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+Project Gutenberg's The Watchers of the Trails, by Charles G. D. Roberts
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Watchers of the Trails
+       A Book of Animal Life
+
+Author: Charles G. D. Roberts
+
+Release Date: June 7, 2008 [EBook #25718]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WATCHERS OF THE TRAILS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roberta Staehlin and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+  The Watchers of the Trails
+
+  A Book of Animal Life
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration: "A HUGE BLACK BEAR STANDING IN THE TRAIL."
+(_See page 177_)]
+
+
+
+
+  THE WATCHERS
+  OF THE TRAIL
+  A BOOK OF ANIMAL LIFE _by_
+
+  CHARLES G D ROBERTS
+
+  _Author of_
+
+  "_The Kindred of the Wild_," "_The Heart of the
+  Ancient Wood_," "_Barbara Ladd_," "_The Forge in
+  the Forest_," "_Poems_," _etc._
+
+[Illustration]
+
+  _With many Illustrations by_
+
+  _CHARLES LIVINGSTON BULL_
+
+  A. WESSELS COMPANY
+  MDCCCCVI NEW YORK
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+  _Copyright, 1904, by_
+  The S. S. McClure Co.
+
+  _Copyright, 1904, by_
+  Perry Mason Company
+
+  _Copyright, 1903, 1904, by_
+  Robert Howard Russell
+
+  _Copyright, 1903, by_
+ The Metropolitan Magazine Company
+
+  _Copyright, 1903, by_
+  The Success Company
+
+  _Copyright, 1902, 1903, by_
+  The Outing Publishing Company
+
+  _Copyright, 1902, by_
+  Frank Leslie Publishing House
+
+  _Copyright, 1904, by_
+  L. C. Page & Company
+  (INCORPORATED)
+  _All rights reserved_
+
+
+  Published, June, 1904
+
+
+  _Colonial Press_
+  Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
+  Boston, Mass., U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+  To
+  My Fellow of the Wild
+  Ernest Thompson Seton
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Prefatory Note
+
+
+In the preface to a former volume[1] I have endeavoured to trace the
+development of the modern animal story and have indicated what
+appeared to me to be its tendency and scope. It seems unnecessary to
+add anything here but a few words of more personal application.
+
+[Footnote 1: "The Kindred of the Wild."]
+
+The stories of which this volume is made up are avowedly fiction. They
+are, at the same time, true, in that the material of which they are
+moulded consists of facts,--facts as precise as painstaking
+observation and anxious regard for truth can make them. Certain of the
+stories, of course, are true literally. Literal truth may be attained
+by stories which treat of a single incident, or of action so
+restricted as to lie within the scope of a single observation. When,
+on the other hand, a story follows the career of a wild creature of
+the wood or air or water through wide intervals of time and space, it
+is obvious that the truth of that story must be of a different kind.
+The complete picture which such a story presents is built up from
+observation necessarily detached and scattered; so that the utmost it
+can achieve as a whole is consistency with truth. If a writer has, by
+temperament, any sympathetic understanding of the wild kindreds; if
+he has any intimate knowledge of their habits, with any sensitiveness
+to the infinite variation of their personalities; and if he has
+chanced to live much among them during the impressionable periods
+of his life, and so become saturated in their atmosphere and their
+environment;--then he may hope to make his most elaborate piece of
+animal biography not less true to nature than his transcript of an
+isolated fact. The present writer, having spent most of his boyhood on
+the fringes of the forest, with few interests save those which the
+forest afforded, may claim to have had the intimacies of the
+wilderness as it were thrust upon him. The earliest enthusiasms which
+he can recollect are connected with some of the furred or feathered
+kindred; and the first thrills strong enough to leave a lasting mark
+on his memory are those with which he used to follow--furtive,
+apprehensive, expectant, breathlessly watchful--the lure of an unknown
+trail.
+
+There is one more point which may seem to claim a word. A very
+distinguished author--to whom all contemporary writers on nature are
+indebted, and from whom it is only with the utmost diffidence that I
+venture to dissent at all--has gently called me to account on the
+charge of ascribing to my animals human motives and the mental
+processes of man. The fact is, however, that this fault is one which I
+have been at particular pains to guard against. The psychological
+processes of the animals are so simple, so obvious, in comparison with
+those of man, their actions flow so directly from their springs of
+impulse, that it is, as a rule, an easy matter to infer the motives
+which are at any one moment impelling them. In my desire to avoid
+alike the melodramatic, the visionary, and the sentimental, I have
+studied to keep well within the limits of safe inference. Where I may
+have seemed to state too confidently the motives underlying the
+special action of this or that animal, it will usually be found that
+the action itself is very fully presented; and it will, I think, be
+further found that the motive which I have here assumed affords the
+most reasonable, if not the only reasonable, explanation of that
+action.
+
+C. G. D. R.
+
+New York, _April, 1904_.
+
+
+
+
+Contents of the Book
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+                                          PAGE
+
+  Prefatory Note                          vii
+
+  The Freedom of the Black-faced Ram        3
+
+  The Master of Golden Pool                25
+
+  The Return to the Trails                 45
+
+  The Little Wolf of the Pool              65
+
+  The Little Wolf of the Air               73
+
+  The Alien of the Wild                    83
+
+  The Silver Frost                        111
+
+  By the Winter Tide                      121
+
+  The Rivals of Ringwaak                  131
+
+  The Decoy                               155
+
+  The Laugh in the Dark                   173
+
+  The Kings of the Intervale              185
+
+  The Kill                                197
+
+  The Little People of the Sycamore       211
+
+  Horns and Antlers                       237
+
+  In the Deep of the Grass                247
+
+  When the Moon Is over the Corn          257
+
+  The Truce                               267
+
+  The Keeper of the Water-Gate            291
+
+  When the Moose Cow Calls                311
+
+  The Passing of the Black Whelps         323
+
+  The Homeward Trail                      351
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+The Watchers of the Trails
+
+The Freedom of the Black-faced Ram
+
+
+On the top of Ringwaak Hill the black-faced ram stood motionless,
+looking off with mild, yellow eyes across the wooded level, across the
+scattered farmsteads of the settlement, and across the bright,
+retreating spirals of the distant river, to that streak of scarlet
+light on the horizon which indicated the beginning of sunrise. A few
+paces below him, half-hidden by a gray stump, a green juniper bush,
+and a mossy brown hillock, lay a white ewe with a lamb at her side.
+The ewe's jaws moved leisurely, as she chewed her cud and gazed up
+with comfortable confidence at the sturdy figure of the ram
+silhouetted against the brightening sky.
+
+This sunrise was the breaking of the black-faced ram's first day in
+the wilderness. Never before had he stood on an open hilltop and
+watched the light spread magically over a wide, wild landscape. Up to
+the morning of the previous day, his three years of life had been
+passed in protected, green-hedged valley pastures, amid tilled fields
+and well-stocked barns, beside a lilied water. This rugged, lonely,
+wide-visioned world into which fortune had so unexpectedly projected
+him filled him with wonder. Yet he felt strangely at ease therein. The
+hedged pastures had never quite suited him; but here, at length, in
+the great spaces, he felt at home. The fact was that, alike in
+character and in outward appearance, he was a reversion to far-off
+ancestors. He was the product of a freak of heredity.
+
+In the fat-soiled valley-lands, some fifteen miles back of Ringwaak
+Hill, the farmers had a heavy, long-wooled, hornless strain of sheep,
+mainly of the Leicester breed, which had been crossed, years back, by
+an imported Scotch ram of one of the horned, courageous, upland,
+black-faced varieties. The effect of this hardy cross had apparently
+all been bred out, save for an added stamina in the resulting stock,
+which was uniformly white and hornless. When, therefore, a lamb was
+born with a black face and blackish-gray legs, it was cherished as a
+curiosity; and when, in time, it developed a splendid pair of horns,
+it became the handsomest ram in all the valley, and a source of great
+pride to its owner. But when black-faced lambs began to grow common in
+the hornless and immaculate flocks, the feelings of the valley folks
+changed, and word went around that the strain of the white-faced must
+be kept pure. Then it was decreed that the great horned ram should no
+longer sire the flocks, but be hurried to the doom of his kind and go
+to the shambles.
+
+Just at this time, however, a young farmer from the backwoods
+settlement over behind Ringwaak chanced to visit the valley. The sheep
+of his settlement were not only hornless, but small and light-wooled
+as well, and the splendid, horned ram took his fancy. Here was a
+chance to improve his breed. He bought the ram for what he was worth
+to the butcher, and proudly led him away, over the hills and through
+the great woods, toward the settlement on the other side of Ringwaak.
+
+The backwoodsman knew right well that a flock of sheep may be driven,
+but that a single sheep must be led; so he held his new possession
+securely by a piece of stout rope about ten feet long. For an hour or
+two the ram followed with an exemplary docility quite foreign to his
+independent spirit. He was subdued by the novelty of his
+surroundings,--the hillocky, sloping pastures, and the shadowy
+solemnity of the forest. Moreover, he perceived, in his dim way, a
+kind of mastery in this heavy-booted, homespun-clad, tobacco-chewing,
+grave-eyed man from the backwoods, and for a long time he felt none of
+his usual pugnacity. But by and by the craving for freedom began to
+stir in his breast, and the blood of his hill-roving ancestors
+thrilled toward the wild pastures. The glances which, from time to
+time, he cast upon the backwoodsman at the other end of the rope
+became wary, calculating, and hostile. This stalwart form, striding
+before him, was the one barrier between himself and freedom. Freedom
+was a thing of which he knew, indeed, nothing,--a thing which, to most
+of his kind, would have seemed terrifying rather than alluring. But to
+him, with that inherited wildness stirring in his blood, it seemed the
+thing to be craved before all else.
+
+Presently they came to a little cold spring, bubbling up beside the
+road and tinkling over the steep bank. The road at this point ran
+along a hillside, and the slope below the road was clothed with
+blueberry and other dense shrubs. The backwoodsman was hot and
+thirsty. Flinging aside his battered hat, he dropped down on his hands
+and knees beside the spring and touched his lips to the water.
+
+In this position, still holding the rope in a firm grasp, he had his
+back to the ram. Moreover, he no longer looked either formidable or
+commanding. The ram saw his chance. A curious change came over his
+mild, yellow eyes. They remained yellow, indeed, but became cold,
+sinister, and almost cruel in their expression.
+
+The backwoodsman, as he drank, held a tight grip on the rope. The ram
+settled back slightly, till the rope was almost taut. Then he launched
+himself forward. His movement was straight and swift, as if he had
+been propelled by a gigantic spring. His massive, broad-horned
+forehead struck the stooping man with terrific force.
+
+With a grunt of pain and amazement, the man shot sprawling over the
+bank, and landed, half-stunned, in a clump of blueberry bushes. Dazed
+and furious, he picked himself up, passed a heavy hand across his
+scratched, smarting face, and turned to see the ram disappearing among
+the thickets above the road. His disappointment so overcame his wrath
+that he forgot to exercise his vigorous backwoods vocabulary, and
+resumed his homeward way with his head full of plans for the
+recapture of his prize.
+
+The ram, meanwhile, trailing the length of rope behind him, was
+galloping madly through the woods. He was intoxicated with his
+freedom. These rough, wild, lonely places seemed to him his home. With
+all his love for the wilderness, the instinct which had led him to it
+was altogether faulty and incomplete. It supplied him with none of the
+needful forest lore. He had no idea of caution. He had no inkling of
+fear. He had no conception of the enemies that might lurk in thicket
+or hollow. He went crashing ahead as if the green world belonged to
+him, and cared not who might hear the brave sound of his going. Now
+and then he stepped on the rope, and stumbled; but that was a small
+matter.
+
+Through dark strips of forest, over rocky, tangled spaces, across
+slopes of burnt barren, his progress was always upward, until, having
+traversed several swampy vales and shadowy ravines, toward evening he
+came out upon the empty summit of Ringwaak. On the topmost hillock he
+took his stand proudly, his massive head and broad, curled horns in
+splendid relief against the amber sky.
+
+As he stood, surveying his new realm, a low bleat came to him from a
+sheltered hollow close by, and, looking down, he saw a small white ewe
+with a new-born lamb nursing under her flank. Here was his new realm
+peopled at once. Here were followers of his own kind. He stepped
+briskly down from his hillock and graciously accepted the homage of
+the ewe, who snuggled up against him as if afraid at the loneliness
+and the coming on of night. All night he slept beside the mother and
+her young, in the sheltered hollow, and kept no watch because he
+feared no foe. But the ewe kept watch, knowing well what perils might
+steal upon them in the dark.
+
+As it chanced, however, no midnight prowler visited the summit of
+Ringwaak Hill, and the first of dawn found the great ram again at his
+post of observation. It is possible that he had another motive besides
+his interest in his new, wonderful world. He may have expected the
+woodsman to follow and attempt his recapture, and resolved not to be
+taken unawares. Whatever his motive, he kept his post till the sun was
+high above the horizon, and the dew-wet woods gleamed as if sown with
+jewels. Then he came down and began to feed with the ewe, cropping the
+short, thin grass with quick bites and finding it far more sweet than
+the heavy growths of his old pasture.
+
+Late in the morning, when pasturing was over for the time, the ram and
+the little ewe lay down in the shade of a steep rock, comfortably
+chewing their cud, while the lamb slept at its mother's side. The ram,
+deeply contented, did not observe two gray-brown, stealthy forms
+creeping along the slope, from bush to rock, and from stump to
+hillock. But the ewe, ever on the watch, presently caught sight of
+them, and sprang to her feet with a snort of terror. She knew well
+enough what a lynx was. Yet for all her terror she had no thought of
+flight. Her lamb was too young to flee, and she would stay by it in
+face of any fate.
+
+The ram got up more slowly, turned his head, and eyed the stealthy
+strangers with grave curiosity. Curiosity, however, changed into
+hostility as he saw by the ewe's perturbation that the strangers were
+foes; and a sinister glitter came into the great gold eyes which shone
+so brilliantly from his black face.
+
+[Illustration: "THROUGH DARK STRIPS OF FOREST."]
+
+Seeing themselves discovered, the two lynxes threw aside their cunning
+and rushed ravenously upon what they counted easy prey. They knew
+something of the timorous hearts of sheep, and had little
+expectation of resistance. But being, first of all, hungry rather than
+angry, they preferred what seemed easiest to get. It was upon the lamb
+and the ewe that they sprang, ignoring the ram contemptuously.
+
+One thing which they had not reckoned with, however, was the temper of
+the ewe. Before one fierce claw could reach her lamb, she had butted
+the assailant so fiercely in the flank that he forgot his purpose and
+turned with a snarl of rage to rend her. Meanwhile the other lynx,
+springing for her neck, had experienced the unexpected. He had been
+met by the lightning charge of the ram, fair in the ribs, and hurled
+sprawling into a brittle, pointed tangle of dead limbs sticking up
+from the trunk of a fallen tree.
+
+Having delivered this most effective blow, the ram stepped back a pace
+or two, mincing on his slender feet, and prepared to repeat it. The
+lynx was struggling frantically among the branches, which stuck into
+him and tore his fine fur. Just in time to escape the second assault
+he got free,--but free not for fight but for flight. One tremendous,
+wildly contorted leap landed him on the other side of the dead tree;
+and, thoroughly cowed, he scurried away down the hillside.
+
+The ram at once turned his attention to the ewe and her antagonist.
+But the second lynx, who had not found his task so simple as he had
+expected it to be, had no stomach left for one more difficult. The ewe
+was bleeding about the head, and would, of course, if she had been
+left to fight it out, have been worsted in a very short time. But the
+enemy had felt the weight of her blows upon his ribs, and had learned
+his lesson. For just a fraction of a second he turned, and defied the
+ram with a screeching snarl. But when that horned, black, battering
+head pitched forward at him he bounded aside like a furry gray ball
+and clambered to the top of the rock. Here he crouched for some
+moments, snarling viciously, his tufted ears set back against his
+neck, and his stump of a tail twitching with rage, while the ram
+minced to and fro beneath him, stamping defiance with his dainty
+hoofs. All at once the big cat doubled upon itself, slipped down the
+other side of the rock, and went gliding away through the stumps and
+hillocks like a gray shadow; and the ram, perhaps to conceal his
+elation, fell to grazing as if nothing out of the ordinary had
+happened. The ewe, on the other hand, seeing the danger so well past,
+took no thought of her torn face, but set herself to comfort and
+reassure the trembling lamb.
+
+After this, through the slow, bright hours while the sun swung hotly
+over Ringwaak, the ram and his little family were undisturbed. An
+eagle, wheeling, wheeling, wheeling in the depths of the blue, looked
+down and noted the lamb. But he had no thought of attacking so well
+guarded a prey. The eagle had a wider outlook than others of the wild
+kindred, and he knew from of old many matters which the lynxes of
+Ringwaak had never learned till that day.
+
+There were other visitors that came and glanced at the little family
+during the quiet content of their cud-chewing. A weasel ran restlessly
+over a hillock and peered down upon them with hard, bright eyes. The
+big ram, with his black face and huge, curling horns, was a novel
+phenomenon, and the weasel disappeared behind the hillock, only to
+appear again much nearer, around a clump of weeds. His curiosity was
+mingled with malicious contempt, till the ram chanced to rise and
+shake his head. Then the weasel saw the rope that wriggled from the
+ram's neck. Was it some new and terrible kind of snake? The weasel
+respected snakes when they were large and active; so he forgot his
+curiosity and slipped away from the dangerous neighbourhood.
+
+The alarm of the weasel, however, was nothing to that of the
+wood-mice. While the ram was lying down they came out of their secret
+holes and played about securely, seeming to realize that the big
+animal's presence was a safeguard to them. But when he moved, and they
+saw the rope trail sinuously behind him through the scanty grass, they
+were almost paralyzed with panic. Such a snake as that would require
+all the wood-mice on Ringwaak to assuage his appetite. They fairly
+fell backward into their burrows, where they crouched quivering in the
+darkest recesses, not daring to show their noses again for hours.
+
+Neither weasel nor wood-mice, nor the chickadees which came to eye him
+saucily, seemed to the big ram worth a moment's attention. But when a
+porcupine, his quills rattling and bristling till he looked as big
+around as a half-bushel basket, strolled aimlessly by, the ram was
+interested and rose to his feet. The little, deep-set eyes of the
+porcupine passed over him with supremest indifference, and their owner
+began to gnaw at the bark of a hemlock sapling which grew at one side
+of the rock. To this gnawing he devoted his whole attention, with an
+eagerness that would have led one to think he was hungry,--as, indeed,
+he was, not having had a full meal for nearly half an hour. The
+porcupine, of all nature's children, is the best provided for, having
+the food he loves lying about him at all seasons. Yet he is for ever
+eating, as if famine were in ambush for him just over the next
+hillock.
+
+Seeing the high indifference of this small, bristling stranger, the
+ram stepped up and was just about to sniff at him inquiringly. Had he
+done so, the result would have been disastrous. He would have got a
+slap in the face from the porcupine's active and armed tail; and his
+face would have straightway been transformed into a sort of anguished
+pincushion, stuck full of piercing, finely barbed quills. He would
+have paid dear for his ignorance of woodcraft,--perhaps with the loss
+of an eye, or even with starvation from a quill working through into
+his gullet. But fortunately for him the ewe understood the
+peculiarities of porcupines. Just in time she noted his danger, and
+rudely butted him aside. He turned upon her in a fume of amazed
+indignation; but in some way she made him understand that the
+porcupine was above all law, and not to be trifled with even by the
+lords of the wilderness. Very sulkily he lay down again, and the
+porcupine went on chiselling hemlock bark, serenely unconscious of the
+anger in the inscrutable yellow eyes that watched him from the ram's
+black face.
+
+When the shadows grew long and luminous, toward evening, the ram,
+following some unexplained instinct, again mounted the topmost point
+of Ringwaak, and stood like a statue gazing over the vast,
+warm-coloured solitude of his new domain. His yellow eyes were placid
+with a great content. A little below him, the white lamb wobbling on
+weak legs at her side, the ewe pastured confidently, secure in the
+proved prowess of her protector. As the sun dropped below the far-off
+western rim of the forest, it seemed as if one wide wave of lucent
+rose-violet on a sudden flooded the world. Everything on Ringwaak--the
+ram's white fleece, the gray, bleached stumps, the brown hillocks, the
+green hollows and juniper clumps and poplar saplings--took on a
+palpitating aerial stain. Here and there in the distance the coils of
+the river gleamed clear gold; and overhead, in the hollow
+amber-and-lilac arch of sky, the high-wandering night-hawks swooped
+with the sweet twang of smitten strings.
+
+Down at the foot of the northern slope of Ringwaak lay a dense cedar
+swamp. Presently, out from the green fringe of the cedars, a bear
+thrust his head and cast a crafty glance about the open. Seeing the
+ram on the hilltop and the ewe with her lamb feeding near by, he sank
+back noiselessly into the cover of the cedars, and stole around toward
+the darkening eastern slope, where a succession of shrubby copses ran
+nearly to the top of the hill.
+
+The bear was rank, rusty-coated, old, and hungry; and he loved sheep.
+He was an adept in stalking this sweet-fleshed, timorous quarry, and
+breaking its neck with a well-directed blow as it dashed past him in a
+panic. Emerging from the swamp, he crept up the hill, taking cunning
+advantage of every bush, stump, and boulder. For all his awkward
+looking bulk, he moved as lightly as a cat, making himself small, and
+twisting and flattening and effacing himself; and never a twig was
+allowed to snap, or a stone to clatter, under his broad, unerring
+feet.
+
+About this time it chanced that the backwoodsman, who had been out
+nearly all day hunting for his lost prize, approached the edge of the
+forest at the other side of Ringwaak,--and saw the figure of the ram
+against the sky. Then, seeing also the ewe with the lamb beside her,
+he knew that the game was his.
+
+Below the top of the hill there was not a scrap of cover for a
+distance of perhaps twenty paces. The bear crept to the very last
+bush, the ram being occupied with the world at a distance, and the ewe
+busy at her pasturing. Behind the bush--a thick, spreading
+juniper--the bear crouched motionless for some seconds, his little red
+eyes aglow, and his jaws beginning to slaver with eagerness. Then
+selecting the unconscious ewe, because he knew she was not likely to
+desert the lamb, he rushed upon his intended victim.
+
+The ewe, as it chanced, was about thirty-five or forty feet distant
+from the enemy, as he lunged out, black and appalling, from behind the
+juniper. At the same time the ram was not more than twenty or
+twenty-five feet distant, straight above the lamb, in a direction at
+right angles to the path of the bear. The ewe looked up with a
+startled bleat, wheeled, sprang nimbly before the lamb, and faced her
+doom dauntlessly, with lowered head.
+
+[Illustration: "HE CREPT UP THE HILL."]
+
+The ram's mild gaze changed in a flash to one of cold, yellow savagery
+at the sight of the great black beast invading his kingdom. Down went
+his conquering head. For just a fraction of a second his sturdy body
+sagged back, as if he were about to sit down. This, so to speak, was
+the bending of the bow. Then he launched himself straight down the
+slope, all his strength, his weight, and the force of gravity
+combining to drive home that mighty stroke.
+
+The bear had never, in all his experience with sheep, encountered one
+whose resistance was worth taking into account. The defiance of the
+ewe was less than nothing to him. But as he saw, from the corner of
+his eye, the huge bulk plunging down upon him, he hesitated, and half
+turned, with great paw upraised for a finishing blow.
+
+He turned not quite in time, however, and his defence was not quite
+strenuous enough for the emergency. He struck like lightning, as a
+bear always can, but just before the stroke could find its mark the
+ram's armed forehead crashed into his ribs. The blow, catching him as
+it did, was irresistible. His claws tore off a patch of wool and skin,
+and ploughed red furrows across the ram's shoulder,--but the next
+instant he was sprawling, his breath jarred from his lungs, against a
+stump some ten feet down the slope.
+
+As the bear struggled to his feet, furious but half-daunted with
+amazement, the ram danced backward a pace or two on his nimble feet,
+as if showing off, and then delivered his second charge. The
+bewildered bear was again caught unready, irresolute as to whether he
+should fight or flee; and again he was knocked headlong, a yard or two
+further down the slope. His was not the dauntless spirit that most of
+his kindred would have shown in such a case, and he would willingly
+have made his escape at once if he had seen his way quite clear to do
+so. But at this moment, while he hesitated, he heard a man's voice
+shouting loudly, and saw the tall backwoodsman running toward him up
+the hill. This sight turned his alarm into a blind panic. His feet
+seemed to acquire wings as he tore madly away among the thickets. When
+he was hidden by the leafage, his path could still be followed by the
+crashing of dry branches and the clattering of loosened stones.
+
+The woodsman had seen the whole incident, and was wild with enthusiasm
+over the prowess of his prize. Bears had been the most dreaded scourge
+of the settlement sheep-farmers, but now, as he proudly said to
+himself, he had a ram that could "lick a b'ar silly!" He bore no
+grudge on account of his discomfiture that morning beside the spring,
+but rather thought of it with appreciation as a further evidence of
+his favourite's cunning and prowess; and he foresaw, with a chuckle,
+that there were painful surprises in store for the bears of the
+Ringwaak range. He had made a wise purchase indeed when he saved that
+splendid beast from the butcher.
+
+Hearing the man's voice, the ram had halted in dismay just when he was
+about to charge the bear a third time. He had no mind to go again into
+captivity. But, on the other hand, for all his lordliness of spirit,
+he felt that the man was his master. At first he lowered his head
+threateningly, as if about to attack; but when the backwoodsman
+shouted at him there was an authority in those tones which he could
+not withstand, and he sullenly drew aside. With a good-natured laugh,
+the man picked the lamb up in his arms, whereupon the mother stepped
+timidly to his side, evidently having no fear. The man rubbed her nose
+kindly, and stroked her ears, and gave her something from his pocket
+which she ate greedily; and, as the ram looked on, the anger gradually
+faded out from his yellow eyes. At length the man turned and walked
+slowly down the hill, carrying the lamb. The ewe followed, crowding as
+close to him as she could, and stumbling as she went because her eyes
+were fixed upon her little one.
+
+The ram hesitated. He looked at the hillside, the woods, and the sky
+beginning to grow chill with the onrush of twilight. Then he looked
+at the retreating figures. Suddenly he saw his world growing empty and
+desolate. With an anxious bleat he trotted after the ewe, and took his
+docile place a few feet behind the man's heels. The man glanced over
+his shoulders, and a smile of pleasure softened his rugged face. In a
+few moments the little procession disappeared in the woods, moving
+toward the settlement, and Ringwaak Hill was left solitary in the
+dusk, with the lonely notes of the night-hawks twanging over it.
+
+
+
+
+The Master of Golden Pool
+
+
+One shore of the pool was a spacious sweeping curve of the sward,
+dotted with clumps of blue flag-flowers. From the green fringes of
+this shore the bottom sloped away softly over a sand so deep and
+glowing in its hue of orange-yellow as to give the pool the rich name
+by which it was known for miles up and down the hurrying Clearwater.
+The other shore was a high, overhanging bank, from whose top drooped a
+varied leafage of birch, ash, poplar, and hemlock. Under this bank the
+water was deep and dark, a translucent black with trembling streaks
+and glints of amber. Fifty yards up-stream a low fall roared
+musically; but before reaching the fresh tranquillity of the pool, the
+current bore no signs of its disturbance save a few softly whirling
+foam clusters. Light airs, perfumed with birch and balsam and warm
+scents of the sun-steeped sward, drew over the pool from time to time,
+wrinkling and clouding its glassy surface. Birds flew over it,
+catching the small flies to whom its sheen was a ceaseless lure. And
+huge dragon-flies, with long, iridescent bodies and great jewelled,
+sinister eyes, danced and darted above it.
+
+The cool black depths under the bank retained their coolness through
+the fiercest heats of summer, because just here the brook was joined
+by the waters of an icy spring stealing down through a crevice of the
+rocks; and here in the deepest recess, exacting toll of all the varied
+life that passed his domain, the master of Golden Pool made his home.
+
+For several years the great trout had held his post in the pool,
+defying every lure of the crafty fisherman. The Clearwater was a
+protected stream, being leased to a rich fishing club; and the master
+of the pool was therefore secure against the treacherous assaults of
+net or dynamite. Many times each season fishermen would come and pit
+their skill against his cunning; but never a fly could tempt him,
+never a silvery, trolled minnow or whirling spoon deceive him to the
+fatal rush. At some new lure he would rise lazily once in awhile,
+revealing his bulk to the ambitious angler,--but never to take hold.
+Contemptuously he would flout the cheat with his broad flukes, and go
+down again with a grand swirl to his lair under the rock.
+
+It was only to the outside world--to the dragon-fly, and the bird, and
+the chattering red squirrel in the overhanging hemlock--that the deep
+water under the bank looked black. To the trout in his lair, looking
+upward toward the sunlight, the whole pool had a golden glow. His
+favourite position was a narrow place between two stones, where he lay
+with head up-stream and belly about two inches from the sandy bottom,
+gently fanning the water with his party-coloured fins, and opening and
+closing his rosy gill-fringes as he breathed. In length he was
+something over twenty inches, with a thick, deep body tapering finely
+to the powerful tail. Like all the trout of the Clearwater, he was
+silver-bellied with a light pink flush, the yellow and brown markings
+on his sides light in tone, and his spots of the most high, intense
+vermilion. His great lower jaw was thrust forward in a way that gave a
+kind of bulldog ferocity to his expression.
+
+The sky of the big trout's world was the flat surface of Golden Pool.
+From the unknown place beyond that sky there came to his eyes but
+moving shadows, arrangements of light and dark. He could not see out
+and through into the air unobstructedly, as one looks forth from a
+window into the world. Most of these moving shadows he understood very
+well. When broad and vague, they did not, as a rule, greatly interest
+him; but when they got small, and sharply black, he knew they might at
+any instant break through with a splash and become real, coloured
+things, probably good to eat. A certain slim little shadow was always
+of interest to him unless he was feeling gorged. Experience had taught
+him that when it actually touched the shining surface above, and lay
+there sprawling helplessly with wet wings, it would prove to be a May
+fly, which he liked. Having no rivals to get ahead of him, there was
+no need of haste. He would sail up with dignity, open his great jaws,
+and take in the tiny morsel.
+
+Sometimes the moving shadows were large and of a slower motion, and
+these, if they chanced to break through, would prove to be
+bright-coloured moths or butterflies, or glittering beetles, or fat
+black and yellow bumblebees, or lean black and yellow wasps. If he was
+hungry, all these things were good for food, and his bony,
+many-toothed mouth cared nothing for stings. Sometimes when he was not
+at all hungry, but merely playful, he would rise with a rush at
+anything breaking the sheen of his roof, slap it with his tail, then
+seize it between his hard lips and carry it down with him, only to
+drop it a moment later as a child might drop a toy. Once in awhile,
+either in hunger or in sport, he would rise swiftly at the claws or
+wing-tips of a dipping swallow; but he never managed to catch the
+nimble bird. Had he, by any chance, succeeded, he would probably have
+found the feathers no obstacle to his enjoyment of the novel fare.
+
+At times it was not a shadow, but a splash, that would attract his
+attention to the shining roof of his world. A grasshopper would fall
+in, and kick grotesquely till he rose to end its troubles. Or a
+misguided frog, pursued perhaps by some enemy on land, would dive in
+and swim by with long, webbed toes. At this sight the master of the
+pool would dart from his lair like a bolt from a catapult. Frogs were
+much to his taste. And once in a long time even a wood-mouse, hard
+pressed and panic-stricken, would leap in to swim across to the meadow
+shore. The first time this occurred the trout had risen slowly, and
+followed below the swimmer till assured that there was no peril
+concealed in the tempting phenomenon. After that, however, he always
+went at such prey with a ferocious rush, hurling himself half out of
+water in his eagerness.
+
+But it was not only to his translucent sky that the master of the
+pool looked for his meat. A large part of it came down upon the
+current of the brook. Bugs, grubs, and worms, of land and water, some
+dead, others disabled or bewildered by their passage through the
+falls, contributed to his feasting. Above all, there were the smaller
+fish who were so reckless or uninformed as to try to pass through
+Golden Pool. They might be chub, or suckers, or red-fin; they might
+be--and more often were--kith and kin of his own. It was all the same
+to the big trout, who knew as well as any gourmet that trout were
+royal fare. His wide jaws and capacious gullet were big enough to
+accommodate a cousin a full third of his own size, if swallowed
+properly, head first. His speed was so great that any smaller fish
+which he pursued was doomed, unless fortunate enough to be within
+instant reach of shoal water. Of course, it must not be imagined that
+the great trout was able to keep his domain quite inviolate. When he
+was full fed, or sulking, then the finny wanderers passed up and down
+freely,--always, however, giving wide berth to the lair under the
+bank. In the bright shallows over against the other shore, the
+scurrying shoals of pin-fish played safely in the sun. Once in a long
+while a fish would pass, up or down, so big that the master of the
+pool was willing to let him go unchallenged. And sometimes a muskrat,
+swimming with powerful strokes of his hind legs, his tiny forepaws
+gathered childishly under his chin, would take his way over the pool
+to the meadow of the blue flag-flowers. The master of the pool would
+turn up a fierce eye, and watch the swimmer's progress breaking the
+golden surface into long, parabolic ripples; but he was too wise to
+court a trial of the muskrat's long, chisel-like teeth.
+
+[Illustration: "THEY MIGHT BE--AND MORE OFTEN WERE--KITH AND KIN OF
+HIS OWN."]
+
+There were two occasions, never to be effaced from his sluggish
+memory, on which the master of the pool had been temporarily routed
+from his mastership and driven in a panic from his domain. Of these
+the less important had seemed to him by far the more appalling.
+
+Once, on a summer noonday, when the pool was all of a quiver with
+golden light, and he lay with slow-waving fins close to the coldest
+up-gushing of the spring which cooled his lair, the shining roof of
+his realm had been shattered and upheaved with a tremendous splash. A
+long, whitish body, many times his own length, had plunged in and
+dived almost to the bottom. This creature swam with wide-sprawling
+limbs, like a frog, beating the water, and leaping, and uttering
+strange sounds; and the disturbance of its antics was a very
+cataclysm to the utmost corners of the pool. The trout had not stayed
+to investigate the horrifying phenomenon, but had darted madly
+down-stream for half a mile, through fall and eddy, rapid and shallow,
+to pause at last, with throbbing sides and panting gills, in a little
+black pool behind a tree root. Not till hours after the man had
+finished his bath, and put on his clothes, and strode away whistling
+up the shore, did the big trout venture back to his stronghold. He
+found it already occupied by a smaller trout, whom he fell upon and
+devoured, to the assuaging of his appetite and the salving of his
+wounded dignity. But for days he was tremulously watchful, and ready
+to dart away if any unusually large shadow passed over his amber
+ceiling. He was expecting a return of the great, white, sprawling
+visitor.
+
+His second experience was one which he remembered with cunning
+wariness rather than with actual terror. Yet this had been a real
+peril, one of the gravest with which he could be confronted in the
+guarded precincts of Golden Pool. One day he saw a little lithe black
+body swimming rapidly at the surface, its head above the water. It was
+about ten feet away from his lair, and headed up-stream. The strange
+creature swam with legs, like a muskrat, instead of with fins like a
+fish, but it was longer and slenderer than a muskrat; and something in
+its sinister shape and motion, or else some stirring of an inherited
+instinct, filled the big trout with apprehension as he looked.
+Suddenly the stranger's head dipped under the surface, and the
+stranger's eyes sought him out, far down in his yellow gloom. That
+narrow-nosed, triangular head with its pointed fangs, those bright,
+cruel, undeceivable eyes, smote the trout with instant alarm. Here was
+an enemy to be avoided. The mink had dived at once, going through the
+water with the swiftness and precision of a fish. Few trout could have
+escaped. But the master of the pool, as we have seen, was no ordinary
+trout. The promptness of his cunning had got him under way in time.
+The power of his broad and muscular tail shot him forth from his lair
+just before the mink got there. And before the baffled enemy could
+change his direction, the trout was many feet away, heading up for the
+broken water of the rapids. The mink followed vindictively, but in the
+foamy stretch below the falls he lost all track of the fugitive. Angry
+and disappointed he scrambled ashore, and, finding a dead sucker
+beside his runway, seized it savagely. As he did so, there was a
+smart click, and the jaws of a steel trap, snapping upon his throat,
+rid the wilderness of one of its most bloodthirsty and implacable
+marauders. A half-hour later the master of the pool was back in his
+lair, waving his delicate, gay-coloured fins over the yellow sand, and
+lazily swallowing a large crayfish. One claw of the crayfish projected
+beyond his black jaw; and, being thus comfortably occupied, he turned
+an indifferent eye upon the frightened swimming of a small green frog,
+which had just then fallen in and disturbed the sheen of his amber
+roof.
+
+Very early one morning, when all his world was of a silvery gray, and
+over the glassy pallor of his roof thin gleams of pink were mingled
+with ghostly, swirling mist-shadows, a strange fly touched the
+surface, directly above him. It had a slender, scarlet, curving body,
+with long hairs of yellow and black about its neck, and brown and
+white wings. It fell upon the water with the daintiest possible
+splash, just enough to catch his attention. Being utterly unlike
+anything he had ever seen before, it aroused his interest, and he
+slanted slowly upward. A moment later a second fly touched the water,
+a light gray, mottled thing, with a yellow body, and pink and green
+hairs fringing its neck. This, too, was strange to him. He rolled a
+foot higher, not with any immediate idea of trying them, but under his
+usual vague impulse to investigate everything pertaining to his pool.
+Just then the mist-swirls lifted slightly, and the light grew
+stronger, and against the smooth surface he detected a fine, almost
+invisible, thread leading from the head of each fly. With a derisive
+flirt of his tail he sank back to the bottom of his lair. Right well
+he knew the significance of that fine thread.
+
+The strange flies skipped lightly over the surface of the pool, in a
+manner that to most trout would have seemed very alluring. They moved
+away toward a phenomenon which he just now noticed for the first time,
+a pair of dark, pillar-like objects standing where the water was about
+two feet deep, over toward the further shore. These dark objects moved
+a little, gently. Then the strange flies disappeared. A moment later
+they dropped again, and went through the same performance. This was
+repeated several times, the big trout watching with interest mingled
+with contempt. There was no peril for him in such gauds.
+
+Presently the flies disappeared for good. A few minutes later two
+others came in their place,--one a tiny, white, moth-like thing, the
+other a big, bristling bunch of crimson hairs. The latter stirred,
+far back in his dull memory, an association of pain and fear, and he
+backed deeper into his watery den. It was a red hackle; and in his
+early days, when he was about eight inches long and frequented the
+tail of a shallow, foamy rapid, he had had experience of its sharp
+allurements. The little moth he ignored, but he kept an eye on the red
+hackle as it trailed and danced hither and thither across the pool.
+Once, near the other side, he saw a misguided fingerling dart from
+under a stone in the shallow water and seize the gay morsel. The
+fingerling rose, with a jerk, from the water, and was no more seen. It
+vanished into the unknown air; and the master of the pool quailed as
+he marked its fate. After this, the pair of dark, pillar-like objects
+moved away to the shore, no longer careful, but making a huge,
+splashing noise. No more strange flies appeared; and the gold light of
+full day stole down to the depths of the pool. Soon, flies which the
+master well knew, with no fine threads attached to them, began to
+speck the surface over him, and he fed, in his lazy way, without
+misgiving.
+
+The big trout had good reason for his dread of the angler's lure. His
+experience with the red hackle had given him the wisdom which had
+enabled him to live through all the perils of a well-known
+trout-stream and grow to his present fame and stature. Behind that red
+hackle which hooked him in his youth had been a good rod, a crafty
+head, and a skilful wrist. His hour had sounded then and there, but
+for a fortunate flaw in the tackle. The leader had parted just at the
+drop, and the terrified trout (he had taken the tail fly) had darted
+away frantically through the rapids with three feet of fine gut
+trailing from his jaw. For several weeks he trailed that hampering
+thread, and carried that red hackle in the cartilage of his upper jaw;
+and he had time to get very familiar with them. He grew thin and
+slab-sided under the fret of it before he succeeded, by much nosing in
+gravel and sand, in wearing away the cartilage and rubbing his jaw
+clear of the encumbrance. From that day forward he had scrutinized all
+unfamiliar baits or lures to see if they carried any threadlike
+attachment.
+
+When any individual of the wild kindreds, furred, feathered, or
+finned, achieves the distinction of baffling man's efforts to undo
+him, his doom may be considered sealed. There is no beast, bird, or
+fish so crafty or so powerful but some one man can worst him, and will
+take the trouble to do it if the game seems to be worth while. Some
+lure would doubtless have been found, some scheme devised for the
+hiding of the line, whereby the big trout's cunning would have been
+made foolishness. Some swimming frog, some terrified, hurrying mouse,
+or some great night-moth flopping down upon the dim water of a
+moonless night, would have lulled his suspicions and concealed the
+inescapable barb; and the master of the pool would have gone to swell
+the record of an ingenious conqueror. He would have been stuffed, and
+mounted, and hung upon the walls of the club-house, down at the mouth
+of the Clearwater. But it pleased the secret and inscrutable deities
+of the woods that the end of the lordly trout should come in another
+fashion.
