand the bird’s Indian name, Seksagadagee, little thunder-maker; again it drifts in vaguely from all directions, filling the air like the surge of a waterfall at night. Listen attentively, and the drum seems to be near at hand, quite distinctly in front of you; but take a few careless steps in that direction and it is gone, like a flame that is blown out, and when you hear it once more it sounds faintly from the valley behind you.

Somewhere out yonder, not nearly so remote as you think, a cock partridge or ruffed grouse is finding a mate by the odd method of drumming her up; for he never goes in quest of her, but rumbles his drum day after day, sometimes also on moonlit nights, till she appears in answer to his summons. Though I have often seen little Thunder-maker when he was filling hill and valley with his love-call, never yet have I learned how he sounds his drum; so I must have another look at him. Taking every precaution against noise, moving only when the muffled thunder rolls[8] through the woods, I creep nearer and nearer till I locate a great mossy log and— Ah! there he is, a beautiful creature, standing tense as if listening. There is a flash of wings up and down, so swift that I cannot follow the motion or tell whether the hollow brum sounds when the stiffened wings are above the bird’s back or in front of his pouting chest. He does not beat the log; I have an impression that the booming sound is made by columns of air caught under the wings and driven together when the grouse strikes forward. If you cup your hands and drive them almost against your ears, repeating the action till you hear the air boom, you will have a faint but excellent imitation of the partridge’s drum call. The explanation remains theoretical, however, for even with the bird under my eyes I cannot say for a certainty how the sound is made. I see flash after flash of the wings, and with each comes an answering brum; then the wing-beats follow faster and faster till individual sounds merge in a continuous roll; which suddenly grows faint, as if moving away, and seems to vanish in the far distance.

Thunder-maker now stands at attention, his ear cocked to something I cannot hear. In a few moments, as if well satisfied, he droops his wing-tips, spreads wide his tail, erects his crest and his bronzed ruff, and begins to strut, showing all his[9] fine feathers. There is a stir beyond him; from behind a yellow birch a hen-grouse appears and glides on, pretending to be merely passing this way; while the drummer pretends not to see her or to be interested in anything save his own performance. So it seems to me, watching the play through the branches of a low fir. Thunder-maker drums again, as if his mate were yet to come; while the audience moves coyly away, picking at a seed here or there, till she enters the shadowy underbrush. There she hides and remains motionless, where she can see without being seen.

As I creep away, trying not to disturb the little comedy, I am startled by a rush behind me, and have glimpse of two deer bounding through the leafless woods. They take needlessly high jumps for such easy going, it seems; one has an impression that they are kicking up their heels in delight at being out of their winter yard, free to wander at will and find abundance of fresh food, tender and delicious, wherever they seek. A loon blows his wild bugle from the lake below. Multitudes of little warblers, the first ripple of a mighty wave, are sweeping northward with exultation, singing as they go. Frogs are piping, kingfishers clattering, thrushes chiming their silver bells,—everywhere the full tide of life, the impulse of play, the spirit of happy adventure.

[10]One such morning, when every blessed bird or beast appears like a bit of happiness astray, should be enough to open one’s eyes to the meaning of nature; but yesterday was just like this in the woods, and in the back of my head is a memory of other mornings in that far, misty time when all days came as holidays, when one leaped out of bed with the wordless thought that life was too precious to waste any of its sunny hours in sleeping. Suddenly it occurs to me, looking out from my “Commoosie” at the sunrise on Moosehead, while the woods around are vocal and jubilant, that this inspiring morning is simply natural and as it should be; that this new day, with its tingle of life and joy, is typical of the whole existence of the wood folk. For them every day is a new day, joyous and expectant, without regret for yesterday or anxiety for the morrow.

“Ah, but wait!” you say. “Wait till winter returns with its hunger and snow and bitter cold. Then we shall see nothing of this springtime comedy, but a stern and terrible struggle for existence.”

That owlish hoot expresses the prevalent theory of wild life, I know; but forget all such borrowed notions here in the budding woods, and open your eyes to behold life as it is. “Ask now the beasts and they shall teach thee, or the fowls of the air and they shall tell thee” that animal life is from[11] beginning to end a gladsome comedy. The “tragedy” is a romantic invention of our story-writers; the “struggle for existence” is a bookish theory passed from lip to lip without a moment’s thought or observation to justify it. I would call it mythical were it not that myths commonly have some hint of truth or gleam of beauty in them; but this struggle notion is the crude, unlovely superstition of one who used neither his eyes nor his imagination. To quote Darwin as an authority is to deceive yourself; for he borrowed the notion of natural struggle from the economist Malthus, who invented it not as a theory of nature (of which he knew nothing), but to explain from his easy-chair the vice and misery of massed humanity. Moreover, Darwin used the “struggle for existence” as a crude figure of speech; but later writers accept it as a literal gospel, or rather bodespel, without once putting it to the test of out-door observation.[1]

[12]A moment’s reflection here may suggest two things: first, that from lowly protozoans, which always unite in colonies, to the mighty elephant that finds comfort and safety in a herd of his fellows, coöperation of kind with kind is the universal law of nature; second, that the evolutionary processes, to which the violent name of struggle is thoughtlessly applied, are all so leisurely that centuries must pass before the change is noticeable, and so effortless that subject creatures are not even aware they are being changed. Meanwhile individual birds and beasts go their alert ways, finding pleasure in the exercise of every natural faculty. Singing or feeding, playing or resting, courting their mates or roving freely with their little ones, all wild creatures have every appearance of gladness, but give you never a sign that they are under a terrible law of strife or competition. And why? Because there is absolutely no such thing as a struggle for existence in nature. There is no evidence of struggle, no reason for struggle, no impression of the spirit of struggle, when you look on the natural world with frank unprejudiced eyes.

As for the coming winter, let not theory be as a veil over your sight to obscure the facts or to blur your impressions. One who camps in these big woods when they are white with snow finds[13] them quite as cheery as the woods of spring or summer. Most of the birds that now fill the solitude with rejoicing will then be far away, pursuing the happy adventure under other skies; but the friendliest of them all, the tiny chickadee, will bide contentedly in his cold domain, and greet the sunrise with a note in which you detect no lack of cheerfulness. A few of the animals will then be snug in their dens, with the bear and chipmunk; others will show the same spirit of play—a little subdued, but still brave and confident—which moves them now as they go seeking their mates to the sound of running brooks and the fragrance of swelling buds. Keeonekh the otter will spend a large part of his time happily sliding downhill. Pequam the fisher will save his short legs much travel by putting his nose into every fox track till he finds one which tells him that Eleemos has been digging at a frozen carcass, and has the smell of it on his feet; then he will cunningly back-trail that fellow, knowing that food is somewhere ahead of him. Tookhees the wood mouse will be building his assembly rooms deep under the snow, and Meeko the red squirrel (mischief-maker the Indians call him) will still be making tragi-comedy of every passing event, berating the jays that spy upon him when he hides food, chasing the woodpeckers that hammer[14] on his hollow tree, and scolding every big beast that pays no attention to him.

To sum up this prelude of the sunrise: whether you enter the solitude in the expectant spring or the restful winter, “nothing is here to wail or knock the breast.” The wood folk are invincibly cheerful, and need no pity for their alleged tragic fate. If I dared voice their unconscious philosophy, I might say that the lines are fallen unto them in pleasant places, and that, if ever they grow discontented with the place, they quickly change it for a better or for hope of a better. The world is wide and all theirs, and through it they go like perpetual Canterbury pilgrims.

[15]

THE BIRDS’ TABLE

THE impression of comedy among natural birds and beasts first came to me in childhood, a time when eyes are frankly open to behold the natural world as God made it. Long before it became the excellent fashion to feed our winter birds, I used to prepare a table under the grapevines and spread it with crumbs, raisins, cracked nuts, everything a child could think of that feathered folk might like. Scores of wild birds came daily to my table in bitter weather. Squirrels frisked over it, and were sometimes hungry enough to eat before they began to hide things away, as squirrels commonly do when they find unexpected abundance. Several times a family of Bob Whites, graceful and light footed, came swiftly over the wall, gurgling exquisite low calls as they sensed[16] the feast; and once a beautiful cock partridge appeared from nowhere, gliding, turning, balancing like a dancing master, and hopped upon the table and ate all the raisins as his first morsel.

Unless a door were noisily opened or a sneaky cat crept into the scene, none of these dainty creatures gave me any impression of fearfulness, and such a notion as pity for their tragic existence could hardly enter one’s head; certainly not so long as one kept his eyes open. Though always finely alert, they seemed a contented folk, gay even in midwinter, and they quickly accepted the child who watched with eager eyes from the window or sat motionless out-of-doors within a few feet of their dining table. When their hunger was satisfied many would stay a little time, basking in the sunshine on the grapevines or the pear tree, as if they liked to be near the house. Some of them sang, and their note was low and sweet, very different from their springtime jubilation. A few uttered what seemed to be a food call, since it brought more of the same feather hurrying in; now and then it appeared that birds which are perforce solitary in winter (because of the necessity of seeking food over wide areas) were glad to be once more with their own kind. Among these were certain small groups, noticeable because they chattered together after the feast, and I wondered[17] if they were not a mother bird and her reunited nestlings. I think they were, for I have since learned that family ties hold longer among the birds than we have been led to imagine.

One of the first things I noticed in the conduct of my little guests was that they were never quarrelsome so long as they were downright hungry. Indeed, unlike our imported house sparrow, very few of them showed a pugnacious disposition at any time; but now and then appeared a thrifty or grasping fellow who, after satisfying his hunger, would get a notion into his head that the food was all his if he could claim or corner it; and he was apt to be a trouble-maker. This early observation is one which I have since confirmed many times, both at home and in the snows of the North: the hunger which is supposed to make wild creatures ferocious invariably softens and tames them.

Another matter which soon became evident was that birds of the same species were not all alike. Their forms, their colors, even their faces distinguished them one from another. I began to recognize many of them at sight, and presently to note individual whims or humors which reminded me pleasantly of my neighbors; so much so that I called certain birds by names which might be found in the town records, but not in books of natural history. Some came with grace to the[18] table, eating daintily or moving aside for a newcomer, as if timid of giving offense. Others swooped in and fed rudely, unmindful of others, as if eating had no savor of society or the Sacrament, but were a trivial matter to be finished quickly, with no regard for that natural courtesy and dignity which we now call manners.

Among these graceful or graceless birds there was constant individual variety. Alert juncos, forever on tiptoe, would be followed by some sleepy or indifferent junco; woodpeckers that seemed wholly intent on the marrow of a hollow bone would be replaced by a Paul-Pry woodpecker, who was always watching the other guests from behind a limb; and sooner or later in the day I would bid welcome to “Saryjane,” a fussy and suspicious bird that reminded me of a woman who had only to look at a boy to make him shamefully conscious that his face needed washing or his clothes mending.

No sooner did “Saryjane” light on the table than peace took to flight. Before she picked up a crumb she would lay down the law how crumbs must be picked up, and by her bossy or meddlesome ways she drove many of the birds into the grapevines; whither they went gladly, it seemed, to be rid of her. They soon learned to anticipate[19] her ways; at her approach some dainty tree sparrow or cheerful titmouse would flit away with an air of “Here she comes!” in his hasty exit. She was a nuthatch, one of a half-dozen that came at odd times, peaceably enough, to explore a lump of suet suspended over the birds’ table; and whenever I see her like now, or hear her critical yank-yank, I always think of “Saryjane” rather than of Sitta carolinensis.

When I translate the latter jargon, using a monkey-wrench on the grammar, I get, “A she-thing that squats, inhabitating a place named after an imaginary counterpart of a he-one miscalled Carolus”; which illuminates the ornithologists somewhat, but leaves the nuthatch in obscurity. The other name has power, at least, to evoke a smile and a happy memory. The real or human “Saryjane” used to stipulate, when she hired a boy to pick her cherries, that he must whistle while he worked or lose his pay.

One morning—I remember only that the snow lay deep, and that all birds were uncommonly eager at their breakfast—a stranger appeared at the birds’ table, a sober fellow whom I had never before seen. Without paying the slightest attention to other guests he plumped into the feast, ate enough for two birds of his size, and then sat for a long time beside a pile of crumbs, as if[20] waiting for another appetite. Thereafter he came regularly, and always acted in the same greedy way. He would light fair in the middle of the food, and gobble the first thing in sight, as if fearful that the supply might fail or that other birds might devour everything before he was satisfied. After eating he would sit at the edge of the table, his feathers puffed, a disconsolate droop to his tail, looking in a sad way at the abundance of things he could not eat, being too full. With the joy of Adam when he gave names to creatures that were brought before him, I promptly called this bird “Jake” after a boy about my size, one of a numerous and shiftless brood, whom I had brought most unexpectedly to our human table on Thanksgiving Day.

The table happened to be loaded, in the country fashion of that time, with every tasty or substantial thing that the farm provided, and Jake stuffed himself in a way to threaten famine. Turkey with cranberry sauce, sparerib with apple sauce, game potpie, mashed potatoes with cream, Hubbard squash with butter,—whatever was offered him vanished in fearful haste, and his eyes were fixed hungrily on something else. He said never a word; as I watched him, fascinated, he seemed to swell as he ate. Then came a great tray of plum pudding, with mince and pumpkin[21] pies flanked by raisins and fruit; and the waif sat appalled, his greasy cheeks puffed out, tears rolling down over them into his plate. “I can’t eat no puddin’; I—can’t—eat—no—pie!” he wailed; while we forgot all courtesy to our guest and howled at the comedy. Poor little chap! he had more hunger and less discretion than any wild thing I ever fed.

That was long ago, when I knew most of the birds without naming them, and when no one within my ken could have given me book names for the half of them had I cared to ask. It was the bird himself, not his ticket or his species, that always interested me.

Among the visitors was one gorgeous blue-and-white fellow, a jay, as I guessed at once, who puzzled me all winter. He always came most politely, and would light on the pear tree to whistle a pleasant too-loo-loo! a greeting it seemed, before he approached the table. I took to him at once, with his gay attire and gallant crest, and immediately he proved himself the most courteous guest at the feast. He invariably lit at some empty place; he would move aside for the smallest bird, with deference in his manner; when he took a morsel it was always with an air of “By your leave, sir,” which showed his breeding.

The puzzle was that other birds disdained this[22] handsome Chesterfield, refusing to have anything to do with him. Now and then, when he was most polite, some tiny sparrow would fly at his head or chivvy him angrily from the table; but for the most part they kept him at a distance until they had eaten, when they would move scornfully aside, leaving him to eat by himself. At first I thought they had bad tempers; but a child’s instinct is quick to measure any social situation, and when the jay had returned a few times I began to suspect that the fault was with him. Yes, surely there was something wrong, some pretense or imposture, in this fine fellow whom nobody trusted; but what?

The answer came in the spring, and was my own discovery. I am still more proud of it than of the time, years later, when I first touched a wild deer in the woods with my hand. Near my home was a woodsy dell with a brook singing through it, which I named “Bird Hollow” from the number of feathered folk that gathered or nested there. What attracted them I know not; perhaps the brook, with its shallows for bathing; or the perfect solitude of the place, for though cultivated fields lay about it, and from its edge a distant house could be seen, I never once met a human being there. It was just such a place as a child loves, because it is all his own, and because it is[23] sure to furnish something new or old every day of the year,—birds’ nests, wood for whistles, early woodcock, frogs for pickerel bait, pools for sailing a fleet of cucumber boats, a mink’s track, a rabbit’s form, an owl’s cavernous tree, a thousand interesting matters.

One morning I was at the Hollow alone, watching some nests at a time when mother birds chanced to be away for a hurried mouthful. Presently came my blue jay, and he seemed a different creature from the Chesterfield I had known. No more polite or gallant ways now; he fairly sneaked along, hiding, listening, like a boy sent to plunder a neighbor’s garden. Without knowing why, I felt suddenly ashamed of him.

Just over a catbird’s nest the jay stopped and called, but very softly. That was a “feeler,” I think, for at the call he pressed against the stem of a tree, as if to hide, and he stood alert, ready to flit at a moment’s notice. Then he dropped swiftly to the nest, drove his bill into it, and tip-tilted his head with a speared egg. A dribble of yellow ran down the corner of his mouth as he ate. He finished off two more eggs, and went straight as a bee to another nest, which I had not discovered. Evidently he knew where they all were. He speared an egg here, and was eating it when there came a rush of wings, the challenge of an excited[24] robin, and away went the jay screaming, “Thief! Thief!” at the top of his voice. A score of little birds came with angry cries to the robin’s challenge, and together they chased the nest-robber out of hearing.

And then I understood why the other guests had no patience with the jay’s comedy when he played the part of a fine fellow at the winter table. They knew him better than I did.

It was an experience, not a theory, of life that I sought in those early days, when nature spoke a language that I seemed to understand; and a host of experiences soon confirmed me in the belief that birds and beasts accept life, unconsciously perhaps, as a kind of game and play it to the end in a spirit of comedy. Later came the literature and alleged science of wild life, one filling the pleasant woods with tragedy, the other with a pitiless struggle for existence; but no sooner do I go out-of-doors to front life as it is than all such borrowed notions appear in their true light, the tragic stories as mere inventions, the scientific theories as bookish delusions.

The cheery lesson of the winter birds, for example, is one which I have since proved in many places, especially in the North, where I always spread a table for the birds before I dine at my[25] own. The typical table is a broad and bountiful affair, set just outside the window on the sunny side of camp; but sometimes, when I am following the wolf trails, it is only a bit of bark on the snow beside my midday fire.

When the halt comes, and the glow of snowshoeing is replaced by the chill of a zero wind, a fire is quickly kindled and a dipper of tea set to brew. Next comes the birds’ table with its sprinkling of crumbs, and hardly is one returned to the fire before Ch’geegee appears, calling blithely as he comes to share the feast. His summons invariably brings more chickadees, each with gray, warm coat and jaunty black cap; their eager voices attract other hungry ones, a woodpecker, a pair of Canada jays (they always go in pairs, as if expecting another ark), and a shy, elusive visitor who is no less welcome because you cannot name him in his winter garb. Suddenly from aloft comes a new call, very wild and sweet; there is a whirl of wings in the top of a spruce, where Little Far-to-go, as the Indians name him, calls halt to his troop of crossbills at sight of the fire and the gathering birds. A brief moment of rest, a babel of soft voices, another flurry of wings, and the crossbills are gone, speeding away into the far distance. Next to arrive are the nuthatches, a squirrel or two, and then—well, then you never[26] know who may answer your invitation. Before your feast ends you may learn two things: that these snow-filled woods shelter an abundant life, and that the life is invincibly cheerful.

So it happens that, though I have often been alone in the winter wilderness, I have never eaten a lonely meal there; always I have had guests, friendly, well-mannered little guests, and the pleasure they bring to the solitary man is beyond words. Very companionable it is, as one says grace over his bread and meat, to hear “Amen” from a score of pleasant voices making Thanksgiving of the homely fare. Warm as the radiance of the fire, soothing as the fragrance of a restful pipe, is the inner glow of satisfaction when one sees his guests linger awhile, gossiping over the unexpected, questioning the flame or the smoke, and anon turning up an inquisitive eye at the silent host from whose table they have just eaten. When I hear speaker or writer urging his audience to feed our winter birds because of their earthly or economic value, I find myself wondering why he does not emphasize the heavenly fun of the thing.

As I recall these many tables, spread in the snow at a season when, as we imagine, the pitiless struggle for existence is at its height, they all speak to strengthen the early impression of gladness, of good cheer, of a general spirit of play or[27] comedy among wild creatures. I have counted over sixty chickadees, woodpeckers, grouse, jays, squirrels and other wayfarers around the table beside my camp; but though some of these have their enmities in the nesting season, when jays and squirrels are overfond of eggs, it was still a lively and a happy company, because all the wood folk have an excellent way of ending an unpleasantness by forgetting it. They live wholly in the present, being too full of vitality to dwell in the past, and too carefree to burden life by carrying a grudge.

Some of these remembered guests came boldly to my table, some with the exquisite shyness born of the silent places; but all were natural at first, and therefore peaceable. Unlike our mannerless house sparrows, they fed very daintily for the most part, and would chatter pleasantly before going away, to return when they were again hungry; but now and then some graceless bird or squirrel would insist on having the biggest morsel, or might even try to drive others away while he made sure of it; and it was these exceptional individuals who caused whatever brief, unnatural bickerings I have chanced to witness.

I remember especially one nuthatch that visited my winter camp in Ontario; he was different from all others of his kind, even from my early acquaintance,[28] “Saryjane,” in that he seemed possessed of the notion that whatever I put out-doors in the way of food was his private property. He was always first at the table, arriving before the sun; and sometimes, when an angry chatter would break through my dawn dreams, I would go to the window to find him driving other early comers away from the relicts of yesterday’s abundance. “Food Baron” we dubbed him when some of his notions struck us as familiar and quite human.

As the sun rose, and more hungry birds appeared for the breakfast I always spread for them, the Baron would change his methods. Finding the hungry ones too many or too lively to be managed, he would proceed hurriedly to remove as much food as possible to a cache which he had somewhere back in the woods. In this individual whim of hiding food, as well as in his peculiar challenge, he was different from any other nuthatch I ever met. Returning from one of these hurried flights, he would perch a moment on a branch over the table, eye the feeding guests angrily, pick out one who was busy at a big morsel, and launch himself straight at the offender’s head. Deep in his throat sounded a terrifying chur-churr as he made his swoop.

The odd thing is that he always got the morsel he wanted. Though he often charged a jay or a[29] squirrel much bigger than himself, I never saw one that had the nerve to stand against his headlong rush. Being peaceable and a little timid, as all wild things naturally are, they dropped whatever they were eating and dodged aside; whereupon the nuthatch swept over the table like a fury, whirring his wings and crying, “Churr! Away with you! Vamoose!” which sent most of the little birds with startled peeps into the trees. Then, with the board cleared, he would drag off his morsel, hide it, and come back as quickly as he could to repeat his extraordinary performance.

How the other birds regarded him would be hard to tell. At times they seemed to get a bit of fun or excitement out of the game by slipping in to steal a mouthful while the Baron was chasing some luckless fellow who had claimed too big a crumb. At other times they would wait patiently in the trees, basking in the sunshine, till the trouble-maker was gone away to hide things, when they would come down and feed alertly. In this way they would soon get all they wanted for the time, and flit away to their own affairs. Another odd thing is that the Baron, after storing things without opposition for a few minutes, would tire of it and disappear, leaving plenty still on the table.

Occasionally in the woods one meets a bird that by some freak of heredity seems to have been[30] born without his proper instincts: a young wild goose sees his companions depart from the North, but feels no impulse to follow them, and remains to die in the winter snow; or a cow-bunting has no instinct to build a nest of her own, and makes a farce of life by leaving an egg here or there in some other bird’s household. Among the beasts it is the same story: a rare beaver has no instinct to build a house with his fellows, but lives by himself in a den in the bank; or some timid creature that has fled from you unnumbered times on a sudden upsets all your generalizations by showing the boldness of lunacy.

I remember one occasion when darkness and rain overtook me on the trail, and sent me to sleep in a deserted lumber camp; which is the most sleepless place on earth, I think, being full of creaks, groans, rustling porcupines, wild-eyed cats, spooks, mice, evil smells, and other distractions. Except in a downpour, any tree or bush offers more cheerful shelter. About the middle of the night I was awakened, or rather galvanized, by the impression that some creature was trying to get at me. In the black darkness of the place the very presence of the thing seemed to fill the whole shanty. I foolishly jumped up, charged with a yell, and ran bang into a huge, hairy object. There was a grunt, and a hasty, flaring match[31] showed the grotesque head of a cow-moose sticking into the open window. Having been scared stiff, I belted her away roughly; but hardly had I straightened my poor nerves in sleep when she came again, head, neck, shoulders, all she could crowd into the low doorway. I shooed her off, hastening her flight with clubs, ax heads, old moccasins, everything throwable that I could lay hands on; yet she lingered about the yard for an hour or two, and once more came snuffling with her camel’s nose at the window. How do I account for her? I don’t. You can say that she mistook me for her lost calf, and I shall not contradict you.

So this nuthatch, at odds with all his kind, may possibly have been born without the common instinct of sociability and decency. The other birds were sometimes seen watching him curiously, as they watch any other strange thing. Now and then one of them would resent some personal indignity by giving the greedy one tit for tat; but for the most part they seemed well content to keep aloof from the nuisance. They had enough to eat, with a little sauce of excitement, and I think they accepted the nuthatch as a harmless kind of lunatic.

[32]

FOX COMEDY

THOUGH my early impressions of wild life were mostly heart-warming, one thing always troubled me, and that was the clamor of a pack of hounds running a fox to death. There were fox hunters in the neighborhood; I had shivered at stories of men who had been chased by wolves, and whenever I heard the winter woods ringing to dog voices I pictured the poor fox as running desperately for his life, with terror lifting his heels or tugging at his heart. I could see no comedy in that picture, probably because, never having witnessed a fox chase, I was viewing it with my imagination rather than with my eyes.

There came a day when the hounds were out in full cry, and I was in the snowy woods alone. For some time I had heard dogs in the distance, and when a louder clamor came on the breath[33] of the wind I hid beside a hemlock fronting a stream, all eyes and ears for whatever might befall. Presently came the fox, the hunted beast, and my first glimpse of him was reassuring. He was moving easily, confidently, his beautiful fur fluffed out as if each individual hair were alive, his great brush floating like a plume behind him. There was no sign of terror, no evidence of haste in his graceful action. Though he could run like a red streak, as I well knew, having watched fox cubs playing outside their den, he was now trotting leisurely on his way, stopping often to listen or to sniff the air, while far behind him the heavy-footed hounds were wailing their hearts out over a tangled trail.

So Eleemos came to the water and ran lightly beside it, heading downstream, taking in the possibilities of the situation with cunning glances of his bright eyes. The water was low; above it showed the heads of many rocks, from which the sun had melted all the snow, leaving dry spots that would hold no scent. Suddenly a beautiful jump landed Eleemos on a flat rock well out from shore; without losing momentum he turned and went flying upstream, leaping from rock to rock, till he was twenty yards above where he had first approached the water, and a broad stretch called halt to his rush. Again without losing speed, he whirled in[34] to my side, leaped ashore, flashed up through the woods, and scrambled to the top of a ledge, where he could overlook his trail. When I saw him stretch himself comfortably in the sunshine, as if for a nap, and when, as the hounds came pounding into sight, he lifted his head to cock his ears and wrinkle his eyebrows at the lunatic beasts that were yelling up and down a peaceful world, trying to find out where or how he had crossed the stream—well, then and there I put imagination aside, and concluded that perhaps the fox was getting more fun out of the chase than any of the dogs. He had this advantage, moreover, that whenever he wearied of the play he had only to slip into the nearest ledge or den to make a safe end of it.

Another day when I was roaming the woods I heard in the distance the melodious voice of Old Roby, best of all possible foxhounds. It was a springlike morning, with melting snow; and Roby, thinking it an excellent time for smelling things, had pulled the collar over his head and gone off for a solitary hunt, as he often did. When his voice rose triumphant over a ridge and headed in my direction, I hurried to the edge of a wild meadow and stood against a big chestnut tree, waiting for the fox and growing more expectant that I should have a glimpse of him.

A short distance in front of me a cart-path came[35] winding down through the leafless woods. Where this path entered the meadow was a dry ditch; over the ditch was a bridge of slabwood, and some loaded wagon had recently broken through it, crushing the slabs on one side down into the earth. On that side, therefore, the ditch was closed; but on the other side it appeared as a dark tunnel, hardly a foot high and three or four times as long,—an excellent refuge for any beastie that cared to shelter therein, since it was too low for a hound to enter bodily, and if he thrust his head in too far, the beastie would have a fine chance to teach him manners by nipping his nose.

I had waited but a few minutes when down the cart-path came the fox, running fast but not easily. One could see that at a glance. The soft snow made hard going; as he plunged into it, moisture got into his great brush, making it heavy, so that it no longer floated like a gallant plume. A gray fox would have taken to earth within a few minutes of the start, and now even this fleet red fox had run as far as he cared to go under such circumstances. At sight of the open meadow he put on speed, flying gloriously down the hill. One jump landed him fair in the middle of the bridge; a marvelous side spring carried him into the ditch, and with a final wave of his brush he disappeared into the tunnel.

[36]A little later Old Roby hove into sight, singing ough! ough! oooooooh! in jubilation of the melancholy joy he followed. Clean over the bridge he went, head up, picking the rich scent from the air rather than from the ground, and took three or four jumps into the meadow before he discovered that the fox was no longer ahead of him. Then he came out of his trance, circled over the bridge, poked his nose into the tunnel. There before his bulging eyes was the fox, and in his nostrils was a reek to drive any foxhound crazy. “Ow-wow! here’s the villain at last! And, woooo! what won’t I do to him!” yelled Roby, pulling out his head and lifting it over the edge of the bridge for a mighty howl of exultation. Again he thrust his nose into the tunnel and began to dig furiously; but the sight of the fox, so near, so reeky, so surely caught at last, set the old dog’s heart leaping and his tongue a-clamoring. Every other minute he would stop digging, back out of the tunnel for room, for air, and lifting his head over the bridge send up to heaven another jubilation.

Now Roby was bow-legged, as many foxhounds are that run too young; also he was apt to spread his feet as he howled, so that there was plenty of room to pass under him, and when his head was lifted up for joy he could see nothing but the sky. He had been alternately digging and celebrating[37] for some time, working his way farther under the bridge, when as he raised his head for another bowl of relief a flash of yellow passed between his bowlegs, out under his belly and up over the hill. The thing was done so boldly that it made one gasp, so quickly that a living streak seemed to be drawn through the woods; but the entranced old dog saw nothing of it. When he thrust his head confidently into the tunnel once more, there was no fox and no pungent odor of fox where landscape and smellscape had just been filled with foxiness.

Roby looked a second time and sniffed with a loud sniffing to be sure he was not dreaming. He looked all over the bridge, and sat down upon it. He examined the ditch on the other or closed side, and took a final squint into the tunnel; while every line and hair of him from furrowed face to ratty tail proclaimed that he considered himself the foolishest of all fool dogs that ever thought they could catch a fox. Then he shook his ears violently, as if ridding himself of hallucinations, and began to cast about methodically in circles. A fresh reek of fox poured into his nostrils, filling him with the old ecstasy; he threw up his head for a glad hoot, and went pounding up the hill after his nose, singing ough! ough! oooooh! as an epitome of all fox hunting.

[38]Whenever I heard the hounds after that, I pictured comedy afoot and followed it eagerly, still roaming alone in hope of meeting the fox, and making myself a nuisance to many a proper fox hunter who, waiting expectantly for a shot, heard the chase draw away and fell to cursing the luck or the mischief that had turned the fox from his runway. So it befell, one winter, that I saw Old Roby and a pack of hounds completely fooled by a fox that lay quietly watching them while they hunted and howled for his lost trail.

The place was a deep gully in some big woods. Its sides were covered with a mat of vines and bushes; at the bottom ran a stream, too broad to jump and too swift to freeze even in severe weather. Several times an old fox had been “lost” here, his trail leading straight to the gully, and vanishing as completely as if the river had swallowed him up. He was frequently started in some rugged hills to the westward, and would commonly play back and forth from one ridge to another till he wearied of the game, or till he met a hunter and felt the sting of shot on a runway, when he would break away eastward at top speed. For a mile or more his course could be traced by the hounds giving tongue on a hot scent until they reached the gully, where their steady trail-cry changed to howls of vexation. And that was the end of the[39] chase for that day, unless the weary dogs had ambition enough to hunt up another fox.

At first it was assumed that the game had run into a ledge, as red foxes do when they are fagged or wounded; but when hunters followed their baffled dogs time and again, they always found them running wildly up and down both banks of the stream, looking for a trail which they never found. Then some said that the fox had a secret den, which he approached by running over a tangle of vines where the hounds could not follow; but one old hunter, who had chased foxes for half a century, settled the matter briefly. “My dogs,” he said, “can follow anything that runs above ground. They can’t follow this fox. Therefore he takes to water, like a buck, and swims so far downstream that we never find where he comes out.” Though nobody had ever seen a fox take to water, a man who has followed foxes half a century is ready to believe almost anything within reason.

On stormy nights the hunters would forgather at the village store, and whenever the talk turned to the old fox of the gully I was all ears. I knew the place well, and wondered why some Nimrod, instead of merely shooting foxes or theorizing about them, did not take the simplest means of solving the mystery; but it would have been foolhardy in that veteran company to venture a new[40] opinion on the ancient sport of fox hunting. I remember once, when they were swapping yarns, of breaking rashly into the conversation to tell of a fox I had seen at a lucky moment when he did not see me. He was nosing along the edge of a wood, and I threw a chunk of wood after him as he moved away. It missed him by a foot, and he pounced upon it like a flash as it went bouncing among the dead leaves.

Now that was perhaps the most natural thing for any hungry fox to do, to catch a thing which ran away, instead of asking where it came from; but the veterans received the tale in grim silence. One told me that I had surely seen a “sidehill garger”; another wished he could have seen it, too; the rest pestered me unmercifully about the beast all winter. One of them is now in his dotage; but he never meets me without asking, “Son, did that ’ere fox really run arter that chunk of wood you hove at him?” And when I answer, “Yes, he did, and caught it,” he says, “Well, well, well!” in a way to indicate that he has been straining at that gnat for forty years. Heaven only knows how many fox-hunting camels he has swallowed in the interim.

One Saturday morning (a glorious day it was, with all signs pointing to a good fox run) I went early to the gully, crossed it, and hid where I had[41] a view up or down the stream. Several times during the day I heard hounds in the offing, but the chase did not head in my direction. When the winter sunset came, and an owl began to hoot in the darkening woods, it was time for a hungry boy to go home.

The next time I had better luck. From some hills far away the hoot of hounds came clear and sweet through the still air; then the flat report of a gun, a brief silence, a renewed clamor, and my ears began to tingle as the hunt drew my way, louder and louder. Suddenly there was a flash of ruddy color, warm and brilliant on the snow; the fox appeared on the farther side of the gully, slipped over the edge at a slow trot, and disappeared among the vines.

I was watching the stream keenly when the same flash of color caught my eye, again on the other side, but some fifty yards above where the fox had vanished. He bounded lightly up the steep bank, sprang to the level above, listened a moment to the dogs, ran along the edge a short distance, dropped down into the vines, came up quickly, and scuttled back again in another place. There were fleeting glimpses of orange fur as he dodged here or there, now near the stream, now among the thickest vines; then he tiptoed up and stood alert in the open, at the precise spot, apparently,[42] where he had first entered the gully. After cocking his ears once more at the increasing clamor of hounds, he headed back toward them into the woods; and I had the impression that he was carefully stepping in his own footprints, back-tracking, as many hunted creatures do. So he went, cat-footedly at first, then in swift jumps, till he came to a huge tree that had been twisted off by a gale, leaving a slanting stub some fifteen feet high. Here Eleemos took a flying leap at the stub, scrambled up it with almost the ease of a squirrel, and disappeared into the top.

The hounds were by this time close at hand. A wild burst of music preceded them as they rushed into sight, heads up, giving tongue at every jump, and followed the hot trail headlong over the gully’s edge into the vines. Evidently the fox had run about most liberally there; in a moment the bounds were tangled in a pretty crisscross, lost all sense of direction, and broke out in lamentation. Most of them went threshing about the gully till the delicate fox trail was covered by a maze of dog tracks; but one old fellow, who had been through the same mill before, lay down in an open spot and rolled about on his back, his feet in the air, as if to say, “Well, here’s the end of this chase.” Another veteran with furrowed face and a deep, sad voice (it was Roby again), managed to[43] nose out half the puzzle, for he came creeping up over the edge of the gully at the point where the fox had first leaped out; but there he ran up and down, up and down, finding plenty of fresh scent everywhere without being able to follow it to any end except the empty vines. Another hound, a youngster with a notion in his head that anything which runs must go ahead, plunged into the stream, swam it, and went casting about the woods on the farther side.

Meanwhile there was a stir, the ghost of a motion, in the leaning stub. Over the top of it came two furry ears, then a pointed nose and a bright yellow eye. The fox was there, watching every play of the game with intense interest; and in his cocked ears, his inquisitive nose, his wrinkling eyebrows, were the same lively expressions that you see in the face of a fox when he is hunting mice, and thinks he hears one rustling about in the frozen grass.

[44]

PLAYERS IN SABLE

IN severe weather, when snow lay deep on the silent fields, a few crows would enter the yard in view of my birds’ table, sitting aloof in trees where they could view the feast, but making no attempt to join it. I did not then know that crows are nest-robbers, like the jay, or that the smallest bird at the table was ready to bristle his feathers if one of the black bandits approached too near.

