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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.

Meeko, has no patience. Three or four times he showed himself

nervously. Fortunately for me, the jay had found some excitement

to keep his rattle-brain busy for a moment. A flash of blue, and

he came stealing back, just as Meeko had settled himself for more

watching. After much pecking and listening the jay flew down to

the storehouse, and Meeko, unable to contain himself a moment

longer at sight of the thief, jumped out of his hiding and came

rushing along the limb, hurling threats and vituperation ahead of

him. The jay fluttered off, screaming derision. Meeko followed,

hurling more abuse, but soon gave up the chase and came back to

his chestnuts. It was curious to watch him there, sitting

motionless and intent, his nose close down to his treasure,

trying to compute his loss. Then he stuffed his cheeks full and

began carrying his hoard off to another hiding place.

The autumn woods are full of such little comedies. Jays, crows,

and squirrels are all hiding away winter's supplies, and no

matter how great the abundance, not one of them can resist the

temptation to steal or to break into another's garner.

Meeko is a poor provider; he would much rather live on buds and

bark and apple seeds and fir cones, and what he can steal from

others in the winter, than bother himself with laying up supplies

of his own. When the spring comes he goes a-hunting, and is for a

season the most villainous of nest-robbers. Every bird in the

woods then hates him, takes a jab at him, and cries thief, thief!

wherever he goes.

On a trout brook once I had a curious sense of comradeship with

Meeko. It was in the early spring, when all the wild things make

holiday, and man goes a-fishing. Near the brook a red squirrel

had tapped a maple tree with his teeth and was tasting the sweet

sap as it came up scantily. Seeing him and remembering my own

boyhood, I cut a little hollow into the bark of a black birch

tree and, when it brimmed full, drank the sap with immense

satisfaction. Meeko stopped his own drinking to watch, then to

scold and denounce me roundly.

While my cup was filling again I went down to the brook and took

a wary old trout from his den under the end of a log, where the

foam bubbles were dancing merrily. When I went back, thirsting

for another sweet draught from the same spring, Meeko had emptied

it to the last drop and had his nose down in the bottom of my

cup, catching the sap as it welled up with an abundance that must

have surprised him. When I went away quietly he followed me

through the wood to the pool at the edge of the meadow, to see

what I would do next.

Wherever you go in the wilderness you find Meeko ahead of you,

and all the best camping grounds preempted by him. Even on the

islands he seems to own the prettiest spots, and disputes

mightily your right to stay there; though he is generally glad

enough of your company to share his loneliness, and shows it

plainly.

Once I found one living all by himself on an island in the middle

of a wilderness lake, with no company whatever except a family of

mink, who are his enemies. He had probably crossed on the ice in

the late spring, and while he was busy here and there with his

explorations the ice broke up, cutting off his retreat to the

mainland, which was too far away for his swimming. So he was a

prisoner for the long summer, and welcomed me gladly to share his

exile. He was the only red squirrel I ever met that never scolded

me roundly at least once a day. His loneliness had made him quite

tame. Most of the time he lived within sight of my tent door. Not

even Simmo's axe, though it made him jump twice from the top of a

spruce, could keep him long away. He had twenty ways of getting

up an excitement, and whenever he barked out in the woods I knew

that it was simply to call me to see his discovery,--a new nest,

a loon that swam up close, a thieving muskrat, a hawk that rested

on a dead stub, the mink family eating my fish heads,--and when I

stole out to see what it was, he would run ahead, barking and

chuckling at having some one to share his interests with him.

In such places squirrels use the ice for occasional journeys to

the mainland. Sometimes also, when the waters are calm, they swim

over. Hunters have told me that when the breeze is fair they make

use of a floating bit of wood, sitting tip straight with tail

curled over their backs, making a sail of their bodies--just as

an Indian, with no knowledge of sailing whatever, puts a spruce

bush in a bow of his canoe and lets the wind do his work for him.

That would be the sight of a lifetime, to see Meeko sailing his

boat; but I have no doubt whatever that it is true. The only red

squirrel that I ever saw in the water fell in by accident. He

swam rapidly to a floating board, shook himself, sat up with his

tail raised along his back, and began to dry himself. After a

little he saw that the slight breeze was setting him farther from

shore. He began to chatter excitedly, and changed his position

two or three times, evidently trying to catch the wind right.

Finding that it was of no use, he plunged in again and swam

easily to land.

That he lives and thrives in the wilderness, spite of enemies and

hunger and winter cold, is a tribute to his wits. He never

hibernates, except in severe storms, when for a few days he lies

close in his den. Hawks and owls and weasels and martens hunt him

continually; yet he more than holds his own in the big woods,

which would lose some of their charm if their vast silences were

not sometimes broken by his petty scoldings.

As with most wild creatures, the squirrels that live in touch

with civilization are much keener witted than their wilderness

brethren. The most interesting one I ever knew lived in the trees

just outside my dormitory window, in a New England college town.

He was the patriarch of a large family, and the greatest thief

and rascal among them. I speak of the family, but, so far as I

could see, there was very little family life. Each one shifted

for himself the moment he was big enough, and stole from all the

others indiscriminately.

It was while watching these squirrels that I discovered first

that they have regular paths among the trees, as well defined as

our own highways. Not only has each squirrel his own private

paths and ways, but all the squirrels follow certain courses

along the branches in going from one tree to another. Even the

strange squirrels, which ventured at times into the grove,

followed these highways as if they had been used to them all

their lives.

On a recent visit to the old dormitory I watched the squirrels

for a while, and found that they used exactly the same paths,--up

the trunk of a big oak to a certain boss, along a branch to a

certain crook, a jump to a linden twig and so on, making use of

one of the highways that I had watched them following ten years

before. Yet this course was not the shortest between two points,

and there were a hundred other branches that they might have

used.

I had the good fortune one morning to see Meeko, the patriarch,

make a new path for himself that none of the others ever followed

so long as I was in the dormitory. He had a home den over a

hallway, and a hiding place for acorns in a hollow linden.

Between the two was a driveway; but though the branches arched

over it from either side, the jump was too great for him to take.

A hundred times I saw him run out on the farthest oak twig and

look across longingly at the maple that swayed on the other side.

It was perhaps three feet away, with no branches beneath to seize

and break his fall in case he missed his spring, altogether too

much for a red squirrel to attempt. He would rush out as if

determined to try it, time after time, but always his courage

failed him; he had to go down the oak trunk and cross the

driveway on the ground, where numberless straying dogs were

always ready to chase him.

One morning I saw him run twice in succession at the jump, only

to turn back. But the air was keen and bracing, and he felt its

inspiration. He drew farther back, then came rushing along the

oak branch and, before he had time to be afraid, hurled himself

across the chasm. He landed fairly on the maple twig, with

several inches to spare, and hung there with claws and teeth,

swaying up and down gloriously. Then, chattering his delight at

himself, he ran down the maple, back across the driveway, and

tried the jump three times in succession to be sure he could do

it.

After that he sprang across frequently. But I noticed that

whenever the branches were wet with rain or sleet he never

attempted it; and he never tried the return jump, which was

uphill, and which he seemed to know by instinct was too much to

attempt.

When I began feeding him, in the cold winter days, he showed me

many curious bits of his life. First I put some nuts near the top

of an old well, among the stones of which he used to hide things

in the autumn. Long after he had eaten all his store he used to

come and search the crannies among the stones to see if

perchance he had overlooked any trifles. When he found a handful

of shagbarks, one morning, in a hole only a foot below the

surface, his astonishment knew no bounds. His first thought was

that he had forgotten them all these hungry days, and he promptly

ate the biggest of the store within sight, a thing I never saw a

squirrel do before. His second thought--I could see it in his

changed attitude, his sudden creepings and hidings--was that some

other squirrel had hidden them there since his last visit.