+
+It is an unusual thing, an unfortunate and pitiful thing, when death
+comes to the wild kindred by the long-drawn, tragic way of
+overripeness. When the powers begin to fail, the powers which enabled
+them to conquer, or to flee from, or to outwit their innumerable
+foes,--then life becomes a miserable thing for them. But that is not
+for long. Fate meets them in the forest trails or the flowing
+water-paths; and they have grown too dull to see, too heavy to flee,
+too indifferent to contend. So they are spared the anguish of slow,
+uncomprehending decrepitude.
+
+But to the master of Golden Pool Fate came while he was yet master
+unchallenged, and balked the hopes of many crafty fishermen. It came
+in a manner not unworthy of the great trout's dignity and fame, giving
+him over to swell no adversary's triumph, betraying him to no
+contemptible foe.
+
+One crisp autumn morning, when leaves were falling all over the
+surface of the pool, and insects were few, and a fresh tang in the
+water was making him active and hungry, the big trout was swimming
+hither and thither about his domain instead of lying lazily in his
+deep lair. He chanced to be over in the shallows near the grassy
+shore, when he saw, at the upper end of the pool, a long, dark body
+slip noiselessly into the water. It was not unlike the mink in form,
+but several times larger. It swam with a swift movement of its
+forefeet, while its hind legs, stretched out behind with the tail,
+twisted powerfully, like a big sculling oar. Its method, indeed,
+combined the advantages of that of the quadruped and that of the fish.
+The trout saw at once that here was a foe to be dreaded, and he lay
+quite still against a stone, trusting to escape the bright eyes of the
+stranger.
+
+But the stranger, as it happened, was hunting, and the stranger was an
+otter. The big trout was just such quarry as he sought, and his bright
+eyes, peering restlessly on every side, left no corner of the pool
+uninvestigated. They caught sight of the master's silver and vermilion
+sides, his softly waving, gay-coloured fins.
+
+With a dart like that of the swiftest of fish, the stranger shot
+across the pool. The trout darted madly toward his lair. The otter was
+close upon him, missing him by a fin's breadth. Frantic now with
+terror, the trout shot up-stream toward the broken water. But the
+otter, driven not only by his forefeet but by that great combined
+propeller of his hind legs and tail, working like a screw, swam
+faster. Just at the edge of the broken water he overtook his prey. A
+set of long, white teeth went through the trout's backbone. There was
+one convulsive twist, and the gay-coloured fins lay still, the silver
+and vermilion body hung limp from the captor's jaws.
+
+For many days thereafter, Golden Pool lay empty under its dropping
+crimson and purple leaves, its slow sailing foam flakes. Then, by twos
+and threes, small trout strayed in, and found the new region a good
+place to inhabit. When, in the following spring, the fishermen came
+back to the Clearwater, they reported the pool swarming with pan-fish,
+hardly big enough to make it worth while throwing a fly. Then word
+went up and down the Clearwater that the master of the pool was gone,
+and the glory of the pool, for that generation of fishermen, went with
+him.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "HE WOULD SIT BACK AND WHINE FOR HIS MOTHER."]
+
+The Return to the Trails
+
+
+Down from the rocky den under the bald peak of Sugar Loaf, the old
+black bear led her cub. Turning her head every moment to see that he
+was close at her heels, she encouraged him with soft, half-whining,
+half-grunting sounds, that would have been ridiculous in so huge a
+beast had they been addressed to anything less obviously a baby than
+this small, velvet-dark, wondering-eyed cub.
+
+Very carefully the old bear chose her path, and very slowly she moved.
+But for all her care, she had to stop every minute or two, and
+sometimes even turn back a few paces, for the cub was continually
+dropping behind. His big, inquiring ears took in all the vague, small
+noises of the mountainside, puzzling over them. His sharp little nose
+went poking in every direction, sniffing the strange new smells, till
+he would get bewildered, and forget which foot to put forward first.
+Then he would sit back and whine for his mother.
+
+It was the cub's first adventure, this journey down the world outside
+his den. Hitherto he had but played about his doorway.
+
+When the little fellow had somewhat recovered from his first
+bewilderment, the old bear moved more rapidly, leading him toward a
+swampy, grassy pocket, where she thought there might be roots to dig.
+The way was steep, winding down between rocks and stunted trees and
+tangles of thick shrubbery, with here and there a black-green spur of
+the fir forests thrust up tentatively from the lower slopes. Now and
+again it led across a naked shoulder of the mountain, revealing, far
+down, a landscape of dark, wide stretching, bluish woods, with
+desolate, glimmering lakes strung on a thread of winding river. When
+these vast spaces of emptiness opened suddenly upon his baby eyes, the
+cub whimpered and drew closer to his mother. The swimming deeps of air
+daunted him.
+
+Presently, as the two continued their slow journey, the mother bear's
+nostrils caught a new savour. She stopped, lifted her snout, and
+tested the wind discriminatingly. It was a smell she had encountered
+once before, coming from the door of a lumber camp. Well she
+remembered the deliciousness of the lump of fat bacon which she had
+succeeded in purloining while the cook was out getting water. Her
+thin, red tongue licked her lips at that memory, and, without
+hesitation, she turned up the side trail whence came the luring scent.
+The cub had to stir his little legs to keep pace with her, but he felt
+that something interesting was in the wind, and did his best.
+
+A turn around a thick clump of juniper, and there was the source of
+the savour. It looked pleasantly familiar to the old bear, that lump
+of fat bacon. It was stuck on the end of a pointed stick, just under a
+sort of slanting roof of logs, which, in a way, reminded her of the
+lumbermen's cabin. The cabin had done her no harm, and she inferred
+that the structure before her was equally harmless. Nevertheless, the
+man smell, not quite overpowered by the fragrance of the bacon, lurked
+about it; and all the works of man she viewed with suspicion. She
+snatched hastily at the prize, turning to jump away even as she did
+so.
+
+But the bacon seemed to be fastened to the stick. She gave it an
+impatient pull,--and it yielded suddenly. At that same instant, while
+her eyes twinkled with elation, that roof of massive logs came
+crashing down.
+
+It fell across her back. Weighted as it was with heavy stones, it
+crushed the life out of her in a second. There was a coughing gasp,
+cut off abruptly; and the flattened form lay still, the wide-open
+mouth and protruding tongue jammed down among the mosses. At the crash
+the cub had jumped back in terror. Then he sat up on his haunches and
+looked on with anxious bewilderment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When, early the following morning, the Indian who had set the deadfall
+came, he found the cub near perishing with cold and fear and hunger.
+He knew that the little animal would be worth several bearskins, so he
+warmed it, wrapped it in his jacket, and took it home to his cabin.
+Fed and sheltered, it turned to its captor as a rescuer, and acquired
+a perilous faith in the friendliness of man. In fact, it speedily
+learned to follow the Indian about the cabin, and to fret for him in
+his absence.
+
+That same autumn the Indian took the cub into Edmundston and sold him
+for a price that well repaid his pains; and thence, within three or
+four months, and by as many transfers, the little animal found his way
+into the possession of a travelling circus. Being good-natured and
+teachable, and inclined, through his first misunderstanding of the
+situation which had robbed him of his mother, to regard mankind as
+universally beneficent, he was selected to become a trick bear. In the
+course of his training for this honour, he learned that his trainer,
+at least, was not wholly beneficent, and toward him he developed a
+cordial bitterness, which grew with his years. But he learned his
+lessons, nevertheless, and became a star of the ring; and for the
+manager of the show, who always kept peanuts or gingerbread in pocket
+for him, he conceived such a warmth of regard as he had hitherto
+strictly reserved for the Indian.
+
+Valued and well cared for, he grew to a magnificent stature, and up to
+the middle of his fifth year he never knew what his life was missing.
+To be sure, it was exasperatingly monotonous, this being rolled about
+the world in stuffy, swaying cage-cars, and dancing in the ring, and
+playing foolish tricks with a red-and-white clown, and being stared at
+by hot, applauding, fluttering tiers of people, who looked exactly the
+same at every place he came to. His memory of that first walk down the
+mountain, at his great mother's heels, had been laid to sleep at the
+back of his curiously occupied brain. He had no understanding of the
+fierce restlessness, the vague longing, which from time to time, and
+especially when the autumn frosts began to nip and tingle, would take
+possession of him, moving him almost to hatred of even his special
+friends, the manager and the clown.
+
+One vaporous, golden afternoon in early autumn, the circus drew into
+the little town of Edmundston, at the mouth of the Madawaska River.
+When the noise of the train stopped, the soft roar of the Little Falls
+grew audible,--a voice at which all the weary animals pricked their
+ears, they knew not, most of them, why. But when the cars and cages
+were run out into the fields, where the tents were to be raised, there
+drew down from spruce-clad hills a faint fragrance which thrilled the
+bear's nostrils, and stirred formless longings in his heart, and made
+his ears deaf to the wild music of the falls. That fragrance,
+imperceptible to nostrils less sensitive than his, was the breath of
+his native wilderness, a message from the sombre solitudes of the
+Squatook. He did not know that the lonely peak of Sugar Loaf was but
+thirty or forty miles away. He knew only that something, in the air
+and in his blood, was calling him to his own.
+
+The bear--well-taught, well-mannered, well-content--was not regarded
+as even remembering freedom, let alone desiring it. His fetters,
+therefore, were at times little more than nominal, and he was never
+very closely watched. Just on the edge of evening, when the dusk was
+creeping up the valley and honey-scents from the fields mixed with the
+tang of the dark spruce forests, his opportunity came. His trainer had
+unhitched the chain from his collar and stooped over it to examine
+some defect in the clasp.
+
+At this instant that surge of impulse which, when it does come,
+shatters routine and habit to bits, seized the bear. Without
+premeditation, he dealt the trainer a cuff that knocked him clean over
+a wagon-pole and broke his arm. Before any of the other attendants
+could realize what had happened, the bear was beyond the circle of
+wagons, and half-way across the buckwheat-fields. In ten minutes more
+he was in the spicy glooms of the spruce-woods.
+
+His years of association with men had given the bear a great
+confidence in their resources. He was too crafty, therefore, to
+slacken his efforts just because he had gained the longed-for woods.
+He pressed on doggedly, at a shambling, loose-jointed, but very
+effective run, till it was full night and the stars came out sharply
+in the patches of clear, dark sky above the tree-tops. In the friendly
+dark he halted to strip the sweet but insipid fruit of an Indian
+pear, which for a little assuaged his appetite. Then he rushed
+on,--perhaps aimlessly, as far as conscious purpose was concerned,
+but, in reality, by a sure instinct, making toward his ancestral
+steeps of Sugar Loaf.
+
+All night he travelled; and in the steely chill of dawn he came out
+upon a spacious lake. The night had been windless, and now, in the
+first of the coming light, the water was smooth like blue-black oil
+under innumerable writhing wisps and streamers of mist. A keen smell,
+raw but sweet, rose from the wet shores, the wet spruce and fir woods,
+and the fringe of a deep cedar swamp near by. The tired animal sniffed
+it with an uncomprehending delight. He did not recognize it, yet it
+made him feel at home. It seemed a part of what he wanted.
+
+Being thirsty as well as hungry, he pushed through the bushes,--not
+noiselessly, as a wild bear moves, but with crashing and tramplings,
+as if there were no need of secrecy in the wilds,--and lurched down to
+the gravelly brink. Here, as luck would have it, he found a big, dead
+sucker lying half-awash, which made him a meal. Then, when sharp
+streaks of orange along the eastern horizon were beginning to shed a
+mystic colour over the lake, he drew back into the woods and curled
+himself up for sleep behind the trunk of a big hemlock.
+
+When the sun was about an hour high he awoke, and made haste to
+continue his journey. Along the lake shore he went, to the outlet;
+then down the clear, rushing Squatook; and in the afternoon he came
+out upon a smaller lake, over which stood sentinel a lofty, beetling
+mountain. At the foot of the mountain, almost seeming to duplicate it
+in miniature, a steep island of rock rose sharply from the water.
+
+The bear halted on the shore, sniffed wistfully, and looked up at the
+lonely mountain. Dim memories, or emotions too dim to be classed as
+memories, began to stir in the recesses of his brain. He hurried
+around the lake and began to climb the steeps. The lonely mountain was
+old Sugar Loaf. The exile had come home.
+
+It was his feet, rather than his head, perhaps, that knew the way so
+well. Upward he toiled, through swamps and fir woods, over blueberry
+barrens and ranges of granite boulders, till, looking down, he saw the
+eagle flying far below him. He saw a vast, empty forest land, beaded
+with shining lakes,--and a picture, long covered up in his brain, came
+back to him. These were the great spaces that so long ago had
+terrified the little cub creeping at his mother's heels. He knew now
+where his den was,--just behind that whitish gray rock with the
+juniper shrub over it. He ran eagerly to resume possession.
+
+It was now, for the first time, that he found the wilderness less
+empty than he had imagined it. Another bear was in possession of the
+den,--and in no mood to be disturbed.
+
+He flung himself upon the intruder with a savage roar. The next moment
+the two, clutched in a madly clawing embrace, went crashing through a
+fringe of bushes and rolled together down a twenty-foot slope of bald
+rock. They landed in a crevice full of roots, with a violence that
+half-stunned them and threw them apart. As they picked themselves up,
+it was plain that the exile had had the best of the tussle. His rich
+black fur, to be sure, was somewhat torn and bloody, but he showed no
+other signs of battle; while his antagonist breathed heavily and held
+one paw clear of the ground.
+
+[Illustration: "THE EAGLE FLYING FAR BELOW HIM."]
+
+The exile was quite fearless, and quite ready to fight for what he
+wanted, if necessary. But he was not conscious of any particular
+ill-will toward his assailant. What he wanted was possession of that
+den. Now, instead of taking advantage of his adversary's partly
+disabled condition, he clambered with undignified haste up the steep
+rock and plunged into the cave. It was certainly much smaller than he
+had imagined it, but it was, nevertheless, much to his taste. He
+turned around in it two or three times, as if to adjust it to himself,
+then squatted on his haunches in the entrance and looked out
+complacently over the airy deeps. The dispossessed bear stood for a
+few minutes irresolute, his small eyes red with wrath. For a moment or
+two he hesitated, trying to work himself up to the attack. Then
+discretion came to his rescue. Grumbling deep in his throat, he turned
+and limped away, to seek new quarters on the other side of the
+mountain.
+
+Now began for the returned exile two or three months of just such a
+life as he had longed for. The keen and tonic winds that blew around
+the peak of Sugar Loaf filled his veins with vigour. Through his lack
+of education in the lore of the wilderness, his diet was less varied
+than it might have been; but this was the fat of the year, and he
+fared well enough. When the late berries and fruits were all gone
+there were sweet tubers and starchy roots to be grubbed up along the
+meadow levels by the water. Instinct, and a spirit of investigation,
+soon taught him to find the beetles and grubs that lurked under
+stones or in rotting logs,--and in the course of such a search he one
+day discovered that ants were good to eat. But the small animals with
+which a wild bear is prone to vary his diet were all absent from his
+bill of fare. Rabbits, woodchucks, chipmunks, wood-mice, they all kept
+out of his sight. His ignorance of the law of silence, the universal
+law of the wild, deprived him of many toothsome morsels. As for the
+many kinds of fungus which grew upon the mountain, he knew not which
+were edible and which poisonous. After an experiment with one
+pleasant-smelling red-skinned specimen, which gave him excruciating
+cramps, he left the whole race of fungi severely alone.
+
+For perhaps a month he had the solitudes to himself, except for the
+big, scornful-looking eagle which always spent a portion of every day
+sitting on the top of a blasted pine about a hundred feet above the
+den. But, at length, one crisp morning, when he was down by the
+lakeside fishing, he found a mate. A young she-bear came out of the
+bushes, looked at him, then turned as if to run away,--but didn't. The
+exile stopped fishing, and waited civilly to see if the newcomer
+wanted to fight. Evidently she had no such desire.
+
+The exile took a few steps up the beach,--which action seemed to
+terrify the newcomer almost into flight. Seeing this, he sat down on
+his haunches amiably, and waited to see what she would do. What she
+did, after much hesitation and delay and half-retreat, was to come up
+to his side and sniff trustfully but wonderingly at the great
+iron-studded leather collar on his neck. After that the two soon
+reached an understanding; and for the next six weeks or so they spent
+most of their time together.
+
+Under his mate's instruction, or else by force of her example, the big
+bear made some progress in woodcraft, and gained some inklings of the
+lesson of silence. He learned, also, to distinguish between the
+wholesome and the poisonous fungi. He learned the sweets of a
+bee-tree, and how a bear must go to work to attain them. Moving
+through the shadows more quietly, he now had glimpses of rabbits and
+chipmunks, and even caught sight of a wood-mouse whisking into his
+hole under a root. But before he had acquired the cunning to capture
+any of these shy kindreds, his mate wandered away, on her own affairs
+intent; and he found himself once more alone. Frosts by this time were
+binding swale and pool. Ice was forming far out from the edges of the
+lake. The first snows had fallen and the great snows were threatening.
+And the little she-bear was getting ready to creep into a hole and
+curl up for her winter's sleep. She no longer wanted company,--not
+even the company of this splendid, black comrade, whose collar had so
+filled her with admiration.
+
+When, at length, the winter of the north had fairly settled down upon
+the Squatooks, the exile's ribs were well encased in fat. But that
+fortunate condition was not to last long. When the giant winds, laden
+with snow and Arctic cold, thundered and shrieked about the peak of
+Sugar Loaf, and in the loud darkness strange shapes of drift rode down
+the blast, he slept snugly enough in the narrow depths of his den. But
+the essential winter lore of his kind he had not learned. He had not
+learned to sleep away the time of storm and famine. As for instinct,
+it failed him altogether in this emergency. During his five years of
+life with the circus, he had had no chance to gratify his winter
+drowsiness, and gradually the power to hibernate had passed away from
+him. The loss was irremediable. By this one deprivation his contact
+with man had ruined him for the life of nature.
+
+When man has snatched away from Nature one of her wild children,
+Nature, merciless in her resentments, is apt to say, "Keep him! He is
+none of mine!" And if the alien, his heart aching for his own,
+insists upon returning, Nature turns a face of stone against him.
+
+Unskilled in hunting as he was, and unable to sleep, the bear was soon
+driven to extremes. At rare intervals he succeeded in capturing a
+rabbit. Once or twice, after a fierce frost had followed a wet sleet
+storm, he had climbed trees and found dead birds frozen to their
+perches. But most of the time he had nothing but starvation rations of
+wood-ants and buds. In the course of a few weeks he was lean as a
+heron, and his collar hung loose in his fur. He was growing to hate
+the icy and glittering desolation,--and, as he had once longed for an
+untried freedom, now he longed for the companionship of men.
+
+He was now wandering far afield in his daily quest for food, sometimes
+not returning for three or four days at a time. Once, on an excursion
+over into the Madawaska Valley, he came upon a deadfall temptingly
+baited with pork. He rushed forward ravenously to snatch the
+bait,--but just in time that scent called up an ancient memory. The
+horror and the shock of that far-off day when such a trap had crushed
+his mother's life out, came back upon him. It was not the scene,
+exactly, that came back, but rather the memory of an anguish. Obscure
+as it was, it had power to master his appetite and drive him to
+another foraging-ground. Thenceforth he foraged no more in the
+Madawaska Valley.
+
+In such a desolate fashion the exile dragged through the frozen weeks,
+till February came in with deeper snows and fiercer frosts. At this
+time hunger and loneliness drove him far over to the valley of the
+Toledi; and here, one still and biting day, he came upon a human
+trail.
+
+Delightedly he sniffed at the familiar scent, which to him, as
+pleasant memories of food and companionship welled up in his heart,
+represented nothing but kindliness. His little disagreements with his
+trainer were forgotten. He remembered only his unfailing friends, the
+manager and the clown. The trail was a broad and mixed one,--the trail
+of oxen, and of men with larriganed feet. It led toward a camp of
+lumbermen, near the river. Joyously and confidently the exile followed
+it. Soon he heard men's voices, and the familiar clank of chains. Then
+a biting breeze drew through the forest,--biting, but sweet to the
+bear's nostrils. It carried a savour of richness from the cook's
+steaming boilers. It was dinner-hour at the camp.
+
+For the second time in his life, the bear felt that he had come home.
+Captive, indeed, he had been among men,--but a captive always highly
+valued and heedfully cared for. He never for a moment doubted that
+these men-creatures, who had always wanted him, would want him now.
+They would chain him up, of course,--for fear he would change his mind
+and leave them again. But they would feed him,--all he could eat; and
+stare at him; and admire him. Then he would dance for them, and do
+foolish things with a gun, and perhaps stand on his head. Whereupon
+they would applaud, and laugh, and feed him with peanuts and
+gingerbread. His famished jaws dripped at the thought.
+
+Within the camp one of the hands, glancing from the window, saw him
+just as he came in view. In an instant every man was looking out. The
+boldness of the animal stirred up a great excitement. His terrible
+leanness was noticed. He was coming straight for the door,--evidently
+savage, insane with hunger! And such a big fellow, too!
+
+Men seized their axes. The boss snatched down his big-bore Snider
+rifle, slipped in a cartridge, and coolly threw open the cabin door.
+He was a tall, ruddy-faced, wide-mouthed man, much like the kindly
+manager of the show. At sight of him, standing there in the door, the
+bear was overjoyed, and broke into a shuffling run.
+
+Seeing what seemed to them such reckless ferocity, the lumbermen cried
+out in amazement, and shouted hoarse warnings to the boss. But the
+boss was a man of nerve. Raising his rifle to the shoulder, he stepped
+right out clear of the door. He was a dead shot, and very proud of the
+fact. When the bear was within thirty paces of him, he fired.
+
+The massive bullet sped true; and the exile fell forward on his snout
+without a gasp, shot through the brain.
+
+The men gathered about the body, praising the shot, praising the
+prize, praising the reckless audacity which had led the beast to rush
+upon his doom. Then in the long, loose fur that clothed his bones they
+found the heavy collar. At that they all wondered. The boss examined
+it minutely, and stood pondering; and the frank pride upon his face
+gradually died into regret.
+
+"I swan, boys," said he, presently, "if that ain't the b'ar that run
+away from the circus las' fall! I heard tell he was reckoned always
+kind!"
+
+
+
+
+The Little Wolf of the Pool
+
+
+The bottom of the pool (it was too small to be called a pond) was
+muddy, with here and there a thicket of rushes or arrow-weed stems.
+Down upon the windless surface streamed the noon sun warmly. Under its
+light the bottom was flecked with shadows of many patterns,--circular,
+heart-shaped, spear-shaped, netted, and barred. There were other
+shadows that were no more than ghosts of shadows, cast by faint,
+diaphanous films of scum which scarcely achieved to blur the clear
+downpour of radiance, but were nevertheless perceived and appreciated
+by many of the delicate larval creatures which made a large part of
+the life of the pool.
+
+For all its surface tranquillity and its shining summer peace, the
+pool was thronged with life. Beneath the surface, among the weeds and
+stalks, the gleams and shadows, there was little of tranquillity or
+peace. Almost all the many-formed and strange-shaped inhabitants of
+the pool were hunting or being hunted, preying or being preyed
+upon,--from the goggle-eyed, green-throated bullfrog under the willow
+root, down to the swarming animalculae which it required a microscope
+to see. Small crawling things everywhere dotted the mud or tried to
+hide under the sticks and stones. Curled fresh-water snails moved up
+and down the stems of the lilies. Shining little black water-bugs
+scurried swiftly in all directions. In sheltered places near the
+surface, under the leaves, wriggled the slim gray larvae of the
+mosquitoes. And hither and thither, in flickering shoals, darted
+myriads of baby minnows, from half an inch to an inch and a half in
+length.
+
+In a patch of vivid sunshine, about six inches from a tangle of
+arrow-weed stems, a black tadpole lay basking. Light to him meant not
+only growth, but life. Whenever, with the slow wheeling of the sun,
+the shadow of a lily leaf moved over him, he wriggled impatiently
+aside, and settled down again on the brightest part of the mud. Most
+of the time he seemed to be asleep; but in reality he was keeping that
+incessant sharp lookout which, for the pool-dwellers, was the price of
+survival.
+
+Swimming slowly up toward the other side of the arrow-weed stems, came
+a fantastic-looking creature, something more than an inch and a half
+in length. It had a long, tapering, ringed and armoured body, ending
+in a spine; a thick, armoured thorax, with six legs attached; and a
+large head, the back of which was almost covered by two big, dully
+staring globes of eyes. The whole front of its head--part of the eyes,
+and all the face--was covered by a smooth, cleft, shieldlike mask,
+reaching well down under the breast, and giving the creature an
+expression both mysterious and terrible. On its back, folded close and
+obviously useless, were rigidly encased attempts at wings.
+
+The little monster swam slowly by the motion of its long and strong
+legs, thrusting out two short, hornlike antennae over the top of its
+mask. It seemed to be eyeing a snail-shell on a stem above, and
+waiting for the snail's soft body to emerge from the citadel; when on
+a sudden, through the stems, it caught sight of the basking tadpole.
+Instantly it became motionless, and sank, like a waterlogged twig, to
+the level of the mud. It crept around, effacing itself against the
+brown and greenish roots, till it was just opposite the quarry.
+Then it sprang, propelling itself not only by its legs, but by the
+violent ejection of a little stream of water from the powerful
+breathing-valves near its tail.
+
+The tadpole, as we have seen, was not asleep. With a convulsive
+wriggle of its tail it darted away in a panic. It was itself no mean
+swimmer, but it could not escape the darting terror that pursued. When
+the masked form was almost within reach of its victim, the mask
+dropped down and shot straight out, working on a sort of elbow-shaped
+lever, and at the same time revealed at its extremity a pair of
+powerful mandibles. These mandibles snapped firm hold of the victim at
+the base of its wriggling tail. The elbow-shaped lever drew back, till
+the squirming prize was held close against its captor's face. Then
+with swift jets from the turbine arrangement of its abdominal gills,
+the strange monster darted back to a retreat among the weed stems,
+where it could devour its prey in seclusion.
+
+Under those inexorable jaws the tadpole soon disappeared and for a few
+minutes the monster rested, working its mandibles to and fro and
+rubbing them with its front legs before folding back that inscrutable
+mask over its savage face. Presently a plump minnow, more than an inch
+long, with a black stripe along its bronze and silver sides, swam down
+close by the arrow-weed stems. The big eyes of the monster never
+moved. But, suddenly, out shot the mask once more, revealing the face
+of doom behind it; and those hooked mandibles fixed themselves in the
+belly of the minnow. Inexorable as was the grip, it nevertheless for
+the moment left unimpeded the swimming powers of the victim; and he
+was a strong swimmer. With lashing tail and beating fins, he dragged
+his captor out from among the weed stems. For a few seconds there was
+a vehement struggle. Then the minnow was borne down upon the mud, out
+in the broad sheen where, a little before, the tadpole had been
+basking. Clutching ferociously with its six long legs, the conqueror
+crawled over the prey and bit its backbone in two.
+
+Swift, strong, insatiably ravenous, immeasurably fierce, the larva of
+the dragon-fly (for such the little monster was) had fair title to be
+called the wolf of the pool. Its appearance alone was enough to daunt
+all rivals. Even the great black carnivorous water-beetle, with all
+its strength and fighting equipment, was careful to give wide berth to
+that dreadful, quick-darting mask. Had these little wolves been as
+numerous as they were rapacious, there would soon have been left no
+life at all in the pool but theirs and that of the frogs. Between
+these there would have been a long and doubtful struggle, the frogs
+hunting the larvae among the weed stems, and the larvae devouring the
+tadpoles on their basking-grounds.
+
+It chanced that the particular larva whose proceedings we have noted
+was just on the eve of that change which should transport it to the
+world of air. After eating the minnow it somehow failed to recover its
+appetite, and remained, all the rest of the day and through the night,
+clinging to one of the weed stems. Next morning, when the sun was warm
+on the pool, it crawled slowly up, up, up, till it came out into a new
+element, and the untried air fanned it dry. Its great round eyes,
+formerly dull and opaque, had now grown transparent, and were gleaming
+like live jewels, an indescribable blend of emerald, sapphire, and
+amethyst. Presently its armour, now for the first time drying in the
+sun, split apart down the back, and a slender form, adorned with two
+pairs of crumpled, wet wings, struggled three-quarters of its length
+from the shell. For a short time it clung motionless, gathering
+strength. Then, bracing its legs firmly on the edges of the shell, it
+lifted its tail quite clear, and crawled up the weed a perfect
+dragon-fly, forgetful of that grim husk it was leaving behind. A few
+minutes later, the good sun having dried its wings, it went darting
+and hurtling over the pool, a gemlike, opalescent shining thing,
+reflected gloriously in the polished mirror beneath.
+
+
+
+
+The Little Wolf of the Air
+
+
+The pool lay shimmering and basking in the flood of the June sun. On
+three sides, east, west, and north, the willows and birches gathered
+close about it, their light leafage hanging motionless in the clear,
+still heat. On the south side it lay open toward the thick-grassed
+meadows, where bees and flies of innumerable species flickered lazily
+over the pale crimson clover-blooms. From the clover-blooms and the
+vetch-blooms, the wheel-rayed daisies, and the tall umbels of the wild
+parsnip, strange perfumes kept distilling in the heat and pulsing in
+across the pool on breaths of air too soft to ruffle its surface.
+
+Above this unruffled surface the air was full of dancing life. Gnats
+hung in little, whirling nebulae; mosquitoes, wasplike flies, and
+whirring, shard-winged beetles, passed and repassed each other in
+intricate lines of flight; and, here and there, lucently flashing on
+long, transparent, veined wings, darted the dragon-flies in their
+gemlike mail. Their movements were so swift, powerful, and light that
+it was difficult, in spite of their size and radiant colour, to detect
+the business that kept the dragon-flies so incessantly and tirelessly
+in action. Sometimes two or three would hurtle out for a brief
+expedition over the blossoming meadow. Often one would alight for a
+moment on a leaf or twig in the sun, and lie there gleaming, its two
+pairs of wings flatly outspread in a way that showed every delicate
+interlacing of the nerves. Then it would rise again into the air with
+a bold, vehement spring; and when ever it began its flight, or
+whenever it abruptly changed the direction of its flight, its wings
+would make a dry, sharp, rustling sound.
+
+The business that so occupied these winged and flashing gems, these
+darting iridescences, was in truth the universal business of hunting.
+But there were few indeed among all the kindred of earth, air, and
+water whose hunting was so savage and so ravenous as that of these
+slender and spiritlike beings. With appetites insatiable, ferocity
+implacable, strength and courage prodigious for their stature, to call
+them the little wolves of the air is perhaps to wrong the ravening
+gray pack whose howlings strike terror down the corridors of the
+winter forest. Mosquitoes and gnats they hunted every moment,
+devouring them in such countless numbers as to merit the gratitude of
+every creature that calls the mosquito its foe. But every summer fly,
+also, was acceptable prey to these indomitable hunters, every
+velvet-bodied moth, every painted butterfly. And even the envenomed
+wasp, whose weapon no insect can withstand, was not safe. If the
+dragon-fly could catch her engrossed in some small slaughter of her
+own, and, pouncing upon her from above, grip the back of her armed
+abdomen in his great grinding jaws, her sting could do nothing but
+dart out vainly like a dark, licking flame; and she would prove as
+good a meal as the most unresisting bluebottle or horse-fly.
+
+Down to the pool, through the luxurious shadows of the birches, came a
+man, and stretched himself against a leaning trunk by the waterside.
+At his approach, all the business of life and death and mating in his
+immediate neighbourhood came to a halt, and most of the winged
+kindred, except the mosquitoes, drew away from him. The mosquitoes, to
+whom he had become, so to speak, in a measure acclimatized, attacked
+him with less enthusiasm than they would have displayed in the case of
+a stranger, and failed to cause him serious annoyance. He fixed
+himself in a position that was thoroughly comfortable, and then lay
+quite still.
+
+The man's face was under the shadow of the birch-tree, but his body
+lay out in the full sun, and the front of his soft white summer shirt
+made a patch of sharp light against the surrounding tones of brown and
+green. When it had for a time remained quite still, the patch of
+whiteness attracted attention, and various insects alighted upon it to
+investigate. Presently the man noticed a very large steel-blue
+dragon-fly on rustling wings balancing in the air a few feet in front
+of him. At this moment, from a branch overhead, a hungry shrike dashed
+down. The dragon-fly saw the peril just in time; and, instead of
+fleeing desperately across the pool, to be almost inevitably overtaken
+by the strong-winged bird, it dashed forward and perched for refuge on
+a fold of the dazzling white shirt. The foiled shrike, with an angry
+and astonished twitter, flew off to a tree across the pool.
+
+For perhaps a minute the great fly stood with moveless, wide-spread
+wings, scintillating aerial hues as if its body was compacted of a
+million microscopic prisms. The transparent tissue of its wings was
+filled with a finer and more elusive iridescence. The great rounded,
+globose, overlapping jaws, half as big as the creature's whole head,
+kept opening and shutting, as if to polish their edges. The other half
+of its head was quite occupied by two bulging, brilliant spheres of
+eyes, which seemed to hold in their transparent yet curiously
+impenetrable depths a shifting light of emerald and violet. These
+inscrutable and enormous eyes--each one nearly as great in
+circumference as the creature's body--rolled themselves in a steady
+stare at the man's face, till he felt the skin of his cheeks creep at
+their sinister beauty. It seemed to him as if a spirit hostile and
+evil had threatened him from beneath those shining eyes; and he was
+amused to experience, for all his interest, a sense of half-relief
+when the four beautiful wings hurtled crisply and the creature darted
+away.
+
+It would seem, however, that the fold of white shirt had found favour
+in those mysteriously gleaming eyes; for a minute or two later the
+same fly returned to the same spot. The man recognized not only its
+unusual size and its splendour of colour, but a broken notch on one of
+its wing films, the mark of the tip of a bird's beak. This time the
+dragon-fly came not as a fugitive from fate, but as a triumphant
+dispenser of fate to others. It carried between its jaws the body of
+a small green grasshopper, which it had already partly eaten.
+
+Fixing the enigmatic radiance of its eyes upon the man's face, the
+dragon-fly calmly continued its meal, using the second joints of its
+front pair of legs to help manipulate the rather awkward morsel. Its
+great round jaws crushed their prey resistlessly, while the inner
+mouth sucked up the juices so cleanly and instantaneously that the
+repast left no smallest stain upon the man's spotless shirt. When the
+feast was over there remained nothing of the victim but a compact,
+perfectly rounded, glistening green ball, the size of a pea, made up
+of the well-chewed shell-like parts of the grasshopper's body. It
+reminded the man of the round "castings" of fur or feathers which an
+owl ejects after its undiscriminating banquet. Having rolled the
+little green ball several times between its jaws, to make sure there
+was no particle of nourishment left therein, the dragon-fly coolly
+dropped it into a crease in the shirt-bosom, and rustled away.
+
+[Illustration: "A LARGE FROG RISE TO THE SURFACE JUST BELOW HER."]
+
+It chanced that this particular and conspicuous individual of the
+little wolves of the air was a female. A half-hour later, when the man
+had almost grown tired of his watching, he again caught sight of the
+great fly. This time she alighted on a half-submerged log, one end
+of which lay on shore by the man's feet, while the other end was
+afloat in deep water, where it could rise and fall with every change
+in the level of the pool. Quivering and gleaming with all her subtle
+fires, the dragon-fly stood motionless on the log for a few seconds.
+Then she backed down close to the water's edge, thrust her long,
+slender abdomen a good inch into the water, and curled it under her as
+if she were trying to sting the hidden surface of the log. In reality,
+as the man at once understood, she was busy laying eggs,--eggs that
+should presently develop into those masked and terrible larvae of hers,
+the little wolves of the pool. She laid the eggs in a row under the
+log, where there was no danger of the water receding from them. She
+moved along the log daintily, step by step, and her wings fluttered
+over the task.
+
+The man had taken out his watch as soon as he saw what she was about,
+in order that he might time the egg-laying process. But he was not
+destined to discover what he wanted to know. The dragon-fly had been
+at her business for perhaps two minutes, when the man saw a large frog
+rise to the surface just below her. He liked all dragon-flies,--and
+for this one in particular he had developed a personal interest.
+Suddenly and violently he jumped to his feet, hoping to chase her away
+from the approaching doom. But he was just too late. As he jumped, the
+big frog sprang, and a long, darting, cleft tongue clutched the busy
+fly, dragging her down. The frog disappeared with his prize,--to come
+to the surface again at the edge of a lily-pad, a few feet off, and
+blink his goggle-eyes in satisfaction. He had avenged (though about
+that he cared as little as he knew) the lives of a thousand tadpoles.
+
+
+
+
+The Alien of the Wild
+
+
+A full day's tramp back from the settlement, on the edge of a
+water-meadow beside the lonely Quah-Davic, stood the old woodsman's
+cabin. Beside it he had built a snug log-barn, stored with hay from
+the wild meadow. The hay he had made that August, being smitten with a
+desire for some touch of the civilization to which as a whole he could
+not reconcile himself. Then, with a still enthusiasm, he had built his
+barn, chinking its crevices scrupulously with moss and mud. He had
+resolved to have a cow. The dream that gave new zest to all his waking
+hours was the fashioning of a little farm in this sunny, sheltered
+space about his cabin. He had grown somewhat weary of living by trap
+and snare and gun, hunting down the wild creatures whom he had come to
+regard, through lapse of the long, solitary years by the Quah-Davic,
+as in some sense comrade and kin to him.
+
+It was late autumn, and the asters fading out like smoke along the
+river edges, when the barn was finished and the hay safe stored
+therein. Then the old woodsman journeyed out to the settlement to buy
+his cow. He found one exactly to his whimsical liking,--a small, dark
+red, long-horned scrub, with a look in her big, liquid eyes that made
+him feel she would know how to take care of herself in the perilous
+wilds. He equipped her with the most sonorous and far-sounding bell he
+could find in all the settlement. Then proudly he led her away to her
+new domain in the wilderness.
+
+When the long-horned little cow had been salted and foddered in the
+new barn, and when her liquid eyes had taken in the surroundings of
+the sunny little meadow and cabin by the lonely Quah-Davic, she was
+well enough content, and the mellow _tunk-a-tonk, tank tonk_ of her
+bell was sounded never out of ear-shot from the cabin. The meadow and
+the nearest fringes of the woods were range enough for her. Of the
+perils that might lurk in the further depths she had a wary
+apprehension. And the old woodsman, busy grubbing out a narrow cellar
+under his cabin, was happy in his purchase. The _tunk-a-tonk_ of the
+mellow bell was sweetest music in his ears as he worked.
+
+Now it chanced that that autumn was one of unusual drought. In the
+channel of the Quah-Davic rocks appeared which the old woodsman had
+never seen before. The leaves fell early, before half their wonted
+gamut of colour was run through. They wore a livery of pallid
+tones--rusty-reds, cloudy light violets, grayish thin golds, ethereal
+russets--under a dry, pale sky. The only solid, substantial colouring
+was that of the enduring hemlocks and the sombre, serried firs. Then
+there came a mistiness in the air, making the noonday sun red and
+unradiant And the woodsman knew that there were forest fires somewhere
+up the wind.
+
+A little anxious, he studied the signs minutely, and concluded that,
+the wind being light, the fires were too far distant to endanger the
+Quah-Davic region. Thereupon he decided to make a hurried trip to the
+settlement for a sack of middlings and other supplies, planning to
+return by night, making the round trip within the twenty-four hours in
+order that the little red cow should not miss more than one milking.
+
+On the afternoon of the woodsman's going, however, the wind freshened
+into a gale, and the fires which had been eating leisurely way through
+the forest were blown into sudden fury. That same evening a hurricane
+of flame swept down upon the lonely cabin and the little wild meadow,
+cutting a mile-wide swath through the woods, jumping the Quah-Davic,
+and roaring on to the north. It was days before the woodsman could get
+back along the smoking, smouldering trail, through black, fallen
+trunks and dead roots which still held the persistent fire in their
+hearts. Of cabin and barn, of course, there was nothing left at all,
+save the half-dug cellar and the half-crumbled chimney. Sick at heart
+and very lonely, he returned to the settlement, and took up his new
+abode on a half-reclaimed farm on the outskirts, just where the tilth
+and the wilderness held each other at bay.
+
+The red cow, meanwhile, being shrewd and alert, had escaped the
+conflagration. She had taken alarm early, having seen a fire in the
+woods once before and conceived an appreciation of its powers. Instead
+of flying straight before it, and being inevitably overtaken, she ran
+at once to the river and galloped madly down the shallow margin.
+Before the flames were actually upon her, she was beyond the zone of
+their fury. But she felt the withering blast of them, and their
+appalling roar was in her ears. With starting eyes and wide,
+palpitating nostrils, she ran on and on, and stopped only when she
+sank exhausted in a rude cove. There she lay with panting sides and
+watched far behind her the wide red arc of terror drawn across the
+sky.