For several days, while the crows grew pinched, I waited expectantly for hunger to tame them, only to learn that a crow never ventures into a flock of smaller birds, being absurdly afraid of their quickness of wing and temper. Then, because any hungry thing always appealed to me, I spread a variety of food, scraps of meat and the[45] entrails of fish or fowl, on a special table at a distance; but the crows would not go near it, probably thinking it some new device to insnare them. They have waged a long battle with the farmer, and the battle has bred in them a suspicion that not even hunger can heal. As a last resort, I scattered food carelessly on the snow, and within the hour the hungry fellows were eating it. Their first meal was a revelation to me; no gobbling or quarreling, but a stately and courteous affair of very fine manners. Nor have I ever seen a crow do anything to belie that first impression.

Among the scraps was some field corn, dry and hard from the crib; but the canny birds knew too much to swallow the grain whole, ravenous though they were. Green or soft corn they will eat with gusto, but ripened field corn calls for proper treatment. Each crow would take a single kernel (never more than that at one time) to a flat rock on the nearest wall, and there, holding the kernel between the toes of a foot, would strike it a powerful blow with his pointed beak. I used to tremble for his toes, remembering my own experience with hammer or hatchet; but every crow proved himself a good shot. Occasionally a descending beak might glance from the outer edge of a kernel, sending it spinning out from under the crow’s foot; whereupon he hopped nimbly after it and[46] brought it back to the block. After a trial or two he would hit it squarely in the “eye”; it would fly into bits, and he would gather up every morsel before going back for a fresh supply.

Once when a hungry crow splintered a kernel in this way, I saw a piece fly to the feet of another crow, who bent his head to eat it as the owner came running up. The two bandits bumped together; but instead of fighting over the titbit, as I expected, they drew back quickly with a sense of “Oh, excuse me!” in their nodding heads and half-spread wings. Then they went through a little comedy of manners, “After you, my dear Alphonse” or “You first, my dear Gaston,” till they settled the order of precedence in some way of their own, when the owner ate his morsel and went back to the wall to find the rest of the fragments.

Watching these crows, with their sable dress and stately manners, it was hard to imagine them off their dignity; but I soon learned that they are rare comedians, that they spend more time in play or mere fooling than any other wild creature of my acquaintance, excepting only the otters. I have repeatedly watched them play games, somewhat similar in outward appearance to games that boys used to play in country school yards, and once I witnessed what seemed to be a good crow joke.[47] Indeed, so sociable are they, so dependent on one another for amusement, that a solitary crow is a great rarity at any season. Twice have I seen a white crow (an albino), but never a crow living by himself.

The joke, or what looked like a joke, occurred when I was a small boy. I was eating my lunch in a shady spot at the edge of a berry pasture when a young crow appeared silently in a pine tree, only a few yards away. A deformed tree it was, with a splintered top. In the distance a flock of crows were calling idly, and the youngster seemed to cock his ears to listen. Presently he set up a distressed wailing, which the flock answered on the instant. When a flurry of wings leaped into sight above the trees, the youngster dodged into the splintered pine, and remained there while a score of his fellows swept back and forth over him, and then went to search a grove of pines beyond. When they flew back across the berry pasture, and only an occasional haw came from the distance, the young crow came out and set up another wail; and again the flock went clamoring all over the place without finding where he was hidden.

The play ended in an uproar, as such affairs commonly end among the crows; but whether the uproar spelled anger or hilarity would be hard to tell. The youngster had called and hidden several[48] times; each time the flock returned in great excitement, circled over the neighborhood, and straggled back to the place whence they had come. Then one crow must have hidden and watched, I think, for he came with a rush behind the youngster, and caught him in the midst of his wailing. A sharp signal brought the flock straight to the spot, and with riotous haw-hawing they chased the joker out of sight and hearing.

It was this little comedy which taught me how easily crows can be called, and I began to have no end of fun with them. In the spring when they were mating, or in autumn when immense flocks gathered in preparation for sending the greater part of their number to the seacoast for winter, I had only to hide and imitate the distressed call I had heard, and presto! a flock of excited crows would be clamoring over my head. Yet I noticed this peculiarity: at times every crow within hearing would come to my first summons; while at other times they would bide in their trees or hold steadily on their way, answering my call, but paying no further attention to it. I mark that crows still act in the same puzzling way, now coming instantly, again holding aloof; but what causes one or the other action, aside from mere curiosity, I have never learned. In the northern wilderness, where crows are comparatively scarce,[49] it is almost impossible to call them at any season. They live there in small family groups, each holding its own bit of territory; and apparently they know each voice so perfectly that they recognize my imposture on the instant.

Whenever the “civilized” crows found me, after hearing my invitation, they rarely seemed to associate me with the crow talk they had just heard; for they would go searching elsewhere, and would readily come to my call in another part of the wood. If I were well concealed, and they found nothing to account for the disturbance, most of the flock would go about their affairs; but some were almost sure to wait near at hand for hours, apparently standing guard over the place where I had been calling.

Once at midday I called a large flock to a thicket of scrub pine, and resolved to see the end of the adventure. Though they circled over me again and again, they learned nothing; for I kept well hidden, and a crow will not enter thick scrub where he cannot use his wings freely. Late in the afternoon it set in to rain, and I thought that the crows were all gone away, since they paid no more attention to my calling; but the first thing I saw when my head came out of the scrub was a solitary crow on guard. He was on the tip of a hickory tree, hunched up in the rain, and he gave one derisive[50] haw as I appeared. From behind came an answering haw, and I had a glimpse of another crow that had evidently been keeping watch over the other side of the thicket.

Next I discovered that my dignified crows are always ready for fun at the expense of other birds or beasts, and especially do they make holiday of an owl whenever they have the luck to find one asleep for the day. To wake him up, berate him, and follow him with peace-shattering clamor from one retreat to another, seems to furnish them unfailing entertainment. I have watched them many times when they were pestering an owl or a hawk or a running fox, and once I saw them square themselves for all the indignity they had suffered at the beaks of little birds by paying it back with interest to a bald eagle. These last were certainly making a picnic of their rare occasion; never again have I seen crows so crazily happy, or a free eagle so helpless and so furious.

It was on the shore of a river, near the sea, in midwinter. The eagle may have come down to earth after a dead fish, unmindful of crows that were ranging about; but I think it more likely that they had cornered him in an unguarded moment, as they are themselves often cornered by sparrows or robins. Have you seen a crowd of small birds chivvy a crow that they catch in[51] the open, whirling about his slow flight till they drive him to cover and sit around him, scolding him violently for all the nests he has robbed; while he cowers in the middle of the angry circle, very uncomfortable where he is, but afraid to move lest he bring another tempest around his ears? That is how the lordly eagle now stood on the open shore, twisting his head uneasily, his eyes flashing impotent fury. Around him in a jubilant circle were half-a-hundred crows, some watchfully silent, some jeering; and behind him on a rock perched one glossy old bandit, his head cocked for trouble, his eye shining. “Oh, if I could only grip some of you!” said the eagle. “If I could only get these” (working his great claws) “into your black hides! If I could once get aloft, where I could use my—”

He crouched suddenly and sprang, his broad wings threshing heavily. “Haw! haw! To him, my bullies!” yelled the old crow on the rock, hurling himself into the air, shooting over the eagle and ripping a white feather from the royal neck. In a flash the whole rabble was over and around the laboring lord of the air, pecking at his head, interfering with his flight, making a din to crack his ears. He stood it for a turbulent moment, then dropped, and the jeering circle closed around him instantly. He was a thousand[52] times more powerful, more dangerous than any crow; but they were smaller and quicker than he, and they knew it, and he knew it. That was the comedy of what might have been imagined a tragical situation.

Twice, while I watched, the eagle tried to escape, and twice the crows chivvied him down to earth, the only place where he is impotent. Then he gave up all thought of the blue sky and freedom, standing majestically on his dignity, his eyes half closed, as if the sight of such puny babblers wearied him. But under the narrowed lids was a fierce gleam that kept his tormentors at a safe distance. Then a man with a gun blundered upon the stage, and spoiled the play.

One day, as I watched a crowd of crows yelling themselves hoarse over an owl, an idea fell upon me with the freshness, the delight of inspiration. In the barn was a dilapidated stuffed owl, once known in the house as Bunsby, which had been gathering dust for many seasons. Somehow, for some occult reason, people never throw a stuffed bird on the rubbish heap, where it belongs; when they can stand its ugliness no longer, they store it away in barn or attic till they can give it as a precious thing to some beaming naturalist. Bunsby was in this unappreciated stage when I rescued him. With some filched hairpins I poked him[53] together, so as to make him more presentable; gave him a glass eye, the only one I could find, and sewed up the other in a grotesque wink. Then I perched him in the woods, where the crows, coming blithely to my call, proceeded to give him a hazing.

Thereafter, when I heard crows playing, I sometimes used Bunsby to raise a terrible pother among them. By twos or threes they would come streaming in from all directions till the trees were full of them, all vociferating at once, hurling advice at one another or insults at the solemn caricature. Once a more venturesome crow struck a blow with his wing as he shot past (an accident, I think), which knocked Bunsby from his upright balance and dignity. He was an absurd figure at any time, and now with one wing flapping and one foot in the air he was clean ridiculous; but the crows evidently thought they had him groggy at last, and let loose a tumult of whooping.

Another day, when some clamoring crows would pay no attention to my call, I stole through the woods in their direction till I reached the edge of an upland pasture, where a score of the birds were deeply intent on some affair of their own. On the ground, holding the center of the stage, was a small crow that either could not or would not fly, and was acting very queerly. At times he would[54] stand drooping, while a circle of crows waited for his next move in profound silence. After keeping them expectant awhile, he would stretch his neck and say, ker-aw! kerrrr-aw! an odd call, like the cry of a rooster when he spies a hawk, such as I had never before heard from a crow. Instantly from the waiting circle a crow would step briskly up to the invalid, if such he was, and feel him all over, rubbing a beak down from shoulder to tail and going around to repeat on the other side. This rubbing, or whatever it was, would last several seconds, while not a sound was heard; then the investigator would fly to a cedar bush and begin a violent harangue, bobbing his head and striking the branches as he talked. The other crows would apparently listen, then break out in what seemed noisy approval or opposition, and fly wildly about the field. After circling for a time, their tongues clamorous, they would gather around the odd one on the ground, hush their jabber, and the silent play or investigation would begin all over again.

Whether this were another comedy or something deeper I cannot say. Crows do not act in this noisy, aimless way when they find a wounded member of the flock. I have watched them when they gathered to a wing-broken or dying crow, and while some perched silent in the trees a few[55] others were beside the stricken one, seemingly trying to find out what he wanted. An element of play is suggested by the fact that, when I showed myself, the small crow on the ground flew away with the others. Moreover, I have repeatedly seen crows go through a somewhat similar performance, with alternate silence and yelling, when they were listening to a performer, as I judge, who was clucking or barking or making some other sound that crows ordinarily cannot make. As you may learn by keeping tame crows, a few of these sable comedians have ability to imitate other birds or beasts. I have heard from them, early and late, a variety of calls from a deep whistle to a gruff bark, and have noticed that, when one of the mimics chances to display his gift in the woods, he has what appears to be a circle of applauding crows close about him.

On the other hand, I once saw a pack of wolves on the ice of a northern lake acting in a way which strongly reminded me of the crows in the upland pasture; and these wolves were certainly not playing or fooling. One of the pack had just been hit by a bullet, which came at long range from a hidden rifle, against a wind that blew all sound of the report away, and the wounded brute did not know what was suddenly the matter with him. When he was silent, the other wolves would watch[56] or follow him in silence. When he raised his head to whine, as he several times did, instantly a wolf or two would come close to nose him all over, and then all the wolves would run about with muzzles lifted to the sky in wild howling.

[57]

WOLVES AND WOLF TALES

THERE must be something in a wolf which appeals powerfully to the imagination; otherwise there would be no proper wolf stories. You shall understand that “something” if ever you are alone in the winter woods at night, and suddenly from the trail behind you comes a wolf outcry, savage and exultant. There is really no more danger in such a cry than in the clamor of dogs that bay the moon; but, whether it be due to the shadow-filled woods or the remembrance of old nursery tales or the terrible voice of the beast, no sooner does that fierce howling shake your ears than your imagination stirs wildly, your heels also, unless you put a brake on them.

Therefore it befalls, whenever I venture to say, that wolves do not chase men, that some fellow[58] appears with a story to contradict me. Indeed, I contradict myself after a fashion, for I was once rushed by a pack of timber wolves; but that was pure comedy in the end, while the man with a wolf tale always makes a near-tragedy of it. Like this, from a friend who once escaped by the skin of his teeth from a wolf pack:

“It happened out in Minnesota one winter, when I was a boy. The season was fearfully bitter, and the cold had brought down from the north a pest of wolves, big, savage brutes that killed the settlers’ stock whenever they had a chance. We often heard them at night, and it was hard to say whether we were more scared when we heard them howling through the woods or when we didn’t hear them, but knew they were about. Nobody ventured far from the house after dark that winter, I can tell you; not unless he had to.”

Here, though I am following my friend intently, I must jot down a mental note that all good wolf stories are born of just such an atmosphere. They are like trout eggs, which hatch only in chilly water. But let the tale go on:

“Well, father and I were delayed by a broken sled one afternoon, and it was getting dusky when we started on our way home. And a mighty lonely way it was, with nothing but woods, snow, frozen ponds, and one deserted shack on the ten-mile[59] road. This winter road ran five or six miles through solid forest; then to save rough going it cut across a lake and through a smaller patch of woods, coming out by the clearing where our farm was. I remember vividly the night, so still, so moonlit, so killing-cold. I can hear the sled runners squealing in the snow, and see the horses’ breath in spurts of white rime.

“We came through the first woods all right, hurrying as much as we dared with a light load, and were slipping easily over the ice of the lake when—Woooo! a wolf howled like a lost soul in the woods behind us. I pricked up my ears at that; so did the horses; but before we could catch breath there came an uproar that bristled the hair under our caps. It sounded as if a hundred wolves were yelling all at once; they were right on our trail, and they were coming.

“Father gave just one look behind; then he lashed the horses. They were nervous, and they jumped in the traces, jerking the sled along at a gallop. Only speed and marvelous good luck kept us from upsetting; for there was no pole to steady the sled, only tugs and loose chains, and it slithered over the bare spots like a mad thing. Flying lumps of ice from the horses’ hoofs blinded or half stunned us; all the while we could hear a devilish uproar coming nearer and nearer.

[60]“That rush over the ice was hair-raising enough, but worse was waiting for us on the rough trail. We were dreading it; at least I was, for I knew the horses could never keep up the pace, when we hit the shore of the lake, and hit it foul. The sled jumped in the air and came bang-up against a stump, splintering a runner. I was pitched off on my head; but father flew out like a cat and landed at the horses’ bridles. He had his hands full, too. Before I was on my feet I heard him shouting, ‘Where are you, son? Unhitch! unhitch!’ Almost as quick as I can tell it we had freed the horses, leaped for their backs, and started up the road on the dead run. I was ahead, father pounding along behind, and behind him the howling.

“So we tore out of the woods into the clearing, smashed through the bars, and reached the barn all blowing. There I slid off to swing the door open; but I didn’t have sense enough left to get out of the way of it. My horse was crazy with fright; hardly had I started the door when he bolted against it and knocked me flat. At his heels came father on the jump, and whisked through the doorway, thinking me safe inside. That is the moment which comes back to me most keenly, the moment when he disappeared, and my heart went down with a horrible sinking. The thought of being left out there alone fairly paralyzed[61] me for a moment; then I yelled like a loon, and father came out faster than he went in. He picked me up like a sack, ran into the barn, and slammed the door to. ‘Safe, boy, safe!’ was all he said; but his voice had a queer crack when he said it.

“Then we realized, all of a sudden, that the wolves had quit their howling. Inside the barn we could hear the horses wheezing; outside, the world and everything in it was dead-still. Somehow that awful stillness scared us worse than the noise; we could feel the brutes coming at us from all sides. After watching through a window and listening at cracks for a while, we made a break for the house, and got there before the wolves could catch us.”

I have given only the outline and atmosphere of this wolf story, and it is really too bad to spoil it so; for as my friend tells it, with vivid or picturesque detail, it is very thrilling and all true so far as it goes. After showing my appreciation by letting the tale soak into me, I venture to ask, “Did you see any wolves that night?”

“No,” he says, frankly, “I didn’t, and I didn’t want to. The howling was plenty for me.”

And there you have it, a right good wolf story with everything properly in it except the wolves. There were no wolf tracks about the sled when[62] father and son went back with guns in hand next morning; but there were numerous fresh signs in the distant woods, and these with the howling were enough to convince any reasonable imagination that only the speed of two good horses saved two good men from death or mutilation.

Another friend of mine, a mining engineer in Alaska, is also quite sure that wolves may be dangerous, and in support of this opinion he quotes a personal experience. He went astray in a snowstorm one fall afternoon, and it was growing dark when he sighted a familiar ridge, beyond which was his camp. He was hurrying along silently, as a man goes after nightfall, and had reached a natural opening with evergreens standing thickly all about, when a terrific howling of wolves broke out on a hillside behind him.

The sudden clamor scared him stiff. He listened a moment, his heart thumping as he remembered all the wolf stories he had ever heard; then he started to run, but stopped to listen again. The howling changed to an eager whimper; it came rapidly on, and thinking himself as good as a dead man he jumped for a spruce, and climbed it almost to the top. Hardly was he hidden when a pack of wolves, dark and terrible looking, swept into the open and ran all over it with their noses out, sniffing, sniffing. Suspicion was in every[63] movement, and to the watcher in the tree the suspicion seemed to point mostly in his direction.

Presently a wolf yelped, and began scratching at a pile of litter on the edge of a thicket. The pack joined him at his digging, dragged out a carcass of some kind from where they had covered it, ate what they wanted, and slipped away into the woods. But once, at some vague alarm, they all stopped eating while two of the largest wolves came slowly across the opening, heads up and muzzles working, like pointers with the scent of game in their nose. And then my friend thought surely that his last night on earth had come, that the ferocious brutes would discover him and hold him on his perch till he fell from cold or exhaustion. Which shows that he, too, gets his notions of a wolf from the story books.

By northern camp fires I have listened to many other wolf tales; but these two seem to me the most typical, having one element of undoubted truth, and another of unbridled imagination. That wolves howl at night with a clamor that is startling to an unhoused man; that when pinched by hunger they grow bold, like other beasts; that they have a little of the dog’s curiosity, and much of the dog’s tendency to run after anything that runs away,—all that is natural and wolflike; but that they will ever chase a man, knowing that he is a[64] man, seems very doubtful to one who had always found the wolf to be as wary as any eagle, and even more difficult of approach. In a word, one’s experience of the natural wolf is sure to run counter to all the wolf stories.

For example, if you surprise a pack of wolves (rarely do they let themselves be seen, night or day), they vanish slyly or haltingly or in a headlong rush, according to the fashion of your approach; but if ever they surprise you in a quiet moment, you have a rare chance to see a fascinating bit of animal nature. The older wolves, after one keen look, pass on as if you did not exist, and pretend to be indifferent so long as you are in sight; after which they run like a scared bear for a mile or two, as you may learn by following their tracks. Meanwhile some young wolf is almost sure to take the part that a fox plays in similar circumstances. He studies you intently, puzzled by your quietness, till he thinks he is mistaken or has the wrong angle on you; then he disappears, and you are wondering where he has gone when his nose is pushed cautiously from behind a bush. Learning nothing there he draws back, and now you must not move or even turn your head while he goes to have a look at you from the rear. When you see him again he will be on the other flank; for he will not leave this interesting new thing till[65] he has nosed it out from all sides. And to frighten him at such a time, or to let him frighten you, is to miss all that is worth seeing.

Again, our northern wolf is like a dog in that he has many idle moments when he wishes something would happen, and in such moments he would rather have a bit of excitement than a bellyful of meat. During the winter he lives with his pack, as a rule, following a simple and fairly regular routine. At dusk the wolves stir themselves, and often howl a bit; then they hunt and eat their one daily meal, after which they roam idly over a wide territory, nosing into all sorts of places, but holding a general direction toward their next hunting ground; for they rarely harry the same covert two nights in succession. Before sunrise they have settled on a good place to rest for the day; and it has happened, on the few occasions when I have had time or breath enough to trail wolves to their day bed, that I have always found them in a sightly spot, where they could look down on a lake or a wide stretch of country.

If from such a place of rest and observation the wolves see you passing through their solitude, some of them are apt to follow you at a distance, keeping carefully out of sight, till they find out who you are or what you are doing. Should you pass near their day bed without being seen or[66] heard, they will surely discover that fact when they begin to hunt at nightfall; and then a wolf, a young wolf especially, will raise a great howl when he runs across your snowshoe trail; not a savage or ferocious howl, so far as I can understand it, but a howl with wonder in it, and also some excitement. It is as if the wolf that found the trail were saying, “Come hither, all noses! Here’s something new, something that you or I never smelled before. Woooo-ow-ow-ow! what’s all this now?” And if the pack be made up mostly of young wolves, you shall hear a wild chorus as they debate the matter of the trail you have just left behind you.

Such an impression, of harmless animal excitement rather than of ferocity, must surely be strengthened when you follow it up confidently with an open mind. If instead of running away when you hear wolves on your trail you steal back to meet them, the situation and the consequent story will change completely. In some subtle way the brutes seem to read your intention before you come within sight of them. They may be ready to investigate you, but have no notion of being themselves investigated; they melt away like shadows among deeper shadows, and you are at a loss to know where they are even while their keen noses are telling them all about you.

[67]The European wolf, if one may judge him by a slight acquaintance, is essentially like our timber wolf; but his natural timidity has been modified by frequent famines, and especially by dwelling near unarmed peasant folk who are mortally afraid of him. In the summer he lives shyly in the solitudes, where he finds enough mice, grubs, and such small deer to satisfy his appetite. In winter he is always hungry, and when hunger approaches the starvation point he descends from his stronghold to raid the farms. A very little of his raiding starts a veritable reign of terror; every man, woman or child whom he meets runs away, and presently he becomes bold or even dangerous. At least, I can fancy him to be dangerous, having been in an Italian village when a severe winter brought wolves down from the mountains, and when terrified villagers related specific and horrible instances of wolf ferocity. Whenever I searched for the brutes the natives would advise or implore me not to venture into the forest alone. The rural guards kept themselves carefully housed at night, and a single guard, though armed with a rifle, would not enter the woods or cross open country even by daylight for fear of meeting the wolf pack.

It was hard for a stranger to decide whether such terrors came from bitter experience, or[68] whether, like our own fear of the wolf, they were the product of a lively imagination; but one was soon forced to the conclusion that where was so much smoke there must be some fire also. Moreover, as evidence of the fire, I found some official records which indicate that the European wolf may be so crazed by hunger as to kill and eat human beings. Such records inevitably pass into fireside tales, repeated, enlarged, embellished, and thereafter the wolf’s character is blackened forever. He is naturally a timid beast; but his one evil deed, done in a moment of hunger, becomes typical of a ferocious disposition. For, say what you will, the common man’s most lasting impressions of the world are not reasonable, but imaginative; they come not from observation, but from tales heard in childhood. That is perhaps the reason why Indians, in dealing with their children, always represent nature and nature’s beasts as peaceable and friendly.

Our pioneers brought many harrowing wolf tales with them to the New World, and promptly applied them to the timber wolf, a more powerful beast than his European relative, but wholly guiltless, I think, of the charge of eating human flesh even in a season of famine. Neither in our own country nor in Canada, so far as I can learn by searching, is there a single trustworthy record to[69] indicate that our wolves have ever killed a man. Yet the tale is against them, and the consequence is, when a belated traveler hears a clamor in the darkening woods, that ferocity gets into his imagination and terror into his heels; he starts on a hatless run for shelter, and appears with another blood-curdling story of escape from a ravening pack of wolves.

In all such stories certain traits appear to betray a common and romantic origin. Thus, the imaginary pack always terrifies you by reason of its numbers; scores of grim shapes flit through shadowy woods or draw a circle of green eyes to flash back the firelight. The real pack is invariably small, since it consists of a single wolf family. The mother wolf leads; the dog wolf is in the same neighborhood, but commonly hunts by himself; with the mother go her last litter of cubs and a few grown wolves of a former litter that have not yet found their mates. From five to eight wolves make the ordinary pack. Where game is plentiful (leading to large wolf families) ten or twelve may occasionally follow the mother; but such a large pack is exceptional, even in winter. In the subarctic region, where uncounted caribou move north in spring or south in autumn, several different packs hang about the flanks of the migrating herds; but never at such times[70] do the wolves unite or mass, and being well fed with the best of venison they are uncommonly peaceable.

Another romantic trait of the terrible packs of the tale is that they always howl when they charge home. It is one of the marked characteristics of the real wolf that he is silent when stalking or running down game of any kind. His howling has nothing to do with his hunting, being reserved for social or other occasions; he wastes no breath in noise, as hounds do, when he means to overtake anything. Indeed, one of the most uncanny qualities of a wolf is the fleet, soundless, mysterious way he has of appearing where he is least expected. In the northern wilderness this is the typical way of it:

You are swinging along campward, following your lonely snowshoe trail over ice-locked waters, through snow-filled woods, when there comes a vague change or chill in the air. It is the moment when we say that night is falling, when gray shadows rise from the lake to meet other shadows flowing down from the hills; and that is the moment when you can count most surely on hearing the first howl of a stirring wolf. It is a creepy sound in such a place or moment, especially when it is followed by the clamor of a pack, a cry that carries far over the silent places, and that may[71] come from the hills on either side or from the trail behind you. However far away it may be, there is always a menace in the wolf’s challenge; your nerves tingle as you stop to listen.

If you believe your imagination now, the fierce outcry grows louder, sweeps nearer; but if you trust your ears, you will know that it remains stationary, dying away where it began. Those noisy brutes are only proclaiming their ego, like awakened dogs; and having marked their direction you move homeward again, noting the increasing tension of the brief winter twilight, so different from the summer gloaming with its velvet shadows, its thrush song, its lingering light. Presently you have lost all thought of the distant wolves; if you remember them at all, you are thinking of the morrow’s hunt, how you will go back and search out their trail, when suddenly and most startlingly—there they are! And always the disturbing part of such a meeting is this: the wolves are behind you, in front of you, and on either side, before you have the first inkling that they are anywhere near.

So open is the forest here, and so white the snow, that you fancied a rabbit could hardly move without betraying himself to your eyes; yet without noise or shadow of motion surely that is a wolf watching you over a fallen log, where you can see[72] only his eyes and his cocked ears. On the other side of the trail a bush quivers as a wolf creeps under it, but you catch no sure glimpse of him. Look behind you, and a gray something vanishes; then the woods are motionless again. And that is all you will see or hear of your ferocious wolf pack, unless, perchance, you run away; in which event some cub-wolf that knows no better may take a jump or two after you.

These timber wolves of the north are immensely interesting brutes, tireless, powerful, unbelievably cunning. To follow their trail is to have increasing respect for their keenness, their vim, their hair-trigger way of meeting any emergency. Once when I was tracking a solitary dog wolf, an uncommonly big brute, and lazy after eating his fill of venison, I came out of the woods to a frozen lake, and saw him ambling along near shore a few hundred yards ahead of me. He happened to be passing under an icy ledge, utterly unsuspicious of man or danger, when a bullet struck the ice, ping! at his heels.

That was a range shot, a bit shy, and I expected him to give me another chance; but he never even looked around to see where the ping or the bang came from. Almost, it seemed, before the report could reach him he had tried the ledge twice, only to find it overhigh for a standing jump[73] and too slippery to climb. Without an instant’s hesitation he darted out on the lake for a flying start, whirled to the right-about, came at the ledge, and went superbly over it into thick cover. The ledge was over eight feet in the rise, and from the foot of it to his take-off was another ten feet; but in a flash he had measured his leap and taken it rather than expose himself any longer in the open.

Another time I saw a single wolf throw and kill a buck, a matter which called for skill as well as strength, and he did it so easily that one was left wondering what chance a man would have with a few brutes of that kind rolling in upon him. In numbers or when made reckless by hunger our timber wolves might well prove terrible enemies; but the simple fact is that they have no desire to meet a man. They are afraid of him, and avoid him even when they are hungry. Again and again, when wolves have howled about my winter camp at night, I have gone out and given them opportunity for a man hunt; but though they are much bolder by night than by day, they have never, save in one peculiar instance, shown any evidence of a hostile or dangerous disposition. And then they scared me properly, making me know how a man might feel if he were running with a pack of wolves at his heels.

The startling exception came one winter afternoon[74] as I was crossing a frozen lake in a snowstorm. It was almost dusk when I came out of the woods, hurrying because I had far to go, and started fair across the middle of the lake. Soon the wind was blowing the snowflakes in level lines; what with snow and darkened air it became difficult to keep one’s bearings, and in order to see my way better I edged in nearer and nearer to the weather shore.

Two or three times, as I headed steadily up the lake, I had a vague impression that something moved in the woods, and moved so as to keep abreast of me; but the flying flakes interfered with clear vision till I began to come under the lee of a point of evergreens. Then I surely saw a creeping motion among the trees on my left, and stopped dead in my tracks to watch it. The next instant the underbrush was ripped open in a dozen places, and a pack of wolves rushed out. One turned and loped swiftly between me and the point ahead; another that I dared not watch sped down the lake, at a broad angle from the course of the first; the rest spread into a fan-shaped formation that broadened swiftly and must soon spring its ends together like a trap. In a twinkling every avenue of escape to the woods was shut by a wolf; there was left only a fight or a straightaway run across the ice.

[75]The wolves were perhaps a hundred yards distant when they broke cover. They came on easily, their heads low, some with a curious sidling motion that presented a rough shoulder till the fangs had a chance to snap. The brutes uttered no cry, not a howl of any kind. They had been upwind from me when I came out of the woods, and I think now that they mistook me in the storm for a deer or some other game animal; but at the moment their rush looked dangerous, and their grim silence was more terrifying than any clamor. Bending down, I threw off the snowshoe straps for free footing and, as I straightened up, pulled a heavy revolver from its sheath. Then I stood stock-still, which is the most surprising thing you can do to any charging wild beast. He is so accustomed to running away from danger himself, and to seeing other beasts run away from it, that a motionless figure puzzles him, makes him suspect that there must be a mistake somewhere.

From one end of the charging line a big wolf suddenly shot out at top speed, circling to get behind me. I picked him as the one I must first kill; but I would wait till the last moment for two reasons: because shooting must be straight, there being only half as many bullets as there were wolves; and because here was the chance of a[76] lifetime to learn whether a wolf, knowing what he was doing, would ever run into a man. The mental process is slow and orderly now, but then it came and went with a snowflake that swept before my eyes.

As the big wolf whirled in on the run, still some forty yards away, the wind came fair from me to him; he got his first whiff of the man scent, and with it a terrible shock, I think, since its effect was a contortion which looked as if it might dislocate the brute’s back. At the top of a jump he tried to check himself by a violent wriggle. Down he came, his legs stiff as bars, and slid to his toes and leaped straight up again with a wild yelp, as if I had shot him. Yet up to that moment, when his nose told him what game he was running, I had not stirred a muscle.

That single yelp stopped the rush as if by magic. Most of the pack scattered on the instant; but two or three younger wolves that did not understand their blunder hesitated a bit, with surprise written all over them. Then they, too, caught the alarm, and the whole pack went speeding for cover in immense bounds, which grew convulsive when I began to play my part in the comedy. At the shot every flying brute went up in the air, as if safety lay only in the clouds or on the other side of the mountain.

[77]Such are the real wolves. I see them yet, the snow powdering their grizzled coats, streaking away like flushed quail and vanishing with one last tremendous jump into the dusky woods, whenever I hear a good wolf story.

[78]

EARS FOR HEARING

ONE night in June I heard a new bird note, wonderfully clear and sweet, but so dreamlike that it seemed some tiny creature had blown a flute from elfland. The note came from far away, apparently; but I traced it at last to a branch just over my head, where a pair of grosbeaks had built their nest. There the male bird was singing near his brooding mate, singing in his dreams, I think, for his song was like no other that I ever heard from him.

The surprise of that dream song returned to me at dawn, one winter morning, when I heard low, eager voices outside my “Commoosie,” and crept out to find a family of partridges under the birds’ table.

Now a mother partridge has many notes, from[79] the sibilant squeal of anger to the deep kroo-kroo that calls the chicks from hiding; but these voices were quite different from all grouse sounds with which I had grown familiar in the woods. They had what one might call an intimate quality, musical, softly modulated, marvelously expressive. When the partridges were gone, gliding away as if they had not meant to be overheard, I spread the table abundantly, as usual; and that day hardly a bird came without giving me at least one new note, perhaps because I was for the first time really listening.

From that time forth the voices of these feeding birds were a revelation to me, as I heard them close at hand. Surprise, confidence, pleasure, resentment, hunger, loneliness, alarm,—a dozen different emotions seemed to find ready expression, either in varied cries or by modulations of a single note. In making mental register of this bird “talk,” I became convinced that the ear needs more training than the eye if one is to understand the wood folk or enter into the spirit of their little comedy. Even if you turn mere ornithologist, with an interest in feathers or species rather than in birds, hearing is a better or surer sense than sight if you would name birds without the needless barbarity of killing them for identification. Once you recognize the peculiar quality of any[80] bird’s voice, you may surely name him at any season. He may change his plumage as he will, for youth or age, for spring or winter; but he cannot change his natural voice, and, like Peter’s, his speech bewrayeth him.

One morning, in that same winter camp where the grouse appeared, a woodpecker sent a long call rattling across the frozen lake. The first subtle feeling of spring was in the air. Deep under snow the sap began to well upward from roots of the sugar maples to express itself in coloring buds; and I fancy that something stirred upward from some root of being in the woodpecker, also, to find expression in lusty drumming. Ever since we made camp we had heard him or his fellows signaling, answering, drilling their food out of frost-bound wood; but this call was entirely different, and Bob’s keen ears were instantly turned to it.

“Aha! that chap wants something. Can ye answer him now?” he said; and in his eye was a challenge.

I imitated the drumming, closely as I thought; but though I tried repeatedly, I received nothing like an answer. Downy or logcock or goldenwing, a woodpecker is an independent chap that I have never been able to call fairly; not even in spring, when he is all ears for a mate or a rival. Like many other birds, he will come quickly to an excited and deceptive squeaking between my[81] fingers, but to my best drumming he remains deaf or indifferent.

“Ye haven’t the right combination, b’y,” said Bob when I gave over my fruitless attempt, and using his hunting knife as a hammer he began talking woodpecker-talk on a dry stub. At his first tunk-a-tunk (which was not like the call we had just heard) the answer came back like an echo, and when he varied his note the woodpecker came speeding across the lake. He could do that almost any time when woodpeckers were talking, as he could excite a red squirrel into emotional fits by his gibbering; but he abused me when I told him the truth, that it was not his secret combination of raps but the fellow feeling he put into it which brought the woodpeckers.

Still more amusing have been my efforts to make talk with the timber wolves. The dog wolf has a tremendous voice for occasions, and his pack has several distinct calls, challenge, trail yelp, rallying cry, lunatic baying of the moon; but though I seem to recognize these when I hear them, and to imitate them closely enough to deceive some ears, it is seldom that I can put into my voice the true wolf quality which brings an answer. For in the woods, as elsewhere, “the tone makes the music”; it is tone quality rather than any sound or combination of sounds, the[82] feeling behind a cry rather than the cry itself, which appeals to moose or owl or any other wild beast or bird you happen to be calling.

One still, winter night I stood in front of my “Commoosie” and repeatedly gave the gray wolf’s challenge. That wolves were within hearing I was quite sure, having crossed the fresh trail of a pack at sundown; but none made answer. Then old Noel stirred and came forth from his blanket. “Hwolf don’ spik dat way; he spik dis way,” he said, and gave a howl so nearly like mine that no ordinary ear could detect the difference. Something was in his voice, however, some primal or animal quality which a wolf understood; for hardly had his howl gone forth when it was flung back eagerly from the woods behind us; and when the Indian changed his howl to a whimper, he had wolves answering from three different directions.

The point is, that when one opens his ears to the medley of calls that enliven the day or the night, he receives many an invitation which beforetime had passed over his head unheeded. Around your summer camp, for example, red squirrels are the most numerous and, as you think, the most familiar of animals; but did you ever attempt to interpret the astonishing variety of sounds which a squirrel uses habitually in the way of speech?[83] Until you do that, Meeko the mischief-maker is a stranger to you, dwelling far on the other side of an unbridged gulf.

I do not mean that Meeko or any other animal has a language, for that is a doubtful matter; but all wild creatures communicate with others of their kind; and even when alone an animal is like a child in that he has changing moods or emotions which he expresses very plainly by modulations of his voice. So these familiar squirrels, which you hear about your camp, are not jabbering idiotically or without meaning. When angry they scold; when surprised they snicker; at other times they fling jest or repartee or abuse at one another, their voices changing noticeably with their changing moods. Now and then, as you follow Meeko to see what he is doing, he utters a long, vibrant and exultant call, in sheer delight at being alive, you think; or he stops short in a gambol and puzzles you by sitting very still, very attentive, with his nose pressed against a branch between his paws. Gone suddenly are all his jeers, his exultations, his mischief-making; he has a sober, introspective air, as if trying to remember something, or as if listening to what his other self might be saying.

