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Secret of the Woods

by William J. Long

September, 1999 [Etext #1901]

Project Gutenberg Etext Secret of the Woods, by William J. Long

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SECRETS OF THE WOODS

WILLIAM J. LONG

Wood Folk Series Book Three

1901

TO CH'GEEGEE-LOKH-SIS, "Little

Friend Ch'geegee," whose

coming makes the winter glad.

PREFACE

This little book is but another chapter in the shy 'wild life of

the fields and woods' of which "Ways of Wood Folk" and

"Wilderness Ways " were the beginning. It is given gladly in

answer to the call for more from those who have read the previous

volumes, and whose letters are full of the spirit of kindness

and appreciation.

Many questions have come of late with these same letters;

chief of which is this: How shall one discover such things for

himself? how shall we, too, read the secrets of the Wood Folk?

There is no space here to answer, to describe the long

training, even if one could explain perfectly what is more or

less unconscious. I would only suggest that perhaps the real

reason why we see so little in the woods is the way we go through

them--talking, laughing, rustling, smashing twigs, disturbing the

peace of the solitudes by what must seem strange and uncouth

noises to the little wild creatures. They, on the other hand,

slip with noiseless feet through their native coverts, shy,

silent, listening, more concerned to hear than to be heard,

loving the silence, hating noise and fearing it, as they fear and

hate their natural enemies.

We would not feel comfortable if a big barbarian came into

our quiet home, broke the door down, whacked his war-club on the

furniture, and whooped his battle yell. We could hardly be

natural under the circumstances. Our true dispositions would hide

themselves. We might even vacate the house bodily. Just so Wood

Folk. Only as you copy their ways can you expect to share their

life and their secrets. And it is astonishing how little the

shyest of them fears you, if you but keep silence and avoid all

excitement, even of feeling; for they understand your feeling

quite as much as your action.

A dog knows when you are afraid of him; when you are hostile;

when friendly. So does a bear. Lose your nerve, and the horse you

are riding goes to pieces instantly. Bubble over with suppressed

excitement, and the deer yonder, stepping daintily down the bank

to your canoe in the water grasses, will stamp and snort and

bound away without ever knowing what startled him. But be quiet,

friendly, peace-possessed in the same place, and the deer, even

after discovering you, will draw near and show his curiosity in

twenty pretty ways ere he trots away, looking back over his

shoulder for your last message. Then be generous--show him the

flash of a looking-glass, the flutter of a bright handkerchief, a

tin whistle, or any other little kickshaw that the remembrance of

a boy's pocket may suggest--and the chances are that he will come

back again, finding curiosity so richly rewarded.

That is another point to remember: all the Wood Folk are more

curious about you than you are about them. Sit down quietly in

the woods anywhere, and your coming will occasion the same stir

that a stranger makes in a New England hill town. Control your

curiosity, and soon their curiosity gets beyond control; they

must come to find out who you are and what you are doing. Then

you have the advantage; for, while their curiosity is being

satisfied, they forget fear and show you many curious bits of

their life that you will never discover otherwise.

As to the source of these sketches, it is the same as that of the

others years of quiet observation in the woods and fields, and

some old notebooks which hold the records of summer and winter

camps in the great wilderness.

My kind publishers announced, some time ago, a table of contents,

which included chapters on jay and fish-hawk, panther, and

musquash, and a certain savage old bull moose that once took up

his abode too near my camp for comfort. My only excuse for their

non-appearance is that my little book was full before their turn

came. They will find their place, I trust, in another volume

presently.

STAMFORD, CONN., June, 1901. Wm. J. LONG.

CONTENTS

TOOKHEES THE 'FRAID ONE

A WILDERNESS BYWAY

KEEONEKH THE FISHERMAN

KOSKOMENOS THE OUTCAST

MEEKO THE MISCHIEF-MAKER

THE OL' BEECH PA'TRIDGE

FOLLOWING THE DEER

SUMMER WOODS

STILL HUNTING

WINTER TRAILS

SNOW BOUND

GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES

SECRETS OF THE WOODS

TOOKHEES THE 'FRAID ONE

Little Tookhees the wood mouse, the 'Fraid One, as Simmo calls

him, always makes two appearances when you squeak to bring him

out. First, after much peeking, he runs out of his tunnel; sits

up once on his hind legs; rubs his eyes with his paws; looks up

for the owl, and behind him for the fox, and straight ahead at

the tent where the man lives; then he dives back headlong into

his tunnel with a rustle of leaves and a frightened whistle, as

if Kupkawis the little owl had seen him. That is to reassure

himself. In a moment he comes back softly to see what kind of

crumbs you have given him.

No wonder Tookhees is so timid, for there is no place in earth or

air or water, outside his own little doorway under the mossy

stone, where he is safe. Above him the owls watch by night and

the hawks by day; around him not a prowler of the wilderness,

from Mooween the bear down through a score of gradations, to

Kagax the bloodthirsty little weasel, but will sniff under every

old log in the hope of finding a wood mouse; and if he takes a

swim, as he is fond of doing, not a big trout in the river but

leaves his eddy to rush at the tiny ripple holding bravely across

the current. So, with all these enemies waiting to catch him the

moment he ventures out, Tookhees must needs make one or two false

starts in order to find out where the coast is clear.

That is why he always dodges back after his first appearance; why

he gives you two or three swift glimpses of himself, now here,

now there, before coming out into the light. He knows his enemies

are so hungry, so afraid he will get away or that somebody else

will catch him, that they jump for him the moment he shows a

whisker. So eager are they for his flesh, and so sure, after

missing him, that the swoop of wings or the snap of red jaws has

scared him into permanent hiding, that they pass on to other

trails. And when a prowler, watching from behind a stump, sees

Tookhees flash out of sight and hears his startled squeak, he

thinks naturally that the keen little eyes have seen the tail,

which he forgot to curl close enough, and so sneaks away as if

ashamed of himself. Not even the fox, whose patience is without

end, has learned the wisdom of waiting for Tookhees' second

appearance. And that is the salvation of the little 'Fraid One.

From all these enemies Tookhees has one refuge, the little arched

nest beyond the pretty doorway under the mossy stone. Most of

his enemies can dig, to be sure, but his tunnel winds about in

such a way that they never can tell from the looks of his doorway

where it leads to; and there are no snakes in the wilderness to

follow and find out. Occasionally I have seen where Mooween the

bear has turned the stone over and clawed the earth beneath; but

there is generally a tough root in the way, and Mooween concludes

that he is taking too much trouble for so small a mouthful, and

shuffles off to the log where the red ants live.

On his journeys through the woods Tookhees never forgets the

dangerous possibilities. His progress is a series of jerks, and

whisks, and jumps, and hidings. He leaves his doorway, after much

watching, and shoots like a minnow across the moss to an

upturned root. There he sits up and listens, rubbing his whiskers

nervously. Then he glides along the root for a couple of feet,

drops to the ground and disappears. He is hiding there under a

dead leaf. A moment of stillness and he jumps like a

jack-in-abox. Now he is sitting on the leaf that covered him,

rubbing his whiskers again, looking back over his trail as if he

heard footsteps behind him. Then another nervous dash, a squeak

which proclaims at once his escape. and his arrival, and he

vanishes under the old moss-grown log where his fellows live, a

whole colony of them.

All these things, and many more, I discovered the first season

that I began to study the wild things that lived within sight of

my tent. I had been making long excursions after bear and beaver,

following on wild-goose chases after Old Whitehead the eagle and

Kakagos the wild woods raven that always escaped me, only to

find that within the warm circle of my camp-fire little wild folk

were hiding whose lives were more unknown and quite as

interesting as the greater creatures I had been following.

One day, as I returned quietly to camp, I saw Simmo quite lost in

watching something near my tent. He stood beside a great birch

tree, one hand resting against the bark that he would claim next

winter for his new canoe; the other hand still grasped his axe,

which he had picked up a moment before to quicken the tempo of

the bean kettle's song. His dark face peered behind the tree with

a kind of childlike intensity written all over it.

I stole nearer without his hearing me; but I could see nothing.

The woods were all still. Killooleet was dozing by his nest; the

chickadees had vanished, knowing that it was not meal time; and

Meeko the red squirrel had been made to jump from the fir top to

the ground so often that now he kept sullenly to his own hemlock

across the island, nursing his sore feet and scolding like a fury

whenever I approached. Still Simmo watched, as if a bear were

approaching his bait, till I whispered, "Quiee, Simmo, what is

it?"

"Nodwar k'chee Toquis, I see little 'Fraid One'" he said,

unconsciously dropping into his own dialect, which is the softest

speech in the world, so soft that wild things are not disturbed

when they hear it, thinking it only a louder sough of the pines

or a softer tunking of ripples on the rocks.--"O bah cosh, see!

He wash-um face in yo lil cup." And when I tiptoed to his side,

there was Tookhees sitting on the rim of my drinking cup, in

which I had left a new leader to soak for the evening's fishing,

scrubbing his face diligently, like a boy who is watched from

behind to see that he slights not his ears or his neck.

Remembering my own boyhood on cold mornings, I looked behind him

to see if he also were under compulsion, but there was no other

mouse in sight. He would scoop up a double handful of water in

his paws, rub it rapidly up over nose and eyes, and then behind

his ears, on the spots that wake you up quickest when you are

sleepy. Then another scoop of water, and another vigorous rub,

ending behind his ears as before.

Simmo was full of wonder, for an Indian notices few things in the

woods beside those that pertain to his trapping and hunting; and

to see a mouse wash his face was as incomprehensible to him as to

see me read a book. But all wood mice are very cleanly; they have

none of the strong odors of our house mice. Afterwards, while

getting acquainted, I saw him wash many times in the plate of

water that I kept filled near his den; but he never washed more

than his face and the sensitive spot behind his ears. Sometimes,

however, when I have seen him swimming in the lake or river, I

have wondered whether he were going on a journey, or just bathing

for the love of it, as he washed his face in my cup.

I left the cup where it was and spread a feast for the little

guest, cracker crumbs and a bit of candle end. In the morning

they were gone, the signs of several mice telling plainly who had

been called in from the wilderness byways. That was the

introduction of man to beast. Soon they came regularly. I had

only to scatter crumbs and squeak a few times like a mouse, when

little streaks and flashes would appear on the moss or among the

faded gold tapestries of old birch leaves, and the little wild

things would come to my table, their eyes shining like jet, their

tiny paws lifted to rub their whiskers or to shield themselves

from the fear under which they lived continually.