+
+The next day she wandered some miles farther down the Quah-Davic, till
+she came to a neighbourhood where the water-meadows were strung
+thickly along the stream and where the pasturage, though now dry and
+untasty, was abundant. Back from the water-meadows was a region of low
+hills covered with a second growth of young birches and poplars. Among
+the hills were ravines thick with hemlock and spruce. Here she
+established herself, and at night, either because she missed the
+narrow quarters of her stable, or because some wild instinct within
+her led her to adapt herself quickly to the ways of the wild kindred,
+she would make her lair in the deepest and most sheltered of the
+ravines, where a peculiarly dense hemlock veiled the front of an
+overhanging rock. This retreat was almost as snug as her old stable;
+and, lying down with her long horns toward the opening, she felt
+comparatively secure. As a matter of fact, though all these woods of
+the Quah-Davic were populous with the furtive folk, the little red cow
+saw few signs of life. She was surrounded, wherever she moved, by a
+wide ring of resentful solitude. The inexplicable _tunk-a-tonk,
+tunk, tonk_ of her deep-throated bell was disquieting to all the
+forest kindred; and the least move of her head at night was enough to
+keep the most interested prowler at a distance from the lair behind
+the hemlock. There was not a bear, a wolf, or a panther on the
+Quah-Davic (there was but a single pair of panthers, indeed, within a
+radius of fifty miles!) that cared to investigate the fighting
+qualities of this keen-horned red creature with the inexplicable
+voice.
+
+Till the snow fell deep, covering the dry grass on the meadows, the
+little cow throve well enough. But when the northern winter had fairly
+settled in, and the great white stillness lay like sleep upon the
+ancient wood, and the fir-trees, with their cloaking of snow, were so
+many spires and domes and pinnacles of glittering marble under the icy
+sunlight, then the wanderer would have starved if she had not chanced
+to be both resourceful and indomitable. From her lair under the
+hemlock, which was sheltered from all winds, her deeply trodden trail
+led both to the meadows and the birchen hill-slopes. She could paw her
+way down to the deep-buried grasses; but it took so much digging to
+uncover a few poor and unsatisfying mouthfuls that she could never
+have kept herself alive in this fashion. Being adaptable, however, she
+soon accustomed herself to browsing on the slimmest of the birch and
+poplar twigs, and so, having proved herself one of the fittest, she
+survived. When the late, reluctant spring brought the first green of
+sprouting grasses to the meadows of the Quah-Davic, it found the red
+cow a mere bag of bones, indeed, but still alive, and still presenting
+an undaunted pair of horns to a still distrusted world.
+
+Into this unfriendly world, when the painted trilliums and the purple
+wake-robins were dotting every half-exposed glade, was born a sturdy
+bull-calf. His sire was a handsome black half-breed Durham which had
+been brought into the settlement the previous summer for the
+improvement of the scrubby backwoods stock. The calf was jet-black in
+colour. As he grew, he soon began to show hints of his sire's broad
+forehead and massive fore-quarters. He had his mother's large,
+half-wild, discriminating eyes; and his legs, soon throwing off the
+straddling awkwardness of calfhood, developed his mother's almost
+deer-like activity.
+
+The summer passed uneventfully for the pair of aliens in the
+wilderness. With abundant pasturage on the Quah-Davic water-meadows,
+they had no occasion to wander into the perils of the deep wood; and
+the little red cow had none of that prevision of wild mothers, which
+leads them to instruct their young in the two great vital points of
+woodcraft,--the procuring of food and the avoiding of enemies. She
+herself knew little woodcraft save what she and the calf were
+absorbing together, unconsciously, day by day. For the time they
+needed none, their food being all about them, their enemies kept at
+bay by the ceaseless _tunk-a-tonk_ of the mellow bell. Thus it came
+about that to the black bull-calf the wilderness seemed almost empty
+of life, save for the birds, the insects, the squirrels, and the fish
+leaping in the pool. To all these the bell was a matter of
+indifference.
+
+Once only, late in the autumn, did he get a glimpse of the old
+Quah-Davic panther. He and his mother were lying in the sun by the
+meadow's edge, comfortably chewing the cud, when the long, tawny
+beast, following their trail with more curiosity than hunger, came
+upon them suddenly, and stopped short about twenty paces distant. The
+little red cow, recognizing the most dangerous of all her possible
+enemies, had sprung to her feet with a bellow and lowered her defiant
+horns. Thereupon, the panther had slunk off with a whipped look and a
+drooping tail; and the little black bull conceived a poor opinion of
+panthers. But it was the sudden _tonk-tonking_ of the bell, not the
+challenge of his redoubtable mother, that had put the fierce-eyed
+prowler to flight.
+
+It was much the same with the bears, who were numerous about the
+Quah-Davic. They regarded the noisy bell with hatred and invincible
+suspicion. But for that, they would probably have put the red cow's
+horns to the test, and in all likelihood the career of the lonely
+alien would have come to an end ere the snow fell. As it was, however,
+the black bull-calf never saw a bear in any attitude save that of
+sulkily slinking away from his mother's neighbourhood; and therefore,
+in that first summer of his life, he conceived a very dangerous
+contempt for bears. As for the lynxes,--those soundless-footed, gray
+shadows of the wild,--neither he nor his mother ever saw them, so
+fearful were they of the voice of the bell. But their screeches and
+harsh caterwaulings often filled his heart with wonder. Fear he had as
+yet had no occasion to learn; and therefore he had little real part in
+the ever-watchful life of the wilderness.
+
+The next winter was a hard one for all the beasts of the Quah-Davic;
+and, ere it went by, the lair under the hemlocks was surrounded by
+many lynx tracks. But to neither red cow nor black calf did tracks
+carry much significance, and they had no thought for the perils that
+begirt them. Once, indeed, even the two panthers came, and turned upon
+them pale, bright, evil eyes. But they did not come very near. The cow
+shook her horns at them defiantly; and the calf shook his broadening,
+curly forehead at them; and wild were the clamours of the vigilant
+bell. The hearts of the hunting beasts turned to water at these
+incomprehensible voices. In their chagrin they shifted their range
+farther east; and for several years they came no more to the
+water-meadows of the Quah-Davic.
+
+Late in the following summer, when the fireweed was beginning to
+crimson the open spaces on the hillside, fate came to the
+water-meadows in a form which the bell was powerless to avert. An
+Indian, paddling down the Quah-Davic to the sea, caught sight of the
+red cow drinking by the waterside. He knew there was no settlement
+within leagues. He knew the cow was a stray, and therefore no man's
+property. He knew he wanted fresh meat, to say nothing of cowhide for
+moccasins and thongs. Up went his big smooth-bore muzzle-loader. There
+was a deafening, clattering report, unlike the smart detonation of a
+rifle. The little red cow fell on her knees, with a cough and a wild
+clamour of the bell, then rolled over in the shallow, shimmering
+water. With a whoop of exultation, the Indian thrust ashore; and, as
+he did so, the black yearling, taught terror at last by the report and
+by the human voice, broke from his covert in a willow thicket and
+dashed wildly into the woods.
+
+When he came back, hours later, the Indian had vanished, and, with
+that strident bellow of his, from which the calf-bleat was not yet
+quite gone, he trotted down the bank to look for his mother. But the
+smell of fresh blood, and the red spectacle which he saw on the
+pebbles of the river-beach, struck a new and madder terror into his
+heart. With stiffly uplifted tail and staring eyes, he dashed away
+again into the woods.
+
+From that day he never again went near that particular meadow;
+neither, though for days he called to her in his loneliness, did he
+search any more for the mother who had so suddenly disappeared out of
+his life. Standing on the edge of a bluff, in the fading sunset, he
+would thrust his head and neck out straight and bellow his sonorous
+appeal. Then he would stop and listen long for an answer. And as he
+called, evening after evening in vain, a deeper, surer tone came into
+his voice, a more self-reliant, masterful look into the lonely but
+fearless eyes with which he surveyed the solitude.
+
+Again came autumn to the Quah-Davic, with the pale blue smoke of
+asters along the meadow-ledges, the pale gold glimmer of birches on
+the slopes, and the wax-vermilion bunches of the rowan-berries
+reflected in each brown pool. By this time the black bull was of the
+stature of a well-grown two-year-old, massive in the shoulder, lean
+and fine in limb and flank, with a cushion of dense, close, inky curls
+between his horns. The horns themselves--very short, thick,
+keen-pointed spikes of horns--were not set forward, but stood out
+absolutely straight on either side of his broad black head. Young
+though he was, he was an ominous figure to all the furtive eyes that
+watched him, as he stood and bellowed from his bluff in the fading
+sunset.
+
+[Illustration: "BUT THEY DID NOT COME VERY NEAR."]
+
+About this time it was that the young bull began to find the solitude
+more populous. Since the voice of the bronze bell was hushed, the wild
+creatures were no longer held aloof. Hitherto the red squirrels and
+the indifferent, arrogant porcupines were the only animals he had
+noticed. But now he saw an occasional slim and snaky mink at its
+fishing; or a red fox stealing down upon the duck asleep in the lily
+patch; or a weasel craftily trailing one of the brown hares which
+had of a sudden grown so numerous. All these strange little beasts
+excited his curiosity. At first he would sniff, and snort, and
+approach to investigate, which would lead, of course, to an immediate
+and discouraging disappearance. Only the fox was too haughty to
+disappear. He would maintain a judicious distance, but otherwise
+seemed to regard the inquisitive bull with utter unconcern. This
+unconcern, together with the musky smell of the bush-tailed red
+stranger, at last so aggravated the bull that he charged furiously
+again and again. But the fox eluded him with mocking ease, till the
+bull at last sulkily ignored him.
+
+The bull's next important acquaintance was the lynx. He was lying
+under a scarlet maple, chewing his cud, and lazily watching a rabbit
+scratching its ears some dozen paces distant. Suddenly a soundless
+gray shadow shot from a thicket and dropped upon the rabbit. There was
+a squeak, a feeble scuffle; and then a big lynx, setting the claws of
+one paw into the prey, turned with a snarl and eyed venomously the
+still, dark form under the maple. This seemed like a challenge. With a
+mixture of curiosity and indignation, the young bull got up, grunted,
+pawed the earth once or twice by way of ceremony, and emerged to the
+encounter. But the lynx had no stomach to meet the charge of that
+sturdy front. He snatched up the rabbit in his jaws and bounded away
+into the underbrush.
+
+A few days later, as the bull again lay under the scarlet maple and
+looked out contemplatively over his yellow autumn world, a large bear
+lumbered past, taking his own well-beaten trail to the waterside. The
+bull lurched to his feet, and stood on guard, for this was a
+formidable-looking stranger. But the bear, fed fat with autumn
+berries, was at peace with all the world. He gave the black bull a
+shrewd glance out of his little cunning eyes, and paid no further
+attention; and the bull, seeing no incentive to a quarrel, snorted
+doubtfully and lay down again. After this he saw several more bears,
+but, being well fed and lazy, they made no effort to molest him. Then,
+one unfortunate day, as he came up dripping from his favourite pool,
+he met one face to face.
+
+The bear was surprised, and halted. He half-settled back upon his
+haunches, as if to turn aside and yield the path. Then he thought
+better of it and held his ground, being at the moment good-natured
+enough, but careful of his dignity, as a bear is apt to be. The young
+bull, however, was enraged at this obstinate intrusion upon his trail.
+He was unlucky enough to remember how often he had seen bears slink
+off to avoid his mother's charge. With an angry bellow, he lifted his
+tail, lowered his head, and launched himself upon the intruder.
+
+The bear, poising himself upon three legs, gracefully and lightly
+avoided the attack, and at the same instant delivered a terrific
+buffet upon the young bull's neck. The blow struck low, where the
+muscles were corded and massive, or the neck would have been broken.
+As it was, the bull went staggering to his knees at one side of the
+trail, the blood spurting from his wounds. In that moment he realized
+that he was not yet a match for a full-grown bear. Smarting with pain
+and wrath, he rushed on up the trail, and hid himself in the old lair
+under the hemlock. When again, some days later, he met another bear,
+he made haste to yield the right of way.
+
+In the wild, as in the world, to be once beaten is to invite the fist
+of fate. While the young bull's wounds were still red and raw, there
+came a big-antlered, high-shouldered bull-moose to the bluff
+overlooking the Quah-Davic. The moose was surprised at sight of the
+short-legged, black animal on the bluff. But it was rutting season,
+and his surprise soon gave way to indignation. The black bull, whose
+careless eyes had not yet noticed the visitor, began to bellow as was
+his evening wont. The moose responded with a hoarse, bleating roar,
+thrashed the bushes defiantly with his antlers, and shambled up to the
+attack. The bull, astonished and outraged, stood his ground boldly,
+and at the first charge got in a daunting blow between the enemy's
+antlers. But he was not yet strong enough or heavy enough to hold so
+tough an antagonist, and, after a very few minutes of fierce grunting
+and pushing, he was thrust clear over the bank and sent rolling down
+into the river. All next day he sulked, but when night came he
+returned to the bluff, his eyes red with rage. He found the moose
+before him, but not alone. A tall, dingy-coloured, antlerless cow was
+there, fondling her mate's neck and ears with her long, flexible
+muzzle. This sight gave the young bull a new and uncomprehended fury,
+under the impulse of which he would have attacked an elephant. But the
+moose, thus interrupted in his wooing, was far more dangerous than he
+had been the night before. Like a whirlwind of devastation he rushed
+to meet the intruder; and the young bull was hopelessly overmatched.
+Within five minutes he was gored, beaten down, pounded from the field,
+and driven bellowing through the bushes. For several weeks he hardly
+showed himself in the open meadows, but lurked all day in the
+thickets, nursing his wounds and his humiliation.
+
+The next winter set in early and severe, driving the drowsy bears into
+their winter quarters and their long, snow-comforted sleep before they
+had time to get hungry and dangerous. The lynxes, no longer mystified
+by the voice of the bell, came prowling about the lair beneath the
+hemlock, but the sullen front and angry, lonely eyes of the black bull
+held them in awe. Not even in the worst of the cold, when they had
+taken to hunting together in a loosely organized pack, did they dare
+to trouble the bull. When spring came, it found him a big, burly
+three-year-old, his temper beginning to sour with an unhappiness which
+he did not understand; and by the time the bears came hungry from
+their winter sleep he was quite too formidable to be meddled with.
+Stung by humiliating memories, he attacked with fury every bear he
+saw; and they soon learned to give him a wide berth.
+
+As the summer wore along, his loneliness grew more bitter and
+distracting. He would spend sometimes a full hour upon the bluff, when
+the yellow day was fading into dusk, bellowing his calls across the
+stillness, and waiting for he knew not what reply. He was now a huge
+and daunting figure. When, at last, came round again the full October
+moon, and the spirit of mating went abroad on the crisp air, he grew
+more restless than ever. Then, one night, on a clear white stretch of
+sand some distance down the shore, he saw a cow-moose standing close
+by the water. He was much interested, and half unconsciously began to
+move in her direction. When she stretched out her long, ungainly head
+and uttered her harsh call, he answered with a soft, caressing bellow.
+But at almost the same instant her call was answered by another and a
+very different voice; and a tall bull-moose strode out arrogantly upon
+the sand.
+
+The black bull's heart swelled with wrath and longing. With a roar he
+charged down from the bluff; and the moose, diverted from his wooing,
+turned to meet the assault. But he was no match for this dreadful
+black bulk that descended upon him with the resistlessness of doom. He
+went down at the first crash, a pathetic sprawl of long limbs and
+long, ineffective, beautiful antlers; and barely escaping with his
+life, he fled away into the thickets. Then, satisfied with his
+victory, the black bull lifted his head and turned to the watching
+cow.
+
+The cow, after the manner of her kind appreciating a conqueror,
+awaited somewhat doubtfully his approach. But when he was within a
+few feet of her, wonder and interest gave way to terror. His bulk, his
+blackness, his square, mighty head, his big, blazing eyes, and short,
+thick muzzle filled her with repulsion and amazement. His voice, too,
+though unmistakably caressing and persuasive, was too daunting in its
+strangeness. With a wild snort, she turned and fled into the woods
+with a speed that he could not hope to match.
+
+After this experience the black bull's loneliness grew almost
+intolerable, and his temper so bad that he would go raging up and down
+the woods in search of bears to chase. The winter cooled him down
+somewhat, and in the spring his temper was not so raw. But he was now
+troubled with a spirit of wandering, and kept ranging the woods in
+every direction, only returning to the young green of the water-meadow
+once or twice a day.
+
+One afternoon, however, there came a change. He was browsing irritably
+near the bank when he heard voices that made him look up sharply. A
+canoe was passing up-stream, poled by two men. It passed slowly,
+surging against the current. As he looked at the men, a dreadful
+memory stirred within him. He recalled the loud report which had
+driven him mad with fear on that day when the red cow disappeared. He
+remembered an appalling sight on the beach of that lower meadow which
+he had never visited since. His eyes went red. With a grunt of fury,
+he thundered down the bank and out knee-deep into the current.
+
+The men in the canoe were astonished, and hastily pushed over toward
+the other shore. The one in the bow laid down his pole and reached
+back for his rifle. But the man in the stern intervened.
+
+"What's the good o' shootin' him?" said he. "He can't git at us here,
+an' we ain't a-wantin' for grub. Let him be!"
+
+"That's so!" said the other, picking up his pole again. "But ain't he
+handsome? An' mad, eh? How do you suppose he come here, anyways?"
+
+"Strayed!" grunted the man in the stern, bending to his pole as the
+canoe met a heavier rush of the current.
+
+As the two voyagers pursued their strenuous way up-stream, rock and
+eddy and "rip" consuming all their attention, the furious bull kept
+abreast of them along the shore, splashing in the shallows and
+bellowing his challenge, till at length a deep insetting of the
+current compelled him to mount the bank, along which he continued his
+vain pursuit for several miles. At last a stretch of dense swamp
+headed him off, and the canoe vanished from his sight.
+
+He was now in unknown territory, miles away from his meadows. His rage
+against the men had all died out, but some faint stirring of inherited
+instincts impelled him to follow for companionship. Had they suddenly
+reappeared, close at hand, doubtless his rage would have burst forth
+anew. But when they were gone, he had to follow. A dim intuition told
+him that where they were going dwelt some kind of relief for his
+loneliness. He skirted the swamp, rejoined the river, and kept slowly
+on his way up-stream, pasturing as he went. He had turned his back for
+ever on the water-meadows and the life of which he could not be a
+part, and was off on the quest for that unknown which he felt to be
+his own.
+
+After two days of leisurely journeying he passed through a belt of
+burnt lands, and had his curiosity mildly excited by a blackened
+chimney rising from a heap of ruins near the water. Through this burnt
+land he travelled swiftly; and about dawn of the fourth day of his
+quest he came out upon the pasture-lands skirting the rear of the
+settlement.
+
+Here he found a rude but strong snake fence, at which he sniffed with
+wonder. Then, beyond the fence, a creature shaped something like
+himself, but red and white in colour, got up from among the misty
+hillocks and stared at him. But for the colour, he might have thought
+it was the little red mother who had vanished two years before. _This_
+was what he had come for. This was the object of his quest. Two or
+three other cows, and some young steers, presently arose and fell to
+feeding. He lowed to them softly through the rails, and they eyed him
+with amiable interest. With a burst of joy, he reared his bulk against
+the fence, bore it down, trotted in confidently, and took command of
+the little herd. There was no protesting. Cows and steers alike
+recognized at once the right of this dominant black stranger to rule;
+and soon he fell to pasturing among them quietly, his heart healed at
+last of its loneliness.
+
+The two canoemen, meanwhile, on their arrival at the settlement, had
+told of their encounter with the wild black bull. As they described
+the adventure to a little circle gathered in the back room of the
+grocery, the old woodsman whose cabin had been burned in the great
+fires was one of their most interested listeners.
+
+[Illustration: "A LORDLY BLACK BEAST IN COMMAND OF THE HERD."]
+
+"I'll bet he's mine! I'll bet he's out of the little red cow I bought
+just afore the fire!" he exclaimed at last. And his theory, duly
+expounded, met with general credence.
+
+When, therefore, a couple of mornings later, the old woodsman, on
+going to the pasture to fetch in his cows for the milking, found a
+lordly black beast in command of the herd, he understood at once.
+Fortunately for him, he understood so well that he took certain
+precautions, instead of walking straight into the middle of the
+pasture as usual to get the cows. With judgment born of intuitive
+understanding, he let down the pasture bars unnoticed, then went over
+near the stable door and called. At the familiar summons the cows
+lifted their heads, and came filing lazily toward the open bars, which
+lay a little to one side of the direct way to the house. But the black
+bull was of another mind. He saw the man; and straight his eyes saw
+red. He pawed the earth, roared angrily, gave one uncertain glance at
+the cows sauntering away from him, and then charged straight for the
+unknown foe. The works of man might, indeed, have some strange
+inherited attraction for him; but man, the individual, he hated with
+destructive hate.
+
+The woodsman noticed that the bull was not heading for the bars.
+
+"The fence'll stop him!" he said to himself, confidently.
+
+But not so. The wild bull had no conception of the sanctity and
+authority of fences. The stout rails went down before him like
+corn-stalks. The old woodsman shook his head deprecatingly, stepped
+into the stable, and latched the door.
+
+The bull, much puzzled at the unaccountable disappearance of his foe,
+stopped for a moment, snorting, then dashed around the barn to see if
+the enemy were hiding on the other side. Twice he circled it, his rage
+increasing instead of diminishing; and then he caught sight of the
+man's face eyeing him calmly through the little square stable window.
+
+He stopped again to paw the earth, bellowing his heavy challenge; and
+the old woodsman wondered what to do. He wanted the splendid black
+bull for his little herd, but he was beginning to have serious
+misgivings. Moreover, he wanted to get into the house. He threw open
+the stable door; and as the bull dashed in he scrambled through a
+manger, swung himself into the loft, dropped from the hay window, and
+darted for the house at top speed. He had had an idea of shutting the
+stable door, and imprisoning his unmanageable visitor; but the bull
+was too quick for him. He got the heavy kitchen door slammed to just
+in time. Thoughtfully he rubbed his grizzled chin as he glanced out
+and saw the black beast raging up and down before the window.
+
+"Can't do nothin' with that, I'm afeared!" he muttered.
+
+Just then the bull stopped his ravings, turned his head, and stared
+away up the road. There came a clamour of gay young voices; and the
+old woodsman, following the beast's eyes, saw a little group of
+children approaching on their way to school. Among them he noticed a
+girl in a bright scarlet waist. This the bull noted also. He forgot
+his enemy in the house. He grunted savagely, gave his tail a vicious
+twist, and trotted down the lane toward the road.
+
+The old woodsman saw that the time had come for prompt action. He
+snatched up his loaded rifle from the corner where it stood always
+ready, ran out upon the steps, and shouted at the bull. The great
+black animal stopped and looked around, mumbling deep in his throat.
+He wheeled half-about to return to the old enemy. Then he paused
+irresolutely and eyed the gay bevy of children. Which foe should he
+obliterate first?
+
+While he hesitated, the rifle rang out, and the heavy bullet found
+its mark just back of his fore-shoulder. He sank forward upon his
+outstretched muzzle and his knees, his tail stiffening straight up,
+and quivering. Then he rolled over on his side.
+
+The old woodsman strode down the lane, and stood over the great black
+form. His shrewd gray eyes were filled with regret and sympathetic
+comprehension.
+
+"Spiled!" said he. "Clean spiled all 'round! The woods, they wa'n't no
+place fer you, so ye had to quit 'em. But they spiled you fer the
+habitations o' man. It's a born stranger and an alien you was, an'
+there wa'n't no place fer ye neither here nor there!"
+
+
+
+
+The Silver Frost
+
+
+In the heart of an almost impenetrable thicket of young firs the
+rabbit had crouched all night, sometimes sleeping the light sleep of
+the woodsfolk, sometimes listening to the swish of the winter rain on
+his roof of branches. In spite of the storm, he had been warm and dry
+all night, only a big drop coming through from time to time to make
+him shift his couch. Hearing the rain, he was vaguely puzzled because
+he felt so little of it; for he knew that even the densest of fir
+thickets were not proof against a prolonged and steady rainfall. He
+was glad to profit, however, by a phenomenon which he could not
+comprehend, so he lay close, and restrained his impatient appetite,
+and kept his white fur dry and warmly fluffy. Had the night been fine,
+he would have been leaping gaily hither and thither over the deep,
+midwinter snow, and browsing on the tender, aromatic shoots of the
+young birches which dotted the little woodland valley.
+
+Early in the night, soon after the rain began, the lower air had
+turned cold, and every wet branch and twig had found itself on a
+sudden encased with ice. Meanwhile, in the upper dark a warm and
+moisture-laden current had kept drifting up from the southwest, and
+ceaselessly spilling its burden on the hushed world. Had this fine
+rain been less warm, or had the wrapping of cold air next to the earth
+been deeper, the drops would have frozen in their descent, and fallen
+as sleet; but as it was, they waited till they fell, and then froze
+instantly. Thus every limb, and branch, and twig, and every delicate,
+perennial frondage of fir and hemlock, gathered an ever-increasing
+adornment of clearest crystal. And thus it was that the rabbit in the
+fir thicket slept dry through the storm, the branches above him having
+been transformed into a roof of ice.
+
+The rain had stopped a little before dawn, and just as the sunrise
+colours began to spread down the valley, the rabbit came hopping out
+from his snug retreat. He stopped in surprise, sat up, and waved his
+long ears to and fro, while his large, bulging eyes surveyed the world
+in wonder. He was a young rabbit, born the spring before, and his
+world had changed in the night to something he had never dreamed of.
+He hopped back beneath the firs for a moment, and sniffed about to
+reassure himself, then came out and stared again.
+
+The valley was an open space in the woods, with wooded hills all about
+it except on the east, where it stretched away toward the fields and
+scattered farmsteads of the settlement. It had once been cleared, but
+young seedlings of birch and poplar and maple, with willows along the
+course of a hidden stream, had been suffered to partly reclaim it.
+Here and there a group of dark fir or hemlock stood out among the
+slenderer saplings. Now, all this valley was transmuted to crystal.
+The soft white surface of the snow was overlaid with a sheet of
+transparent silver, flashing white light and cold but coloured fire.
+Every bush and tree was a miracle of frostwork, lavish, inexhaustible,
+infinitely varied, and of an unspeakable purity wherever it failed to
+catch the young light. But that light, spreading pink and yellow and
+rose from the growing radiance upon the eastern horizon, seemed to
+penetrate everywhere, reflected and re-reflected from innumerable
+facets; and every ray seemed to come from the live heart of a jewel.
+Each icy tree and bush emitted thin threadlike flames, high and aerial
+in tone, but of a piercing intensity. It was as if the quiet valley
+had been flooded all at once with dust of emerald and opal, of
+sapphire and amethyst and diamond. And as the light grew the miracle
+changed slowly, one keen gleam dying out as another flashed into life.
+
+Having convinced himself that this dazzling and mysterious world was
+really the world he knew, the rabbit thought no more about it, but
+went leaping gaily over the radiant crust (which was just strong
+enough to support him) toward some young birches, where he proposed to
+nibble a breakfast. As he went, suddenly a curious sound just under
+his feet made him jump wildly aside. Trembling, but consumed with
+curiosity, he stared down at the glassy surface. In a moment the sound
+was repeated. It was a sharp, impatient tapping against the under side
+of the crust. To the rabbit's ears the sound conveyed no threat, so he
+hopped nearer to investigate. What he saw beneath the clear shell of
+ice was a cock-partridge, his wings half-spread, his head thrown back
+in the struggle to break from his snowy grave. His curiosity
+satisfied, the rabbit bounded away again, and fell to nibbling the
+young birch-twigs. Of small concern to him was the doom of the
+imprisoned bird.
+
+At dusk of the preceding evening, when the cock-partridge went to
+roost, there had been no suggestion of rain, but a bitter air from
+the northwest searching through the woods. The wise old bird, finding
+cold comfort on his perch, had bethought him of a trick which many a
+time before had served his turn. In the open, where the snow was deep,
+he had rocketed down, head foremost, with such force that he was
+fairly buried in the light, feathery mass. A little kicking, a little
+awkward burrowing, and he had worked his way to a depth of perhaps two
+feet. Turning about and lifting his wings gently, he had made himself
+a snug nest, where neither wind nor cold could reach him, and where
+there was small likelihood that any night marauder would smell him
+out. Here in the fluffy stillness he got no word of the change of the
+wind, no hint of the soft rain sifting over him. When he woke and
+started to revisit the outer world, he found a wall of glass above
+him, which his sturdy beak could not break through. A fate that
+overtakes many of his kindred had caught him unawares.
+
+While the partridge was resting after his struggles with the
+inexorable ice, through which he could look out dimly on the jewelled
+world of freedom, a red fox appeared on the edge of the wood. His
+crafty eyes fell on the rabbit, and crouching flat, he crept
+noiselessly forward. But the crust, strong enough to support the
+rabbit, was not strong enough to quite support the heavier animal.
+With light, crackling sound one foot broke through, and the rabbit,
+with a frightened glance at the most dreaded of all his foes, went
+sailing away in long bounds. Soundless though his padded footfalls
+were, his flight was accompanied and heralded by a crisp rattling of
+icicles as the frozen twigs snapped at his passing.
+
+Laboriously the fox followed, breaking through at every other stride,
+but hungry and obstinate, and unwilling to acknowledge himself
+baffled. Halfway across the valley, however, he gave up. After pausing
+a moment to consider, he retraced his steps, having apparently had
+some scheme in mind when diverted by the sight of the rabbit. The
+latter, being young and properly harebrained, and aware of his present
+advantage, now came back by a great circle, and fell to browsing again
+on the birch-twigs. As he fed, however, he kept a sharp eye on the
+enemy.
+
+The fox, meanwhile, was growing more and more exasperated. He was
+happening upon every weak spot in the crust, and floundering at almost
+every step. All at once, as the surface broke there came to his
+nostrils the familiar smell of a partridge. It was a fresh scent. The
+fox forgot his indignation. He poked his narrow snout into the snow,
+sniffed sharply, and began to dig with all his might.
+
+Now it chanced that the imprisoned bird, in his search for an exit,
+had worked away from the spot where he had slept. The fox was puzzled.
+That alluring scent was all about him, and most tantalizingly fresh.
+He understood this partridge trick, and had several times made his
+knowledge supply him with a meal. But hitherto he had always found the
+partridge asleep; and he had no idea what the bird would do in such a
+case as the present. He dug furiously in one direction, then fiercely
+in another, but all in vain. Then he lifted his head, panting, his
+pointed ears and ruddy face grotesquely patched with snow. At this
+moment a great puff of the white powder was flapped into his eyes, a
+feathery dark body jumped up from under his very nose, and the crafty
+old bird went whirring off triumphantly to the nearest tree. With his
+tongue hanging out, the fox stared foolishly after him, then slunk
+away into the woods. And the white rabbit, nibbling at his
+birch-twigs, was left in undisputed possession of the scintillating
+rainbow world.
+
+
+
+
+By the Winter Tide
+
+
+Behind the long, slow-winding barrier of the dyke the marshes of
+Tantramar lay secure, mile on mile of blue-white radiance under the
+unclouded moon. Outside the dyke it was different. Mile on mile of
+tumbled, mud-stained ice-cakes, strewn thickly over the Tantramar
+flats, waited motionless under the moon for the incoming tide. Twice
+in each day the far-wandering tide of Fundy would come in, to lift,
+and toss, and grind, and roll the ice-cakes, then return again to its
+deep channels; and with every tide certain of the floes would go forth
+to be lost in the open sea, while the rest would sink back to their
+tumbled stillness on the mud. Just now the flood was coming in. From
+all along the outer fringes of the flats came a hoarse, desolate roar;
+and in the steady light the edges of the ice-field began to turn and
+flash, the strange motion creeping gradually inland toward that
+impassive bulwark of the dyke. Had it been daylight, the chaotic
+ice-field would have shown small beauty, every wave-beaten floe being
+soiled and streaked with rust-coloured Tantramar mud. But under the
+transfiguring touch of the moon the unsightly levels changed to plains
+of infinite mystery--expanses of shattered, white granite, as it were,
+fretted and scrawled with blackness--reaches of loneliness older than
+time. So well is the mask of eternity assumed by the mutable moonlight
+and the ephemeral ice.
+
+Nearer and nearer across the waste drew the movement that marked the
+incoming flood. Then from over the dyke-top floated a noiseless,
+winnowing, sinister shape which seemed the very embodiment of the
+desolation. The great white owl of the north, driven down from his
+Arctic hunting-grounds by hunger, came questing over the ragged
+levels. His long, soft-feathered wings moved lightly as a ghost, and
+almost touched the ice-cakes now and then as his round, yellow eyes,
+savagely hard and brilliant, searched the dark crevices for prey. With
+his black beak, his black talons protruding from the mass of snowy
+feathers which swathed his legs, and the dark bars on his plumage, one
+might have fancied him a being just breathed into menacing and
+furtive life by the sorcery of the scene.
+
+Suddenly, with a motion almost as swift as light, the great owl
+swooped and struck. Swift as he was, however, this time he struck just
+too late. A spot of dark on the edge of an ice-cake vanished. It was a
+foraging muskrat who had seen the approaching doom in time and slipped
+into a deep and narrow crevice. Here, on the wet mud, he crouched
+trembling, while the baffled bird reached down for him with vainly
+clutching claws.
+
+On either side of the two ice-cakes which had given the muskrat
+refuge, was a space of open mud which he knew it would be death to
+cross. Each time those deadly black talons clutched at him, he
+flattened himself to the ground in panic; but there were several
+inches to spare between his throat and death. The owl glared down with
+fixed and flaming eyes, then gave up his useless efforts. But he
+showed no inclination to go away. He knew that the muskrat could not
+stay for ever down in that muddy crevice. So he perched himself bolt
+upright on the very edge, where he could keep secure watch upon his
+intended victim, while at the same time his wide, round eyes might
+detect any movement of life among the surrounding ice-cakes.
+
+The great flood-tides of Fundy, when once they have brimmed the steep
+channels and begun to invade the vast reaches of the flats, lose
+little time. When the baffled owl, hungry and obstinate, perched
+himself on the edge of the ice-cake to wait for the muskrat to come
+out, the roar of the incoming water and the line of tossing, gleaming
+floes were half a mile away. In about four minutes the fringe of
+tumult was not three hundred yards distant,--and at the same time the
+vanguards of the flood, thin, frothy rivulets of chill water, were
+trickling in through the crevice where the little prisoner crouched.
+As the water touched his feet, the muskrat took heart anew,
+anticipating a way of escape. As it deepened he stood upright,--and
+instantly the white destruction cruelly watching struck again. This
+time the muskrat felt those deadly talons graze the long, loose fur of
+his back; and again he cowered down, inviting the flood to cover him.
+As much at home under water as on dry land, he counted on easy escape
+when the tide came in.
+
+It happens, however, that the little kindreds of the wild are usually
+more wise in the general than in the particular. The furry prisoner at
+the bottom of the crevice knew about such regular phenomena as the
+tides. He knew, too, that presently there would be water enough for
+him to dive and swim beneath it, where his dreadful adversary could
+neither reach him nor detect him. What he did not take into account
+was the way the ice-cakes would grind and batter each other as soon as
+the tide was deep enough to float them. Now, submerged till his furry
+back and spiky tail were just even with the surface, his little, dark
+eyes glanced up with mingled defiance and appeal at the savage, yellow
+glare of the wide orbs staring down upon him. If only the water would
+come, he would be safe. For a moment his eyes turned longingly toward
+the dyke, and he thought of the narrow, safe hole, the long, ascending
+burrow, and the warm, soft-lined chamber which was his nest, far up in
+the heart of the dyke, high above the reach of the highest tides and
+hidden from all enemies. But here in the hostile water, with a cruel
+death hanging just above him, his valorous little heart ached with
+homesickness for that nest in the heart of the dyke; and though the
+water had no chill for his hardy blood, he shivered.
+
+Meanwhile, the long line of clamour was rushing steadily inland. The
+roar suddenly crashed into thunder on the prisoner's ears and a rush
+of water swept him up. The white owl spread his wings and balanced
+himself on tiptoe, as the ice-cake on which he was perching lurched
+and rolled. Through all the clamour his ears, miraculously keen beyond
+those of other birds, caught an agonized squeak from below. The
+jostling ice had nipped the muskrat's hind quarters.
+
+Though desperately hurt, so desperately that his strong hind legs were
+almost useless, the brave little animal was not swerved from his
+purpose. Straight from his prison, no longer now a refuge, he dived
+and swam for home through the loud uproar. But the muskrat's small
+forelegs are of little use in swimming, so much so that as a rule he
+carries them folded under his chin while in the water. Now, therefore,
+he was at a piteous disadvantage. His progress was slow, as in a
+nightmare,--such a nightmare as must often come to muskrats if their
+small, careless brains know how to dream. And in spite of his frantic
+efforts, he found that he could not hold himself down in the water. He
+kept rising toward the surface every other second.
+
+Balancing had by this time grown too difficult for the great, white
+owl, and he had softly lifted himself on hovering wings. But not for
+an instant had he forgotten the object of his hunt. What were floods
+and cataclysms to him in the face of his hunger? Swiftly his shining
+eyes searched the foamy, swirling water. Then, some ten feet away,
+beside a pitching floe, a furry back appeared for an instant. In that
+instant he swooped. The back had vanished,--but unerringly his talons
+struck beneath the surface--struck and gripped their prey. The next
+moment the wide, white wings beat upward heavily, and the muskrat was
+lifted from the water.
+
+As he rose into the air, though near blind with the anguish of that
+iron grip, the little victim writhed upward and bit furiously at his
+enemy's leg. His jaws got nothing but a bunch of fluffy feathers,
+which came away and floated down the moonlight air. Then the life sank
+out of his brain, and he hung limply; and the broad wings bore him
+inland over the dyke-top--straight over the warm and hidden nest where
+he had longed to be.
+
+
+
+
+The Rivals of Ringwaak
+
+I.
+
+
+A white flood, still and wonderful, the moonlight lay on the naked
+rampikes and dense thickets of Ringwaak Hill. Beneath its magic the
+very rocks, harsh bulks of granite, seemed almost afloat; and every
+branch, spray and leaf, swam liquidly. The rampikes, towering trunks
+of pine, fire-blasted and time-bleached, lifted lonely spires of
+silver over the enchanted solitude.
+
+Apparently, there was neither sound nor motion over all Ringwaak, or
+over the wide wilderness spread out below its ken. But along the
+secret trails, threading the thicket, and skirting the granite
+boulders, life went on with an intensity all the deeper and more
+stringent for the seal of silence laid upon it. The small, fugitive
+kindreds moved noiselessly about their affairs, foraging, mating,
+sometimes even playing, but ever watchful, a sleepless vigilance the
+price of each hour's breath; while even more furtive, but more
+intermittent in their watchfulness, the hunting and blood-loving
+kindreds followed the trails.
+
+Gliding swiftly from bush to rock, from rock to thicket, now for an
+instant clear and terrible in a patch of moonlight, now ghost-gray and
+still more terrible in the sharp-cut shadows, came a round-eyed,
+crouching shape. It was somewhere about the size of a large spaniel,
+but shorter in the body, and longer in the legs; and its hind legs, in
+particular, though kept partly gathered beneath the body, in readiness
+for a lightning spring, were so disproportionately long as to give a
+high, humped-up, rabbity look to the powerful hind quarters. This
+combined suggestion of the rabbit and the tiger was peculiarly
+daunting in its effect. The strange beast's head was round and
+cat-like, but with high, tufted ears, and a curious, back-brushed
+muffle of whiskers under the throat. Its eyes, wide and pale, shone
+with a cold ferocity and unconquerable wildness. Its legs, singularly
+large for the bulk of its body, and ending in broad, razor-clawed,
+furry pads of feet, would have seemed clumsy, but for the impression
+of tense steel springs and limitless power which they gave in every
+movement. In weight, this stealthy and terrifying figure would have
+gone perhaps forty pounds--but forty pounds of destroying energy and
+tireless swiftness.
+
+As he crept through a spruce thicket, his savage eyes turning from
+side to side, the lynx came upon a strange trail, and stopped short,
+crouching. His stub of a tail twitched, his ears flattened back
+angrily, his long, white fangs bared themselves in a soundless snarl.
+A green flame seemed to flicker in his eyes, as he subjected every
+bush, every stone, every stump within his view to the most piercing
+scrutiny. Detecting no hostile presence, he bent his attention to the
+strange trail, sniffing at it with minute consideration.
+
+The scent of the trail was that of a wildcat; but its size was too
+great for that of any wildcat this big lynx had ever known. Wildcats
+he viewed with utter scorn. For three years he had ruled all Ringwaak
+Hill; and no wildcat, in those three years, had dared to hunt upon his
+range. But this newcomer, with the wildcat smell, seemed about as big
+as three wildcats. The impression of its foot on a patch of moist
+mould was almost as large as that of the lynx himself--and the lynx
+well knew that the wildcats were a small-footed tribe. Like most of
+the hunting beasts, he was well-schooled in the lore of the trails,
+and all the signs were to him a clear speech. From the depth and
+definiteness of that footprint, he felt that both weight and strength
+had stamped it. His long claws protruded from their hidden sheaths, as
+he pondered the significance of this message from the unknown. Was the
+stranger a deliberate invader of his range, or a mere ignorant
+trespasser? And would he fight, or would he run? The angry lynx was
+determined to put these questions to the test with the least possible
+delay.