If you watch Meeko’s eye at such a moment, noting its telltale lights, you will have a different[84] opinion of his silence. He is listening, indeed, but to something so fine or distant that he cannot be quite sure what it is, or rather what it says. Therefore does he use the branch as a sounding board, pressing nose or teeth against it to catch the faint vibrations in a way to help his ears, just as woodpeckers use their tongues for the same purpose of better hearing. There! you hear the sound faintly now, and Meeko hears it distinctly enough to understand it, if one may judge by his actions. It comes from another squirrel out yonder, a truculent fellow, who is proclaiming his heretical opinion to the universe, and to this little dogmatist in particular.

Watch Meeko now; see his silent absorption change to violent rage. He barks; he seems to curse in his own way; he springs up and down on the same spot, like a boastful Quebec lumberman who jumps on his hat to work himself up to the fighting pitch. Out of breath, he stops a moment to listen, to ascertain whether he has silenced his opponent. A jeer floats in from the distance. Meeko says, “Kilch-kilch! I’ll show that impostor; I’ll teach him a lesson,” and away he goes headlong. To follow him is to witness a characteristic squirrel argument, a challenge, a rush, an upset, a furious chase up and down the swaying branches, till your head grows dizzy in following[85] it. And then one long, triumphant yell to proclaim that another heresy is silenced forever.

Many times I have thus watched Meeko as he listened to something I could not at first hear; and almost invariably, when I have followed his rush, I have found him either berating some passing animal much bigger than himself or engaged in a hurry-scurry kind of argument with another squirrel.

Once I saw that the fellow who dared dispute Meeko’s doctrine was a very little squirrel, not big enough to hold opinion of his own, much less to challenge a quidnunc. He was bowled over at the first charge, and fell to the ground, where he darted off at top speed, doubling and dodging here, there, anywhere for a quiet life. Hot at his heels followed the irate Meeko, berating him like a pirate, giving him no chance to retract his impudence. The little fellow whisked up a tree at last, and squirmed into a knothole that seemed too small for any squirrel. Meeko was so close behind that nose met tail; but wriggle as he would, he could not get halfway into the knothole. It was an impossible squeeze for a squirrel of his bulk. As he worked and scolded himself into a passion, every now and then came a hollow, muffled snicker from within the doorway, which seemed to drive Meeko frantic.

[86]He gave up the attempt after a time, and headed down the tree, threatening vengeance as he went. Before he was halfway to the ground the little fellow put his head out and repeated his original opinion, which started the explosive argument all over again. Eight times, while I watched, Meeko went away fuming, after vainly trying to force himself into the knothole; and every time Meekosis, as Simmo calls the little squirrel, came to the doorway to jibe at him, bringing him back in a fury that ran the gamut from volubility to speechlessness. The comedy was still running when lengthening shadows called me away to the trout pool, where my supper needed catching.

That same pool recalls another wood-folk comedy, none the less amusing because two of the actors were serious as owls when they played it out. Simmo, the Indian, and I were on our homeward way through the wilderness when we came to a beautiful place on the river, and camped there, day after heavenly day, until my vacation drew to an end. Then, because trout were plentiful at the mouth of a cold brook, I broke my rule of catching only enough for my table, and decided to take a few good fish as a thank-offering to some people who had been kind to me, a stranger. Two mornings and evenings I whipped the pools, ignoring small rises, striking only at the big fellows; and at dusk[87] of the second day I packed away my catch and my rod with a sigh of heartfelt content. It was my last fishing for the year. There were only fifteen fish to show for it; but they weighed full thirty pounds, all clean, silvery, beautiful trout. Each one was wiped dry for keeping, wrapped separately in dried moss, and set away under a rock by a cold spring.

Early next morning Simmo went to fetch one of the trout for breakfast. I was stirring the fire when I heard him calling, “Come here! Oh, by cosh, come here!” and ran to find him standing open-mouthed over the storehouse, his eyes like gimlets, a blank, utterly bewildered expression spread all over his dark face. There was not a fish left, and not a sign on the hard soil to tell who had taken them.

We gave up the puzzle and went back to a meager breakfast, wagging our heads soberly. A bear or a lynx would have left plenty of signs for us to read. As we were eating, I saw a mink dodging along the shore, humping his back in true weasel fashion, as if in a great hurry. He disappeared under a root, all but his tail, and seemed to be very busy about something. When he backed out he was dragging a big trout.

“Das de feller! Cheokhes steal-um,” yelled Simmo, all excitement, and away he went on the[88] jump. Startled by the thumping behind him, Cheokhes dropped his fish and took to the river, leaving a V-shaped wake trailing behind him as he forged away.

“Keep still, Simmo; let’s watch him,” I cautioned, and we both sat motionless on the bank; but not till the Indian had made sure of a more ample breakfast. His fingers were hooked into the gills of the big trout, his face a study in satisfaction.

The mink circled uneasily a few moments; then he whirled and headed for us, wiggling his pointed nose as he smelled the fish. Simmo was sitting with elbows on knees, the trout hanging down between, when the nervy little beast crossed over my foot, grabbed his prize, and attempted to drag it out of the Indian’s hand.

“By cosh, now, das too cheeky!” said Simmo, and with the tail of the trout he batted Cheokhes over the head. Away he went with a screech and a show of sharp teeth; but in a moment he was back again, and twice attempted to get possession of what he considered his property. Then, as Simmo grew impatient and batted the little thief coming and going, he made off indignantly with an air of, “Well, I know where to find a better one.” Following him up, I took away from him another trout, which he dragged from a pile of[89] drift stuff, and after some search I unearthed two more which he had hidden under a pine stump.

That was all we ever found of our fine catch, and I am still wondering what a creature not much bigger than a rat expected to do with thirty pounds of fresh fish. Indeed, from his unprejudiced viewpoint, what should anybody expect to do with them? They belonged first of all to the river, and then to any light-footed fellow who could appreciate their flavor. But Simmo was wrathy. As we paddled downriver that day, he talked of mink and white men’s children, and read me a little homily on the vice of stealing.

[90]

HEALTH AND A DAY

DURING the night I had been up to watch Tookhees playing in the moonlight. Tookhees is the wood mouse, a dainty and a pretty creature, who is happily ignorant that he is an important item in nature’s food supply. He and his fellows have a way of amusing themselves, as I judge, by creeping up one slope of my tent and tumbling or sliding down the other; and before they come together for play, if such it be, you will hear them drumming in all directions, signaling and answering by tapping on the ground. The wood mice ran away when Kook’skoos, “the mother of the moon,” began a doleful hooting to her owlets;[91] then through the light, dreamless sleep of the woodsman came the first chirping of awakened birds. My day had begun; expectantly I came forth to enjoy its uncovenanted mercies.

Killooleet the white-throated sparrow was already singing, and though his voice was a bit rusty, as it always is when summer wanes, there was yet gladness in it. You will hear it said that birds sing only in nesting time; but the saying comes of late sleeping. When dawn comes with its rosy invitation to a new day, birds at any season seem to feel the old Sursum Corda, and are impelled to some joyous expression. Though the springtime was long past, a score of warblers and thrushes were ringing their matins, and among them one shy wood thrush sent forth a heavenly note, beautiful and solemn, as from a silver flute. Then a jay cried thief! thief! seeming different from other birds in that he called attention to himself, while they were content to herald the morning. From a hollow cedar behind my tent a red squirrel began to snicker; on the lake shore a kingfisher raised his Jubilate; as I listened to the medley of awakening life a word of Anne Bradstreet came into my head:

[92]Most of Anne’s poetry was rather “punk,” to be sure, but here her feeling was excellent; so from primeval woods I sent greeting across the centuries to the Colonial singer who had lived in their shadow, and was first to put our New World nature to melody. Then, to keep proper company with her and all glad creatures, I joined the chorus with “From All That Dwell Below the Skies.” The grand old hymn needs a church organ and ten-thousand voices; but I must sing it softly for two reasons: because some sleepers in camp regarded early rising as a sign of lunacy; and because others might wake up and ask where I was going, or whether they might not go with me. And I did not yet know where I was going. I had picked this day for a “good lonesome,” to go where I listed, and perhaps to grow better acquainted with God and Nature by meeting them in solitude face to face.

As the canoe glided from the landing there was a faint stir in the mist, which hung low over all the lake. Out of the mist came first a thrush song, then a glow of soft color, like mother-of-pearl, finally something dark and solid, which turned into the crown of a mighty pine as I approached. Its stem was hidden under a white veil, as was the island on which it grew; but its topmost branches spread lightly over the sea of cloud, like the wings of a floating raven.

[93]Doubling the point on which the pine stood sentinel, I used my sounding line to locate a channel that wound deeply amid shoals and gravel bars. I had discovered this channel one day when swimming; and it seemed, now that fish had retired to deep water, the likeliest place for a big trout on the entire lake. Under the shroud of mist the water lay dreamy, placid, formless, giving no hint of what it concealed save in one spot on the edge of the outermost shoal. There, as if indeed all things were foreordained, tiny ripples and splashes kept the surface in commotion. It was a school of fresh-water smelts, darting about or leaping into the air to escape the rush of feeding fish below. Suddenly came a plunge, a swirl; a mottled back rolled into sight among the smelts.

“Aha! I knew I’d catch a big one here this morning,” I thought, thus deceiving myself again; for I did not know anything of the kind. I was merely exalting hope above experience, which is the everlasting occupation of all fishermen.

Close beside the shoaling smelts I lowered my killick, and turned overboard from my bucket a dozen minnows that were plainly in need of fresher water. Soon two delicately curving rods were out, one swinging its shining lure close to bottom for fat or lazy fellows, the other holding a lively red-fin near the surface. Then, my part being properly[94] played, I leaned back against an air-cushion in heavenly content. Once more I was fishing, my companions the bird songs and the awakening day.

He who counts time in such a place is no philosopher, and therefore no fisherman. I had waited an hour or a minute, one being short as the other to him who is sure of a bite, when the slender tip of a rod arched sharply, once, twice, and again. A moment’s wait, because fish that refuse a fly are slow about a minnow; then I struck, and was fast to something that seemed charged with electricity. He was netted after a heart-kindling struggle filled by hopes, thrills, anxieties, with one awful sinking moment when the line slacked and I could not feel his tugging. There he was, safe in the canoe, a firm-fleshed, deep-bodied, five-pound trout, his olive back mottled as if by the ripples under which he had lived, his sheeny sides flecked with flaming crimson.

I was feasting my eyes on the trout, the beauty and goodly size of him, and was humming the Doxology, when the other rod rattled on the thwart, and its tip ducked out of sight under water. Another age of thrills, livelier but shorter than the last; then a big whitefish—a rare catch here, and a delicious bonne bouche anywhere—is placed tenderly in his box of moss. He flaunts[95] blue and silver as his colors; they form airy contrast to the deeper hues of the gorgeous trout.

I am admiring the splendid catch as I reel in my lines and turn overboard the remaining minnows. There are more fish under those darting smelts, perhaps much larger fish; but enough is plenty for one morning. I shall come again. The pine, which is still my only visible landmark, begins to hide his crown. The mist is rising, and glowing in the east with a gorgeous promise. “I shall hide these fish in the Indian spring,” I tell myself, “and begin another day before the sun rises.”

The Indian spring is on the mainland, halfway up a hardwood ridge. Out of it flows a run, mossy and ice-cold, a perfect place for storing fish; and the run joins a little brook that goes singing down to the lake. As I follow up this brook, brushing the moist ferns, inhaling the fragrance of balsam and hemlock, there is a swift movement ahead. Here or there I have glimpse of an arched back, and down the bank of the stream comes a mink on the jump, wiggling his pointed nose as he smells my fish. Then I change my mind about storing the catch, since to hide it here is to lose it. Once I left two grilse and a salmon of fifteen pounds in a spring brook, and when I returned I found only mink tracks. How the little beast could get away with that salmon without leaving[96] a trail for me to follow is still a mystery. I think he floated him down the brook, as a beaver handles a heavy log.

The mink darts up to my foot and rests a paw upon it before he begins to suspect something wrong in the motionless figure with two big fish hanging beside it. He goes away unwillingly, still wiggling his nose; and I make my way back to camp, and hang the fish where the cook must see them when he comes to get breakfast for the lazy ones. I shall miss the transient flavor of that whitefish; but I have something better, the lasting taste of catching him. Then I slip away, leaving the campers fast asleep. Their day has not yet begun; mine stretches away in both directions into endless vistas.

Again the canoe glides into the mist, which is swaying now in fantastic shapes, gloriously colored. To watch it is to remember Lanier’s “Sunrise” and “Marshes of Glynn”; but life is all a poem just now, and no one has ever written a line of it. Across the lake we go, and up a stream where great trees bend low over feeding deer. The deer lift their heads to point each a velvety black muzzle at our approach. From the stream we steal into a smaller lake, profoundly still; it seems to be sleeping under its blanket of mist, amid hills of spruce and pine.

[97]It is beautiful here, and lonely enough to satisfy the most fastidious; but to-day the Beyond is calling, and the spirit answers, “I come.” Leaving the canoe overturned in a shady spot, and tapping various pockets to be sure of compass, matches and other things needful, I take gladly to the trail. In my hand is a cased fishing rod, at my belt a good ax, before me a silent wilderness. The wilderness has its road, unfortunately, and so it is not quite unspoiled; but of two things you may be sure: you shall meet no traveler on the road, and find no inn at the end of it.

The way leads eastward at first, following the old lumber road; then, if one looks sharply, one may find the entrance to a blazed trapper’s trail. At the end of that trail, I am told, is a lake of wondrous beauty, over which hangs a tradition of trout. I have not been this way before; the joy of Balboa and of all explorers since time began is in the air.

The big woods are quiet, as if just awake, and fragrant with the breath of morning. A multitude of little birds, having spent a happy summer here, are now flocking with their young in the open places; jays are calling loudly, and hiding things; chipmunks are busily filling their winter bins. Even the red squirrels, most careless of wood folk, seem to have a thought in their empty heads as they hurry about. They no longer gather a winter[98] store, like the chipmunk; but when abundant autumn approaches they hide a few morsels here or there with some dim instinct of lean days to come. One passes me in haste, as if time were suddenly important; he is carrying something in his mouth, and I await his return, lured by a little brook that cries its invitation to all who are thirsty. In my heart is the old fancy, which has dwelt there since childhood, that a brook always sings a happier song when you stop to drink from it. Thus pleasantly to a roundelay I learn a new and surprising thing about squirrels.

Through all forests the squirrels have regular tree-paths; they never run blindly on a journey, but follow definite runways along the branches, which are apparently as well known to them as are lanes or alleys to the city gamin. Knowing this, I wait confidently for Meeko, and presently see him coming along the path by which he disappeared. Beyond the brook his trail leads through a spruce thicket, an unusual course, for squirrels like open going. Examining the thicket, I find that Meeko has recently been clearing this trail by cutting many of the obstructing twigs. No doubt he has found an unexpected food supply, and is using this new runway as a short cut to his cache, where he is storing things in his usual hit-or-miss fashion.

That looks promising from such a scatter-brained[99] creature; so I sit down in the spruce thicket, making myself inconspicuous, to await Meeko’s coming. His trail runs ten feet above my head; as he rushes over it with another mouthful, he bumps into a twig that crosses his course at an awkward angle. The bump throws him off his perfect balance, and instantly he falls to swearing, though his full mouth interferes with what he would like to say. He grows silent as he examines the troublesome twig; then he rushes away as if he had made up what he calls his mind. In a few minutes, having left his mouthful at the cache, he reappears in the same path. He is silent now, and look! he is not running in his wonted breakneck fashion, but following his trail in an exploring kind of way. So he reaches the twig that hindered him, swears at it again, and cuts it with his teeth. Resting his chin between his forepaws, he follows the falling twig, his eyes shining, till it strikes the ground beside me, when he snickers his satisfaction. A motion of my head attracts his attention; he sees me for the first time, and instantly forgets everything else. He leaves his trail to come down where he can see better. In his eye is the question, “Are you alive, or am I mistaken?” When I nod to him again he breaks forth in scolding, asking who I am, demanding my business, ordering me out, all in the same breath.

[100]So the little comedy runs on till I have enough of squirrel jabber, and leave Meeko to his own affairs; but that is the last thing he proposes to do with me. When I turn away from the thicket he rushes over branches above me, reiterating his demand, growing more wrathy as I keep silence. I am wishing I knew his language, which sounds like an imprecatory psalm with a pirate’s variation, as he follows me abusively along the road. Not till he reaches the boundary of his small territory (for squirrels, like other beasts, have limits beyond which they rarely go) does he turn back, leaving other squirrels to deal with me as an intruder. Searching the woods to the left, I soon find a blazed hemlock, and turn gladly from the lumber road into a trapper’s winter trail.

Here, save for an occasional old “blaze” on a tree, for which guiding signal one must look ahead sharply, there is no trace of man or his destruction. All is still, fragrant, beautiful, just as Nature left her handiwork. There is a sudden bumping of feet on soft earth, a flash of orange color, and I catch the waving of white flags as a deer and her fawns bound away. Farther on a brood of partridges barely move aside into the underbrush, where they stop to watch me as I pass. A hare darts out from underfoot, and he, too, is inquisitive; he crouches in the first bit of cover to find out who I am.

[101]Up and down goes the trail, now over hardwood ridges where great sugar maples stand wide apart, now through dim evergreen valleys or cedar swamps where one must feel his way; and at last, from the summit of a ridge, comes a gleam of blue ahead. It is the lake, eureka, I have found it, asleep amid its eternal hills! Over it bend the trees, as if they loved it. On every point stands a giant pine, like the king-man of old, lifting head and shoulders above his fellows. From the water’s edge the forest sweeps away grandly to the sky line. A moose and her ungainly calf are feeding on the farther shore. Some animal that I cannot name slips unseen into the cover; a brood of wild ducks stretch their necks, alert and questioning, as I appear in the open.

It is a little lake, and therefore companionable, a perfect place to spend the day and find the hours too short. Searching out a pretty spot where I can see without being seen, I rest at ease, enjoying the quiet beauty of the lake; enjoying also the rare blessing of silence. I have been awake and keenly alive since the birds called me, ages ago; a thousand tongues, voices, messages, have been heard and understood; yet not a solitary word has been spoken, not once has the exquisite peace been disturbed. The plash yonder, behind the rock where I cannot see what made it, is hardly[102] a sound; like everything else one hears, it seems like a fragment of the great stillness. It reminds me, however, that when I return to camp two questions will be asked: the first, Did you find the lake? and the second, Are there any trout in it? It seems a pity, almost a profanation, to disturb such a place by human noises; I would rather be quiet; but I have promised to answer that second question.

In a swampy spot I find some dry cedars near the lake shore. Though dead, they are standing on their own roots; they are therefore weathered, and will float like corks. Soon I have cut enough for a dozen logs, with cross-pieces, and have gathered them at the water’s edge. One should be true Indian now, I suppose, and bind the raft together with bark; but to do that it is necessary to kill or scar a living tree, which is a thing I never do if it can be avoided; so I use some spikes which I have brought in my pocket. The only objection to such civilized implements is that the loud hammering seems horribly out of place. The first time I drive a spike I look around guiltily, as if I had been breaking the law. When the work is done and I push out bravely on my homely craft, I know how the man felt who found himself afloat for the first time on his own invention. It is a good feeling which makes one understand his old ancestors.

[103]Yes, the trout are surely here; but the sun has risen over the hills and the day is bright. A few fingerlings answer as I cast in the shadow of the rocks; they chivvy the feathered lure a moment (for I do not care to catch trout to-day, nor such little fellows at any time), and flash away unharmed to the depths. Farther out from shore, out from under the lee of the hills, the water is ruffled by a light breeze; so I push in that direction, lengthening my cast as I go. The fly lights in the very center of a “catspaw”; there is a gleam of red-gold under it, followed by a terrific rush. Aha! a big one. Though I had intended merely to locate the trout without striking them, no fisherman ever trained himself so fine that he could withhold the snap of his wrist at an unexpected rise like that. Involuntarily I strike; the hook goes solidly home; the reel sets up a shrill yell of exultation as the line flies out.

I shall play this trout to a standstill, then unhook him tenderly without lifting him from the water, and let him go when I see how big he is. Yes, of course; I am not fishing to-day. But as the beautiful fish comes in, fighting every inch of the way, threatening to part my delicate leader as he darts under the raft, something reminds me that man must eat, and that a trout can be well broiled on a split stick, a green fir preferred, to[104] give him an added woodsy flavor. Fortunately there is a pinch of salt in my pocket, put there in hopeful expectancy of the unexpected.

Killing the trout as mercifully as such a thing can be done, I run a string through his red gills, and tie him to my loose-jointed craft. Then, just to see if there are any more like him (and to avoid temptation) I break my hook at the bend, leaving only a harmless bit of steel on the fly. Here comes a cloud-shadow, drifting up the lake. I wait for it, and cast again in the same place. Yi-yi, what a fool I was to break that hook! The flashing rise that follows my cast is such as a fisherman dreams of in his sleep.

There must be a spring hereabouts, I think; such trouty vim and dash at this season bespeak living water. The raft drifts over the spot where my fish rose, and I stretch out to become as one of the logs, shading my eyes with my hands to exclude the upper light. There to the left I dimly discern a ring of white sand; in the middle, where the water rolls in ceaseless commotion, boils up a spring as big as my hat. As the raft grows quiet, shadows glide in from all directions to rest on the rim of sand. Shades of Izaak Walton, look at them! My trout weighs two pounds; but I wish I had let him alone and waited for a big one.

[105]The shadows dart away at the first motion of my head; but they will come back, and one has only to bring his raft within casting distance to have wonderful fishing. This is a sure-thing place, one of the few I have found in drifting over many northern lakes, and I must locate it past forgetting. Carefully I take the ranges: big pine east and larch stub west; hawk’s nest south and split rock north. Where the imaginary lines cross is the hidden spring with its treasures. No fear that I shall miss it when I come again!

The raft moves heavily shoreward and lands at the mouth of a little brook. There I broil the lordly trout, noting with satisfaction that his flesh is pink as a salmon’s; also I make a dipper of tea, and spread a birch-bark cloth, on which is a feast for a freeman. As I eat in thankfulness, after dousing my fire to kill all scent of smoke, the moose and her calf come circumspectly out of the woods; a deer appears on the opposite shore, stepping daintily; the wild ducks glide out of their hiding place, and I am one with the silent wilderness again.

Now comes the best time of all, the time when one remembers the traveler who came to a place where it was always afternoon. At one moment I am lost in the immense tranquillity of the woods; the next I am following some little comedy which[106] begins with a flutter of wings or a rustle of feet on leaves, and which runs on till the actors discover that a stranger is watching them.

Slowly, imperceptibly, my lovely day slips away to join all the other days; each moment of it is like a full hour of life; each hour, when it is past, seems but a fleeting moment. From an endless period of alternate watching and reverie I start up with the consciousness that the sun is below the western hills, that shadows are growing long, that I have a dim trail to follow before I find familiar landmarks again.

As I hurry along, picking up the blazed spots with difficulty in the fading light, at times over-running the trail, there comes now and then a tingling of the skin, as at the touch of cold, when I pass through darkening thickets where the night life begins to stir and rustle. If the philosopher Hume had ever followed this or any other wilderness trail after sundown, he would have found under his own skin some illustrative matter for his central doctrine. He sought to tell what the mind of man is by determining its contents at any one instant, as if its continuity and identity were of no consequence. Had he lived in the woods, he must have noticed that there are moments on a darkening trail when the mind seems to be reduced to an acute point of attraction, at[107] the tip of which, like an electric spark, is a sense-impression. One becomes at such a time a veritable part of wild nature; a multitude of sights, sounds and flavors that ordinarily pass unnoticed are each one bringing its warning, its challenge, its question. A man’s dull ears grow keen; the pupils of his eyes expand like an animal’s; his nose resumes its almost forgotten function of taking messages from the air; his whole skin becomes a delicate receiving instrument, like the skins of the lower orders; and the strange “sixth sense” of unseen things, which most animals possess, begins to stir in its long sleep. The flow of thought is suspended; reason retreats to its hidden spring, and one grows sensitive all over, alert and responsive in every fiber of his nature. Such is the way of a man alone in the woods at night.

If this be the way the higher animals live continually (and I think it is), I heartily envy them their aliveness. It is alleged that they live a life of ceaseless fear; but fear is almost wholly mental or imaginative, and is therefore beyond the animal’s horizon. All wild creatures are naturally timid, but they have no means of knowing what fear is. That which our naturalists thoughtlessly call fear in an animal (doubtless because civilized and imaginative man, having no wild experience, is himself fearful in the dark woods) is in reality[108] only exquisite sensitiveness to physical and pleasurable impressions.

It is almost dark when I reach the old lumber road, thankful that I need no longer search out the trapper’s trail, and turn down the open way to the lake. Yet I go more cautiously, more cat-footedly, because a few minutes ago a hidden deer stood watching my approach till I could have touched him with the fishing rod. He reminds me that most animals are now at their ease, and that twilight is the best time to come near them. The birds are asleep, all save the owls; but I hear many a faint stir or lisp of surprise as my shoulder brushes a thicket.

Presently I come to an open spot beside the road, where trees and underbrush have been cut away. A hundred roots or stubs rise above the ground, looking all alike in the gloom; yet somehow I am aware, without knowing why or how, that one motionless object is different from all the rest. I fix attention upon it, and approach softly, nearer and nearer. My eyes say that it is only a lump, dark and silent; my ears and nose tell me nothing. There is no sound, no motion, no form even to suggest what huddles there in the dark; but I know it is a living thing. I bend forward to touch it—Br-r-r-room! With a roar of whirring wings a[109] cock partridge bursts away like a bomb, giving me a terrible shock.

I never saw that explosive fellow before; but I ought to have guessed who he was, because several times I have surprised a solitary cock grouse asleep amid stubs of his own size, or else leaning against a huge stump, where he looks precisely like an extra root in the dusk. Meanwhile mother partridges with their broods are roosting higher, some in thick alders where the leaves hide them, others close against the stem of a spruce or cedar, where it is hard for eyes to distinguish them even in broad daylight.

At the foot of a hill, where a jumper trail enters the logging road from the right, I hear a strange cry from the opposite side, and stop to learn what it is. For several minutes I wait, hearing the cry at intervals, till I have located it far away on a ridge and have recognized it as the voice of a cub-bear.

The dusk is now heavy in the sleeping woods; not a breath of air stirs; the silence is intense. I am listening for the bear, when suddenly comes a feeling that something is near or watching me. Where it is, what it is, I have absolutely no notion; but the sense-of-presence grows stronger, and I trust it because I have seldom known it to be wrong. I search the lumber road up and down,[110] but there is nothing to be seen. I search the woods on both sides, slowly, minutely, but there is no sound. Then, as I turn to the jumper trail that comes winding down the hill behind me, a current of air drifts in; my nose begins to recognize a faint odor.

A few yards up the trail is a huge black object, an upturned tree with a mat of soil clinging to its roots. Yes, it is a root, surely; but there is something in its shadow. I watch it, bending slightly so as to get the outline against the sky; and there, clearly showing now above the root, are the antlers of a bull-moose. He is still as a rock, pointing ears and ungainly nose straight at me. Undoubtedly he was coming down the trail when he saw a motion in the road ahead, and froze in his tracks to find out about it. He knows now that he is seen, and that one of us must move. For a full minute we stare at each other; then he takes a nervous step, swings broadside to the trail, and turns his head for another look. Big as he is, not a sound marks his going; he takes a few springy, silent steps up the trail, and fades into the gloom of the big woods.

So I come to the canoe at last, and cross the pond and run the stream, which is now a veritable tunnel with a tattered ribbon of sky overhead. As I cross the big lake campward, the evening star is sparkling like a great jewel on the pointed tip of a[111] spruce, which towers above his fellows on the crown of the western hills. Overhead passes a sound of hurrying wings; a loon calls far away, and again these wild sounds are as fragments of a mighty stillness. Under the gliding canoe the waters are quiet, as if in slumber; but in the distance you can hear them talking to the shore with a voice that is now a whisper, again a faint echo of music. On every side the woods come closer, as if to look upon their reflection in the inky mirror; and they seem to be waiting, to be listening. Over all this silent, expectant world some sublime presence, living but unseen, is brooding upon the mystery of life.

And at last I, too, begin to brood. For the first time in uncounted hours comes a touch of relaxation, a quieting of the alert senses, the well-done of a perfect day. I quote softly from Lanier:

As I double the point toward which the canoe has long been heading, a light flashes cheerily out of the dark woods; the camp fire sends out its invitation, and a voice calls, “Welcome home!” Though my “good lonesome” is ended, and better[112] things are waiting, I must still turn for a last look at the sleeping lake, to watch the ultimate glimmer of twilight fade and vanish over the western steeps.

Good-by, my Day; and hail! You go, yet you stay forever. You have taught me something of the nature of eternity, of the day of the Lord that is as a thousand years, and of the thousand years that are as one day.

[113]

NIGHT LIFE OF THE WILDERNESS

TWILIGHT is deepening into dusk as you leave camp to follow the silent trail. The long summer day has had its lesson, broken short off, as all lessons are before we learn them; now what of the night?

With the sunset a subtle change comes over the big woods; they are fragrant and profoundly still. Trees that were massed in the sunshine now seem more individual, standing with outstretched arms, praying their myriad prayer; and viewing them against the sky you see their delicate grace as well as their strength. The birds have long been quiet, all but the robin, who on the tip of the tallest evergreen, where he can see a gleam of afterglow, pours out a strangely wild song. He is always the last[114] to go to bed. Chipmunks that have been silently busy all day, and red squirrels that have been noisily idle, are now in their dens asleep. Something like a shadow passes before your face, swooping downward in quivering flight; you hear the scratching of tiny feet on bark, and there at your shoulder, looking at you with round inquisitive eye, is Molepsis the flying squirrel. He is the gentlest, the most lovable of his tribe, and he belongs to the night. You are watching him, your heart warming to the little fellow, when leaves rustle and a twig cracks.

If your ears were better trained, you would know now what is passing, since no two animals rustle the leaves or snap a twig in precisely the same way. Lacking such lore of the woods, you halt at the first sound, straining your eyes in the gloom. The rustle draws nearer; and there in the shadow stands Hetokh the buck, observing you keenly and asking, “Who are you, Pilgrim, and whither does your trail lead?”

There is no fear in his alert poise, you see; nor does he whirl and bound away in alarm, as you expect him to do, because you know him only by daylight. Receiving no answer, he goes his own way, but haltingly, looking back as he disappears. Then Molepsis loses interest in you, or remembers his small affairs; he runs to the top of his tree,[115] launches himself out in slanting flight, and is swallowed up in the immensity of the dusk. Such a little life to trust itself so boldly in a great darkness!

Again the trail is before you, silent but never lifeless; it seems always to be listening. As you follow it onward, you are wiser than before, having learned the odor of a deer and the meaning of a tiny shadow that often passes before your face in the twilight. You are also more sympathetic, and richer by two happy memories; for the flying squirrel has softened your heart to all innocent creatures, and that questioning pose of the buck has awakened a desire to know more of the real animal, the living mysterious anima of him, not the babble of his death or the jargon of his bones that fill our books of hunting or of science. Meanwhile Kook’skoos the great horned owl is sounding for rain, and his voice is no longer a foreboding; it is a call, an invitation to come and learn.

And speaking of learning, you will not follow the twilight trail very far before it is impressed on your mind that the wild creature you surprise or startle by day is very different from the creature that surprises and often startles you by night. He has at first all the advantage, being at home in dark woods where you are a wary stranger. Then, as you grow familiar with the dusk, more in tune[116] with its harmony, you begin to appreciate this distinction: by day you see a strange wild animal at a distance; by night you may meet him as a fellow traveler on the same road of mystery. This natural equality, this laying aside of all killing or collecting for a live-and-let-live policy, is absolutely essential if you would learn anything worth knowing about the wood folk.

All this is at variance with the prevalent notion that timid beasts spend their nights in a state of terror; but never mind that notion now. It is pure delusion. You will learn from the night woods that the alleged terror of animals is, like their imaginary struggle for existence, the distorted reflection of a human and most unnatural experience. A lone man in the woods after nightfall is like one who has lost his birthright of confidence in nature. His spine goes chilly at every rustling; his overstrained eyes irritate his whole nervous system, which becomes “like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh”; whereupon his imagination conjures up a world of savage beasts and other hallucinations. When he returns to his fire-lighted camp, there to think of small or large creatures roaming the dusk from which he has just escaped with trembling, he easily attributes to them his own human fears or terrors. It does not occur to our fevered fancy that the animal is[117] abroad because he prefers the dusk to the daylight, or that he has, as we shall see, an excellent reason for his preference. The simple fact is that of fear, in any human sense, the wild animal is wholly and happily ignorant.

Let me emphasize, therefore, as the first lesson of the night woods, that they have no fear in them, except such as you carry in your own heart. Banish that fear, and you shall speedily learn this other lesson: by day your civilized man is by force of habit an intruder, a meddlesome adventurer who makes noises and disturbs the peace; but by night his transgressions are covered; he is peaceable because powerless, unable to use his inventions, and nature accepts him as part of a reasonable universe in which sizes vary but rights are all equal. Gradually his spirit, set free from its worldly business, expands into the immensity around him. From the stars and the still night he absorbs tranquillity; and then it is that the animal seems to recognize his changed disposition and meets him unafraid. This, I think, is the most illuminating experience that comes to a man who enters into the spirit of the night, that the wild animal has little or no fear of him.

One evidence of this is the fact that you can come much nearer to an animal by night than by day. Though all his senses are then much better[118] than yours, he will often wait beside trail or waterway till you are almost upon him, when he is apt to startle you as he breaks away. He has sensed you long before you became aware of him, and has been watching you closely; but your approach, timid and halting in the uncertain light, has disarmed his suspicion. Another plain piece of evidence is that the same timid creatures which this morning fled from you, as if you had a demon, will to-night come confidently to your tenting ground, so near that you may be awakened by their low calls or their soft footsteps.

You may think that this careless approach is due to the animal’s ignorance, that he cannot smell you because the scent of men, as of all birds or beasts, is very faint in sleep; and so I thought till I learned better. I think now that it is not the smell of man, but of something variable in man, which arouses an animal’s suspicion. Before a little child, who certainly has the man scent, most timid beasts show no fear whatever, but only a lively curiosity.

Near a permanent camp of mine I once constructed a roof of bark, a shelter open on all sides, wherein to tie trout-flies and do other woodsy work in stormy weather. Soon I noticed fresh tracks all about; then I kept vegetables in the shed, with salt and other things that deer like. One rainy[119] night I heard sounds out there, and crept from my tent to investigate. Some animal slipped away as I approached; but so black was the night that I could not see the shelter till I went beyond and viewed it against the open lake. Presently a shadow glided past to stand under the roof; my nose told me it was a deer, and behind it trotted two smaller shadows that were her fawns. They smelled me, no doubt, and I think they also saw me, their eyes being better than mine in such light; but they showed no alarm until I walked past them on my way to the tent. Then they ran away, but without their usual warning cries, and within a few minutes I heard the doe calling her little ones under the roof again.

These deer are but types of many other timid animals that may be met after darkness has fallen, at such close range that one who has known them only by daylight is amazed at their boldness. As a rule, the so-called savage beasts are always difficult of approach, being more shy than any rabbit; while harmless creatures that we imagine to be governed by terror give the impression at night that they are frolicsome rather than fearful. Even the wood mice—clean, beautiful little creatures, so delicately balanced that the sudden appearance of danger may paralyze or kill them—seem to lose much of their natural timidity as they run about[120] among the twilight shadows. By day you see them, if at all, only as vanishing streaks; by night you may hear them climbing up one side of your tent and sliding down the other. They will enter freely and, as I have often tested, will sit in your open palm, as at a friendly table, and eat what you offer them.

Two rules of courtesy must be observed, however, when you entertain such little guests. You must eschew mental excitement, which is contagious; and you must never make a sudden motion.

One reason for the boldness of animals at night is that they apparently recognize man’s helplessness, his lack of confidence in his own senses. At times one may even think that an animal is playing with him, as children are moved to play with one who is blindfolded. Such was my impression, at least, when I went astray one night in making my way back to camp. A half-moon was shining, giving enough light in the open places, but sadly confusing matters in the forest depths, where one’s eyes were never quite sure whether they were looking upon substance or shadow. I had missed the trail, and was casting for it in circles, hurrying as one does when lost, blundering through the woods with the clumsiness that distinguishes man from all other creatures. Down into a valley of[121] gloom I went, only to find myself in surroundings that were all strange and wild. Next I floundered through a stream, and was climbing the bank when I saw something in front of me, something big, motionless, and misty-white.