They were not all alike--quite the contrary. One, the same who

had washed in my cup, was gray and old, and wise from much

dodging of enemies. His left ear was split from a fight, or an

owl's claw, probably, that just missed him as he dodged under a

root. He was at once the shyest and boldest of the lot. For a day

or two he came with marvelous stealth, making use of every dead

leaf and root tangle to hide his approach, and shooting across

the open spaces so quickly that one knew not what had happened-

-just a dun streak which ended in nothing. And the brown leaf

gave no sign of what it sheltered. But once assured of his

ground, he came boldly. This great man-creature, with his face

close to the table, perfectly still but for his eyes, with a

hand that moved gently if it moved at all, was not to be

feared--that Tookhees felt instinctively. And this strange fire

with hungry odors, and the white tent, and the comings and goings

of men who were masters of the woods kept fox and lynx and owl

far away--that he learned after a day or two. Only the mink, who

crept in at night to steal the man's fish, was to be feared. So

Tookhees presently gave up his nocturnal habits and came out

boldly into the sunlight. Ordinarily the little creatures come

out in the dusk, when their quick movements are hidden among the

shadows that creep and quiver. But with fear gone, they are only

too glad to run about in the daylight, especially when good

things to eat are calling them.

Besides the veteran there was a little mother-mouse, whose tiny

gray jacket was still big enough to cover a wonderful mother

love, as I afterwards found out. She never ate at my table, but

carried her fare away into hiding, not to feed her little

ones-they were, too small as yet--but thinking in some dumb way,

behind the bright little eyes, that they needed her and that her

life must be spared with greater precaution for their sakes. She

would steal timidly to my table, always appearing from under a

gray shred of bark on a fallen birch log, following the same

path, first to a mossy stone, then to a dark hole under a root,

then to a low brake, and along the underside of a billet of wood

to the mouse table. There she would stuff both cheeks hurriedly,

till they bulged as if she had toothache, and steal away by the

same path, disappearing at last under the shred of gray bark.

For a long time it puzzled me to find her nest, which I knew

could not be far away. It was not in the birch log where she

disappeared--that was hollow the whole length--nor was it

anywhere beneath it. Some distance away was a large stone, half

covered by the green moss which reached up from every side. The

most careful search here had failed to discover any trace of

Tookhees' doorway; so one day when the wind blew half a gale and

I was going out on the lake alone, I picked up this stone to put

in the bow of my canoe. That was to steady the little craft by

bringing her nose down to grip the water. Then the secret was

out, and there it was in a little dome of dried grass among some

spruce roots under the stone.

The mother was away foraging, but a faint sibilant squeaking

within the dome told me that the little ones were there, and

hungry as usual. As I watched there was a swift movement in a

tunnel among the roots, and the mother-mouse came rushing back.

She paused a moment, lifting her forepaws against a root to sniff

what danger threatened. Then she saw my face bending over the

opening--Et tu Brute! and she darted into the nest. In a moment

she was out again and disappeared into her tunnel, running

swiftly with her little ones hanging to her sides by a grip that

could not be shaken,--all but one, a delicate pink creature that

one could hide in a thimble, and that snuggled down in the

darkest corner of my hand confidently.

It was ten minutes before the little mother came back, looking

anxiously for the lost baby. When she found him safe in his own

nest, with the man's face still watching, she was half reassured;

but when she threw herself down and the little one began to

drink, she grew fearful again and ran away into the tunnel, the

little one clinging to her side, this time securely.

I put the stone back and gathered the moss carefully about it. In

a few days Mother Mouse was again at my table. I stole away to

the stone, put my ear close to it, and heard with immense

satisfaction tiny squeaks, which told me that the house was again

occupied. Then I watched to find the path by which Mother Mouse

came to her own. When her cheeks were full, she disappeared under

the shred of bark by her usual route. That led into the hollow

center of the birch log, which she followed to the end, where she

paused a moment, eyes, ears, and nostrils busy; then she jumped

to a tangle of roots and dead leaves, beneath which was a tunnel

that led, deep down under the moss, straight to her nest beneath

the stone.

Besides these older mice, there were five or six smaller ones,

all shy save one, who from the first showed not the slightest

fear but came straight to my hand, ate his crumbs, and went up my

sleeve, and proceeded to make himself a warm nest there by

nibbling wool from my flannel shirt.

In strong contrast to this little fellow was another who knew

too well what fear meant. He belonged to another tribe that had

not yet grown accustomed to man's ways. I learned too late how

careful one must be in handling the little creatures that live

continually in the land where fear reigns.

A little way behind my tent was a great fallen log, mouldy and

moss-grown, with twin-flowers shaking their bells along its

length, under which lived a whole colony of wood mice. They ate

the crumbs that I placed by the log; but they could never be

tolled to my table, whether because they had no split-eared old

veteran to spy out the man's ways, or because my own colony drove

them away, I could never find out. One day I saw Tookhees dive

under the big log as I approached, and having nothing more

important to do, I placed one big crumb near his entrance,

stretched out in the moss, hid my hand in a dead brake near the

tempting morsel, and squeaked the call. In a moment Tookhees'

nose and eyes appeared in his doorway, his whiskers twitching

nervously as he smelled the candle grease. But he was suspicious

of the big object, or perhaps he smelled the man too and was

afraid, for after much dodging in and out he disappeared

altogether.

I was wondering how long his hunger would battle with his

caution, when I saw the moss near my bait stir from beneath. A

little waving of the moss blossoms, and Tookhees' nose and eyes

appeared out of the ground for an instant, sniffing in all

directions. His little scheme was evident enough now; he was

tunneling for the morsel that he dared not take openly. I watched

with breathless interest as a faint quiver nearer my bait showed

where he was pushing his works. Then the moss stirred cautiously

close beside his objective; a hole opened; the morsel tumbled in,

and Tookhees was gone with his prize.

I placed more crumbs from my pocket in the same place, and

presently three or four mice were nibbling them. One sat up close

by the dead brake, holding a bit of bread in his forepaws like a

squirrel. The brake stirred suddenly; before he could jump my

hand closed over him, and slipping the other hand beneath him I

held him up to my face to watch him between my fingers. He made

no movement to escape, but only trembled violently. His legs

seemed too weak to support his weight now; he lay down; his eyes

closed. One convulsive twitch and he was dead--dead of fright in

a hand which had not harmed him.

It was at this colony, whose members were all strangers to me,

that I learned in a peculiar way of the visiting habits of wood

mice, and at the same time another lesson that I shall not soon

forget. For several days I had been trying every legitimate way

in vain to catch a big trout, a monster of his kind, that lived

in an eddy behind a rock up at the inlet. Trout were scarce in

that lake, and in summer the big fish are always lazy and hard to

catch. I was trout hungry most of the time, for the fish that I

caught were small, and few and far between. Several times,

however, when casting from the shore at the inlet for small

fish, I had seen swirls in a great eddy near the farther shore,

which told me plainly of big fish beneath; and one day, when a

huge trout rolled half his length out of water behind my fly,

small fry lost all their interest and I promised myself the joy

of feeling my rod bend and tingle beneath the rush of that big

trout if it took all summer.

Flies were no use. I offered him a bookful, every variety of

shape and color, at dawn and dusk, without tempting him. I tried

grubs, which bass like, and a frog's leg, which no pickerel can

resist, and little frogs, such as big trout hunt among the lily

pads in the twilight,--all without pleasing him. And then

waterbeetles, and a red squirrel's tail-tip, which makes the best

hackle in the world, and kicking grasshoppers, and a silver spoon

with a wicked "gang" of hooks, which I detest and which, I am

thankful to remember, the trout detested also. They lay there in

their big cool eddy, lazily taking what food the stream brought

down to them, giving no heed to frauds of any kind.

Then I caught a red-fin in the stream above, hooked it securely,

laid it on a big chip, coiled my line upon it, and set it

floating down stream, the line uncoiling gently behind it as it

went. When it reached the eddy I raised my rod tip; the line

straightened; the red-fin plunged overboard, and a two-pound

trout, thinking, no doubt, that the little fellow had been hiding

under the chip, rose for him and took him in. That was the only

one I caught. His struggle disturbed the pool, and the other

trout gave no heed to more red-fins.

Then, one morning at daybreak, as I sat on a big rock pondering

new baits and devices, a stir on an alder bush across the stream

caught my eye. Tookhees the wood mouse was there, running over

the bush, evidently for the black catkins which still clung to

the tips. As I watched him he fell, or jumped from his branch

into the quiet water below and, after circling about for a

moment, headed bravely across the current. I could just see his

nose as he swam, a rippling wedge against the black water with a

widening letter V trailing out behind him. The current swept him

downward; he touched the edge of the big eddy; there was a swirl,

a mighty plunge beneath, and Tookhees was gone, leaving no trace

but a swift circle of ripples that were swallowed up in the rings

and dimples behind the rock.--I had found what bait the big trout

wanted.

Hurrying back to camp, I loaded a cartridge lightly with a pinch

of dust shot, spread some crumbs near the big log behind my tent,

squeaked the call a few times, and sat down to wait. "These mice

are strangers to me," I told Conscience, who was protesting a

little, "and the woods are full of them, and I want that trout."

In a moment there was a rustle in the mossy doorway and Tookhees

appeared. He darted across the open, seized a crumb in his mouth,

sat up on his hind legs, took the crumb in his paws, and began to

eat. I had raised the gun, thinking he would dodge back a few

times before giving me a shot; his boldness surprised me, but I

did not recognize him. Still my eye followed along the barrels

and over the sight to where Tookhees sat eating his crumb. My

finger was pressing the trigger--"O you big butcher," said

Conscience, "think how little he is, and what a big roar your gun

will make! Aren't you ashamed?"

"But I want the trout," I protested.

"Catch him then, without killing this little harmless thing,"

said Conscience sternly.

"But he is a stranger to me; I never--"

"He is eating your bread and salt," said Conscience. That settled

it; but even as I looked at him over the gun sight, Tookhees

finished his crumb, came to my foot, ran along my leg into my

lap, and looked into my face expectantly. The grizzled coat and

the split ear showed the welcome guest at my table for a week

past. He was visiting the stranger colony, as wood mice are fond

of doing, and persuading them by his example that they might

trust me, as he did. More ashamed than if I had been caught

potting quail, I threw away the hateful shell that had almost

slain my friend. and went back to camp.

There I made a mouse of a bit of muskrat fur, with a piece of my

leather shoestring sewed on for a tail. It served the purpose

perfectly, for within the hour I was gloating over the size and

beauty of the big trout as he stretched his length on the rock

beside me. But I lost the fraud at the next cast, leaving it,

with a foot of my leader, in the mouth of a second trout that

rolled up at it the instant it touched his eddy behind the rock.

After that the wood mice were safe so far as I was concerned. Not

a trout, though he were big as a salmon, would ever taste them,

unless they chose to go swimming of their own accord; and I kept

their table better supplied than before. I saw much of their

visiting back and forth, and have understood better what those

tunnels mean that one finds in the spring when the last snows are

melting. In a corner of the woods, where the drifts lay, you will

often find a score of tunnels coming in from all directions to a

central chamber. They speak of Tookhees' sociable nature, of his

long visits with his fellows, undisturbed by swoop or snap, when

the packed snow above has swept the summer fear away and made him

safe from hawk and owl and fox and wildcat, and when no open

water tempts him to go swimming where Skooktum the big trout lies

waiting, mouse hungry, under his eddy.