+
+The trail was comparatively fresh, and the lynx began to follow it,
+forgetful of his hunger and of the hunt on which he had set out. He
+moved now more warily than ever, crouching flat, gliding smoothly as a
+snake, and hoping to score the first point against his rival by
+catching him unawares. So noiselessly did he go, indeed, that a
+weasel, running hard upon the trail of a rabbit, actually brushed
+against him, to bound away in a paroxysm of fear and rush off in
+another direction, wondering how he had escaped those lightning claws.
+In fact the lynx, intent only upon the hunting of his unknown foe, was
+almost as astonished as the weasel, and quite unprepared to seize the
+sudden opportunity for a meal. He eyed the vanishing weasel malignly
+for a moment, then resumed his stealthy advance. A white-footed mouse,
+sitting up daintily at the door of her burrow, fell over backwards,
+and nearly died of fright, as the ghost-gray shape of doom sped up and
+passed. But the lynx had just then no mind for mice, and never saw
+her.
+
+The strange trail, for some hundreds of yards, kept carefully to the
+thickets and the shadows. In one place the marks of a scuffle, with a
+heap of speckled feathers and a pair of slim claws, showed that the
+intruder had captured and devoured an unwary partridge mothering her
+brood. At this evidence of poaching on his preserves, the big lynx's
+anger swelled hotly. He paused to sniff at the remnants, and then
+stole on with added caution. The blood of the victim was not yet dry,
+or even clotted, on the leaves.
+
+A little further on, the trail touched the foot of a clean-stemmed
+young maple. Here the trespasser had paused to stretch himself,
+setting his claws deep into the bark. These claw-marks the lynx
+appeared to take as a challenge or a defiance. Rearing himself against
+the tree, he stretched himself to his utmost. But his highest scratch
+was two inches below the mark of the stranger. This still further
+enraged him. Possibly, it might also have daunted him a little but for
+the fact that his own claw-marks were both deeper and wider apart
+than those of his rival.
+
+From the clawed tree, the trail now led to the very edge of the open
+and thence to the top of an overhanging rock, white and sharply
+chiseled in the moonlight. The lynx was just about to climb the rock,
+when there beneath it, in the revealing radiance, he saw a sight which
+flattened him in his tracks. The torn carcass of a young doe lay a few
+feet from the base of the rock; and on top of the prey, glaring savage
+challenge, crouched such a wildcat as the lynx had never even dreamed
+of.
+
+
+II.
+
+A few days before this night of the white full moon, a gigantic
+wildcat living some fifteen miles from Ringwaak had decided to change
+his hunting-grounds. His range, over which he had ruled for years, was
+a dark, thick-wooded slope overlooking the brown pools and loud chutes
+of the Guimic stream. Here he had prospered hunting with continual
+success, and enjoying life as only the few overlords among the wild
+kindreds can hope to enjoy it. He had nothing to fear, as long as he
+avoided quarrel with a bear or a bull moose. And a narrow escape when
+young had taught him to shun trap and snare, and everything that
+savoured of the hated works of man.
+
+Now, the lumbermen had found their way to his shadowy domain. Loud
+axe-strokes, the crash of falling trees, the hard clank of ox-chains,
+jarred the solemn stillness. But far more intolerable to the great
+cat's ears was the noise of laughter and shouting, the masterful
+insolence of the human voice unabashed in the face of the solitude.
+The men had built a camp near each end of his range. No retreat was
+safe from their incursions. And they had cut down the great pine-tree
+whose base shielded the entrance of his favourite lair. All through
+the winter the angry cat had spent the greater portion of his time
+slinking aside from these boisterous invaders or glaring fierce hate
+upon them from his densest coverts. Thus occupied, he had too little
+time for his hunting, and, moreover, the troubled game had become shy.
+His temper grew worse and worse as his ribs grew more and more obvious
+under his brownish, speckled fur. Nevertheless, for all his swelling
+indignation, he had as yet no thought of forsaking his range. He kept
+expecting that the men would go away.
+
+When spring came, and the Guimic roared white between its tortuous
+shores, some of the loud-mouthed men did go away. Nevertheless, the
+big cat's rage waxed hotter than ever. Far worse than the men who went
+were three portable steam sawmills which came in their place. At three
+separate points these mills were set up--and straightway the long,
+intolerable shriek of the circulars was ripping the air. In spite of
+himself, the amazed cat screeched in unison when that sound first
+smote his ears. He slunk away and hid for hours in his remotest lair,
+wondering if it would follow him. When, in the course of weeks, he
+grew so far accustomed to the fiendish sound that he could go about
+his hunting within half a mile of it, he found that the saws had
+worked him an unspeakable injury. They had fouled his beloved
+fishing-pools with sawdust.
+
+[Illustration: "HIS ROUND FACE BENT CLOSE DOWN TO THE GLASSY
+SURFACE."]
+
+It was the big cat's favoured custom to spend hours at a time crouched
+over one or another of these pools, waiting for a chance to catch a
+trout. Where an overhanging rock or a jutting root came out into deep
+water, he would lie as motionless as the rock or log itself, his round
+face bent close down to the glassy surface, his bright eyes intently
+following the movements of the big, lazy trout in their safe deeps.
+Once in a long while, often enough to keep his interest keen, a
+May-fly or a fat worm would drop close past his nose and lie kicking
+on top of the water. Up would sail a big trout, open-jawed to engulf
+the morsel. At that instant the clutching paw of the watcher would
+strike down and around more swiftly than eye could follow--and the
+next instant the fish would be flopping violently among the underbrush
+up the bank, with leaves and twigs clinging to its fat, silvery,
+dappled sides. The sport was one which gave the big wildcat
+never-failing delight; and, moreover, there was no other food in all
+the wilderness quite so exquisite to his palate as a plump trout from
+the ice-cool waters of the Guimic. When, therefore, he found his pools
+covered, all day long, with the whitey-yellow grains of sawdust, which
+prevented the trout feeding at the surface or drove them in disgust
+from their wonted haunts, he realized that his range was ruined. The
+men and the mills were the conquerors, and he must let himself be
+driven from his well-beloved Guimic slopes. But first he would have
+revenge. His caution somewhat undermined by his rage, he crept much
+nearer to the main camp than he had hitherto dared to go, and hid
+himself in a low tree to see what opportunity fate might fling to
+him.
+
+Belonging to the camp was a brindle dog, a sturdy and noisy mongrel
+whose barking was particularly obnoxious to the wildcat. Of a surly
+yet restless temper, the mongrel was in reality by no means popular in
+the camp, and would not have been tolerated there but for the fact
+that he belonged to the Boss. In the wildcat's eyes, however, as in
+the eyes of all the wild kindreds, he seemed a treasured possession of
+the menkind, and an especially objectionable expression of all their
+most objectionable characteristics. Moreover, being four-footed and
+furred, he was plainly more kin to the wild creatures than to man--and
+therefore, to the wild creature, obviously a traitor and a renegade.
+There was not one of them but would have taken more satisfaction in
+avenging its wrongs upon the loud-mouthed mongrel than upon one of the
+mongrel's masters; not one but would have counted that the sweetest
+and completest form of vengeance.
+
+It is not surprising, therefore, that the big cat quivered with eager
+hate when he saw the dog come lazily out of the cook-house and wander
+toward the spring--which lay just beyond the thick tree! His eyes
+blazed green, his fur rose slightly, and he set his claws into the
+bark to gain firm foothold.
+
+Confident and secure, the dog approached the tree. On the way he
+jumped savagely at a chipmunk, which dodged in time and whisked into
+its hole. For a minute or two the dog pawed and scratched at the hole,
+trying to dig the little fugitive out. Then he gave up the vain task,
+and moved on toward the spring.
+
+The wildcat gave one quick glance on every side. There was not a man
+in sight. The cook was in the cook-house, rattling tins. Then the dog
+came beneath the tree--and stopped to sniff at the wildcat's track.
+
+There was a sharp scratch in the tree above--and in the next instant a
+brown furry shape dropped upon him noiselessly, bearing him to the
+ground. This thing was a mass of teeth and claws and terrific muscles.
+It gave one sharp screech as the dog's yelping howl arose, then made
+no sound but a spitting growl as it bit and ripped. From the first the
+brindled mongrel had no ghost of a chance; and the struggle was over
+in three minutes. As the cook, astonished by the sudden uproar, came
+rushing axe in hand from his shanty, the wildcat sprang away with a
+snarl and bounded into the cover of the nearest spruce bushes. He was
+none the worse save for a deep and bleeding gash down his
+fore-shoulder, where his victim had gained a moment's grip. But the
+dog was so cruelly mauled that the woodsman could do nothing but
+compassionately knock him on the head with the axe which he had
+brought to the rescue.
+
+Savage from the struggle, and elated from his vengeance, the wildcat
+with no further hesitation turned his back upon his old haunts,
+crossed the Guimic by great leaps from rock to rock, and set southward
+toward the wooded slopes and valleys overlooked by the ragged crest of
+Ringwaak.
+
+The indignant exile, journeying so boldly to confront the peril of
+which he had no suspicion or forewarning, belonged to a species
+confined to the forests of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia or the
+neighbourhood of their boundaries. He was a giant cousin of the common
+wildcat, and known to the few naturalists who had succeeded in
+differentiating and classifying his species as _Lynx Gigas_. In weight
+and stature he was, if anything, more than the peer of his other and
+more distant cousin, the savage Canada lynx. The cook of the camp, in
+telling his comrades about the fate of the dog, spoke of the great
+wildcat as a "catamount," to distinguish him from the common cat of
+the woods. These same woodsmen, had they seen the lynx who ruled on
+Ringwaak Hill, would have called him a "lucerfee," while any
+Madawaska Frenchman in their company would have dubbed him _loup
+cervier_. Either catamount or lucerfee was respectfully regarded by
+the woodsmen.
+
+For an hour the great cat journeyed on, wary and stealthy from habit
+rather than intention, as he was neither hunting for prey nor avoiding
+enemies. But when he found himself in strange woods--a gloomy cedar
+swamp, dotted with dry hardwood knolls like islands--with true cat
+instinct he delayed his journey to look about him and investigate.
+Prowling from side to side, and sniffing and peering, he presently
+found something that he was not looking for. In a hollow beneath a
+granite boulder, behind the roots of two gnarled old cedars, he came
+upon two glossy black bear cubs, fast asleep. The mother was nowhere
+in sight, but the intruder shrank back with an abashed and guilty air
+and ran up the nearest tree. Thence he made his way from branch to
+branch, and did not return to the ground till he had put three or four
+hundred yards between him and the den. He had no mind to bring
+relentless doom upon his trail.
+
+Not till he was well clear of the cedar swamp did the catamount
+remember that he was hungry. The idea of being suspected of an
+interest in young bear's meat had taken away his appetite. Now,
+however, coming to a series of wild meadows, he lingered to hunt
+meadow-mice. Among the roots of the long grass the mice had
+innumerable hidden runways, through which they could travel without
+danger from the hawks and owls. Crouching close to one of these
+runways, the big cat would listen till a squeak or a faint scurrying
+noise would reveal the passing of a mouse. Then a lightning pounce,
+with paws much wider apart than in his ordinary hunting, would tear
+away the frail covering of the runway, and usually show the victim
+clutched beneath one paw or the other. This was much quicker as well
+as craftier hunting than the more common wildcat method of lying in
+wait for an hour at the door of a runway. Three of these plump
+meadow-mice made the traveller a comfortable meal. Forgetting his
+wrongs, he stretched himself in the full sun under the shelter of a
+fallen tree, and slept soundly for an hour. Once only he awoke, when
+his ears caught the beat of a hawk's wings winnowing low over his
+retreat. He opened wide, fiercely bright eyes, completely alert on the
+instant; but seeing the source of the sound he was asleep again
+before the hawk had crossed the little meadow.
+
+His siesta over, the exile mounted the fallen tree, dug his claws deep
+into the bark, stretched himself again and again, yawned prodigiously,
+and ended the exercise with a big, rasping miaow. At the sound there
+was a sudden rustling in the bushes behind the windfall. Instantly the
+catamount sprang, taking the risk of catching a porcupine or a skunk.
+But whatever it was that made the noise, it had vanished in time; and
+the rash hunter returned to his perch with a shamefaced air.
+
+From this post of vantage on the edge of the meadows he could see the
+crest of old Ringwaak dominating the forests to the south; and the
+sight, for some unknown reason, drew him. Among those bleak rampikes
+and rocks and dark coverts he might find a range to his liking. He
+resumed his journey with a definiteness of purpose which kept him from
+squandering time on the chase. Only once he halted, and that was when
+the cries and flutterings of a pair of excited thrushes caught his
+attention. He saw their nest in a low tree--and he saw a black snake,
+coiled in the branches, greedily swallowing the half-fledged
+nestlings. This was an opportunity which he could not afford to lose.
+He ran expertly up the tree, pounced upon the snake, and bit through
+its back bone just behind the head. The strong, black coils
+straightened out limply. Carrying his prize between his jaws, the
+catamount descended to the ground, growling and jerking savagely when
+the wriggling length got tangled among the branches. Quick to
+understand the services of their most unexpected ally, the desperate
+birds returned to one surviving nestling, and their clamours ceased.
+Beneath the tree the exile hurriedly devoured a few mouthfuls of the
+thick meat of the back just behind the snake's head, then resumed his
+journey toward Ringwaak.
+
+It was close upon sunset when he reached the first fringes of the
+northward slope of the mountain. Here his reception was benign. On the
+banks of a tiny brook, rosy-gold in the flooding afternoon light, he
+found a bed of wild catnip. Here for a few minutes he rolled in
+ecstasy, chewing and clawing at the aromatic leaves, all four paws in
+air, and hoarsely purring his delight. When, at last, he went on up
+the slope, he carried with him through the gathering shadows the
+pungent, sweet aroma of the herb. In a fierce gaiety of spirit he
+would now and then leap into the air to strike idly at some bird
+flitting high above his reach. Or he would jump and clutch
+kittenishly with both paws at a fluttering, overhanging leaf, or
+pounce upon an imaginary quiet mouse crouched among the leaves.
+
+About twilight, as he was nearing the summit of the hill, he came
+across a footprint which somewhat startled him out of his
+intoxication. It was a footprint not unlike his own, but distinctly
+larger. Being an old sign, there was no scent left to it--but its size
+was puzzling and disquieting. From this on he went warily, not knowing
+when he might be called upon to measure forces with some redoubtable
+possessor of the range. When the moon rose, round and white and
+all-revealing, and threw sinister shadows from rampike and rock, he
+kept to the densest thickets and felt oppressed with strangeness. But
+when he succeeded in surprising a hen partridge hovering over her
+brood, with the blood warm in his mouth he began to feel at home. This
+fine range should be his, whoever might contest the sovereignty.
+Coming across a deer trail leading beneath an overhanging rock, he
+climbed the rock and crouched in ambush, waiting to see what might
+come by.
+
+For an hour he crouched there, motionless as the eternal granite
+itself, while the moon climbed and whitened, and the shadows of the
+rampikes changed, and the breathless enchantment deepened over
+Ringwaak. At long intervals there would be a faint rustling in some
+near-by clump of juniper, or a squeak and a brief scuffle in the
+thickets; or, on wings as soundless as sleep, a great owl would pass
+by, to drop sharply behind a rock, or sail away like a ghost among the
+rampikes. But to none of these furtive happenings did the watcher on
+the rock pay any heed. He was waiting for what might come upon the
+trail.
+
+At last, it came. Stepping daintily on her small, fine hoofs, her
+large eyes glancing timorously in every direction, a little yearling
+doe emerged from the bushes and started to cross the patch of
+brilliant light. The strange, upright pupils of the catamount's eyes
+narrowed and dilated at the sight, and his muscles quivered to sudden
+tension. The young doe came beneath the rock. The cat sprang,
+unerring, irresistible; and the next moment she lay kicking helplessly
+beneath him, his fangs buried in her velvet throat.
+
+[Illustration: "SOMETHING MADE HIM TURN HIS HEAD QUICKLY."]
+
+This was noble prey; and the giant cat, his misgivings all forgotten,
+drank till his long thirst was satiated. His jaws dripping, he lifted
+his round, fierce face, and gazed out and away across the moonlit
+slopes below him toward his ancient range beyond the Guimic. While he
+gazed, triumphing, something made him turn his head quickly and eye
+the spruce thicket behind him.
+
+
+III.
+
+It was at this moment that the old lynx, master of Ringwaak, coming
+suddenly out into the moonlight, saw the grim apparition beneath the
+rock, and flattened to the ground.
+
+Through long, momentous, pregnant seconds the two formidable and
+matched antagonists scrutinized each other, the lynx close crouched,
+ready to launch himself like a thunderbolt, the catamount half risen,
+his back bowed, one paw of obstinate possession clutching the head of
+his prey. In the eyes of each, as they measured each other's powers
+and sought for an advantage, flamed hate, defiance, courage, and
+savage question.
+
+Seen thus near together, catamount by lucerfee, they were obviously
+akin, yet markedly different. The cat was heavier in the body,
+outweighing his rival by perhaps not far from ten pounds, but with
+shorter and more gracefully shaped legs, and smaller feet. His head
+was more arched, seeming to indicate a greater intelligence, and his
+flaming eyes were set wider apart; but his mouth was smaller, his
+fangs less long and punishing. His fur was of a browner, warmer hue
+than that of the lynx, whose gray had a half-invisible ghostliness in
+the moonlight. The tails of both were ridiculously short, not six
+inches in length, but that of the catamount was straight and stiff,
+while that of the lucerfee had a curious upward twist that somehow
+mocked the contortions of his huge and overlong hind legs. The eyes of
+the lynx, under his flatter forehead, were the more piercing, the less
+blazing. Altogether the great wildcat was the more beautiful of the
+two beasts, the more intelligent, the more adaptable and resourceful.
+But the lynx, with his big, uncouth, hind quarters, and great legs
+gathered under him, and exaggerated paws, looked to be the more
+formidable fighting machine.
+
+Thus, unstirring, they eyed each other. Then with a strident screech
+that seemed to tear the spell of the night to tatters, the gray body
+of the lynx shot through the air. It landed, not upon the catamount,
+but squarely upon the carcass of the doe, where, a fraction of a
+second before, the catamount had stood. The wary intruder had not
+waited to endure the full shock of that charge, but lightly as a puff
+of down had leaped aside. The next instant he had pounced, with a yowl
+of defiance, straight for the lynx's neck.
+
+Lightning quick though he was, the lynx recovered in time to meet the
+attack with deadly counter-stroke of bared claws, parrying like a
+skilled boxer. In this forearm work the catamount, lighter of paw and
+talon, suffered the more; and being quick to perceive his adversary's
+advantage, he sought to force a close grapple. This the lynx at first
+avoided, rending and punishing frightfully as he gave ground; while
+the solemn height of old Ringwaak was shocked by a clamour of spitting
+and raucous yowling that sent every sleepy bird fluttering in terror
+from its nest.
+
+Suddenly, perceiving that the lynx was backing dangerously close to
+the face of the rock, the great cat sprang, took a frightful, ripping
+buffet across the face, broke down his foe's guard and bore him to the
+ground by sheer weight. Here, in this close embrace, the hinder claws
+of both came into play with hideous effect. The clamour died down to a
+tense, desperate, gasping snarl; for now the verdict of life or death
+was a matter of moments. But in this fearful and final test, when
+there was no more room for fencing, no more time for strategy, the
+more powerful hind legs and longer, more eviscerating claws of the
+lynx had the decisive advantage. Though borne down, and apparently
+getting the worst of the fight, the master of Ringwaak was in reality
+ripping his enemy to pieces from beneath. All at once the latter
+sprang away with a scream, stood for a second erect and rigid, then
+sank limp beside the torn carcass of the doe.
+
+The lynx, badly torn and bitten, but with no fatal injury, pounced
+upon the unresisting body of the catamount and mauled it till well
+assured of the completeness of his victory. Then, heedless of his
+wounds, he mounted the carcass of the doe, lifted his head high, and
+screeched his challenge across the night. No answer coming, he tore a
+mouthful of the meat to emphasize possession, stepped down, and crept
+off to nurse his hurts in some dark retreat; for not easy had been the
+task of defending his lordship. When all was still once more on
+Ringwaak, presently descended again the enchantment of the mystic
+light. And under its transforming touch even the torn bodies lying
+before the bright face of the rock lost their hideousness, becoming
+remote, and unsubstantial and visionary.
+
+
+
+
+The Decoy
+
+
+High above the flat-spread earth, their strong wings driving them at
+tremendous speed through the thin, cold air of dawn, the wild-goose
+flock journeyed north. In the shape of an irregular V they journeyed,
+an old gander, wise and powerful, at the apex of the aerial array. As
+they flew, their long necks stretched straight out, the living air
+thrilled like a string beneath their wing-beats. From their throats
+came a throbbing chorus, resonant, far-carrying, mysterious,--_honka,
+honka, honka, honk, honka, honk_. It seemed to be the proper utterance
+of altitude and space.
+
+The flight was as true as if set by a compass; but the longer limb of
+the V would curve and swerve sinuously from time to time as the weaker
+or less experienced members of the flock wavered in their alignment.
+Flat, low-lying forests, and lonely meres, and rough, isolated farms
+sped past below the rushing voyagers,--then a black head-land, and
+then a wide, shallow arm of the sea. For a few minutes the glimmer of
+pale, crawling tides was everywhere beneath them,--then league on
+league of gray-green, sedgy marsh, interlaced with little pools and
+lanes of bright water, and crisscrossed with ranks of bulrush. The
+leader of the flock now stretched his dark head downward, slowing the
+beat of his wings, and the disciplined array started on a long decline
+toward earth. From its great height the flock covered nearly a mile of
+advance before coming within a hundred yards of the pale green levels;
+and all through the gradual descent the confusion of marsh, and pool,
+and winding creek, seemed to float up gently to meet the long-absent
+wanderers. At length, just over a shallow, spacious, grassy mere, and
+some thirty feet above its surface, the leader decided to alight. It
+was an old and favoured feeding-ground, where the mud was full of
+tender shoots and tiny creatures of the ooze. The wings of the flock,
+as if on signal, turned out and upward, showing a flash of paler
+colour as they checked the still considerable speed of the flight.
+
+In that pause, just before the splash of alighting, from a thick cover
+of sedge across the pool came two sharp spurts of flame, one after the
+other, followed by two thunderous reports, so close together as to
+seem almost like one. Turning straight over, the leader fell upon the
+water with a heavy splash; and immediately after him dropped his
+second in leadership, the strong young gander who flew next him on the
+longer limb of the V. The flock, altogether demoralized, huddled
+together for a few seconds with loud cries; then rose and flapped off
+seaward. Before the hunter in the sedge could get fresh cartridges
+into his gun, the diminished flock was out of range, making desperate
+haste to safer feeding-grounds.
+
+Of the two birds thus suddenly smitten by fate, the younger, shot
+through the heart, lay motionless where he had dropped, a sprawl of
+black and white, and ashen feathers tumbled by the little ripples of
+the pool. But the older bird was merely winged. Recovering himself
+almost instantly from the shock of the wound and the fall, he made one
+pathetically futile effort to rise again, then started swimming down
+the pond, trailing his shattered wing behind him and straining his
+gaze toward the departing flock.
+
+Immediately after the two shots, out from the shelter of the rushes
+had sprung a large, curly-coated, brown retriever. With a yelp of
+excitement he had dashed into the water and dragged ashore the body
+of the dead bird. Now the hunter, standing up and stretching his legs
+as if cramped from a long lying-in-wait, started on a sharp run down
+the wet shore of the pond, whistling the retriever after him. He had
+noted the splendid stature of the wounded bird, and wanted to capture
+him alive.
+
+Not without cause had the great gander achieved the leadership of the
+flock, for he possessed not only strength but intelligence. When he
+saw that his trailing wing so hampered his swimming that he would
+presently be overtaken, he turned and darted into the sedges of the
+opposite shore, trusting to the difficulties of the swamp to protect
+him. He did not know that the big brown retriever was almost
+amphibious, and more cunning than himself.
+
+The hunter stopped, and pointed to the spot of waving reeds where the
+bird had disappeared.
+
+"Fetch him, Pete!" he commanded,--"But gently, boy, ge-e-ently!" And
+the wise old dog understood, either from the words or from the tone in
+which they were uttered, that this was to be a bloodless capture.
+Barking joyously, he tore around the pond to the place where the
+gander had vanished, and dashed splashing into the reeds. A few
+seconds later a tumult arose, the reeds were beaten down, and the dog
+reappeared, dragging his prize by the uninjured wing.
+
+The great bird, powerful and dauntless, made a gallant fight; but he
+was hopelessly handicapped. His most formidable weapons were the bony
+elbows of his strong, untiring wings; and of both these he was now
+deprived, one wing being shattered, and the other in the grip of the
+enemy's jaws. He struck and bit and worried with his hard bill; but
+the dog, half-shutting his eyes, took the mauling grimly and dragged
+his troublesome captive into the water.
+
+Here, however, he made a mistake. The great bird was a mighty swimmer,
+and indomitable; and in half a minute his captor was glad to drag him
+to land again. Then the hunter arrived on the scene; and the dog,
+gladly relinquishing so unmanageable a prisoner, sat back on his
+haunches, with tongue hanging out, to see what his master would do.
+The dauntless gander bit furiously, and pounded with his one undamaged
+wing, and earned his adversary's unstinted commendation: but in a
+minute or two he found himself helpless, swathed like a cocoon in a
+stout, woollen hunting-coat, and his head ignominiously bagged in one
+of the sleeves. In this fashion, his heart bursting with fear and
+wrath, his broken wing one hot throb of anguish, he was carried under
+the hunter's arm for what seemed to him a whole night long. Then he
+was set free in a little open pen in a garden, beside a
+green-shuttered, wide-eaved, white cottage on the uplands.
+
+The hunter was so kind to his captive, so assiduous in his care, that
+the wild bird presently grew almost indifferent to his approach, and
+ceased to strike at him savagely with his free wing whenever he
+entered the pen. The other wing, well cleaned and salved, and bound in
+cunning splints, healed rapidly, and caused no pain save when its
+owner strove to flap it,--which he did, with long, desolate, appealing
+cries, whenever a wild-goose flock went honking musically across the
+evening or morning sky.
+
+At length, while the injured wing was still in bandage, the hunter
+took the bird in spite of all protest, tucked the long neck and
+troublesome head under his arm, and attached to one leg a little
+leather wrapping and a long, strong cord. Then he opened the pen. The
+big gander strode forth with more haste than quite comported with his
+dignity. Straight down the slope he started, seeking the wide marshes
+where he expected to find his flock. Then suddenly he came to the end
+of his cord with a jerk, and fell forward on his breast and bill with
+a _honk_ of surprise. He was not free, after all, and two or three
+violent struggles convinced him of the fact. As soon as he realized
+himself still a prisoner, his keen, dark eyes turned a look of
+reproach upon his jailer, who was holding the other end of the cord
+and watching him intently. Then he slackened on the tether, and fell
+to cropping the short grass of the lawn as if being tied by the leg
+was an ancient experience. It was a great thing, after all, to be out
+of the pen.
+
+"He'll do!" said the man to himself with satisfaction, as he fixed the
+tether to a young apple-tree. When he had gone into the house the bird
+stopped feeding, turned first one eye and then the other toward the
+empty sky, stretched his long, black neck and clean white throat, and
+sent out across the green spaces his appealing and lonely
+cry,--_honka, honka, honka, ho-onka_!
+
+Very early the following morning, before the stars had begun to pale
+at the approach of dawn, the captive was once more wrapped up
+securely and taken on a blind journey. When he was uncovered, and
+anxiously stretched out his head, he found himself again on the edge
+of that shallow pool in the marshes where fate had overtaken him. The
+brown retriever was sitting on his haunches close by, regarding him
+amicably. The man was fastening one end of the tether to a stake at
+the water's edge, and from the east a grayness touched with chill pink
+was spreading over the sky.
+
+A moment later the surprised bird found himself standing among the wet
+sedge, close to the water. With a nervous glance at the dog, whom he
+shrank from with more dread than from the man, he launched himself
+into the water and swam straight out from shore.
+
+This time, surely, he was free. Next to the spacious solitudes of the
+air, this was his proper element. How exquisite to the thin webs of
+his feet felt the coolness of it, as he pushed against it with strong
+strokes! How it curled away luxuriously from his gray, firm-feathered
+breast! This was to live again, after the pain and humiliation of his
+captivity! And yonder, far down the mere, and past those tall reeds
+standing shadowy in the pallor, surely he would find the flock which
+had moved on without him! Then, all at once, it was as if something
+had clutched him by the leg. With a startled cry and a splash he
+tipped forward, and his glad journey came to an end. He had reached
+the limit of his tether.
+
+Remembering his experience of the day before, he made no vain
+struggle, but floated quietly for a minute or two, stricken with his
+disappointment. The man and the big brown dog had disappeared; but
+presently his keen and sagacious eyes detected them both, lying
+motionless in a thicket of reeds. Having stared at them indignantly
+for a few moments, swimming slowly to and fro and transfixing them
+with first one eye and then the other, he ducked his head and began
+biting savagely at the leathern wrapping on his leg. But the
+uselessness of this soon appearing to him, he gave it up, and sought
+to ease his despair by diving and guttering with his bill among the
+roots of the oozy bottom. In this absorbing occupation he so far
+forgot his miseries that all at once he tried to lift himself on the
+water, flap his wings, and sound his trumpet-call. One wing did give a
+frantic flap. The other surged fiercely against its bandages, sending
+a throb of anguish through his frame, and the trumpet-call broke in a
+single hoarse _honk_. After this he floated for a long time in
+dejection, while the level rays of sunrise stole mysteriously across
+the pale marshes.
+
+The hunter, tired of his long stillness in the sedge, was just about
+to stand up and stretch himself, when from far down the sky to
+southward came a hollow and confused clamour. The hunter heard it, and
+the brown retriever heard it; and both crouched low behind their
+shelter, as motionless as stones. The wild captive, floating at the
+end of his tether out on the pink-and-gold mirror of the pond, also
+heard it, and stretched his fine black head aloft, rigid with
+expectancy. Nearer and nearer came the thrilling voices. Blacker and
+larger against the sky grew the journeying V as it approached the
+marshes. The heart of the captive swelled with hope and longing. Not
+his own flock, indeed, but his own kin, these free and tireless
+voyagers coming confidently to safe feeding-grounds! Forgetting
+everything but his great loneliness, he raised himself as high as he
+could upon the water, one wing partly outspread, and called, and
+called again, summoning the travellers to alight.
+
+Hearing this kindly summons, the flock dipped at once and came
+slanting steeply toward earth. In their haste they broke rank,
+descending more abruptly than usual, their customary caution quite
+laid aside when they saw one of their own kind waiting to receive
+them. The joyous captive ducked and bowed his head in greeting. In
+another moment the whole flock would have settled clamorously about
+him, and he would have been happy,--but before that moment came there
+came instead two bursts of flame and thunder from the covert of sedge.
+And instead of the descending flock, there fell beside the captive two
+heavy, fluttering gray-and-black shapes, which beat the water feebly
+and then lay still.
+
+As the betrayed and panic-stricken flock flapped away in confusion the
+captive tugged frantically at his tether, crying shrilly and
+struggling to follow them. In his desperation he paid no heed whatever
+as the big, brown dog dashed out and triumphantly dragged the bodies
+of the two victims to land. He was horrified by the terrible noise,
+and the killing; but his attention was chiefly engrossed by the fact
+that the flock had been frightened away, leaving him to his
+loneliness. For several minutes he continued his cries, till the flock
+was far out of sight. Then silence fell again on the marshes.
+
+A quarter of an hour later much the same thing happened again. Another
+flock, passing overhead, came clamouring fearlessly down in response
+to the captive's calls, met the doom that blazed from the reed-covert,
+and left two of its members gasping on the surface of the pond. This
+time, however, the despair of the captive was less loud and less
+prolonged. As leader, for two seasons, of his own flock, he had
+necessarily learned certain simple processes of deduction. These
+pitiful tragedies through which he had just passed were quite
+sufficient to convince him that this particular shallow pond, though
+so good a feeding-ground, was a fatal place for the voyaging geese to
+visit. Further, in a dim way, his shocked and shuddering brain began
+to realize that his own calling was the cause of the horrors. If he
+called, the flocks came fearlessly, content with his pledge that all
+was well. Upon their coming, the fire, and dreadful thunders, and
+inexplicable death burst forth from the sedge; and then the great
+brown dog appeared to drag his prey to shore. The whole mischief, as
+it seemed to him, was the work of the dog; and it did not occur to him
+that the man, who seemed fairly well-disposed and all-powerful, had
+anything whatever to do with it. This idea gradually grew clear in
+the captive's brain, as he swam, very slowly, to and fro upon the
+brightening water. In a vague way his heart determined that he would
+lure no more of his kindred to their doom. And when, a little later, a
+third flock came trumpeting up the sky, the captive eyed their
+approach in despairing silence.
+
+As the beating wings drew near, stooping toward the silvery pools and
+pale green levels, the captive swam back and forward in wild
+excitement, aching to give the call and ease his loneliness. The
+flock, perceiving him, drew nearer; but in his excited movements and
+his silence its leader discerned a peril. There was something sinister
+and incomprehensible in this splendidly marked bird who refused to
+summon them to his feeding-ground, and kept swimming wildly back and
+forth. Keeping well beyond gunshot, they circled around this smiling
+but too mysterious water, to alight with great clamour and splashing
+in a little, sheltered mere some two or three hundred yards farther
+inland. The hunter, crouching moveless and expectant in his ambush,
+muttered an exclamation of surprise, and wondered if it could be
+possible that his incomparable decoy had reached an understanding of
+the treacherous game and refused to play it.
+
+"There's no smarter bird that flies than a wild gander!" he mused,
+watching the great bird curiously and with a certain sympathy. "We'll
+see what happens when another flock comes by!"
+
+Meanwhile the new arrivals, over in the unseen pond behind the rushes,
+were feeding and bathing with a happy clamour. They little dreamed
+that a pot-hunting rustic from the village on the hills, flat on his
+belly in the oozy grass, was noiselessly worming his way toward them.
+Armed with an old, single-barrel duck gun, the height of his ambition
+was to get a safe and easy shot at the feeding birds. No delicate
+wing-shooting for him. What he wanted was the most he could get for
+his powder and lead. Big and clumsy though he was, his progress
+through the grass was as stealthy as that of a mink.
+
+[Illustration: "HE LIFTED UP HIS VOICE IN A SUDDEN ABRUPT 'HONK,
+HONK!'"]
+
+It chanced that the path of the pot-hunter took him close past the
+further shore of the pond where the captive was straining at his
+tether and eating his heart out in determined silence. The homesick,
+desolate bird would swim around and around for a few minutes, as a
+caged panther circles his bounds, then stop and listen longingly to
+the happy noise from over beyond the reed-fringes. At last, goaded
+into a moment of forgetfulness by the urge of his desire, he lifted up
+his voice in a sudden abrupt _honk, honk_!
+
+The pot-hunter stopped his crawling and peered delightedly through the
+sedgy stems. Here was a prize ready to his hand. The flock was still
+far off, and might easily take alarm before he could get within range.
+But this stray bird, a beauty too, was so near that he could not miss.
+Stealthily he brought his heavy weapon to the shoulder; and slowly,
+carefully, he took aim.
+
+The report of the big duck gun was like thunder, and roused the
+marshes. In a fury the hunter sprang from his ambush across the mere,
+and ran down to the water's edge, threatening vengeance on the lout
+who would fire on a decoy. The brown retriever, wild with excitement,
+dashed barking up and down the shore, not knowing just what he ought
+to do. Sandpipers went whistling in every direction. And the foraging
+flock, startled from their security, screamed wildly and flapped off
+unhurt to remoter regions of the marsh. But the lonely captive, the
+wise old gander who had piloted his clan through so many hundred
+leagues of trackless air, lay limp and mangled on the stained water,
+torn by the heavy charge of the duck gun. The whimsical fate that
+seems to play with the destinies of the wild kindreds had chosen to
+let him save one flock from the slaughterer, and expiate his blameless
+treason.
+
+
+
+
+The Laugh in the Dark
+
+
+Though the darkness under the great trees was impenetrable, it gave an
+impression of transparency which invited the eyes to strain and peer,
+as if vision might be expected to reward an adequate effort. It was
+that liquid darkness which means not mist, but the utter absence of
+light on a clear air; and it was filled with elusive yet almost
+illuminating forest scents. To the keen nostrils of the man who was
+silently mounting the trail, it seemed as if these wild aromas almost
+enabled him to veritably see the trees which towered all about him, so
+clearly did they differentiate to him their several species as he
+passed,--the hemlock, in particular, and the birch, the black poplar,
+and the aromatic balsam-fir. But his eyes, though trained to the open,
+could in truth detect nothing whatever, except now and then a darting
+gleam which might come from a wet leaf, or from the gaze of a watching
+wood-mouse, or merely from the stirrings of the blood within his own
+brain.
+
+The man was on his way up from the lake, by an old trail long ago
+familiar to his feet, to make camp for the night in a deserted lumber
+shanty about a quarter of a mile back from the water. Over the dimly
+glimmering, windless water, under a cloudless sky, he had groped his
+way in his canoe to the old landing. Turning the canoe over his
+supplies for protection in case of rain, he had set out for the lumber
+shanty with only a blanket and a couple of hardtack. His rifle he had
+indifferently left in the canoe, but in his right hand he carried a
+paddle, to steady his steps and help him feel his way through the
+dark.
+
+Once the grayness of the open shore had faded behind him, the man
+found himself walking stealthily, like the stealthiest of the wild
+kindred themselves. The trail being well-worn, though long deserted by
+man, his feet kept it without difficulty; but he held the paddle out
+before him lest he should stumble over a windfall. Presently he took
+note of the fact that the trail was marvellously smooth for one that
+had been so long deserted, and with a little creeping of the skin,
+which was not in any sense fear but rather an acknowledgment of
+mystery, he realized that it was other than human feet which were
+keeping the lonely path in use. What kind were they, he wondered,--the
+great, noiseless pads of bear, or lynx, or panther, the hard hoofs of
+moose or deer, or the airy, swift feet of hare and mink and marten? As
+he wondered, moving more and more furtively as the spirit of the
+unseen wild pervaded and possessed him, his nostrils discerned across
+the savours of the trees and the mould a sudden musky scent; and he
+knew that one of the frequenters of the trail was a red fox, who had
+just gone by.
+
+Impressed by a sense that he was not so utterly alone as he had
+imagined himself to be, the man now obeyed one of the wary impulses of
+the wood-folk. He stepped aside from the trail, feeling his way, and
+leaned his back against a huge birch-tree. The ragged, ancient,
+sweet-smelling bark felt familiar and friendly to his touch. Here he
+stood, sniffing the still air with discrimination, testing with
+initiated ears every faint forest breathing. The infinitesimal and
+incessant stir of growth and change and readjustment was vaguely
+audible to his fine sense, making a rhythmic background against which
+the slightest unusual sound, even to the squeak of a wood-mouse, or
+the falling of a worm-bitten leaf, would have fairly startled the
+dark. Once he heard a twig snap, far in the depths on the other side
+of the trail, and he knew that some one of the wild kindred had moved
+carelessly. But on the trail nothing went by.
+
+Had there been ever so small a glimmer of light, to enable his eyes to
+play their part in this forest game, the man could have watched for an
+hour as moveless as the tree on which he leaned. But in that strange,
+absolute dark the strain soon grew almost intolerable. The game
+certainly ceased to be amusing after an uneventful fifteen minutes had
+passed. He was just about to give up, to step forth into the trail and
+resume his journey to the cabin, when he caught a strange sound, which
+made him stiffen back at once into watchful rigidity.
+
+The sound was a great breath. In its suddenness and its vagueness the
+listener was unable to distinguish whether it came from a dozen yards
+down the trail, or a couple of dozen inches from his elbow. His nose,
+however, assured him that he had not the latter alternative to face;
+so he waited, his right hand upon the knife in his belt. He could hear
+his heart beating.
+
+For several minutes nothing more was heard. Then through the high
+leafage overhead splashed a few big drops of rain, with the hushing
+sound of a shower not heavy enough to break through. The next moment a
+flash of white lightning lit up the forest aisles,--and in that moment
+the man saw a huge black bear standing in the trail, not ten feet
+distant. In that moment the eyes of the man and the eyes of the beast
+met each other fairly. Then the blackness fell once more; and a thin
+peal of midsummer thunder rolled over the unseen tree-tops.