Whereupon he carried them all off and hid them in a broken linden

branch.

Then I tossed him peanuts, throwing them first far away, then

nearer and nearer till he would come to my window-sill. And when

I woke one morning he was sitting there looking in at the window,

waiting for me to get up and bring his breakfast.

In a week he had showed me all his hiding places. The most

interesting of these was over a roofed piazza in a building near

by. He had gnawed a hole under the eaves, where it would not be

noticed, and lived there in solitary grandeur during stormy days

in a den four by eight feet, and rain-proof. In one corner was a

bushel of corncobs, some of them two or three years old, which he

had stolen from a cornfield near by in the early autumn mornings.

With characteristic improvidence he had fallen to eating the corn

while yet there was plenty more to be gathered. In consequence he

was hungry before February was half over, and living by his wits,

like his brother of the wilderness.

The other squirrels soon noticed his journeys to my window, and

presently they too came for their share. Spite of his fury in

driving them away, they managed in twenty ways to circumvent him.

It was most interesting, while he sat on my window-sill eating

peanuts, to see the nose and eyes of another squirrel peering

over the crotch of the nearest tree, watching the proceedings

from his hiding place. Then I would give Meeko five or six

peanuts at once. Instantly the old hiding instinct would come

back; he would start away, taking as much of his store as he

could carry with him. The moment he was gone, out would come a

squirrel--sometimes two or three from their concealment--and

carry off all the peanuts that remained.

Meeko's wrath when he returned was most comical. The Indian

legend is true as gospel to squirrel nature. If he returned

unexpectedly and caught one of the intruders, there was always a

furious chase and a deal of scolding and squirrel jabber before

peace was restored and the peanuts eaten.

Once, when he had hidden a dozen or more nuts in the broken

linden branch, a very small squirrel came prowling along and

discovered the store. In an instant he was all alertness,

peeking, listening, exploring, till quite sure that the coast was

clear, when he rushed away headlong with a mouthful.

He did not return that day; but the next morning early I saw him

do the same thing. An hour later Meeko appeared and, finding

nothing on the window-sill, went to the linden. Half his store of

yesterday was gone. Curiously enough, he did not suspect at first

that they were stolen. Meeko is always quite sure that nobody

knows his secrets. He searched the tree over, went to his other

hiding places, came back, counted his peanuts, then searched the

ground beneath, thinking, no doubt, the wind must have blown them

out--all this before he had tasted a peanut of those that

remained.

Slowly it dawned upon him that he had been robbed and there was

an outburst of wrath. But instead of carrying what were left to

another place, he left them where they were, still without

eating, and hid himself near by to watch. I neglected a lecture

in philosophy to see the proceedings, but nothing happened.

Meeko's patience soon gave out, or else he grew hungry, for he

ate two or three of his scanty supply of peanuts, scolding and

threatening to himself. But he left the rest carefully where they

were.

Two or three times that day I saw him sneaking about, keeping a

sharp eye on the linden; but the little thief was watching too,

and kept out of the way.

Early next morning a great hubbub rose outside my window, and I

jumped up to see what was going on. Little Thief had come back,

and Big Thief caught him in the act of robbery. Away they went

pell-mell, jabbering like a flock of blackbirds, along a linden

branch, through two maples, across a driveway, and up a big elm

where Little Thief whisked out of sight into a knot hole.

After him came Big Thief, swearing vengeance. But the knot hole

was too small; he couldn't get in. Twist and turn and push and

threaten as he would, he could not get in; and Little Thief sat

just inside jeering maliciously.

Meeko gave it up after a while and went off, nursing his wrath.

But ten feet from the tree a thought struck him. He rushed away

out of sight, making a great noise, then came back quietly and

hid under an eave where he could watch the knot hole.

Presently Little Thief came out, rubbed his eyes, and looked all

about. Through my glass I could see Meeko blinking and twitching

under the dark eave, trying to control his anger. Little Thief

ventured to a branch a few feet away from his refuge, and Big

Thief, unable to hold himself a moment longer, rushed out, firing

a volley of direful threats ahead of him. In a flash Little Thief

was back in his knot hole and the comedy began all over again.

I never saw how it ended; but for a day or two there was an

unusual amount of chasing and scolding going on outside my

windows.

It was this same big squirrel that first showed me a curious

trick of biding. Whenever he found a handful of nuts on my

windowsill and suspected that other squirrels were watching to

share the bounty, he had a way of hiding them all very rapidly.

He would never carry them direct to his various garners; first,

because these were too far away, and the other squirrels would

steal while he was gone; second, because, with hungry eyes

watching somewhere, they might follow and find out where he

habitually kept things. So he used to bide them all on the

ground, under the leaves in autumn, under snow in winter, and all

within sight of the window-sill, where he could watch the store

as he hurried to and fro. Then, at his leisure, he would dig them

up and carry them off to his den, two cheekfuls at a time.

Each nut was hidden by itself; never so much as two in one spot.

For a long time it puzzled me to know how he remembered so many

places. I noticed first that he would always start from a certain

point, a tree or a stone, with his burden. When it was hidden he

would come back by the shortest route to the windowsill; but with

his new mouthful he would always go first to the tree or stone he

had selected, and from there search out a new hiding place.

It was many days before I noticed tbat, starting from one fixed

point, he generally worked toward another tree or stone in the

distance. Then his secret was out; he hid things in a line. Next

day he would come back, start from his fixed point and move

slowly towards the distant one till his nose told him he was over

a peanut, which be dug up and ate or carried away to his den. But

he always seemed to distrust himself; for on hungry days he would

go over two or three of his old lines in the hope of finding a

mouthful that he had overlooked.

This method was used only when he had a large supply to dispose

of hurriedly, and not always then. Meeko is a careless fellow and

soon forgets. When I gave him only a few to dispose of, he hid

them helter-skelter among the leaves, forgetting some of them

afterwards and enjoying the rare delight of stumbling upon them

when he was hungriest--much like a child whom I saw once giving

himself a sensation. He would throw his penny on the ground, go

round the house, and saunter back with his hands in his pockets

till he saw the penny, which he pounced upon with almost the joy

of treasure-trove in the highway.

Meeko made a sad end--a fate which he deserved well enough, but

which I had to pity, spite of myself. When the spring came on, he

went back to evil ways. Sap was sweet and buds were luscious with

the first swelling of tender leaves; spring rains had washed out

plenty of acorns in the crannies under the big oak, and there

were fresh-roasted peanuts still at the corner window-sill

within easy jump of a linden twig; but he took to watching the

robins to see where they nested, and when the young were hatched

he came no more to my window. Twice I saw him with fledgelings in

his mouth; and I drove him day after day from a late clutch of

robin's eggs that I could watch from my study.

He had warnings enough. Once some students, who had been friendly

all winter, stoned him out of a tree where he was nestrobbing;

once the sparrows caught him in their nest under the high eaves,

and knocked him off promptly. A twig upon which he caught in

falling saved his life undoubtedly, for the sparrows were after

him and he barely escaped into a knot hole, leaving the angry

horde clamoring outside. But nothing could reform him.

One morning at daylight a great crying of robins brought me to

the window. Meeko was running along a limb, the first of the

fledgelings in his mouth. After him were five or six robins whom

the parents' danger cry had brought to the rescue. They were all

excited and tremendously in earnest. They cried thief! thief! and

swooped at him like hawks. Their cries speedily brought a score

of other birds, some to watch, others to join in the punishment.