Now I had been seeing white things for an hour past, bleached rocks, spots of moonlight, silver birches; but this was different. I knew instantly that the thing was alive; for there is something in a living animal that makes itself known, though your ordinary senses cannot tell you why or how you know. For a long moment I faced the thing steadily; but it was dead-still, and I could make nothing of it. As I started forward, the misty-white spot enlarged to twice its size, narrowed again, drifted away among the trees like a ghost. When I followed, straining my eyes after it, I fell into a hidden branch of the stream where water was deep and the mud bottomless. The white thing stood, as if watching me, only a few yards beyond.

Yes, it was rather creepy just then. The chill in my spine was not of the cold water when all the grisly doings of ha’nts, wanderlights and banshees (tales that I heard in childhood and forgotten) came back in a vivid troop. For a time I was as pagan as any of my old ancestors, and as ready to believe in any kind of hobgoblin; only I must find out what the mysterious thing was.

[122]When I struggled out of the pool, the white spot floated up a hill in front of me, noiselessly as an owl, and vanished in a thicket of fir. As I smashed in after it, out it blew on the opposite side, making me feel creepy again till a twig cracked. That was the first sound I heard, and it told me that the thing had legs long enough to reach the ground. Twice afterward I saw it close ahead, broadening, narrowing, drifting away; but except that it was an animal, and a large one, I had no notion of what I was following. Then it vanished for good, and on my right was a gleam of the lake. I had my bearings then, and turning to the left I soon found the lost trail, making an Indian compass of broken twigs as I went.

At daybreak I was back at the place and following my Indian compass. Near the fir thicket I found the track of a large deer, but was unable to follow it on the hard ground. An hour later, as I watched the lake shore, a buck white as snow stepped out. He was an albino, the first I had ever met, and to this day I have never again seen so magnificent a specimen. It was he, undoubtedly, who had played with me in the dark woods, waiting till I came close to him, then moving on to watch my flounderings from another vantage ground. The widening of the white spot, which had so completely mystified me, was due to a[123] momentary glimpse of his broadside as he turned away.

A second reason for the animal’s boldness has already been suggested; namely, that at night a man’s feeling undergoes a change. He is no longer confident of his superior power; as eyes fail him he grows doubtful of himself; and the wild animal is like certain dogs in that he seems able to recognize one’s mental attitude. Hunters who call moose will tell you that the bulls are extraordinarily wary after dark, and that is often true; but for this wariness the hunter, not the moose, is responsible. In the first place, your modern hunter goes out with a guide; and two men make ten times as much noise as one, and spread far more terror. Next, the hunter is eager to see, to shoot, to kill; his excitement gets into his skin, gets into the guide and the call, and a sensitive moose probably feels this contagion of excitement as he draws near it; though it might be hard to explain why or how. As Simmo the Indian says, “Moose don’t know how he know somet’ing; he jus’ know.”

I think Simmo is right, and that he has an explanation of the fact that a sportsman who is most keen to kill in the calling season is often the one who must wait longest for his chance; while to the man who goes out unarmed opportunity comes[124] with both hands full. Though I am a very poor caller, measured by Simmo’s art, I have seldom found much difficulty in bringing out a bull; but this may be due to the fact that most of my calling has been done far from settlements, in regions where moose are seldom hunted. Yet even in Maine, where moose are literally hunted to death, during the summer or “closed” season they have no more fear than in the remote wilderness. If you meet one on the trail at night, he may come quite as near as you care to have him; and in the early part of the mating season it is not unusual to have two or three bulls answer the call. After the hunting season opens, it is much more difficult to deceive the ungainly brutes; but the difficulty is largely due to the fact that, because of the law which protects cows and so makes them abundant, the bulls are already mated and no longer interested in your wailing.

In the wilder region of northern New Brunswick, the first time I ever tried to call moose a truculent old bull burst out of the woods and chased me into my canoe. On another occasion I was sitting on a big rock in the moonlight, “talking” to a young bull that answered but was shy of showing himself, when a huge brute with magnificent antlers came silently behind me, and would, I think, have poked me off my rock had I not made a hasty exit. As[125] I have never done any shooting at such times, I do not know whether bulls would come as readily to my call if there were a rifle behind it; but I do know, from repeated experiment, that when I take others with me it is much harder to bring a bull into the open than when I call alone.

Perhaps the chief reason for the fearlessness of wild beasts at night is that their senses then become so acute as to produce almost perfect self-reliance. In the daytime your eyes are better than theirs; but after nightfall they have you at a disadvantage, and they seem to know it. Not only do their eyes or ears tell them of your coming, but their nostrils seem to detect your very quality or condition. This is not theory, but experience. Repeatedly animals that run from me by day have at night stood quietly beside the trail till I was almost upon them.

The nose of a beast is wonderful enough at any hour; but at night it is to him what a lamp is to you, because the moist air is then laden with odors which are quenched by the dry sunlight. No sooner does twilight fall than the forest becomes a huge bouquet. If you test the matter, you can soon learn to recognize every tree or shrub you pass by its characteristic fragrance. You can wind a beast before you see him, and can pick up from the dewy grass the musky odor of a deer, the[126] heavy smell of a moose, the pungent reek of a fox, long after one of these animals has crossed the trail. Curiously enough, the pine and balsam needles call in their odorous messengers with the night; many flowers suspend their fragrant activity when they close their petals, and not till the sun rises will they be known once more.

From such human experience one may judge what the sense of smell must be to wild animals, which are better endowed in this respect, and which daily cultivate a gift that we neglect. Watch any beast, your dog for example, and note that he does not trust even his master till his nose brings its perfect message. When a deer with his exquisite nostrils passes through the night woods, finding at every step odors which invite or check or warn him, the sensation must be like that of a keen-eyed man who looks upon a landscape flooded with sunshine. Because a man trusts only his sight (the least trustworthy of the senses) he is timid in the darkness, and grows bold with the morning. For the same psychological reason an animal, which trusts his nose, is wary in the dry sunshine when odors are faintest, but grows confident when night falls and the woods fill with messages that he understands perfectly.

The night is better also for hearing. Sounds travel farther, more clearly and more accurately[127] in the elastic air, and the animal’s keen ears are then like another pair of eyes. Even a man’s ears grow sensitive to the meaning of sounds that are mere cries or noises by day, calling of owls far or near, hunting calls, assembly calls, food calls, rain calls; hail or farewell of loons, answered by hail or farewell from another lake far away over the hills; eager or querulous barking of a mother fox, calling her cubs to the feast or chiding them for their clumsy hunting. Above these and a hundred other wild calls is that rushing sound of music which sweeps over the listening night woods, like the surge and swell of a mighty organ at an immeasurable distance.

It is commonly believed that this thrilling harmony of the night is from within, from overstrained nerves of the ear; but I think, on the contrary, that it is wholly objective, as real as the vibration of a wind harp or a ’cello string or any other instrument. I take one person into the big woods at night, and say to him: “Listen; what do you hear?” And he answers, “I hear nothing.” I take another person, and say: “Listen; what do you hear?” And a great wonder comes into his face as he answers: “I hear music. What is it?” When I am alone in the woods my ears are always tense; but on some nights the rushing harmony is everywhere, while on other nights I cannot hear[128] it, listen as I will. Only when conditions are just right, when the air is like a stretched wire, do the woods begin to sing. Then from a distance comes a faint vibration; from the waterfall, it may be, or from some mountain edge purring under a current of air, or from ten-million trembling needles in a swaying grove of pines. The hanging leaves feel it and begin to stir rhythmically; shells of hardwood, dry and resonant as violins, fall to humming with the movement, and suddenly all the forest is musical. The strangest thing about this eerie, wonderful melody is that, when you change position to hear better, it vanishes altogether, and hours may pass before you hear it again.

Amid such conditions, which awaken even human senses from their long sleep, the animal is at home, and his ability to locate sounds is almost beyond belief. You may have heard much of moose-calling, the wailing of the guide, the tingling answer, the approach, the shot, the barbarous end; but the most astonishing thing about moose-calling I have never heard mentioned; namely, that the distant bull seems to locate your first call as accurately as if he had watched you all the way to your chosen position. And this is the way of it:

You leave camp at moonrise and make your[129] way silently to a little bog lying amid endless barrens, lakes, forests,—an unmapped wilderness without road or trail, in which one might lose a city. From your hiding place, a thicket exactly like a thousand others near or far, you begin to call, very softly at first, because a bull may be near and listening. When nothing stirs to your trumpet you grow bolder, sending forth the weird bellow of a cow-moose. Away it goes, whining over forest and barren, rousing up innumerable echoes; in the tense, startled air it seems that such a cry must carry to the ends of the earth. The silence grows more pronounced after that; it begins to be painful when, from a mountain looming far away against the sky, there floats down the ghost of a sound, quoh! so small that the buzz of a chilled mosquito fairly drowns it. You strain your ears, thinking you were deceived; but no, the bull answers again; he is beginning to talk. Listen!

Now you can hear his voice and something else, something almost fairylike,—a rustling, faint as the stir of a mouse in the grass, and tock! an elfin report, as the bull hits a stub in his rush and sends it crackling down.

That fellow will come if you coax him properly. Indeed, if he is not mated, he is bound to come and is already on his way. But the moon is[130] obscured now, and the light very dim. If you would see your bull clearly, or measure his antlers, or learn a new thing, go away quickly without another sound. At daybreak you shall find him not only on this particular bog, which is as a pin point in the vast expanse, but waiting expectantly near the very thicket where you were calling.

With such senses to guide him, to tell him of your every step as you go blundering through the night, no wonder that a wild animal grows serenely confident. Even the black bear, more timid than deer or moose, sheds something of his aloofness when night falls and his nose or ears become as penetrating searchlights. Ordinarily a bear avoids you; should you meet him accidentally his every action says, “I do desire that we may be better strangers.” But if you enter his territory without disturbing him, he will sometimes let curiosity get the better of discretion, and draw near to question you in the friendly darkness.

Once on a canoe journey I found myself breaking all rules of travel by making a belated camp, having passed the sunset hour and crossed a large lake in order to sleep at an old camp ground of mine, a lovely spot, endeared by happy memories. The night was chill, the moon shining full and clear, when I arrived at the familiar place and searched it all over, as a man always searches a[131] place where he once camped, looking for something that he never finds, that he does not even name. Then I repaired my old “Commoosie,” made a fragrant bed of fir boughs, and was thinking of supper when, on the farther side of a bay, two bull-moose started a rumpus, grunting, smashing brush, clanging their antlers like metal blades as they charged each other savagely; all this to win the favor of a mate that cared nothing for either of them.

Silently I paddled over in my canoe, ran close to the fighting brutes, and watched till one drove the other out of hearing. When I returned it was over-late for cooking; so I supped of pilot-bread with dried fruit, and turned in to sleep without lighting a fire. The splash of a feeding trout in the shallows and the wild call of a bear, hey’-oo! like a person lost or demented, were the last sounds I heard.

A man in the open sleeps lightly, in some subconscious way keeping track of what goes on around him. Suddenly, as if someone had touched me, I was broad awake with every sense alert. Behind the great log which lay as a threshold across the open front of the “Commoosie” something moved; a shadow rose up, and there, sharply defined in the moonlight, stood a huge bear. His forepaws rested lightly on the log; his head was[132] raised, his whole body drawn to its utmost tension. Eyes, ears, nose, every sense and fiber of him seemed to question the sleeper with intense wonder.

When you surprise a brute like that, or especially when he surprises you, the rule is to freeze in your tracks; but you need not memorize it, since instinct will attend to the matter perfectly if you follow it without question. If you must move before he does, ignore the animal; turn half away (never move directly toward or from him) and walk quietly off at a tangent, as if going about your own affairs. But here the bear had me wholly at a disadvantage. Except to start fair upright, any move was impossible under the blankets, and a sudden motion would certainly throw the brute into a panic; in which event he might bolt away or bolt into the “Commoosie.” You can never be sure what a startled animal will do at close quarters. So I lay still, following an instinctive rather than a rational decision.

Presently the bear glided away, but falteringly, and I knew that he was not satisfied. Without a sound I reached for my heavy revolver, gripped it, and lay as I was before. Very soon the bear’s head reappeared; like a shadow his bulk moved across the opening, and again he raised himself on the threshold for a look. He probably smelled me, as I certainly smelled him, rank and doggy;[133] but a sleeping man gives off very little scent (of a non-alarming kind, I think), and Mooween’s inquisitiveness had made a bold beast out of a timid one. He had a fine autumn coat; the short velvety fur rippled or gleamed as the moonlight touched it, giving to its lustrous black an apparent fringe of frosty white, like the pelt of a silver fox.

When I marked that perfect fur I knew it was what I had long wanted as a rug. It needed only the pressure of a finger to make it mine, and the finger was curling on the trigger when, unfortunately, I began to think.

Silence enfolded the earth in its benediction, and I must shatter that blessed silence by gunpowder. Like a veil let down from heaven the moonlight rested on every tree, on the rough ground, on my old “Commoosie,” making all things beautiful; and I must spatter that pure veil with red. No, it was not a pleasant notion; night and solitude make a man sensitive, averse to noise, violence, discord of every kind. Even a bear might have some rights, if one were fair with him. He had done no harm in the woods, and meant no harm when he came to my camp. He was simply curious, like all natural beasts. Somehow it began to appear as a greedy, an atrocious thing to kill him just for his skin; at my own door, too, where he stood timidly looking in. Besides,[134] a dead animal is no longer interesting. In the back of my head was the desire, always present when a wild beast appears, to know what he thinks or, if that be impossible, to know at least what he does. The experience, startling enough at first, had now turned to comedy, and I wanted to see how it would end.

Thus a small moment passed, while I tried the great beast for his life; through it ran a river of thought or sentiment with the rush and dance of rapids.

Once during the trial Mooween turned away, only to return quickly. I had moved a trifle, and he heard it. When he turned a second time something in his gait or motion said that he would not come back, that he no longer dared trust his neighborhood. As he disappeared I peeked around the corner of the “Commoosie.” Straight off he went to the edge of the clearing, where he sat upon his haunches, feeling safer with the woods only a jump away, and rocked his nose up and down to catch air from different currents, still hoping for some message that would tell him who or what I was. It was a wild region; he had probably never before met a man. Then he stood erect on his hind legs for a last look, dropped on all-fours, and vanished silently among the shadows. A moment later panic struck him like a bomb;[135] away he ran with a great smashing of brush, as if all the dogs of a parish were after him.

If you are desirous of meeting or knowing wild animals, the hour following the evening twilight is the best time to be abroad. Toward midnight the wood folk all rest, as a rule, and through the small hours the coverts are profoundly quiet till just before the dawn. On a moonlit night birds and beasts are apt to be stirring at all hours, and then is the time to learn the language of the wild, the cries, barks, hootings, yellings, rustlings, which come to you as mere noises at first, but which have all definite meaning when you learn to interpret them. Yet even on moonlit nights such voices are rather exceptional. Wild birds and beasts go their ways in silence for the most part; the typical wilderness night is so quiet, so peaceful, that an occasional cry seems part of a mighty stillness.

On other than moonlit nights you will do well to travel by canoe, keeping close to shore so as to get the fragrance of the breathing woods. They are wonderful in darkness; but if you enter them, your chief concern will probably be to find your way out again, because the depths of a primeval forest are so pitch dark that human eyes are useless. Even on a trail you must look up steadily,[136] keeping your course by the heavens, which are always lighter than the earth. If you strive to look ahead, you will certainly lose the narrow way; but to look up is to see between the black forest bulks on either hand a pathway of light, which corresponds to every turn and winding of the trail beneath. Better still, if you are in danger of losing the path, shut your eyes; keep them shut, and trust to the guidance of your own feet. They are more familiar with the touch of mother earth than you are aware, and they will tell you instantly when you are departing from a beaten trail. But avoid burglar-proof shoes, of the absurd “sportsman” variety, when you try this enlightening experiment.

There are other things than animals, you see, to be met in the night. Perhaps the most interesting creature you will ever meet is your natural self, which lies buried but not dead under a crust of artificial habit. To break that crust and come forth, like a moth from its dry chrysalis; to feel again the joy of human senses, awakened, vibrant, responsive to every message of earth; to cast aside unworthy fear and walk in one’s birthright of confidence; to know the companionship of the night, more mysterious and more lovely than the day,—all this is waiting for you in the darkened woods. Try it and see. Leave your camp on the[137] first still, moonlit evening to follow the trail alone. Look up at the trees, all fairylike, with leaves of burnished silver set amid luminous shadows, and confess that you never saw a tree in its beauty before. Smell the fragrance of the moistened woods, like an old-fashioned garden of thyme and mignonette. Listen to the night, to its small voices, to its rushing harmonies, above all to its silences. Grow accustomed to a world on which darkness has fallen like refreshing rain, until you cast aside all hallucinations of terror or struggle, and learn for yourself how friendly, how restful nature is. And when the right night comes, when the tense stillness begins to tremble and all the woods grow musical, then you will wish that some great composer could hear what you hear, and put it upon the stringed instruments, and call it his symphony of silence.

[138]

STORIES OF THE TRAIL

DAWN comes to the big woods, a winter dawn, fair and wondrous still. It finds our little “Commoosie” nestled among the evergreens, its back to a protecting ledge, its open front to the lake. We are half asleep after restful hours of sleeping when a persistent hammering floats through our dreams and rouses us as the day is breaking.

The hammering comes from the birds’ table, now bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard, where a woodpecker is impatiently calling for his daily fare. Chickadees repeat his call softly, and a pine grosbeak, perched on a projecting roof pole, bends his head to look into the “Commoosie” with its two lazy sleepers. Outside, the snow is four feet deep; the mercury huddles below the zero mark; the[139] dead fire sends a thin column of smoke straight up into air that sparkles with frost as the light runs in through the evergreens. It is early spring by the almanac, but the world we look on gives no sign of it.

“Hello!” says Bob, poking a head out of his sleeping bag as a louder reveille rattles on the table. “Your friends out there want their breakfast.”

“Well, breakfast is a good thing,” I answer, “and hospitality is here the chief of virtues. Suppose you stir the fire and cook a bite for them. Trout, bacon, toast and coffee will just suit that woodpecker, and I’ll be content with whatever he leaves.” Then we crawl forth to rub our faces with snow, a tribute to civilization which has the effect of shocking sleep out of us, and take a look at the woods, the sky, the lake all white and still under its soft mantle.

Oh, but it is good to be alive in such an hour; good to be awakened by birds that brave the northern winter cheerfully; good to breathe deep of this keen air that blows over miles of spruce and balsam, uncontaminated by any smell of man, sniffed only by the wild things! So our day begins naturally with joy, as a day should begin which promises good hunting.

An hour later we say good-by and good luck[140] on the lake shore, my friend heading northeast, and I due south, each with an ample wilderness to himself. Bob swings off in front of a moose sled, to which is strapped a camera and other duffle. While shooling through the woods a few days ago we discovered a colony of beaver in a beautiful spot, with a playground of open water in front of their lodges; now he will arrange a booth, a string, and other mysteries of his craft, and perhaps get a rare winter picture of the animals. Meanwhile I shall get many pictures of the kind that a man carries with him forever, but cannot show; for I travel light, with both hands free, having no other object than to follow any inviting trail wherever it may lead. There are stories with every one of these pictures—but first an explanation.

Since I am hunting alone to-day, bagging as game any woodsy impression of the trail, the personal pronouns of this narrative will become sadly jumbled before the day is done; and especially will the familiar “you” or convenient “we” replace the obtrusive “I.” Such pronouns are always used vaguely by a solitary man, for two reasons: first, because the woods discourage all self-assertion, telling one through his natural instincts to go softly, to merge himself bodily in his environment, to be in spiritual harmony with his[141] visible or invisible audience; and second, because every wilderness voyageur, as a protection against the overwhelming silence, has the habit of talking to that other self, at once friendly and critical, who goes with him over every lonely way for good company.

That last is natural enough, and wholesome so long as one does not talk aloud or address that other self as a stranger. When a man in the woods suddenly hears the sound of his own voice, or catches himself asking that other, “Who are you?” it is a bad sign. It means that he has been alone too much, that solitude is getting the best of him, that he needs the medicine of human society. And now for the trail!

A fall of snow last night has wrought marvelous transformation in the familiar world. The word of the Apocalypse, “Behold, I make all things new,” is written on the face of the whole earth, which is like a book fresh and clean from the press. Across its white pages go many tracks, each telling its story or leading to some other story beyond; and to read such records, even as a neophyte, is to enter into one of the pleasures of the winter woods. The snow is a greater telltale than any newspaper, and all its tales are true. No matter how shy the wood folk may be, each must leave a[142] trail, whether straight or crooked; and the trails are ready to tell who passed this way, how he fared, what adventure befell him, and how he played his big or little part in the endless comedy of the woods.

The sun is rising as we strap on snowshoes and head blithely down the lake, keeping close to the eastern shore with its deep shadows; for you shall learn little of the wood folk until you learn to imitate them by making yourself inconspicuous. A great tide of light rolls over the level expanse and ripples up the western hills, showing rank upon rank of giant spruces, each bearing his burden of new snow tenderly, as if he loved it. Suddenly the morning breeze shakes them, filling the air with diamond dust, through which the sunshine breaks in a thousand fleeting rainbows.

Near at hand, under the hardwoods of this sheltered shore, the snow has taken many shapes, noble or fantastic, at the hands of the eddying wind; here a smooth page to catch the tale of wandering feet; there a great dome, glistening white, which hides some shapeless thing beneath; beyond that a shadowy cave with doorway light as air, into which leads a single delicate track; and under the cliff, where the wind recoiled, a fairyland of arches, towers, battlements, all fretted more delicately than any lace. Every ugly or unsightly thing has been beautified, every unclean[143] thing washed whiter than wool. All this beautiful world, breathless with the wonder of creation still upon it, this newborn world over which the Infinite broods silently, is wholly ours to enter, to possess, and to enjoy. Expectantly, as if something fair and good must come to-day, and on tiptoe, as if any noise must profane such a world of splendor and silence, we slip along between lake and woods, marveling once more at the magic of the winter wilderness.

A wavy line of blue shadows under the western shore beckons us, and we cross over to pick up our first trail. A curious trail it is, showing a few deep tracks close together, followed by a long groove in the snow; then more tracks, another groove, and so up the lake as far as you can see. Keeonekh the otter left that record; there is no other like it in the woods. He is wooing a mate now, and being a young otter, as the tracks show, he is looking for her in distant places. Thus instinctively he avoids the danger of inbreeding with otters that are more or less related to him; and in this he is like most other wild animals and birds, which scatter widely when looking for their mates.

Wherever you go at this season in this untraveled wilderness, you find Keeonekh neglecting his habitual play (he is the most playful of all[144] wild creatures) for endless, erratic journeys over the ice or through the woods, where he seems a little out of place. Being a fisherman, he is at home only in the water, where he is all celerity and grace; but his legs are short and his body heavy for traveling on dry land. On the snow he does better, and puts rhythm into his motion by taking two or three quick jumps to get momentum, and then sliding forward on his belly. Where the surface is level his slides are short, from two to six feet, according to the speed at which he is going; but he takes advantage of every slope to make much longer distances.

Once I trailed an otter that went over a high bluff to the river below; his trail showed a clean slide of two hundred feet, and the pitch was so steep that I dared not follow. Keeonekh was in a hurry that time, for I was too close behind him for comfort. He hurled himself at top speed over the bluff, and went down like a bolt. In the intervals of travel or fishing he may seek his favorite bank, where he slides for hours at a stretch just for the fun of the thing. That explains why every otter caught in the spring has the glistening outer hairs, or king fur, completely worn away on the under side of his body: he has been sliding downhill too much from a furrier’s viewpoint.

[145]For a mile or more we follow the otter’s trail up the lake, slide-jump-jump, slide-jump-jump, as if he were moving to waltz music. “You are taking your time, Keeonekh,” I say; “but you are leaving an uncommonly crooked trail, dodging in and out like a thieving mink; which is not like you or your breed. Why are you at such pains to hide your tracks? Ah, yes, I remember; last night when you passed this way the wolves were howling.”

As a rule the otter travels boldly, being well able to take care of himself; but here the trail holds close to shore, curving in or out with the banks, taking advantage of every bush or ledge to keep under cover. Suddenly Keeonekh begins to hurry; he is alarmed, no doubt about it. See, his jumps lengthen, he spatters the snow wildly, making us cast about for the cause. There is nothing here to account for his flight; but yonder, over under the eastern shore, are blue shadows wide apart in the snow, which show where some other beast came leaping down from the woods. We shall name that beast presently, for where the lake narrows far ahead his trail sweeps into the one we are following. Holding to the otter’s course, our stride lengthens as we see how desperately he is running. No waltz time now, but a headlong rush for safety.

[146]Near the inlet, whither he has been heading since he struck the lake, Keeonekh darts to a projecting stub, where black ice and moist snow speak of moving water, and begins to dig furiously. Here is one of his refuge holes, such as otters keep open in winter near good fishing grounds; but the frost has sealed it since his last visit, and he has no time now to break through. The other trail veers round this spot in a great curve, the flying arc of which betokens speed, and we go over to find the tracks of a wolf coming at a fast clip up the inlet, sixteen feet to the jump. No wonder Keeonekh hurries; that wolf is after him. But why does he not head straight for open water, where he will be safe? A brook enters the lake ahead; one can both see and hear that it is free of ice.

Turning sharply from his course, leaving lake and open inlet behind him, Keeonekh streaks away for the woods of the eastern shore. Surely he has lost his head; he has no chance either at running or fighting with a brute of that stride and fang behind him. It’s all over with him now, you think, and you are sorry; for though you try to keep open mind for all creatures, when it comes to a choice between wolf and otter your sympathy is wholly with the fisherman. But spare your feelings a moment; you never know the end of a story till you come to the end of the trail. To follow Keeonekh[147] is to learn that he still has his head on, and that he knows the country more intimately than we do.

Just over the low ridge yonder is another lake; and under the ledge which you see cropping out is a spring-hole that never freezes. It is nearer than the mouth of the inlet, though the traveling looks much harder, uphill through deep snow. With the wolf in sight, coming up the lake like a cyclone, Keeonekh takes a desperate chance, knowing his advantage if he can top the ridge. Both trails go up the bank by a natural runway, otter and wolf sinking shoulder-deep at every jump. The wolf is gaining here at a frightful rate, one of his flying leaps covering two or three of the otter’s. Nose to tail, they reach the top, where Keeonekh springs aside from the runway and plunges headlong over the ledge. One clean slide of thirty feet, and with a final convulsive leap he lands on the edge-ice of the spring-hole. It breaks under his impact; down he goes in a swirl of black water.

The trail now brings a smile or a chuckle, for we follow Malsun the wolf. Here he hesitates at the brink of the ledge, slippery where snow has melted by day or frozen by night; looking down the almost perpendicular slope, he sees the glistening body of Keeonekh glance away from under his nose. Malsun will sit on his tail and slide down[148] an ordinary bank, but he balks at this icy ledge. It is too steep; and the black ice below, with water lapping over its broken edges, looks dangerous. Turning from the ledge, he leaps down the runway and creeps around to the farther side of the spring-hole, where he stands waiting expectantly. Keeonekh is under water, and can go where he pleases; he can even cross the lake to another spring-hole, if need be, since he has learned the trick of breathing under the ice. But the wolf, who has no notion of such possibilities in a mere beast, thinks that whoever goes into water must soon come out again, and waits for Keeonekh to reappear.

Malsun is not a patient waiter, being too much like a dog. Soon a doubt enters his head, then a suspicion which sends him sniffing around the edges of the spring-hole to be sure the game did not slip away while he was coming down the runway. “No, nothing went away from here,” he says. “Nothing could possibly go away without telling my nose about it.”

The uneasy trail, weaving here and there, shows that Malsun is more puzzled than ever. Suddenly a notion strikes him, a cunning notion that his game is hiding somewhere, waiting for a chance to continue the flight. He trots off to the woods, as if going away; but no sooner is he hidden than he creeps back behind a stump, where he can see the[149] spring-hole without being seen. He is a young wolf, sure enough; the cub habit of stalking things, like a cat, is still strong in him; but his patience is no better than before. He fidgets, changes position; after watching awhile, as you see by a depression in the snow, he goes to have another sniff around the spring-hole. Then he turns away reluctantly and lopes off eastward, probably to rejoin the pack, which we heard howling in this direction last night.

We shall follow him later, to see what else he chased and how he fared; but now a heavy blue shadow drawn across the second lake demands attention. It is trail of some kind; but most wilderness trails are devious, and this goes straight as a string from one wooded point to another on the opposite shore. From this distance it looks like an artificial roadway; we must see who made it.

The shadow, as we draw near it, turns into a path beaten deep in the snow; so deep that, in places near shore, it would easily hide the animals that made use of it. On either side are curious marks or scratches, all slanting one way; in the fresh snow at the bottom are tracks which say that a pair of large beavers have gone back and forth many times. That is an amazing thing, since Hamoosabik the builder, as Simmo calls him, ought[150] now to be safe in his winter lodge, especially in a wolf and lynx country like this. He is a clumsy creature on land or ice; he is courting sudden death to be more than a few jumps from open water at this hungry time of year.

Following the path to the nearer woods, on our right, we find that the beavers have been felling poplar trees and trimming branches into convenient lengths for transportation. The heavy butts lie where they fell, but all smaller pieces have disappeared, showing that the animals are gathering a new supply of food. I have known beavers, driven by necessity, to leave their winter lodge and forage in the woods, eating where they could; but here are no signs of feeding, and no peeled sticks such as a beaver leaves when he has eaten the good bark.

The cutting has been done near a brook, which you hear singing to itself under its blanket of snow and ice. To the brook go several snow tunnels, each starting beside the stump of a fallen poplar, and examination brings out this interesting bit of animal foresight: wherever the beavers fell a tree, they also dig a tunnel leading to the unseen brook. The digging was first in order, and its purpose was to furnish a way of escape should the beavers be surprised at their work.

It is plain now that we are following an uncommonly[151] cunning pair of animals; that they are working in great danger to transport food-wood to their lodge (which must be on the other side of the lake), and that the curious marks beside their path were made by projecting ends of sticks that they carried crosswise in their teeth. Since beavers store an ample food supply in autumn, some misfortune must have sent this pair abroad in the snow; but why do they not eat their bark where they find it? That they know the danger of crossing an expanse of ice, where they may be caught under their burden by prowling enemies, becomes increasingly apparent as we follow the trail. It heads straight across the narrowest part of the lake to a wooded point, where it turns southward, hiding under banks or underbrush, and then cuts across a bay to the open mouth of a large brook.

Here the beavers have their winter home in a great domed lodge. Around the open water are tracks made by three generations of beaver, and these with the uncommonly big house tell us that the family is a large one. Probably their bark soured under water, the wood having been cut early with too much sap, and they were compelled to go afield for a fresh supply. It is hard, perhaps impossible, for a man to judge what went on in their troubled heads when the need of food grew imperative; but a little memory and some study[152] of the trail bring out two facts to make one thoughtful. The first fact, from memory, is that old and young members of a beaver family habitually work together in gathering their winter store of food; the second, from the trail, is that this particular family is not following its habitual or instinctive custom. Though there are kits and well-grown yearlings in the lodge, only two of the largest beavers have gone forth on their dangerous foraging.

An inviting trail leads up beside the brook, and we follow it to find where several of the family have been cutting a huge yellow birch this very morning. That this tree was intended for food is most improbable; the branches are untouched, and beavers do not care for yellow-birch bark at any season. Had they been driven to such fare by necessity, there are smaller trees with more tender bark near the lodge. They have cut this tough tree for exercise, I think. Their teeth grow rapidly, and unless cutting edges are worn down to the proper bevel they soon grow troublesome. That is why a beaver often comes out beside his lodge, if he can possibly reach open water, and cuts for an hour or two at the butt of a tree to keep his teeth in trim. If he is unable to reach open water, he may find himself in need of heroic treatment when the ice breaks up. I once found a[153] beaver that had starved to death simply because his cutting teeth had grown so long, overlapping below and above, that he could not open his mouth wide enough to separate them and so peel the bark from his food-wood.

Farther up the brook the trail of a solitary beaver leaves the path and heads away into a swamp. Step by step we follow him, till he finds a young cedar tree and cuts it down. That is an odd proceeding, since beavers never eat cedar bark for food. See, as the tree falls he jumps aside to be clear of the butt, which has a trick of lashing out and knocking over anything in its path. Then he mogs around to the very tip, where he eats a few of the greenest sprays, filled with pungent oil of cedar. This for medicine, undoubtedly, which some beavers seem to need in winter, perhaps because of their scant exercise and restricted diet.

The lodge looms up finely across the stream, inviting a closer inspection. It is an enormous structure for a single family, higher than my head and full twelve feet in diameter. An old wolf trail leads to the top on one side, a fresh lynx trail on the other, showing where these hungry prowlers climbed up on tiptoe, as if stalking game, for a smell of the odors that steamed through the beavers’ ventilator. A ravenous smell it must[154] have been to them, like the smell of frying onions to a hungry man. There is hardly a flesh-eating animal in the north that will not leave any other game for a taste of musky beaver. Neither wolf nor lynx attempted to dig the game out, you see; they merely sniffed and passed on; and that, too, tells a story. When they were cubs, perhaps, both animals tried to dig a beaver out of some other lodge like this, only to find that the thick walls of sticks and grass, cemented by frozen mud, were too strong to be breached by any beast in the wilderness.

At thought of these hungry brutes, some vague hint of a nearer hunger floats in and turns our mind to minnows; for that bit of open water looks fishy, and if we can catch a minnow there, we are sure of a good breakfast. There are plenty of trout in the lake by the home camp; but lately they have shown a capricious appetite for minnows, which are more precious here than rubies. To catch a trout is easy enough. All you need do is to place a slanting twig over the hole from which we get drinking water, tie a bit of cloth to your line for a flag, stick this into the split upper end of the twig, and sit comfortably by the fire till your flag is jerked into the hole; whereupon you run quickly and pull out your trout, a fat, delicious trout that tastes as if he had[155] been raised on milk and honey. But first you must catch a minnow for bait, and that calls for a fisherman.

Spreading some brush to distribute my weight, for the ice here is dangerous, I crumble a bit of bread from our lunch into the open water—this to attract any minnow that happily may dwell in the beavers’ playground. Suddenly a flash of silver flickers in the black water amid the sinking crumbs. It inspires hope, tingling and electric, like that which thrills one when the swirl of a noble salmon follows his cast. Then for an hour, it seems, or until I am almost frozen, I use all my fisherman’s art with a bent pin, a morsel of meat, a thread and a moosewood twig; after which I wriggle ashore proudly, holding up one minnow a good inch-and-a-half long. Letting him freeze in the snow while we kindle a fire and brew a dipper of tea for lunch, I carry him off in an outside pocket, where he will keep cold enough until we need him. Sport is a matter of sentiment, and is nine-tenths imagination; but real enjoyment is born of necessity. Never a big salmon, of all that I have taken on the fly, was so well angled for or gave so much solid satisfaction as that tiny minnow.

We shall cruise in strange woods for the rest of the day, taking a hint from Malsun the wolf[156] when he left the otter’s spring-hole. Turning away from the lake, we head rapidly northeast through broken country, on a course which may bring us to the trail of the wolves we heard howling in the night. Malsun was heading this way when we left his trail, and a wolf always knows where to find his pack.

Over a hillock we go, and across a white-faced bog bordered by ghostly larches, so wild, so lonely, that it seems nothing ever breathed here since the world began. Nature seems dead, her form shrouded in snow, her lips sealed with ice; but she is only playing with us, having slipped on another of her many masks. Though nothing moves here, though your snowshoes glide on hour after hour and start no bird or beast, there is life near you at every instant, an eager, abundant life, which finds health and cheerfulness in these apparently desolate places. That you cannot see it is part of the winter game; wild life is too alert now, and much too secretive, to reveal itself to any careless eye.

Beyond the bog an immense ridge of hardwood sweeps upward to the sky line. As we climb it, we cross a succession of delicate trails that seem to move onward at a stealthy fox trot. No wonder that Indians call the maker of such a trail Eleemos the sly one! A dozen foxes have crossed the[157] ridge this morning, probably between dawn and sunrise. That seems too many for one locality until you consult the snow, which says that most of the “sly ones” are heading the same way, and that they are no longer hunting, but moving to a definite goal. In the ledges yonder, which front the sunshine, are probably two or three dens that have been used by generations of foxes; and the cubs, after hunting far afield, come back every morning to pass the day near the familiar place or, it may be, near familiar companions, as young foxes commonly do in regions where they are not disturbed by hunting.

Would you like to see one of these wilderness foxes? Then come, follow this dainty trail. It was made by a young dog fox (his habits betray him), and we shall not be long in finding his day bed.