+
+When all was silence again the man felt uncomfortable, and regretted
+the rifle which he had left under the canoe. That the bear would
+attack him, unprovoked, he knew to be improbable; but he also knew
+enough about bears to know that it is never well to argue too
+confidently as to what they will do. The more he waited and listened,
+the more he felt sure that the bear was also waiting and listening, in
+an uncertainty not much unlike his own. He decided that it was for him
+to take the initiative. Clapping his hands smartly, he threw back his
+head, and burst into a peal of laughter.
+
+The loud, incongruous sound shocked the silences. It almost horrified
+the man himself, so unexpected, so unnatural, so inexplicable did it
+seem even to his own ears. When it ceased, he knew that it had
+accomplished its purpose. He heard rustling and snapping noises
+swiftly diminishing in the distance, and knew that the bear was
+retreating in a panic. At this he laughed again, not loudly, but to
+himself, and stepped out into the trail.
+
+But the man was not yet done with the effects of his loud challenge to
+the solemnities of the dark. Hardly had he taken three steps along the
+trail when a little in front of him--perhaps, as he guessed, some five
+and twenty paces--there arose a slashing and crashing noise of
+struggle. Branches cracked and rustled and snapped, heavy feet pounded
+the earth, and a confusion of gasping grunts suggested a blind
+menagerie in mortal combat. The man, fairly startled, groped his way
+back to the tree, and waited behind it, knife in hand. In fact he had
+a strong inclination to climb into the branches; but this impulse he
+angrily restrained.
+
+For a whole minute the daunting uproar continued, neither approaching
+nor receding, and at length the man's curiosity, ever insatiable where
+the mysteries of the wild were concerned, got the better of his
+prudence. He lit a match and peered from behind his shelter. The
+little, sudden blaze spread a sharp light, but whatever was making the
+uproar went on as before, quite heedless of the singular phenomenon.
+When the match died out it left the man no wiser. Then with hurried
+hands he stripped some birch bark, and rolled himself a serviceable
+torch. When this blazed up with its smoky flame, he held it well off
+to one side and a little behind him, and made his way warily to the
+scene of the disturbance.
+
+A turn in the trail, and the mystery stood revealed. With a cry of
+indignation the man darted forward, no longer cautious. What he saw
+before him was a great, gaunt moose-cow reared upon her hind legs,
+caught under the jaws by a villainous moose-snare. With her head high
+among the branches, she lurched and kicked in a brave struggle for
+life, while every effort but drew tighter the murdering noose. A few
+feet away stood her lanky calf, trembling, and staring stupidly at the
+light.
+
+The man lost not a moment. Dropping his bundle and paddle, but
+carefully guarding the torch, he climbed the tree above the victim,
+lay out on a branch, reached down, and dexterously severed the noose
+with his knife. What matter if, with his haste and her struggles, he
+at the same time cut a slash in the beast's stout hide? The
+blood-letting was a sorely needed medicine to her choked veins. She
+fell in a heap, and for a minute or two lay gasping loudly. Then she
+staggered to her feet, and stood swaying, while she nosed the calf
+with her long muzzle to assure herself that it had not been hurt in
+the cataclysm which had overtaken her.
+
+The man watched her until his torch was almost gone, then climbed down
+the tree (which was not a birch) to get himself another. Noticing him
+now for the first time, the moose pulled herself together with a
+mighty effort, and thrust the calf behind her. Could this be the enemy
+who had so nearly vanquished her? For a moment the man thought she was
+going to charge upon him, and he held himself in readiness to go up
+the tree again. But the poor shaken beast thought better of it. Pain,
+rage, fear, amazement, doubt,--all these the man fancied he could see
+in her staring, bloodshot eyes. He stood quite still, pitying her, and
+cursing the brutal poachers who had set the snare. Then, just before
+the torch gave its last flicker, the great animal turned and led her
+calf off through the woods, looking back nervously as she went.
+
+When the light was out, and silence had come again upon the forest,
+the man resumed his journey. He travelled noisily, whistling and
+stamping as he went, as a warning to all wild creatures that a man
+was in their woods, and that they must give room to a master. He
+carried with him now, besides his blanket and his paddle, a generous
+roll of birch bark, with which to illuminate the lumber shanty before
+going in. It had occurred to him that possibly some lynx or wildcat
+might have taken up its dwelling therein; and if so, he was no longer
+in the mood to meet it at close quarters in the dark.
+
+
+
+
+The Kings of the Intervale
+
+
+Far out over the pale, smooth surface of the river a crow flew,
+flapping heavily. From time to time he uttered an angry and frightened
+squawk. Over, under, and all around him, now darting at his eyes, now
+dropping upon him like a little, arrow-pointed thunderbolt, now
+slapping a derisive wing across his formidable beak, flashed a small,
+dark bird whose silvery white belly now and then caught the sun.
+
+The crow's accustomed alert self-possession was quite shattered. He
+had forgotten his own powers of attack. He seemed to fear for his
+eyes,--and among all the wild kindred there is no fear more horrifying
+than that. When he ducked, and swerved, and tried to dodge, he did it
+awkwardly, as if his presence of mind was all gone.
+
+His assailant, less than a third of his weight, was a king-bird, whose
+nest, in the crotch of an elm on the intervale meadow, the crow had
+been so ill-advised as to investigate. The crow was comparatively
+inexperienced, or he would have known enough to keep away from the
+nests of the king-birds. But there it was, in plain sight; and he
+loved eggs or tender nestlings. Before he had had time to find out
+which it was that the nest contained, both the parent birds had fallen
+upon him with a swift ferocity which speedily took away his appetite
+for food or fight. Their beaks were sturdy and burning sharp. Their
+short, powerful wings gave them a flight so swift and darting that,
+for all his superior strength, he felt himself at their mercy. His one
+thought was to save his eyes and escape.
+
+Both birds chased him till he was well out over the river. Then the
+female returned to her nest, leaving her mate to complete the
+intruder's chastisement. Had the crow been an old and cunning bird, he
+would have sought the extreme heights of air, where the king-bird is
+disinclined to follow; but lacking this crow-wisdom, he kept on at the
+level of the tallest tree-tops, and was forced to take his punishment.
+He was, in reality, more sore and terrified than actually injured.
+That darting, threatening beak of his pursuer never actually struck
+his eyes. But for this, it is probable, he had only the indulgence of
+the king-bird to thank. When at last the chastiser, tired of his task,
+turned and flew back up the river toward the nest in the elm-crotch,
+the ruffled crow took refuge out of sight, in the top of the densest
+hemlock, where he rolled his eyes and preened his plumage silently for
+an hour before daring again the vicissitudes of the wilderness world.
+
+The nest to which the triumphant king-bird hurried back was
+audaciously perched in plain view of every prowler. The crotch of the
+elm-tree which it occupied was about twelve feet from the ground. The
+intervale, or water-meadow, by the side of the river, held but a few
+widely scattered trees,--trees of open growth, such as elm,
+balsam-poplar, and water-ash. It was free from all underbrush. There
+was nothing, therefore, to shield the nest from even the most careless
+eyes; and with an insolence of fearlessness matched only by that of
+the osprey, it was made the more conspicuous by having great tufts of
+white wool from a neighbouring sheep-pasture woven into its bulky,
+irregular frame. So irregular and haphazard, indeed, did it appear,
+that it might almost have been mistaken for a bunch of rubbish left in
+the tree from the time of freshet. But if the two king-birds relied on
+this resemblance as a concealment, they presumed as so clever a bird
+is not likely to do upon the blindness or stupidity of the wild
+kindred. The wild kindred are seldom blind, and very seldom stupid,
+because those members of the fellowship who are possessed of such
+defects sooner or later go to feed their fellows. Hence it was that
+most of the folk of the riverside, furred or feathered, knew well
+enough what the big whitish-gray bunch of rubbish in the elm-crotch
+was.
+
+There were five eggs at the bottom of the smooth, warm cup, which
+formed the heart of the nest. They were a little smaller than a
+robin's egg, and of a soft creamy white, blotched irregularly with
+dull purplish maroon of varying tone. So jealous of these mottled
+marvels were the king-birds that not even the most harmless of
+visitors were allowed to look upon them. If so much as a thrush, or a
+pewee, or a mild-mannered white throat, presumed to alight on the very
+remotest branch of that elm, it was brusquely driven away.
+
+One morning early, the male king-bird was sitting very erect, as was
+his custom, on the naked tip of a long, slender, dead branch some ten
+feet above the nest The morning chill was yet in the air, so it was a
+little early for the flies which formed his food to be stirring. But
+he was hungry, and on the alert for the first of them to appear. Only
+the tense feathers of his crest, raised to show the flame-orange spot
+which was his kingly crown, betrayed his eagerness; for he was a
+self-contained bird. The sun was just beginning to show the red
+topmost edge of his rim through the jagged line of firs across the
+river, and the long, level streaks of aerial rose, creeping under the
+branches, filled all the shadowed places of the wilderness with
+mysterious light. The eastward sides of the tree-trunks and naked
+branches glimmered pink; and dew-wet leaves, here and there, shone
+like pale jewels of pink, amber, and violet. The mirror-like surface
+of the river was blurred with twisting spirals of mist, silvery and
+opalescent, through which the dim-seen figure of a duck in straight
+flight shot like a missile.
+
+As the king-bird sat erect on his branch, watching with bright eyes
+the miracle of the morning, an over-adventurous dragon-fly arose from
+a weed-top below him and flew into the rosy light. The bird darted
+straight and true, zigzagged sharply as the victim tried to dodge,
+caught the lean prize in his beak, and carried it very gallantly to
+his mate upon the nest. Then he fluttered back to his post on the
+branch.
+
+As the sun got up over the hill, and the warmth dried their wings, the
+intervale began to hum softly with dancing flies and hurrying
+beetles, and the king-bird was continually on the move, twittering
+with soft monotony (his sole attempt at song), between each successful
+sally. At length the female rose from her eggs, stood on the edge of
+the nest, and gave an impatient call. Her mate flew down to take her
+place, and the two perched side by side, making a low chirping sound
+in their throats.
+
+Just at this moment a small black snake, warmed into activity and
+hunger by the first rays of the sun, glided to the tree and began to
+climb. Bird's-nesting was the black snake's favourite employment; but
+it had not stopped to consider that the nest in this particular tree
+was a king-bird's. It climbed swiftly and noiselessly, and the
+preoccupied birds did not get glimpse of it till it was within two
+feet of the nest.
+
+There was no time for consultation in the face of this peril. Like
+lightning the two darted down upon the enemy, buffeting its head with
+swift wing-strokes. The first assault all but swept it from the tree,
+and it shrank back upon itself with flattened head and angry hiss.
+Then it struck fiercely, again and again, at its bewildering
+assailants. But swift as were its movements, those of the king-birds
+were swifter, and its fangs never hit upon so much as one harassing
+feather. Suddenly, in its fury, it struck out too far, weakening for a
+moment its hold upon the crevices of the bark; and in that moment,
+both birds striking it together, its squirming folds were hurled to
+the ground. Thoroughly cowed, it slipped under cover and made off,
+only a wavering line among the grasses betraying its path. The
+king-birds, with excited and defiant twittering, followed for a little
+its hidden retreat, and then returned elated to the nest.
+
+Among the kindred of the wild as well as among those of roof and
+hearth, events are apt to go in company. For day after day things will
+revolve in set fashion. Then chance takes sudden interest in a
+particular spot or a certain individual, and there, for a time, is
+established a centre for events. This day of the black snake was an
+eventful day for the little kings of the intervale. They had hardly
+more than recovered from their excitement over the snake when a red
+squirrel, his banner of a tail flaunting superbly behind him, came
+bounding over the grass to their tree. His intentions may have been
+strictly honourable. But a red squirrel's intentions are liable to
+change in the face of opportunity. As he ran up the tree, and paused
+curiously at the nested crotch, a feathered thunderbolt struck him on
+the side of the head. It knocked him clean out of the tree; and he
+turned a complete somersault in the air before he could get his
+balance and spread his legs so as to alight properly. When he reached
+the ground he fled in dismay, and was soon heard chattering
+vindictively among the branches of a far-off poplar.
+
+It was a little before noon when came the great event of this eventful
+day. The male king-bird was on the edge of the nest, feeding a fat
+moth to his mate. As he straightened up and glanced around he saw a
+large marsh-hawk winnowing low across the river. As it reached the
+shore it swooped into the reed-fringe, but rose again without a
+capture. For a few minutes it quartered the open grass near the bank,
+hunting for mice. The two king-birds watched it with anxious, angry
+eyes. Suddenly it sailed straight toward the tree; and the king-birds
+shot into the air, ready for battle.
+
+It was not the precious nest, however, nor the owners of the nest, on
+which the fierce eyes of the marsh-hawk had fallen. When he was within
+twenty paces of the nest he dropped into the grass. There was a moment
+of thrashing wings, then he rose again, and beat back toward the river
+with a young muskrat in his talons.
+
+Considering the size and savagery of the hawk, any small bird but the
+little king would have been well content with his riddance. Not so the
+king-birds. With shrill chirpings they sped to the rescue. Their wings
+cuffed the marauder's head in a fashion that confused him. Their
+wedge-like beaks menaced his eyes and brought blood through the short
+feathers on the top of his head. He could make no defence or
+counter-attack against opponents so small and so agile of wing. At
+length a sharp jab split the lower lid of one eye,--and this added
+fear to his embarrassment. He dropped the muskrat, which fell into the
+river and swam off little the worse for the experience.
+
+Relieved of his burden, the hawk made all speed to escape. At the
+farther shore the female king-bird desisted from the pursuit, and
+hurried back to her nest. But the avenging wrath of the male was not
+so easily pacified. Finding the tormentor still at his head, the hawk
+remembered the security of the upper air, and began to mount in sharp
+spirals. The king-bird pursued till, seen from the earth, he seemed no
+bigger than a bee dancing over the hawk's back. Then he disappeared
+altogether; and the hawk, but for his nervous, harassed flight, might
+have seemed to be alone in that clear altitude. At last his wings
+were seen to steady themselves into the tranquil, majestic soaring of
+his kind. Presently, far below the soaring wings, appeared a tiny dark
+shape, zigzagging swiftly downward; and soon the king-bird, hastening
+across the river, alighted once more on his branch and began to preen
+himself composedly.
+
+
+
+
+The Kill
+
+
+It was early winter and early morning, and the first of the light lay
+sharp on the new snow. The sun was just lifting over a far and low
+horizon. Long, level rays, streaking the snow with straight,
+attenuated stains of pinkish gold and sharp lines of smoky-blue
+shadow, pierced the edges of the tall fir forests of Touladi. Though
+every tint--of the blackish-green firs, of the black-brown trunks, of
+the violet and yellow and gray birch saplings, of the many-hued snow
+spaces--was unspeakably tender and delicate, the atmosphere was of a
+transparency and brilliancy almost vitreous. One felt as if the whole
+scene might shatter and vanish at the shock of any sudden sound. Then
+a sound came--but it was not sudden; and the mystic landscape did not
+dissolve. It was a sound of heavy, measured, muffled footfalls
+crushing the crisp snow. There was a bending and swishing of bare
+branches, a rattling as of twigs upon horn or ivory--and a huge bull
+moose strode into view. With his splendid antlers laid far back he
+lifted his great, dilating nostrils, stared down the long, white
+lanelike open toward the rising sun, and sniffed the air inquiringly.
+Then he turned to browse on the aromatic twigs of the birch saplings.
+
+The great moose was a lord of his kind. His long, thick, glistening
+hair was almost black over the upper portions of his body, changing
+abruptly to a tawny ochre on the belly, and the inner and lower parts
+of the legs. The maned and hump-like ridge of his mighty
+fore-shoulders stood a good six feet three from the ground; and the
+spread of his polished, palmated antlers, so massive as to look a
+burden for even so colossal a head and neck as his, was well beyond
+five feet. The ridge of his back sloped down to hind-quarters
+disproportionately small, finished off with a little, meagrely tufted
+tail that on any beast less regal in mien and stature would have
+looked ridiculous. The majesty of a bull moose, however, is too secure
+to be marred by the incongruous pettiness of his tail. From the lower
+part of his neck, where the great muscles ran into the spacious,
+corded chest, hung a curious tuft of long and very coarse black hair,
+called among woodsmen the "bell." As he turned to his browsing, his
+black form stood out sharply against the background of the firs. Far
+down the silent, glittering slope, a good mile distant, a tall, gray
+figure on snow-shoes appeared for a second in the open, caught sight
+of the pasturing moose, and vanished hurriedly into the birch
+thickets.
+
+[Illustration: "STARED DOWN THE LONG, WHITE LANELIKE OPEN."]
+
+Having cropped a few mouthfuls here and there from branches within
+easy reach, the great bull set himself to make a more systematic
+breakfast. Selecting a tall young birch with a bushy top, he leaned
+his chest against it until he bore it to the ground. Then, straddling
+it and working his way along toward the top, he held it firmly while
+he browsed at ease upon the juiciest and most savoury of the tips.
+
+For some minutes he had been thus pleasantly occupied, when suddenly
+an obscure apprehension stirred in his brain. He stopped feeding,
+lifted his head, and stood motionless. Only his big ears moved,
+turning their wary interrogations toward every point of the compass,
+and his big nostrils suspiciously testing every current of air.
+Neither nose nor ears, the most alert of his sentinels, gave any
+report of danger. He looked about, saw nothing unusual, and fell again
+to feeding.
+
+Among the wild kindreds, as far as man can judge, there are
+occasional intuitions that seem to work beyond the scope of the
+senses. It is not ordinarily so, else would all hunting, on the part
+of man or of the hunting beasts, be idle. But once in a while, as if
+by some unwilling telepathic communication from hunter to hunted, or
+else by an obscure and only half-delivered message from the powers
+that preside over the wild kindreds, a warning of peril is conveyed to
+a pasturing creature while yet the peril is far off and unrevealed.
+The great moose found his appetite all gone. He backed off the sapling
+and let its top spring up again toward the empty blue. He looked back
+nervously over his trail, sniffed the air, waved his ears inquiringly.
+The more he found nothing to warrant his uneasiness, the more his
+uneasiness grew. It was as if Death, following far off but
+relentlessly, had sent a grim menace along the windings of the trail.
+Something like a panic came into the dilating eyes of the big bull. He
+turned toward the fir forest, at a walk which presently broke into a
+shambling, rapid trot; and presently he disappeared among the sombre
+and shadowy colonnades.
+
+In the strange gloom of the forest, a transparent gloom confused by
+thin glints and threads of penetrating, pinkish light, the formless
+alarm of the moose began to subside. In a few minutes his wild run
+diminished into a rapid walk. He would not go back to his feeding,
+however. He had been seized with a shuddering distrust of the young
+birch thickets on the slope. Over beyond the next ridge there were
+some bushy swales which he remembered as good pasturage--where,
+indeed, he had a mind to "yard up" for the winter, when the snow
+should get too deep for wide ranging. Once more quickening his pace,
+he circled back almost to the fringe of the forest, making toward a
+little stretch of frozen marsh, which was one of his frequented
+runways between ridge and ridge. That nameless fear in the birch
+thickets still haunted him, however, and he moved with marvellous
+quietness. Not once did his vast antlers and his rushing bulk disturb
+the dry undergrowth, or bring the brittle, dead branches crashing down
+behind him. The only sound that followed him was that of the shallow
+snow yielding crisply under his feet, and a light clicking, as the
+tips of his deep-cleft, loose-spreading hoofs came together at the
+recovery of each stride. This clicking, one of the most telltale of
+wilderness sounds to the woodsman's ear, grew more sharp and insistent
+as the moose increased his speed, till presently it became a sort of
+castanet accompaniment to his long, hurried stride. A porcupine, busy
+girdling a hemlock, ruffled and rattled his dry quills at the sound,
+and peered down with little, disapproving eyes as the big, black form
+fled by below him.
+
+The snowy surface of the marsh was stained with ghosts of
+colour--aerial, elusive tinges of saffron and violet--as the moose
+came out upon it. As he swung down its lonely length, his gigantic
+shadow, lopsided and blue, danced along threateningly, its head lost
+in the bushes fringing the open. When he came to the end of the marsh,
+where the wooded slope of the next ridge began, he half paused,
+reaching his long muzzle irresolutely toward the tempting twigs of a
+young willow thicket; but before he could gather one mouthful, that
+nameless fear came over him again, that obscure forewarning of doom,
+and he sprang forward toward the cover of the firs. As he sprang,
+there was a movement and a flash far down a wooded alley--a sharp,
+ringing crack--and something invisible struck him in the body. He had
+been struck before, by falling branches, or by stones bounding down a
+bluff, but this missile seemed very different and very small. Small as
+it was, however, the blow staggered him for an instant; then he
+shuddered, and a surge of heat passed through his nerves. But a second
+later he recovered himself fully, and bounded into the woods, just in
+time to escape a second bullet, as a second shot rang out in vain
+behind him.
+
+Straight up the wooded steep he ran, startled, but less actually
+terrified now, in fleeing from a definite peril, then when trembling
+before a formless menace. This peril was one that he felt he could
+cope with. He knew his own strength and speed. Now that he had the
+start of them, these slow-moving, relentless man-creatures, with the
+sticks that spoke fire, could never overtake him. With confident
+vigour he breasted the incline, his mighty muscles working as never
+before under the black hair of shoulder and flank. But he did not know
+that every splendid stride was measured by a scarlet sign on the snow.
+
+For a few minutes the moose rushed on through the morning woods, up
+and up between the tall trunks of the firs, half-forgetting his alarm
+in the triumph of his speed. Then it began to seem to him that the
+slope of the hill had grown steeper than of old; gradually, and
+half-unconsciously, he changed his course, and ran parallel with the
+ridge; and with this change the scarlet signs upon his trail grew
+scanter. But in a few minutes more he began to feel that the snow was
+deeper than it had been--deeper, and more clinging. It weighted his
+hoofs and fetlocks as it had never done before, and his pace
+slackened. He began to be troubled by the thick foam welling into his
+nostrils and obstructing his breath. As he blew it forth impatiently
+it made red flecks and spatters on the snow. He had no pain, no
+realization that anything had gone wrong with him. But his eyes took
+on suddenly a harassed, anxious look, and he felt himself growing
+tired. He must rest a little before continuing his flight.
+
+The idea of resting while his enemies were still so near and hot upon
+the trail, would, at any other time, have been rejected as absurd; but
+now the brain of the black moose was growing a little confused. Often
+before this he had run till he felt tired, and then lain down to rest.
+He had never felt tired till he knew that he had run a great distance.
+Now, from his dimming intelligence the sense of time had slipped away.
+He had been running, and he felt tired. Therefore, he must have run a
+long distance, and his slow enemies must have been left far behind. He
+could safely rest. His old craft, however, did not quite fail him at
+this point. Before yielding to the impulse which urged him to lie
+down, he doubled and ran back, parallel to his trail and some fifty
+paces from it, for a distance of perhaps two hundred yards. Staggering
+at every other stride, and fretfully blowing the stained froth from
+his nostrils, he crouched behind a thicket of hemlock seedlings, and
+watched the track by which his foes must come.
+
+For a little while he kept his watch alertly, antlers laid back, ears
+attentive, eyes wide and bright. Then, so slowly that he did not seem
+aware of it himself, his massive head drooped forward till his muzzle
+lay outstretched upon the snow. So far back from the gate of the
+senses drew the life within him, that when three gray-coated figures
+on snow-shoes went silently past on his old trail, he never saw them.
+His eyes were filled with a blur of snow, and shadows, and unsteady
+trunks, and confusing little gleams of light.
+
+Of the three hunters following on the trail of the great black moose,
+one was more impetuous than the others. It was his first moose that he
+was trailing; and it was his bullet that was speaking through those
+scarlet signs on the snow. He kept far ahead of his comrades, elated
+and fiercely glad, every nerve strung with expectation. Behind each
+bush, each thicket, he looked for the opportunity to make the final,
+effective shot that should end the great chase. Not unlearned in
+woodcraft, he knew what it meant when he reached the loop in the
+trail. He understood that the moose had gone back to watch for his
+pursuers. What he did not know or suspect was, that the watcher's eyes
+had grown too dim to see. He took it for granted that the wise beast
+had marked their passing, and fled off in another direction as soon as
+they got by. Instead, however, of redoubling his caution, he plunged
+ahead with a burst of fresh enthusiasm. He was very properly sure his
+bullet had done good work, since it had so soon compelled the enduring
+animal to rest.
+
+A puff of wandering air, by chance, drifted down from the running man
+to the thicket, behind which the black bull lay, sunk in his torpor.
+The dreaded man-scent--the scent of death to the wilderness folk--was
+blown to the bull's nostrils. Filled though they were with that red
+froth, their fine sense caught the warning. The eyes might fail in
+their duty, the ears flag and betray their trust; but the nostrils,
+skilled and schooled, were faithful to the last. Their imperative
+message pierced to the fainting brain, and life resumed its duties.
+Once more the dull eyes awoke to brightness. The great, black form
+lunged up and crashed forward into the open, towering, formidable, and
+shaking ominous antlers.
+
+Taken by surprise, and too close to shoot in time, the rash hunter
+sprang aside to make for a tree. He had heard much of the charge of a
+wounded moose. As he turned, the toe of one snow-shoe caught on a
+branchy stub, just below the surface of the snow. The snow-shoe turned
+side on, and tripped him, and he fell headlong right in the path of
+the charging beast.
+
+As he fell, he heard a shout from his comrades, hurrying up far behind
+him; but the thought that flashed through him was that they could not
+be in time. Falling on his face, he expected the next instant to feel
+the bull's great rending hoofs descend upon his back and stamp his
+life out.
+
+But the blow never fell. The moose had seen his foe coming, and
+charged to meet him, his strength and valour flashing up for an
+instant as the final emergency confronted him. But ere he could reach
+that prostrate shape in the snow, he forgot what he was doing, and
+stopped short. With legs a little apart he braced himself, and stood
+rigid. His noble head was held high, as if he scorned the enemies who
+had dogged him to his last refuge. But in reality he no longer saw
+them. The breath came hard through his rattling nostrils, and his
+eyes, very wide open, were dark with a fear which he could not
+understand. The life within him strove desperately to maintain its
+hold upon that free and lordly habitation. The second hunter, now, was
+just lifting his rifle,--but before he could sight and fire, the chase
+was ended. That erect, magnificent figure, towering over the fallen
+man, collapsed all at once. It fell together into a mere heap of hide
+and antlers. The light in the eyes went out, as a spark that is
+trodden, and the laboured breathing stopped in mid-breath. The fallen
+hunter sprang up, rushed forward with a shout, and drew his knife
+across the outstretched throat.
+
+
+
+
+The Little People of the Sycamore
+
+
+I.
+
+The fantastic old sycamore, standing alone on the hill, thrust out its
+one gaunt limb across the face of the moon. It was late April, and the
+buds not yet swollen to bursting. On the middle of the limb, blackly
+silhouetted against the golden disk, crouched a raccoon, who sniffed
+the spring air and scanned the moon-washed spaces. From the marshy
+spots at the foot of the hill, over toward the full-fed, softly
+rushing brook, came the high piping of the frogs, a voice of poignant,
+indeterminate desire.
+
+Having reconnoitred the night to her satisfaction, the raccoon
+returned to a deep hole in the sycamore, and hastily touched with her
+pointed nose each in turn of her five, blind, furry little ones. Very
+little they were, half-cub, half-kitten in appearance, with their long
+noses, long tails, and bear-like feet. They huddled luxuriously
+together in the warm, dry darkness of the den, and gave little
+squeals in response to their mother's touch. In her absence they had
+been voiceless, almost moveless, lest voice or motion should betray
+them to an enemy.
+
+Having satisfied herself as to the comfort of the furry children, the
+old raccoon nimbly descended the tree, ran lightly down the hill, and
+made for the nearest pool, where the frogs were piping. She was a
+sturdy figure, yet lithe and graceful, about the bulk of the largest
+cat, and with a tail almost the length of her body. Her legs, however,
+were much shorter and more powerful than those of a cat; and when, for
+a moment of wary observation, she stood still, her feet came down
+flatly, like those of a bear, though in running she went on her toes,
+light as the seed of the milkweed. Her head was much like a bear's in
+shape, with the nose very long and pointed; and a bar of black across
+the middle of her face, gave a startling intensity to her dark, keen,
+half-malicious eyes. Her fur, very long and thick, was of a cloudy
+brown; and the black rings on her gray tail stood out sharply in the
+moonlight. Both in expression and in movement, she showed that strange
+mixture of gaiety, ferocity, mischievousness, and confident sagacity,
+which makes the raccoon unlike in character to all the other wild
+kindreds.
+
+[Illustration: "CROUCHED FLAT, MOVELESS AS THE LOG ITSELF."]
+
+Though she was on important affairs intent, and carrying the cares of
+the family, she was not too absorbed to feel the glad impulse of the
+spring; and for sheer exuberance of life, she would go bounding over a
+stick or a stone as if it were a tree or a boulder. Though life was a
+serious matter, she was prepared to get out of it all the fun there
+was to be had.
+
+But when she neared the noisy pools she went stealthily enough.
+Nevertheless, for all her caution, the pipings ceased in that section
+of the pool when she was within two or three feet of the waterside;
+and, in the little space of sudden silence, she knew that every small
+piper was staring at her with fixed, protruding eyes. On she went,
+straight out to the end of a half-submerged log, and there crouched
+flat, moveless as the log itself. She knew that if she only kept still
+long enough, she would come to be regarded by the pool-dwellers as
+nothing more than a portion of the log. Meanwhile the high chorus from
+the adjoining pools swelled ever louder and shriller, as the small
+musicians voiced the joy of spring.
+
+For perhaps ten minutes the space about the waiting raccoon on the log
+appeared lifeless. Then one little black spot, which had seemed like a
+lump of mud against a dead grass-stalk, moved; then another, and
+another, and another--all over the pool. Pale throats began to throb
+rhythmically; and the pipings once more pulsed forth buoyant and
+strong. The frogs had utterly forgotten the intruder, and their
+bulging eyes were no longer fixed on the log. Nevertheless, as it
+chanced, there was not a single piper within reach of the watcher's
+paw.
+
+The raccoon's eyes gleamed with intenser fire, but she never stirred.
+She knew that the price of a meal, to most of the wood-folk, was
+patience as untiring as a stone. Only her full, dark eyes, set in
+their bar of black, moved watchfully, searching the pallid spaces all
+about the log.
+
+A moment more and her patience was rewarded. A big frog from the
+neighbour pool, unaware that there had been any intrusion here, came
+swimming up, on some errand of private urgency, and made directly for
+the log. The next instant, before he had any inkling of the imminence
+of doom, the raccoon's forepaw shot out like a flash. It was a
+wide-spread, flexible paw, like a little, black, lean hand, strong and
+delicate, the fingers tipped with formidable claws. It caught the
+swimming frog under the belly, swept him from the water, and threw him
+far up on to the shore. With a pounce, the raccoon was upon him; and
+a snap of her strong teeth ended his struggles.
+
+The raccoon was very hungry, but, unlike others of the hunting tribes,
+she did not fall instantly to her meal. The mauled victim was covered
+with bits of dried stubble and leaf and earth, which clung to its
+sticky skin and were most distasteful to her fastidious appetite.
+Picking it up in her jaws, she carried it back to the pool. There,
+holding it in her claws, she proceeded to wash it thoroughly, sousing
+it up and down till there was not a vestige of soilure to be found
+upon it. When quite satisfied that no washing could make it cleaner,
+she fell to and made her meal with relish.
+
+But what was one frog to a raccoon with a family, a mother whose
+breast must supply five hungry little mouths? She ran over to the
+brook, and followed down its bank to a spot where it widened out and a
+strong eddy made up against the hither shore, washing a slope of
+gravel. Here, in the shallows, she heard a feeble flopping, and knew
+that a sick or disabled fish was making its last fight with fate. It
+was a large chub, which had evidently been hooked by some heedless
+trout-fisher farther up-stream, torn from the hook in anger because it
+was not a trout, and thrown back into the water, to survive or die as
+the water-fates should will. It turned on one side, revealing its
+white belly and torn gills; then, feeling itself washed ashore by the
+eddy, it gave one more feeble flop in the effort to regain the safe
+deeps. At this moment the raccoon, pouncing with a light splash into
+the shallows, seized it, and with a nip through the backbone ended its
+misery.
+
+Having eaten the fish, and daintily cleaned her fur, the raccoon
+ascended the bank, with the purpose of returning to her lair in the
+old sycamore. She stopped abruptly, however, as a new sound, very
+different from that of the frog chorus, fell upon her heedful ear. It
+was an excited, yelping whine; and presently she caught sight of a
+long-legged, plumy-tailed dog, rushing wildly hither and thither, nose
+to earth, quartering the ground for fresh trails.
+
+The raccoon knew the dog, from a distance, for the young, unbroken,
+brown Irish setter which had lately come to the neighbour farm. His
+qualities and capabilities, however, were, as yet, unknown to her.
+Though she knew herself more than a match for the average dog, and
+particularly for the small black and white mongrel which, up to a
+month ago, had been the only dog on the farm, she did not know just
+how dangerous the Irish setter might be. Therefore, though the light
+of battle flamed into her eyes, she considered her responsibilities,
+and looked around for a tree.
+
+There was no tree near, so she turned, crouched close to the ground,
+and attempted to steal off unperceived. But as she turned the dog
+caught sight of her. At the same instant he also caught her scent. It
+was a new scent to him, a most interesting scent; and he rushed upon
+her, with streaming tail and a peal of joyously savage yelpings. The
+raccoon backed up against a granite rock, and stood at bay, her long,
+white teeth bared, her eyes fierce, fearless, and watchful.
+
+The Irish setter was a wild, undisciplined pup, harebrained and
+headlong after the manner of his breed. Of raccoons and their
+capabilities he had had no experience. This small, crouching animal,
+under the rock in the moonlight, seemed to promise an easy victory. He
+sprang upon her, open-mouthed, and snapped confidently at her neck.
+
+All his big jaws got were a few hairs; for on the instant the raccoon
+had dodged. Her keen claws raked the side of his face, and her fine,
+punishing fangs tore a gash in his neck, dangerously near his throat.
+With a yelp of pain and terror he tore himself free of those deadly
+teeth and bounded out of reach. And the raccoon, silently triumphant,
+backed up again into her posture of defence against the rock.
+
+But the Irish setter, in that half-minute, had learned a great deal
+about raccoons. He now refused to come within four or five feet of his
+small antagonist. He leaped up and down, snapping and barking, but had
+no more stomach for the actual encounter. His noisy threatenings,
+however, which did violence to the silver magic of the night, soon
+brought no answer; and the black and white mongrel, barking in great
+excitement, rushed up to take a hand in the affray.
+
+At the sight of the quietly desperate raccoon he stopped short. But
+his hesitation was from discretion, not from cowardice. He knew that
+the raccoon could master him. He took some sort of swift counsel,
+therefore, with the blustering setter; and then, having apparently
+received assurance of support, sprang boldly on the enemy.
+
+There was a sharp tussle, a confusion of snapping, snarling, clawing,
+growling, and squealing; while the Irish setter, having reconsidered
+his promise to take a hand, contented himself with barking brave
+encouragement from a safe distance. At last the black and white
+mongrel, finding that he was getting badly worsted and receiving no
+support, tried to draw away; and the raccoon, fearing to be dragged
+from her post of vantage against the rock, at once let him go. Both
+combatants were breathless and bleeding, and they eyed each other with
+the watchfulness born of respect.
+
+The little mongrel now seemed to hold a second and more elaborate
+conference with the Irish setter. Possibly he conveyed his opinion of
+the latter's character, for the proud-plumed tail drooped
+disconsolately, and the loud-mouthed threatenings ceased. Just what
+new courage the sagacious mongrel might have succeeded in infusing
+into the volatile heart of his ally, just what plan of concerted
+action might have been evolved, to the ruin of the heroic little
+fighter under the rock, will never be known; for at this moment a
+second and larger raccoon came running swiftly and silently up the
+bank.
+
+It was the mother 'coon's mate, who had heard the noise of combat
+where he was foraging by himself, far down the brook. At sight of this
+most timely reinforcement, the beleaguered raccoon made a sortie.
+Recognizing the weak point in the assailing forces, she darted
+straight upon the hesitating setter, and snapped at his leg.
+
+This was quite too much for his jarred nerves, and with a howl, as if
+he already felt those white teeth crunching to the bone, the setter
+turned and fled. The black and white mongrel, highly disgusted, but
+realizing the hopelessness of the situation, turned and fled after him
+in silence. Then the triumphant raccoons touched noses in brief
+congratulation, and presently moved off to their hunting as if nothing
+had happened. The wild kindred, as a rule, maintain a poise which the
+most extravagant adventures this side of death seldom deeply disturb.
+
+
+II.
+
+Up to this time, through the hungry weeks of late winter and the first
+thaws, the raccoons in the old sycamore had resisted the temptation of
+the farmer's hen-roosts. They knew that the wilderness hunting, though
+the most difficult, was safe, while any serious depredations at the
+farm would be sure to bring retaliation from that most crafty and
+dangerous creature, man. Now, however, after the fight with the dogs,
+a mixture of audacity with the desire for revenge got the better of
+them; and that same night, very late, when the moon was casting long,
+sharp shadows from the very rim of the horizon, they hurried through
+the belt of forest, which separated their sycamore from the cleared
+fields, and stole into the rear of the barn-yard.
+
+The farm was an outpost, so to speak, of the settlements, on the
+debatable ground between the forces of the forest and the forces of
+civilization, and therefore much exposed to attack. As the raccoons
+crept along behind the wood-shed they smelt traces of a sickly pungent
+odour, and knew that other marauders had been on the ground not very
+long before. This made them bolder in their enterprise, for they knew
+that such depredations as they might commit would be laid to the
+account of the skunks, and therefore not likely to draw down vengeance
+upon the den in the sycamore. They killed a sitting hen upon her nest,
+feasted luxuriously upon her eggs and as much of herself as they could
+hold, and went away highly elated. For three successive nights they
+repeated their raid upon the fowl-house, each night smelling the
+pungent, choking scent more strongly, but never catching a glimpse of
+the rival marauder. On the fourth night, as they crossed the hillocky
+stump-lot behind the barns, the scent became overpowering, and they
+found the body of the skunk, where fate had overtaken him, lying
+beside the path. They stopped, considered, and turned back to their
+wildwood foraging; and through all that spring they went no more to
+the farmyard, lest they should call down a similar doom upon
+themselves.
+
+As spring ripened and turned to summer over the land, food grew
+abundant in the neighbourhood of the sycamore, and there was no
+temptation to trespass on man's preserves. There were grouse nests to
+rifle, there were squirrels, hare, wood-mice, chipmunks, to exercise
+all the craft and skill of the raccoons. Also there were the
+occasional unwary trout, chub, or suckers, to be scooped up upon the
+borders of the brook. And once, more in hate than in hunger, the old
+mother raccoon had the fierce joy of eradicating a nest of weasels,
+which she found in a pile of rocks. She had a savage antipathy to the
+weasel tribe, whose blood-lust menaces all the lesser wood-folk, and
+whose teeth delight to kill, after hunger is sated, for the mere
+relish of a taste of quivering brain or a spurt of warm blood. The
+raccoon carried more scars from the victory over the weasels than she
+had to remind her of the scuffle with the dogs. But she had the nerve
+that takes punishment without complaint, and the scars troubled her
+little.
+
+When the five young raccoons came down from the sycamore and began to
+depend upon their own foraging, it soon became necessary to extend the
+range, as game grew shyer and more scarce. Even chub and suckers
+learn something in course of time; and as for wood-mice and chipmunks,
+under such incentive as an active family of raccoons can give them
+they attain to a truly heartless cunning in the art of making their
+enemies go hungry. Hanging together with an intense clannishness, the
+raccoon family would make expeditions of such length as to keep often
+for two or three days at a time away from the home in the sycamore.
+
+At last, one night in late summer, when the stars seemed to hang low
+among the warm and thick-leaved trees, and warm scents steamed up
+wherever the dew was disturbed by furry feet, the raccoons wandered
+over to the edge of the corn-field. It chanced that the corn was just
+plumping to tender and juicy fulness. The old raccoons showed the
+youngsters what richness of sweetness lay hidden within the green
+wrappings of the ears; and forth-with the whole clan fell to feasting
+recklessly.
+
+In regard to the ducks and chickens of the farm, the raccoons were
+shrewd enough to know that any extensive depredations upon them would
+call down the swift vengeance of the farmer-folk; but they could not
+realize that they were in mischief when they helped themselves to
+these juicy, growing things. The corn, though manifestly in some way
+involved with the works of man, seemed nevertheless to them a portion
+of nature's liberality. They ran riot, therefore, through the tall,
+well-ordered ranks of green, without malice or misgiving; and in their
+gaiety they were extravagant. They would snatch a mouthful out of one
+sweet ear, then out of another, spoiling ten for one that they
+consumed.