Meeko dropped the young bird and ran for his den; but a robin

dashed recklessly in his face and knocked him fair from the tree.

That and the fall of the fledgeling excited the birds more than

ever. This thieving bird-eater was not invulnerable. A dozen

rushed at him on the ground and left the marks of their beaks on

his coat before he could reach the nearest tree.

Again he rushed for his den, but wherever he turned now angry

wings fluttered over him and beaks jabbed in his face. Raging but

frightened, he sat up to snarl wickedly. Like a flash a robin

hurled himself down, caught the squirrel just under his ear and

knocked him again to the ground.

Things began to look dark for Meeko. The birds grew bolder and

angrier every minute. When he started to climb a tree he was

hurled off twice ere he reached a crotch and drew himself down

into it. He was safe there with his back against a big limb; they

could not get at him from behind. But the angry clamor in front

frightened him, and again he started for his place of refuge. His

footing was unsteady now and his head dizzy from the blows he had

received. Before he had gone half a limb's length he was again on

the ground, with a dozen birds pecking at him as they swooped

over.

With his last strength he snapped viciously at his foes and

rushed to the linden. My window was open, and he came creeping,

hurrying towards it on the branch over which he had often capered

so lightly in the winter days. Over him clamored the birds,

forgetting all fear of me in their hatred of the nestrobber.

A dozen times he was struck on the way, but at every blow he

clung to the branch with claws and teeth, then staggered on

doggedly, making no defense. His whole thought now was to reach

the window-sill.

At the place where he always jumped he stopped and began to sway,

gripping the bark with his claws, trying to summon strength for

the effort. He knew it was too much, but it was his last hope. At

the instant of his spring a robin swooped in his face; another

caught him a side blow in mid-air, and he fell heavily to the

stones below.--Sic semper tyrannis! yelled the robins, scattering

wildly as I ran down the steps to save him, if it were not too

late.

He died in my hands a moment later, with curious maliciousness

nipping my finger sharply at the last gasp. He was the only

squirrel of the lot who knew how to hide in a line; and never a

one since his day has taken the jump from oak to maple over the

driveway.

THE OL' BEECH PA'TRIDGE

Of all the wild birds that still haunt our remaining solitudes,

the ruffed grouse--the pa'tridge of our younger days--is perhaps

the wildest, the most alert, the most suggestive of the primeval

wilderness that we have lost. You enter the woods from the

hillside pasture, lounging a moment on the old gray fence to note

the play of light and shadow on the birch bolls. Your eye lingers

restfully on the wonderful mixture of soft colors that no brush

has ever yet imitated, the rich old gold of autumn tapestries,

the glimmering gray-green of the mouldering stump that the fungi

have painted. What a giant that tree must have been, generations

ago, in its days of strength; how puny the birches that now grow

out of its roots! You remember the great canoe birches by the

wilderness river, whiter than the little tent that nestled

beneath them, their wide bark banners waving in the wind, soft as

the flutter of owls' wings that swept among them, shadow-like, in

the twilight. A vague regret steals over you that our own

wilderness is gone, and with it most of the shy folk that loved

its solitudes.

Suddenly there is a rustle in the leaves. Something stirs by the

old stump. A moment ago you thought it was only a brown root; now

it runs, hides, draws itself erect--Kwit, kwit, kwit! and with a

whirring rush of wings and a whirling eddy of dead leaves a

grouse bursts up, and darts away like a blunt arrow,

flint-tipped, gray-feathered, among the startled birch stems. As

you follow softly to rout him out again, and to thrill and be

startled by his unexpected rush, something of the Indian has come

unbidden into your cautious tread. All regret for the wilderness

is vanished; you are simply glad that so much wildness still

remains to speak eloquently of the good old days.

It is this element of unconquerable wildness in the grouse,

coupled with a host of early, half-fearful impressions, that

always sets my heart to beating, as to an old tune, whenever a

partridge bursts away at my feet. I remember well a little child

that used to steal away into the still woods, which drew him by

an irresistible attraction while as yet their dim arches and

quiet paths were full of mysteries and haunting terrors. Step by

step the child would advance into the shadows, cautious as a wood

mouse, timid as a rabbit. Suddenly a swift rustle and a

thunderous rush of something from the ground that first set the

child's heart to beating wildly, and then reached his heels in a

fearful impulse which sent him rushing out of the woods, tumbling

headlong over the old gray wall, and scampering halfway across

the pasture before he dared halt from the terror behind. And

then, at last, another impulse which always sent the child

stealing back into the woods again, shy, alert, tense as a

watching fox, to find out what the fearful thing was that could

make such a commotion in the quiet woods.

And when he found out at last--ah, that was a discovery beside

which the panther's kittens are as nothing as I think of them.

One day in the woods, near the spot where the awful thunder used

to burst away, the child heard a cluck and a kwitkwit, and saw a

beautiful bird dodging, gliding, halting, hiding in the

underbrush, watching the child's every motion. And when he ran

forward to put his cap over the bird, it burst away, and

then--whirr! whirr! whirr! a whole covey of grouse roared up all

about him. The terror of it weakened his legs so that he fell

down in the eddying leaves and covered his ears. But this time he

knew what it was at last, and in a moment he was up and running,

not away, but fast as his little legs could carry him after the

last bird that he saw hurtling away among the trees, with a birch

branch that he had touched with his wings nodding good-by behind

him.

There is another association with this same bird that always

gives an added thrill to the rush of his wings through the

startled woods. It was in the old school by the cross-roads, one

sleepy September afternoon. A class in spelling, big boys and

little girls, toed a crack in front of the waster's desk. The

rest of the school droned away on appointed tasks in the drowsy

interlude. The fat boy slept openly on his arms; even the

mischief-maker was quiet, thinking dreamily of summer days that

were gone. Suddenly there was a terrific crash, a clattering

tinkle of broken glass, a howl from a boy near the window. Twenty

knees banged the desks beneath as twenty boys jumped. Then,

before any of us had found his wits, Jimmy Jenkins, a red-headed

boy whom no calamity could throw off his balance and from whom no

opportunity ever got away free, had jumped over two forms

and was down on the floor in the girls' aisle, gripping something

between his knees--

"I've got him," he announced, with the air of a general.

"Got what?" thundered the master.

"Got a pa'tridge; he's an old buster," said Jimmy. And he

straightened up, holding by the legs a fine cock partridge whose

stiffening wings still beat his sides spasmodically. He had been

scared-up in the neighboring woods, frightened by some hunter out

of his native coverts. When he reached the unknown open places he

was more frightened still and, as a frightened grouse always

flies straight, he had driven like a bolt through the schoolhouse

window, killing himself by the impact.

Rule-of-three and cube root and the unmapped wilderness of

partial payments have left but scant impression on one of those

pupils, at least; but a bird that could wake up a drowsy

schoolroom and bring out a living lesson, full of life and

interest and the subtile call of the woods, from a drowsy teacher

who studied law by night, but never his boys by day,--that was a

bird to be respected. I have studied him with keener interest

ever since.

Yet however much you study the grouse, you learn little except

how wild he is. Occasionally, when you are still in the woods and

a grouse walks up to your hiding place, you get a fair glimpse

and an idea or two; but he soon discovers you, and draws himself

up straight as a string and watches you for five minutes without

stirring or even winking. Then, outdone at his own game, he

glides away. A rustle of little feet on leaves, a faint kwit-kwit

with a question in it, and he is gone. Nor will he come back,

like the fox, to watch from the other side and find out what you

are.