The weeks passed all too quickly, as wilderness weeks do, and the

sad task of breaking camp lay just before us. But one thing

troubled me--the little Tookhees, who knew no fear, but tried to

make a nest in the sleeve of my flannel shirt. His simple

confidence touched me more than the curious ways of all the other

mice. Every day he came and took his crumbs, not from the common

table, but from my, hand, evidently enjoying its warmth while he

ate, and always getting the choicest morsels. But I knew that he

would be the first one caught by the owl after I left; for it is

fear only that saves the wild things. Occasionally one finds

animals of various kinds in which the instinct of fear is

lacking--a frog, a young partridge, a moose calf--and wonders

what golden age that knew no fear, or what glorious vision of

Isaiah in which lion and lamb lie down together, is here set

forth. I have even seen a young black duck, whose natural

disposition is wild as the wilderness itself, that had profited

nothing by his mother's alarms and her constant lessons in

hiding, but came bobbing up to my canoe among the sedges of a

wilderness lake, while his brethren crouched invisible in their

coverts of bending rushes, and his mother flapped wildly off,

splashing and quacking and trailing a wing to draw me away from

the little ones.

Such an one is generally abandoned by its mother, or else is the

first to fall in the battle with the strong before she gives him

up as hopeless. Little Tookhees evidently belonged to this class,

so before leaving I undertook the task of teaching him fear,

which had evidently been too much for Nature and his own mother.

I pinched him a few times, hooting like an owl as I did so,--a

startling process, which sent the other mice diving like brown

streaks to cover. Then I waved a branch over him, like a hawk's

wing, at the same time flipping him end over end, shaking him up

terribly. Then again, when he appeared with a new light dawning

in his eyes, the light of fear, I would set a stick to wiggling

like a creeping fox among the ferns and switch him sharply with a

hemlock tip. It was a hard lesson, but he learned it after a few

days. And before I finished the teaching, not a mouse would come

to my table, no matter how persuasively I squeaked. They would

dart about in the twilight as of yore, but the first whish of my

stick sent them all back to cover on the instant.

That was their stern yet, practical preparation for the robber

horde that would soon be prowling over my camping ground. Then a

stealthy movement among the ferns or the sweep of a shadow among

the twilight shadows would mean a very different thing from

wriggling stick and waving hemlock tip. Snap and swoop, and teeth

and claws,--jump for your life and find out afterwards. That is

the rule for a wise wood mouse. So I said good-by, and left them

to take care of themselves in the wilderness.

A WILDERNESS BYWAY

One day in the wilderness, as my canoe was sweeping down a

beautiful stretch of river, I noticed a little path leading

through the water grass, at right angles to the stream's course.

Swinging my canoe up to it, I found what seemed to be a landing

place for the wood folk on their river journeyings. The sedges,

which stood thickly all about, were here bent inward, making a

shiny green channel from the river.

On the muddy shore were many tracks of mink and muskrat and

otter. Here a big moose had stood drinking; and there a beaver

had cut the grass and made a little mud pie, in the middle of

which was a bit of musk scenting the whole neighborhood. It was

done last night, for the marks of his fore paws still showed

plainly where he had patted his pie smooth ere he went away.

But the spot was more than a landing place; a path went up the

bank into the woods, as faint as the green waterway among the

sedges. Tall ferns bent over to hide it; rank grasses that had

been softly brushed aside tried their best to look natural; the

alders waved their branches thickly, saying: There is no way

here. But there it was, a path for the wood folk. And when I

followed it into the shade and silence of the woods, the first

mossy log that lay across it was worn smooth by the passage of

many little feet.

As I came back, Simmo's canoe glided into sight and I waved him

to shore. The light birch swung up beside mine, a deep

water-dimple just under the curl of its bow, and a musical ripple

like the gurgle of water by a mossy stone--that was the only

sound.

"What means this path, Simmo?"

His keen eyes took in everything,at a glance, the wavy waterway,

the tracks, the faint path to the alders. There was a look of

surprise in his face that I had blundered onto a discovery which

he had looked for many times in vain, his traps on his back.

"Das a portash," he said simply.

"A portage! But who made a portage here?"

"Well, Musquash he prob'ly make-um first. Den beaver, den

h'otter, den everybody in hurry he make-um. You see, river make

big bend here. Portash go 'cross; save time, jus' same Indian

portash."

That was the first of a dozen such paths that I have since found

cutting across the bends of wilderness rivers,--the wood folk's

way of saving time on a journey. I left Simmo to go on down the

river, while I followed the little byway curiously. There is

nothing more fascinating in the woods than to go on the track

of the wild things and see what they have been doing.

But alas! mine were not the first human feet that had taken the

journey. Halfway across, at a point where the path ran over a

little brook, I found a deadfall set squarely in the way of

unwary feet. It was different from any I had ever seen, and was

made like this: {drawing omitted}

That tiny stick (trigger, the trappers call it) with its end

resting in air three inches above the bed log, just the right

height so that a beaver or an otter would naturally put his foot

on it in crossing, looks innocent enough. But if you look sharply

you will see that if it were pressed down ever so little it would

instantly release the bent stick that holds the fall-log, and

bring the deadly thing down with crushing force across the back

of any animal beneath.

Such are the pitfalls that lie athwart the way of Keeonekh the

otter, when he goes a-courting and uses Musquash's portage to

shorten his journey.

At the other end of the portage I waited for Simmo to come round

the bend, and took him back to see the work, denouncing the

heartless carelessness of the trapper who had gone away in the

spring and left an unsprung deadfall as a menace to the wild

things. At the first glance he pronounced it an otter trap. Then

the fear and wonder swept into his face, and the questions into

mine.

"Das Noel Waby's trap. Nobody else make-um tukpeel stick like

dat," he said at last.

Then I understood. Noel Waby had gone up river trapping in the

spring, and had never come back; nor any word to tell how death

met him.

I stooped down to examine the trap with greater interest. On the

underside of the fall-log I found some long hairs still clinging

in the crevices of the rough bark. They belonged to the outer

waterproof coat with which Keeonekh keeps his fur dry. One otter

at least had been caught here, and the trap reset. But some sense

of danger, some old scent of blood or subtle warning clung to the

spot, and no other creature had crossed the bed log, though

hundreds must have passed that way since the old Indian reset his

trap, and strode away with the dead otter across his shoulders.

What was it in the air? What sense of fear brooded here and

whispered in the alder leaves and tinkled in the brook? Simmo

grew uneasy and hurried away. He was like the wood folk. But I

sat down on a great log that the spring floods had driven in

through the alders to feel the meaning of the place, if possible,

and to have the vast sweet solitude all to myself for a little

while.

A faint stir on my left, and another! Then up the path, twisting

and gliding, came Keeonekh, the first otter that I had ever seen

in the wilderness. Where the sun flickered in through the alder

leaves it glinted brightly on the shiny puter hairs of his rough

coat. As he went his nose worked constantly, going far ahead of

his bright little eyes to tell him what was in the path.

I was sitting very still, some distance to one side, and he did

not see me. Near old Noel's deadfall he paused an instant with

raised head, in the curious snake-like attitude that all the

weasels take when watching. Then he glided round the end of the

trap, and disappeared down the portage.

When he was gone I stole out to examine his tracks. Then I

noticed for the first time that the old path near the deadfall

was getting moss-grown; a faint new path began to show among the

alders. Some warning was there in the trap, and with cunning

instinct all the wood dwellers turned aside, giving a wide berth

to what they felt was dangerous but could not understand. The new

path joined the old again, beyond the brook, and followed it

straight to the river.

Again I examined the deadfall carefully, but of course I found

nothing. That is a matter of instinct, not of eyes and ears, and

it is past finding out. Then I went away for good, after driving

a ring of stout stakes all about the trap to keep heedless little

feet out of it. But I left it unsprung, just as it was, a rude

tribute of remembrance to Keeonekh and the lost Indian.

KEEONEKH THE FISHERMAN

Wherever you find Keeonekh the otter you find three other things:

wildness, beauty, and running water that no winter can freeze.

There is also good fishing, but that will profit you little; for

after Keeonekh has harried a pool it is useless to cast your fly

or minnow there. The largest fish has disappeared--you will find

his bones and a fin or two on the ice or the nearest bank--and

the little fish are still in hiding after their fright.

Conversely, wherever you find the three elements mentioned you

will also find Keeonekh, if your eyes know how to read the signs

aright. Even in places near the towns, where no otter has been

seen for generations, they are still to be found leading their

shy wild life, so familiar with every sight and sound of

danger that no eye of the many that pass by ever sees them. No

animal has been more persistently trapped and hunted for the

valuable fur that he bears; but Keeonekh is hard to catch and

quick to learn. When a family have all been caught or driven away

from a favorite stream, another otter speedily finds the spot in

some of his winter wanderings after better fishing, and, knowing

well from the signs that others of his race have paid the sad

penalty for heedlessness, he settles down there with greater

watchfulness, and enjoys his fisherman's luck.

In the spring he brings a mate to share his rich living. Soon a

family of young otters go a-fishing in the best pools and explore

the stream for miles up and down. But so shy and wild and quick

to hide are they that the trout fishermen who follow the river,

and the ice fishermen who set their tilt-ups in the pond below,

and the children who gather cowslips in the spring have no

suspicion that the original proprietors of the stream are still

on the spot, jealously watching and resenting every intrusion.

Occasionally the wood choppers cross an unknown trail in the

snow, a heavy trail, with long, sliding, down-hill plunges which

look as if a log had been dragged along. But they too go their

way, wondering a bit at the queer things that live in the woods,

but not understanding the plain records that the queer things

leave behind them. Did they but follow far enough they would find

the end of the trail in open water, and on the ice beyond the

signs of Keeonekh's fishing.

I remember one otter family whose den I found, when a boy, on a

stream between two ponds within three miles of the town house.

Yet the oldest hunter could barely remember the time when the

last otter had been caught or seen in the county.

I was sitting very still in the bushes on the bank, one day in

spring, watching for a wood duck. Wood duck lived there, but the

cover was so thick that I could never surprise them. They always

heard me coming and were off, giving me only vanishing glimpses

among the trees, or else quietly hiding until I went by. So the

only way to see them--a beautiful sight they were--was to sit

still in hiding, for hours if need be, until they came gliding

by, all unconscious of the watcher.

As I waited a large animal came swiftly up stream, just his head

visible, with a long tail trailing behind. He was swimming

powerfully, steadily, straight as a string; but, as I noted with

wonder, he made no ripple whatever, sliding through the water as

if greased from nose to tail. Just above me he dived, and I did

not see him again, though I watched up and down stream

breathlessly for him to reappear.

I had never seen such an animal before, but I knew somehow that

it was an otter, and I drew back into better hiding with the hope

of seeing the rare creature again. Presently another otter

appeared, coming up stream and disappearing in exactly the same

way as the first. But though I stayed all the afternoon I saw

nothing more.

After that I haunted the spot every time I could get away,

creeping down. to the river bank and lying in hiding hours long

at a stretch; for I knew now that the otters lived there, and

they gave me many glimpses of a life I had never seen before.