For a half-mile or more Eleemos holds steadily on his course, stopping once to listen and spring aside when he heard a wood mouse squeak under a fallen pine. See, there is a pinkish tinge in the snow where he dropped a morsel of his small game, and lapped it to the last smell. That does not mean necessarily that Eleemos was very hungry. A fox will stop to catch a mouse when his stomach is so full that you wonder how it can hold any more. One October day, when hunting with a[158] gun, I called a fox by a mouselike squeaking. His stomach was tight as a drum; when I opened it I found that Eleemos had already eaten three or four mice, two birds, some stuff I could not name, and part of a young muskrat.

The fox we are following turns from his straight course and heads diagonally upward toward the ledges. Never mind the trail at your feet now; it will soon begin to twist, because a fox never goes straight to his day bed, and you should see the turn before you come to it. So look far ahead, and go carefully; don’t click the snowshoes or let your clothing scrape on a frozen twig. See, the trail turns sharp to the left, and beyond that to the right. There he is! a flash of ruddy color, as Eleemos slips away from the log on which he was curled up in the sun. He saw us before we saw him, though he was more or less asleep. Had he not waited to learn who was coming, you would not have caught even a glimpse of him. Now he half circles to get our wind, for like most animals he trusts his nose above all other senses. There are fleeting glimpses of fur as he passes an opening or halts behind a windfall that hides all but his ears; then he heads away in swift jumps, his brush quivering nervously, and disappears in thick cover. No use to follow; you will not see that fox again.

[159]The older foxes are mating now, and their trails are amazingly devious. Ordinarily Eleemos leaves a plain story in the snow; but if you attempt to read it at a time when he is cajoling a mate, or in a region where his enemies, the wolves, have just been hunting, you will be at your wits’ end to untangle the puzzle. Aside from his courting or hunting habits, every fox has times or moods when his actions are humanly incomprehensible. Last week, for example, I found the trail of a fox that had taken one of Bob’s wolf baits; but instead of eating it he carried it off in his mouth, taking a very erratic course, and setting the bait down here or there to have another look at it. Once he dropped it under a drooping fir tip, crept completely around the fir, and crouched to watch the thing from hiding, as a kitten plays with a paralyzed mouse. Then he carried it hither and yon over the crookedest trail I ever tried to follow, sometimes trotting quietly, again rushing away as if something were chasing him, now and then squatting to look at his prize as it lay immobile under his nose. Though I had a perfect tracking snow, which showed every footprint of the fox and every resting place of the bait, what with his crisscrosses and back-tracking I could not trace him a straight mile from the starting point, and I left him without the faintest[160] notion of where he was heading or what he would do with his stolen morsel.

That bait, by the way, was an odd thing for any fox to uncover in his familiar woods. It was invented in an idle, lunatic moment after the wolves had refused to go near a variety of natural baits, and immediately it brought forth the fantastic fruits of lunacy by becoming excellent “medicine.” It was the size of a teacup; it was compounded of meat scraps held together by melted lard; just before it hardened, it was rolled in powdered fish skins; then the tail feather of a crow was stuck into it, as a marker on the snow. From beginning to end of the alchemy no human hand touched it to leave a suspicious odor. No doubt the queer but appetizing thing was enough to puzzle any fox, making him cut strange capers; but I was unable to generalize about its effect on a canny beast, because the next fox that took a similar bait not only ate it on the spot, but licked up every crumb and looked about for more.

As we resume our course after seeing Eleemos, we run into another trail, which confuses us by its odd appearance until we read that it was made by a pair of foxes, male and female, that were carefully stepping in each other’s tracks. They came over the ridge one behind the other, not heading for the den, but approaching the lake by[161] endless roundabouts, stopping here or there to leave a tangle of tracks which record some little comedy. Instead of trying to read the puzzle, which is beyond all woodcraft, I sketch a portion of the trail just as the foxes left it,—so:

On the farther side of the ridge, as we turn downward to a cedar swamp, we begin to cross other[162] trails, each with a tale to tell if one follows it far enough. But the winter day is too short; we must hurry if we are to learn what the wolves were doing. Here is where a solitary Canada lynx passed, leaving round pugs like enormous cat tracks. His trail gives a curious impression of mingled cunning and stupidity; it is wavering, sneaky, suspicious, like all cat trails. Since it is heading our way, we follow it through the swamp, to see how Upweekis stalks a hare, before climbing the next ridge. Here in a wind-swept spot a few wood mice have ventured up from their tunnels under the snow; and red squirrels—’sh! there’s one now.

Meeko was hidden in a spruce as we approached, and we would never have seen him had he kept still. Being packed full of curiosity, he cannot be quiet, but must run down his tree to see a man, no doubt the first biped of that kind he has ever met. He begins to scold when we stand motionless, telling him nothing, and I answer him by talking squirrel talk between lips and teeth. Meeko listens in amazed silence; his eyes seem to enlarge, to snap fire; then, as if he had discovered something of vast importance, he leaps jabbering from the tree and scurries away in breakneck fashion. At his summons a second squirrel tumbles out from under a log; whereupon I talk more gibberish, and two more come rushing down the hill.[163] From a sugar maple comes a volley of questions, protests, expostulations. A squirrel is up there who thinks he is being neglected; when he can stand his isolation no longer he comes down to join the crowd. That makes five in this small spot, and we hear more voices in the distance, shrill, querulous voices, demanding the news or scolding about it, whatever it may be.

The five visible squirrels are running in erratic circles, drawing nearer to the strange creature that puzzles and irritates them, till one scurries up my leg almost to my waist, where he loses courage and leaps off, scared but chattering. At this they all scatter and climb different trees, stopping at the level of my eyes, where they jump up and down on the same spot, crying kilch! kilch! as they jump. Then, for they are a rattle-headed folk, they forget curiosity and take to chasing or punishing one poor, squealing wretch who, they think, caused all this ado about nothing.

There is life here, you see, and in the snow at your feet is the record of it, more interesting by far than any book of natural history. So with senses all alert we move onward to the rhythmic swish and click of the snowshoes, mile after lonely mile, now over mighty hardwood ridges that probably never before were marked by a man’s footprints, again pushing through dense evergreen[164] thickets to break out on the silent expanse of a caribou barren, a beaver pond, an unnamed lake; and hardly a rood of all this ground but offers a trail to follow and a story to read. Here is good hunting.

As we follow down a ridge in the late afternoon, we get one shock and meet with the only nerve-testing adventure which this big, lonely wilderness can furnish. There is no game in sight; the woods are still, the snow unmarked by any trail; but we are moving cautiously, lifting the snowshoes so as to avoid all noise. Somewhere on that densely wooded hillside across the valley is a deer yard; our eyes are searching far ahead, trying to pick up a moving shadow, when with startling suddenness comes a rumble, a roar, a violent upheaval of snow, and out from underfoot bursts a whirring, booming thing that scares us stiff. Through the flurry of snow the thing looks like a bomb and sounds like an explosion; but—we laugh at our fright—it is only a bird, a grouse, who is making all that commotion. Seksagadagee, Little Thunder-maker, the Indians call him, and now you know why: he has a thunderclap way of startling you at times, and in the spring his hollow drumming has a suggestion of distant thunder. This one, having eaten his fill of birch buds, had swooped into the snow for the night, as grouse often do[165] before the big owls begin to hunt, and I had put one of the snowshoes fairly over him before seeing the hole he made when he went in.

That hole is scarcely noticeable even now, for no sooner was it made than the falling snow almost filled it again. Beneath it is a tunnel, cloven by the bird’s plunge, which slants downward and makes a sharp turn to the left. At the end is, or was, a little chamber where Seksagadagee intended to sleep warm, out of eyeshot of hunting owls, with a blanket of snow all around him.

There he is now, cuddled against the stem of a big spruce, where he is hard to find. He is motionless, like a knob of the tree, but he is looking back alertly to see what startled him. At sight of his plump breast the thought of food replaces natural history; my revolver comes up in line with his head. He will be a rare bonne bouche, and the wilderness must feed its wanderers—but wait! Grouse are scarce here, as they are at home this year, having gone through a wet breeding season which killed most of the chicks, after enduring a pest of goshawks that came down from the north and harried the old birds all winter. That is why we have crossed but one grouse track to-day, though we have traversed miles of good cover since sunrise.

It seems a pity to take this lonesome fellow.[166] When you kill a bird he is dead, and makes no more trails. “Well, Little Thunder-maker, you and your poults have had a hard enough rub with hawks and foxes, and these big woods seem to need you. Good-by and good luck!” I call, and we break even. But I was more scared than he was. The bomb paralyzed me for a moment, exploding so suddenly; while his booming flight said that he was master of his own motions.

In the valley beyond, just before entering the deer yard, we cross the trail of the wolves we are seeking,—six powerful brutes that keep together at this point, traveling in single file till they reach the hillside with its tangle of deer paths, when they spread out to sweep the cover from end to end. The air was northerly last night; they are hunting upwind after their usual fashion. We must hurry now; it is growing late, and we have one more story to read from the trails, a story which I wish had not been written. Ah, see that!

Yonder are holes in the snow where two deer (probably a doe and her fawn of last spring) rested near one of the paths of their winter yard; and up the path comes a wolf, stealing along like a cat. That fellow is hunting keenly; but though near enough to smell his game under ordinary conditions, the trail shows that he has no inkling of the two animals only a few yards away. They are[167] hidden by the snow a little to one side of his course, which will take him past them if he keeps on as he is going. Fortunately for the deer, they give out very little scent when resting; and since a wolf does not follow foot scent, he must run almost over them before he knows where they are. See, he has passed without smelling them; they will be safe in another minute if they hold still. There! too bad! too bad! The deer have caught the rank wolf smell, and a single whiff stampedes them. As they jump, the wolf catches the body scent and whirls toward them. Two great bounds bring him into their trail; he is after them in a terrific rush.

Poor deer! it is all up with them now; they have no chance with that grim brute at their heels. Luckily he will kill only one, leaving the other, for deer are not like crowding sheep; they scatter when a wolf attacks the herd. But what is this?

A short run, and the wolf leaves the hot trail and speeds to a distant part of the yard, hurling himself forward by extraordinary bounds, as if life depended on getting somewhere else on the instant.

That is just like a wolf. He has room for only one notion or impulse at a time; when a new notion or a stronger impulse comes into his head, it drives out the other. Chasing his game and gaining on it at every jump, this wolf received some new, imperative summons and rushed to[168] answer it. Following him, we find where another wolf joins his headlong rush; others come sweeping in from either side; the whole pack goes leaping alongside a fresh trail left by a running buck and a single big wolf.

We understand now the uproar that shattered last night’s stillness. It was the trail-cry of a wolf, followed by the pack’s terrifying answer. As a rule, wolves hunt in silence; when they run a deer there is seldom a yelp from beginning to end of the chase. Occasionally, however, when a solitary wolf starts big game and wants help, he utters a peculiar cry; and that cry, coming from the mother wolf who leads the pack or from the old dog wolf who hunts by himself, rouses up a wild impulse, electric, irresistible. At the tingling summons every wolf in the pack leaves his own affairs, even the food he has just caught, and darts away to join the hunt. As the scattered brutes draw together, there is confused, uproarious howling. The running game, thinking only of the wolf behind him, hears a threatening clamor on all sides; he wavers, halts, turns, and the chase is over. Such is the psychology of a wolf’s hunting, as one hears it in the night or reads it from the snowy trail next morning.

The buck is heading for the nearest lake, where running is easier and he has the advantage, since[169] his sharp hoofs cling to the ice where the wolves’ feet slip and slither; but the lake is half a mile away, and he will never reach it. I have followed a score of just such trails as this, and whether in woods or on open ice I have not yet found one which said that a buck could keep ahead of these fleet brutes more than a few minutes.

That is an odd thing, too, since wolves trust to stealth rather than to speed. Though they have tremendous power of running and leaping, they refuse (in their hunting, at least) to keep up a fast clip for any length of time; and in witnessing one of their hunts I had the impression that any buck should be able to get away from them. In deep snow he seems to have quite as much speed as they have; on the ice he has more, and he might win in any kind of footing if he would only put his mind into his running. Unhappily, that is precisely what a white-tailed deer will not or cannot do when a wolf is after him. When a caribou sniffs a wolf he racks away at a slashing pace, keeping it up until he is out of danger, and no wolf on earth can catch him in a fair run; but a deer, after a magnificent burst of speed which shows his power, always stops to look around, to stamp, to threaten, to fidget. At times he gives the impression that, in a dazed sort of way, he is puzzling his head to know what the brutes behind[170] him are doing or why they do not go about their own affairs. It is not the wolf’s extra speed, I think, but the deer’s mental paralysis which makes the chase so short. But enough of psychology! Here is a plain trail to follow.

At this point the buck and the big wolf that jumped him are running evenly, one behind the other, with no great exertion on either side. Farther on the buck slows down, his jumps shorten; then the wolf closes in, the buck turns to fight. See, as he turns, how the pack rolls in behind him, cutting off his escape, while the big wolf holds him in front. Though they have the buck at their mercy, the powerful brutes do not spring upon the game at bay, for that is not a wolf’s way; he watches his chance to kill by stealth, as he hunts by stealth. Here are depressions which show where two wolves crouched within easy-springing distance; behind them is a hole where the buck came down from a jump. He must have leaped clean over the crouching wolves as he broke away for the lake.

The trail is marvelously interesting now; it tells of things that happen in the night, things that few human eyes have ever seen. Some of the pack are racing on either side of the buck, while a single big wolf follows jump for jump at his heels. Here the buck is thrown fairly when the following wolf[171] catches a flying foot; but he is up and away with the same motion that rolls him completely over. There is the story in the snow, as plain as English when you know how to read it. Though a few red drops mark the trail, the buck is hardly scratched; the big wolf has not yet had the chance for which he is watching. Again the buck is thrown, and this time he stays down. There he lies, just as he fell! He was not quick enough on his feet the second time, and the big wolf closed his jaws on the small of the back. That is one way of killing, but not the common way when the approach is from behind. The wolf was looking for a different chance, I think, but took this like a flash when he saw it.

We examine the wound carefully, cutting away the skin so as to see more clearly. Only the deep fang-marks show; the flesh is not eaten here, or even torn; yet under the muscles the bones grate like a broken hinge. The wolves eat a little from the hind quarters, and two of them lap a bit at the throat without tearing it. There is only a slight puncture, under which a few red drops are frozen in a hollow lapped by a wolf’s tongue. So far as we can discover, the only serious wound on the body is that broken back, with its mute testimony to the power of a timber wolf’s snap. The trail shows no sign of quarreling when the wolves feed[172] or when they go off, their hunger satisfied, to roam the woods like lazy dogs.

There is a different kind of hunting ahead now, a hunt to save the deer by shooting their enemies; but the short winter day is almost done, and we must wait for the morrow. You will be told that it is vain to follow a wolf in this densely wooded region; that his senses are so much keener than yours that you will never find him by trailing; that your only chance of killing him is to go abroad at all hours and trust to a chance meeting. One can understand such counsel, born of repeated failure, without quite agreeing with it. Only yesterday I found the fresh kill of a wolf pack in the early morning, and before noon I had trailed the brutes to where they were resting for the day under a ledge. The fascinating thing was that they had no notion I was anywhere near them when the first massive gray head rose above the bushes to sniff suspiciously. Such a chase is out of the question to-day; the light fades, and camp is calling.

The snowshoe trail stretches far behind, giving a sense of comfort in these strange woods, because one cannot well be lost with his own snowshoe slots to guide him. But the back trail is weary miles long, and, judging by our course since morning (which was first southerly, you remember, then northeast), the home lake can hardly be more than[173] an hour or so to westward. No need to look at your compass; there’s the sunset. So into the sunset we go, and after the sunset is the twilight, with one great star like a lamp hung over it.

It is dusk, and numberless stars are glittering in the frosty air, when we break out of the gloomy woods near the foot of the lake. As we move campward, more swiftly now over level going, a long howl rolls down from the hills over which our trail has just been drawn. There is a moment of quiet on nature’s part, of tense listening on ours; then the rally cry of the wolves goes shivering through the night.

That pack, or another one, must have been nearer than we thought. Perhaps they saw us as we hurried down the last slope through deepening shadows. No doubt they will soon be sniffing our trail. In the early evening a young wolf is apt to raise a great howl when he runs across the fresh trail of a man; not because he knows what it is, but for precisely the opposite reason. “Will they follow or chase us?” you ask; which shows that you have been reading wolf stories. “No, these big timber wolves never hunt a man,” I answer, and that answer is true. Nevertheless, your stride lengthens; there is a feeling of lightness in your heels; you are a little nervous, and your scalp is tight; wait a bit.

[174]A fallen pine stub offers an inviting seat under the shore, where we sit down to “rest a pipe,” listening alertly to the wolves, trying to gauge their course for the next hunting,—their hunting and mine, for I shall surely follow them at daybreak. Aha! hear that.

An awful row, wailing, ululating, breaks out from the hill above us, where young wolves of the pack are clamoring over our trail. They have found it, all right. One can easily fancy now that they are coming on the jump; but they are not even headed this way, never fear. They are merely puzzled or excited over a new thing. Later, when they grow quiet, some of them may steal down to have a look at us; but they will take good care that we do not have a look at them. Their howling, especially when heard by a solitary man at night, has a strangely disturbing quality, rasping our civilized nerves like sandpaper. If you are not accustomed to the cry, panic and imaginary terrors are bred of it, and all the foolish stories of wolf ferocity you ever heard come crowding back to demand, “Now will you listen to us? Now will you believe?” No, not a bit. Every ferocious wolf story I ever heard (every American story, at least) is an invention absurdly at variance with the wolf’s character. So we finish the pipe, slowly for discipline, and move campward through[175] the witchery of the wilderness night. The wolves have ceased their howling; the world is intensely still.

A ruddy gleam breaks suddenly from the dark bulk of trees; and Bob, hearing the click of snowshoes, comes out from the fire where he has been keeping supper warm for the greater pleasure of sharing it. “Welcome home, b’y! What luck?” he calls; and something in his voice tells me that he, too, has good news, which waits only an occasion for telling. The occasion comes as we eat leisurely, thankfully, before the glowing birch logs; while night gathers close about our little “Commoosie,” and our fire makes the wilderness home.

[176]

TWO ENDS OF A BEAR STORY

IN my “Benacadie,” or home camp, one summer was a cow, very much out of focus, that had been led far through the woods, and then, in a lunatic moment, had been rolled into a bateau and rowed across the big lake. That last was a brave adventure, especially when the cow, not knowing why she should be bundled up like a sack, kicked free of the straps, heaved up on wobbly legs, and tried to climb out of the boat; but that is not the comedy.

Not far from “Benacadie,” on the other side of a wooded ridge, was a beaver meadow sparsely overgrown with ash and alder, where the cow was tied out every morning in blue-joint grass up to her eyes. It was fine pasturage, and the cow, being a sensible creature when she was not in a[177] boat, proceeded to make cream of it. Before the season was over she became a pet and, like most pets, something also of a nuisance. She had a genius for freedom and diet; no sooner had she slipped her halter than she would come begging for cake at the kitchen. She would poke her head into open doors at unseemly hours of the night, or moo into open windows at cockcrow in the morning. When she had eaten all she wanted of grass or browse, then her thoughts turned to pastures new, and she would follow any foot-loose man wherever he might be going.

In camp that summer was a cookee and handy man, who had been hired to do whatever anybody else or the cook shied at. It was a loose kind of contract, but Cookee kept his part of it admirably, stopping his whistle to answer our lumberman’s hail of “Cookee here!” and tackling any job with unfailing good humor. Though he got the burnt end of every stick, he believed he was born lucky until the bear chased him; after that he was sure of it. One of his jobs was to mog over to the beaver meadow before sundown, and lead the cow home to her shack for the night. She was a precious old beast, the only one of her kind in the whole region, and because there were bear signs in the woods we were taking no chances. Her owner said she would be worth a hundred[178] dollars if we did not bring her back; and that is a lot of money to put into a bear bait.

Now Cookee, though he had spent a good part of his days in the lumber woods, had never met a bear, and said he never wanted to. After hearing plenty of bear stories, he was mortally afraid of the brutes. One afternoon, just as he approached the tethered cow, he ran head-on to a bear, and had the shock of his life. His first bulgy-eyed glance told him that it was a big bear, a black bear, a ferocious bear with red eyes; his next, that the fearsome beast was creeping over a windfall in his direction. With a yell he turned and streaked for camp. At his first jump he lost his hat, and he maintains that it was no bush but his own rising hair that lifted it off. A few more jumps and he had ripped off most of his buttons, with some of his clothes, as he tore his way through fir or moosewood thickets.

The lucky man had compelling reason for his haste. Even as he turned he heard a loud, unearthly bawling; which sent him up in the air in a convulsive way, as if thrown by a spring. Then came a terrifying woof-woof! a cry with teeth and claws in it. On the heels of that sounded a furious crashing of brush, coming nearer and nearer.

Cookee never turned to look; he had no time.[179] He had started to run, being light shod with moccasins; but now he flew. Great pine logs lay across his trail, with rows of little spruces growing out of their mossy tops; he sailed over them without touching a thing. Till that moment he had not dreamed how he could jump. Where the trail corkscrewed to avoid a thicket, he drove straight through with the directness of a startled grouse, leaving here a bit of skin or there a shred of raiment to mark his course. Every time he broke into open traveling he loosed another yell.

At first he felt himself going like the wind, and no deer ever took the jumps as he took them; but presently, though he was moving faster than ever, his heart sank, his spirit groaned, his legs became leaden legs, and his pace a snail’s pace. With all his striving, which was supermannish, he was not gaining an inch. However he jumped or however he ran, he could not shake off that ferocious thing at his heels. It stuck to him like a leech. No sooner did he hit the ground after one of his kangaroo springs than he heard behind him a thump and a grunt as the creature cleared the same log. Hardly was he out of a thicket with a despairing, “Save me, O Lord, from this bear!” on his lips, than there would follow a nerve-shattering crash as the pursuing beast plunged through the same bushes.

[180]So, wild-eyed and hatless, but thrilling with a new hope, Cookee burst out of the woods, and just below him lay the camp, smoke curling out of its chimney most peacefully. Down the rough trail he came, hurdling stumps like a grasshopper, and almost scared the life out of the cook as he dove with a final yell of “Bear! Bear!” into the kitchen. Clear across the floor he slid, upsetting everything but the stove, and bringing a big dishpan down on the wreck with a mighty clatter. The scared cook had mind enough left to slam the door on the instant. Grabbing one the poker, the other a butcher knife, they rushed to the window to meet the enemy like men. And there, wheezing, stood the old cow with her nose against the door, trying to follow Cookee the rest of the way to safety. He had made that heart-bursting run with the notion that it was the bear making all the noise behind him.

So much of the story we heard from Cookee when we tumbled hastily out of tent or cabin at his wild yelling. The remainder I read from the trail or pieced together from my imagination.

That bear was a young bear, as the trail showed, and he had probably never seen a cow nor a man in his life before. Roaming with him were two others, a yearling and big she-bear; but they were luckily on the farther side of the beaver meadow, where[181] Cookee could not see them. Had he met three bears, no one knows what miracle of jumping might have followed. He says that he would not have run any faster had he met a whole flock of bears, because no man could.

As Mooween came shuffling along, nosing about for grubs and other kickshaws that bears like, a new odor poured suddenly into his nostrils, a startling odor, rich and strong, which made him halt and sniff for possible trouble. Rising on his hind legs to peek over a windfall, he saw a strange beast, big and red and very smelly. Though its head was out of sight in the grass, two pointed horns were thrust about in alarming fashion; though its legs and most of its body were hidden, there was still bulk enough in sight to shame any bear, and it flirted a tail such as no bear ever dreamed of. A most astonishing beast, surely; but was it dangerous? Very cautiously, like any other suspicious bear, Mooween crept over the windfall for a better look and sniff at the monster.

It was at this psychological moment that Cookee appeared and fled. Startled by his yell, the cow threw up her head; and before her was a strange black beast, such as she had never encountered. It was a day of surprises for everybody. The cow was staring in heavy, bovine wonder when a wisp of wind eddied round the meadow; it brought to[182] her nose the rank bear smell, which electrified her like a yelping dog and a swarm of hornets all at once. Though that powerful, wet-doggy odor had never before entered her nostrils, there were ages of memory behind it, dead but not lost ages, during which countless of her ancestors had always curled their tails and fled from unseen bears. Her nerves first and then her heels flew off in a panic. With a bawl that shocked even herself she surged away on her rope, heading straight for camp, giving no heed to obstacles. Suddenly she had the legs of deer, the strength of giants.

The rope was tied to an overturned stump, to which clung a tangle of weathered roots; and it proved light anchorage for heavy weather. For a dozen yards the crazy thing whirled through grass or bushes, waving all its crooked arms like a devilfish. Then it caught fast; the rope snapped, and the cow went tearing up the trail on the heels of Cookee, following her protector jump for jump, as close as she could get without stepping on him.

Meanwhile the bear was running for his life, going twice as fast as any cow or cookee ever went, in the opposite direction. The first human yell had scared him stiff; but the bovine bawl galvanized him into action. Then came the bounding root, whirling mad arms, tearing up the grass,[183] and that petrified him once more. With a woof-woof! which sounded like an explosion, but which only said, “I’m a goner if I don’t light out of here!” he plunged headlong into the windfall over which he had just crept like a shadow, cracking a deal of dead branches as he went through. No more cat-footing for him; the world was too full of strange monsters. Across the meadow and into the big woods he rushed with great smashing of brush, making so much racket himself that he scarcely heard the sound of another flight. Behind him lay an amazing trail: here a hole in a wet spot with mud spattered all about; there a bunch of moss or a sliver of bark ripped from the top of a log; yonder, where the bear struck rising ground, a volley of dirt or chips flung out as he dug his toes into the hillside in frantic haste to get over the horizon.

[184]

WHEN BEAVER MEETS OTTER

ONE rainy day, while crossing a northern lake, I saw a commotion in the water and drove my canoe up to it, so quietly that I was alongside a pair of fighting beasts before they noticed me. And then, to my astonishment, they went on with their fighting.

They were a beaver and an otter, both uncommonly large, and therefore uncommonly shy by all familiar standards. Not by carelessness does any creature come to unwonted size or years in the wilderness. Ordinarily these alert beasts would have vanished before I had even a glimpse of them. Now they were intent on the business in hand, at times locked jowl to throat, again circling for an opening and watching each other so warily that they had eyes for nothing else.

The otter did most of the sparring; at times he[185] made the water boil as he whirled with nervous strokes about his enemy or dove like a flash to get beneath him. The beaver, larger but more clumsy, seemed content with defensive tactics, turning within his own length so as to face the attack. His beady eyes showed a gleam of red; his great cutting teeth were bared in a ferocious grin. Every time the otter flashed under like a dipper duck, the beaver would go down with the oily roll of a porpoise to meet him under water. A violent swirling, a stream of bubbles gurgling and plopping; then the two animals would wabble up to the surface, their teeth fastened in each other’s neck. Down or up, they paid no attention to the huge object floating near them; if they were aware of the canoe, it was but vaguely, their senses being blunted by their battle fury.

As they went down for the third or fourth time I noticed the water reddening around them, showing that it was time for some blessed peacemaker to interfere. Not knowing who started the fight, I pushed the canoe over them impartially. When they came up I splashed them with the paddle, and they seemed to realize for the first time that a stranger, an enemy, was watching them. In a wink they were themselves once more; their native alertness returned; their lunacy was shed like a garment. The beaver sounded on the[186] instant, giving the alarm signal of his tribe as he went down. He is a sociable creature, living by choice with a colony of his fellows, and in him the thought of his own safety is always associated with the safety of others. But the otter, accustomed to roaming alone, whirled without a sound and forged away on the surface, heading for the nearest shore. There I watched him twisting about uneasily, mewing over his wounds, dressing his rumpled fur like a sick cat.

That was the first time I ever learned of the grudge which seems to stand unsettled between beaver and otter. Had it been the last, I would have thought no more of it than of any other odd incident; but several times in later years I found signs of the same incomprehensible feud. Once the evidence took the form of two dead bodies, beaver and otter, floating together in a cove at the mouth of a brook, where the water circled aimlessly round and round. They had killed each other, I judged, since both were badly bitten about the neck. In a grip that neither had the will to break they sank to the bottom and died. There they rested awhile, till with lightened bodies they rose to the surface and went bumping each other around the eddy, as if their quarrel were still on.

Whether the feud were general among all otters and beavers of that region, or whether it was a[187] private animosity kindled by a personal grievance, I had no means of knowing. Occasionally I would hear of a similar quarrel in other places, and every new indication of it puzzled me afresh. Fights being rarely exceptional between animals of different species, I could imagine no reason why a beaver, most inoffensive of the wood folk, should go out of his way to force a quarrel on an animal with whom he has no dealing from one year’s end to another. The two are not what we call natural enemies, meaning by the thoughtless expression that one does not eat the other as food. They belong to different tribes that have nothing in common, not even a cause of enmity. They cannot interfere with each other in the matter of food, since the otter lives on fish, the beaver on bark or water plants, according to season. Moreover, every wild animal avoids meddling with creatures that do not appeal to him momentarily when he is looking for something to eat, and the beaver is exemplary in minding his own business. He lives a secluded kind of life, wandering up or down the wilderness streams with his family all summer, shutting himself up in a narrow prison all winter; and, aside from wolves or lynxes, which gladly eat beaver meat when they have a rare chance, he has not an enemy in his quiet world so long as man keeps out of it.

[188]The otter, also, unlike most of his weasel tribe, is a peaceable and highly interesting beast. He is a fisherman, a very expert fisherman, and finds plenty to eat without interfering with any other. So he is always in good condition, and as full of capers as a kitten. Most animals are fat and playful when they are young, growing lean and sober as they grow old; but an otter is just the opposite, having leanness and sobriety as his portion in infancy. As a kit he spends an uncommonly long time in his dark den; when he comes out he passes many an hour asleep in the water, where he lies comfortably on his back with nose in the air and paws folded on his chest. As he grows older he plays more, thickens up till he is in perfect condition, and ends by becoming the most sportive of all wild creatures. He makes one of the most affectionate of pets; and what with his constant good fare and good humor he has no more reason to quarrel with a beaver than with the man in the moon. Remember that there are no “savage” beasts except in our yards and our imagination; that the wild or natural animal does not fight unless he has a compelling motive, and not even then if he can avoid it. Why then, one must ask, do these two peaceable beasts fall upon each other whenever their trails cross?

We know so little of an animal (the real animal[189] which you meet in the woods, not the labeled skin-and-bones which you find in a book or a museum) that any answer must be guesswork, and the guess varies with the woodsman who makes it. When I put the question to a trapper I know, a silent, observant man who follows his solitary trap line every winter, he answered confidently that the otter carries a grudge around with him, and always begins the quarrel. An otter likes to have his fishing waters to himself; he is intolerant of trespassers, and in this he is like the loon, the kingfisher, the sheldrake, and other natural fishermen, all of whom seem to have definite portions of lake or river which they regard as their own.

Now the beaver is not a fisherman; but at times he interferes sadly with those who must follow that craft for a living. When he builds his dam on a trout stream, for example, it means an end of fishing in that neighborhood. The trout cannot stand his commotions, his towing of logs and alder brush, his perpetual digging of mud or roiling of water. So when an otter, coming to dine where he has caught many a good dinner, finds his favorite pool occupied or spoiled, he is in a mood to pick a bone with the offender. In a word, the otter fights because he has a grudge to settle, and the beaver fights to defend himself. Such is the trapper’s explanation.

[190]When I asked Simmo the Indian about the matter, he said that beaver and otter both have grievances, and that when they meet unexpectedly (they avoid each other for the most part) one is quite as likely to begin hostilities as the other. An otter does not like a beaver because the latter may steal an otter kit and bring it up in his lodge as a drudge or slave. “Otter he mitcheego, very cross, ’cause beaver steal-um baby an’ make-um work,” was the way Simmo put it. The beaver is more mitcheego, because he often finds an otter monkeying with his dam or spillway. The dam is the danger-point in a beaver’s winter quarters. Any disturbance of it threatens calamity, and a break may be the herald of death; yet a roving otter can never pass a dam without raising a commotion, splashing about in a way to bring the whole beaver family rushing out of their lodge in wild alarm at the fancied danger.

Simmo is right in his facts, his observation of game or fur animals being microscopic in its accuracy; but whether he has the right explanation of the beaver-otter feud is another matter. It is true that occasionally you may find a young otter sharing the summer wanderings of a family of beaver, apparently content with the life and knowing no other. That he was brought up with the beaver kits is evident from his continued association[191] with them; but whether the beavers stole him, as Simmo thinks; or whether he was left motherless and followed them, which is quite natural; or whether some mother beaver sought him out and suckled him, as many mother animals adopt a stranger when deprived of their young,—these are questions which no man can answer. One can observe with his eyes an otter in a beaver lodge; but only imagination can follow the trail by which he came there.

It is true also, on the other side of the feud, that the otter raises a terrible pother at a beaver dam in winter; but he does it unconsciously, I think, and for a natural reason. He is a lover of open water, and in summer he lives largely in the lakes and streams. In winter, the waters being sealed, he must wander over the vast, inhospitable expanse of ice, unable to enter his favorite pools save by some fortunate air hole. At such times he has the habit (which trappers know too well for his safety) of using every little runlet for his amusement. He may be hungry or on a journey or heading for a distant stream with a man on his trail; but he can never pass near a bit of open water without having a plunge in it. In trailing an otter I have repeatedly found where he went out of his way for no other purpose, apparently, than to play a moment in a spring or little[192] brook that was clear of ice, after which he headed diagonally back to his former course and resumed his journey.

So it happens in winter, when an otter passes a beaver dam that has a run of water beneath it or through the spillway, that he always raises a whillilew there, splashing merrily about in the enjoyment of his own sensations. To the beaver, living in his lodge nearby, any sudden splashing of that kind means just one thing, and a fearful thing,—a break in the dam. In the autumn, or while waters are open, a broken dam is easily mended; but in midwinter even a small break may be hopeless, since the beavers cannot get through the ice of their pond to repair the damage. It means that the little opening will soon become a big opening with a flood pouring through it; that the precious store of food-wood will be frozen into a solid mass. Then the beaver family must die of starvation in their lodge, their tunnel and food pile being blocked by ice; or else, if perchance they can find or dig a way through the frozen pond, that they will probably be caught by wolves or lynxes when they forage in the snow-filled woods, where their short legs and heavy bodies make weary traveling.

One can understand, therefore, the beaver’s alarm at any disturbance of water in his spillway.[193] Day after day he listens to its musical flow as to a quiet tune; when he falls asleep his ears drink in the melody as a sweet lullaby, telling him that all is well. Suddenly comes a pause, a break in the tune, and then a violent splashing. Down under the ice he comes, his family following at his heels, to go rushing up and down the length of the dam, peering about in the underwater gloom, trying to locate the danger. Remember that the beaver is on the upper or pond-side of the dam, while the splashing comes from the lower side, whither he cannot come because of the roof of ice over his head. And when, after much searching and tribulation, he learns that the alarm is needless, that the disturbance is caused by a careless otter amusing himself or monkeying with matters that may become dangerous—well, then he is as mad as anybody else would be; and he will remember his grievance when next he meets the cause of it.

Such is Simmo’s explanation of one little comedy of errors among the wood folk. A dog or an Indian never forgets an injury, and why should not a beaver be like a dog at least? So he reasons, and I cannot answer him. He knows more about wild animals than I shall ever learn.

I have a notion, however, that there may be a better reason for the standing quarrel, a reason suggested by one lucky find in a beaver lodge[194] after I had searched for it many years. Briefly, the notion is (and it looks odd when one puts it in cold ink) that the otter sometimes makes mockery of the beaver’s housekeeping by leaving a smelly mess of fish in a lodge that is wonderfully clean, under the noses of animals that abominate all evil smells. To appreciate the humor of such an explanation we must know how the two animals live during the long northern winter.

For five or six months every year, from November to April, the beaver is virtually a prisoner in his winter lodge. It is a small domicile, and as six or eight beavers may occupy the one, low living room, it is fortunate that they instinctively keep it very clean, and that the aroma of musk or castor fills it at all times with penetrating, antiseptic odors.

It is early autumn when a beaver family begins to think of the lodge as of a home; not an old home, but a new one, for Hamoosabik is strangely typical of America in that he is forever moving somewhere else or building a new house. All summer long the beavers lead a nomad life, wandering up or down the wilderness streams on endless exploration; but when nights have a warning chill, and days grow mellow as ripened fruit, then the heads of the family begin to look about for a place to[195] spend the winter. There is nothing haphazard in the location; a beaver never settles on a place for winter quarters until by examination he is assured of three things: an ample food supply, a storehouse in which to keep it, and a dry lodge in which to live in comfort and security. Because he must have all these, with solitude or remoteness, you may search long in beaver land before you find where the animals have settled.