Civilization, in its first advances, is good to the grouse,

providing him with an abundance of food and driving away his

enemies. Grouse are always more numerous about settlements than

in the wilderness. Unlike other birds, however, he grows wilder

and wilder by nearness to men's dwellings. I suppose that is

because the presence of man is so often accompanied by the rush

of a dog and the report of a gun, and perhaps by the rip and

sting of shot in his feathers as he darts away. Once, in the

wilderness, when very hungry, I caught two partridges by slipping

over their heads a string noose at the end of a pole. Here one

might as well try to catch a bat in the twilight as to hope to

snare one of our upland partridges by any such invention, or even

to get near enough to meditate the attempt.

But there was one grouse--and he the very wildest of all that I

have ever met in the woods--who showed me unwittingly many bits

of his life, and with whom I grew to be very well acquainted

after a few seasons' watching. All the hunters of the village

knew him well; and a half-dozen boys, who owned guns and were

eager to join the hunters' ranks, had a shooting acquaintance

with him. He was known far and wide as "the ol' beech pa'tridge."

That he was old no one could deny who knew his ways and his

devices; and he was frequently scared-up in a beech wood by a

brook, a couple of miles out of the village.

Spite of much learned discussion as to different varieties of

grouse, due to marked variations in coloring, I think personally

that we have but one variety, and that differences in color are

due largely to the different surroundings in which they live. Of

all birds the grouse is most invisible when quiet, his coloring

blends so perfectly with the roots and leaves and tree stems

among which he hides. This wonderful invisibility is increased by

the fact that he changes color easily. He is darker in summer,

lighter in winter, like the rabbit. When he lives in dark woods

he becomes a glossy red-brown; and when his haunt is among the

birches he is often a decided gray.

This was certainly true of the old beech partridge. When he

spread his tail wide and darted away among the beeches, his color

blended so perfectly with the gray tree trunks that only a keen

eye could separate him. And he knew every art of the dodger

perfectly. When he rose there was scarcely a second of time

before he had put a big tree between you and him, so as to cover

his line of flight. I don't know how many times he had been shot

at on the wing. Every hunter I knew had tried it many times; and

every boy who roamed the woods in autumn had sought to pot him on

the ground. But he never lost a feather; and he would never stand

to a dog long enough for the most cunning of our craft to take

his position.

When a brood of young partridges hear a dog running in the woods,

they generally flit to the lower branches of a tree and kwit-kwit

at him curiously. They have not yet learned the difference

between him and the fox, who is the ancient enemy of their kind,

and whom their ancestors of the wilderness escaped and tantalized

in the same way. But when it is an old bird that your setter is

trailing, his actions are a curious mixture of cunning and

fascination. As old Don draws to a point, the grouse pulls

himself up rigidly by a stump and watches the dog. So both stand

like statues; the dog held by the strange instinct which makes

him point, lost to sight, sound and all things else save the

smell in his nose, the grouse tense as a fiddlestring, every

sense alert, watching the enemy whom he thinks to be fooled by

his good hiding. For a few moments they are motionless; then the

grouse skulks and glides to a better cover. As the strong scent

fades from Don's nose, he breaks his point and follows. The

grouse hears him and again hides by drawing himself up against a

stump, where he is invisible; again Don stiffens into his point,

one foot lifted, nose and tail in a straight line, as if he were

frozen and could not move.

So it goes on, now gliding through the coverts, now still as a

stone, till the grouse discovers that so long as he is still the

dog seems paralyzed, unable to move or feel. Then he draws

himself up, braced against a root or a tree boll; and there they

stand, within twenty feet of each other, never stirring, never

winking, till the dog falls from exhaustion at the strain, or

breaks it by leaping forward, or till the hunter's step on the

leaves fills the grouse with a new terror that sends him rushing

away through the October woods to deeper solitudes.

Once, at noon, I saw Old Ben, a famous dog, draw to a perfect

point. Just ahead, in a tangle of brown brakes, I could see the

head and neck of a grouse watching the dog keenly. Old Ben's

master, to test the splendid training of his dog, proposed lunch

on the spot. We withdrew a little space and ate deliberately,

watching the bird and the dog with an interest that grew keener

and keener as the meal progressed, while Old Ben stood like a

rock, and the grouse's eye shone steadily out of the tangle of

brakes. Nor did either move so much as an eyelid while we ate,

and Ben's master smoked his pipe with quiet confidence. At last,

after a full hour, he whacked his pipe on his boot heel and rose

to reach for his gun. That meant death for the grouse; but I owed

him too much of keen enjoyment to see him cut down in swift

flight. In the moment that the master's back was turned I hurled

a knot at the tangle of brakes. The grouse burst away, and Old

Ben, shaken out of his trance by the whirr of wings, dropped

obediently to the charge and turned his head to say reproachfully

with his eyes: "What in the world is the matter with you back

there--didn't I hold him long enough?"

The noble old fellow was trembling like a leaf after the long

strain when I went up to him to pat his head and praise his

steadiness, and share with him the better half of my lunch. But

to this day Ben's master does not know what started the grouse so

suddenly; and as he tells you about the incident will still say

regretfully: "I ought to a-started jest a minute sooner, 'fore he

got tired. Then I'd a had 'im."

The old beech partridge, however, was a bird of a different mind.

No dog ever stood him for more than a second; he had learned too

well what the thing meant. The moment he heard the patter of a

dog's feet on leaves he would run rapidly, and skulk and hide and

run again, keeping dog and hunter on the move till he found the

cover he wanted,--thick trees, or a tangle of wild

grapevines,--when he would burst out on, the farther side. And no

eye, however keen, could catch more than a glimpse of a gray tail

before he was gone. Other grouse make short straight flights, and

can be followed and found again; but he always drove away on

strong wings for an incredible distance, and swerved far to right

or left; so that it was a waste of time to follow him up. Before

you found him he had rested his wings and was ready for another

flight; and when you did find him he would shoot away like an

arrow out of the top of a pine tree and give you never a glimpse

of himself.

He lived most of the time on a ridge behind the 'Fales place,' an

abandoned farm on the east of the old post road. This was his

middle range, a place of dense coverts, bullbrier thickets and

sunny open spots among the ledges, where you might, with

good-luck, find him on special days at any season. But he had

all the migratory instincts of a Newfoundland caribou. In winter

he moved south, with twenty other grouse, to the foot of the

ridge, which dropped away into a succession of knolls and ravines

and sunny, well-protected little valleys, where food was plenty.

Here, fifty years ago, was the farm pasture; but now it had grown

up everywhere with thickets and berry patches, and wild apple

trees of the birds' planting. All the birds loved it in their

season; quail nested on its edges; and you could kick a brown

rabbit out of almost any of its decaying brush piles or hollow

moss-grown logs.

In the spring he crossed the ridge northward again, moving into

the still dark woods, where he had two or three wives with as

many broods of young partridges; all of whom, by the way, he

regarded with astonishing indifference.

Across the whole range--stealing silently out of the big woods,

brawling along the foot of the ridge and singing through the old

pasture--ran a brook that the old beech partridge seemed to love.

A hundred times I started him from its banks. You had only to

follow it any November morning before eight o'clock, and you

would be sure to find him. But why he haunted it at this

particular time and season I never found out.

I used to wonder sometimes why I never saw him drink. Other birds

had their regular drinking places and bathing pools there, and I

frequently watched them from my hiding; but though I saw him

many times, after I learned his haunts, he never touched the

water.

One early summer morning a possible explanation suggested itself.