+
+Night after night they came to the corn-field, and waxed fat on their
+plunder, till at last, when they had done the damage of a herd of
+oxen, one silvery night they were discovered. The young farmer, with
+his hired boy and the harebrained, Irish setter, chanced to come by
+through the woods, and to notice that the corn was moving although
+there was no wind. The raccoons were promptly hunted out; and one of
+the young ones, before they could gain the shadowy refuge of the
+trees, was killed with sticks,--the setter contributing much noise,
+but keeping at a very safe distance. When the affray was over, and the
+young farmer, going through the field, found out what damage had been
+done, he was eloquent with picturesque backwoods blasphemies, and
+vowed the extermination of the whole 'coon clan. With the aid of the
+setter, who now, for the first time, was able to prove the worth of
+his breeding, he tracked the escaping marauders through the woods,
+and at last, after a long hunt, located their lair in the old
+sycamore-tree on the hill. At this his wrath gave way to the hunter's
+elation. His eyes sparkled.
+
+[Illustration: "THEY RAN RIOT ... THROUGH THE TALL, WELL-ORDERED RANKS
+OF GREEN."]
+
+"To-morrow night," said he, to the hired boy, "we'll have a reg'lar
+old-fashioned 'coon hunt!"
+
+Then, whistling off the setter, who was barking, jumping, and whining
+ecstatically at the foot of the sycamore-tree, he turned and strode
+away through the moon-shadows of the forest, with the dog and the
+hired boy at his heels. The diminished raccoon family, with beating
+hearts and trembling nerves, snuggled down together into the depths of
+the sycamore, and dreamed not of the doom preparing for them.
+
+
+III.
+
+On the following night, soon after moonrise, they came. Stealthily,
+though there was little need of stealth, they crept, Indian file,
+around the branchy edges of the fields, through the wet,
+sweet-smelling thickets. The hunter's fever was upon them, fierce and
+furtive. They came to the corn-field--to find that the raccoons had
+paid their visit, made their meal, and got away at the first faint
+signal of the approach of danger. With an outburst of excited
+yelpings, the dogs took up the hot trail, and the hunters made
+straight through the woods for the sycamore-tree.
+
+It was a party of five. With the young farmer, the hired boy, the
+harebrained Irish setter, and the wise little black and white mongrel,
+came also the young schoolmaster of the settlement, who boarded at the
+farm. A year out of college, and more engrossed in the study of the
+wild creatures than ever he had been in his books, he had joined the
+hunt less from sympathy than from curiosity. He had outgrown his
+boyhood's zeal for killing things, and he had a distinct partiality
+for raccoons; but he had never taken part in a 'coon hunt, and it was
+his way to go thoroughly into whatever he undertook. He carried a
+little .22 Winchester repeater, which he had brought with him from
+college, and had employed, hitherto, on nothing more sentient than
+empty bottles or old tomato-cans.
+
+Now it chanced that not all the raccoon family had made their escape
+to the deep hole in the sycamore. The old male, who was rather
+solitary and moody in his habits at this season, had followed the
+flight of the clan for only a short distance; and suddenly, to their
+doubtful joy and complete surprise, the two dogs, who were far ahead
+of the hunters, overtook him. After a moment's wise hesitation, the
+black and white mongrel joined battle, while the setter contributed a
+great deal of noisy encouragement. By the time the hunters came up the
+mongrel had drawn off, bleeding and badly worsted; and the angry
+raccoon, backed up against a tree, glared at the newcomers with fierce
+eyes and wide-open mouth, as if minded to rush upon them.
+
+The odds, however, were much too great for even so dauntless a soul as
+his; and when the enemy were within some ten or twelve paces, he
+turned and ran up the tree. In the first fork he crouched, almost
+hidden, and peered down with one watchful eye.
+
+The young farmer was armed with an old, muzzle-loading,
+single-barrelled duck-gun. He raised it to his shoulder and took aim
+at the one bright eye gleaming from behind the branch. Then he lowered
+it, and turned to his boarder with a mixture of politeness and rustic
+mockery.
+
+"Your first shot!" said he. "I'll shoot the critter, after you've
+tried that there pea-shooter on him!"
+
+"He's licked the dogs in fair fight," said the schoolmaster. "Let's
+let him off!"
+
+The farmer swore in unaffected amazement. "Why, that's the ---- ----
+that does more damage than all the rest put together!" he exclaimed.
+"You'll see me fix _him_. But you take first shot, Mister Chase. I
+want to see the pea-shooter work!"
+
+The young schoolmaster saw his prestige threatened,--and with no
+profit whatever to the doomed raccoon. Prestige is nowhere held at
+higher premium than in the backwoods. It is the magic wand of power.
+The young man fired, a quick, but careful shot; and on the snappy,
+insignificant report, the raccoon fell dead from the tree.
+
+"You _kin_ shoot some!" remarked the farmer, picking up the victim,
+and noting the bullet-hole in its forehead. And the hired boy spread
+his mouth in a huge, broken-toothed grin of admiration.
+
+The old sycamore stood out lonely in the flood of the moonlight. Not a
+raccoon was in sight; but the round, black doorway to their den was
+visible against the gray bark, beside the crotch of the one great
+limb. The frantic yelpings of the dogs around the foot of the tree
+were proof enough that the family were at home. The hunters, after the
+ancient custom of men that hunt 'coons, had brought an axe with them;
+but the hired boy, who carried it, looked with dismay at the huge
+girth of the sycamore.
+
+"Won't git that chopped down in a week!" said he, with pardonable
+depreciation of his powers.
+
+"Go fetch another axe!" commanded the farmer, seating himself on a
+stump, and getting out his pipe.
+
+"It would be a pity to cut down that tree, the biggest sycamore in the
+country, just to get at a 'coon's nest!" said the young schoolmaster,
+willing to spare both the tree and its inhabitants.
+
+The farmer let his match go out while he eyed the great trunk.
+
+"Never mind the axe," said he, calling back the hired boy. "Fetch me
+the new bindin' rope out of the spare manger; an' a bunch of rags, an'
+some salmon-twine. An' stir yerself!"
+
+Relieved of his anxiety as to the chopping, the boy sped willingly on
+his errand. And the young schoolmaster realized, with a little twinge
+of regret, that the raccoon family was doomed.
+
+When the boy came back, the farmer took the bunch of rags, smeared
+them liberally with wet gunpowder, and tied them into a loose, fluffy
+ball, on the end of a length of salmon-twine. Then, having thrown the
+rope over the limb of the sycamore, he held both ends, and sent the
+hired boy up into the tree, where he sat astride, grinning and
+expectant, and peered into the well-worn hole.
+
+"Now," said the farmer, tossing the ball of rags up to him, "light
+this 'ere spittin' devil, an' lower it into the hole, an' we'll see
+what's what!"
+
+As he spoke, he turned, and gave the schoolmaster a slow wink, which
+quickened the latter's expectations. The next moment the boy had set a
+match to the rags, and they were ablaze with wild sputterings and jets
+of red flame. Eagerly, but carefully, he lowered the fiery ball into
+the hole, paying out the string till it was evident that the tree was
+hollow almost down to the butt.
+
+Suddenly there was a wild commotion of squeals, grunts, and
+scratchings in the depths of the invaded hole. The sounds rose swiftly
+up the inside of the trunk. Then there was an eruption at the mouth of
+the hole. A confusion of furry forms shot forth, with such violence
+that the startled boy almost lost his balance. As it was, he backed
+away precipitately along the branch, amid derisive encouragement from
+his friends below.
+
+Having eluded, for the moment, the flaming invader of their home, the
+raccoons paused on the limb to survey the situation.
+
+"Fling 'em down to us," jeered the farmer, hugely amused at the boy's
+dismay.
+
+The latter grinned nervously, and started forward as if to obey. But
+at this moment the raccoons made their decision. The dogs and men
+below looked more formidable than the hesitating boy astride of their
+branch. In a resolute line, their fierce old mother leading, they made
+for him.
+
+The boy backed away with awkward alacrity, but still keeping his hold
+on the salmon-twine. Consequently, by the time he had nearly reached
+the end of the limb, the still sputtering fire-ball emerged from the
+hole in the crotch. At the sound of it behind them the young raccoons
+turned in terror, and straightway dropped from the tree; but the old
+mother, undaunted, darted savagely upon her foe. The boy gave a cry of
+fear. The next instant there was a spiteful crack from the
+schoolmaster's little rifle. The old raccoon stopped, shrank, and
+rolled lifeless from the limb.
+
+Meanwhile, the youngsters were in a _melee_ with the two dogs. Though
+little more than three-fourths grown, they had courage; and so brave a
+front did they oppose to their enemies that for a few moments the dogs
+were cautious in attack. Then the black and white mongrel sprang in;
+and the big setter, realizing that these were no such antagonists as
+their parents had been, followed, and was astonished to learn that he
+could stand a bite from those sharp teeth and resist the impulse to
+howl and run away. In less time than it takes to describe, one of the
+raccoons was shaken to death in the setter's great jaws, and then the
+other three scattered in flight.
+
+One was overtaken in two seconds by the black and white mongrel, and
+bitten through the back. The second ran past the farmer, and was
+killed by a quick blow with his gun-barrel. The third, full of courage
+and resource, flew straight at the setter's throat, and so alarmed him
+that he jumped away. Then, seeing no tree within reach, and probably
+realizing that there was no escape by any ordinary course, he fled
+straight to the farmer.
+
+The farmer, however, mistook this action for the ferocity of despair.
+He struck out with his gun-barrel, missed his aim, swore
+apprehensively, and caught the little animal a kick, which landed it
+within a couple of yards of the spot where stood the young
+schoolmaster, watching the scene with mingled interest and pity. His
+sympathies now went out warmly to this brave and sole survivor of the
+little people of the sycamore. His quick intuitions had understood the
+appeal which had been so cruelly repulsed.
+
+For a second the young raccoon stood still where he had fallen, and
+his keen, dark eyes flashed a glance on each of his enemies in turn.
+Both dogs were now rushing upon him. The ever-imminent doom of the
+wild kindred was about to lay hold of him. He half-turned, as if to
+die fighting, then changed his mind, darted to the feet of the young
+schoolmaster, ran up his trouser-leg, and confidently took refuge
+under his coat.
+
+"Shake him off! Shake him off! A 'coon's bite is pizen!" shouted the
+farmer, in great excitement.
+
+"Not much!" said the young schoolmaster, with decision, gathering his
+coat snugly around his panting guest. "This 'coon hunt's over. This
+little chap's coming home to live with me!"
+
+The farmer stared, and then laughed good-naturedly.
+
+"Jest as you say," said he. "Recken ye've 'arned the right to have a
+say in the matter. But ye'll find 'coons is mighty mischeevous 'round
+a house. Fetch the karkisses, Jake. Reckon we've done pretty well for
+one night's huntin', an' there ain't goin' to be no more 'coons
+messin' in the corn _this_ summer!"
+
+In a few minutes the procession was again plodding, Indian file,
+through the still, dew-fragrant, midnight woods. The little raccoon,
+its heart now beating quietly, nestled in secure contentment under
+the young schoolmaster's arm, untroubled even by the solemn and
+deep-toned menace of a horned-owl's cry from the spiky top of a dead
+hemlock near at hand. From the lake behind the hill came the long
+laughter of a loon, the wildest and saddest of all the wilderness
+voices. And a lonely silence settled down about the old sycamore on
+the hill, solitary under the white, high-sailing moon.
+
+
+
+
+Horns and Antlers
+
+
+The young red and white bull was very angry. He stood by the pasture
+bars grumbling, and blowing through his nostrils, and shaking his
+short, straight horns, and glaring fiercely after the man, who was
+driving three cows down the hill to the farmyard in the shadowy
+valley. Every evening for weeks the man had come about sunset and
+taken away the cows in that fashion, rudely suppressing the young
+bull's efforts to accompany his herd, and leaving him to the sole
+companionship of two silly and calf-like yearlings whom he scorned to
+notice. For the past few evenings the bull had been trying to work
+himself up to the point of fairly joining issue with the man, and
+having it out with him. But there was something in the man's cool
+assurance, in his steady, compelling eye, in the abrupt authority of
+his voice, which made the angry animal hesitate to defy him. Certainly
+the bull could see that the man was very much smaller than he,--a
+pigmy, indeed, in comparison; but he felt that within that erect and
+fragile-looking shape there dwelt an unknown force which no
+four-footed beast could ever hope to withstand. Every evening, after
+the man and cows had gone half-way down the hillside, the bull would
+fall to bellowing and pawing the ground, and rolling his defiance
+across the quiet valley. But when next the man came face to face with
+him, and spoke to him, he would assume, in spite of himself, an
+attitude of lofty and reluctant deference.
+
+The high hill pasture, with its decaying stumps, its rounded hillocks,
+its patches of withering fern and harsh dwarf juniper, was bathed in
+all the colours of the autumn sunset, while the farmyard down in the
+valley was already in the first purple of the twilight. The centre of
+the pasture was the hilltop, roughly rounded, and naked save for one
+maple-tree, now ablaze with scarlet and amber. Along the line of hills
+across the dusk valley the last of the sunset laid a band of clear
+orange, which faded softly through lemon and pink and violet and
+tender green to the high, cold gray-blue of the dome above the hill,
+where one crow was beating his way toward the tree-tops on the farther
+ridge. The tranquillity of the scene was curiously at variance with
+the loud vapourings of the bull, as he raged up and down behind the
+bars, watched tremblingly by the pair of awestruck yearlings.
+
+Over on the other side of the hill, behind the red maple, where the
+hillocks and fern patches lay already in a cool, violet-brown shadow,
+stood a high-antlered red buck, listening to the bull's ravings. He
+had just come out of the woods and up to the snake fence of split
+rails which bounded the pasture. With some curiosity, not unmixed with
+scorn, he had sniffed at the fence, a phenomenon with which he was
+unfamiliar. But the voice of the bull had promptly absorbed his
+attention. There was something in the voice that irritated him,--which
+seemed, though in a language he did not know, to convey a taunt and a
+challenge. His fine, slim head went high. He snorted several times,
+stamped his delicate hoofs, then bounded lightly over the fence and
+trotted up the slope toward the shining maple.
+
+For most of the greater members of the wild kindred,--and for the
+tribes of the deer and moose, in particular,--the month of October is
+the month of love and war. Under those tender and enchanting skies,
+amid the dying crimsons and purples and yellows and russets, and in
+the wistfulness of the falling leaf, duels are fought to the death in
+the forest aisles and high hill glades. When a sting and a tang
+strike across the dreamy air, and the frosts nip crisply, then the
+blood runs hot in the veins and mating-time stirs up both love and
+hate. The red buck, as it happened, had been something of a laggard in
+awakening to the season's summons. His antlers, this year, had been
+late to mature and overlong in the velvet. When he entered the field,
+therefore, he found that other bucks had been ahead of him, and that
+there were no more does wandering forlorn. He had "belled" in vain for
+several days, searched in vain the limits of his wonted range, and at
+last set out in quest of some little herd whose leader his superior
+strength might beat down and supplant. Of his own prowess, his power
+to supplant all rivals, he had no doubt. But hitherto he had found
+none to answer his challenge, and his humour was testy. He had no idea
+what sort of an animal it was that was making such objectionable
+noises on the other side of the hill; but whatever it might be, he did
+not like it. He knew it was not a bear. He knew it was not a
+bull-moose. And of nothing else that walked the forest did he stand in
+deference, when the courage of rutting-time was upon him.
+
+Stepping daintily, the red buck reached the top of the hill and saw
+the bull below him. A formidable antagonist, surely! The buck stopped
+where he was. He had now less inclination to pick a quarrel; but he
+was consumed with curiosity. What could the heavy red and white beast
+be up to, with his grunting and bellowing, his pawings of the sod, and
+his rampings to and fro? The buck could see no object for such
+defiance, no purpose to such rage. It was plain to him, however, that
+those two odd-looking, rather attractive little animals, who stood
+aside and watched the bull's rantings, were in no way the cause or
+object, as the bull completely ignored them. Growing more and more
+inquisitive as he gazed, the buck took a few steps down the slope, and
+again paused to investigate.
+
+At this point the bull caught sight of the intruder, and wheeled
+sharply. His half-artificial rage against the man was promptly
+forgotten. Who was this daring trespasser, advancing undismayed into
+the very heart of his domain? He stared for a moment or two in
+silence, lashing his tail wrathfully. Then, with a rumbling bellow
+deep in his throat, he lowered his head and charged.
+
+This was a demonstration which the red buck could very well
+understand, but his ill-humour had been swallowed up in curiosity,
+and he was not now so ready to fight. In fact, it was with large
+apprehension that he saw that dangerous bulk charging upon him, and
+his great, liquid eyes opened wide. He stood his ground, however, till
+the bull was almost upon him, and then bounded lightly aside.
+
+The bull, infuriated at this easy evasion, almost threw himself in his
+effort to stop and turn quickly; and in a few seconds he charged
+again. This time the charge was down-hill, which doubled its speed and
+resistlessness. But again the buck sprang aside, and the bull
+thundered on for a score of yards, ploughing up the turf in the fierce
+effort to stop himself.
+
+And now the big, wondering eyes of the buck changed. A glitter came
+into them. It had angered him to be so hustled. And moreover, the
+ponderous clumsiness of the bull filled him with contempt. When the
+bull charged him for the third time, he stamped his narrow, sharp
+hoofs in defiance, and stood with antlers down. At the last moment he
+jumped aside no farther than was absolutely necessary, and plowed a
+red furrow in the bull's flank as he plunged by.
+
+[Illustration: "THIS TIME THE CHARGE WAS DOWN-HILL."]
+
+Beside himself with rage, the bull changed his tactics, trying
+short, close rushes and side lunges with his horns. But the buck,
+thoroughly aroused, and elated with the joy of battle, was always just
+beyond his reach, and always punishing him. Before the fight had
+lasted ten minutes, his flanks and neck were streaming with blood.
+
+With his matchless agility, the buck more than once sprang right over
+his enemy's back. It was impossible for the bull to catch him.
+Sometimes, instead of ripping with the antlers, he would rear straight
+up, and slash the bull mercilessly with his knifelike hoofs. For a
+time, the bull doggedly maintained the unequal struggle; but at
+length, feeling himself grow tired, and realizing that his foe was as
+elusive as a shadow, he lost heart and tried to withdraw. But the
+buck's blood was up, and he would have no withdrawing. He followed
+relentlessly, bounding and goring and slashing, till the helpless bull
+was seized with panic, and ran bellowing along the fence, looking
+vainly for an exit.
+
+For perhaps a hundred yards the conquering buck pursued, now half in
+malice, half in sport, but always punishing, punishing. Then, suddenly
+growing tired of it, he stopped, and went daintily mincing his steps
+back to where the two yearlings stood huddled in awe. They shrank,
+staring wildly, as he approached, but for some reason did not run
+away. Sniffing at them curiously, and not finding their scent to his
+taste, he lifted his slim muzzle, and "belled" sonorously several
+times, pausing between the calls to listen for an answer from the
+forest. Then, receiving no reply, he seemed to remember his
+interrupted quest, and moved off over the hill through the fading
+light.
+
+
+
+
+In the Deep of the Grass
+
+
+Misty gray green, washed with tints of the palest violet, spotted with
+red clover-blooms, white oxeyes, and hot orange Canada lilies, the
+deep-grassed levels basked under the July sun. A drowsy hum of bees
+and flies seemed to distil, with warm aromatic scents, from the
+sun-steeped blooms and grass-tops. The broad, blooming, tranquil
+expanse, shimmering and softly radiant in the heat, seemed the very
+epitome of summer. Now and again a small cloud-shadow sailed across
+it. Now and again a little wind, swooping down upon it gently, bent
+the grass-tops all one way, and spread a sudden silvery pallor. Save
+for the droning bees and flies there seemed to be but one live
+creature astir between the grass and the blue. A solitary marsh-hawk,
+far over by the rail fence, was winnowing slowly, slowly hither and
+thither, lazily hunting.
+
+All this was in the world above the grass-tops. But below the
+grass-tops was a very different world,--a dense, tangled world of dim
+green shade, shot with piercing shafts of sun, and populous with
+small, furtive life. Here, among the brown and white roots, the
+crowded green stems and the mottled stalks, the little earth kindreds
+went busily about their affairs and their desires, giving scant
+thought to the aerial world above them. All that made life significant
+to them was here in the warm, green gloom; and when anything chanced
+to part the grass to its depths they would scurry away in unanimous
+indignation.
+
+On a small stone, over which the green closed so thickly that, when he
+chanced to look upward, he caught but the scantiest shreds of sky, sat
+a half-grown field-mouse, washing his whiskers with his dainty claws.
+His tiny, bead-like eyes kept ceaseless watch, peering through the
+shadowy tangle for whatever might come near in the shape of foe or
+prey. Presently two or three stems above his head were beaten down,
+and a big green grasshopper, alighting clumsily from one of his blind
+leaps, fell sprawling on the stone. Before he could struggle to his
+long legs and climb back to the safer region of the grass-tops, the
+little mouse was upon him. Sharp, white teeth pierced his green mail,
+his legs kicked convulsively twice or thrice, and the faint
+iridescence faded out of his big, blank, foolish eyes. The mouse made
+his meal with relish, daintily discarding the dry legs and wing-cases.
+Then, amid the green debris scattered upon the stone, he sat up, and
+once more went through his fastidious toilet.
+
+But life for the little mouse in his grass-world was not quite all
+watching and hunting. When his toilet was complete, and he had amiably
+let a large black cricket crawl by unmolested, he suddenly began to
+whirl round and round on the stone, chasing his own tail. As he was
+amusing himself with this foolish play, another mouse, about the same
+size as himself, and probably of the same litter, jumped upon the
+stone, and knocked him off. He promptly retorted in kind; and for
+several minutes, as if the game were a well-understood one, the two
+kept it up, squeaking soft merriment, and apparently forgetful of all
+peril. The grass-tops above this play rocked and rustled in a way that
+would certainly have attracted attention had there been any eyes to
+see. But the marsh-hawk was still hunting lazily at the other side of
+the field, and no tragedy followed the childishness.
+
+Both seemed to tire of the sport at the same instant; for suddenly
+they stopped, and hurried away through the grass on opposite sides of
+the stone, as if remembered business had just called to them. Whatever
+the business was, the first mouse seemed to forget it very speedily,
+for in half a minute he was back upon the stone again, combing his
+fine whiskers and scratching his ears. This done to his satisfaction,
+he dropped like a flash from his seat, and disappeared into a small
+hollow beneath it. As he did so, a hairy black spider darted out, and
+ran away among the roots.
+
+A minute or two after the disappearance of the mouse, a creature came
+along which appeared gigantic in the diminutive world of the grass
+folk. It was nearly three feet long, and of the thickness of a man's
+finger. Of a steely gray black, striped and reticulated in a
+mysterious pattern with a clear whitish yellow, it was an ominous
+shape indeed, as it glided smoothly and swiftly, in graceful curves,
+through the close green tangle. The cool shadows and thin lights
+touched it flickeringly as it went, and never a grass-top stirred to
+mark its sinister approach. Without a sound of warning it came
+straight up to the stone, and darted its narrow, cruel head into the
+hole.
+
+There was a sharp squeak, and instantly the narrow head came out
+again, ejected by the force of the mouse's agonized spring. But the
+snake's teeth were fastened in the little animal's neck. The doom of
+the green world had come upon him while he slept.
+
+But doomed though he was, the mouse was game. He knew there was no
+poison in those fangs that gripped him, and he struggled desperately
+to break free. His powerful hind legs kicked the ground with a force
+which the snake, hampered at first by the fact of its length being
+partly trailed out through the tangle, was unable to quite control.
+With unerring instinct,--though this was the first snake he had ever
+encountered,--the mouse strove to reach its enemy's back and sever the
+bone with the fine chisels of his teeth. But it was just this that the
+snake was watchful to prevent. Three times in his convulsive leaps the
+mouse succeeded in touching the snake's body,--but with his feet only,
+never once with those destructive little teeth. The snake held him
+inexorably, with a steady, elastic pressure which yielded just so far,
+and never quite far enough. And in a minute or two the mouse's brave
+struggles grew more feeble.
+
+All this, however,--the lashing and the wriggling and the
+jumping,--had not gone on without much disturbance to the grass-tops.
+Timothy head and clover-bloom, oxeye and feathery plume-grass, they
+had bowed and swayed and shivered till the commotion, very conspicuous
+to one looking down upon the tranquil, flowery sea of green, caught
+the attention of the marsh-hawk, which at that moment chanced to be
+perching on a high fence stake. The lean-headed, fierce-eyed,
+trim-feathered bird shot from his perch, and sailed on long wings over
+the grass to see what was happening. As the swift shadow hovered over
+the grass-tops, the snake looked up. Well he understood the
+significance of that sudden shade. Jerking back his fangs with
+difficulty from the mouse's neck, he started to glide off under the
+thickest matting of the roots. But lightning quick though he was, he
+was not quite quick enough. Just as his narrow head darted under the
+roots, the hawk, with wings held straight up, and talons reaching
+down, dropped upon him, and clutched the middle of his back in a grip
+of steel. The next moment he was jerked into the air, writhing and
+coiling, and striking in vain frenzy at his captor's mail of hard
+feathers. The hawk flew off with him over the sea of green to the top
+of the fence stake, there to devour him at leisure. The mouse, sore
+wounded but not past recovery, dragged himself back to the hollow
+under the stone. And over the stone the grass-tops, once more still,
+hummed with flies, and breathed warm perfumes in the distilling
+heat.
+
+
+
+
+When the Moon Is over the Corn
+
+
+In the mystical transparency of the moonlight the leafy world seemed
+all afloat. The solid ground, the trees, the rail fences, the serried
+ranks of silver-washed corn seemed to have lost all substantial
+foundation. Everything lay swimming, as it were, upon a dream. The
+light that poured down from the round, gold-white, high-sailing moon
+was not ordinary moonlight, but that liquid enchantment which the
+sorceress of the heavens sheds at times, and notably at the ripe of
+the summer, lest earth should forget the incomprehensibility of
+beauty. A little to one side, beyond the corn-field and over a billowy
+mass of silvered leafage, stood the gray, clustered roofs of a
+backwoods farmstead.
+
+In the top of a tall, slim poplar, leaning out from the edge of the
+woods and over the fence that marked the bounds of the wilderness,
+clung a queer-looking, roundish object, gently swaying in the magic
+light. It might almost have been mistaken for a huge, bristly
+bird's-nest, but for the squeaky grunts of satisfaction which it kept
+emitting at intervals. Whether it was that the magic of the moonlight
+had got into its blood, driving it to strange pastimes, or that it was
+merely indulging an established taste for the game of "Rock-a-bye-baby,"
+observation made it plain that the porcupine was amusing itself by
+swinging in the tree-top. Any other of the woods folk would have chosen
+for their recreation a less conspicuous spot than this poplar-top thrust
+out over the open field. But the porcupine feared nobody, and was quite
+untroubled by bashfulness. He cared not a jot who heard, saw, or derided
+him. It was a pleasant world; and for all that had ever been shown him
+to the contrary, it belonged to him.
+
+After a time he got tired of swinging and squeaking. He straightened
+himself out, slowly descended the tree, and set off along the top of
+the fence toward the farmyard. Never before had it occurred to him to
+visit the farmyard; but now that the moon had put the madness into his
+head, he acted upon the whim without a moment's misgiving. Unlike the
+rest of the wild kindreds, he stood little in awe of either the works
+or the ways of man.
+
+[Illustration: "SET OFF ALONG THE TOP OF THE FENCE."]
+
+Presently the fence turned off at a sharp angle to the way he had
+chosen to go. He descended, and crawled in leisurely fashion along an
+unused, grassy lane, wandering from side to side as he went, as if
+time were of no concern to him. About a hundred feet from the fence he
+came to a brook crossing the lane. Spring freshets had carried away
+the little bridge, doubtless years before, and now the stream was
+spanned by nothing but an old tree-trunk, carelessly thrown across.
+Upon the end of this,--for him an ample bridge,--the porcupine
+crawled, never troubling himself to inquire if another passenger might
+chance to be crossing from the other side.
+
+At the very same moment, indeed, another passenger raised furtive,
+padded paws, and took possession of the opposite end of the bridge. It
+was a huge bob-cat, with stubby tail and wide, pale green, unwinking
+eyes. It had come stealing down from the thick woods to visit the
+farmyard,--driven, perhaps, by the same moon-madness that stirred the
+porcupine. But at the edge of the silent farmyard, white and tranquil
+under the flooding radiance, the man-smell on the bars had brought the
+bob-cat to a sudden halt. No moon-madness could make the cautious cat
+forget the menace of that smell. It had turned in its tracks, and
+concluded to look for woodchucks in the corn-field.
+
+When the bob-cat had taken a few paces along the log, it paused and
+glared at the porcupine vindictively, its eyes seeming to emit faint,
+whitish flames. The porcupine, on the other hand, came right on,
+slowly and indifferently, as if unaware of the bob-cat's presence. The
+latter crouched down, flattened back its ears, dug long, punishing
+claws into the bark, opened its sharp-toothed jaws, and gave a savage
+spitting snarl. Was it possible that this insignificant, blundering,
+sluggish creature, this pig of the tree-tops, was going to demand the
+right of way? The porcupine, unhurried, continued to advance, nothing
+but an increased elevation of his quills betraying that he was aware
+of an opponent. The cat's absurd stub of a tail twitched
+spasmodically, and for a few seconds it seemed as if rage might get
+the better of discretion. But all the wild creatures know the
+qualities of that fine armory of quills carried by the porcupine. The
+big cat pulled himself together with a screech, ran back, and sprang
+off to a rock on the bank, whence he spat impotently while the
+porcupine crawled by.
+
+So leisurely was the progress of the bristling little adventurer that
+it was a good half-hour ere he reached the farmyard bars. Here he
+stopped, and sniffed curiously. But it was no dread of the dreaded
+man-smell that delayed him. The bars had been handled by many hot,
+toiling hands; and the salt of their sweat had left upon the wood a
+taste which the porcupine found pleasant. Here and there, up and down,
+he gnawed at the discoloured surfaces. Then, when the relish was
+exhausted, he climbed down on the inside, and marched deliberately up
+the middle of the yard toward the kitchen door. His quills made a dry,
+rustling noise as he went; his claws rattled on the chips, and in the
+unshadowed open he was most audaciously in evidence. His bearing was
+not defiant, but self-reliant, as of one who minded his own business
+and demanded to be let alone. From the stables across the yard came
+the stamping of horses' hoofs; a turkey in the tree behind the
+barn _quit-quitted_ warningly; and a long-drawn, high-pitched
+_kwee-ee-ee-ee-ee_ of inquiry came from the wakeful Leghorn cock in
+the poultry-house. To all these unfamiliar sounds the porcupine turned
+the deaf ear of self-contained indifference.
+
+At this moment around from the front door-step came the farmer's big
+black and white dog, to see what was exciting his family. He was a
+wise dog, and versed in the lore of the wilderness. Had the intruder
+been a bear he would have sought to attract its attention, and raised
+an outcry to summon his master to the fray. But a porcupine! He was
+too wary to attack it, and too dignified to make any fuss over it.
+With a scornful _woof_, he turned away, and strolled into the garden,
+to dig up an old bone which he had buried in the cucumber-bed.
+
+The porcupine, meanwhile, had found something that interested him.
+Near the kitchen door stood an empty wooden box, shining in the
+moonlight. First its bright colour, then its scent, attracted his
+attention. It had recently contained choice flakes of salted codfish,
+and the salt had soaked deep into its fibres. With the long, keen
+chisels of his front teeth, he attacked the wood eagerly,--and the
+loud sound of his gnawings echoed on the stillness. It awoke the
+farmer, who rubbed his eyes, arose on his elbow, listened a moment,
+muttered, "Another of them durn porkypines!" and dropped to sleep
+again.
+
+When the leisurely adventurer had eaten as much of the box as he could
+hold, he took it into his head to go home,--which meant, to any
+comfortable tree back in the woods. His home was at large. This time
+he decided to go through a hole under the board fence between the barn
+and the fowl-house. And it was here that, for the first time on this
+expedition, he was induced by a power outside himself to change his
+mind. As he approached the hole under the fence, from the radiance of
+the open yard beyond came another animal, heading for the same point.
+The stranger was much smaller than the porcupine, and wore no panoply
+of points. But it had the same tranquil air of owning the earth. The
+moonlight, shining full upon it, showed its pointed nose, and two
+broad, white stripes running down the black fur of its back.
+
+The stranger reached the opening in the fence about three seconds
+ahead of the porcupine. And this time the porcupine was the one to
+defer. He did not like it. He grunted angrily, and his deadly spines
+stood up. But he drew aside, and avoided giving any offence to so
+formidable an acquaintance. No foot of ground would his sturdy courage
+yield to bob-cat, bear, or man; but of a skunk he was afraid. When the
+skunk had passed through the fence, and wandered off to hunt for eggs
+under the barn, the porcupine turned and went all the way around the
+fowl-house. Then he struck down through the back of the garden, gained
+the rail fence enclosing the corn-field, and at length, whether by
+intention, or because the fence, a convenient promenade, led him to
+it, he came back to the leaning poplar. With a pleasant memory drawing
+him on, he climbed the tree once more. The round moon was getting low
+now, and the shadows she cast out across the corn were long and weird.
+But the downpour of her light was still mysterious in its clarity, and
+in its sheen the porcupine, rolled up like a bird's nest, swung
+himself luxuriously to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+The Truce
+
+
+Too early, while yet the snow was thick and the food scarce, the big
+black bear had roused himself from his long winter sleep and forsaken
+his snug den under the roots of the pine-tree. The thawing spring
+world he found an empty place, no rabbits to be captured, no roots to
+be dug from wet meadows; and his appetite was sorely vexing him. He
+would have crept back into his hole for another nap; but the air was
+too stimulatingly warm, too full of promise of life, to suffer him to
+resume the old, comfortable drowsiness. Moreover, having gone to bed
+thin the previous December, he had waked up hungry; and hunger is a
+restless bedfellow. In three days he had had but one meal--a big
+trout, clawed out half-dead from a rocky eddy below the Falls; and
+now, as he sniffed the soft, wet air with fiercely eager nostrils, he
+forgot his customary tolerance of mood and was ready to do battle with
+anything that walked the wilderness.
+
+It was a little past noon, and the shadows of the tree-tops fell blue
+on the rapidly shrinking snow. The air was full of faint trickling
+noises, and thin tinklings where the snow veiled the slopes of little
+rocky hollows. Under the snow and under the rotting patches of ice,
+innumerable small streams were everywhere hurrying to swell the still
+ice-fettered flood of the river, the Big Fork, whose roomy valley lay
+about a half-mile eastward through the woods. Every now and then, when
+a soft gust drew up from the south, it bore with it a heavy roar, a
+noise as of muffled and tremendous trampling, the voice of the Big
+Fork Falls thundering out from under their decaying lid of ice. The
+Falls were the only thing which the black bear really feared. Often as
+he had visited them, to catch wounded fish in the ominous eddies at
+their foot, he could never look at their terrific plunge without a
+certain awed dilation of his eyes, a certain shrinking at his heart.
+Perhaps by reason of some association of his cubhood, some imminent
+peril and narrow escape at the age when his senses were most
+impressionable, in all his five years of life the Falls had never
+become a commonplace to him. And even now, while questing noiselessly
+and restlessly for food, he rarely failed to pay the tribute of an
+instinctive, unconscious turn of head whenever that portentous voice
+came up upon the wind.
+
+Prowling hither and thither among the great ragged trunks, peering and
+sniffing and listening, the bear suddenly caught the sound of small
+claws on wood. The sound came apparently from within the trunk of a
+huge maple, close at hand. Leaning his head to one side, he listened
+intently, his ears cocked, eager as a child listening to a watch.
+There was, indeed, something half childish in the attitude of the huge
+figure, strangely belying the ferocity in his heart. Yes, the sound
+came, unmistakably, from within the trunk. He nosed the bark warily.
+There was no opening; and the bark was firm. He stole to the other
+side of the tree, his head craftily outstretched and reaching around
+far before him.
+
+The situation was clear to him at once,--and his hungry muzzle jammed
+itself into the entrance to a chipmunk's hole. The maple-tree was
+dead, and partly decayed, up one side of the trunk. All his craft
+forgotten on the instant, the bear sniffed and snorted and drew loud,
+fierce breaths, as if he thought to suck the little furry tenant forth
+by inhalation. The live, warm smell that came from the hole was
+deliciously tantalizing to his appetite. The hole, however, was barely
+big enough to admit the tip of his black snout, so he presently gave
+over his foolish sniffings, and set himself to tear an entrance with
+his resistless claws. The bark and dead wood flew in showers under his
+efforts, and it was evident that the chipmunk's little home would
+speedily lie open to the foe. But the chipmunk, meanwhile, from the
+crotch of a limb overhead, was looking down in silent indignation.
+Little Stripe-sides had been wise enough to provide his dwelling with
+a sort of skylight exit.
+
+Suddenly, in the midst of his task, the bear stopped and lifted his
+muzzle to the wind. What was that new taint upon the air? It was one
+almost unknown to him,--but one which he instinctively dreaded, though
+without any reason based directly upon experience of his own. At
+almost any other time, indeed, he would have taken the first whiff of
+that ominous man-smell as a signal to efface himself and make off
+noiselessly down the wind. But just now, his first feeling was wrath
+at the thought of being hindered from his prospective meal. He would
+let no one, not even a man, rob him of that chipmunk. Then, as his
+wrath swelled rapidly, he decided to hunt the man himself. Perhaps,
+as the bear relishes practically everything edible under the sun
+except human flesh, he had no motive but a savage impulse to punish
+the intruder for such an untimely intrusion. However that may be, a
+red light came into his eyes, and he swung away to meet this unknown
+trespasser upon his trails.
+
+On that same day, after a breakfast before dawn in order that he might
+make an early start, a gaunt trapper had set out from the Settlement
+on the return journey to his camp beyond the Big Fork. He had been in
+to the Settlement with a pack of furs, and was now hurrying back as
+fast as he could, because of the sudden thaw. He was afraid the ice
+might go out of the river and leave him cut off from his camp,--for
+his canoe was on the other side. As the pelts were beginning to get
+poor, he had left his rifle at home, and carried no weapon but his
+knife. He had grown so accustomed to counting all the furry wild
+folk as his prey that he never thought of them as possible
+adversaries,--unless it might chance to be some such exception as a
+bull-moose in rutting season. A rifle, therefore, when he was not
+after skins, seemed to him a useless burden; and he was carrying,
+moreover, a pack of camp supplies on his broad back. He was tall,
+lean, leather-faced and long-jawed, with calm, light blue eyes under
+heavy brows; and he wore a stout, yellow-brown, homespun shirt,
+squirrel-skin cap, long leggings of deerhide, and oiled cowhide
+moccasins. He walked rapidly with a long, slouching stride that was
+almost a lope, his toes pointing straight ahead like an Indian's.
+
+When, suddenly, the bear lurched out into his trail and confronted
+him, the woodsman was in no way disturbed. The bear paused, swaying in
+surly fashion, about ten paces in front of him, completely blocking
+the trail. But the woodsman kept right on. The only attention he paid
+to the big, black stranger was to shout at him authoritatively--"Git
+out the way, thar!"
+
+To his unbounded astonishment, however, the beast, instead of getting
+out of the way, ran at him with a snarling growl. The woodsman's calm
+blue eyes flamed with anger; but the life of the woods teaches one to
+think quickly, or rather, to act in advance of one's thoughts. He knew
+that with no weapon but his knife he was no match for such a foe, so,
+leaping aside as lightly as a panther, he darted around a tree,
+regained the trail beyond his assailant, and ran on at his best speed
+toward the river. He made sure that the bear had acted under a mere
+spasm of ill-temper, and would not take the trouble to follow far.
+
+When, once in a long time, a hunter or trapper gets the worst of it in
+his contest with the wild kindreds, in the majority of cases it is
+because he had fancied he knew all about bears. The bear is strong in
+individuality and delights to set at nought the traditions of his
+kind. So it happens that every now and then a woodsman pays with his
+life for failing to recognize that the bear won't always play by rule.
+
+To the trapper's disgusted amazement, this particular bear followed
+him so vindictively that before he realized the full extent of his
+peril he was almost overtaken. He saw that he must deliver up his
+precious pack, the burden of which was effectively handicapping him in
+the race for life. When the bear was almost upon him, he flung the
+bundle away, with angry violence, expecting that it would at once
+divert the pursuer's attention.
+
+In about ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, perhaps, it would have
+done so, for among other things it contained bacon and sugar, dainties
+altogether delectable to a bear's palate. But as luck would have it,
+the bundle so bitterly hurled struck the beast full on the snout,
+making him grunt with pain and fresh fury. From that moment he was a
+veritable demon of vengeance. Well enough he knew it was not the
+bundle, but the man who had thrown it, upon whom he must wipe out the
+affront. His hunger was all forgotten in red rage.
+
+Fortunate it was now for the tall woodsman that he had lived
+abstemiously and laboured sanely all that winter, and could depend
+upon both wind and limb. Fortunate, too, that on the open trail, cut
+years before by the lumbermen of the Big Fork Drive, the snow was
+already almost gone, so that it did not seriously impede his running.