The first need of the family will be plenty of good food, and to secure that they explore the neighboring woods until they find a grove of poplars, of young poplars with tender bark. One might think that, having found their food, they would begin at once to cut and gather it; but such is not the beaver’s way. With him all things must be done not only decently, but in order. Before a beaver touches his selected trees, he examines the stream carefully to decide where he will put them; and when that matter is settled he will pick out a convenient spot for his house. As he intends to raise the water in the stream, which is too low for his purpose, and as rising water must overflow its banks, he commonly locates his house some distance back from the shore. Then, as he will be working here many days before his house is ready, or even begun, he proceeds quickly to dig three or four refuge burrows. And[196] very cunning burrows they are, starting in hidden places near the bottom of the stream, slanting upward through the bank, and ending in a den under a tree’s roots above the flood level. He will sleep in these dens while preparing his permanent quarters; in winter he will use them as hiding places should he be driven out of his lodge.

The next important matter is a storehouse beyond reach of frost, and the only sure place for that is under water. The stream is shallow; it might easily be frozen to the bottom; but the beaver overcomes the difficulty by going downstream a little way and building a dam of logs, brush, stones and miscellaneous litter. The dam is intended to provide an artificial pond; the double object of the pond is to furnish a playground and a pool for storage, the one wide enough for winter exercise, the other deep enough to give assurance that ice can never form to the bottom of it and grip the food which is to be kept there. So we think, viewing the finished dam and seeing it serve its purpose; what the beaver thinks when he builds it, only a beaver might tell.

While the pond is filling slowly, Hamoosabik gathers his food-wood. First he fells a large number of trees by cutting around the butts with his teeth; then he trims the branches into convenient lengths, drags or rolls them to the nearest water,[197] and floats them down to his storehouse, where he sinks them in a loose pile on the bottom. Green wood sinks easily, as a rule; if the beaver’s sticks have a tendency to bob up to the surface, where they would be frozen into the ice, he keeps them down by pressing one end into the mud. If he can use flowing water for transportation, he always does so; but he will not hesitate to tow his food-wood across a lake, if need be, or to dig a canal if his poplars stand some distance back from the water. He works by night for the most part, remaining hidden in one of his burrows by day. Any dull or rainy afternoon may bring him out; and should the weather turn severe, threatening to freeze his pond or canal before he is ready for winter, he will work day and night without rest. There will be time for sleeping when he has nothing else to do.

When the pile of food-wood grows to goodly size, and while younger members of the family are nightly adding to it, the old beavers prepare their winter lodge on the shore. Their first care, curiously enough, is for a cellarway or tunnel, which leads from the middle of the lodge ground down through the bank, and emerges at the bottom of the pond, convenient to the food pile.

Around the upper or land end of this tunnel they build their house, a solid structure from four[198] to eight feet high, and six to twenty feet in diameter. The height depends on the expected rise of water in the spring, since one room at least must always be above high-water mark. The size varies with the number of occupants, a little lodge for a pair of beavers just starting housekeeping, and a big house for a large family. The latter usually consists of an old pair, with some “kit” beavers recently arrived in the wilderness, and half a dozen or more yearlings and two-year-olds. The materials of the lodge are brush, grass and mud, and the interior is arranged with a view to comfort and security. For safety against enemies the beavers depend on thick walls; for comfort two rooms are provided, a lower entrance hall and an upper living room, with an inclined passage or stairway between.[2]

Just over the tunnel, perhaps a foot above the level of the ground, is a small chamber which serves as the entrance hall and dining-room of the lodge. Here the beavers shake the water from their hairy outer coats when they emerge from[199] the tunnel (the inner coat of fur is always dry), and here they eat their meals. The hard-packed floor of this hall invariably slants upward from the mouth of the tunnel, and the evident purpose is to allow the water to drain away more easily.

From one end of the hall a stairway, just big enough for a single beaver at a time, mounts through the middle of the lodge to the living room above. Sometimes this central passage is the guiding part of the building plan, the lodge being constructed around it; but quite as often the material is piled in a solid mass, and hall and stairway are then cut out from beneath, as a continuation of the tunnel from the pond. Around the top of the stairway, just under where the roof is to be, runs a circular bench or gallery, which is covered deep with dry grass or shredded wood. This bench forms the floor of the living room; on it each member of the family will have his separate nest, from which he can slip into the central opening and down the stairway without disturbing any other beaver.

The bench is then roofed over, making a circular room from four to eight feet in diameter, with an arched ceiling just high enough to enable a beaver to move around without bumping his head. A small ventilator is left among the poles that project through the roof, and the structure is covered to a[200] thickness of two feet with grass, sods, and rushes, all mixed with mud from the pond bottom. This last is the beaver’s mortar, and the frost hardens it to his purpose.

Like most other buildings, whether of bird or beast or man, the completed house receives a final “touch,” and a very suggestive one; but whether Hamoosabik adds it consciously, with purpose of concealment, who can say? When the lodge is finished so far as comfort and safety are involved, the beaver throws over it a litter of weatherbeaten sticks, making it appear like a pile of drift stuff cast up by winds or high waters. With nights of sharp frost the lodge walls harden, becoming finally so granite-like that no enemy can break in, and the beaver himself cannot gnaw a way out. The only door left him is the opening in the middle of his living room, which leads down the stairway through hall and tunnel, and emerges under five or six feet of water at the bottom of the pond.

While all this building is going on, the ice forms thicker and thicker, and presently the beaver is locked in until waters are open once more, and returning birds are filling the silent woods with melody. Meanwhile he will spend the greater part of the time in his upper living room, and for exercise will pass a few pleasant hours every day[201] in swimming about his pond with its roof of ice. Farther he cannot go, and even here his journeys must be short; since there is no air under the ice, he must return to his lodge or enter one of his refuge burrows every time he wants to breathe. When hungry he slips down through the tunnel to the food pile, takes a stick up to his hall, and there eats the bark to the last scrap. Then he carries the peeled stick back to the pond, where it is thrown aside with a growing multitude that have no more interest for the beaver family; unless, perchance, they use the pond another season. In that event the peeled sticks, no longer glistening white, but sodden brown, may be used to repair the dam or disguise the new lodge.

That the beaver wearies of his diet of water-soaked bark is evident from the fact that he explores every inch of his pond for roots of the yellow lily; from this also, that if you cut a hole in the ice and push in a pole of fresh willow or “popple” or moosewood, he will find it within the hour and carry it away. Should you hold the pole, keeping very still and throwing a blanket over the air hole to exclude the light, he will attempt to pull it out of your hand. And if you stick one end deep in the mud, leaving the upper end frozen fast in the ice, he will promptly cut it in two places, one just above the bottom, the other just below[202] the ice, and so carry the pole away to his dining-room.

The only variation of this winter-existence comes when there is an open spring-hole in the pond or a bit of swift water at the inlet. The imprisoned beavers make glad use of such an opening, which they may have to reach by a long swim under the ice. They come every day to play in the free water or to sit erect beside it, sunning themselves by the hour on pleasant days, combing their fine fur meanwhile, or coaxing a snarl out of it, using for the latter purpose the peculiar split claw which every beaver carries on one of his hind toes.

Such hermits are happy fellows, lucky above the majority of beavers, who have no sunlit playground in winter; but they enjoy themselves circumspectly, knowing the danger of being caught in the open. At the slightest alarm, the faint click of snowshoes or a breath of your scent drifting downwind, every beaver disappears under the ice, giving the danger signal by slapping his broad tail on the water as he goes down; and when you hear them again they will be creeping into the living room of the lodge. Rap the roof sharply, after approaching on silent feet, and you hear plop! plop! plop! as the beavers drop into their tunnel one after another. Go out on the ice now, and hammer it with your ax. If your ears are keen, you[203] may hear a faint rumble or gurgling of water as some of the family return to their lodge, while others enter refuge burrows in the bank. So they are driven back and forth; but spare them any prolonged fright, for they are the most inoffensive little prisoners in the wilderness.

Meanwhile Keeonekh the otter is a foot-loose creature, a rambler, an erdstappa or earth-hitter, as our forbears called one with a gift for roaming. He has the whole wilderness for a hermitage; yet his world is only as big as he makes it. Like most wild creatures, he has definite limits beyond which he rarely passes, and then only when food fails in his familiar district. The waters are sealed, to be sure; but every large lake has an air hole or two, and swift streams offer plenty of open places. When fishing for his dinner Keeonekh holds close to one opening, coming out where he went in; but when on a journey he may enter one air hole and emerge at another so far away that you cannot see him. And this because he has learned the curious trick of breathing under the ice, where another animal must quickly drown.

That trick is simple enough, but few besides Keeonekh have mastered it. When he is far from an opening and must have fresh air, he presses up against the under surface of the ice[204] and slowly expels his breath, which forms a great bubble around his nose. He leaves it there a moment, till it is purified by contact with water on one side and ice on the other; then he takes it back into his lungs and goes on refreshed. He may reach an opening on the next tack, where you hear him blow out his breath with a long wheeeef of satisfaction; if not, he rises against the ice once more and repeats his extraordinary performance.

An otter travels widely in winter, following a definite circuit and returning at fairly regular intervals. The circuit may be a dozen miles in diameter, much wider than a deer’s, but not so wide as a wolf’s, and he covers it by his own trails from lake to lake. These commonly follow direct lines, reaching their objective by the easiest route; but if there is a bit of open water on the way, Keeonekh must turn aside for a splash in it; or if there is a steep hill or bank anywhere near, he will climb up one side for the sake of sliding down the other. Even on level ground he proceeds in merry fashion, taking two or three swift jumps and throwing himself forward for a slide on his belly. Part of his traveling seems to be done in mere enjoyment of change, of motion, of seeing the country; another part is intended to keep him acquainted with places where the best fish are[205] wintering. With that difficult matter he is enviably familiar; if ever you find where an otter fishes regularly, you may confidently drop your minnow there.

Keeonekh is a dainty feeder, and uncommonly notional for a beast. He will pass by a score of watery chub if he knows where to expect a fat trout; he will ignore suckers for a white perch, or a coarse-fleshed bass for a sweet eel. He will not touch any fish a second time, though he may have left the greater part of it; and he will not look at a dead fish or at bait or carrion of any kind. Only a fresh fish, a living fish, appeals to him, and he may catch this by stealth or in whirlwind fashion, according to circumstance or his mood of the moment.

Sometimes his approach is so shadowy, so arrow-like, that a somnolent trout is gripped before he is aware that danger is near. Again, a fish darts away in alarm, and Keeonekh follows with silent, powerful thrusts of his webbed forefeet, swinging his body left or right by aid of his muscular tail as a rudder. So he follows every turn of his prey, and catches it at last by sheer skill and endurance. He is a wonderful fisherman, only Hukweem the loon comparing with him in this respect; and the loon is inferior in that he chases little fish, while Keeonekh always picks a big one. When you find[206] the remnant of his feeding, one of your surprises may be this: you have fished the same lake or stream, using your best skill and most delicate tackle; but the head and tail which Keeonekh leaves behind him bespeak a better fish than ever you saw caught here.

All that is simple enough in summer, when waters are open and flooded with light; but when a blanket of ice covers the lake an otter must be more alert, keener of eye and quicker of snap, if he is to keep in good condition by what he catches. The fish are now in hidden places, deep and inconvenient; they eat little or nothing, and they lie so quiet in the underwater gloom that one must be very near to distinguish them from other shadows. Then, when Keeonekh catches a fish under the ice, he cannot breathe from an air bubble, as he does when he is free, because the slippery thing in his mouth interferes with the delicate performance. Neither can he dispose of his fish where he is, but must get it quickly to the nearest air hole. Even there he cannot or will not eat in the water, but invariably takes his catch out on the ice, where he leaves record of his feeding in the shape of bones or scales or, it may be, a pound or two of excellent fish, since he often catches a bigger one than he can eat. When you find such signs, be sure there is good angling[207] nearby. An otter never carries a fish beyond the spot where he lands it.

Keeonekh does most of his winter fishing in half-open streams, where it is easy to bring his catch out on the bank, and where he has hidden dining rooms under shelves of ice left by falling water. For lake fishing he uses a spring-hole or the open mouth of a brook; and should you see him enter such a place, you may confidently look for him to come out again, unless he happened to see you first. If not alarmed, he makes a swift circuit of the fishing grounds, and presently you see his glistening head shoot up in the opening. The next instant he is out on the ice, humping his back over his catch, and sometimes mewing to himself in a pleased kind of way. If he finds nothing in his rapid search, you may know it by his wheeeef! as his head appears; for he cannot whistle like that while his mouth is full. Then he will either wait awhile by the opening and try again, or else hurry away to another fishing ground.

If the lake be small and frozen solidly from shore to shore, Keeonekh passes over it indifferently; it may hold many good fish, but there is no way for him to enter and catch them. Should the ice have a single opening, such as one often finds at the inlet of a lake, you may have a puzzling question to answer when you see an otter go into[208] it, and wait hour after hour without seeing him come out again.

Once, when I first began to follow the winter trails, I saw an animal swim rapidly across a pool of open water and disappear under the ice. He was too far away to name him with certainty; but the electric motion, the broad head without visible ears, the following bits of fur with a handbreadth of water showing between back and tail,—all these proclaimed an otter, because no other creature swims in just that way. He had not seen me; I was luckily quiet when he passed, and the breeze was in my favor. Very confidently I watched for him to reappear, thinking I would take his fine skin back to camp. I knew the pond well; it had no other opening, and the inlet was frozen for a mile or more above the spring-hole. Of a surety, therefore, my game must show itself again, since no animal can live for any length of time under the ice.

Ten minutes ran away, while I marveled at an otter’s power of holding his breath. An hour passed, a time of increasing bewilderment, and no life stirred in the black water, which glimmered like a pool of ink in its setting of ice and snow. The afternoon went to join all other wasted afternoons; I began to doubt what I had seen, until I crossed the inlet and found Keeonekh’s trail under[209] the shore, which made me hide and watch once more. Evening came; owls hooted in the woods; a storm wind began to moan, and still no otter. When it grew too dark to see anything clearly I went home.

Two or three inches of snow fell that night. At daybreak I was back at the inlet, and there were the fresh tracks of my otter,—leisurely, exasperating tracks, which emerged from the spring-hole as if there were no call to hurry, and headed down the pond on a journey of which I never found the end. He had come out, just as I expected; but where had he been?

Could you follow an otter in such a place, you might see him rout out a fish, catch it after a breathless chase, and speed away to the nearest place for eating it. That place may be a den of his own in the bank, or a beaver’s tunnel under the lodge, or a cave under a hummock where the expanding ice crowds up over a half-submerged rock, making a roomy air-chamber in which otter, mink or muskrat may eat or rest in perfect security. The rock offers them a floor, and the roof of ice hides them from all prying eyes. It is in such places, I think, that Keeonekh sometimes meets the beaver and makes an enemy of him.

The winter comedy, as one follows it in imagination, may be something like this. Keeonekh enters[210] a lake that the beavers are using for winter quarters, and glides like a shadow over the fishing grounds. In deep water beyond the inlet he jumps his game, and follows it hither and yon through the gloom under the ice. The chase may take him far from the opening; but for that he has no concern, feeling sure of himself and of his locality. It is his business to know every den and air hole in the lake, as it is a wolf’s business to know every rabbit swamp and deer yard within forty miles, since his life may at any moment depend on knowing just such things. Almost out of breath, he grips his fish and heads swiftly for the nearest breathing place, coming out above water in the beavers’ tunnel, and climbing instantly into the lower room.

The beavers, hearing something in their tunnel, something that comes with a rush, naturally scramble into their upper room to get away from it. They are not looking for trouble; like all other wood folk, they are keen to avoid it. After listening a moment, one big beaver comes cautiously down the passage; but before he can get into his hall Keeonekh has blocked the way.

Now an otter always eats where he lands his catch. He never carries a burden on land; and should you surprise him with a fish, he drops it and escapes, knowing that he can catch another.[211] But he has no fear of the beaver, and so humps his back to eat in Hamoosabik’s hall, unmindful of angry muttering in the passageway above, or of beady eyes that glare down on this mannerless barbarian who brings smelly fish into a house that is very clean.

The smell is the worst feature of the outrage, I think, since it drowns the odor of musk, in which beavers delight. They are curious creatures in this respect; though they carry musk with them, and their lodge is at all times filled with its aroma, they will yet go out of their way for a fresh sniff of the delicacy. For most other odors they have strong aversion. You can drive them from their lodge, for example, or away from any dam they are building (a thing which must be done sometimes, when they flood a trail you are using), by scattering the contents of a carbide lamp or other strong-smelling stuff where they must pass over it or get it on their feet.

Here then is a lively situation, Keeonekh eating fish not only in the house, but under the very noses of beavers that cannot abide a fishy smell. Nor can they stop the nuisance, however angry they may be. A grown otter is a match for any single beaver; a downward rush of the whole family is impossible, because there is room in the passage for only one beaver at a time, and the[212] passage is blocked by Keeonekh with a chip on his shoulder. Like other beasts, he is in fighting mood when his dinner is threatened. So he eats his fish where he lands it, leaving slime, scales, fragments of skin or flesh, an abominable mess, in the beavers’ hallway; and their first concern when he departs is to be rid of what he leaves behind him. Throw it out they cannot, there being no door or window to the lodge; their only way is to take the offensive stuff in their teeth and carry it through the underwater tunnel. One can imagine their emotions as they clean up the litter, and what they would like to do to the wretch who left it.

Keeonekh is far away by the time the lodge is again shipshape, and the beavers can never overtake him. He is faster at swimming than they are. Should they follow as far as the opening by which he entered the lake, there they must halt and turn back. They dare not venture afield in winter, while otters travel boldly in the open at any season.

We have followed the little comedy imaginatively thus far, but not without certain signs or hints that give our fancy the right direction. One day, full twenty years after witnessing the beaver-otter fight, Simmo and I stood beside a[213] beaver lodge that the owners had abandoned for their summer roving. The lake was a natural one, not an artificial pond made by a beaver dam, and in the deeper water fish were still fairly plentiful. The beavers had not yet driven them away. Peering curiously into the still water under the bank on which the lodge stood, I noticed some bones, gill covers and other fishy litter, which Simmo thought was the refuse left by an otter. At first that seemed very queer, since an otter always eats on land, and the refuse was scattered on the bottom of the lake near an outlet of the beavers’ tunnel. When we laid the lodge open to examine its interior arrangement, the Indian pointed to some dried fish scales in crevices of the beavers’ hallway.

“Look,” he said. “Oh, by cosh, look! Dat cheeky hotter come in here las’ winter, an’ eat-um fish in beaver’s house, right under hees nose.”

And that, if one were guessing at animal motives, may suggest a reason why one beaver, at least, will have a grudge to settle when he meets a certain otter in the open. As Simmo says, “By cosh, now, no wonder he mad w’en he meet-um!”

[214]

A NIGHT BEWITCHED

SILENCE is the rule of the woods at night, of all woods and all proper nights, I think; but like other rules it has startling exceptions. Hidden in the voluminous records of Alexander von Humboldt is a picture of night in a tropical forest which stays in the memory like a bad dream. As I recall the matter, after many years, the scientist was awakened by a horrible uproar,—squeals, grunts of terror, a rumbling snarl which broke into the roar of a charging beast. Then came a violent crashing, as tapirs dashed away with a jaguar at their heels, and instantly the forest became pandemonium. Parrots screeched, monkeys gibbered and barked, a multitude of unnamed birds or beasts added each his scream or howl to the jungle chorus of fear.

[215]To read of such nocturnal alarm was, for a certain small boy, at least, to dream and shiver over it afterward, as one dreamed in a cold sweat of Hugo’s man, in Toilers of the Sea, who went down to a gloomy wreck in which lurked a devilfish, and “just then he felt himself seized by one foot.” I did not know, and no truthful person thought to tell me, that the alleged savage jungle is in reality quite peaceful; that its killing is more strictly limited by the need of food than that of a modern packing house, or that women and children go nightly to sleep amid its fancied horrors with a greater sense of security than we enjoy behind bolted doors.

Humboldt’s description is undoubtedly true of some one night, or part of a night; but it gives a wrong impression that such a night is typical of the South American or any other forest. It errs also, and grievously, in the assumption that nocturnal cries are indicative of terror; for terror is an emotion which we carry with us into strange woods at night, and which we are apt to read into any sound we hear, even when the sound voices only anger or warning or animal excitement. Of the tropics I have no personal experience; but I have questioned men who have spent time enough in the jungle to become familiar with it, and they agree that in the early part of the night the forest[216] often resounds to a thrilling outcry; and that this outcry, if one be not himself frightened by it, has a defiant or exultant ring, as when dogs voice challenge or applause at another dog’s barking. Then, as birds settle to sleep and beasts take up their roaming, the jungle becomes profoundly still, and remains so till the dawn, when full-fed brutes begin to grunt or bark as they seek their coverts, and birds call jubilantly from tree to tree as they welcome a new day.

That is certainly true of our northern forests, where a few wild creatures lift their voices, joyously, it seems to me, in the evening twilight, but where “the dead vast and middle of the night” passes in a silence that is almost painful to human ears. Yet even the silent North will sometimes be disturbed, and echoes that have long slept will rouse up to answer a wild calling from lake or ridge or lonely beaver meadow. Once in a while comes a night (in early autumn, as a rule, and at a time of full moon) when birds and beasts are strangely restless, when you meet them in unexpected places or hear them calling everywhere. No explanation of the phenomenon occurs to me, though I have observed it repeatedly, and have noticed that owls cry warning of it before sundown.

Owls have several distinct calls, by the way, and of all forest sounds their voices are perhaps[217] the hardest to interpret. A week or a month may pass over your camp while the owls hold a league of silence, not a sound being heard from them by night or day. Then comes a subtle change in the air, a weather change it may be, and suddenly there are hootings, groanings, maniacal yellings in every direction. The uncanny creatures have their rumpus to themselves, one answering another, while other wood folk go their quiet ways through the dusk without a sign that they are touched by the disturbance. But at last comes an evening when something creeps into the owl’s voice that was not there before; no sooner does he begin to hoot than every bird or beast that hears must lift his head to cry answer. At such times even the taciturn bears will break their long silence, and go whooping through the woods in obedience to some weird impulse which the owl was first to feel.

Thus it befell on one occasion, when the owls of a countryside were calling, that a black bear suddenly began to whoop in the woods over against my tenting place; and the curious thing was that he was immediately answered by others, their wild cries sounding with clocklike regularity at about three-minute intervals. Till then I had not seen or heard a bear, though I had searched for them in places where their signs were plentiful;[218] but that is precisely what one should expect, since Mooween is careful to keep out of your way, and is one of the least talkative creatures in the wilderness. When you stumble upon him at an unguarded moment he is apt to loose an explosive ough-woof! as he jumps for cover; or when you frighten a mother bear away from her cubs you may hear her circling at a distance, uttering a sharp wheeee-oo! again and again; but with these natural exceptions Mooween speaks so seldom that many woodsmen have never heard him. Others confuse his rare call with that of the barred owl, a bird that has half a dozen different cries besides his familiar Who-cooks-for-you? Who-cooks-for-you?

On this night, however, my taciturn bears became almost vociferous; in the space of an hour I heard more bear talk than one ordinarily hears in an entire season. They were bold, too, surprisingly bold, when I met three of them in a little opening not far from my tent. I had heard these bears coming and, as I hurried to head them off, had made more noise than I liked, not being able to see my footing. Far from being frightened by the disturbance, they seemed to be waiting in the opening to see what I was. The moment I appeared they rose on their hind legs, which stopped me in my tracks. Not quite satisfied,[219] they shambled uneasily to and fro, occasionally sitting up for another look; and one of them, a little fellow, had a funny way of wagging his forepaws rapidly up and down in front of his chest. When they had enough of me, instead of rushing off headlong with crash of brush and bumping of logs, as bears commonly go when they meet a man, they melted into the woods like so many shadows.

The caribou is another silent beast that finds his voice only on rare occasions, in response to some urge that I do not yet understand. I had met scores of the animals in winter, a few also in summer; but, with the exception of one low call from a doe to her fawn, I had never heard a word of caribou talk till one early-autumn night, when a herd broke silence all together. On that night I lay broad awake in my tent, unable to sleep or to find a reason for my sleeplessness. Some subtle excitement was afoot; loons were crying it to the woods, owls crying it back to the lake; so presently I made my way to an old lumber road, thinking I would have a look at a chain of barrens under the moonlight. These barrens (flat, treeless bogs surrounded by dense forest) are lonely places at any time. By night, especially when the moon floods them with pale light, and mists wave over them, and little shrouded larches that stand on[220] their edges seem to creep and quiver, they are the epitome of all solitude.

As I crossed the first barren, making no sound on the thick carpet of moss, a band of caribou filed out of the woods as if on a journey. The strange thing to me was, not the excitement of the band or the complete absence of fear, but that these silent brutes were now all talking, as wild geese talk to one another continually in flight. Though they must have seen me plainly, for I was very near, they passed without paying me the slightest attention; all but the big bull, who came at the end of the procession, and who evidently thought it was his business to challenge that motionless figure standing out on the empty bog. He stopped short, came a step toward me, stopped again, and I looked for a rare bit of bluffing. When you stand motionless near a band of caribou in a snowstorm, and they cannot tell what you are because they do not trust their eyes and you are to leeward of their keen noses, the bulls will sometimes rear up on their hind legs, looking enormously threatening as they paw the air with their broad forefeet. In this startling demonstration the woodland caribou differs, I think, from all other members of the deer family. But here the big bull was content to present his antlers, shaking them fiercely in my direction. Getting no answer[221] to his challenge, not even a motion, he followed grunting after his band; and I had the impression that he was glad to go, having saved his face by doing what was expected of him.

I was on my way to the next barren when, from a point of woods on my left, a spikehorn bull came out on the trot, making me freeze in my tracks once more. Whether he mistook me for one of his tribe or was a bit moonstruck, as every other creature seemed to be that night, I could not tell. He ran up as if he had been expecting me, and thrust his nose within a yard of my face, so near that I saw his eyes glow like foxfire in the moonlight; then without a word he brushed past and ran away down the caribou trail.

I had taken only a few steps after the spikehorn left me, and was about to enter the woods to cross to the next barren, when a vixen squalled out loudly, as a cat squalls when you step on her tail. Instantly three or four young foxes, her cubs, undoubtedly, rushed out and scurried all over the trail at my feet. From the woods came a lively outcry, a petulant, bagpipey droning; but it was some time before the cubs paid enough attention to it to dive headlong for cover. And then I heard squalls of a different tenor, one angry, another protesting, as if some youngster were getting nipped for his heedlessness.

[222]Such nights come very rarely, perhaps once in a long season of watching wild animals; and always they affect a man queerly, as if some lunacy were abroad, and he must share it with other natural creatures. I remember vividly one night, many years ago, so different from all others that it seemed to do violence to my experience of the quiet wilderness. The time was September, and the place a wild lake which is still, I am told, the best big-game region in New Brunswick. It was then an unhunted solitude.

During the day I had been ranging the woods, and had noticed that flocking birds were acting strangely, as chickens grow erratic when the barometer is rapidly falling. Yet no storm threatened; the weather, as I remember it, had been for some days unusually brilliant. Late in the afternoon, as I was catching a supper of trout at the inlet of the lake, Kook’skoos the horned owl suddenly started a racket; not his deep hunting call, but an uncanny hoo-hooing up and down the scale, as if he were possessed by some crazy notion. He was answered by others of his kind here or there; and when I stalked the nearest, to find out what was afoot, he upset all my notions of the solemn birds without giving me even a hint of answer to my question. Instead of perching on the top of a stub so as to look like a part[223] of it, as horned owls habitually do, he was hopping up and down a horizontal branch, as if dancing a pas seul. Instead of holding perfectly still save for a vibration of the throat when he sent forth his call, as I had often seen him, he would swoop almost to the ground and whirl about in fantastic circles, at the same time uttering a rapid, guttural note, which ended in a wild yell as he sailed back to his perch.

When I reached camp after sundown, the excitement seemed to have spread widely to others. Kupkawis the barred owl was then going about demanding, Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all? and breaking out in wild clack-clacking before anybody could answer him.

By that time there was a tingle in the air, such as one feels before an electrical storm. Simmo, my smoky companion, was uneasy. I noticed that his eyes had no rest, that they were searching lake or sky or somber forest continually; but I did not question him, having learned to hold my tongue with an Indian; nor did I know enough about the woods to expect anything unusual. Besides, my thoughts were mostly on moose just then. I had found a pond hidden away among low hills and caribou bogs, its shores pitted with moose tracks, among which the slots of a monster bull appealed to my imagination. I intended to[224] call him that night, and had carefully spotted the trail I must follow. When I told Simmo, who did not like my nocturnal rambles, he broke silence to advise me soberly.

“Now I goin’ tell you one t’ing: bes’ don’t go,” he said. “An’ if you do go, bes’ look out; be careful. Moose not hunted here, like down settlement way. I hear-um bull two, t’ree time, an’ he mitcheego, very cross. He come quick to-night if you call-um, an’ he don’t ’fraid of not’ing.”

No sooner was twilight come than a wild calling began, and the woods were as near to noisy as I shall ever hear them. Loons were yelling, owls hooting, ducks quacking, and foxes yapping in all directions. At frequent intervals came the plaint of a black bear, a rare cry, and the loneliest you will ever hear in the night. When the moon rose in a marvelously clear sky I crossed the lake and entered the dim trail that led to my moose pond.

I was following the trail cautiously, feeling my way between a cedar swamp and a burnt hillside, when just ahead of me rang out a screech that seemed to split the air. It was an appalling sound in that lonely place; my skin wrinkled under it, like a dog’s skin under the lash. Again it sounded, making me cringe, though I was waiting for it. It was answered from the hill, and I began to suspect the creature that made it when a caterwauling[225] began which made night hideous. The beasts were approaching each other slowly, screeching as they went, when up through the cedar swamp came a snarling, yowling, unseen thing that sped along the ground with the rush of an arrow. The three lynxes flew together in a rowdydow that spoke of tearing one another to ribbons; yet they were not fighting at all, I think, for when I crept near I could hear no sound of struggle, but only a fiendish yelling. When the rumpus seemed almost under my nose it ceased abruptly; there was no lynx in sight, nor any moving shadow to say what had become of them.

At any ordinary time such an outcry seems to stun the wilderness into deeper silence; but now it had an opposite effect, as if it were an alarm for which wild ears had been waiting. In the dark swamp, on the hillside flooded with pale light, even in the air overhead, alert creatures were moving or crying in nameless excitement. As I went on, following the dim trail, the woods on either side seemed alive with rustlings, some of which were surely not imaginary. Wood mice were abroad, scores of them, it seemed, for the moonlight caught the white edges of their scurrying tails; and within a short space I passed four or five porcupines. Every one of the prickly[226] fellows had climbed to the top of a slender tree, and was perched there, swaying and whining. Birds that sleep by night were peeping or stirring in the shadows. Herons and bitterns, which are always restless when the moon shines, were circling by threes or fours over every lake and bog; while questing individuals winged their way from one group to another, as if seeking or bearing strange news.

Pausing under one of these groups, I would hear the hoarse kruk-kruk of a blue heron drawing nearer, nearer. Suddenly from the air above would come a sharp question, a challenge flung at my head, as the great birds discovered me. Whether by night or day, nothing can remain hidden from their bright yellow eyes. I would see a vague motion, as of wings, emerging from the silver radiance or melting away into it, like gleams and shadows in the eddy of a river under the moonlight. The wings would vanish going I knew not whither; but far and wide forest and lake and caribou barren would all be ringing to the heron’s challenge, Quoskh? Quoskh-quoskh? And I understood then why Indians call this bird the night’s question.

I had left the lake behind and was traveling through a stratum of silence, a restful silence which I devoutly hoped might endure, when an uproar [227]of moose—grunts, splashings, the ring of smitten antler blades—sounded not far away in the direction I was heading. As I emerged from the woods upon the barren that bordered my moose pond, two bulls were having an argument in the shallow water near shore. At first they seemed to be fighting, mud and water flying over them as they surged about with locked antlers; but I soon judged them to be youngsters that were trying their strength while waiting for something else to happen. At intervals they would listen intently to a message I could not hear; then they would drop heads, lock antlers once more, and strive mightily to push each other over.

As they backed away from one of these encounters the nearer bull turned and threw his nose into the wind. The other, instead of driving brow prongs into his rival’s flank (as he surely would have done had they been fighting), took a step toward shore, and both stood at tense attention. Their attitude made me feel queer, for they were in touch with a matter of which I had no warning. Something was passing yonder on the hill, something too fine or distant for me to sense, and the moose were following every rumor of it minutely. Suddenly they leaped from the water, laid their antlers back, thrust their great muzzles out ahead of them, and raced away side by side. They[228] passed close by my hiding place, heading for the thing to which they had been listening.

A little later I began calling from a point of evergreen that thrust itself into the barren from the southern side. Before me and on either hand stretched the level bog, misty and unreal, ringed about by dark woods. Beyond the bog to the right, whither the bulls had gone, rose low hills with pointed spruces standing over them like sentinels. On my left at a little distance was the pond, its placid face glimmering like silver in the moonlight.

Such was the stage, ideal in the perfection of its setting, on which I expected a shy and solitary actor to appear at my summons. Of the moose-caller’s art I knew very little, having at odd times tried to imitate Simmo, who was an excellent caller, but, like all his secretive tribe, an unwilling teacher. Without any preliminary whining, therefore, such as a careful caller employs on the chance that a bull may be near, I sent the bellow of a cow-moose rolling out of my birch-bark trumpet.

The response was immediate, and more than a little startling. Before the echoes of my call were quiet, there came from beyond the pond on my left a gruff quoh! It was a bull barking his answer. A rattling of antlers on alder stems, then a sqush, sqush of mud to say that he was[229] coming. Hardly had he started when, from a hill on the opposite side, a second bull hurled himself down with a hoarse challenge, followed by a terrific smashing of brush. No doubt about it, he was coming, too! When near me he swerved away for the pond or for the other bull, and passed along the farther edge of the bog, where I could hardly see him for the shadows. After him came another, then in a straggling rout three or four more, I think; but they made such commotion in the woods, threshing bushes, grunting, squealing at times, as an old bull will, that it was impossible to keep track of individuals. No sooner did I begin to locate one brute than a nearer or more nerve-shaking rumpus demanded my attention.

Apparently I had blundered into a rare band of traveling moose, and this on the one unlucky night of the year when all wild creatures were strangely excited. For the next half-hour, it seemed (it may have been only a few minutes; I had lost all notion of time), the uneasy brutes went questing over the bog, both bulls and cows. The latter were silent appearing mysteriously here or there; but the bulls seemed to be looking for trouble. At times two or three would go smashing along the fringes of the wood, where they appeared as grotesque shadows; again, a solitary bull would break into the open at a slashing trot, hackles up,[230] bell swinging, and in his throat a chock! chock! chock! which sounded in that place and hour rather ferocious. Once a truculent pair dashed out from opposite sides, only to range challenging down the length of the bog to the pond, where they locked antlers for another bullish kind of argument.

Meanwhile I was making myself as small as possible under an upturned root, where I could see a little of what went on, but where a bull might almost step over me before noticing anything to arouse his fear or anger. Not a moose circled to get my wind, as a solitary bull would surely have done; and I think that they had no inkling of a hidden enemy. They appeared freely here or disappeared there; while I lay close to the ground, where no air stirs, and made no lunatic attempt to call them nearer. They were near enough. Three times out of four you can tell what a wild beast will do, especially if he sees you or suspects where you are, and nine times out of ten you can safely count on his timidity; but a big beast that stumbles upon you is always uncertain, and sometimes dangerous. Once a questing brute chanced within a dozen yards of my point; and when a monster bull with antlers like a pair of rocking-chairs ramped past, gritting his teeth and grunting, one glimpse of him was[231] enough to put the fear of God in any man. I had no rifle, no wish to kill any of these huge beasts; neither did I care to spend the remainder of the chill night reciting mea culpa in a tree.

The moose left the bog when their excitement cooled, trailing off in a procession eastward, whence they had come. They traveled noisily, contrary to all my observation; I could trace their course through the woods long after they had vanished from sight. Their gruff calling ceased; their crashing died away in a surge, a rustle, a shiver as of leaves, and they were gone.

And then the blessed silence returned to brood again over the wilderness. The owls, first to begin the tumult, were last to end; but presently they too were quiet, save for an occasional hunting call. On the way back to camp not a cry, not a rustle disturbed the perfect stillness. The moon shone wondrously clear, making magic of the familiar woods; the lake began whispering to its banks; the air trembled at times to that rushing sound of music which is heard only on still nights in dense forest, and which always fills one with wonder, as if hearing at last the old harmony of the spheres. All around the trail or the gliding canoe the great wilderness stood silent, alert, listening.