I was sitting quietly by the brook, on the edge of the big woods,

waiting for a pool to grow quiet, out of which I had just taken a

trout and in which I suspected there was a larger one hiding. As

I waited a mother-grouse and her brood--one of the old beech

partridge's numerous families for whom he provided nothing--came

gliding along the edge of the woods. They had come to drink,

evidently, but not from the brook. A sweeter draught than that

was waiting for their coming. The dew was still clinging to the

grass blades; here and there a drop hung from a leaf point,

flashing like a diamond in the early light. And the little

partridges, cheeping, gliding, whistling among the drooping

stems, would raise their little bills for each shining dewdrop

that attracted them, and drink it down and run with glad little

pipings and gurglings to the next drop that flashed an invitation

from its bending grass blade. The old mother walked sedately in

the midst of them, now fussing over a laggard, now clucking them

all together in an eager, chirping, jumping little crowd, each

one struggling to be first in at the death of a fat slug she had

discovered on the underside of a leaf; and anon reaching herself

for a dewdrop that hung too high for their drinking. So they

passed by within a few yards, a shy, wild, happy little family,

and disappeared into the shadow of the big woods.

Perhaps that is why I never saw the old beech partridge drink

from the brook. Nature has a fresher draught, of her own

distilling, that is more to his tasting.

Earlier in the season I found another of his families near the

same spot. I was stealing along a wood road when I ran plump upon

them, scratching away at an ant hill in a sunny open spot. There

was a wild flurry, as if a whirlwind had struck the ant hill; but

it was only the wind of the mother bird's wings, whirling up the

dust to blind my eyes and to hide the scampering retreat of her

downy brood. Again her wings beat the ground, sending up a flurry

of dead leaves, in the midst of which the little partridges

jumped and scurried away, so much like the leaves that no eye

could separate them. Then the leaves settled slowly and the brood

was gone, as if the ground had swallowed them up; while Mother

Grouse went fluttering along just out of my reach, trailing a

wing as if broken, falling prone on the ground, clucking and

kwitting and whirling the leaves to draw my attention and bring

me away from where the little ones were hiding.

I knelt down just within the edge of woods, whither I had seen

the last laggard of the brood vanish like a brown streak, and

began to look for them carefully. After a time I found one. He

was crouched flat on a dead oak leaf, just under my nose, his

color hiding him wonderfully. Something glistened in a tangle of

dark roots. It was an eye, and presently I could make out a

little head there. That was all I could find of the family,

though a dozen more were close beside me, under the leaves

mostly. As I backed away I put my hand on another before seeing

him, and barely saved myself from hurting the little sly-boots,

who never stirred a muscle, not even when I took away the leaf

that covered him and put it back again softly.

Across the pathway was a thick scrub oak, under which I sat down

to watch. Ten long minutes passed, with nothing stirring, before

Mother Grouse came stealing back. She clucked once--"Careful!" it

seemed to say; and not a leaf stirred. She clucked again--did the

ground open? There they were, a dozen or more of them, springing

up from nowhere and scurrying with a thousand cheepings to tell

her all about it. So she gathered them all close about her, and

they vanished into the friendly shadows.

It was curious how jealously the old beech partridge watched over

the solitudes where these interesting little families roamed.

Though he seemed to care nothing about them, and was never seen

near one of his families, he suffered no other cock partridge to

come into his woods, or even to drum within hearing. In the

winter he shared the southern pasture peaceably with twenty other

grouse; and on certain days you might, by much creeping, surprise

a whole company of them on a sunny southern slope, strutting and

gliding, in and out and round about, with spread tails and

drooping wings, going through all the movements of a grouse

minuet. Once, in Indian summer, I crept up to twelve or fifteen

of the splendid birds, who were going through their curious

performance in a little opening among the berry bushes; and in

the midst of them-more vain, more resplendent, strutting more

proudly and clucking more arrogantly than any other--was the old

beech partridge.

But when the spring came, and the long rolling drum-calls began

to throb through the budding woods, he retired to his middle

range on the ridge, and marched from one end to the other,

driving every other cock grouse out of hearing, and drubbing him

soundly if he dared resist. Then, after a triumph, you would hear

his loud drum-call rolling through the May splendor, calling as

many wives as possible to share his rich living.

He had two drumming logs on this range, as I soon discovered; and

once, while he was drumming on one log, I hid near the other and

imitated his call fairly well by beating my hands on a blown

bladder that I had buttoned under my jacket. The roll of a grouse

drum is a curiously muffled sound; it is often hard to determine

the spot or even the direction whence it comes; and it always

sounds much farther away than it really is. This may have

deceived the old beech partridge at first into thinking that he

heard some other bird far away, on a ridge across the valley

where he had no concern; for presently he drummed again on his

own log. I answered it promptly, rolling back a defiance, and

also telling any hen grouse on the range that here was another

candidate willing to strut and spread his tail and lift the

resplendent ruff about his neck to win his way into her good

graces, if she would but come to his drumming log and see him.

Some suspicion that a rival had come to his range must have

entered the old beech partridge's head, for there was a long

silence in which I could fancy him standing up straight and stiff

on his drumming log, listening intently to locate the daring

intruder, and holding down his bubbling wrath with difficulty.

Without waiting for him to drum again, I beat out a challenge.

The roll had barely ceased when he came darting up the ridge,

glancing like a bolt among the thick branches, and plunged down

by his own log, where he drew himself up with marvelous

suddenness to listen and watch for the intruder.

He seemed relieved that the log was not occupied, but he was

still full of wrath and suspicion. He glided and dodged all about

the place, looking and listening; then he sprang to his log and,

without waiting to strut and spread his gorgeous feathers as

usual, he rolled out the long call, drawing himself up straight

the instant it was done, turning his head from side to side to

catch the first beat of his rival's answer--"Come out, if you

dare; drum, if you dare. Oh, you coward!" And he hopped, five or

six high, excited hops, like a rooster before a storm, to the

other end of the log, and again his quick throbbing drumcall

rolled through the woods.

Though I was near enough to see him clearly without, my field

glasses, I could not even then, nor at any other time when I have

watched grouse drumming, determine just how the call is given.

After a little while the excitement of a suspected rival's

presence wore away, and he grew exultant, thinking that he had

driven the rascal out of his woods. He strutted back and forth on

the log, trailing his wings, spreading wide his beautiful tail,

lifting his crest and his resplendent ruff. Suddenly he would

draw himself up; there would be a flash of his wings up and down

that no eye could follow, and I would hear a single throb of his

drum. Another flash and another throb; then faster and faster,

till he seemed to have two or three pairs of wings, whirring and

running together like the spokes of a swift-moving wheel, and the

drumbeats rolled together into a long call and died away in the

woods.

Generally he stood up on his toes, as a rooster does when he

flaps his wings before crowing; rarely he crouched down close to

the log; but I doubt if he beat the wood with his wings, as is

often claimed. Yet the two logs were different; one was dry and

hard, the other mouldy and moss-grown; and the drumcalls were as

different as the two logs. After a time I could tell by the sound

which log he was using at the first beat of his wings; but that,

I think, was a matter of resonance, a kind of sounding-board

effect, and not because the two sounded differently as he beat

them. The call is undoubtedly made either by striking the wings

together over his back or, as I am inclined to believe, by

striking them on the down beat against his own sides.

Once I heard a wounded bird give three or four beats of his

drum-call, and when I went into the grapevine thicket, where he

had fallen, I found him lying flat on his back, beating his sides

with his wings.

Whenever he drums he first struts, because he knows not how many

pairs of bright eyes are watching him shyly out of the coverts.