Soon I found their den. It was in a bank opposite my hiding

place, and the entrance was among the roots of a great tree,

under water, where no one could have possibly found it if the

otters had not themselves shown the way. In their approach they

always dived while yet well out in the stream, and so entered

their door unseen. When they came out they were quite as careful,

always swimming some distance under water before coming to the

surface. It was several days before my eye could trace surely the

faint undulation of the water above them, and so follow their

course to their doorway. Had not the water been shallow I should

never have found it; for they are the most wonderful of swimmers,

making no ripple on the surface, and not half the disturbance

below it that a fish of the same weight makes.

Those were among the happiest watching hours that I have ever

spent in the woods. The game was so large, so utterly unexpected;

and I had the wonderful discovery all to myself. Not one of the

half dozen boys and men who occasionally, when the fever seized

them, trapped muskrat in the big meadow, a mile below, or the

rare mink that hunted frogs in the brook, had any suspicion that

such splendid fur was to be had for the hunting.

Sometimes a whole afternoon would go slowly by, filled with the

sounds and sweet smells of the woods, and not a ripple would

break the dimples of the stream before me. But when, one late

afternoon, just as the pines across the stream began to darken

against the western light, a string of silver bubbles shot across

the stream and a big otter rose to the surface with a pickerel in

his mouth, all the watching that had not well repaid itself was

swept out of the reckoning. He came swiftly towards me, put his

fore paws against the bank, gave a wriggling jump,--and there he

was, not twenty feet away, holding the pickerel down with his

fore paws, his back arched like a frightened cat, and a

tiny stream of water trickling down from the tip of his heavy

pointed tail, as he ate his fish with immense relish.

Years afterward, hundreds of miles away on the Dungarvon, in the

heart of the wilderness, every detail of the scene came back to

me again. I was standing on snowshoes, looking out over the

frozen river, when Keeonekh appeared in an open pool with a trout

in his mouth. He broke his way, with a clattering tinkle of

winter bells, through the thin edge of ice, put his paws against

the heavy snow ice, threw himself out with the same wriggling

jump, and ate with his back arched--just as I had seen him years

before.

This curious way of eating is, I think, characteristic of all

otters; certainly of those that I have been fortunate enough to

see. Why they do it is more than I know; but it must be

uncomfortable for every mouthful--full of fish bones, too--to

slide uphill to one's stomach. Perhaps it is mere habit, which

shows in the arched backs of all the weasel family. Perhaps it is

to frighten any enemy that may approach unawares while Keeonekh

is eating, just as an owl, when feeding on the ground, bristles

up all his feathers so as to look as big as possible.

But my first otter was too keen-scented to remain long so near a

concealed enemy. Suddenly he stopped eating and turned his head

in my direction. I could see his nostrils twitching as the wind

gave him its message. Then he left his fish, glided into the

stream as noiselessly as the brook entered it below him, and

disappeared without leaving a single wavelet to show where he had

gone down.

When the young otters appeared, there was one of the most

interesting lessons to be seen in the woods. Though Keeonekh

loves the water and lives in it more than half the time, his

little ones are afraid of it as so many kittens. If left to

themselves they would undoubtedly go off for a hunting life,

following the old family instinct; for fishing is an acquired

habit of the otters, and so the fishing instinct cannot yet be

transmitted to the little ones. That will take many generations.

Meanwhile the little Keeonekhs must be taught to swim.

One day the mother-otter appeared on the bank among the roots of

the great tree under which was their secret doorway. That was

surprising, for up to this time both otters had always approached

it from the river, and were never seen on the bank near their

den. She appeared to be digging, but was immensely cautious about

it, looking, listening, sniffing continually. I had never gone

near the place for fear of frightening them away; and it was

months afterward, when the den was deserted, before I examined it

to understand just what she was doing. Then I found that she had

made another doorway from her den leading out to the bank. She

had selected the spot with wonderful cunning,--a hollow under a

great root that would never be noticed,--and she dug from inside,

carrying the earth down to the river bottom, so that there should

be nothing about the tree to indicate the haunt of an animal.

Long afterwards, when I had grown better acquainted with

Keeonekh's ways from much watching, I understood the meaning of

all this. She was simply making a safe way out and in for the

little ones, who were afraid of the water. Had she taken or

driven them out of her own entrance under the river, they might

easily have drowned ere they reached the surface.

When the entrance was all ready she disappeared, but I have no

doubt she was just inside, watching to be sure the coast was

clear. Slowly her head and neck appeared till they showed clear

of the black roots. She turned her nose up stream--nothing in the

wind. Eyes and ears searched below--nothing harmful there. Then

she came out, and after her toddled two little otters, full of

wonder at the big bright world, full of fear at the river.

There was no play at first, only wonder and investigation.

Caution was born in them; they put their little feet down as if

treading on eggs, and they sniffed every bush before going behind

it. And the old mother noted their cunning with satisfaction

while her own nose and ears watched far away.

The outing was all too short; some uneasiness was in the air down

stream. Suddenly she rose from where she was lying, and the

little ones, as if commanded, tumbled back into the den. In a

moment she had glided after them, and the bank was deserted. It

was fully ten minutes before my untrained cars caught faint

sounds, which were not of the woods, coming up stream; and longer

than that before two men with fish poles appeared, making their

slow way to the pond above. They passed almost over the den and

disappeared, all unconscious of beast or man that wished them

elsewhere, resenting their noisy passage through the solitudes.

But the otters did not come out again, though I watched till

nearly dark.

It was a week before I saw them again, and some good teaching had

evidently been done in the meantime; for all fear of the river

was gone. They toddled out as before, at the same hour in the

afternoon, and went straight to the bank. There the mother lay

down, and the little ones, as if enjoying the frolic, clambered

up to her back. Whereupon she slid into the stream and swam

slowly about with the little Keeonekhs clinging to her

desperately, as if humpty-dumpty had been played on them before,

and might be repeated any moment.

I understood their air of anxious expectation a moment later,

when Mother Otter dived like a flash from under them, leaving

them to make their own way in the water. They began to swim

naturally enough, but the fear of the new element was still upon

them. The moment old Mother Otter appeared they made for her

whimpering, but she dived again and again, or moved slowly away,

and so kept them swimming. After a little they seemed to tire and

lose courage. Her eyes saw it quicker than mine, and she glided

between them. Both little ones turned in at the same instant and

found a resting place on her back. So she brought them carefully

to land again, and in a few moments they were all rolling about

in the dry leaves like so many puppies.

I must confess here that, besides the boy's wonder in watching

the wild things, another interest brought me to the river bank

and kept me studying Keeonekh's ways. Father Otter was a big

fellow,--enormous he seemed to me, thinking of my mink

skins,--and occasionally, when his rich coat glinted in the

sunshine, I was thinking what a famous cap it would make for the

winter woods, or for coasting on moonshiny nights. More often I

was thinking what famous things a boy could buy for the fourteen

dollars, at least, which his pelt would bring in the open market.

The first Saturday after I saw him I prepared a board, ten times

bigger than a mink-stretcher, and tapered one end to a round

point, and split it, and made a wedge, and smoothed it all down,

and hid it away--to stretch the big otter's skin upon when I

should catch him.

When November came, and fur was prime, I carried down a

half-bushel basket of heads and stuff from the fish market, and

piled them up temptingly on the bank, above a little water path,

in a lonely spot by the river. At the lower end of the path,

where it came out of the water, I set a trap, my biggest one,

with a famous grip for skunks and woodchucks. But the fish rotted

away, as did also another basketful in another place. Whatever

was eaten went to the crows and mink. Keeonekh disdained it.

Then I set the trap in some water (to kill the smell of it) on a

game path among some swamp alders, at a bend of the river where

nobody ever came and where I had found Keeonekh's tracks. The

next night be walked into it. But the trap that was sure grip for

woodchucks was a plaything for Keeonekh's strength. He wrenched

his foot out of it, leaving me only a few glistening hairs--which

was all I ever caught of him.

Years afterward, when I found old Noel's trap on Keeonekh's

portage, I asked Simmo why no bait had been used.

"No good use-um bait," he said, "Keeonekh like-um fresh fish, an'

catch-um self all he want." And that is true. Except in

starvation times, when even the pools are frozen, or the fish die

from one of their mysterious epidemics, Keeonekh turns up his

nose at any bait. If a bit of castor is put in a split stick, he

will turn aside, like all the fur-bearers, to see what this

strange smell is. But if you would toll him with a bait, you must

fasten a fish in the water in such a way that it seems alive as

the current wiggles it, else Keeonekh will never think it worthy

of his catching.

The den in the river bank was never disturbed, and the following

year another litter was raised there. With characteristic

cunning--a cunning which grows keener and keener in the

neighborhood of civilization--the mother-otter filled up the land

entrance among the roots with earth and driftweed, using only the

doorway under water until it was time for the cubs to come out

into the world again.

Of all the creatures of the wilderness Keeonekh is the most

richly gifted, and his ways, could we but search them out, would

furnish a most interesting chapter. Every journey he takes,

whether by land or water, is full of unknown traits and tricks;

but unfortunately no one ever sees him doing things, and most of

his ways are yet to be found out. You see a head holding swiftly

across a wilderness lake, or coming to meet your canoe on the

streams; then, as you follow eagerly, a swirl and he is gone.

When he comes up again he will watch you so much more keenly than

you can possibly watch him that you learn little about him,

except how shy he is. Even the trappers who make a business of

catching him, and with whom I have often talked, know almost

nothing of Keeonekh, except where to set their traps for him

living and how to care for his skin when he is dead.

Once I saw him fishing in a curious way. It was winter, on a

wilderness stream flowing into the Dugarvon. There had been a

fall of dry snow that still lay deep and powdery over all the

woods, too light to settle or crust. At every step one had to

lift a shovelful of the stuff on the point of his snowshoe; and I

was tired out, following some caribou that wandered like plover

in the rain.

Just below me was a deep open pool surrounded by double fringes

of ice. Early in the winter, while the stream was higher, the

white ice had formed thickly on the river wherever the current

was not too swift for freezing. Then the stream fell, and a shelf

of new black ice formed at the water's level, eighteen inches or

more below the first ice, some of which still clung to the banks,

reaching out in places two or three feet and forming dark caverns

with the ice below. Both shelves dipped towards the water,

forming a gentle incline all about the edges of the open places.

A string of silver bubbles shooting across the black pool at my

feet roused me out of a drowsy weariness. There it was again, a

rippling wave across the pool, which rose to the surface a moment

later in a hundred bubbles, tinkling like tiny bells as they

broke in the keen air. Two or three times I saw it with growing

wonder. Then something stirred under the shelf of ice across the

pool. An otter slid into the water; the rippling wave shot across

again; the bubbles broke at the surface; and I knew that he was

sitting under the white ice below me, not twenty feet away.

A whole family of otters, three or four of them, were fishing

there at my feet in utter unconsciousness. The discovery took my

breath away. Every little while the bubbles would shoot across

from my side, and watching sharply I would see Keeonekh slide out

upon the lower shelf of ice on the other side and crouch there in

the gloom, with back humped against the ice above him, eating his

catch. The fish they caught were all small evidently, for after a

few minutes he would throw himself flat on the ice, slide down

the incline into the water, making no splash or disturbance as he

entered, and the string of bubbles would shoot across to my side

again.