+He ran almost like a caribou, with enough in reserve to be able to
+glance back over his shoulder from time to time. But seeing how
+implacable was the black bulk that pursued, he could not help thinking
+what would happen, there in the great, wet, shadow-mottled solitudes,
+if he should chance to trip upon a root, or if his wind should fail
+him before he could reach the camp. At this thought, not fear, but a
+certain disgust and impotent resentment, swelled his heart; and with a
+challenging look at the ancient trunks, the familiar forest aisles,
+the high, branch-fretted blue, bright with spring sunshine, he defied
+the wilderness, which he had so long loved and ruled, to turn upon him
+with such an unspeakable betrayal.
+
+The wilderness loves a master; and the challenge was not accepted. No
+root tripped his feet, nor did his wind fail him; and so he came out,
+with the bear raging some ten paces behind his heels, upon the banks
+of the Big Fork. Once across that quarter-mile of sloppy, rotting ice,
+he knew there was good, clear running to his cabin and his gun. His
+heart rose, his resentment left him, and he grinned as he gave one
+more glance over his shoulder.
+
+As he raced down the bank, the trampling of the Falls, a mile away,
+roared up to him on a gust of wind. In spite of himself he could not
+but notice how treacherous the ice was looking. In spite of himself he
+noticed it, having no choice but to trust it. The whole surface looked
+sick, with patches of sodden white and sickly lead-colour; and down
+along the shore it was covered by a lane of shallow, yellowish water.
+It appeared placid and innocent enough; but the woodsman's practised
+eye perceived that it might break up, or "go out," at any moment. The
+bear was at his heels, however, and that particular moment was not the
+one for indecision. The woodsman dashed knee-deep through the margin
+water, and out upon the free ice; and he heard the bear, reckless of
+all admonitory signs, splash after him about three seconds later.
+
+On the wide, sun-flooded expanse of ice, with the dark woods beyond
+and soft blue sky above, the threat of imminent death seemed to the
+woodsman curiously out of place. Yet there death was, panting savagely
+at his heels, ready for the first mis-step. And there, too, a mile
+below, was death in another form, roaring heavily from the swollen
+Falls. And hidden under a face of peace, he knew that death lurked all
+about his feet, liable to rise in mad fury at any instant with the
+breaking of the ice. As he thought of all this besetting menace, the
+woodsman's nerves drew themselves to steel. He set his teeth grimly. A
+light of elation came into his eyes. And he felt himself able to win
+the contest against whatever odds.
+
+As this sense of new vigour and defiance spurred him to a fresh burst
+of speed, the woodsman took notice that he was just about half-way
+across the ice. "Good!" he muttered, counting the game now more than
+half won. Then, even as he spoke, a strange, terrifying sound ran all
+about him. Was it in the air, or beneath the ice? It came from
+everywhere at once,--a straining grumble, ominous as the first growl
+of an earthquake. The woodsman understood that dreadful voice very
+well. He wavered for a second, then sprang forward desperately. And
+the bear, pursuing, understood also. His rage vanished in a breath. He
+stumbled, whimpered, cast one frightened glance at the too distant
+shore behind him, then followed the woodsman's flight,--followed now,
+with no more heed to pursue.
+
+For less than half a minute that straining grumble continued. Then it
+grew louder, mingled with sharp, ripping reports, and long, black
+lanes opened suddenly in every direction. Right before the woodsman's
+flying feet one opened. He took it with a bound. But even as he sprang
+the ice went all to pieces. What he sprang to was no longer a solid
+surface, but a tossing fragment which promptly went down beneath the
+impact of his descent. Not for nothing was it, however, that the
+woodsman had learned to "run the logs" in many a tangled boom and
+racing "drive." His foot barely touched the treacherous floe ere he
+leaped again and yet again, till he had gained, by a path which none
+but a riverman could ever have dreamed of traversing, an ice-cake
+broad and firm enough to give him foothold. Beyond this refuge was a
+space of surging water, foam, and ice-mush, too broad for the essay of
+any human leap.
+
+The Big Fork, from shore to shore, was now a tossing, swishing,
+racing, whirling, and grinding chaos of ice-cakes, churning in an
+angry flood and hurrying blindly to the Falls. In the centre of his
+own floe the woodsman sat down, the better to preserve his balance. He
+bit off a chew from his plug of "blackjack," and with calm eyes
+surveyed the doom toward which he was rushing. A mile is a very short
+distance when it lies above the inevitable. The woodsman saw clearly
+that there was nothing to be done but chew his "blackjack," and wait
+on fate. That point settled, he turned his head to see what the bear
+was doing.
+
+To his surprise, the animal was now a good fifty yards farther
+up-stream, having evidently been delayed by some vagary of the
+struggling ice. He was now sitting up on his haunches on a floe, and
+staring silently at the volleying cloud which marked the Falls. The
+woodsman was aware of a curious fellow feeling for the great beast
+which, not five minutes ago, had been raging for his life. To the
+woodsman, with his long knowledge and understanding of the wild
+kindreds, that rage and that pursuit now appeared as lying more or
+less in the course of events, a part of the normal savagery of Nature,
+and no matter of personal vindictiveness.
+
+Now that he and his enemy were involved in a common and appalling
+doom, the enmity was forgotten. "Got cl'ar grit, too!" he murmured to
+himself, as he took note of the quiet way the bear was eyeing the
+Falls.
+
+And now it seemed to him that the trampling roar grew louder every
+second, drowning into dumbness the crashing and grinding of the ice;
+and the volleying mist-clouds seemed to race up-stream to meet him.
+Then, with a sickening jump and turn of his heart, a hope came and
+shook him out of his stoicism. He saw that his ice-cake was sailing
+straight for a little rocky islet just above the fall. Two minutes
+more would decide his fate,--at least for the time. He did not trouble
+to think what he would do on the island, if he got there. He rose
+cautiously and crouched, every sinew tense to renew the battle for
+life.
+
+Another minute fled away, and the island was close ahead, wrapped in
+the roar and the mist-volleys. A cross-current seized the racing
+ice-cake, dragging it aside,--and the man clenched his fists in a
+fury of disappointment as he saw that he would miss the refuge after
+all. He made ready to plunge in and at least die battling. Then fate
+took yet another whim, and a whirling mass of logs and ice, colliding
+with the floe, forced it back to its original course. Another moment
+and it grounded violently, breaking into four pieces, which rolled off
+on either side toward the abyss. And the woodsman, splashing into the
+turbulent shallows, made good his hold upon a rock and dragged himself
+ashore.
+
+Fairly landed, he shook himself, spat coolly into the flood, and
+turned to see what was happening to his fellow in distress. To the
+roaring vortex just below him--so close that it seemed as if it might
+at any moment drag down the little island and engulf it--he paid no
+heed whatever, but turned his back contemptuously upon the tumult and
+the mists. His late enemy, alive, strong, splendid, and speeding to a
+hideous destruction, was of the keener interest to his wilderness
+spirit.
+
+[Illustration: "HE LAUNCHED HIMSELF AGAIN, DESPERATELY."]
+
+The bear was now about twenty paces above the island; but caught by an
+inexorable current, he was nearly that distance beyond it. With a
+distinct regret, a pang of sympathy, the man saw that there was no
+chance of his adversary's escape. But the bear, like himself, seeing a
+refuge so near, was not of the temper to give up without a struggle.
+Suddenly, like a gigantic spring uncoiling, he launched himself forth
+with a violence that completely up-ended his ice-cake, and carried him
+over a space of churned torrent to the edge of another floe. Gripping
+this with his mighty forearms till he pulled it half under, he
+succeeded in clawing out upon it. Scrambling across, he launched
+himself again, desperately, sank almost out of sight, rose and began
+swimming, with all the energy of courage and despair combined.
+
+But already he was opposite the head of the island. Could he make it?
+The man's own muscles strained and heaved in unconscious sympathy with
+that struggle. The bear was a gallant swimmer, and for a moment it
+looked as if there might be the ghost of a chance for him. But no, the
+torrent had too deadly a grip upon his long-furred bulk. He would
+_just_ miss that last safe ledge!
+
+In his eagerness, and without any conscious thought of what he was
+doing, the man stepped down into the water knee-deep, bracing himself,
+and clinging with his left hand to a tough projecting root. Closer
+came the bear, beating down the splintered refuse that obstructed him,
+his long, black body labouring dauntlessly. Closer he came,--but not
+quite close enough to get his strong paws on the rock. A foot more
+would have done it,--but that paltry foot he was unable to make good.
+
+The man could not stand it. It was quite too fine a beast to be
+dragged over the Falls before his eyes, if he could help it. Reaching
+out swiftly with his right hand, he caught the swimmer by the long fur
+of his neck, and heaved with all his strength.
+
+For a moment he wondered if he could hold on. The great current drew
+and sucked, almost irresistibly. But his grip was of steel, his
+muscles sound and tense. For a moment or two the situation hung in
+doubt. Then the swimmer, stroking desperately, began to gain. A moment
+more, and that narrow, deadly foot of space was covered. The animal
+got first one paw upon the rocks, then the other. With prompt
+discretion, the woodsman dropped his hold and stepped back to the top
+of the island, suddenly grown doubtful of his own wisdom.
+
+Drawing himself just clear of the torrent, the bear crouched panting
+for several minutes, exhausted from the tremendous struggle; and the
+man, on the top of the rock, waited with his hand upon his knife-hilt
+to see what would come of his reckless act. In reality, however, he
+did not look for trouble, knowing the natures of the wild kindreds. He
+was merely holding himself on guard against the unexpected. But he
+soon saw that his caution was unnecessary. Recovering breath, the bear
+clambered around the very edge of the rocks to the farther side of the
+island, as far as possible from his rescuer. There he seated himself
+upon his haunches, and devoted himself to gazing down, as if
+fascinated, at the cauldron from which he had been snatched.
+
+During the next half-hour the woodsman began to think. For the
+present, he knew that the bear was quite inoffensive, being both
+grateful and overawed. But there was no food on the island for either,
+except the other. So the fight was bound to be renewed at last. And
+after that, whoever might be the victor, what remained for him? From
+that island, on the lip of the fall and walled about with wild rapids,
+there could be no escape. The situation was not satisfactory from any
+point of view. But that it was clear against his principles to
+knuckle down, under any conditions, to beast, or man, or fate, the
+woodsman might have permitted himself to wish that, after all, his
+ice-cake had missed the island. As it was, however, he took another
+bite from his plug of "blackjack," and set himself to whittling a
+stick.
+
+With a backwoodsman's skill in the art of whittling, he had made good
+progress toward the shaping of a toy hand-sled, when, looking up from
+his task, he saw something that mightily changed the face of affairs.
+He threw away the half-shaped toy, thrust the knife back into his
+belt, and rose to his feet. After a long, sagacious survey of the
+flood, he drew his knife again, and proceeded to cut himself a stout
+staff, a sort of alpenstock. He saw that an ice-jam was forming just
+above the falls.
+
+The falls of the Big Fork lie at a sharp elbow of the river, and cross
+the channel on a slant. Immediately above them the river shoals
+sharply; and though at ordinary seasons there is only one island
+visible, at times of low water huge rocks appear all along the brink.
+It chanced, at this particular time, that after the first run of the
+ice had passed there came a second run that was mixed with logs. This
+ice, moreover, was less rotten than that which had formed near the
+falls, and it came down in larger cakes. When some of these big cakes,
+cemented with logs, grounded on the head of the island, the nucleus of
+a jam was promptly formed. At the same time some logs, deeply frozen
+into an ice-floe, caught and hung on one of the unseen mid-stream
+ledges. An accumulation gathered in the crook of the elbow, over on
+the farther shore; and then, as if by magic, the rush stopped, the
+flood ran almost clear from the lip of the falls, and the river was
+closed from bank to bank.
+
+The woodsman sat quietly watching, as if it were a mere idle
+spectacle, instead of the very bridge of life, that was forming before
+his eyes. Little by little the structure welded itself, the masses of
+drift surging against the barrier, piling up and diving under, till it
+was compacted and knit to the very bottom,--and the roar of the falls
+dwindled with the diminishing of the stream. This was the moment for
+which the man was waiting. Now, if ever, the jam was solid, and might
+hold so until he gained the farther shore. But beyond this moment
+every second of delay only served to gather the forces that were
+straining to break the obstruction. He knew that in a very few minutes
+the rising weight of the flood must either sweep all before it, or
+flow roaring over the top of the jam in a new cataract that would
+sweep the island bare. He sprang to his feet, grasped his stick, and
+scanned the tumbled, precarious surface, choosing his path. Then he
+turned and looked at the bear, wondering if that animal's woodcraft
+were subtler than his own to distinguish when the jam was secure. He
+found that the bear was eyeing him anxiously, and not looking at the
+ice at all; so he chuckled, told himself that if he didn't know more
+than a bear he'd no business in the woods, and stepped resolutely
+forth upon the treacherous pack. Before he had gone ten paces the bear
+jumped up with a whimper, and followed hastily, plainly conceding that
+the man knew more than he.
+
+In the strange, sudden quiet, the shrunken falls clamouring thinly and
+the broken ice swishing against the upper side of the jam, the man
+picked his way across the slippery, chaotic surface of the dam,
+expecting every moment that it would crumble with a roar from under
+his feet. About ten or a dozen yards behind him came the bear,
+stepping hurriedly, and trembling as he looked down at the diminished
+cataract. The miracle of the vanishing falls daunted his spirit most
+effectively, and he seemed to think that the whole mysterious
+phenomenon was of the man's creating. When the two reached shore, the
+flood was already boiling far up the bank. Without so much as a thank
+you, the bear scurried past his rescuer, and made off through the
+timber like a scared cat. The man looked after him with a slow smile,
+then turned and scanned the perilous path he had just traversed. As he
+did so, the jam seemed to melt away in mid-channel. Then a terrific,
+rending roar tortured the air. The mass of logs and ice, and all the
+incalculable weight of imprisoned waters hurled themselves together
+over the brink with a stupefying crash, and throbbing volumes of spray
+leapt skyward. The woodsman's lean face never changed a muscle; but
+presently, giving a hitch to his breeches under the belt, he muttered
+thoughtfully:
+
+"Blame good thing we come away when we did!"
+
+Then, turning on his larriganed heels, he strode up the trail till the
+great woods closed about him, and the raving thunders gradually died
+into quiet.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "IT WOULD HAVE SEEMED LIKE NO MORE THAN A DARKER,
+SWIFTLY-MOVING SHADOW IN THE DARK WATER."]
+
+The Keeper of the Water-Gate
+
+
+Some distance below the ice, through the clear, dark water of the
+quiet-running stream, a dim form went swimming swiftly. It was a
+sturdy, broad-headed, thick-furred form, a little more than a foot in
+length, with a naked, flattened tail almost as long as the body. It
+held its small, handlike forepaws tucked up under its chin, and swam
+with quick strokes of its strong hind legs and eel-like wrigglings of
+the muscular tail. It would have seemed like no more than a darker,
+swiftly-moving shadow in the dark water, save for a curious burden of
+air-bubbles which went with it. Its close under-fur, which the water
+could not penetrate, was thickly sprinkled with longer hairs, which
+the water seemed, as it were, to plaster down; and under these long
+hairs the air was caught in little silvery bubbles, which made the
+swimmer conspicuous even under two inches of clear ice and eighteen
+inches of running water.
+
+As he went, the swimmer slanted downward and aimed for a round hole at
+the bottom of the bank. This hole was the water-gate of his winter
+citadel; and he, the keeper of it, was the biggest and pluckiest
+muskrat on the whole slow-winding length of Bitter Creek.
+
+At this point Bitter Creek was about four feet deep and ten or twelve
+feet wide, with low, bushy shores subject to overflow at the slightest
+freshet. Winter, setting in suddenly with fierce frost, had caught it
+while its sluggish waters were still so high from the late autumn
+rains that the bushes and border grasses were all awash. Now the young
+ice, transparent and elastic, held them in firm fetters. The flat
+world of field and wood about Bitter Creek was frozen as hard as iron,
+and a biting gale, which carried a thin drift of dry, gritty snow, was
+lashing it pitilessly. The branches snapped and creaked under the
+cruel assault, and not a bird or beast was so hardy as to show its
+head abroad. But in the muskrat's world, there under the safe ice, all
+was as tranquil as a May morning. The long green and brown water-weeds
+swayed softly in the faint current, with here and there a silvery
+young chub or an olive-brown sucker feeding lazily among them. Under
+the projecting roots lurked water-snails, and small, black, scurrying
+beetles, and big-eyed, horn-jawed larvae which would change next spring
+to aerial forms of radiance. And not one of them, muskrat, chub, or
+larva, cared one whit for the scourge of winter on the bleak world
+above the ice.
+
+The big muskrat swam straight to the mouth of the hole, and plunged
+half-way into it. Then he suddenly changed his mind. Backing out
+abruptly, he darted up to the surface close under the edge of the
+bank. Along the edge of the bank the ice-roof slanted upward, the
+water having fallen several inches since the ice had set. This left a
+covered air space, about two inches in height, all along the fringes
+of the grass roots; and here the muskrat paused, head and shoulders
+half out of water, to take breath. He was panting heavily, having come
+a long way under water without stopping to empty and refill his
+long-suffering little lungs. Two inches over his head, on the other
+side of the ice, the thin, hard snow went driving and swirling, and he
+could hear the alders straining under the bitter wind. His little,
+bead-bright eyes, set deep in his furry face, gleamed with
+satisfaction over his comfortable security.
+
+Having fully eased his lungs, the muskrat dived again to the bottom,
+and began to gnaw with fierce energy at a snaky mass of the roots of
+the yellow material. Having cut off a section about as long as
+himself, and more than an inch in thickness, he tugged at it fiercely
+to loosen the fibres which held it to the bottom. But this particular
+piece was more firmly anchored than he had expected to find it, and
+presently, feeling as if his lungs would burst, he was obliged to
+ascend to the air-space under the ice for a new breath. There he
+puffed and panted for perhaps a minute. But he had no thought of
+relinquishing that piece of succulent, crisp, white-hearted lily-root.
+As soon as he had rested, he swam down again, and gripping it savagely
+tore it loose at the first pull. Holding the prize lengthwise that it
+might not obstruct his entrance, he plunged into the hole in the bank,
+the round, black water-gate to his winter house.
+
+The house was a most comfortable and strictly utilitarian structure.
+The entrance, dug with great and persistent toil from the very bottom
+of the bank, for the better discouragement of the muskrat's deadliest
+enemy, the mink, ran inward for nearly two feet, and then upward on a
+long slant some five or six feet through the natural soil. At this
+point the shore was dry land at the average level of the water; and
+over this exit, which was dry at the time of the building, the muskrat
+had raised his house.
+
+The house was a seemingly careless, roughly rounded heap of
+grass-roots, long water-weeds, lily-roots and stems, and mud, with a
+few sticks woven into the foundation. The site was cunningly chosen,
+so that the roots and stems of a large alder gave it secure anchorage;
+and the whole structure, for all its apparent looseness, was so well
+compacted as to be secure against the sweep of the spring freshets.
+About six feet in diameter at the base, it rose about the same
+distance from the foundation, a rude, sedge-thatched dome, of which
+something more than three feet now showed itself above the ice.
+
+To the unobservant eye the muskrat house in the alders might have
+looked like a mass of drift in which the rank water-grass had taken
+root. But within the clumsy pile, about a foot below the centre of the
+dome, was a shapely, small, warm chamber, lined with the softest
+grasses. From one side of this chamber the burrow slanted down to
+another and much larger chamber, the floor of which, at the present
+high level of the water, was partly flooded. From this chamber led
+downward two burrows,--one, the main passage, by which the muskrat had
+entered, opening frankly, as we have seen, in the channel of the
+creek, and the other, longer and more devious, terminating in a narrow
+and cunningly concealed exit, behind a deeply submerged willow-root.
+This passage was little used, and was intended chiefly as a way of
+escape in case of an extreme emergency,--such as, for example, the
+invasion of a particularly enterprising mink by way of the main
+water-gate. The muskrat is no match for the snake-swift, bloodthirsty
+mink, except in the one accomplishment of holding his breath under
+water. And a mink must be very ravenous, or quite mad with the
+blood-lust, to dare the deep water-gate and the long subaqueous
+passage to the muskrat's citadel, at seasons of average high water. In
+time of drought, however, when the entrance is nearly uncovered and
+the water goes but a little way up the dark tunnels, the mink will
+often glide in, slaughter the garrison, and occupy the well-built
+citadel.
+
+The big muskrat, dragging his lily-root, mounted the narrow, black,
+water-filled passage till he reached the first chamber. Here he was
+met by his mate, just descending from the upper room. She promptly
+appropriated the piece of lily-root, which the big muskrat meekly gave
+up. He had fed full before coming, and now had no care except to
+clean his draggled fur and make his toilet before mounting to the
+little dry top chamber and curling himself up for a nap.
+
+This toilet was as elaborate and painstaking as that of the cleanliest
+of cats or squirrels. He was so loose-jointed, so loose-skinned, so
+flexibly built in every way, that he could reach every part of his fur
+with his teeth and claws at once. He would seem to pull great folds of
+skin from his back around under his breast, where he could comb it the
+more thoroughly. It was no trouble at all for him to scratch his left
+ear with his right hind foot. He went about his task with such zeal
+that in a very few minutes his fur was as fluffy and exquisite as that
+of a boudoir kitten. Then he rubbed his face, eyes, and ears
+vigorously with both forepaws at once in a half-childish fashion,
+sitting up on his hind-quarters as he did so. This done, he flicked
+his tail sharply two or three times, touched his mate lightly with his
+nose, and scurried up to the little sleeping-chamber. Something less
+than a foot above his head the winter gale howled, ripped the
+snow-flurries, lashed the bushes, sent the snapped twigs hurtling
+through the bare branches, turned every naked sod to stone. But to the
+sleeping muskrat all the outside sound and fury came but as a murmur
+of Jun trees.
+
+His mate, meanwhile, was gobbling the lily-root as if she had not
+eaten for a week. Sitting up like a squirrel, and clutching the end of
+the root with both little forepaws, she crushed the white esculent
+into her mouth and gnawed at it ravenously with the keen chisels of
+her teeth. The root was as long as herself, and its weight perhaps a
+sixth of her own. Yet when it was all eaten she wanted more. There
+were other pieces stored in the chamber; and indeed the whole house
+itself was in great part edible, being built largely of such roots and
+grasses as the muskrat loves to feed on. But such stores were for
+emergency use. She could forage for herself at present. Diving down
+the main passage she presently issued from the water-gate, and
+immediately rose to the clear-roofed air-space. Here she nibbled
+tentatively at some stems and withered leafage. These proving little
+to her taste, she suddenly remembered a clam-bed not far off, and
+instantly set out for it. She swam briskly down-stream along the
+air-space, her eyes and nose just out of the water, the ice gleaming
+silvery above her head.
+
+She had travelled in this position perhaps fifty yards when she saw,
+some twelve or fifteen feet ahead of her, a lithe, dark, slender
+figure with a sharp-nosed, triangular head, squeeze itself over a
+projecting root which almost touched the ice. The stranger was no
+larger than herself,--but she knew it was not for her to try
+conclusions with even the smallest of minks. Catching a good lungful
+of air, she dived on the instant, down, down, to the very bed of the
+creek, and out to mid-channel.
+
+The mink, eagerly desirous of a meal of muskrat-meat, dived also,
+heading outward to interrupt the fugitive. He swam as well as the
+muskrat,--perhaps faster, indeed, with a darting, eel-like, deadly
+swiftness. But the stream at this point had widened to a breadth of
+twelve or fifteen yards,--and this was the little muskrat's salvation.
+The mink was afraid to follow her to such a distance from the
+air-space. He knew that by the time he overtook her, and fixed his
+teeth in her throat, he would be fairly winded; and then, with no
+breathing-hole at hand, he would die terribly, bumping up against the
+clear ice and staring madly through at the free air for which his
+lungs were agonizing. His fierce heart failed him, and he turned back
+to the air-space under the bank. But the sight of the muskrat had
+whetted his appetite, and when he came to the muskrat house in the
+alders, he swam down and thrust his head inside the water-gate. He
+even, indeed, went half-way in; but soon instinct, or experience, or
+remembered instruction, told him that the distance to the air-chamber
+was too great for him. He had no more fancy to be drowned in the
+muskrat's winding black tunnel, than under the clear daylight of the
+ice; so he turned away, and with red, angry eyes resumed his journey
+up-stream.
+
+The little muskrat, seeing that her enemy was disheartened, went on
+cheerfully to the clam-bed. Here she clawed up from the oozy bottom
+and devoured almost enough clams to make a meal for a full-grown man.
+But she took longer over her meal than the man would, thereby saving
+herself from an otherwise imminent indigestion. Each bivalve, as she
+got it, she would carry up to the air-space among the stones,
+selecting a tussock of grass on which she could rest half out of the
+water. And every time, before devouring her prize, she would
+carefully, though somewhat impatiently, cleanse her face of the mud
+and dead leafage which seemed to be an inseparable concomitant of her
+digging. When she had eaten as many clams as she could stuff into her
+little body, she hastened back to join her mate in the safe nest over
+the water-gate.
+
+In the upper world the winter was a severe one, but of all its
+bitterness the muskrats knew nothing, save by the growing thickness of
+the ice that sheltered them. As Bitter Creek shrank to normal, winter
+level, and the strong ice sank in mid-channel, the air-space along
+shore increased till they had a spacious, covered corridor in which to
+disport themselves. Food was all about them--an unlimited abundance of
+lily-roots and clams; and once in awhile their diet was varied by the
+capture of a half-torpid sucker or chub. There were no otters in
+Bitter Creek; and the mink, which had investigated their water-gate so
+hungrily, got caught in a trap at an open spring up-stream, where he
+was accustomed to fish for eels. So the muskrats had no dangerous
+enemies to mar their peace.
+
+The spring thaws came suddenly, while the ice was yet strong, and the
+flood went wide over the low banks of Bitter Creek. But the little
+house among the alders withstood them sturdily. The water rose till it
+filled the lower chamber. Inch by inch it crept up the last passage,
+till it glistened dimly just an inch below the threshold. But it never
+actually touched that threshold; and the little grass-lined retreat
+stayed warm and dry. Then the ice went out, under the sun and showers
+of late April, and the waters sank away as rapidly as they had risen;
+and the muskrats, wild with the intoxication of spring, rolled,
+played, and swam gaily hither and thither on the surface of the open
+creek. They made long excursions up and down-stream for the sheer
+delight of wandering, and found fresh interest in every clam-flat,
+lily cove, or sprouting bed of sweet-flag. Their appetites they had
+always with them; and though it was fun to chase each other, or to
+roll and wallow luxuriously on the cool surface of the water when the
+sun shone warm, there was nothing quite so worth while, day in and day
+out, as eating. Other muskrats now appeared, the wander-spirit seizing
+them all at once; and the males had many fierce fights, which left
+their naked tails scarred and bleeding. But the big muskrat, from the
+house in the alders, was denied the joy of battle, because none of his
+rivals were so hardy as to confront him.
+
+About this pleasant season, in the upper chamber over the water-gate,
+was born a family of nine very small and very naked young muskrats.
+Their big father was amiably indifferent to them, and spent most of
+his time, when at home, in the lower chamber, which was now dry and
+clean enough for his luxurious tastes. Their small mother, however,
+was assiduous in her care; and in an exceedingly short time the
+youngsters, very sleek and dark in their first fur, were investigating
+the wonderful, great world beyond their water-gate. They had
+prodigious appetites, and they grew prodigiously. One, on their very
+first outing, got snapped up by a greedy black duck. The attention of
+the little mother was just then occupied, and, never having learned to
+count up to nine, she, apparently, never realized her loss; but she
+was destined to avenge it, a week or two later, by eating two
+new-hatched ducklings of that same black duck's brood. Another of the
+little muskrats encountered fate on the threshold of his existence,
+being snatched by the hungry jaws of a large pickerel, which darted
+upon him like lightning from under the covert of a lily-pad. But in
+this case, vengeance was instant and direct. The big muskrat chanced
+to be near by. He caught the pickerel, while the latter was
+preoccupied with his meal, bit clean through the back of his neck, and
+then and there devoured nearly half of him. In the engrossing task of
+cleaning his fur after this feast, and making his toilet, which he did
+with minute nicety on a stranded log by the shore, he promptly forgot
+the loss to his little family, the wrong which he had so
+satisfactorily and appropriately avenged. As for the remaining seven,
+they proceeded to grow up as rapidly as possible, and soon ceased to
+stand in any danger of pickerel or mallard.
+
+Though fairly omnivorous in his tastes, the big muskrat, like all his
+tribe, was so content with his lilies, flag-root, and clams, that he
+was not generally regarded as a foe by the birds and other small
+people of the wilderness. He was too well fed to be a keen hunter.
+
+Having learned (and taught his fellows) to avoid muskrat-traps, the
+big muskrat enjoyed his lazy summer life on Bitter Creek with a
+care-free spirit that is permitted to few, indeed, of the furtive
+kindred of the wild. There was no mink, as we have seen, to beware of;
+and as for hawks, he ignored them as none of the other small wild
+creatures--squirrels, hares, or even the fierce and fearless
+weasel--could afford to do. The hawks knew certain inconvenient
+capacities of his kind. When, therefore, that sudden alarm would ring
+clamorous over the still, brown woods, that shrill outcry of the
+crows, jays, and king-birds, which sends every weak thing trembling to
+cover, the big muskrat would sit up, untroubled, on his log, and go on
+munching his flag-root with as fine an unconcern as if he had been
+a bear or a bull moose.
+
+[Illustration: "WITH A SCREAM OF PAIN AND FEAR, THE BIRD DROPPED
+HIM."]
+
+But one day, one late, rose-amber afternoon, when the gnats were
+dancing over the glassy creek, he was startled out of this confidence.
+He was standing in shallow water, digging out an obstinate, but
+tempting root, when there arose a sudden great outcry from all the
+birds. It meant "A hawk!--A hawk!--A hawk!--A hawk!" He understood it
+perfectly; but he never lifted his head from his task. Next moment
+there was a mighty rush of wind in his ears; a thunderbolt seemed to
+strike him, frightful claws gripped him, piercing his back, and he was
+swept into the air. But it was a young hawk, unversed in the way of
+the muskrat, which had seized him. What those steely claws really
+clutched was little more than a roll of loose skin. Hurt, but not
+daunted, the muskrat twisted his head up and back, and sank his long,
+punishing incisors into the enemy's thigh. He did not hang on, in
+bulldog fashion, but cut, cut, cut, deep through the bird's hard
+feather armour, and into the cringing red strata of veins and muscles.
+With a scream of pain and fear, the bird dropped him, and he fell into
+the water. At first, he dived deep, fearing a second attack, and came
+up under a tangle of grasses, from which he could peer forth unseen.
+Then, perceiving that the hawk had vanished, he, by and by, came out
+of the grass, and paddled to his favourite log. He was bleeding
+profusely, and his toilet that evening was long and painful. But in a
+few days he was as well as ever, with an added confidence.
+
+About this time, however, a small, inquisitive, and particularly
+bloodthirsty mink came down from the upper waters of the creek, where
+game had grown scarce under the ravages of her insatiable and
+implacable family. One of her special weaknesses was for muskrat-meat,
+and many a muskrat house she had invaded so successfully that the
+long, smothering, black, drowned galleries had no more terrors for
+her.
+
+She came to the house in the alders. She noted its size, and realized
+that here, indeed, was good hunting. She swam down to the water-gate
+at the bottom of the channel, poked her nose in, and returned to the
+surface for a full supply of air. Then, with great speed, she dived
+again, and disappeared within the blackness of the water-gate.
+
+It chanced that the big muskrat was just descending. From the inner
+darkness he saw the enemy clearly, before her savage, little, peering
+eyes could discover him. He knew all the deadliness of the peril. He
+could easily have escaped, turning back and fleeing by the other
+passage while the foe went on to her bloody work in the chambers.
+There was no time to warn the rest.
+
+But flight was far from the big muskrat's mind in that crucial moment.
+Not panic, but a fierce hate blazed in his usually good-natured eyes.
+With a swift, strenuous kick of his powerful hind legs, he shot
+downward upon the enemy, and grappled with her in the narrow tunnel.
+
+The mink had seen him just before he fell upon her, and quicker than
+thought itself had darted up her snake-like jaws to gain the fatal
+throat-hold. But long success had made her over-confident. No muskrat
+had ever, within her experience, even tried to fight her. This present
+impetuous attack she mistook for a frantic effort to crowd past her
+and escape. Half careless, therefore, she missed the fatal hold, and
+caught only a mouthful of yielding skin. Before she could try
+again--borne down and hampered as she was by the muskrat's weight--a
+set of long, tenacious teeth, crunching and cutting, met in the side
+of her face, just at the root of the jaw.
+
+This time the muskrat was wise enough to hold on. His deep grip held
+like a vise. The mink's teeth, those vindictive teeth that had killed
+and killed for the mere joy of killing, now gnashed impotently. In
+utter silence, there in the choking deep, the water in their eyes and
+ears and jaws, they writhed and strove, the mink's lithe body twisting
+around her foe like a snake. Then, with a convulsive shudder, her
+struggles ceased. Her lungs had refused to hold the strained breath
+any longer. They had opened--and the water had filled them. Her body
+trailed out limply; and the muskrat, still maintaining that inexorable
+grip, dragged her out through the water-gate which he had so well
+kept. Out in the brown, blurred light of the current he still held her
+down, jamming her head into a patch of bright sand, until the ache of
+his own lungs gave him warning. Then, carrying the body to the
+surface, he flung it scornfully over a root to await the revival of
+his appetite, and proceeded to calm his excitement by a long,
+elaborate toilet. Steely dark and cold the waters of Bitter Creek
+slipped by between their leafless, bushy banks. And inside the dome of
+the house in the alders the thick-furred muskrat colony slept
+luxuriously, little dreaming of the doom just averted from their
+door.
+
+
+
+
+When the Moose Cow Calls
+
+
+The smell of the burning rubbish heaps--the penetrating November
+smell--spread up from the clearings and filled the chilly, windless
+evening air. It seemed a sort of expression of the cold sky, those
+pale steel-gray and sea-green wastes, deepening into sharp straight
+bands of orange and smoke colour along the far horizon. It seemed
+equally an expression of the harsh, darkening upland pastures, dotted
+with ragged stumps and backed by ragged forests. It was the
+distinctive autumn smell of the backwoods settlements, that smell
+which, taken into the blood in childhood, can never lose its potency
+of magic, its power over the most secret springs of memory and
+longing.
+
+On the rude snake fence at the back of the pasture sat a boy, with a
+roll of birch bark in his hands. The bark was fashioned into the shape
+of a fish-horn, and the boy handled it proudly. He took deep breaths
+of the pungent-smelling air, and felt an exciting thrill as he
+glanced over his shoulder at the dark woods just behind him. It was
+for the sake of this thrill, this delicious though unfounded
+apprehension, that he had come here to the very back of the pasture,
+in the twilight, after bringing up the cows from the milking. The cows
+he couldn't see, for they were feeding in the lower pasture, just
+under the rise of the hill. The lights beginning to glimmer in the
+farmhouse were very far down in the valley; and very far down were the
+little creeping flames whence came that pungent smell pervading the
+world; and the boy felt his spirit both expand and tremble before the
+great spaces of the solitude.
+
+It was for the purpose of practising privately the call of the
+cow-moose that the boy had betaken himself to the lonely back pasture.
+On the previous evening an old hunter, just back from a successful
+"calling" over on Nictau Lake, had given the boy some lessons in this
+alluring and suggestive department of woodcraft, and had made his joy
+complete by the gift of the bark "moose-call" itself, a battered old
+tube with many "kills" to its credit. The boy, with his young voice
+just roughening toward the bass of manhood, had proved an apt pupil.
+And the hunter had not only told him that practice would make him a
+first-class "caller," but had promised to take him hunting next
+season. This promise had set the boy's imagination aflame, and all day
+he had been dreaming of tall moose-bulls, wide-antlered, huge-belled,
+black of mane and shoulder.
+
+Of course, when he went up to the fence of the back pasture to
+practise his new accomplishment, the boy had no idea of being heard by
+anything in the shape of a bull-moose, still less of being able to
+deceive that crafty animal. Had he imagined the possibility of gaining
+any response to his call, he would have come well-armed, and would
+have taken up his post in the branches of some safe tree. But it was
+getting near the end of the season, and what was more to the purpose,
+there ran a tradition in the settlement that the moose never came east
+of Five Mile Creek, a water-course some four miles back from the fence
+whereon the boy was sitting. Such traditions, once established in a
+backwoods village, acquire an authority quite superior to fact and
+proof against much ocular refutation. The boy had an unwavering faith
+that, however seductively he might sound the call of the cow, never a
+moose bull would hear him, because never a moose bull could be found
+this side of Five Mile Creek. It was fascinating to pretend,--but he
+had no will to evoke any monstrous apparition from those dark woods
+behind him, on which he found it so thrillingly hard to keep his
+back turned.
+
+After sitting silent and moveless for a few minutes, listening to the
+vague, mysterious stir of the solitude till his eyes grew wide as a
+watching deer's, the boy lifted his birchen tube in both hands,
+stretched his neck, and gave forth the harsh, half-bleating bellow, or
+bray, with which the cow-moose signals for a mate. It was a good
+imitation of what the old hunter had done, and the boy was proud of
+it. In his exultation he repeated it thrice. Then he stopped to
+listen,--pretending, as boys will, that he expected an answer.
+
+The silence following upon that sonorous sound seemed startling in its
+depth; and the boy held his breath lest he should mar it. Then came an
+unexpected noise, at which the boy's heart jumped into his throat,--a
+sharp crashing and rattling of branches, as if somebody was thrashing
+the underbrush with sticks. It seemed to be some hundreds of yards
+away, beyond the farthest fence of the pasture. For a moment the boy
+wondered tremulously what it could be. Then he thought he understood.
+"Some fool steer's got through the fence and gone stumbling through
+the brush piles," he muttered to himself. The explanation had the
+merit of explaining; and when the sound had ceased the boy once more
+set the bark trumpet to his lips and sounded its harsh appeal.
+
+This time he called twice. As he paused to draw breath, a little
+creepy feeling on the skin of his cheeks and about the roots of his
+hair made him turn his head and fix his eyes upon a dense spruce
+thicket some twenty paces behind him. Surely there was a movement
+among the young spruce tops. Almost as smoothly as a mink slips from a
+rock the boy slipt down from his too conspicuous perch and crouched
+behind the fence. Peering between the rails he saw a tall, dark shape,
+with gigantic head, vast antlers, and portentous bulk of shoulder,
+step noiselessly from the thicket and stand motionless. With a heart
+that throbbed in mingled exultation and terror, the boy realized that
+he had called a bull-moose.
+
+Huge as seemed its stature to the boy's excited vision, the moose was
+in reality a young and rather small bull, who had been forced by
+stronger rivals to go unmated. Driven by his restless desire, he had
+wandered beyond his wonted range. Now he stood like a statue, head
+uplifted, peering on every side to catch sight of the mate whose voice
+had so resistlessly summoned him. Only his wide ears moved, waving
+inquisitively. His nostrils, ordinarily his chief source of
+information, were dulled almost to obtuseness by that subtly acrid
+perfume of the smoke.
+
+The boy in his fence corner, with a gray stump beside him, shrank
+within himself and stared through half-closed eyes, trembling lest the
+mighty stranger should detect him. He had a very reasonable notion
+that the mighty stranger might object to the deception which had been
+practised upon his eager emotions, and might not find the old rail
+fence much barrier to his righteous wrath. For all his elation, the
+boy began to wish that he had not been in such haste to learn
+moose-calling. "Don't call till you've some idea who'll answer!" was a
+rule which he deduced from that night's experience.
+
+It is possible that the bull, during those few minutes while he stood
+waiting and watching, saw the dim figure of the boy behind the fence.
+If so, the figure had no concern for him. He caught nothing of the
+dreaded man-smell; and he had no reason to associate that small,
+harmless creature with the mate to whose calling he had sped so
+eagerly. But there was no doubt that the calling had come from this
+very place. Was it possible that the cow, more coquettish than her
+kind are apt to be, had hidden herself to provoke him? He came closer
+to the fence, and uttered a soft grumble in his throat, a sound both
+caressing and appealing. "My! how disappointed he'll be!" thought the
+boy, and devoutly wished himself safe at home.
+
+At this trying moment came relief from an unexpected quarter. That
+distant threshing of the bushes which the boy had heard after his
+first calling had not been a stray steer. Not by any means. It was the
+response of another young wandering moose bull, beating on the
+underbrush with his ill-developed, but to himself quite wonderful,
+antlers. He, too, was seeking a mate in a region far remote from that
+where ruled the tyrannous elder bulls. Silently and swiftly, assured
+by the second summons, he had hurried to the tryst; and now, to his
+ungovernable rage, what he saw awaiting him in the dusk was no mate at
+all, but a rival. Pausing not to consider the odds, he burst from the
+covert and rushed furiously to the attack.
+
+The first bull, though somewhat the larger of the two, and by far the
+better antlered, was taken at a disadvantage. Before he could whirl
+and present his formidable front to the charge, the newcomer caught
+him on the flank, knocked him clear off his feet, and sent him
+crashing into the fence. The fence went down like stubble; and the
+boy, his eyes starting with astonished terror, scurried like a rabbit
+for the nearest tree. Climbing into the branches with an agility which
+surprised even himself, he promptly recovered from his panic and
+turned to watch the fight.