That is the last as well as the first impression[232] of a northern forest, the impression of listening. Though silent, it is never dead nor even asleep; it is alive and awake, as a man is most awake when living in his own thoughts. You may range the vast solitude for hours and start no living thing; but you have never a thought that the woods are deserted. No, they are only hiding their wild creatures, which may step forth at any moment. Day or night, summer or winter, the wilderness is always animate. As you move through it on careful feet, awed by its mystery or sublimity, you are every instant in the presence of life, a life so full and deep that silence is its only expression.

[233]

THE TRAIL OF THE LOUP-GAROU

A HOWLING as of wolves fetched me wide-awake one night in my winter camp in Quebec. The sound was familiar enough in that lonely place; yet because it has a fascination for me, an appeal which I can neither satisfy nor explain, I must don whatever warm thing I could lay hands on in the darkness, and go out where I could hear better.

The night was still and nipping cold. Big northern stars glittered over the spruce tops. The light of a waning moon wrought its magic on the frozen lake, its beautiful enchantment on the brooding forest. Under its spell every stately tree had an outline of burnished silver; massive rocks became shadowy and unreal; remote things drew[234] near, and over nearer things was drawn a transparent veil, making them seem remote and mysterious. Through every dim avenue of the snowy woods went a luminous mist, working its wondrous transformation till one seemed to live in a world of dreams and illusions.

The howling ceased as I opened the camp door, but not before I had caught its general direction. In hope of hearing it again and of locating the wolves for my next day’s hunting, I headed toward them, following a snowshoe trail deep into the moonlit woods.

Suddenly to the northward a cry broke out, not the many-tongued uproar for which I listened, but a moan, a wail of unimaginable woe. A wolf’s voice, certainly, but a queer one, so unlike any other that I forgot all else in trying to read its meaning. This was no lunatic baying of the moon, such as must bring response from many wolves, each sitting alone with his nose to the sky. It was not the trail-cry that a wolf utters when he jumps big game and wants the pack to close in. It had no resemblance to the thrilling food call, which brings every hungry wolf within hearing to a kill; nor was it like the howl of a she-wolf, leader of the pack, when she calls her cubs to the hunting, and they come with the clamor of hounds unleashed. A single wolf, unanswered, was voicing[235] some wild emotion in a cry for which I had no explanation. He would begin with a falsetto note, a wail like the keen of a banshee; without a break he would slide down to a full-chested roar, a monstrous, earth-filling sound, and taper off in a moan that made the woods shudder.

“If that brute matches his voice, he must be the father of all wolves,” I thought, feeling a chill in my spine that was not of the frosty night. “In the morning I shall run his trail to find out what he is doing, and get him if I can. Perhaps he is the loup-garou himself!”

Thus naturally, to a wailing accompaniment, I fell to thinking of a fearsome beast, the werewolf of Oriental and Western, of medieval and ancient belief. Even such wide limits of space or time are too narrow; the superstition has flourished wherever wolves and men are found. In corners of modern Europe and on fringes of the Canadian wilderness are people who still believe it; yes, and tremble. In all folklore, in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, in books of witchcraft and books of werewolves, in judgments of criminal courts and acts of parliaments,—through all human records runs the red trail of the loup-garou, haunting the lonely roads, waylaying belated travelers, laying the spell of unearthly fear on all who hear his voice on a winter night.

[236]Everywhere in these old records, as in tales still told by the Habitant’s fireside, the monster has the same gruesome qualities. He is a man “not of one skin” who assumes the form of a beast to gratify a debased appetite for human flesh. While in this shape he has the ferocity of the brute, the intelligence of a man, the cunning of his master the devil. Fear and pity are alike unknown to him. He is not to be shaken from any trail, nor can he be slain by mortal weapons. Being under an evil spell, only magic can overcome him, or bell, book and candle if you have no magic handy. As Drayton wrote:

Which indicates that as late as Elizabethan times men had no thought of killing the loup-garou, but only of laying such a powerful charm on their outlying fields that he could not break through to approach their villages. With different emphasis the ancients call him “wolf-man,” the moderns “man-wolf”; but both agree that while he runs in a beast’s skin he looks precisely like a huge wolf; all but his eyes, which are human, and which betray him.

Such was the superstition, hoary with the fear of ages, which came moaning over the startled[237] woods; and surely never were place and hour more propitious for its reception. In the region where I camped on a winter holiday the tracks of an enormous wolf had been seen at intervals for years past; the rumor of him was in every lumber camp, the fear of him in every village for fifty miles around. If a man vanished in the woods and was never seen again, what but the beast could have caught him and left no trace? At such a thought the Habitant would cross himself, hitch nearer the fire, and, if you were sympathetic, relate a blood-curdling tale of “mon frère Bawteese” or of “bonhomme Philorum” to prove that the loup-garou was still abroad, and terrible as ever.

The lone wolf ceased his cry, and presently in a different direction a pack of wolves set up a hair-raising ululation. These were the brutes that had called me out; after locating them for the morrow I went back to camp and to sleep.

Before sunrise I was ready for the trail. Daylight is brave stuff. The tingle in my skin was now one of joy at being alive on a hunting morning, a joy that laughs aloud at oldwives’ fables. A few winter birds, brave little northern birds, were greeting the new day cheerily; the soundless woods were beautiful beyond words; the keen air was like old wine in its effect, with this added[238] virtue, that one could take as much exhilaration as he pleased and still remain gloriously sober. So, until night should again fall and catch me in the forest, my ancient spine and modern brain agreed that the loup-garou was a myth, but that out yonder was a wolf to challenge any man’s wind or woodcraft. Ordinarily I let wild animals alone, preferring the work of God to that of the taxidermist; but to-day some hunter was stalking in my moccasins and, to say truth, rejoicing from toe to finger tip. “Not that I love wolves less, but deer more. If I find that big brute, I will make an end of his howling and deer killing.” Thus I promised myself, slipping a heavy revolver on one side of my belt to balance an ax on the other. Then, with a touch on various pockets to be sure that compass, knife, matches and emergency ration were in place, I was off for a day in the big woods alone. There was a vague “feel” of coming change in the air; later I noticed that deer or birds were foretelling a storm; but the sun rose on as sweet a tracking morning as heart could wish.

On the day before this hunt I had been fishing through the ice; and the first leg of my present course took me northward along my incoming snowshoe trail as far as a certain lake, halfway to my fishing ground. From the lake I would[239] follow a wolf runway till I came near the ridge where, as I judged, the loup-garou had been howling. I was resolved to pay no heed to any other trail than his; but hardly had I entered the woods when I noticed the fresh track of a wolf beside my own of yesterday. “Too small for the loup-garou,” I said at a glance; “but what is he doing here, so near my camp?”

Only the trail could answer that question; but all the trail said was that a young wolf had cat-footed through the woods till he came within sight of my camp, half buried in snow. There he stood behind a bush, evidently watching, and then loped away to the northwest.

Here was a pretty puzzle at the outset. A wolf does not approach a camp of men unless he has an extraordinary reason; I must find out what caused a wary brute to change his lifelong habit. Among wolves, as among other gregarious creatures, there are occasional hermits or outcasts whose ways are not the ways of their kind; they are less wild, more daring or more trustful than their fellows, and perhaps this cub was one of them. Luckily he had come from northward, the direction in which I was heading; I could run his back trail and pick up information without losing precious time.

My first discovery, a surprising one, was that[240] the wolf had been following me when I came home after dark, dragging a moose sled on which were a catch of trout, a coat, a bundle of tilts, and a duffle bag of such odds and ends as fishermen carry, all snugly lashed because of the rough going. My first notion, that the hungry brute was attracted by the trout, was promptly discarded. A timber wolf might eat a fish that he found on the shore; but nothing could induce him to go near food that lay amid human belongings. A second notion, that the cub was following me with ferocious intent, was more nearly preposterous. Not even when running in a hungry pack will these northern wolves approach a man; on the contrary, they avoid him so carefully that he is lucky to catch a fleeting glimpse of them. Occasionally, when a wolf finds you in the woods at dusk, he may follow at a distance to learn who you are or what you are doing. He is like a farm dog in that he must have a look at every stranger who crosses his range; but he differs from the dog in that he gives no challenge, and is very quiet in his investigations. It was this last motive of curiosity, I thought, which had brought the wolf sniffing along the trail behind me.

The story became more fascinating as I unrolled it from the snow. For miles the cub had followed me closely, rarely coming into the trail, where I[241] might have seen him had I turned, but keeping to one side in thick cover. When I entered camp he had hidden and watched till the smoky smells or terrifying sounds of a hungry man getting supper sent him off on the jump. Instead of retracing his course, he had headed away to the northwest, probably to rejoin his pack at a distance from where he left it.

As I ran his trail across the first lake, another little comedy came to light. The first intimation I had of it was when I saw that the cub had been digging under a bank, and went over and found—But let me tell the tale as it happened to the wolf, not as I learned it from the snow, where the end puzzled me before I had seen the beginning.

On the farther side of the lake, where yesterday I came out on the ice at nightfall, my old moose sled had threatened to go to pieces, and I had stopped to tinker it for the last stage of the journey. It was dark when I made an end of the lashing; as I went forward once more, a bit of rope that I had not used lay unnoticed beside the trail. From the nearby woods the wolf had watched me at my work, keeping hidden till I was well across the lake. Then he ventured shyly into the open, and the first thing he ran against was this queer piece of rope.

Here was a new thing, a rare thing, a thing no[242] wolf had ever before seen; and the cub must find out about it. He studied it gingerly, thrusting out his nose, circling to the other side, till he nerved himself to give it a pull. The end squirmed like a snake, making him hop away; but in a moment he came creeping back. This time he gave the rope a shake, and a free end whipped over his head or flicked an ear, to judge by the tremendous side jump he took to escape the thing. With a sudden access of courage he pounced on his find, tussled it, whirled it up in the air, scampered hither and yon like a playing kitten. Remembering suddenly what he was following, he started after me; but after a dozen steps he went back, and came trotting along the trail with the rope in his mouth. All the way across the lake he played with it at intervals, dropping it whenever some rumor of me came to his nose or ears, but always going back to fetch it again. When I entered the woods he ran quickly to one side and buried his plaything, and then followed me to camp, growing more wary till the wood-splitting, door-slamming, pan-rattling sound of a hasty supper frightened him away.

Still back-tracking the cub into the woods beyond the lake, I found where a pack of eight or ten wolves had crossed my snowshoe trail the evening before. They approached it warily, for[243] either they had seen me or else I had just passed, leaving every track reeking with the man scent. Every wolf had put his nose to my footing before leaping over it. While the pack swept on for the night’s hunting, a single wolf turned to follow me, and probably had me in sight all the way to camp, keeping himself hidden in the dusk of the winter woods.

There were some big wolves in this pack, two especially; but none left a track large enough for the loup-garou. My imagination, having drawn that fellow on a grand scale, was hard to satisfy. He had howled farther to the north and east, I judged; yet there was better chance to find him with the pack at this hour than to pick up his trail by casting about the vast forest. On that chance I followed the pack, only to meet with endless difficulty. The wolves were hunting keenly, scattering in such devious fashion that I abandoned their trail with the thought that I would find them by aid of the inquisitive cub. After leaving me, you remember, he had headed away to the northwest; as I was now well north of camp, I need go only a few miles westward in order to cross his trail.

Should you be interested enough in woodcraft to ask a reason for this departure, the answer is that I wanted to get quickly to where the wolves[244] had killed and eaten; after which it would be easier to follow them, since they grow lazy after feeding, and travel by runways instead of sweeping the whole country. It might take hours of hard trailing to find their kill; but the cub-wolf would go to it like a homing bee the moment he felt hungry. And that suggests another curious bit of animal lore (one which may be questioned, but of which I had myself no doubt), that a lone wolf always knows where his pack is feeding or resting. They may be asleep in their day bed far away, after roving uncounted miles since he left them; yet by some instinct or extra sense he seems able to go straight to them at any hour of the day or night.

Holding across the wild country, therefore, within the hour I had picked up the forward trail of my cub-wolf. As I expected, he had followed a direct course till his trail joined that of the pack, some four or five miles from my camp. Here I made two heartening discoveries: the first, that the wolves had fed and were now roaming with slow feet and heavy stomachs; the second, that they had been joined by a huge wolf that was not with them when they crossed my snowshoe trail. “The loup-garou, and a monster!” I thought exultingly as I measured his tracks, the largest I have ever found. Folding my fingers flat at the[245] second joint, I could drop my gloved hand into the print of his forefoot; where snow was soft he sank deep as a buck at every step. Best of all, he had fed, he was logy, he must soon grow sleepy; and, O day of good luck! I had yet six hours of sunlight. Before dark I would run into that pack, and then— The revolver butt snuggled into my hand to say that we would then know whether the loup-garou had any medicine to compare with a long-barreled, target-sighted, velvet-triggered forty-four.

There was no call to hurry; the longer the wolves slept, the more secure they would feel; so to satisfy my curiosity, and prove or disprove my notion of wolf habits, I decided to follow my cub awhile more. Instead of running with the pack, he had taken their back trail; which told me that he expected to find food.

On the ice of a little pond I found a buck stretched out. The trail said that the wolves jumped him on the ridge above, caught him after a short run, ate what they wanted, and left the rest to the foxes. Here was abundance of good meat, enough to satisfy this pack for a week or two; yet to-night or to-morrow night, preferring warm flesh to cold, they would chivvy another deer. My gorge rose at the thought; for though a hungry beast must live, one must take sides[246] with wolf or deer in the wilderness, as he must choose between cats and birds in his home orchard. If any excuse were needed for the joy of hunting, it seemed a desirable thing, like poetic justice, to lay this buck and the wolf that killed him side by side when the day was done.

From the pond I swung away rapidly after the pack, expecting to be near enough for a stalk within an hour or two; but had a man been hunting merely for heads or skins, the trail would have spelled hope, vexation and heartbreak in quick succession. For a time the wolves roamed lazily, but not aimlessly. They had in mind a day bed near the scene of the next hunting (wolves do not harry the same ground two nights in succession), and though they were constantly making detours, following an easy runway between hills or seeking a safe crossing of swift water, they held a westward direction as true as a compass. I was glad of that course, because it might bring me near a chain of lakes where I had a snowshoe trail, one that I could follow homeward after dark if need be. To the south also the lay of the land was familiar; but northward stretched a wild country which I had never entered.

The trail of a wolf pack is never a dull trail, and at first I gave myself up to full enjoyment of it, here puzzling over a record that I could not understand,[247] there finding another so typical that at times I seemed to be trailing a band of roving dogs. Wolves do not blunder through a region; they are alive and inquisitive every moment, the youngsters especially. In this pack the loup-garou and a big female held together (it was the end of winter, near the mating season), while the cubs and yearlings were continually going off on side tours of investigation. To follow these excursions, learning what pleased or puzzled the intelligent brutes, was part of the fun of trailing; yes, and a better part than pushing blindly ahead, intent on a shot or a killing. I must give the wolves this credit, too, that though they crossed the deep paths of a deer yard, they made no attempt to harry the game. They rarely do so unless they are hungry, or unless (near settlements) they run into a herd of foolish domestic animals that do not know enough to scatter or be quiet when wolves appear.

So the pleasant trail ran on through the big woods, wonderfully white and still, and suddenly headed for a sheltered spot on a ridge overlooking a wide stretch of country. My heart jumped when I saw that spot, and the trail turning to its cover. It was an ideal place for wolves to “lie up” for the day; after testing the air, I approached the nest from leeward as stealthily as a hunting[248] fox. It was empty; worse than that, it had not been occupied even for a moment’s halt. No sooner did the wolves enter the perfect cover than all the imps of uneasiness flew to their backs and drove them on. The trail was cold, showing no sign of alarm; but it said that the pack had shaken off laziness and was going somewhere without delay.

No more easy trailing now, and no more side excursions to learn what the cubs had been doing. The wolves headed into rough country northward; for miles I followed them where never a man went before, I think, and where no sensible man would go again. Only once have I experienced anything to compare with it and that was when I followed a bear that was making for his winter den through a foot of new-fallen snow. The bear had seen me, and took to rough country, knowing that I was hot on his trail; but all these cold signs said that the wolves were making medicine here while I was making coffee far away. In some uncanny way they seemed to have received a “tip” that they would be followed on this one day of all the year, and had laid out a trail that must break an enemy’s wind or heart. “Oh, that’s the loup-garou, all right,” I thought; “and some cunning devil is surely his master, as old books say. What else would lead this gorged pack to forsake its[249] way of easy traveling and go through a breakneck country like this?”

For hours the trail held to broken ground, telling its lively tale. When the wolves drew near a steep hill or a stiff cobble, instead of rounding it by an easy runway they would corkscrew up one side and tumble down the other. In one place they would climb a sharp pitch like goats; in another, with discouraging ease, they would crouch under a ledge and take it with a catlike spring. When they topped ridge or hill, the leader would pick out a smooth pitch, sit on his tail, and slide down the other side, leaving a chute in the snow which might be ten or thirty feet long, and steep as a church roof. Here a few of the wolves might select individual slides; as a rule, they sat on their tails and tobogganed down after the leader.

To follow them in such places (warily, because the pack might be jumped at any moment) you had to rise on tiptoe, driving moccasins down through toe-holes in the snowshoe webs for a grip on the slippery incline, and make use of every bush or root to give yourself a helpful upward pull. When you reached the top and made cautious survey, you had to take off snowshoes and slide or scramble down the wolf chute. Meanwhile the thermometer was near zero, and you[250] wished it were lower, for a little of this kind of work left you hot as a haymaker. Your wind-proof coat was tied in a snug bundle at your back; you were gloveless, in shirt-sleeves, and still too warmly dressed. When you stopped to breathe after a tough climb, the keen air promptly chilled you to the bone.

What between laborious ups and breathless downs, the afternoon passed all too quickly away; the last precious hour of daylight struck, and still there was no sign to indicate how far ahead the wolves might be resting. The trail was still cold, calling for haste if one expected to run into the pack; yet calling also for alertness, since the next step might bring one into sense range of the keenest of wild animals. A wolf may sleep, but never his ears or his nose; that is the fascination of trailing him to his day bed.

I was resting on the crest of a ridge, the trail stretching northward along the summit, when a gloom swept over the woods, as if they had been brushed by a cloud. Then a breeze stirred, making moan in the evergreens, and a snowstorm came creeping up from the south. In a moment my good luck was changed; the wind had turned behind me while the game was still ahead, and one might as well climb after a squirrel as to stalk a wolf pack from windward.

[251]“No use! this loup-garou is too much for you,” I told myself, almost ready to acknowledge his superior medicine or magic. Ordinarily I might have been homeward bound with a wolf skin on my back at this hour; but now, empty handed, I must find a sheltered spot, build a “Commoosie” and gather wood for a night’s fire. Somewhere to the westward was a snowshoe trail; but a storm was coming, the country was strange, and to find the trail or retrace my course before dark was out of the question. Yes, I must spend the night here; but first, as a man waits another hopeful minute after a poor day’s fishing, I would run the trail a little farther.

That was a fortunate last-minute decision. I had followed the ridge only a few steps when I saw the face of a pond far below on my left, and recognized it as one I had crossed when a wolf pack led me a long chase hither from a different direction. No cheerless night for me now, and no more climbing every heartbreak hill between here and camp! The trail had borne more to the westward than I thought; the pond below was near a chain of lakes, and from it I could quickly reach my snowshoe trail and easy traveling.

The wooded ridge on which I stood had a sharp drop of twenty yards toward the pond. Along the foot of this drop grew clumps of bushes (of the[252] dwarf-laurel family, I think), bearing shiny green leaves that appeared very beautiful when all other leaves were dead under the snow; and below that was an immense hillside stretching down to the valley. The wolves had slid down the first pitch, and turned sharp to the north again, still keeping to the heights, seeking even rougher country before calling halt for the day. So I judged, my eyes following the tireless trail, which went weaving in and out of the laurel bushes. That thicket yonder was a good wolf nest, excellent; but so were twenty others I had found empty that day; and see, a trail going out on the farther side!

As I stole along the summit, scanning the cover below in lingering hope, a snowflake touched my cheek with unmistakable warning. Others came whirling among the trees, like little white birds seeking a place to light; the great valley at my feet began to fill and darken. “No time to lose,” I thought; “not a minute, if I am to reach camp before this storm gets too thick to see through it. So, till next time, loup-garou! You have given me a great hunt; but I wish I could have seen your eyes.” Then I took off my snowshoes, picked a smooth pitch with a snowdrift below, and went down like a shot.

That was a short slide, hardly more than a second; but it was crammed full of surprises and[253] wild emotions. Before it fairly started I had a startling glimpse of something big and gray popping above the laurels, like a jack-in-a-box. Another and another gray thing flew up and down. As each topped the cover I had instantaneous picture of a convulsed body with dangling legs, above which gleaming white fangs and fierce eyes were turned in my direction. Every wolf in the pack must have leaped straight up from his sleep, so as to look clear of the bushes and see what was coming. When I struck the drift with the rumble of a small avalanche, the landscape was full of wolves, some jumping up wildly to see, others streaking away through the woods like scared cats.

Out of the corner of an eye I saw these vanishing shapes, my whole heart and attention being fastened on one enormous wolf that jumped from under me and went whisking down the slope in astonishing-high bounds, as if he rode a witch’s broomstick. It was the loup-garou, the terrible, the enchanted beast! I could have laughed or yelled at his flight had I not wanted to bemoan my own blunder. After throwing me off his trail he had gone to sleep in the laurels under the ridge, where he was sure no enemy could approach unnoticed; and after trailing him uncounted miles with endless caution, I had tumbled down like a[254] sack almost on top of him. It was such an ending as makes one a believer in luck, especially bad luck.

And speaking of luck, it was, after all, fairly distributed, with such waggish humor that no reasonable creature had any cause to grumble. The lucky thing for me was the panic that gets into a wild beast’s legs whenever a startling thing happens. I knew the power of a timber wolf, that he can throw a buck by a twist of the head, and paralyze him or open his throat by a snap of the terrible fangs; and I had roused a dozen such brutes, every one within springing distance. Had they whirled on me in the drift, my sky would have been no bigger than my hat; I would have had no more fighting chance than a rabbit. Yet they lost nerve and scattered like flushed quail when a snowball came blundering down into their day bed.

In the other scale of fortune’s balance, it was lucky for the wolves that I was as much surprised and generally stood-on-my-head as they were. After an all-day chase, here was one rewardful moment when a man needed just three things: solid footing, clear eyes, a steady hand. In that moment I was sprawling like an upset turtle, one hand brushing snow out of my face, the other tugging at a revolver, which took that particular occasion to jam in the holster. Somehow, with[255] loss of the only precious second, I was on my feet to send one hasty shot at the loup-garou, flying off on his broomstick with trees flitting past him in dizzy procession, and another at a big dog wolf that, confused by the roaring echo, turned and came streaking past me up the ridge.

It was all over before there was time to pick a target or even to think. The dog wolf jumped high at the shot, showing he had no magic; but as I gazed ruefully after the loup-garou I had a last glimpse of his plume waving au revoir as he sailed over a windfall. Whatever loup-garouishness that fellow ever had is still with him.

[256]

FROM A BEAVER LODGE

TO look into a house is one thing; to look out of it is another. The difference between the two views is the difference between strangeness and familiarity, between guessing and knowing. This is an attempt to look forth from a beaver’s house and see the world as a beaver sees it.

When you stand for the first time beside a beaver lodge you front a disappointment, then a doubt, finally a battery of questions. You are gliding down a wilderness stream, your senses joyously alert, in your heart a curious feeling that you are an intruder, when your eye catches a thing which is neither alive nor quite natural. It is a mass of sticks, gray, like all jetsam of the shore; but it stands in a circle of cut glass overlooking a bend where the stream broadens into a little pond. Quietly the canoe turns in, touching the bank as[257] noiselessly as a floating leaf. As you step ashore, an odor of musk tells you that you are at last in beaver land.

All around you is beauty, quietude, immensity; upon you is the spell of the silent places. The wild meadow with its blossoming grass, over which the wind runs in waves of light and shadow; the big woods, which seem always to be listening; the everlasting hills with their sentinel pines,—all these remind you of a day when God looked upon a new creation, “and behold, it was very good.” Even the graceful canoe, which has borne you silently through a vast silence, seems part of a harmonious landscape. But that crude heap yonder, surely that is not the famous dwelling you have read about and longed to see! One look at the formless thing is enough to dispel all your illusions of beaver intelligence. You expected something rare, an abode finely or wonderfully wrought; you see a pile of sticks, big and scraggly, as if a huge hawk’s nest had tumbled out of a tree and landed upside down.

Such is your first impression of a beaver’s winter house, making you doubt whether the maker of such a poor abode has any more brains in his head than a delving woodchuck. But when you push the sticks aside and find that they conceal a careful work beneath; when you reflect that the[258] beaver gave a cunning last touch to his handiwork in order to make it look like drift stuff cast up by the waters; when you slowly uncover dam, transportation canal, emergency burrows, storehouse, and other works of which this rude house was once the hopeful center,—then your illusions come back multiplied, and you ask questions of a different kind, no longer scornful, but truth-seeking. Your first view discloses only a formless heap of sticks, because you view it from without as a stranger; your last view, as you turn away regretfully, brings sympathetic understanding of the brave little pioneer who looks out from the sticks as from a familiar home, and is well content with what he sees because he has proved himself master of circumstance.

The first of your new questions deals with the height of the lodge, which is its most variable feature. One beaver builds a high lodge, another a low; or the same beaver may erect a six-foot house one season, and the next be content with a dwelling that will hardly be noticeable when the snow covers it. In your thought this varying height is associated with a strange weather prediction; for as in childhood you were told that a low or high muskrat’s house was sure sign of a mild or severe winter, so when you visit beaver land you shall hear that this relative of the muskrat is an[259] unerring weather prophet. “When the beaver builds high and solid, look for deep snow and intense cold” runs the saying, and your proper state of mind is one of wonder at the mysterious instinct which enables the animal to know what kind of winter he is facing, and to build his house accordingly.

Now the beaver, like other wild creatures, is an excellent weather prophet. When you find him working leisurely by night, and sleeping from early dawn till the stars come out, you may confidently expect a continuation of Indian-summer weather; but when you find him rushing his work by day-and-night labor, it is time for you to head out of the woods (if you travel by canoe) before a freeze-up blocks all the waterways. From these and other signs, which woodsmen point out, one might judge that the beaver knows what kind of weather to expect for the next day or two; but there his foreknowledge stops, being sufficient for his needs. The weather of next winter cannot possibly concern him when he builds his house; the height or solidity of his walls is not determined by fear of cold or anticipation of a heavy snowfall. What should he care for cold who has the warmest of furs on his back, or for snow who has a weather-proof roof over his head?

No, the problem which a beaver faces is the[260] single problem of rising or falling water. Therefore the height of his dwelling will never be determined by season, but always by locality. If he selects one place for a winter habitation, he will build a high lodge; if he decides that another place is better, he will be satisfied with a low lodge. In either place his house, whether high or low, will prove to be just the right height nine times out of ten, and perhaps oftener. Indians assert that a beaver never repeats a mistake. They seem to think of him as they think of themselves when they say, “If you fool-um Injun once, that’s your fault. If you fool-um twice, that’s Injun’s fault.”

To understand the problem as Hamoosabik faces it every autumn, we must remember that the lodge is to be his home during the winter, until streams are clear of ice and he can once more seek his food along the banks. He builds by choice on low ground, beside a quiet stream, because he finds there alders for building material, abundant mud for mortar, soft banks for refuge burrows, and broad levels through which to run his transportation canals. Such places are overflowed in the spring, some more, some less; and it is this varying overflow which the beaver anticipates by the height of his dwelling, as he provides against wolves or lynxes by thick walls that cannot be broken.

[261]Near the top of the lodge is the living room, from which a tunnel leads down through lodge and bank to a store of food-wood under the ice. Since the water in this tunnel rises or falls with the level of the pond, it follows that the living room must be high enough to give assurance that the water will not enter and drown the beaver against his own roof. Once his living room is flooded, he must escape through the tunnel, find an opening in the ice of his pond, and take his chance with hungry enemies in the snow-filled woods. A beaver does that once in a lifetime, perhaps, when he builds a low lodge in a place which calls for a high one; but he will not do it a second time, or a first, if instinct can anticipate or industry prevent it.

We begin to understand now what is in the animal’s head while he speeds his work during the beautiful Indian-summer days, when a soft haze rests like a dream on the hills, and waters grow still as if to hold the reflection of tranquil skies, of russet meadows, of woods agleam with crimson and gold. He must abide here in a narrow room when all this beauty and tenderness have passed into the cold gray or gleaming white of winter; that the time is short he hears from the trumpets of wild geese wending southward over his head. Food for his growing family, a pond to store it in,[262] a canal for transportation, a number of safety burrows,—all these must be provided not in haphazard fashion, but carefully and in order. If his food-wood be stored too early, it will hold enough sap to cause the bark to sour under water, which means calamity; or if it be gathered too late, a frost may close the canal through which it must be towed to the storehouse. Not till these preliminary works are finished does Hamoosabik rear his winter lodge, with its living room wherein his family may gather in comfort by day or sleep without fear at night, while trees crack under the intense cold, and the howl of a hungry wolf goes searching through the woods.

While beavers are building their lodge, the water in all wilderness streams is low, as a rule, for it is the end of the summer season; but before spring comes the water will be high, and much higher in some places than in others. The important matter, therefore, is to plan a house suitable for the locality in which it stands; high enough, that is, to prevent rising water from flooding the living room, but not a handbreadth higher than the place demands for security. An overhigh house is too noticeable, too glaring; and Hamoosabik is like other wood folk in that he strives to be inconspicuous. The last thing any bird or beast cares to do is to draw attention to the place where he[263] lives; that is as true of eagle or bear as of hummingbird or chipmunk.

Weighing these matters as we stand beside a beaver lodge, our question returns in another form. It is no longer a question of foretelling winter weather, but of anticipating early-spring conditions of land and water, and it reads, By what strange instinct does the beaver build now high, now low, and always just high enough to keep his living room above the crest of the coming floods? That is the rule in beaver land, with enough exceptions in the way of drowned lodges and homeless beavers to make it an interesting rule, not a mere “dead” certainty.

The answer is, probably, that instinct has nothing to do with the matter; so we may as well put that prejudice out of our heads and open our eyes. Instincts are fairly constant, so far as we know them, while floods and lodges are endlessly variable. The height of a beaver’s lodge is largely the result of observation, I think, and of very simple observation. It is noticeable that, when lodges are built by different beaver families on the lower part of a stream, they are all comparatively high; but when they appear on the head-waters of the same stream, they are uniformly low. This because the spring rise of water at the mouth of a brook is commonly much greater than at its source.

[264]Take your stand now at either place, and look keenly about. See those frayed alders; see that level line of gray spots where living trees have been barked by floating logs; see that other line of jetsam on the shore. Here, plain as your nose, are the high-water marks of this particular locality. Every spring these marks are renewed, and the highest is ever the most conspicuous. If you can see such signs, so also can a beaver, who has excellent eyes, and who is accustomed to use them in the darkness as well as in the light. That he does see them and is guided by them is suggested by the fact that Hamoosabik’s lodge, wherever you find it, has a dome which rises just above the high-water mark of the surrounding country. Again and again I have laid a straight stick as a level on top of a beaver house, turning it in different directions and sighting along it; and almost invariably, in one direction or another, I found my glance passing just above some striking line of barked trees or drift stuff which showed where the floods had reached their height.

A beaver does not use an artificial level, to be sure; but it is doubtless as easy for him as for anyone else to know, when he sits on a hummock, whether he is above or below the level of a plain mark confronting him. Such is the probability, since all creatures have subconscious powers of coördination.[265] The probability increases when you observe the beaver at his building operations.

One evening, just after sundown, I had the luck to watch a family of beavers at work on their winter lodge. The place was solitary; the animals had long been undisturbed, and they were hurrying the last part of their work by day as well as by night, as they do in lonely regions. As they are very shy in the light (at night they will come within reach of your paddle, if you sit motionless in your canoe), I dared not approach near enough to follow the details of their work; but this much I saw plainly, that while four or five animals were industriously gathering material and piling it up, one large beaver sat almost constantly on top of the lodge. Occasionally he moved as if to receive a troublesome stick or place it properly; but for the most part he seemed to be doing nothing. Even when it became too dark to distinguish more than moving shadows, the silhouette of that quiet beaver stood out like a watchman against the twilight.

Simmo and Tomah both tell me that such a scene is typical of beaver families at work, and that the quiet animal I had noticed, far from doing nothing, was directing the whole job. These Indians can tell at a glance whether a dam was built by young or old beavers; and they say that,[266] if the older members of a family are trapped or killed, the young make blundering attempt at providing winter quarters. If the family is undisturbed (a beaver family is made up, commonly, of three generations), one of the parent animals takes his place on top of any dam or lodge they are building, in order to direct the work and bring it to the right level. At the same time he acts as a watchman, his elevated position giving him advantage over the working beavers, which have the habit every few minutes of dropping whatever they may be doing and sitting up on their tails for a look all around.

It is very likely, therefore, that Hamoosabik does not follow a “blind” instinct when he can use his seeing eyes. While his lodge is rising he looks forth from the top of it, seeking familiar signs to guide him, and he keeps on looking as well as building until he knows that he is above the high-water mark of the neighborhood. And then, having reared his walls to clear the flood level, he lays the floor of his upper room and puts on the roof. If waters are normal, he will have a dry nest as long as he cares to use it; but if deep snows are followed by an unprecedented rise of water, he will probably be drowned out.

Such observation seems remarkable in a mere beast; but what shall we say of the beaver’s dam,[267] of his transportation canal, of his channels scooped out of the bottom of a shallow pond, and of other works that deal intelligently with land or water levels? All these seem to call for eyes as well as instinct; and it is no more remarkable that a beaver should know, sitting on top of his lodge, that he is above or below a visible mark than that he should run a winding canal half a mile, as he often does, and keep the water level right at every point.

Even the simplest of the beaver’s works, his felling of trees, seems to indicate a measure of observation. When he cuts a leaning tree he always gnaws first and deepest on the leaning side, to which the tree will fall. But if the tree is straight up and down, like a clever cat’s tail, he cannot judge its inclination, and often makes a mistake, throwing the tree to the wrong side or “lodging” it against another tree, as the best woodsman may do now and then. When a beaver tackles such a doubtful tree, he gnaws evenly around the whole butt, sinking the cut deepest in the middle, shaping it like an hourglass. As he works, he often stops cutting to look aloft, raising himself with forepaws against the trunk or sitting erect at a little distance, studying the tree with unblinking eyes as if to learn for his own safety which way it intends to go. One who has[268] ever seen an old beaver thus sitting up on his tail, apparently to get the slant of a towering poplar before he fells it, has no difficulty in accepting the notion that the same beaver will recognize high-water mark when it lies directly under his nose.

At times Hamoosabik must be sadly puzzled by his primitive observation, especially where man interferes with nature, leaving strange marks to which animals are not accustomed. Twice have I found surprising lodges built on the shore of artificial ponds, where a new high-water mark showed above the old flood level. These ponds had been made by lumbermen, who raised the water five or six feet in order to have a “head” for driving their logs. When their work ended they opened the gates of their dam and went away, leaving the pond to return to its former size. Then beavers came back to the solitude, and used the pond for a winter home. When they examined the shores before building their lodge (it is their habit to explore a place thoroughly), they must have seen the dead trees, the barked trees, the line of jetsam high and dry, all plainly indicating where the flood had been. But there was nothing to tell the beavers why the water had risen so much higher here than in other lakes, and they were evidently guided by such signs as[269] they could understand. In each case they built their lodge not on low swampy ground, as they habitually do, but on a dry bank, and the dome of the lodge rose just above the artificial water level.

Another question meets you when you examine Hamoosabik’s digging operations, especially his canals, which are the most intelligent of all his works. It is noticeable that beavers cut their food-wood above their storehouse whenever that is possible, and so make use of the current in transportation; but when the selected grove of poplars stands back from the shore, then the beavers dig a canal from their pond or stream to their source of supply. And a very remarkable canal it is, with clean-cut sides, about two feet wide and a little less in depth, in which the water stands quiet, showing a perfect level.

Such a canal goes straight as a string in one place, or winds around an obstruction in another, always following the most even ground; and it ends at the beaver’s grove, or as near as he can get and bring the water with him. He is a powerful worker, handling logs of astonishing size with the help of his mate; but you will not catch him rolling or dragging a thing if he can possibly float it. Even the stones which he uses in weighting[270] his dam are moved under water, where they are much lighter than on land.

It is commonly assumed that Hamoosabik digs a canal in order to have an easy way of transporting his wood. He certainly uses it for that purpose; but he has another end in view, I think, when he begins his digging. It should be remembered that beavers, though tireless workers, like to loaf and play as well as other wood folk. They never work for the sake of working; yet one often sees a canal that represents an enormous amount of labor, so apparently superfluous that one wonders what the animals were thinking of. It is not merely the length of such a canal which puzzles one, but the roundabout course it must follow in order to keep on level ground. It sometimes happens, when food-wood stands on a hillock within a few rods of the pond, that the beavers will run their canal four or five times that distance, avoiding the rising ground and approaching the hill from the farther side. Your first thought, when you meet such a work, is that the animals could have hauled their wood down the easy slope in half the time they spent preparing for water transportation.