Once, when I had watched him strut and drum a few times, the

leaves rustled, and two hen grouse emerged from opposite sides

into the little opening where his log was. Then he strutted with

greater vanity than before, while the two hen grouse went gliding

about the place, searching for seeds apparently, but in reality

watching his every movement out of their eye corners, and

admiring him to his heart's content.

In winter I used to follow his trail through the snow to find

what he had been doing, and what he had found to eat in nature's

scarce time. His worst enemies, the man and his dog, were no

longer to be feared, being restrained by law, and he roamed the

woods with greater freedom than ever. He seemed to know that he

was safe at this time, and more than once I trailed him up to his

hiding and saw him whirr away through the open woods, sending

down a shower of snow behind him, as if in that curious way to

hide his line of flight from my eyes.

There were other enemies, however, whom no law restrained, save

the universal wood-laws of fear and hunger. Often I found the

trail of a fox crossing his in the snow; and once I followed a

double trail, fox over grouse, for nearly half a mile. The fox

had struck the trail late the previous afternoon, and followed it

to a bullbrier thicket, in the midst of which was a great cedar

in which the old beech partridge roosted. The fox went twice

around the tree, halting and looking up, then went straight away

to the swamp, as if he knew it was of no use to watch longer.

Rarely, when the snow was deep, I found the place where he, or

some other grouse, went to sleep on the ground. He would plunge

down from a tree into the soft snow, driving into it headfirst

for three or four feet, then turn around and settle down in his

white warm chamber for the night. I would find the small hole

where he plunged in at evening, and near it the great hole where

he burst out when the light waked him. Taking my direction from

his wing prints in the snow, I would follow to find where he lit,

and then trace him on his morning wanderings.

One would think that this might be a dangerous proceeding,

sleeping on the ground with no protection but the snow, and a

score of hungry enemies prowling about the woods; but the grouse

knows well that when the storms are out his enemies stay close at

home, not being able to see or smell, and therefore afraid each

one of his own enemies. There is always a truce in the woods

during a snowstorm; and that is the reason why a grouse goes to

sleep in the snow only while the flakes are still falling. When

the storm is over and the snow has settled a bit, the fox will be

abroad again; and then the grouse sleeps in the evergreens.

Once, however, the old beech partridge miscalculated. The storm

ceased early in the evening, and hunger drove the fox out on a

night when, ordinarily, he would have stayed under cover.

Sometime about daybreak, before yet the light had penetrated to

where the old beech partridge was sleeping, the fox found a hole

in the snow, which told him that just in front of his hungry nose

a grouse was hidden, all unconscious of danger. I found the spot,

trailing the fox, a few hours later. How cautious he was! The sly

trail was eloquent with hunger and anticipation. A few feet away

from the promising hole he had stopped, looking keenly over the

snow to find some suspicious roundness on the smooth surface. Ah!

there it was, just by the edge of a juniper thicket. He crouched

down, stole forward, pushing a deep trail with his body, settled

himself firmly and sprang. And there, just beside the hole his

paws had made in the snow, was another hole where the grouse had

burst out, scattering snow all over his enemy, who had

miscalculated by a foot, and thundered away to the safety and

shelter of the pines.

There was another enemy, who ought to have known better,

following the old beech partridge all one early spring when snow

was deep and food scarce. One day, in crossing the partridge's

southern range, I met a small boy,--a keen little fellow, with

the instincts of a fox for hunting. He had always something

interesting afoot,--minks, or muskrats, or a skunk, or a big

owl,--so I hailed him with joy.

"Hello, Johnnie! what you after to-day--bears?"

But he only shook his head--a bit sheepishly, I thought--and

talked of all things except the one that he was thinking about;

and presently he vanished down the old road. One of his jacket

pockets bulged more than the other, and I knew there was a trap

in it.

Late that afternoon I crossed his trail and, having nothing more

interesting to do, followed it. It led straight to the bullbrier

thicket where the old beech partridge roosted. I had searched for

it many times in vain before the fox led me to it; but Johnnie,

in some of his prowlings, had found tracks and a feather or two

under a cedar branch, and knew just what it meant. His trap was

there, in the very spot where, the night before, the old beech

partridge had stood when he jumped for the lowest limb. Corn was

scattered liberally about, and a bluejay that had followed

Johnnie was already fast in the trap, caught at the base of his

bill just under the eyes. He had sprung the trap in pecking at

some corn that was fastened cunningly to the pan by fine wire.

When I took the jay carefully from the trap he played possum,

lying limp in my hand till my grip relaxed, when he flew to a

branch over my head, squalling and upbraiding me for having

anything to do with such abominable inventions.

I hung the trap to a low limb of the cedar, with a note in its

jaws telling Johnnie to come and see me next day. He came at

dusk, shamefaced, and I read him a lecture on fair play and the

difference between a thieving mink and an honest partridge. But

he chuckled over the bluejay, and I doubted the withholding power

of a mere lecture; so, to even matters, I hinted of an otter

slide I had discovered, and of a Saturday afternoon tramp

together. Twenty times, he told me, he had tried to snare the old

beech partridge. When he saw the otter slide he forswore traps

and snares for birds; and I left the place, soon after, with good

hopes for the grouse, knowing that I had spiked the guns of his

most dangerous enemy.

Years later I crossed the old pasture and went straight to the

bullbrier tangle. There were tracks of a grouse in the snow,-

-blunt tracks that rested lightly on the soft whiteness, showing

that Nature remembered his necessity and had caused his new

snowshoes to grow famously. I hurried to the brook, a hundred

memories thronging over me of happy days and rare sights when the

wood folk revealed their little secrets. In the midst of

them--kwit! kwit! and with a thunder of wings a grouse whirred

away, wild and gray as the rare bird that lived there years

before. And when I questioned a hunter, he said: "That ol' beech

pa'tridge? Oh, yes, he's there. He'll stay there, too, till he

dies of old age; 'cause you see, Mister, there ain't nobody in

these parts spry enough to ketch 'im."

FOLLOWING THE DEER

I was camping one summer on a little lake--Deer Pond, the

natives called it--a few miles back from a quiet summer resort

on the Maine coast. Summer hotels and mackerel fishing and

noisy excursions had lost their semblance to a charm; so I

made a little tent, hired a canoe, and moved back into the

woods.

It was better here. The days, were still and long, and the nights

full of peace. The air was good, for nothing but the wild

creatures breathed it, and the firs had touched it with their

fragrance. The faraway surge of the sea came up faintly till the

spruces answered it, and both sounds went gossiping over the

hills together. On all sides were the woods, which, on the north

especially, stretched away over a broken country beyond my

farthest explorations.

Over against my tenting place a colony of herons had their nests

in some dark hemlocks. They were interesting as a camp of

gypsies, some going off in straggling bands to the coast at

daybreak, others frogging in the streams, and a few solitary,

patient, philosophical ones joining me daily in following the

gentle art of Izaak Walton. And then, when the sunset came and

the deep red glowed just behind the hemlocks, and the gypsy bands

came home, I would see their sentinels posted here and there

among the hemlock tips--still, dark, graceful silhouettes etched

in sepia against the gorgeous after-glow--and hear the mothers

croaking their ungainly babies to sleep in the tree tops.

Down at one end of the pond a brood of young black ducks were

learning their daily lessons in hiding; at the other end a noisy

kingfisher, an honest blue heron, and a thieving mink shared the

pools and watched each other as rival fishermen. Hares by night,

and squirrels by day, and wood mice at all seasons played round

my tent, or came shyly to taste my bounty. A pair of big owls

lived and hunted in a swamp hard by, who hooted dismally before

the storms came, and sometimes swept within the circle of my fire

at night. Every morning a raccoon stopped at a little pool in the

brook above my tent, to wash his food carefully ere taking it

home. So there was plenty to do and plenty to learn, and the days

passed all too swiftly.