For a full hour I watched them breathlessly, marveling at their

skill. A small fish is nimble game to follow and catch in his own

element. But at every slide Keeonekh did it. Sometimes the

rippling wave would shoot all over the pool, and the bubbles

break in a wild tangle as the fish darted and doubled below, with

the otter after him. But it always ended the same way. Keeonekh

would slide out upon the ice shelf, and hump his back, and begin

to eat almost before the last bubble had tinkled behind him.

Curiously enough, the rule of the salmon fishermen prevailed here

in the wilderness: no two rods shall whip the same pool at the

same time. I would see an otter lying ready on the ice, evidently

waiting for the chase to end. Then, as another otter slid out

beside him with his fish, in he would go like a flash and take

his turn. For a while the pool was a lively place; the bubbles

had no rest. Then the plunges grew fewer and fewer, and the

otters all disappeared into the ice caverns.

What became of them I could not make out; and I was too chilled

to watch longer. Above and below the pool the stream was frozen

for a distance; then there was more open water and more fishing.

Whether they followed along the bank under cover of the ice to

other pools, or simply slept where they were till hungry again, I

never found out. Certainly they had taken up their abode in an

ideal spot, and would not leave it willingly. The open pools gave

excellent fishing, and the upper ice shelf protected them

perfectly from all enemies.

Once, a week later, I left the caribou and came back to the spot

to watch awhile; but the place was deserted. The black water

gurgled and dimpled across the pool, and slipped away silently

under the lower edge of ice undisturbed by strings of silver

bubbles. The ice caverns were all dark and silent. The mink had

stolen the fish heads, and there was no trace anywhere to show

that it was Keeonekh's banquet hall.

The swimming power of an otter, which was so evident there in the

winter pool, is one of the most remarkable things in nature. All

other animals and birds, and even the best modeled of modern

boats, leave more or less wake behind them when moving through

the water. But Keeonekh leaves no more trail than a fish. This is

partly because he keeps his body well submerged when swimming,

partly because of the strong, deep, even stroke that drives him

forward. Sometimes I have wondered if the outer hairs of his

coat--the waterproof covering that keeps his fur dry, no matter

how long he swims--are not better oiled than in other animals,

which might account for the lack of ripple. I have seen him go

down suddenly and leave absolutely no break in the surface to

show where he was. When sliding also, plunging down a twenty-foot

clay bank, he enters the water with an astonishing lack of noise

or disturbance of any kind.

In swimming at the surface he seems to use all four feet, like

other animals. But below the surface, when chasing fish, he uses

only the fore-paws. The hind legs then stretch straight out

behind and are used, with the heavy tail, for a great rudder. By

this means he turns and doubles like a flash, following surely

the swift dartings of frightened trout, and beating them by sheer

speed and nimbleness.

When fishing a pool he always hunts outward from the center,

driving the fish towards the bank, keeping himself within their

circlings, and so having the immense advantage of the shorter

line in heading off his game. The fish are seized as they crouch

against the bank for protection, or try to dart out past him.

Large fish are frequently caught from behind as they lie resting

in their spring-holes. So swift and noiseless is his approach

that they are seized before they become aware of danger.

This swimming power of Keeonekh is all the more astonishing when

one remembers that he is distinctively a land animal, with none

of the special endowments of the seal, who is his only rival as a

fisherman. Nature undoubtedly intended him to get his living, as

the other members of his large family do, by hunting in the

woods, and endowed him accordingly. He is a strong runner, a good

climber, a patient tireless hunter, and his nose is keen as a

brier. With a little practice he could again get his living by

hunting, as his ancestors did. If squirrels and rats and rabbits

were too nimble at first, there are plenty of musquash to be

caught, and he need not stop at a fawn or a sheep, for he is

enormously strong, and the grip of his jaws is not to be

loosened.

In severe winters, when fish are scarce or his pools frozen over,

he takes to the woods boldly and shows himself a master at

hunting craft. But he likes fish, and likes the water, and for

many generations now has been simply a fisherman, with many of

the quiet lovable traits that belong to fishermen in general.

That is one thing to give you instant sympathy for Keeonekh--he

is so different, so far above all other members of his tribe. He

is very gentle by nature, with no trace of the fisher's ferocity

or the weasel's bloodthirstiness. He tames easily, and makes the

most docile and affectionate pet of all the wood folk. He never

kills for the sake of killing, but lives peaceably, so far as he

can, with all creatures. And he stops fishing when he has caught

his dinner. He is also most cleanly in his habits, with no

suggestion whatever of the evil odors that cling to the mink and

defile the whole neighborhood of a skunk. One cannot help

wondering whether just going fishing has not wrought all this

wonder in Keeonekh's disposition. If so, 't is a pity that all

his tribe do not turn fishermen.

His one enemy among the wood folk, so far as I have observed, is

the beaver. As the latter is also a peaceable animal, it is

difficult to account for the hostility. I have heard or read

somewhere that Keeonekh is fond of young beaver and hunts them

occasionally to vary his diet of fish; but I have never found any

evidence in the wilderness to show this. Instead, I think it is

simply a matter of the beaver's dam and pond that causes the

trouble.

When the dam is built the beavers often dig a channel around

either end to carry off the surplus water, and so prevent their

handiwork being washed away in a freshet. Then the beavers guard

their preserve jealously, driving away the wood folk that dare to

cross their dam or enter their ponds, especially the musquash,

who is apt to burrow and cause them no end of trouble. But

Keeonekh, secure in his strength, holds straight through the

pond, minding his own business and even taking a fish or two in

the deep places near the dam. He delights also in running water,

especially in winter when lakes and streams are mostly frozen,

and in his journeyings he makes use of the open channels that

guard the beavers' work. But the moment the beavers hear a

splashing there, or note a disturbance in the pond where Keeonekh

is chasing fish, down they come full of wrath. And there is

generally a desperate fight before the affair is settled.

Once, on a little pond, I saw a fierce battle going on out in the

middle, and paddled hastily to find out about it. Two beavers and

a big otter were locked in a death struggle, diving, plunging,

throwing themselves out of water, and snapping at each other's

throats.

As my canoe halted the otter gripped one of his antagonists and

went under with him. There was a terrible commotion below the

surface for a few moments. When it ended the beaver rolled up

dead, and Keeonekh shot up under the second beaver to repeat the

attack. They gripped on the instant, but the second beaver, an

enormous fellow, refused to go under where he would be at a

disadvantage. In my eagerness I let the canoe drift almost upon

them, driving them wildly apart before the common danger. The

otter held on his way up the lake; the beaver turned towards the

shore, where I noticed for the first time a couple of beaver

houses.

In this case there was no chance for intrusion on Keeonekh's

part. He had probably been attacked when going peaceably about

his business through the lake.

It is barely possible, however, that there was an old grievance

on the beavers' part, which they sought to square when they

caught Keeonekh on the lake. When beavers build their houses on

the lake shore, without the necessity for making a dam, they

generally build a tunnel slanting up from the lake's bed to their

den or house on the bank. Now Keeonekh fishes under the ice in

winter more than is generally supposed. As he must breathe after

every chase he must needs know all the air-holes and dens in the

whole lake. No matter how much he turns and doubles in the chase

after a trout, he never loses his sense of direction, never

forgets where the breathing places are. When his fish is seized

he makes a bee line under the ice for the nearest place where he

can breathe and eat. Sometimes this lands him, out of breath, in

the beaver's tunnel; and the beaver must sit upstairs in his own

house, nursing his wrath, while Keeonekh eats fish in his

hallway; for there is not room for both at once in the tunnel,

and a fight there or under the ice is out of the question. As the

beaver eats only bark--the white inner layer of "popple" bark is

his chief dainty--he cannot understand and cannot tolerate this

barbarian, who eats raw fish and leaves the bones and fins and

the smell of slime in his doorway. The beaver is exemplary in his

neatness, detesting all smells and filth; and this may possibly

account for some of his enmity and his savage attacks upon

Keeonekh when he catches him in a good place.

Not the least interesting of Keeonekh's queer ways is his habit

of sliding down hill, which makes a bond of sympathy and brings

him close to the boyhood memories of those who know him.

I remember one pair of otters that I watched for the better part

of a sunny afternoon sliding down a clay bank with endless

delight. The slide had been made, with much care evidently, on

the steep side of a little promontory that jutted into the river.

It was very steep, about twenty feet high, and had been made

perfectly smooth by much sliding and wetting-down. An otter would

appear at the top of the bank, throw himself forward on his belly

and shoot downward like a flash, diving deep under water and

reappearing some distance out from the foot of the slide. And all

this with marvelous stillness, as if the very woods had ears and

were listening to betray the shy creatures at their fun. For it

was fun, pure and simple, and fun with no end of tingle and

excitement in it, especially when one tried to catch the other

and shot into the water at his very heels.

This slide was in perfect condition, and the otters were careful

not to roughen it. They never scrambled up over it, but went

round the point and climbed from the other side, or else went up

parallel to the slide, some distance away, where the ascent was

easier and where there was no danger of rolling stones or sticks

upon the coasting ground to spoil its smoothness.

In winter the snow makes better coasting than the clay. Moreover

it soon grows hard and icy from the freezing of the water left by

the otter's body, and after a few days the slide is as smooth as

glass. Then coasting is perfect, and every otter, old and young,

has his favorite slide and spends part of every pleasant day

enjoying the fun.

When traveling through the woods in deep snow, Keeonekh makes use

of his sliding habit to help him along, especially on down

grades. He runs a little way and throws himself forward on his

belly, sliding through the snow for several feet before he runs

again. So his progress is a series of slides, much as one hurries

along in slippery weather.

I have spoken of the silver bubbles that first drew my attention

to the fishing otters one day in the wilderness. From the few

rare opportunities that I have had to watch them, I think that

the bubbles are seen only after Keeonekh slides swiftly into the

stream. The air clings to the hairs of his rough outer coat and

is brushed from them as he passes through the water. One who

watches him thus, shooting down the long slide belly-bump into

the black winter pool, with a string of silver bubbles breaking

and tinkling above him, is apt to know the hunter's change of

heart from the touch of Nature which makes us all kin. Thereafter

he eschews trapping--at least you will not find his number-three

trap at the foot of Keeonekh's slide any more, to turn the shy

creature's happiness into tragedy--and he sends a hearty

good-luck after his fellow-fisherman, whether he meet him on the

wilderness lakes or in the quiet places on the home streams where

nobody ever comes.

KOSKOMENOS THE OUTCAST

Koskomenos the kingfisher is a kind of outcast among the birds. I

think they regard him as a half reptile, who has not yet climbed

high enough in the bird scale to deserve recognition; so they let

him severely alone. Even the goshawk hesitates before taking a

swoop at him, not knowing quite whether the gaudy creature is

dangerous or only uncanny. I saw a great hawk once drop like a

bolt upon a kingfisher that hung on quivering wings, rattling

softly, before his hole in the bank. But the robber lost his

nerve at the instant when he should have dropped his claws to

strike. He swerved aside and shot upward in a great slant to a

dead spruce top, where he stood watching intently till the dark

beak of a brooding kingfisher reached out of the hole to receive

the fish that her mate had brought her. Whereupon Koskomenos

swept away to his watchtower above the minnow pool, and the hawk

set his wings toward the outlet, where a brood of young

sheldrakes were taking their first lessons in the open water.