I recall one canal on which a deal of labor, the most skillful I ever saw in an animal, had been expended for what seemed a very small result.[271] The beavers were building a dam on a trout stream bordered by primeval forest. About two hundred yards west of the stream the forest opened upon a little swale, in which grew plentiful alders, the beavers’ favorite building material. Evidently they found the alders when they explored the neighborhood, and decided they must have them. Their dam was a small one, and it would have been a simple matter to drag a sufficient supply of brush through the woods; but the beavers chose the harder task of digging a six-hundred-foot canal from the stream to the alder swale.

That canal was an amazing piece of work. Not ten yards of it were straight, and could not be straight because of trees or other obstacles; yet it held a course true as a compass from the pool above the dam to the objective point, which was hidden from sight in the big woods. In one place it ran under an immense tree that stood on a hummock. The central roots were cut away; but other great roots were left arching down on either side, supporting the tree as a living bridge. In another place a pine log twenty-inches thick, its heart still sound, was encountered beneath the mossy mold, squarely athwart the course of the canal. The beavers had cut through other logs that lay on the surface; but the buried pine did not interfere with their plan or purpose, apparently.[272] After clearing away the earth on top of the log, they dug an opening beneath it and continued their ditch on the other side, thus allowing the water to flow over and under the obstruction. When the time came for towing their material through the canal, the slippery top of the pine offered hardly more resistance than the water itself.

Here the beavers had not only spared themselves unnecessary labor, but had shown a rare degree of intelligence in the process. So the question arises, Why did they bother with a canal at all, since they move material overland on occasion, and they could have dragged a supply of alders to the stream with half the effort required for their extraordinary digging?

I had camped weeks near this beaver family, puzzled by their work, before answer came from an unexpected actor. Lynxes were uncommonly abundant; they prowl by night, when the beaver works, and they are ravenously fond of young-beaver meat. They suggest the fact that all the beaver’s works are intended primarily for security, and that the element of safety is probably uppermost in his mind when he digs a canal. On land he is slow, clumsy, almost defenseless; in the water he is at home, a match for any animal at either swimming or fighting. Undoubtedly he feels[273] safer in his canal, where he can defend himself or get away under water, than he can possibly feel in woods or meadows that offer him no refuge from his enemies. So he always starts digging at the stream’s edge, and works toward his grove of wood (never in the opposite direction, from grove to stream), and so the friendly water goes with him, filling his canal as fast as he digs it, offering him a way of escape at every instant.

It is significant, in this connection, that beavers do not use a pond that has no outlet or inlet. Hundreds of such spring-fed ponds are scattered through the north, some of them desirable from a beaver’s viewpoint; yet I have never found a sign to indicate that Hamoosabik has visited them. But if the pond have even a trickle of water running out of it, he will surely find it, no matter how distant it may be. The method is very simple, I think. Swimming up or down river on his endless exploration (for Hamoosabik is the pioneer among wood folk, forever pushing out himself or sending forth his progeny to new regions), he catches a flavor of different water, and follows it from river to brook, from brook to runlet, till he finds the pond it came from. And if he likes the place, after exploring all its watershed, he will bring his mate or family there for winter quarters.

In his journeying from place to place, likewise,[274] Hamoosabik invariably follows the watercourses. His objective may be only a mile away in a direct line; but to reach it he will travel five or ten times that distance, making his way down one brook or river and up another to the pond he is seeking. If a brook is shallow, the beavers hurry over it, leaving only a few tracks to mark their passing; but if they intend to use the brook again, either for gathering building material or as a trail between their new home and the colony from which they came, they deepen the channel here and there by dam or excavation. And commonly at such places there is a hidden burrow, with entrance under water, in which the beavers may take refuge if surprised by their enemies.

These emergency burrows, which Hamoosabik prepares beside a regular trail or near the site of his lodge, always start from the bottom of the pond or stream, and slant upward to a spot under a tree’s roots, above high-water level. There he excavates a rough den, a little den if he has only a mate to consider, or a big den if he has brought a family with him. Finding such a refuge with its secret approach, one is reminded of New England pioneers, who built hiding places in their chimneys or cellars as a precaution against Indian attack.

When Hamoosabik needs deeper water for storing[275] his winter food, he makes a pond by damming the stream below his lodge; but if he finds plentiful food near a natural lake having depth enough for safety, he uses that lake just as it is, thus avoiding the difficult job of building a dam. If he makes a pond that proves too shallow for his need or too slow in filling (the latter occurs frequently in dry weather), instead of running the risk of being frozen in before he is ready for winter he will dig channels in the bottom of his pond, and so provide the needed depth of water in another way. For winter lodging he must have a solid structure of two rooms, lower entrance hall and upper living room, with a stairway between;[3] but when he occasionally builds a house for summer use he is content with a simpler shack, as if it were not worth while to build solidly for a few weeks of pleasant weather.

The walls of a summer house are lightly constructed of grass and mud, over which a few weathered sticks may be thrown for the apparent purpose of concealment. The interior is a single large room, with a floor that either slants upward from the front or water side or else is arranged in two distinct levels or benches. The slanting floor is the work of a young pair of beavers, as a rule; the two-bench arrangement indicates that[276] the lodge is used by more experienced builders. From the lower bench a passage through the wall opens directly on the air, at the brink of the stream; from the upper bench a hidden tunnel leads down through the bank, and emerges in deep water.

One curious fact about these summer houses is that a beaver always enters by the open door, and always comes out by the subaqueous tunnel. One can understand why he should enter by the door, because he stops just within to let water drain from his outer coat before climbing to his dry nest. The tunnel goes direct to the sleeping bench; if he entered by that route, he must drag a lot of water into his bed. But that Hamoosabik should refuse to go out of his open door appears as an oddity, until by long watching you become acquainted with his cautious habits. Thus, if you surprise him outside his summer house, he will not enter it (showing you where it is) so long as you remain in the neighborhood, but will hide in one of his refuge burrows. And if you surprise him at home, he will make an unseen exit under your very eyes. This is the method of it, when you watch from your canoe in the summer twilight:

During the day the family sleep in their nests of grass on the upper bench, all but one old beaver, who is on guard near the entrance; for that open door of the summer house (a winter lodge has[277] no opening in the walls) may invite an intruder or an enemy. As the shadows deepen into dusk, and waters fill with soft colors of the afterglow, the watchman bestirs himself for his night’s work; but still he is careful not to show himself at the open door. Instead of making the easy and obvious exit, he climbs the sleeping bench, slips down through the tunnel, and lifts eyes and ears among the shadows under the bank, where he cannot be seen. After watching there awhile, he sinks without a sound and swims away under water. You are watching the lodge keenly when your eye catches a ripple breaking the reflection of sky and sleeping woods, or your ear hears a low call, like the flutter of a dry leaf in the wind. There is your beaver, at last, not where you looked for him at the door of his lodge, but far away on the other side of your canoe!

Again, as showing the beaver’s grasp of a natural situation, when he finds a wild meadow with a stream meandering through it, and decides to use it for winter quarters, his work is so simple as to appear like play. That meadow was once, undoubtedly, the bed of a beaver pond; it became a meadow because of rich soil which the stream brought down in flood, year after year, filling the pond and giving wild grasses a chance to root and blossom there. The beaver may not know this[278] ancient history, that the perfect place he selects was made perfect by an ancestor who pioneered this region long ago; but he does know, or soon finds out, that water, soil, food-wood, building material,—everything is precisely suited to his needs. After locating his grove of poplar, he goes down to the foot of the meadow and builds a dam across the stream. Since he is careful to pick the best spot for building, the chances are that he will place the dam where his unknown ancestor placed it; if you dig beneath the new structure, you will find the solid foundation of the old. As the water flows back, being checked in its onward course by the dam, the grasses slowly disappear until their heads are covered, and presently the meadow is a beaver pond once more. Then without hurry or anxiety a goodly store of food is gathered, a lodge rises on the shore, and the family have all things ready before winter comes and the ice locks them in.

It is a different story when Hamoosabik settles in a new place, which no beaver ever used before, and then you see what pioneer stuff is in him. What with building his dam (always a troublesome element in a new place), or getting the right level to his pond or the proper height to his lodge, or running safety burrows and transportation canal through soil that may show rocks or clay[279] where he expected easy digging, our little settler is up to his ears in work, and faces a new problem every evening. He is still working and planning, adding a last stick to the food pile or putting a spillway on the dam, which already gives him more water than he needs, when as he rises from his tunnel on a nipping night he bumps his head against the top of his pond, and knows that he is frozen in. Then, seeing he has done all a beaver can do, he settles down with pioneer courage to face the winter, the lazy winter, when from dawn to dusk he will be sociable with his family, and from dusk to dawn they will all sleep without fear in their warm living room.

What a curious life they live for six long months every year! By night the lodge and tunnel must be places of almost absolute darkness; yet even after nightfall, should the need arise, beavers go to every part of their pond and return, finding their way without seeing, I think, by their unerring sense of locality. By day a little light filters through the walls of the lodge, enough to make the gloom visible, and then the beavers use their eyes once more,—wonderful eyes, which adapt themselves alternately to thick darkness and the blinding glare of sunlight on pure snow.

No sooner does the sun rise than beavers, young and old, are all stirring eagerly, cleaning their[280] house, exploring the pond under the ice for a relish of lily roots, bringing in their daily fare of bark, and finally, when hunger and need of exercise are satisfied, gathering in the big living room for an hour of sociability. At such a time, if you approach softly from leeward and lay your ear to the lodge, you may hear a low, rapidly whispered thup-a, thup-a, thup-a, thup-a, which is made by the vibration of a beaver’s lips when he is surprised or pleased. There is a moment of silence after the call, then a babel of voices, squeaky or whining or bumbling voices, as if little and big beavers were talking all at once.

As the short winter day fades into the long night, the gloom thickens in the arched living room. Voices are hushed; not a sound comes from the lodge, which is covered with a blanket of snow. In the forest an owl hoots, or a wolf wails to the sky, or a stealthy tread is heard as some night prowler climbs the lodge for a sniff at the ventilator. That hungry beast is only three or four feet away; but the beavers care not; their house is burglar-proof. Its one doorway leads down through the bank to water under the ice, and no enemy can come from that direction. When the prowler goes away, an old beaver stirs himself; like a watchman he goes down the stairway to the tunnel, finds the water at its safe level,[281] comes back whining a low call, and curls up in his bed with a satisfied grunt. Then the family fall asleep, each in his own nest; in their ears is a little song, the endless song of the spillway with its quieting burden, All’s well with our world; all’s well!

Yes, a curious life, monotonous and dismal, or cheery and forever expectant, according as you view it from without or from within. Coming upon the lodge now, you see only a mound of white swelling above the expanse of pond or beaver meadow, and beyond stand ranks of evergreen, dark and silent. That mound is as dull or dead as anything else in the somber landscape until, as you pass indifferently, your eye catches a wisp of vapor, like a breath, or your ear detects a faint plop, plop, as bodies slide down into the tunnel one after another. In an instant the whole landscape changes, as it always does change, and glow and fall away into the golden frame of a picture, when a living creature moves across the face of it. The mound is no longer a dull mass, but the fascinating abode of life; the wilderness sun rises or sets not on snow and ice, but on work, play, companionship, and all else that makes life the one interesting and eternally mysterious thing in the universe.

So when my friend of the telescope looks in,[282] as I write this, and tries to stir my lagging enthusiasm for the satellites of Jupiter or the vastness of the Milky Way, I find myself thinking that Jupiter might allure me if there were a beaver lodge on its meadows, and that I shall never feel any human interest in stars or interstellar spaces until someone discovers a squirrel track on the Milky Way.

[283]

COMEDIANS ALL

WHILE watching a chipmunk one summer, a fascinating little fellow whom I had tamed till he would sit on my knee to beg with eloquent eyes for nuts or rice or sweet chocolate, I learned first the location of his den, and then, when he abandoned it for a roomy winter storehouse, the whole secret of his building.

For years our naturalists have debated the mystery of the squirrel’s digging, how he can excavate den or tunnel without leaving fresh earth at the entrance to betray him; but when I was a boy any farmer’s lad in the countryside could have given instant explanation. “How does a chipmunk dig a hole without leaving any earth at the entrance? Why, very simply; he begins[284] at the other end.” And though the answer is true, beyond cavil or gainsaying, some doubting Thomas who clothes all animal action in a mysterious fog of instinct is bound to make hocus-pocus of the chipmunk’s art by demanding, “But how does he get to the other end?”

That also is simple; but you will not appreciate the answer till you know by observation that a chipmunk never digs a den. He trusts nature for that, contenting himself with furnishing a suitable tunnel and doorway.

In some way (probably by tapping the earth, as a woodpecker sounds a limb to see if it be hollow) Chick’weesep learns that there is a den under a certain tree or rock, a natural hollow engineered by frost or rain or settling earth, which by a little alteration may be made to serve his double need of room and safety. At any rate, it will do no harm to go down and have a look at it; he can find another if he is not satisfied.

Starting at a distance, for a chipmunk wants no sign of occupation near his den, he runs a slanting shaft down to the concealed hollow, throwing the earth from his excavation in a loose heap about the spot where he began to dig. Later he may scatter that heap if it looks conspicuous; but since he does not intend to use this shaft as an entrance, the disturbed earth gives him little[285] concern. Next he modifies the natural hollow by a day’s or a week’s operations, making it over into a living room with two or three adjacent storerooms; and the final step is to run a tunnel from the finished den upward to the air. The first or exploration shaft is as straight as he can make it; but the new tunnel takes a devious course, following under roots where digging is very easy or where there is sometimes no digging at all. Also it heads well away from the den, so that when it reaches the surface the outlet is far from the scene of the first digging. A part of the earth from this tunnel is thrown back into the den, and from there is pushed into the working shaft, which is always filled solidly from end to end. The finished den has but one entrance, therefore; and there is no earth about the doorway for the simple reason that the whole tunnel was excavated from below.

Such is the process in our cleared lands, where Chick’weesep’s doorway may be in the middle of a lawn, while his storehouse is far away in a hidden drain or under a buried bowlder. On such lands, if you find the squirrel’s doorway and search the ground in all directions, you may discover at a considerable distance a flattened heap of earth, which will mean nothing unless you know the chipmunk’s secret. That heap speaks of the time[286] when he ran an exploration shaft down to his unseen den; it tells also, if you listen to it, of the sad way in which civilization has interfered with the perfection of the squirrel’s craft. He must leave that plain sign of his work and presence (unwillingly, I think) because so much clearing has been done without consulting his small needs that he can find no convenient place to hide a quantity of fresh earth.

In the deep woods, where Chick’weesep’s ancestors learned to construct winter quarters, such a telltale sign is never found. The forest floor offers him a thousand hiding places; before beginning to dig he slips under a root or rock or moldering log, and from there runs a shaft to his objective point. The earth from his digging is packed away under mossy logs, where no eyes but his ever see it; and when the den is ready the working shaft is filled by earth from a new tunnel, as Chick’weesep bores his way toward the point where he intends to have his doorway. Like the beaver, he seems to have a perfect sense of direction; engineering his tunnel under the earth, turning this way or that to follow a friendly root, he seems to know precisely where he is coming out. From watching him several times when he was busy about his den, I think that he selects a spot for his doorway before starting his tunnel;[287] but that is a doubtful matter of which no man has any assurance.

To fashion such a den and fill its storeroom to overflowing in the beautiful autumn days must be a joyous experience, I fancy, even to an unthinking squirrel. On a farm the happiest days of the year are not those of spring planting (for sowing of seeds is an artificial work, the result of our thought and calculation), but rather in the rewardful autumn, when man’s primitive instincts are stirred as he gathers the fruits of the earth into his winter storehouse. Likewise in the wilderness, the happiest days which ever come to a man are those in which he builds a shack by the labor of his hands, fashions a rude fireplace of rock or clay, lays in his provisions, and then, with eager anticipation of snappy days afield or stormy nights before the fire, looks upon his finished work and says in his heart, “Now welcome, winter!” If spoiled man can feel this instinctive joy of providing for creature comfort, why not an unspoiled squirrel also? In the woods all natural creatures, man included, seem to be made of the same happy, elemental stuff.

Once the den is ready, with living quarters, dry nest for sleeping, and a storeroom filled with the seeds he likes best, Chick’weesep faces the winter with a merry heart. He can commiserate the[288] deer or the moose birds, who must be abroad in all weather and ofttimes hungry; or can chuckle at the sleepyhead bears, who must spend all winter days in oblivion, having a den but no store of food, and who miss the enjoyment of eating and of roaming abroad when the weather is fine. From the secret entrance to his den a tunnel pushes outward under the snowdrifts, a cunning runway that hides beneath twisted roots before it ventures up to the surface. On every pleasant day Chick’weesep makes use of that outlet to enjoy the world from the sunny side of a ledge. There he can safely watch all that passes in the woods; while rock ferns that are always green serve to hide him or to rest his eyes from the blinding glare of sunlight on the snow. When storms are loosed and the great trees bend to the driving sleet, he bides snug in his den underground, and there eats till he grows sleepy or sleeps till he grows hungry, or until something calls him with information that the sun is shining and wood folk are passing in the upper world once more.

A chipmunk’s eating, therefore, however enjoyable it may be on stormy days, is not by any means his sole winter occupation. It is merely one element in a season that has many pleasures, and it brings out this curious habit: Chick’weesep eats the softest of his grains first, as a farmer begins[289] with the mellowest of his apples, reserving the hardest till the end. To judge from dens I have examined, his storehouse has two or more compartments, one near the frost line, another below; and in the colder room, chilled by glittering ice crystals, he seems to keep such of his foods as are most easily spoiled. Meanwhile his living quarters are beyond the line of frost, where, thanks to his dry nest and his fur jacket, he is always comfortably warm. Should worst come to worst, and his store prove too small for a long winter, even then he has this quieting assurance: like the gray squirrel, who has alternate periods of winter activity and retirement, he can curl up in his nest and sleep for a week or a month, if need be, until spring returns to melt the snows, and he can once more find a living in the awakening woods.

Altogether a happy kind of a life, one must think, and Chick’weesep gives the impression of making endless comedy of it. He is a most entertaining actor, especially when he shows his curiosity, which is so great that he will stop his work or rush out of his den to see any large animal or small bird that is making commotion in the quiet woods. Of all smaller animals and larger birds he is wary, since the one may turn out a weasel and the other an owl or a goshawk; and all such freebooters are dangerous to chipmunks. From a[290] distance, as you roam the solitude, your eye happens to catch him sitting motionless on his favorite stump, where his coat blends with the sunshine and the wonderful forest colors. Heading in his direction, you aim to pass close by, but not too close, as if seeking something far ahead.

Chick’weesep watches you keenly as you draw near, and he is so pleased or excited that he cannot keep still. You see his eye sparkle, his feet dance, his body quiver, as he wavers between the lifelong habit of concealment and his evident desire to be noticed by this bold passing animal, who is surely a stranger in the woods, since his foot is noisy. On you come steadily, paying no heed to the tiny atom of life that watches you expectantly, like a child at a window who hopes to be saluted; and Chick’weesep follows you with questioning eyes till you have passed him and are going away. Up to this moment he has been half afraid you might see him; now, fearful that you will not see, he blows a sharp whistle or cries his full Indian name, Chick-chick-koo-wee-sep! to tell you that you are in his woods, and that you have passed him without a sign of recognition.

A hundred times I have had a heart-warming over that little comedy, which always follows the same course. There is the first start of surprise when the little fellow sees you, the eager look, the[291] quivering feet, the timid expectancy; then the sharp cry as you pass with apparent indifference. And when you turn quickly, as if surprised, Chick’weesep dodges out of sight with a different cry, a cry with mingled pleasure and alarm in it; but the next moment he is peeking at you with dancing eyes from a crevice. Then, if you bide quietly where you are, he may come nearer, talking as he comes; and within the hour, should you have food that he likes, he will be sitting with entire confidence on your knee, stuffing all you offer him into his cheek pockets till they bulge as if he had the mumps, or pulling with all his might at a choice bit which you hold tightly to tease him.

A red squirrel would nip you if you teased him like that; but Chick’weesep braces himself with soft paws against the tips of your fingers, and tugs till he gets his morsel. This is the deep wilderness, where he has not been made to know the fear of man, and where he is the most lovable of all his merry tribe, excepting only Molepsis the flying squirrel.

As with the little, so also with the larger wood folk, even those whom we ignorantly call savage; when you meet without frightening them in their native woods, they all seem to be playing at comedy for the greater part of their days. I[292] suppose there are no animals that have given rise to more fearsome stories than the wolves and bears, one a symbol of ravin, the other of ferocity; but when you meet the real wolf he turns out to be a very shy beast, one that has a doglike interest in man, but is afraid to show it openly; and Mooween the bear, far from being the terrible creature of literary imagination, is in reality a harmless vagabond whose waking life is one long succession of whims and drolleries.

The trouble is, on first meeting a bear, that one is so frightened by the brute, or so eager to kill, that one never opens his eyes frankly to see what kind of fellow blunderer is before him. Several times, when I have had the luck to find bears among the blueberries of the burnt lands, I have crept near to watch them (it is quite safe so long as you do not blunder between an old she-bear and her cubs), and their droll attitudes, their greed, their lively interest in something to eat, their comical ways of stripping a berry bush or robbing an ant’s nest, their watchfulness lest one of their number discover something good and eat it all by himself, their surprises and alarms, their piglike fits of excitement, their whimsical and ever-changing expression,—all this is so unexpected, so entertaining, that a few minutes of it will change your whole opinion of the bear’s[293] character. You meet him as a dangerous beast; you leave him, or he leaves you, with the notion that he is the best of all natural comedians.

Here, for example, is an illuminating show of bear nature, one of a score which you uncover with surprise as you follow Mooween’s trail. When a cub finds a toothsome morsel he sweeps it instantly into his mouth, if it be small enough to swallow; but if it offers several mouthfuls, the first thing he does is to look alertly about to see where the other cubs are. If they are near or watching him, he sits on his morsel and pretends to be surveying the world, wagging his head from side to side; but if they are busy with their own affairs, he comes between them and his find, turning his back on them while he eats.

One might think this little deception a mere accident until it is repeated, or until this supplemental bit of bear psychology bubbles up to the surface. When a cub sees another cub with back turned, holding still in one place, he first stares hard, his face an exclamation point, as if he could not believe his eyes. Then he cries, ur-rump-umph! and comes on the jump to have a share of whatever the fortunate one has uncovered. Knowing what it means when he turns his own back, I suppose, he jumps to the conclusion that he is like all other greedy cubs, or that other cubs[294] are just like him. To a spectator the most amusing part of the comedy is that, when a cub is discovered in his greediness, he seems to treat it as a joke, gobbling as much as possible of his find, but showing no ill temper if another cub arrives in time to have a bite of it. “Get away with it if you can, but don’t squeal if you are caught” seems to be the sporting rule of a young bear family. As they grow older they become unsociable, even morose; and occasionally one meets a bear that seems to be a regular sorehead.

Once when I was near a family of black bears, my position on a high rock preventing them from getting my scent, I saw one of the cubs unearth a morsel and gobble it greedily. It was a bee’s nest, I think, and it was certainly delicious; the little fellow ate with gusto, making a smacking sound as he opened his mouth wide or licked his chops again and again, as if he could never have enough of the taste. Twenty yards away another cub suddenly threw up his head, smelling the sweets, undoubtedly, for they can wind a disturbed bee’s nest at an incredible distance. Rolling his fur in anticipation, he scampered up and nosed all over the spot, sniffing and whining. Finding nothing but a smell, he sat down, crossed both paws over the top of his head, and howled a falsetto oooo-wow-ow-ow-ow! twisting and shaking[295] his body like a petulant child. The other cub looked cunningly at the howling one; now and then he would run out a slender red tongue and lap it around his lips, as if to say, “Yum-yum, it was good!”

When their stomachs are filled the cubs take to playing; and one who watches them at their play has no more heart to kill them. They are too droll, and the big woods seem to need them. They hide, and the mother, after vain calling, must go smell them out; but as the end of that game is commonly a cuffing, it is not repeated. Then, mindful of their ears, the cubs begin to wrestle; or they face each other and box, striking and fending till one gets more than he wants, when they clinch and go rolling about in a rough-and-tumble. The most fascinating play is when two cubs climb a tree on opposite sides, a tree so big that they are hidden one from the other. The one in your sight goes humping aloft, clasping the tree with his paws and hurling himself upward by digs of his hind claws, till he thinks he is well above his rival. In the excitement, what with flying chips and the loud scratching of bark, he hears nothing but the sound of his own going. Then he peeks cautiously around the tree, and very likely finds a black nose coming to meet him. He hits it quickly, and dodges away to the other[296] side, only to get his own nose rapped. So they play hide and peek, and hit and dodge and peek again, till they scramble into the high branches. And there they whimper awhile, afraid to come down. Not till they are sharply called will they try the descent, sagging down backward, looking first over one shoulder, then over the other. But if they are in a hurry and the branches are not too high, they turn all loose, like a coon; they tumble down in a heap, hit the ground, and bound away like rubber balls.

Meanwhile the old she-bear is watching over the family in an odd mixture of fondness and discipline, with temper enough to give variety to both. Sometimes she mothers the cubs with a gruff, bearish kind of tenderness. When they bother her, or when they are heedless of some warning or message, she cuffs them impatiently; and a bear’s cuff is no love pat, but a thud from a heavy paw which sends a cub spinning end over end. If you are near enough to read her expression, you will hear her at one moment saying, “That’s my little cubs! Oh, that’s my little cubs!” A few minutes later she may be sitting with humped back, her paws between her outstretched hind legs, and in her piggy, disapproving eye the question, “Can these greedy little unfillable things be my offspring?” So they move across the berry field, a day-long comedy. What they do at night nobody has ever seen.

[297]The fox is another comedian whose cunning has been overemphasized ever since Æsop invented certain animal fables, but whose amusing side had not yet found a worthy chronicler. Young foxes play by the hour outside their den with a variety of games, mock fights and rough-and-tumble capers, which make the antics of a kitten almost dull by comparison. That they are glad little beasts, without fear and with only a saving measure of caution, is plain to anyone who has ever watched them with the understanding of sympathy. Unlike the bears, they keep the spirit of play to the end. A grown fox will chase his tail in sheer exuberance of animal spirits; or he will forget his mousing, even his hunger, in the pleasure of pestering a tortoise when he finds one of the awkward creatures loafing about the woods.

One summer day I watched a fox-and-woodchuck drama in which keen wits were pitted against dull wits, a drama to which only the genius of Uncle Remus could do justice. The time was late afternoon, the place a cleared hillside, the first actor an old woodchuck that ventured from[298] his den to a clover field for a last sweet mouthful before he slept. On the hill above, a fox came out of the woods, leaped to the top of a stone wall, and stood looking keenly over the clover. Such was the pretty scene; from some filbert bushes behind a lower wall a solitary spectator watched it expectantly.

Eleemos the sly one, as Simmo calls the fox, does not lightly enter a cleared field by daylight, though he is often mousing along the edge of it just before dawn. I think he knew that this particular field had a den, and that he was planning to catch one of the young woodchucks. Hence his elevated station on the wall, with bushes bending over to shadow him, and the expectant look in his bright eyes. He gave a quick start as he caught a waving of grass, the motion of a grizzled head; then, having located his prize, he dropped back into the woods, ran down behind the wall, slipped over it under cover of a bush, crept flat on his belly to a rock, and peeked around it to measure his chance. Oh yes, he could catch that slow fellow yonder; surely, without half trying! Inch by inch he pushed clear of the rock, waited with feet under him till the chuck dropped out of sight to feed, then launched himself like a bolt.

Now a woodchuck is also cunning in his own way, far too cunning to be caught napping in the open.[299] Like the beaver, he often sits up for a wary look all around; after which he drops as if to feed, but immediately bobs up a second time. A young chuck may be foolishly content with a single survey; but a veteran is apt to make at least two false starts at feeding, with the evident purpose of fooling any enemy that may be watching him.

So it befell that, just as the fox leaped from cover, the woodchuck’s head bobbed up over the clover. He saw the enemy instantly, and scuttled away for his burrow, his fat body shaking like a jelly bag as he ran. After him came the fox with swift jumps; into the hole dived the woodchuck, sending back a whistle of defiance; and the fox, grabbing at the vanishing tail, fetched up bump! against the earth with a shock that might have dislocated a less limber neck. He had the tail, firmly gripped between his teeth; and with a do-or-die expression he proceeded to drag his game out bodily,—a hard job, as anyone knows who has ever tested a woodchuck’s holding power.

Eleemos pulled steadily at first, turning his head first one side, then the other; but he might as well have tried to pull up a young hickory as to move that anchored creature with hind feet braced against opposite sides of the hole, and forepaws gripped about a rock or root. Then the fox[300] began to tug, bracing his forefeet, jerking his body to the rear, like a terrier on a rope. In the midst of a mighty effort something gave way; the fox went over backward, turning end over end down the pitch of the hill. He picked himself up in a shamefaced way, sniffed a moment at the hole, and trotted off to the woods with a small piece of scrubby tail in his mouth.

Another time I was in an opening of the big woods at dusk of a winter day when a red fox appeared, carrying a rabbit. Evidently he had eaten as much as he wanted of the sweet meat, and was seeking a place to bury the remainder against a time of need. How cautious he was! How mindful of hungry noses that would be questing the woods before daybreak! He went hither and yon in a most aimless way, apparently; but one who watched him might know that he was leaving a merry tangle of tracks for any nose that should attempt to follow them. After hesitating over many spots he dropped the rabbit beside a rock, threw some snow over it, and went away with such confidence that he never once turned round. As he disappeared in the dusky woods the top of a stub under which he passed seemed to move, to bend forward as if alive. And it was alive; for a horned owl was sitting up there on his watchtower, making himself so inconspicuous[301] that no one noticed him. No sooner was the fox gone than the owl swooped to the cache, drove his claws into it, and glided away like a shadow, taking the rabbit with him.

Such little comedies are not uncommon; they go on at all hours, in all unspoiled places, the only uncommon thing being that now and then some man is quiet or lucky enough to see them. The few squirrels, bears, foxes and other creatures which I have pictured are typical of all natural birds and beasts; gladness and comedy prevail among them until some sportsman appears with his needless killing, or a scientist invents an absurd theory of natural struggle to account for unnatural human depravity, or a literary artist with imaginative eye creates a world-embracing tragedy out of a passing incident, like this, for example:

While trout fishing one day I climbed the bank to a beautiful spot in the budding woods, which invited me to linger and fill my heart instead of my creel. The spring sun shone warmly; birds sang welcome to their arriving mates; violets and marigolds were distilling sunshine into bright color, and leaf mold into sweet fragrance. Meanwhile the brook prattled of the mountains whence it came, or murmured of the sea to which[302] it hastened, or lisped and tinkled of other matters which one has tried in vain since childhood to interpret. Truly a lovely place, a perfect hour; but even as I picked the cushion of dry leaves on which to rest and attune my soul to a harmonious universe, there came a heart-stopping whir, a writhing of horrible coils, and a rattlesnake lifted its ugly head, fangs bared, tail buzzing forth a deadly warning.

It was a shock, I confess. The instant backward leap was slow beside the chills that ran like flood over me; but as I think of it now, impersonally, the element of comedy is still uppermost. For the snake, too, had answered the call of the sun, perhaps thinking in his unemotional way that a frog would come out of the brook to enjoy such weather, a frog of which he had greater need than I of the trout I had been catching. Instead of a frog, the brook produced an unexpected biped, and the snake acted pretty decently in sounding a warning rattle before he struck—on the whole, more decently than I acted when I grabbed a stick and, without warning, proceeded to break his neck. But even had he struck home, to defend himself as he thought, the result would have been a mere incident and no tragedy from Nature’s viewpoint. Had she not bred in me, as a son of Adam, an instinct against all creeping serpents?[303] Had she not, as if to supplement that instinct, furnished me with nimble legs, quick eyes and plentiful timidity wherewith to take care of myself? Had she not even added the supererogatory gift of medicinal plants and minerals, in order that I might heal me of the painful result of my own carelessness?

Surely, then, it were most illogical as well as ungrateful on my part, a truly lunatic conclusion, to misjudge Nature’s motives, to forget my mercies, to overlook the beauty of the world and the evident gladness of ten-thousand other creatures, all because of one reptile that had come forth with no other purpose than to enjoy the sunshine, the frogs and the general comedy of life in his own way.

Yes, to be sure I killed the snake, which would have killed the frog, which would have killed the fly; and so in a house-that-Jack-built descension to the microbes, which kill smaller creatures to us invisible. Life feeds upon life, and can be nourished from no other source; that is the first rule of the game, a rule which governs the lowly grass as well as the lordly lion. But forgetting our serpent, a questionable character since Eve first met him, the natural man has no sense of struggle or tragedy when he eats eggs for breakfast, since most eggs were laid for just that purpose; neither does a fox dream of tragedy when luckily he finds[304] a partridge’s nest, nor a partridge when she uncovers a swarm of fat young grubs. If you could get the instinctive attitude of such wild creatures toward their world, it would be precisely that of Dante, who called his great work Divina Commedia with the thought that the cosmos is a mighty comedy because all things are divinely ordered, balanced, harmonized, turning out well and fair for all in the end.

That is no new or romantic notion; on the contrary, it is the oldest and most persistent notion of Nature in the thinking world. Because it comes straight from Nature herself, all poets have it, all prophets, all simple out-door men. It is your own notion, harsh and artificial, which you get not from Nature but from modern books, that is without warrant of reason or observation. The accepted fashion now is to put yourself in the skin of a fox running before the dogs, or of a buck that springs up alert at the hunting howl of a wolf, and from your own fears, your vivid imagination, your weak legs or weak heart, and your ignorance of animal psychology, to fill the quiet woods with advancing terror and tragedy.

Now I have followed many fox hunts in the New England woods, and have yet to meet the first fox that does not appear to be getting more fun out of the chase than comes to the heavy-footed[305] hounds as their portion. Except in damp weather or soft snow, which weights his brush and makes him take to earth, a fox runs lightly, almost leisurely, stopping often to listen, and even snatching a nap when his speed or his criss-crossed trail has put a safe distance between him and danger. He has a dozen fastnesses among the ledges, where he can find safety at any time; but the simple fact is that a red fox prefers to keep his feet in the open, knowing that he can outrun or outwit any dog if he be given a fair field.

Also I have witnessed the death of a buck at the fangs of a wolf, and it was utterly different from what I had imagined. The buck ran down a ridge through deep snow, and out on a frozen lake, where he might easily have escaped had he put his mind into the running, since his sharp hoofs clung to the ice where the wolf’s paws slithered wildly, losing grip and balance at every jump. Instead of running for his life, the buck kept stopping to look, as if dazed or curious to know what the chase was all about. The wolf held easily close at heel, stopping when the buck stopped, until he saw his chance, when he flashed in, threw his game, and paralyzed it by a single powerful snap. Before that buck found out what was up, he was dead or beyond all feeling. The wolf raised his head in a tingling cry that rang[306] over the frozen waste like an invitation; and out of the woods beyond the lake raced a wolf pack to share in the feast.

That might appear a tragic or terrible ending, I suppose, if you viewed it imaginatively from the side of Hetokh the buck; but how would it appear if you looked at it imaginatively from the viewpoint of Malsun the wolf, a hungry wolf, who must take whatever good thing his Mother Nature offers to satisfy his hunger? If you elect to stand by the buck, as the better animal, it is still unreasonable to form a judgment from the last event of his life, ignoring all the happy days that went before. He had lived five or six years, as I judged from his development, and he died in a minute. This also is to be remembered, that the idea of death and the fear of death are wholly the result of imagination. And of imagination—that marvelous creative faculty which enables us to picture the unseen or to follow the unknown, and which is the highest attribute of the human mind—the buck had probably very little; certainly not enough either to inspire or to trouble him. Life was all that he knew when the end came quickly. He had absolutely no conception of death, and therefore no fear of it. Any such thing as tragedy was to him unthinkable.

The point is, you see, that in our modern view[307] of nature, which we imagine to be scientific when it is merely bookish and thoughtless, we are prone to let the moment or the passing incident of death obscure the entire vista of life,—life with its leisure hours, its changing seasons, its work and play and rest. To go out-of-doors and look upon nature with unprejudiced eyes is to learn that death is but a curtain let down on a play. Of the stage to which the play is removed, as of that other stage whence it came here, we have as yet no knowledge; but this much we see plainly, that for its completion every life, however small or great, must have its exit as well as its entrance. The quality of that life is to be judged not by either of its momentary and mysterious extremes, but by the long, pleasure-seeking, pleasure-finding days which lie between its end and its beginning.

THE END