I had been told by the village hunters that there were no deer;

that they had vanished long since, hounded and crusted and

chevied out of season, till life was not worth the living. So it

was with a start of surprise and a thrill of new interest that I

came upon the tracks of a large buck and two smaller deer on the

shore one morning. I was following them eagerly when I ran plump

upon Old Wally, the cunningest hunter and trapper in the whole

region.

"Sho! Mister, what yer follerin?"

"Why, these deer tracks," I said simply.

Wally gave me a look, of great pity.

"Guess you're green--one o' them city fellers, ain't ye, Mister?

Them ere's sheep tracks--my sheep. Wandered off int' th' woods a

spell ago, and I hain't seen the tarnal critters since. Came up

here lookin' for um this mornin'."

I glanced at Wally's fish basket, and thought of the nibbled lily

pads; but I said nothing. Wally was a great hunter, albeit

jealous; apt to think of all the game in the woods as being sent

by Providence to help him get a lazy living; and I knew little

about deer at that time. So I took him to camp, fed him, and sent

him away.

"Kinder keep a lookout for my sheep, will ye, Mister, down 't

this end o' the pond?" he said, pointing away from the deer

tracks. "If ye see ary one, send out word, and I'll come and

fetch 'im.--Needn't foller the tracks though; they wander like

all possessed this time o' year," he added earnestly as he went

away.

That afternoon I went over to a little pond, a mile distant from

my camp, and deeper in the woods. The shore was well cut up with

numerous deer tracks, and among the lily pads everywhere were

signs of recent feeding. There was a man's track here too, which

came cautiously out from a thick point of woods, and spied about

on the shore, and went back again more cautiously than before. I

took the measure of it back to camp, and found that it

corresponded perfectly with the boot tracks of Old Wally. There

were a few deer here, undoubtedly, which he was watching

jealously for his own benefit in the fall hunting.

When the next still, misty night came, it found me afloat on the

lonely little pond with a dark lantern fastened to an upright

stick just in front of me in the canoe. In the shadow of the

shores all was black as Egypt; but out in the middle the outlines

of the pond could be followed vaguely by the heavy cloud of woods

against the lighter sky. The stillness was intense; every

slightest sound,--the creak of a bough or the ripple of a passing

musquash, the plunk of a water drop into the lake or the snap of

a rotten twig, broken by the weight of clinging mist,--came to

the strained ear with startling suddenness. Then, as I waited and

sifted the night sounds, a dainty plop, plop, plop! sent the

canoe gliding like a shadow toward the shore whence the sounds

had come.

When the lantern opened noiselessly, sending a broad beam of

gray, full of shadows and misty lights, through the even

blackness of the night, the deer stood revealed--a beautiful

creature, shrinking back into the forest's shadow, yet ever drawn

forward by the sudden wonder of the light.

She turned her head towards me, and her eyes blazed like great

colored lights in the lantern's reflection. They fascinated me; I

could see nothing but those great glowing spots, blazing and

scintillating with a kind of intense fear and wonder out of the

darkness. She turned away, unable to endure the glory any longer;

then released from the fascination of her eyes, I saw her

hurrying along the shore, a graceful living shadow among the

shadows, rubbing her head among the bushes as if to brush away

from her eyes the charm that dazzled them.

I followed a little way, watching every move, till she turned

again, and for a longer time stared steadfastly at the light. It

was harder this time to break away from its power. She came

nearer two or three times, halting between dainty steps to stare

and wonder, while her eyes blazed into mine. Then, as she

faltered irresolutely, I reached forward and closed the lantern,

leaving lake and woods in deeper darkness than before. At the

sudden release I heard her plunge out of the water; but a moment

later she was moving nervously among the trees, trying to stamp

herself up to the courage point of coming back to investigate.

And when I flashed my lantern at the spot she threw aside caution

and came hurriedly down the bank again.

Later that night I heard other footsteps in the pond, and opened

my lantern upon three deer, a doe, a fawn and a large buck,

feeding at short intervals among the lily pads. The buck was

wild; after one look he plunged into the woods, whistling danger

to his companions. But the fawn heeded nothing, knew nothing for

the moment save the fascination of the wonderful glare out there

in the darkness. Had I not shut off the light, I think he would

have climbed into the canoe in his intense wonder.

I saw the little fellow again,,in a curious way, a few nights

later. A wild storm was raging over the woods. Under its lash the

great trees writhed and groaned; and the "voices"--that strange

phenomenon of the forest and rapids--were calling wildly through

the roar of the storm and the rush of rain on innumerable leaves.

I had gone out on the old wood road, to lose myself for a little

while in the intense darkness and uproar, and to feel again the

wild thrill of the elements. But the night was too dark, the

storm too fierce. Every few moments I would blunder against a

tree, which told me I was off the road; and to lose the road

meant to wander all night in the storm-swept woods. So I went

back for my lantern, with which I again started down the old cart

path, a little circle of wavering, jumping shadows about me, the

one gray spot in the midst of universal darkness.

I had gone but a few hundred yards when there was a rush--it was

not the wind or the rain--in a thicket on my right. Something

jumped into the circle of light. Two bright spots burned out of

the darkness, then two more; and with strange bleats a deer came

close to me with her fawn. I stood stockstill, with a thrill in

my spine that was not altogether of the elements, while the deer

moved uneasily back and forth. The doe wavered between fear and

fascination; but the fawn knew no fear, or perhaps he knew only

the great fear of the uproar around him; for he came close beside

me, rested his nose an instant against the light, then thrust his

head between my arm and body, so as to shield his eyes, and

pressed close against my side, shivering with cold and fear,

pleading dumbly for my protection against the pitiless storm.

I refrained from touching the little thing, for no wild creature

likes to be handled, while his mother called in vain from the

leafy darkness. When I turned to go he followed me close, still

trying to thrust his face under my arm; and I had to close the

light with a sharp click before he bounded away down the road,

where one who knew better than I how to take care of a frightened

innocent was, no doubt, waiting to receive him.

I gave up everything else but fishing after that, and took to

watching the deer; but there was little to be learned in the

summer woods. Once I came upon the big buck lying down in a

thicket. I was following his track, trying to learn the Indian

trick of sign-trailing, when he shot up in front of me like

Jack-in-a-box, and was gone before I knew what it meant. From the

impressions in the moss, I concluded that he slept with all four

feet under him, ready to shoot up at an instant's notice, with

power enough in his spring to clear any obstacle near him. And

then I thought of the way a cow gets up, first one end, then the

other, rising from the fore knees at last with puff and grunt and

clacking of joints; and I took my first lesson in wholesome

respect for the creature whom I already considered mine by right

of discovery, and whose splendid head I saw, in anticipation,

adorning the hall of my house--to the utter discomfiture of Old

Wally.

At another time I crept up to an old road beyond the little deer

pond, where three deer, a mother with her fawn, and a young

spike-buck, were playing. They kept running up and down, leaping

over the trees that lay across the road with marvelous ease and

grace--that is, the two larger deer. The little fellow followed

awkwardly; but he had the spring in him, and was learning rapidly

to gather himself for the rise, and lift his hind feet at the top

of his jump, and come down with all fours together, instead of

sprawling clumsily, as a horse does.