No wonder the birds look askance at Kingfisher. His head is

ridiculously large; his feet ridiculously small. He is a poem of

grace in the air; but he creeps like a lizard, or waddles so that

a duck would be ashamed of him, in the rare moments when he is

afoot. His mouth is big enough to take in a minnow whole; his

tongue so small that he has no voice, but only a harsh

klr-rr-r-ik-ik-ik, like a watchman's rattle. He builds no nest,

but rather a den in the bank, in which he lives most filthily

half the day; yet the other half he is a clean, beautiful

creature, with never a suggestion of earth, but only of the blue

heavens above and the color-steeped water below, in his bright

garments. Water will not wet him, though he plunge a dozen times

out of sight beneath the surface. His clatter is harsh, noisy,

diabolical; yet his plunge into the stream, with its flash of

color, its silver spray, and its tinkle of smitten water, is the

most musical thing in the wilderness.

As a fisherman he has no equal. His fishy, expressionless eye is

yet the keenest that sweeps the water, and his swoop puts even

the fish-hawk to shame for its certainty and its lightning

quickness.

Besides all these contradictions, he is solitary, unknown,

inapproachable. He has no youth, no play, no joy except to eat;

he associates with nobody, not even with his own kind; and when

he catches a fish, and beats its head against a limb till it is

dead, and sits with head back-tilted, swallowing his prey, with a

clattering chuckle deep down in his throat, he affects you as a

parrot does that swears diabolically under his breath as he

scratches his head, and that you would gladly shy a stone at, if

the owner's back were turned for a sufficient moment.

It is this unknown, this uncanny mixture of bird and reptile that

has made the kingfisher an object of superstition among all

savage peoples. The legends about him are legion; his crested

head is prized by savages above all others as a charm or fetish;

and even among civilized peoples his dried body may still

sometimes be seen hanging to a pole, in the hope that his bill

will point out the quarter from which the next wind will blow.

But Koskomenos has another side, though the world as yet has

found out little about it. One day in the wilderness I cheered

him quite involuntarily. It was late afternoon; the fishing was

over, and I sat in my canoe watching by a grassy point to see

what would happen next. Across the stream was a clay bank, near

the top of which a hole as wide as a tea-cup showed where a pair

of kingfishers had dug their long tunnel. "There is nothing for

them to stand on there; how did they begin that hole?" I wondered

lazily; "and how can they ever raise a brood, with an open door

like that for mink and weasel to enter?" Here were two new

problems to add to the many unsolved ones which meet you at every

turn on the woodland byways.

A movement under the shore stopped my wondering, and the long

lithe form of a hunting mink shot swiftly up stream. Under the

hole he stopped, raised himself with his fore paws against the

bank, twisting his head from side to side and sniffing nervously.

"Something good up there," he thought, and began to climb. But

the bank was sheer and soft; he slipped back half a dozen times

without rising two feet. Then he went down stream to a point

where some roots gave him a foothold, and ran lightly up till

under the dark eaves that threw their shadowy roots over the clay

bank. There he crept cautiously along till his nose found the

nest, and slipped down till his fore paws rested on the

threshold. A long hungry sniff of the rank fishy odor that pours

out of a kingfisher's den, a keen look all around to be sure the

old birds were not returning, and he vanished like a shadow.

"There is one brood of kingfishers the less," I thought, with my

glasses focused on the hole. But scarcely was the thought formed,

when a fierce rumbling clatter sounded in the bank. The mink shot

out, a streak of red showing plainly across his brown face. After

him came a kingfisher clattering out a storm of invective and

aiding his progress by vicious jabs at his rear. He had made a

miscalculation that time; the old mother bird was at home waiting

for him, and drove her powerful beak at his evil eye the moment

it appeared at the inner end of the tunnel. That took the longing

for young kingfisher all out of Cheokhes. He plunged headlong

down the bank, the bird swooping after him with a rattling alarm

that brought another kingfisher in a twinkling. The mink dived,

but it was useless to attempt escape in that way; the keen eyes

above followed his flight perfectly. When he came to the surface,

twenty feet away, both birds were over him and dropped like

plummets on his head. So they drove him down stream and out of

sight.

Years afterward I solved the second problem suggested by the

kingfisher's den, when I had the good fortune, one day, to watch

a pair beginning their tunneling. All who have ever watched the

bird have, no doubt, noticed his wonderful ability to stop short

in swift flight and hold himself poised in midair for an

indefinite time, while watching the movements of a minnow

beneath. They make use of this ability in beginning their nest

on a bank so steep as to afford no foothold.

As I watched the pair referred to, first one then the other would

hover before the point selected, as a hummingbird balances for a

moment at the door of a trumpet flower to be sure that no one is

watching ere he goes in, then drive his beak with rapid plunges

into the bank, sending down a continuous shower of clay to the

river below. When tired he rested on a watch-stub, while his mate

made a battering-ram of herself and kept up the work. In a

remarkably short time they had a foothold and proceeded to dig

themselves in out of sight.

Kingfisher's tunnel is so narrow that he cannot turn around in

it. His straight, strong bill loosens the earth; his tiny feet

throw it out behind. I would see a shower of dirt, and perchance

the tail of Koskomenos for a brief instant, then a period of

waiting, and another shower. This kept up till the tunnel was

bored perhaps two feet, when they undoubtedly made a sharp turn,

as is their custom. After that they brought most of the earth out

in their beaks. While one worked, the other watched or fished at

the minnow pool, so that there was steady progress as long as I

observed them.

For years I had regarded Koskomenos, as the birds and the rest of

the world regard bim, as a noisy, half-diabolical creature,

between bird and lizard, whom one must pass by with suspicion.

But that affair with the mink changed my feelings a bit.

Koskomenos' mate might lay her eggs like a reptile, but she could

defend them like any bird hero. So I took to watching more

carefully; which is the only way to get acquainted.

The first thing I noticed about the birds--an observation

confirmed later on many waters--was that each pair of kingfishers

have their own particular pools, over which they exercise

unquestioned lordship. There may be a dozen pairs of birds on a

single stream; but, so far as I have been able to observe, each

family has a certain stretch of water on which no other

kingfishers are allowed to fish. They may pass up and down

freely, but they never stop at the minnow pools; they are caught

watching near them, they are promptly driven out by the rightful

owners.

The same thing is true on the lake shores. Whether there is some

secret understanding and partition among them, or whether (which

is more likely) their right consists in discovery or first

arrival, there is no means of knowing.

A curious thing, in this connection, is that while a kingfisher

will allow none of his kind to poach on his preserves, he lives

at peace with the brood of sheldrakes that occupy the same

stretch of river. And the sheldrake eats a dozen fish to his one.

The same thing is noticeable among the sheldrakes also, namely,

that each pair, or rather each mother and her brood, have their

own piece of lake or river on. which no others are allowed to

fish. The male sheldrakes meanwhile are far away, fishing on

their own waters.

I had not half settled this matter of the division of trout

streams when another observation came, which was utterly

unexpected. Koskomenos, half reptile though he seem, not only

recognizes riparian rights, but he is also capable of

friendship--and that, too, for a moody prowler of the wilderness

whom no one else cares anything about. Here is the proof.

I was out in my canoe alone looking for a loon's nest, one

midsummer day, when the fresh trail of a bull caribou drew me to

shore. The trail led straight from the water to a broad alder

belt, beyond which, on the hillside, I might find the big brute

loafing his time away till evening should come, and watch him to

see what he would do with himself.

As I turned shoreward a kingfisher sounded his rattle and came

darting across the mouth of the bay where Hukweem the loon had

hidden her two eggs. I watched him, admiring the rippling sweep

of his flight, like the run of a cat's-paw breeze across a

sleeping lake, and the clear blue of his crest against the deeper

blue of summer sky. Under him his reflection rippled along, like

the rush of a gorgeous fish through the glassy water. Opposite my

canoe he checked himself, poised an instant in mid-air, watching

the minnows that my paddle had disturbed, and dropped bill

first--plash! with a silvery tinkle in the sound, as if hidden

bells down among the green water weeds had been set to ringing by

this sprite of the air. A shower of spray caught the rainbow for

a brief instant; the ripples gathered and began to dance over the

spot where Koskomenos had gone down, when they were scattered

rudely again as he burst out among them with his fish. He swept

back to the stub whence he had come, chuckling on the way. There

he whacked his fish soundly on the wood, threw his head back, and

through the glass I saw the tail of a minnow wriggling slowly

down the road that has for him no turning. Then I took up the

caribou trail.

I had gone nearly through the alders, following the course of a

little brook and stealing along without a sound, when behind me I

heard the kingfisher coming above the alders, rattling as if

possessed, klrrr, klrrr, klrrr-ik-ik-ik! On the instant there was

a heavy plunge and splash just ahead, and the swift rush of some

large animal up the hillside. Over me poised the kingfisher,

looking down first at me, then ahead at the unknown beast, till

the crashing ceased in a faint rustle far away, when he swept

back to his fishing-stub, clacking and chuckling immoderately.

I pushed cautiously ahead and came presently to a beautiful pool

below a rock, where the hillside shelved gently towards the

alders. From the numerous tracks and the look of the place, I

knew instantly that I had stumbled upon a bear's bathing pool.

The water was still troubled and muddy; huge tracks, all soppy

and broken, led up the hillside in big jumps; the moss was torn,

the underbrush spattered with shining water drops. "No room for

doubt here," I thought; "Mooween was asleep in this pool, and the

kingfisher woke him up--but why? and did he do it on purpose?

I remembered suddenly a record in an old notebook, which reads:

"Sugarloaf Lake, 26 July.--Tried to stalk a bear this noon. No

luck. He was nosing alongshore and I had a perfect chance; but a

kingfisher scared him." I began to wonder how the rattle of a

kingfisher, which is one of the commonest sounds on wilderness

waters, could scare a bear, who knows all the sounds of the

wilderness perfectly. Perhaps Koskomenos has an alarm note and

uses it for a friend in time of need, as gulls go out of their

way to alarm a flock of sleeping ducks when danger is

approaching.

Here was a new trait, a touch of the human in this unknown,

clattering suspect of the fishing streams. I resolved to watch

him with keener interest.

Somewhere above me, deep in the tangle of the summer wilderness,

Mooween stood watching his back track, eyes, ears, and nose alert

to discover what the creature was who dared frighten him out of

his noonday bath. It would be senseless to attempt to surprise

him now; besides, I had no weapon of any kind.--"To-morrow,

about this time, I shall be coming back; then look out, Mooween,"

I thought as I marked the place and stole away to my canoe.

But the next day when I came to the place, creeping along the

upper edge of the alders so as to make no noise, the pool was

clear and quiet, as if nothing but the little trout that hid

under the foam bubbles had ever disturbed its peace. Koskomenos

was clattering about the bay below as usual. Spite of my

precaution he had seen me enter the alders; but he gave me no

attention whatever. He went on with his fishing as if he knew

perfectly that the bear had deserted his bathing pool.