+
+The first bull, saved from serious injury by the defects of his
+adversary's antlers, picked himself up from the wreckage of the fence,
+and, grunting with anger, plunged back to meet his assailant. The
+latter, somewhat puzzled by the fence and its zig-zag twistings, had
+drawn a little to one side, and so it happened that when the first
+bull rushed at him, the angle of a fence corner intervened. When the
+opposing antlers came together, they met harmlessly between the heavy
+rails, and got tangled in a way that seemed to daunt their owners'
+rage. In the pushing and struggling the top rail was thrown off and
+fell smartly across the newcomer's neck. At the same time one of the
+stakes flew up and caught the first bull fairly on the sensitive
+muzzle. Sneezing violently, he jumped back; and the two stood eyeing
+each other with fierce suspicion over the top of the fence.
+
+The boy was trembling with excitement there in his tree, eager for the
+fight to go on and eager to see which would win. But in this he was
+doomed to disappointment. The end came in a most unlooked-for fashion.
+It chanced that the boy's "calling" had deceived others besides the
+two young bulls. The old hunter, in his cabin under the hill, had
+heard it. He had snatched his rifle from behind the door, and stolen
+swiftly up to the back pasture.
+
+From a clump of hemlock not fifty yards away came a red flash and a
+sharp report. The bull on the near side of the fence sprang into the
+air with a gasping cough, and fell. The smaller bull, who knew what
+guns meant, simply vanished. It was as if the dusk had blotted him
+out, so noiselessly and instantaneously did he sink back into the
+thickets; and a moment later he was heard crashing away through the
+underbrush in mad flight. As the hunter stepped up to examine his
+prize, the boy dropped from the tree, grabbed his birch-bark tube, and
+came forward proudly.
+
+"There wasn't any cow at all,--'cept me!" he proclaimed, his voice
+ringing with triumph.
+
+
+
+
+The Passing of the Black Whelps
+
+[Illustration: "OVER THE CREST OF THE RIDGE, INKY BLACK FOR AN INSTANT
+AGAINST THE MOON, CAME A LEAPING DEER"]
+
+
+I.
+
+A lopsided, waning moon, not long risen, looked over the ragged crest
+of the ridge, and sent long shadows down the sparsely wooded slope.
+Though there was no wind, and every tree was as motionless as if
+carved of ice, these spare, intricate shadows seemed to stir and
+writhe, as if instinct with a kind of sinister activity. This
+confusion of light and dark was increased by the patches of snow that
+still clung in the dips and on the gentler slopes. The air was cold,
+yet with a bitter softness in it, the breath of the thaw. The sound of
+running water was everywhere--the light clamour of rivulets, and the
+rush of the swollen brooks; while from the bottom of the valley came
+the deep, pervading voice of the river at freshet, labouring between
+high banks with its burden of sudden flood.
+
+Over the crest of the ridge, inky black for an instant against the
+moon, came a leaping deer. He vanished in a patch of young firs. He
+shot out again into the moonlight. Down the slope he came in mighty
+bounds, so light of foot and so elastic that he seemed to float
+through the air. From his heaving sides and wild eyes it was evident
+that he was fleeing in desperation from some appalling terror.
+Straight down the slope he came, to the very brink of the high bluff
+overlooking the river. There he wheeled, and continued his flight up
+the valley, his violent shadow every now and then, as he crossed the
+spaces of moonlight, projecting grotesquely out upon the swirling
+flood.
+
+Up along the river bluff he fled for perhaps a mile. Then he stopped
+suddenly and listened, his sensitive ears and dilating nostrils held
+high to catch the faintest waft of air. Not a sound came to him,
+except the calling of the waters; not a scent, save the raw freshness
+of melting snow and the balsamic tang of buds just beginning to thrill
+to the first of the rising sap. He bounded on again for perhaps a
+hundred yards, then with a tremendous leap sprang to one side, a full
+thirty feet, landing belly-deep in a thicket of scrub juniper. Another
+leap, as if he were propelled by steel springs, carried him yet
+another thirty feet aside. Then he turned, ran back a couple of
+hundred yards parallel to his old trail, and lay down in a dense
+covert of spruces to catch breath and ease his pounding heart. He was
+a very young buck, not yet seasoned in the craft of the wilderness,
+and his terror shook him. But he knew enough to take his snatched rest
+at the very edge of his covert, where his eyes could watch the back
+trail. For a quarter of an hour, however, nothing appeared along that
+staring trail. Then he got up nervously and resumed his flight, still
+ascending the valley, but now slanting away from the river, and
+gradually climbing back toward the crest of the ridge. He had in mind
+a wide reach of swales and flooded meadows, still miles away, wherein
+he might hope to elude the doom that followed him.
+
+Not long after the buck had vanished there arose a strange sound upon
+the still, wet air. It came in a rising and falling cadence from far
+behind the ridge, under the lopsided moon. It was a high, confused
+sound, not unmusical, but terrifying--a cry of many voices. It drifted
+up into the silvery night, wavered and diminished, swelled again, and
+then died away, leaving a sense of fear upon the quiet that followed.
+The soft clamour of the waters, when one noticed them again, seemed to
+have taken a new note from the menace of that cadenced cry.
+
+Presently over the top of the ridge, at the gap wherein had first
+appeared the form of the leaping buck, a low, dark shape came, moving
+sinuously and with deadly swiftness. It did not bound into the air and
+float, as the buck had seemed to do, but slid smoothly, like a small,
+dense patch of cloud-shadow--a direct, inevitable movement, wasting no
+force and fairly eating up the trail of the fleeing deer.
+
+As it came down the slope, disappearing in the hemlock groves and
+emerging upon the bright, snowy hollows, the dread shape resolved
+itself into a pack of seven wolves. They ran so close, so evenly, with
+fanged muzzles a little low, and ample, cloudy tails a little high,
+that one might have almost covered the whole deadly pack with a
+table-cloth. Their tongues were hanging out, and their eyes shot green
+fire. They were fiercely hungry, for game was scarce and cunning that
+winter on their much ravaged range, and this chase was already a long
+one. When the trail of the buck wheeled at the river-brink, the leader
+of the pack gave one short howl as he turned, barely escaping the
+abyss. It seemed to him that the buck must have been nearly winded, or
+he would not, even for an instant, have contemplated taking to such
+mad water. With the renewed vigour of encouragement, he swept his
+pack along up the edge of the bluff.
+
+On the pack-leader's right flank ran a sturdy wolf of a darker colour
+than his fellows--nearly black, indeed, on the top of his head, over
+his shoulders, and along his stiff-haired backbone. Not quite so tall
+or so long-flanked as the leader, he had that greater breadth of skull
+between the eyes which betokens the stronger intelligence, the more
+individualized resourcefulness. He had a look in his deep-set, fierce
+eye which seemed to prophesy that unless the unforeseen should happen
+he would ere long seize the leadership to himself.
+
+But--the unforeseen did happen, at that moment. The trail, just there,
+led across a little dip wherein the snow still lingered. Thinly
+covered by the snow lay a young pine-tree, lightning shivered and long
+dead. Thrust up from the trunk was a slim, sharp-pointed stub, keen
+and hard and preserved by its resin. Upon this hidden dagger-point, as
+he ran, the dark wolf planted his right fore foot--planted it fair and
+with a mighty push. Between the spreading toes, between the fine bones
+and sinews and the cringing nerves of the foot, and out by the first
+joint of the leg it thrust its rending way.
+
+At the suddenness of the anguish the dark wolf yelped, falling
+forward upon his muzzle as he did so, and dropping from his place as
+the pack sped on. But as he wrenched his foot free and took one
+stumbling stride forward, the pack stopped, and turned. Their long
+white fangs snapped, and the fire in their eyes took a different hue.
+
+Very well the dark wolf knew the meaning of the halt, the turn, the
+change in his fellows' eyes. He knew the stern law of the pack--the
+instant and inevitable doom of its hurt member. The average gray wolf
+knows how to accept the inevitable. Fate itself--the law of the
+pack--he does not presume to defy. He will fight--to justify his
+blood, and, perhaps, to drug his despair and die in the heat of the
+struggle. But he does not dream of trying to escape.
+
+And in this fashion, fighting in silence, this dark wolf would have
+died at the brink of the river bluff, and been eaten by his fellows
+ere they continued their chase of the leaping buck--in this fashion
+would he have died, but for that extra breadth of skull between the
+eyes, that heightened individualism and resourcefulness. Had there
+been any chance to escape by fighting, fighting would have been the
+choice of his fierce and hardy spirit. But what was he against six?
+
+Defying the fiery anguish in his foot, he made a desperate leap which
+took him to the extreme overhanging edge of the bluff. Already the
+jaws of the executioners were gnashing at his heels. A second more and
+they would have been at his throat. But before that second passed he
+was in mid-air, his legs spread wide like those of a squirrel, falling
+to the ice-cakes of the swollen river. From the brink above, the grim
+eyes of the baffled pack flamed down upon him for an instant, and then
+withdrew. What was a drowned wolf, when there was a winded buck not
+far ahead?
+
+But the black-shouldered wolf was not drowned. The flood was thick,
+indeed, with crunching ice-cakes and wallowing logs and slowly turning
+islets of uprooted trees and the _debris_ of the winter forest. But
+fortune so favoured the wolf that he fell in a space of clear water,
+instead of being dashed to a pulp on ice-cake or tree trunk. He
+disappeared, came to the surface gasping, struck out hardily through
+the grim and daunting turmoil, and succeeded in gaining one of those
+islets of toughly interlaced _debris_ which turned slowly in the
+flood. Upon this precarious refuge, crouched shivering on the largest
+tree root and licking persistently at his wounded paw, he was carried
+swiftly down-stream through the roar of waters.
+
+
+II.
+
+When the lopsided moon, now hung high over a low, desolate shore of
+blanched rampikes, was fading to a papery whiteness against a sky of
+dawn, the roar of the river grew louder, and the islet, no longer
+slowly revolving, plunged forward, through a succession of wallowing
+waves, over a wild half-mile of ledges, and joined itself to a wider
+and mightier stream. The wolf, drenched, shivering, and appalled by
+the tumult, clung to his refuge by tooth and claw; and the islet,
+being well compacted, held together through the wrenching plunges, and
+carried its burden safely forth upon the quiet current.
+
+For a day and a night and a day the starving wolf voyaged down the
+flood, till his gaunt sides clung together, and a fierce ache gnawed
+at his vitals. But with the fasting and the ceaseless soothing of his
+tongue his wound rapidly healed; and when, after sunset of his second
+evening on the river, the islet grounded in an eddy under the bank, he
+sprang ashore with speed little impaired. Only a limp and an ache
+remained to remind him of the hurt which had so nearly cost him his
+life and had exiled him to untried hunting-grounds.
+
+His feet once more on firm ground, the wolf halted warily. The air
+that came down the bank carried a strange and warning scent.
+Noiselessly he crept up the steep, went through a few yards of
+shrubbery like a ghost, and peered forth upon a rough back-settlement
+road. At one side he saw a cabin, with a barn near it, and two
+long-horned steers (he had seen steers at a lumber camp in his own
+wild land), thrusting their muzzles over the fence. Down the road
+toward the cabin came a man, in gray homespun and cowhide larrigans,
+with an axe over his shoulder. It was the man-smell which had made the
+wolf so cautious.
+
+With savage but curious eyes he watched the man, with no thought of
+attacking alone so redoubtable a foe. Presently the latter began to
+whistle, and at the incomprehensible sound the wolf shrank back, fear
+mingled with his curiosity. But when the man was well past, there came
+a new scent upon the air, a scent quite unknown to him; and then a
+small black and white cur trotted into view, nosing along the roadside
+in quest of chipmunks. The jaws of the starving wolf dripped water at
+the sight. He gathered himself for a rush. He saw that the man had
+disappeared. The dog ran across the road, sniffing a new chipmunk
+trail, and halted, in sudden apprehension, not five feet from the
+hidden wolf. There was a rustle, a leap, a sharp yelp; and the wolf
+was back into cover with his prey.
+
+Emboldened by the success of this, his first hunting in the unknown
+land, the wolf slept for a few hours in his bushy retreat, and then,
+when the misshapen moon was up, went prowling cautiously around the
+outskirts of the scattered little settlement. Everywhere the man-smell
+kept him on his guard. Once he was careless enough to get between the
+wind and a farmyard, whereupon a watchful cur started a barking, which
+was taken up and kept up for an hour by all the dogs of the village.
+At this the wolf, with snarling, contemptuous jaws apart, withdrew to
+a knoll, sat quietly erect upon his haunches, and waited for the din
+to subside. He noted carefully the fact that one or two men were
+aroused by the alarm, and came out to see what was the matter. When
+all was quiet again he sought the house of the nearest yelper, took
+him by surprise, and killed him in sheer rage, leaving his torn body
+beside the very door-step, instead of dragging it away for a later
+meal. This was a mistake in hunting craft. Had he been more familiar
+with the man-folk, his wide-skulled intelligence would have taught him
+better than to leave a clue behind him in this careless fashion.
+
+[Illustration: "HE BARED HIS FANGS DISDAINFULLY."]
+
+From the farmyard he wandered back toward the hills, and came upon a
+lonely sheep pasture. Here he found killing so easy that he slew in
+wantonness; and then, about daybreak, gorged and triumphant, withdrew
+to a rocky hillside, where he found a lair to his taste.
+
+Later in the day, however, he realized his mistake. He had called down
+upon himself the wrath of the man-folk. A din of dogs aroused him,
+and, mounting a rock, he saw a motley crowd of curs upon his trail,
+with half a dozen men following far behind them. He bared his fangs
+disdainfully, then turned and sought the forest at a long gallop,
+which, for all his limp and his twinge, soon carried him beyond
+ear-shot of his pursuers.
+
+For hours he pressed on ever eastward, with a little trend to the
+south, crossing many a trail of deer, caribou, and moose, passing here
+and there a beaver village, and realizing that he had come to
+wonderful hunting-grounds. But when he came to the outskirts of
+another settlement, he halted. His jaws ran water at the thought of
+finding another sheep pasture, and he decided to range for awhile in
+this neighbourhood. He was quick to realize the disadvantage of man's
+proximity, but he would dare it for a little before retiring into the
+untainted wilderness. He had learned his lesson quickly, however. That
+night he refrained from stirring up the dogs of the settlement; and he
+killed but one sheep, in a secluded corner of the pasture.
+
+Now, by singular chance, it happened that at this particular
+settlement there was already a sheep-killer harrying the thick-wooled
+flocks. A wandering peddler, smitten with a fever while visiting the
+settlement, had died, and left to pay for his board and burial only
+his pack and his dog. The dog, so fiercely devoted to him as to have
+made the funeral difficult, was a long-legged, long-haired, long-jawed
+bitch, apparently a cross between a collie and a Scotch deerhound. So
+unusual a beast, making all the other dogs of the settlement look
+contemptible, was in demand; but she was deaf, for a time, to all
+overtures. For a week she pined for the dead peddler; and then, with
+an air of scornful tolerance, consented to take up her abode with the
+village shopkeeper. Her choice was made not for any distinction in the
+man, but for a certain association, apparently, with the smell of the
+contents of her late master's pack. For months she sulked and was
+admired, making friends with neither man, woman, nor child, and
+keeping all the village curs at a respectful distance.
+
+A few days, however, before the arrival of the journeying wolf, a new
+interest had entered into the life of the long-jawed bitch. Her eyes
+resumed their old bright alertness, and she grew perceptibly less
+ungracious to the loafers gathered around the stove in the back store.
+She had entered upon a career which would have ended right speedily
+with a bullet in her reckless brain, but for an utterly unlooked-for
+freak of fate. She had discovered that, if every night she could hunt,
+run down, and kill one sheep, life might again become worth living,
+and the coarse-clodded grave in the little lonely cemetery might be
+forgotten. It was not the killing, but the chase, that she craved. The
+killing was, of course, merely the ecstatic culmination. So she went
+about the sport with artistic cunning. To disguise her trail she came
+upon the flocks from the side of the forest, as any wild beast would.
+Then she would segregate her victim with a skill born of her collie
+ancestry, set it running, madden it to the topmost delirium of fear
+and flight, and almost let it escape before darting at its throat and
+ending the game with the gush of warm blood between her jaws.
+
+Such had been her adventures for three nights: and already the
+settlement was concerned, and already glances of half-formed suspicion
+had been cast upon the long-legged bitch so innocently asleep by the
+stove, when the wandering wolf arrived upon the outskirts of the
+settlement. The newcomer was quick to note and examine the tracks of a
+peculiarly large dog--a foeman, perhaps, to prove not unworthy of his
+fangs. And he conducted his reconnoitring with more care. Then he came
+upon the carcass of a sheep, torn and partly eaten. It was almost like
+a wolf's work--though less cleanly done--and the smell of the cold
+trail was unmistakably dog. The black-backed wolf was puzzled. He had
+a vague notion that dogs were the protectors, not the hunters, of all
+the four-legged kindred belonging to men. The problem seemed to him an
+important one. He crouched in ambush near the carcass to consider it
+for a time, before setting out upon his own sheep-hunting.
+
+As he crouched, watching, he saw the killer approach. He saw a tall,
+lean bitch come up, tear carelessly at the dead sheep for a moment or
+two, in a manner of ownership, and turn to leave. She was as long in
+leg and flank as himself, and possessed of the like punishing jaws;
+but she was not so massive in the shoulder. The wolf felt that he
+could master her in combat; but he felt no disposition for the fight.
+The dog-smell that came to his nostrils did not excite the usual hot
+aversion. On the contrary, it made him desire to know more of the
+sheep-killing stranger.
+
+But acquaintance is not made lightly among the wild kindred, who are
+quick to resent a presumption. The wolf slipped noiselessly back into
+his covert, emerged upon the farther side of the thicket, and at a
+distance of some twenty paces stood forth in the glimmering light. To
+attract the tall bitch's attention he made a soft, whining sound.
+
+At the unexpected noise behind her the bitch wheeled like lightning.
+At sight of the big wolf the hair rose along her back, her fangs bared
+themselves dangerously, and she growled a deep note of challenge. For
+some seconds the wolf thought she would fly at him,; but he stood
+motionless, tail drooping humbly, tongue hanging a little way from his
+lips, a soft light in his eyes. Then he sat back upon his haunches,
+let his tongue hang out still farther, and drooped his head a little
+to one side--the picture of conciliation and deference.
+
+The long-jawed bitch had never before seen a wolf, but she recognized
+him at once as a natural enemy. There was something in his attitude of
+unoffending confidence, however, which made her hesitate to attack,
+although he was plainly a trespasser. As she eyed him, she felt her
+anger melting away. How like he was to certain big, strong dogs which
+she had seen once or twice in her wanderings with the peddler! and how
+unlike to the diminutive, yelping curs of the settlement! Her
+bristling hairs smoothed themselves, the skin of her jaws relaxed and
+set itself about her teeth in a totally different expression; her
+growling ceased, and she gave an amicable whine. Diffidently the two
+approached each other, and in a few minutes a perfect understanding
+was established.
+
+That night they hunted sheep together. In the joy of comradeship and
+emulation, prudence was scattered to the winds, and they held a riot
+of slaughter. When day broke a dozen or more sheep lay dead about the
+pastures. And the wolf, knowing that men and dogs would soon be noisy
+on their trail, led his new-found mate far back into the wilderness.
+
+
+III.
+
+The tall bitch, hating the settlement and all the folk therein, was
+glad to be quit of it. And she found the hunting of deer far more
+thrilling than the tame pursuit of sheep. Slipping with curious ease
+the inherited sympathies of her kind, she fell into the ways of the
+wild kindred, save for a certain brusque openness which she never
+succeeded in laying off.
+
+For weeks the strangely mated pair drifted southward through the
+bright New Brunswick spring, to come to a halt at last in a region to
+their liking between the St. John and the Chiputneticook chain of
+lakes. It was a land of deer and rabbits and ducks, with settlements
+small and widely scattered; a land where never a wolf-snout had been
+seen for half a hundred years. And here, on a thick-wooded hill-slope,
+the wanderers found a dry cave and made it their den.
+
+In due course the long-jawed bitch bore a litter of six sturdy whelps,
+which throve amazingly. As they grew up they showed almost all wolf,
+harking back to the type--save that in colour they were nearly black,
+with a touch of tan in the gray of their under parts. When they came
+to maturity, and were accredited hunters all, they were in general
+larger and more savage than either of their parents, differing more
+widely, one from another, than would the like number of full-blooded
+wolves. The eight, when they hunted together, made a pack which, for
+strength, ferocity, and craft, no like number of full-blooded wolves
+in all Canada could have matched.
+
+The long-jawed bitch, whose highly developed brain guided, for the
+most part, the destinies of the pack, for a time kept them from the
+settlement and away from the contact with men; and the existence of
+wolves in the Chiputneticook country was not dreamed of among the
+backwoods settlements. In this policy she was backed by the sagacity
+and strength of her mate, under whose wide-arched skull was a clear
+perception of the truth that man is the one master animal. But the
+hybrid whelps, by some perversion of inherited instinct, hated man
+savagely, and had less dread of him than either of their parents. More
+than once was the authority of the leaders sharply strained to prevent
+a disastrous attack upon some unsuspecting pair of lumbermen, with
+their ox-team and their axes.
+
+[Illustration: "THEY PROWLED AND HOWLED ABOUT THE DOOR."]
+
+The second winter of the wolves in the Chiputneticook country proved a
+very hard one--game scarce and hunting difficult; and toward the
+end of February the pack drew in toward the settlements, in the hope
+of more abundant foraging. Fate promptly favoured the move. Some
+sheep, and a heifer or two, were easily killed, with no calamitous
+result; and the authority of the leaders was somewhat discredited.
+Three of the young wolves even went so far as to besiege a solitary
+cabin, where a woman and some trembling children awaited the return of
+the man. For two hideous moonlit hours they prowled and howled about
+the door, sniffing at the sill, and grinning in through the low
+window; and when the sound of bells came near they withdrew sullenly,
+half-minded to attack the man and horse.
+
+A few nights after this, when the pack was following together the
+discouraging trail of a long-winded and wily buck, they crossed the
+trail of a man on snow-shoes. This trail was fresher, and to the young
+wolves it seemed to promise easier hunting. The leaders were
+overruled, and the new trail was taken up with heat.
+
+The trail was that of a gaunt, tan-faced backwoodsman, on his way to a
+lumber camp a few miles down the other side of the lake. He was
+packing a supply of light needfuls, of which the lumbermen had
+unexpectedly run short, and he was pressing forward in haste to avoid
+a second night on the trail. The pack was carried high on his powerful
+shoulders, in a manner to interfere as little as possible with his
+long, snow-shoeing stride. In one hand he carried his axe. From under
+the brim of his coonskin cap his piercing gray eyes kept watch with a
+quiet alertness--expecting no danger, indeed, and fearing none, but
+trained to cool readiness for every vicissitude of the wild.
+
+He was travelling through a stretch of heavy timber, where the
+moonlight came down in such scant streaks that he had trouble in
+picking a clear path, when his ear was caught by an unwonted sound far
+behind him. He paused to listen, no unwonted sound being matter of
+indifference to them who range the wood. It came again, long-drawn and
+high and cadenced. The big woodsman looked surprised. "I'd 'a' took my
+oath," said he to himself, "ther' wa'n't a wolf in New Brunswick! But
+I knowed the deer'd bring 'em back afore long!" Then, unconcernedly,
+he resumed his tramp, such experience as he had had with wolves in the
+West having convinced him that they would not want to meddle with a
+man.
+
+In a few minutes, however, the instinct of the woods awoke in him
+suddenly, and told him that it was not some buck, but himself, whom
+the hunting pack were trailing. Then the sound came again, perceptibly
+nearer, though still far off. The woodsman gave a grunt of impatience,
+angry to think that any four-foot creature of the forest should
+presume to hunt _him_. But the barest prudence told him that he should
+make haste for the open. Under protest, as it were, he broke into a
+long trot, and swerved to the right, that he might sooner reach the
+lake.
+
+As he ran, the novel experience of feeling himself pursued got on his
+nerves, and filled him with rage. Were there not plenty of deer in the
+woods? he thought, indignantly. He would teach the vermin a lesson.
+Several times he was on the point of stopping and waiting, to have it
+out with them as soon as possible. But wisdom prevailed, and he pushed
+on to the open. On the lake, the moonlit snow was packed hard, and the
+running good. About a mile from shore a little, steep, rocky island,
+upthrusting itself boldly, suggested to the woodsman that if his
+pursuers were really going to have the audacity to attack him, it
+might be well to have his back to a rock, that he might not be
+surrounded. He headed for the island, therefore, though with protest
+in his heart. And just as he got to it the wolves emerged from cover,
+and darted out upon the shining level.
+
+"Looks like they really meant it!" growled the big woodsman, loosing
+his pack-strap, and setting his jaws for a fight.
+
+When the pack came near he was astonished first at the stature and
+dark colour of its members, and he realized, with a sudden fury, that
+the outcome was not so assured as he had taken for granted it would
+be. Perhaps he would never see camp, after all! Then he was further
+astonished to note that one of the pack-leaders looked like a dog. He
+shouted, in a voice of angry command; and the onrushing pack
+hesitated, checked themselves, spread apart. From that dominating
+voice it was evident that this was a creature of power--not to be
+attacked carelessly, but to be surrounded.
+
+That voice of command had thrilled the heart of the long-jawed bitch.
+Something in it reminded her of the dead peddler, who had been a
+masterful man. She would have none of this hunting. But she looked at
+each of her savage whelps, and knew that any attempt to lead them off
+would be worse than vain. A strange hatred began to stir within her,
+and her fangs bared toward them as if they, not the man against the
+rock, were the enemy. She looked again at the man, and saw the bundle,
+so like a peddler's pack, at his feet! Instantly her heart went out to
+him. She was no longer a wolf, but a dog; and there was her
+master--not her old master, but such a one as he had been. At his
+side, and fighting his foes, was her place. Like a flash, she darted
+away from her companions, stopped a few feet in front of the ready
+woodsman, turned about, and faced the pack with a savage growl. Her
+hair was stiffly erect from neck to tail; her long, white teeth were
+bared to the roots; her eyes were narrowed to slits of green flame;
+she half-crouched, ready to spring in mad fury and tear the throat of
+any beast which should try to hurt the man.
+
+As for the woodsman, he knew dogs, and was not greatly surprised at
+his strange ally. At her sudden approach he had swung his axe in
+readiness, but his cool eye had read her signals aright. "Good dog!"
+he said, with cheerful confidence. "We'll lick the varmints!"
+
+But the young wolves went wild with rage at this defection and
+defiance, and rushed in at once. They sprang first upon the bitch;
+though one, rushing past, leaped venomously at the woodsman's throat.
+This one got the axe in his skull, and dropped without a sound.
+Meanwhile, the old wolf, who had been holding back in uncertainty, had
+made his decision. When he saw his mate attacked, his doubts vanished,
+and a red haze for an instant went over his eyes. These unnatural
+whelps that attacked her--he suddenly saw them, not as wolves at all,
+but as dogs, and hated them with a deadly hate. Silently he fell upon
+the nearest, and tore him savagely. He was too late, however, to save
+his mistress. The long-jawed bitch, for all her strength and her
+valiant spirit, was overwhelmed by her powerful offspring. One she had
+killed, and for one she had crunched a leg-joint to splinters; but now
+she lay mangled and still under the struggle. The brute whose
+leg-joint she had smashed dragged out from the _melee_; and her
+faithful mate, the wide-skulled old wanderer wolf, found himself in
+the death-grapple with three raging adversaries, each fairly his match
+for weight and strength. True wolf, he fought in silence; but in his
+antagonists the mixed breed came out, and they fought with yelps and
+snarls.
+
+At this juncture, fortunately for the old wolf, the woodsman's
+understanding eye had penetrated the whole situation. He saw that the
+black-haired beasts were the common enemy; and he fell upon the three
+with his axe. His snow-shoes he had kicked off when making ready for
+the struggle. In his mighty grasp the light axe whirled and smote with
+the cunning of a rapier; and in a few seconds the old wolf, bleeding
+but still vigorous, found himself confronting the man across a heap of
+mangled black bodies. The man, lowering his axe, looked at the
+bleeding wolf with mingled doubt and approbation. The wolf glared back
+for an instant,--fear, hate, and grief in the green gleam of his
+eyes,--then turned and fled, his pace accelerated by the cheerful yell
+which the man sent after him.
+
+"He's got the sand, sure!" muttered the woodsman, to himself, wiping
+his axe. "Glad I didn't hev to knock him on the head, too!"
+
+Then turning about, he saw the disabled whelp trying to sneak off,
+and, with unerring aim, threw his axe. The black mongrel sank with a
+kick, and lay still. The woodsman got out his pipe, slowly stuffed it
+with blackjack, and smoked contemplatively, while he stood and
+pondered the slain. He turned over the bodies, and patted the fur of
+the long-jawed bitch, which had so splendidly turned back to her
+traditions in the time of need. As he thought, the main elements of
+the story unfolded themselves to him. Considerately he carried the
+limp body, and securely buried it under a heap of stones on the
+island. The rest he cached carelessly, intending to return and skin
+them on the morrow.
+
+"Them black pelts'll be worth somethin', I reckon!" he said to himself
+with satisfaction as he took up his pack.
+
+
+
+
+The Homeward Trail
+
+
+In the lumber camp, far back upon the lonely headquarters of the
+Quah-Davic, there was the stir of something unusual afoot. It was
+Christmas Eve, and every kerosene lamp, lantern, and candle that the
+camp could boast, was blazing. The little square windows gleamed
+softly through the dust and cobwebs of unwashen years. For all the
+cold that snapped and bit through the stillness of the forest night,
+the door of the camp was thrown wide open, and from it a long sheet of
+light spread out across the trodden and chip-littered snow. Around the
+doorway crowded the rough-shirted woodsmen, loafing and smoking after
+their prodigious dinner of boiled pork, boiled beans, and steaming-hot
+molasses cake. The big box-stove behind them, which heated the camp,
+was wearing itself to a dull red glow; and the air that rushed out
+with the light from the open door was heavy with the smell of wet
+woollens, wet larrigans, and wet leather. Many of the men were wearing
+nothing on their feet but their heavy, home-knit socks of country
+yarn; but in these they did not hesitate to come out upon the dry
+snow, rather than trouble themselves to resume their massive
+foot-gear.
+
+Before the door, in the spread of the light, stood a pair of sturdy,
+rough-coated gray horses, hitched to a strong box sled, or "pung." The
+bottom of the pung was covered thick with straw, and over the broad,
+low seat were blankets, with one heavy bearskin robe. Into the space
+behind the seat a gaunt, big-shouldered man was stowing a haunch of
+frozen moose-meat. A lanky, tow-haired boy of fifteen was tucking
+himself up carefully among the blankets on the left-hand side of the
+seat. The horses stood patient, but with drooping heads, aggrieved at
+being taken from the stable at this unwonted hour. In the pale-blue,
+kindly, woods-wise eyes of both the man and the boy shone the light of
+happy anticipation. They seemed too occupied and excited to make much
+response to the good-natured banter of their comrades, but grinned
+contentedly as they hastened their preparations for departure. The man
+was Steve Williams, best axe-man and stream-driver in the camp; the
+boy, young Steve, his eldest son, who was serving as "cookee," or
+assistant to the camp cook. The two were setting out on a long night
+drive through the forest to spend Christmas with their family, on the
+edge of the lonely little settlement of Brine's Brook.
+
+When all was ready, the big-shouldered woodsman slipped into the seat
+beside his son, pulled the blankets and the bearskin all about him,
+and picked up the reins from the square dashboard. A sharp _tchk_
+started the horses, and, amid a chorus of shouts,--good nights and
+Merry Christmases, and well-worn rustic pleasantries,--the loaded pung
+slid forward from the light into the great, ghost-white gloom beyond.
+The sled-bells jangled; the steel runners crunched and sang frostily;
+and the cheerful camp, the only centre of human life within a radius
+of more than twenty miles, sank back behind the voyagers. There was
+the sound of a door slamming, and the bright streak across the snow
+was blotted out. The travellers were alone on the trail, with the
+solemn ranks of trees and the icy-pointed stars.
+
+They were well prepared, these two happy Christmas adventurers, to
+face the rigours of the December night. Under their heavy
+blanket-coats were many thicknesses of homespun flannel. Inside their
+high-laced, capacious "shoe-packs" were several pairs of yarn socks.
+Their hands were covered by double-knit home-made mittens. Their
+heads were protected by wadded caps of muskrat fur, with flaps that
+pulled down well over the ears. The cold, which iced their eyelashes,
+turned the tips of their up-turned coat-collars and the edges of their
+mufflers to board, and made the old trees snap startlingly, had no
+terrors at all for their hardy frames. Once well under way, and the
+camp quite out of sight, they fell to chatting happily of the surprise
+they would give the home folks, who did not expect them home for
+Christmas. They calculated, if they had "anyways good luck," to get
+home to the little isolated backwoods farmhouse between four and five
+in the morning, about when grandfather would be getting up by
+candle-light to start the kitchen fire for mother, and then go out and
+fodder the cattle. They'd be home in time to wake the three younger
+children (young Steve was the eldest of a family of four), and to add
+certain little carven products of the woodsman's whittling--ingenious
+wooden toys, and tiny elaborate boxes, filled with choicest globules
+of spruce gum--to the few poor Christmas gifts which the resourceful
+and busy little mother had managed to get together against the
+festival. As they talked these things over, slowly and with frugal
+speech, after the fashion of their class, suddenly was borne in upon
+them a sense of the loneliness of the home folks' Christmas if they
+should fail to come. Under the spell of this feeling, a kind of
+inverted homesickness, their talk died into silence. They sat
+thinking, and listening to the hoarse jangle of their bells.
+
+In such a night as this, few of the wild kindreds were astir in the
+forest. The bears, raccoons, woodchucks, and chipmunks were snugly
+"holed up," and sleeping away the great white cold. The deer and moose
+were in their well-trodden "yards," for the snow was deep. The
+travellers knew that there were plenty of wood-mice astir,--that if
+there had been light enough they would have seen their delicate trails
+wandering everywhere among the trees. But the jangling of the
+sled-bells was enough to keep all shy beasts at a distance. Only the
+porcupine was quite undaunted by the strange sounds. One came out into
+the middle of the road, and stood there seemingly to dispute passage.
+The boy, in whom primal instincts were still dominant, was for getting
+out and killing the insolent little bristler. But the father turned
+the team aside, and gracefully yielded the road, saying:
+
+"Let him be, son! The woods is hisn as much as ourn. An' I respect
+him, fer he ain't skeered of nothin' that goes on legs!"
+
+An hour later, when the boy was getting very drowsy from watching the
+ceaseless procession of dark fir-trees, his father nudged him, and
+whispered, "Look!" The boy, wide awake on the instant, peered into the
+gloom, and presently his trained young eyes made out a shadowy,
+slouching form, that flitted without a sound from tree to tree.
+
+"Lucivee?" he asked, breathless with interest, laying his mittened
+hand on his little rifle under the blankets.
+
+"Yes, lucivee! lynx!" answered the father.
+
+"Let me take a shot at him," said the boy, removing the mitten from
+his right hand, and bringing out his weapon.
+
+"Oh, what's the good o' killin' the beast Christmas times!" protested
+the father, gently. And the boy laid down the gun.
+
+"What does he think he's follerin' us fer?" he inquired, a moment
+later.
+
+"The moose-meat, maybe!" replied the man. "He smells it likely, an'
+thinks we're goin' to give it to him for a Christmas present!"
+
+At this suggestion the boy laughed out loud. His clear young voice
+rang through the frosty shadows; and the lynx, surprised and
+offended, shrank back, and slunk away in another direction.
+
+"Bloodthirsty varmints, them lucivees!" said the boy, who wanted a
+lynx-skin as a trophy. "Ain't it better to shoot 'em whenever one gits
+the chance?"
+
+"Well," said the father, dubiously, "maybe so! But there's better
+times fer killin' than Christmas times!"
+
+A little farther ahead, the road to Brine's Brook turned off. Here the
+going was very heavy. The road was little travelled, and in places
+almost choked up by drifts. Most of the time the horses had to walk;
+and sometimes the man and boy had to get out and tramp a path ahead of
+the discouraged team.
+
+"At this rate, dad, we ain't a-goin' to git home in time fer
+breakfast!" exclaimed the boy, despondently. To which the man replied,
+"Don't you fret, son! It'll be better goin' when we git over the rise.
+You git into the pung now an' take the reins, an' let me do the
+trampin'."
+
+The boy, who was tired out, obeyed gladly. He gathered up the
+reins,--and in two minutes was sound asleep. The man smiled, tucked
+the blankets snugly around the sleeping form, and trudged on
+tirelessly for a couple of hours, the horses floundering at his
+heels. Then the drifts ceased. The man kicked the snow from his
+trousers and shoe-packs, and climbed into the pung again. "We'll make
+it in time fer breakfast yet!" he murmured to himself, confidently, as
+the horses once more broke into a trot.
+
+They were traversing now a high table-land, rather sparsely wooded,
+and dotted here and there with towering rampikes. Suddenly from far
+behind came a long, wavering cry, high-pitched and peculiarly
+daunting. The horses, though they had probably never heard such a
+sound before, started apprehensively, and quickened their pace. The
+man reined them in firmly; but as he did so he frowned.
+
+"I've hearn say the wolves was comin' back to these here parts," he
+muttered, "now that the deer's gittin' so plenty agin! But I didn't
+more'n half-believe it afore!"
+
+Presently the grim sound came again. Then the man once more awoke the
+boy.
+
+"Here's somethin' to interest you, lad," said he, as the latter put a
+mittened fist to sleepy eyes. "Hark to that there noise! Did you ever
+hear the like?"
+
+The boy listened, paled slightly, and was instantly wide awake.
+
+"Why, that's like what I've read about!" he exclaimed. "It must be
+wolves!"
+
+"Nary a doubt of it!" assented his father, again reining the uneasy
+horses down to a steady gait. "They've followed the deer back, and
+now, seems like their a-follerin' us!"
+
+The boy looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, carelessly:
+
+"Oh, well, I reckon there's deer a-plenty for 'em, an' they're not
+likely to come too nigh us, lookin' fer trouble. I reckon they ain't
+much like them Roosian wolves we read about, eh, dad?"
+
+"I reckon," agreed the father. At the same time, it was with a certain
+satisfaction that he set his foot on his trusty axe, amid the straw in
+the bottom of the pung.
+
+As the high, quavering voices drew nearer, the horses grew more and
+more alarmed; but the man soothed them with his voice, and sternly
+held them in, husbanding their strength lest there should be more
+heavy going farther ahead. At length, some three hundred yards behind
+them, they caught a glimpse of their pursuers, four swiftly running
+shapes.
+
+"Only four!" cried the boy, scornfully, as he patted his little
+rifle. "I thought there was always more'n that in a pack!"
+
+"You needn't grumble," said the man, with a grin. "It's gittin' home
+fer breakfast we're after, not fightin' wolves, son!"
+
+The road was so much better now that the man gave the horses their
+head a little, and the pung flew over the singing snow. But in a few
+minutes the four wolves, though keeping a distance of a couple of
+hundred yards, were running abreast of them. The animals were
+evidently unacquainted with horses or men, and shy about a close
+investigation. The sled-bells, too, were to them a very suspicious
+phenomenon. Deer, assuredly, were safer hunting; but they would, at
+least, keep this strange, new kind of quarry in sight for awhile, to
+see what might turn up.
+
+For the next half-hour there was no change in the situation. From time
+to time, where the woods thickened, the wolves would draw nearer to
+the pung; and the boy, with shining eyes, would lift his rifle. But
+presently they would sheer off again; and the boy grew more and more
+scornful. Then came the winter dawn, a creeping, bitter gray, and for
+a few minutes the forest was an unreal place, full of ghosts, and cold
+with a cold to pierce the soul. Then, a growing, spreading, pervading
+glory of pink and lilac and transparent gold. As the light streamed
+through the trees, the wolves got a clearer view of their quarry; and
+perceiving in it a something distinctly dangerous, they dropped the
+chase and faded back into the thickets. The man looked at the boy's
+disappointed face, and said, smilingly:
+
+"I reckon they was extry-ordinary civil, seein' us home that way
+through the woods!"
+
+A few moments later the woods were left behind, and the travellers
+came out among the snowy stump-fields. There below them, half-way down
+the hill, was home, bathed in the sparkling sun. Smoke was pouring
+cheerfully from the chimney; and there in the yard was grandfather,
+bringing in a pail of milk from the barn.
+
+"Mother'll have breakfast jest about ready!" cried the man, his rough
+face tender and aglow.
+
+"But I wisht I could've brought her a nice wolf-skin for Christmas!"
+exclaimed the boy, sighing softly as he laid down the little rifle.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Watchers of the Trails, by Charles G. D. Roberts
+
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