It was nearly a month before I again camped on the beautiful

lake. Summer was gone. All her warmth and more than her

fragrant beauty still lingered on forest and river; but the

drowsiness had gone from the atmosphere, and the haze had

crept into it. Here and there birches and maples flung out their

gorgeous banners of autumn over the silent water. A tingle came

into the evening air; the lake's breath lay heavy and white in

the twilight stillness; birds and beasts became suddenly changed

as they entered the brief period of sport and of full feeding.

I was drifting about a reedy bay (the same bay in which the

almost forgotten kingfisher had cheated me out of my bear, after

eating a minnow that my paddle had routed out for him) shooting

frogs for my table with a pocket rifle. How different it was

here, I reflected, from the woods about home. There the game was

already harried; the report of a gun set every living creature

skulking. Here the crack of my little rifle was no more heeded

than the plunge of a fish-hawk, or the groaning of a burdened elm

bough. A score of fat woodcock lay unheeding in that bit of alder

tangle yonder, the ground bored like a colander after their

night's feeding. Up on the burned hillside the partridges said,

quit, quit! when I appeared, and jumped to a tree and craned

their necks to see what I was. The black ducks skulked in the

reeds. They were full-grown now and strong of wing, but the early

hiding habit was not yet broken up by shooting. They would glide

through the sedges, and double the bogs, and crouch in a tangle

till the canoe was almost upon them, when with a rush and a

frightened hark-ark! they shot into the air and away to the

river. The mink, changing from brown to black, gave up his

nest-robbing for honest hunting, undismayed by trap or deadfall;

and up in the inlet I could see grassy domes rising above the

bronze and gold of the marsh, where Musquash was building thick

and high for winter cold and spring floods. Truly it was good to

be here, and to enter for a brief hour into the shy, wild but

unharried life of the wood folk.

A big bullfrog showed his head among the lily pads, and the

little rifle, unmindful of the joys of an unharried existence,

rose slowly to its place. My eye was glancing along the sights

when a sudden movement in the alders on the shore, above and

beyond the unconscious head of Chigwooltz the frog, spared him

for a little season to his lily pads and his minnow hunting. At

the same moment a kingfisher went rattling by to his old perch

over the minnow pool. The alders swayed again as if struck; a

huge bear lumbered out of them to the shore, with a disgruntled

woof! at some twig that had switched his ear too sharply.

I slid lower in the canoe till only my head and shoulders were

visible. Mooween went nosing along-shore till something--a

dead fish or a mussel bed--touched his appetite, when he

stopped and began feeding, scarcely two hundred yards

away. I reached first for my heavy rifle, then for the paddle,

and cautiously "fanned" the canoe towards shore till an old

stump on the point covered my approach. Then the little bark

jumped forward as if alive. But I had scarcely started when--

klrrrr! klrrr! ik-ik--ik! Over my head swept Koskomenos

with a rush of wings and an alarm cry that spoke only of haste

and danger. I had a glimpse of the bear as he shot into the

alders, as if thrown by a catapult; the kingfisher wheeled in a

great rattling circle about the canoe before he pitched upon the

old stump, jerking his tail and clattering in great excitement.

I swung noiselessly out into the lake, where I could watch the

alders. They were all still for a space of ten minutes; but

Mooween was there, I knew, sniffing and listening. Then a great

snake seemed to be wriggling through the bushes, making no sound,

but showing a wavy line of quivering tops as he went.

Down the shore a little way was a higher point, with a fallen

tree that commanded a view of half the lake. I had stood there a

few days before, while watching to determine the air paths and

lines of flight that sheldrakes use in passing up and down the

lake,--for birds have runways, or rather flyways, just as foxes

do. Mooween evidently knew the spot; the alders showed that he

was heading straight for it, to look out on the lake and see what

the alarm was about. As yet he had no idea what peril had

threatened him; though, like all wild creatures, he had obeyed

the first clang of a danger note on the instant. Not a creature

in the woods, from Mooween down to Tookhees the wood mouse, but

has learned from experience that, in matters of this kind, it is

well to jump to cover first and investigate afterwards.

I paddled swiftly to the point, landed and crept to a rock from

which I could just see the fallen tree. Mooween was coming. "My

bear this time," I thought, as a twig snapped faintly. Then

Koskomenos swept into the woods, hovering over the brush near the

butt of the old tree, looking down and rattling--klrrrik, clear

out! klrrr-ik, clear out! There was a heavy rush, such as a bear

always makes when alarmed; Koskomenos swept back to his perch;

and I sought the shore, half inclined to make my next hunting

more even-chanced by disposing of one meddlesome factor. "You

wretched, noisy, clattering meddler!" I muttered, the front sight

of my rifle resting fair on the blue back of Koskomenos, "that is

the third time you have spoiled my shot, and you won't have

another chance.--But wait; who is the meddler here?"

Slowly the bent finger relaxed on the trigger. A loon went

floating by the point, all unconscious of danger, with a rippling

wake that sent silver reflections glinting across the lake's deep

blue. Far overhead soared an eagle, breeze-borne in wide circles,

looking down on his own wide domain, unheeding the man's

intrusion. Nearer, a red squirrel barked down his resentment from

a giant spruce trunk. Down on my left a heavy splash and a wild,

free tumult of quacking told where the black ducks were coming

in, as they had done, undisturbed, for generations. Behind me a

long roll echoed through the woods--some young cock partridge,

whom the warm sun had beguiled into drumming his spring

love-call. From the mountain side a cow moose rolled back a

startling answer. Close at hand, yet seeming miles away, a

chipmunk was chunking sleepily in the sunshine, while a nest of

young wood mice were calling their mother in the grass at my

feet. And every wild sound did but deepen the vast, wondrous

silence of the wilderness.

"After all, what place has the roar of a rifle or the smell of

sulphurous powder in the midst of all this blessed peace?" I

asked half sadly. As if in answer, the kingfisher dropped with

his musical plash, and swept back with exultant rattle to his

watchtower.--"Go on with your clatter and your fishing. The

wilderness and the solitary place shall still be glad, for you

and Mooween, and the trout pools would be lonely without you. But

I wish you knew that your life lay a moment ago in the bend of my

finger, and that some one, besides the bear, appreciates your

brave warning."

Then I went back to the point to measure the tracks, and to

estimate how big the bear was, and to console myself with the

thought of how I would certainly have had him, if something had

not interfered--which is the philosophy of all hunters since

Esau.

It was a few days later that the chance came of repaying

Koskomenos with coals of fire. The lake surface was still warm;

no storms nor frosts had cooled it. The big trout had risen from

the deep places, but were not yet quickened enough to take my

flies; so, trout hungry, I had gone trolling for them with a

minnow. I had taken two good fish, and was moving slowly by the

mouth of the bay, Simmo at the paddle, when a suspicious movement

on the shore attracted my attention. I passed the line to Simmo,

the better to use my glasses, and was scanning the alders

sharply, when a cry of wonder came from the Indian. "O bah cosh,

see! das second time I catchum, Koskomenos." And there, twenty

feet above the lake, a young kingfisher--one of Koskomenos'

frowzy-headed, wild-eyed-youngsters--was whirling wildly at the

end of my line. He had seen the minnow trailing a hundred feet

astern and, with more hunger than discretion, had swooped for it

promptly. Simmo, feeling the tug but seeing nothing behind him,

had struck promptly, and the hook went home.

I seized the line and began to pull in gently. The young

kingfisher came most unwillingly, with a continuous clatter of

protest that speedily brought Koskomenos and his mate, and two or

three of the captive's brethren, in a wild, clamoring about the

canoe. They showed no lack of courage, but swooped again and

again at the line, and even at the man who held it. In a moment I

had the youngster in my hand, and had disengaged the hook. He was

not hurt at all, but terribly frightened; so I held him a little

while, enjoying the excitement of the others, whom the captive's

alarm rattle kept circling wildly about the canoe. It was

noteworthy that not another bird heeded the cry or came near.

Even in distress they refused to recognize the outcast. Then, as

Koskomenos hovered on quivering wings just over my head, I tossed

the captive close up beside him. "There, Koskomenos, take your

young chuckle-head, and teach him better wisdom. Next time you

see me stalking a bear, please go on with your fishing."

But there was no note of gratitude in the noisy babel that swept

up the bay after the kingfishers. When I saw them again, they

were sitting on a dead branch, five of them in a row, chuckling

and clattering all at once, unmindful of the minnows that played

beneath them. I have no doubt that, in their own way, they were

telling each other all about it.

MEEKO THE MISCHIEF-MAKER

There is a curious Indian legend about Meeko the red

squirrel--the Mischief-Maker, as the Milicetes call him--which is

also an excellent commentary upon his character. Simmo told it to

me, one day, when we had caught Meeko coming out of a

woodpecker's hole with the last of a brood of fledgelings in his

mouth, chuckling to himself over his hunting.

Long ago, in the days when Clote Scarpe ruled the animals, Meeko

was much larger than he is now, large as Mooween the bear. But

his temper was so fierce, and his disposition so altogether bad

that all the wood folk were threatened with destruction. Meeko

killed right and left with the temper of a weasel, who kills from

pure lust of blood. So Clote Scarpe, to save the little

woods-people, made Meeko smaller--small as he is now.

Unfortunately, Clote Scarpe forgot Meeko's disposition; that

remained as big and as bad as before. So now Meeko goes about the

woods with a small body and a big temper, barking, scolding,

quarreling and, since he cannot destroy in his rage as before,

setting other animals by the ears to destroy each other.

When you have listened to Meeko's scolding for a season, and have

seen him going from nest to nest after innocent fledgelings; or

creeping into the den of his big cousin, the beautiful gray

squirrel, to kill the young; or driving away his little cousin,

the chipmunk, to steal his hoarded nuts; or watching every fight

that goes on in the woods, jeering and chuckling above it,--then

you begin to understand the Indian legend.

Spite of his evil ways, however, he is interesting and always

unexpected. When you have watched the red squirrel that lives

near your camp all summer, and think you know all about him, he

does the queerest thing, good or bad, to upset all your theories

and even the Indian legends about him.

I remember one that greeted me, the first living thing in the

great woods, as I ran my canoe ashore on a wilderness river.

Meeko heard me coming. His bark sounded loudly, in a big spruce,

above the dip of the paddles. As we turned shoreward, he ran down

the tree in which he was, and out on a fallen log to meet us. I

grasped a branch of the old log to steady the canoe and watched

him curiously. He had never seen a man before; he barked, jeered,

scolded, jerked his tail, whistled, did everything within his

power to make me show my teeth and my disposition.

Suddenly he grew excited--and when Meeko grows excited the woods

are not big enough to hold him. He came nearer and nearer to my

canoe till he leaped upon the gunwale and sat there chattering,

as if he were Adjidaumo come back again and I were Hiawatha. All

the while he had poured out a torrent of squirrel talk, but now

his note changed; jeering and scolding and curiosity went out of

it; something else crept in. I began to feel, somehow, that he

was trying to make me understand something, and found me very

stupid about it.

I began to talk quietly, calling him a rattle-head and a

disturber of the peace. At the first sound of my voice he

listened with intense curiosity, then leaped to the log, ran the

length of it, jumped down and began to dig furiously among the

moss and dead leaves. Every moment or two he would stop, and jump

to the log to see if I were watching him.

Presently he ran to my canoe, sprang upon the gunwale, jumped

back again, and ran along the log as before to where he had been

digging. He did it again, looking back at me and saying plainly:

"Come here; come and look." I stepped out of the canoe to the old

log, whereupon Meeko went off into a fit of terrible excitement.

--I was bigger than he expected; I had only two legs;

kut-e-k'chuck, kut-e-k'chuck! whit, whit, whit, kut-e-k'chuck!

I stood where I was until he got over his excitement. Then he

came towards me, and led me along the log, with much chuckling

and jabbering, to the hole in the leaves where he had been

digging. When I bent over it he sprang to a spruce trunk, on a

level with my head, fairly bursting with excitement, but watching

me with intensest interest. In the hole I found a small lizard,

one of the rare kind that lives under logs and loves the dusk. He

had been bitten through the back and disabled. He could still use

legs, tail and head feebly, but could not run away. When I picked

him up and held him in my hand, Meeko came closer with

loud-voiced curiosity, longing to leap to my hand and claim his

own, but held back by fear.--"What is it? He's mine; I found him.

What is it?" he barked, jumping about as if bewitched. Two

curiosities, the lizard and the man, were almost too much for

him. I never saw a squirrel more excited. He had evidently found

the lizard by accident, bit him to keep him still, and then,

astonished by the rare find, hid him away where he could dig him

out and watch him at leisure.

I put the lizard back into the hole and covered him with leaves;

then went to unloading my canoe. Meeko watched me closely. And

the moment I was gone he dug away the leaves, took his treasure

out, watched it with wide bright eyes, bit it once more to keep

it still, and covered it up again carefully. Then he came

chuckling along to where I was putting up my tent.

In a week he owned the camp, coming and going at his own will,

stealing my provisions when I forgot to feed him, and scolding me

roundly at every irregular occurrence. He was an early riser and

insisted on my conforming to the custom. Every morning he would

leap at daylight from a fir tip to my ridgepole, run it along to

the front and sit there, barking and whistling, until I put my

head out of my door, or until Simmo came along with his axe. Of

Simmo and his axe Meeko had a mortal dread, which I could not

understand till one day when I paddled silently back to camp and,

instead of coming up the path, sat idly in my canoe watching the

Indian, who had broken his one pipe and now sat making another

out of a chunk of black alder and a length of nanny bush.

Simmo was as interesting to watch, in his way, as any of the wood

folk.

Presently Meeko came down, chattering his curiosity at seeing the

Indian so still and so occupied. A red squirrel is always unhappy

unless he knows all about everything. He watched from the nearest

tree for a while, but could not make up his mind what was doing.

Then he came down on the ground and advanced a foot at a time,

jumping up continually but coming down in the same spot, barking

to make Simmo turn his head and show his hand. Simmo watched out

of the corner of his eye until Meeko was near a solitary tree

which stood in the middle of the camp ground, when he jumped up

suddenly and rushed at the squirrel, who sprang to the tree and

ran to a branch out of reach, snickering and jeering.

Simmo took his axe deliberately and swung it mightily at the foot

of the tree, as if to chop it down; only he hit the trunk with

the head, not,the blade of his weapon. At the first blow, which

made his toes tingle, Meeko stopped jeering and ran higher. Simmo

swung again and Meeko went up another notch. So it went on, Simmo

looking up intently to see the effect and Meeko running higher

after each blow, until the tiptop was reached. Then Simmo gave a

mighty whack; the squirrel leaped far out and came to the

ground, sixty feet below; picked himself up, none the worse for

his leap, and rushed scolding away to his nest. Then Simmo said

umpfh! like a bear, and went back to his pipemaking. He had not

smiled nor relaxed the intent expression of his face during the

whole little comedy.

I found out afterwards that making Meeko jump from a tree top is

one of the few diversions of Indian children. I tried it myself

many times with many squirrels, and found to my astonishment that

a jump from any height, however great, is no concern to a

squirrel, red or gray. They have a way of flattening the body and

bushy tail against the air, which breaks their fall. Their

bodies, and especially their bushy tails, have a curious

tremulous motion, like the quiver of wings, as they come down.

The flying squirrel's sailing down from a tree top to another

tree, fifty feet away, is but an exaggeration, due to the

membrane connecting the fore and hind legs, of what all squirrels

practice continually. I have seen a red squirrel land lightly

after jumping from an enormous height, and run away as if nothing

unusual had happened. But though I have watched them often, I

have never seen a squirrel do this except when compelled to do

so. When chased by a weasel or a marten, or when the axe beats

against the trunk below --either because the vibration hurts

their feet, or else they fear the tree is being cut down--they

use the strange gift to save their lives. But I fancy it is a

breathless experience, and they never try it for fun, though I

have seen them do all sorts of risky stumps in leaping from

branch to branch.

It is a curious fact that, though a squirrel leaps from a great

height without hesitation, it is practically impossible to make

him take a jump of a few feet to the ground. Probably the upward

rush of air, caused by falling a long distance, is necessary to

flatten the body enough to make him land lightly.

It would be interesting to know whether the raccoon also, a

large, heavy animal, has the same way of breaking his fall when

he jumps from a height. One bright moonlight night, when I ran

ahead of the dogs, I saw a big coon leap from a tree to the

ground, a distance of some thirty or forty feet. The dogs had

treed him in an evergreen, and he left them howling below while

he stole silently from branch to branch until a good distance

away, when to save time he leaped to the ground. He struck with a

heavy thump, but ran on uninjured as swiftly as before, and gave

the dogs a long run before they treed him again.

The sole of a coon's foot is padded thick with fat and gristle,

so that it must feel like landing on springs when he jumps; but I

suspect that he also knows the squirrel trick of flattening his

body and tail against the air so as to fall lightly.

The chipmunk seems to be the only one of the squirrel family in

whom this gift is wanting. Possibly he has it also, if the need

ever comes. I fancy, however, that he would fare badly if

compelled to jump from a spruce top, for his body is heavy and

his tail small from long living on the ground; all of which seems

to indicate that the tree-squirrel's bushy tail is given him, not

for ornament, but to aid his passage from branch to branch, and

to break his fall when he comes down from a height.

By way of contrast with Meeko, you may try a curious trick on the

chipmunk. It is not easy to get him into a tree; he prefers a log

or an old wall when frightened; and he is seldom more than two or

three jumps from his den. But watch him as he goes from his

garner to the grove where the acorns are, or to the field where

his winter corn is ripening. Put yourself near his path (he

always follows the same one to and fro) where there is no refuge

close at hand. Then, as he comes along, rush at him suddenly and

he will take to the nearest tree in his alarm. When he recovers

from his fright--which is soon over; for he is the most trustful

of squirrels and looks down at you with interest, never

questioning your motives--take a stick and begin to tap the tree

softly. The more slow and rhythmical your tattoo the sooner he is

charmed. Presently he comes down closer and closer, his eyes

filled with strange wonder. More than once I have had a chipmunk

come to my hand and rest upon it, looking everywhere for the

queer sound that brought him down, forgetting fright and

cornfield and coming winter in his bright curiosity.

Meeko is a bird of another color. He never trusts you nor anybody

else fully, and his curiosity is generally of the vulgar, selfish

kind. When the autumn woods are busy places, and wings flutter

and little feet go pattering everywhere after winter supplies, he

also begins garnering, remembering the hungry days of last

winter. But he is always more curious to see what others are

doing than to fill his own bins. He seldom trusts to one

storehouse--he is too suspicious for that--but hides his things

in twenty different places; some shagbarks in the old wall, a

handful of acorns in a hollow tree, an ear of corn under the

eaves of the old barn, a pint of chestnuts scattered about in the

trees, some in crevices in the bark, some in a pine crotch

covered carefully with needles, and one or two stuck firmly into

the splinters of every broken branch that is not too conspicuous.

But he never gathers much at a time. The moment he sees anybody

else gathering he forgets his own work and goes spying to see

where others are hiding their store. The little chipmunk, who

knows his thieving and his devices, always makes one turn, at

least, in the tunnel to his den too small for Meeko to follow.

He sees a blue jay flitting through the woods, and knows by his

unusual silence that he is hiding things. Meeko follows after

him, stopping all his jabber and stealing from tree to tree,

watching patiently, for hours it need be, until he knows that

Deedeeaskh is gathering corn from a certain field. Then he

watches the line of flight, like a bee hunter, and sees

Deedeeaskh disappear twice by an oak on the wood's edge, a

hundred yards away. Meeko rushes away at a headlong pace and

hides himself in the oak. There he traces the jay's line of

flight a little farther into the woods; sees the unconscious

thief disappear by an old pine. Meeko hides in the pine, and so

traces the jay straight to one of his storehouses.

Sometimes Meeko is so elated over the discovery that, with all

the fields laden with food, he cannot wait for winter. When the

jay goes away Meeko falls to eating or to carrying away his

store. More often he marks the spot and goes away silently. When

he is hungry he will carry off Deedeeaskh's corn before touching

his own.

Once I saw the tables turned in a most interesting fashion.

Deedeeaskh is as big a thief in his way as is Meeko, and also as

vile a nest-robber. The red squirrel had found a hoard of

chestnuts--small fruit, but sweet and good--and was hiding it

away. Part of it he stored in a hollow under the stub of a broken

branch, twenty feet from the ground, so near the source of supply

that no one would ever think of looking for it there. I was

hidden away in a thicket when I discovered him at his work quite

by accident. He seldom came twice to the same spot, but went off

to his other storehouses in succession. After an unusually long

absence, when I was expecting him every moment, a blue jay came

stealing into the tree, spying and sneaking about, as if a nest

of fresh thrush's eggs were somewhere near. He smelled a mouse

evidently, for after a moment's spying he hid himself away in the

tree top, close up against the trunk. Presently Meeko came back,

with his face bulging as if he had toothache, uncovered his

store, emptied in the half dozen chestnuts from his cheek pockets

and covered them all up again.

The moment he was gone the blue jay went straight to the spot,

seized a mouthful of nuts and flew swiftly away. He made three

trips before the squirrel came back. Meeko in his hurry never

noticed the loss, but emptied his pockets and was off to the

chestnut tree again. When he returned, the jay in his eagerness

had disturbed the leaves which covered the hidden store. Meeko

noticed it and was all suspicion in an instant. He whipped off

the covering and stood staring down intently into the garner,

evidently trying to compute the number he had brought and the

number that were there. Then a terrible scolding began, a

scolding that was broken short off when a distant screaming of

jays came floating through the woods. Meeko covered his store

hurriedly, ran along a limb and leaped to the next tree, where he

hid in a knot hole, just his eyes visible, watching his garner

keenly out of the darkness.