I saw the perfection of it a few days later. I was sitting before

my tent door at twilight, watching the herons, when there was a

shot and a sudden crash over on their side. In a moment the big

buck plunged out of the woods and went leaping in swift bounds

along the shore, head high, antlers back, the mighty muscles

driving him up and onward as if invisible wings were bearing him.

A dozen great trees were fallen across his path, one of which, as

I afterwards measured, lay a clear eight feet above the sand. But

he never hesitated nor broke his splendid stride. He would rush

at a tree; rise light and swift till above it, where he turned as

if on a pivot, with head thrown back to the wind, actually

resting an instant in air at the very top of his jump; then shoot

downward, not falling but driven still by the impulse of his

great muscles. When he struck, all four feet were close together;

and almost quicker than the eye could follow he was in the air

again, sweeping along the water's edge, or rising like a bird

over the next obstacle.

Just below me was a stream, with muddy shores on both sides. I

looked to see if he would stog himself there or turn aside; but

he knew the place better than I, and that just under the soft mud

the sand lay firm and, sure. He struck the muddy place only

twice, once on either side the fifteen-foot stream, sending out a

light shower of mud in all directions; then, because the banks on

my side were steep, he leaped for the cover of the woods and was

gone.

I thought I had seen the last of him, when I heard him coming,

bump! bump! bump! the swift blows of his hoofs sounding all

together on the forest floor. So he flashed by, between me and my

tent door, barely swerved aside for my fire, and gave me another

beautiful run down the old road, rising and falling light as

thistle-down, with the old trees arching over him and brushing

his antlers as he rocketed along.

The last branch had hardly swished behind him when, across the

pond, the underbrush parted cautiously and Old Wally appeared,

trailing a long gun. He had followed scarcely a dozen of the

buck's jumps when he looked back and saw me watching him from

beside a great maple.

"Just a-follerin one o' my tarnal sheep. Strayed off day 'fore

yesterday. Hain't seen 'im, hev ye?" he bawled across.

"Just went along; ten or twelve points on his horns. And say,

Wally--"

The old sinner, who was glancing about furtively to see if the

white sand showed any blood stains,--looked up quickly at the

changed tone.

"You let those sheep of yours alone till the first of October;

then I'll help you round 'em up. Just now they're worth forty

dollars apiece to the state. I'll see that the warden collects

it, too, if you shoot another."

"Sho! Mister, I ain't a-shootin' no deer. Hain't seen a deer

round here in ten year or more. I just took a crack at a

pa'tridge 'at kwitted at me, top o' a stump"--

But as he vanished among the hemlocks, trailing his old gun, I

knew that he understood the threat. To make the matter sure I

drove the deer out of the pond that night, giving them the first

of a series of rude lessons in caution, until the falling leaves

should make them wild enough to take care of themselves.

STILL HUNTING

October, the superb month for one who loves the forest, found me

again in the same woods, this time not to watch and, learn, but

to follow the big buck to his death. Old Wally was ahead of me;

but the falling leaves had done their work well. The deer had

left the pond at his approach. Here and there on the ridges I

found their tracks, and saw them at a distance, shy, wild, alert,

ready to take care of themselves in any emergency. The big buck

led them everywhere. Already his spirit, grown keen in long

battle against his enemies, dominated them all. Even the fawns

had learned fear, and followed it as their salvation.

Then began the most fascinating experience that comes to one who

haunts the woods--the first, thrilling, glorious days of the

still-hunter's schooling, with the frost-colored October woods

for a schoolroom, and Nature herself for the all-wise teacher.

Daylight found me far afield, while the heavy mists hung low and

the night smells still clung to the first fallen leaves, moving

swift and silent through the chill fragrant mistiness of the

lowlands, eye and ear alert for every sign, and face set to the

heights where the deer were waiting. Noon found me miles away on

the hills, munching my crust thankfully in a sunny opening of the

woods, with a brook's music tinkling among the mossy stones at my

feet, and the gorgeous crimson and green and gold of the hillside

stretching down and away, like a vast Oriental rug of a giant's

weaving, to the flash and blue gleam of the distant sea. And

everywhere--Nature's last subtle touches to her picture--the

sense of a filmy veil let down ere the end was reached, a soft

haze on the glowing hilltops, a sheen as of silver mist along the

stream in the valley, a fleecy light-shot cloud on the sea, to

suggest more, and more beautiful, beyond the veil.

Evening found me hurrying homeward through the short twilight,

along silent wood roads from which the birds had departed,

breathing deep of the pure air with its pungent tang of ripened

leaves, sniffing the first night smells, listening now for the

yap of a fox, now for the distant bay of a dog to guide me in a

short cut over the hills to where my room in the old farmhouse

was waiting.

It mattered little that, far behind me (though not so far from

where the trail ended), the big buck began his twilight wandering

along the ridges, sniffing alertly at the vanishing scent of the

man on his feeding ground. The best things that a hunter brings

home are in his heart, not in his game bag; and a free deer meant

another long glorious day following him through the October

woods, making the tyro's mistakes, to be sure, but feeling also

the tyro's thrill and the tyro's wonder, and the consciousness of

growing power and skill to read in a new language the secrets

that the moss and leaves hide so innocently.

There was so much to note and learn and remember in those days! A

bit of moss with that curiously measured angular cut in it, as if

the wood folk had taken to studying Euclid,--how wonderful it was

at first! The deer had been here; his foot drew that sharp

triangle; and I must measure and feel it carefully, and press

aside the moss, and study the leaves, to know whether it were my

big buck or no, and how long since he had passed, and whether he

were feeding or running or just nosing about and watching the

valley below. And all that is much to learn from a tiny triangle

in the moss, with imaginary a, b, c's clinging to the dried moss

blossoms.

How careful one had to be! Every shift of wind, every cloud

shadow had to be noted. The lesson of a dewdrop, splashed from a

leaf in the early morning; the testimony of a crushed flower, or

a broken brake, or a bending grass blade; the counsel of a bit of

bark frayed from a birch tree, with a shred of deer-velvet

clinging to it,--all these were vastly significant and

interesting. Every copse and hiding place and cathedral aisle of

the big woods in front must be searched with quiet eyes far

ahead, as one glided silently from tree to tree. That depression

in the gray moss of a fir thicket, with two others near it--three

deer lay down there last night; no, this morning; no, scarcely an

hour ago, and the dim traces along the ridge show no sign of

hurry or alarm. So I move on, following surely the trail that,

only a few days since, would have been invisible as the trail of

a fish in the lake to my unschooled eyes, searching, searching

everywhere for dim forms gliding among the trees, till--a scream,

a whistle, a rush away! And I know that the bluejay, which has

been gliding after me curiously the last ten minutes,--has

fathomed my intentions and flown ahead to alarm the deer, which

are now bounding away for denser cover.

I brush ahead heedlessly, knowing that caution here only wastes

time, and study the fresh trail where the quarry jumped away in

alarm. Straight down the wind it goes. Cunning old buck! He has

no idea what Bluejay's alarm was about, but a warning, whether of

crow or jay or tainted wind or snapping twig, is never lost on

the wood folk. Now as he bounds along, cleaving the woods like a

living bolt, yet stopping short every hundred yards or so to

whirl and listen and sort the messages that the wood wires bring

to him, he is perfectly sure of himself and his little flock,

knowing that if danger follow down wind, his own nose will tell

him all about it. I glance at the sun; only another hour of

light, and I am six miles from home. I glance at the jay,

flitting about restlessly in a mixture of mischief and curiosity,

whistling his too-loo-loo loudly as a sign to the fleeing game

that I am right here and that he sees me. Then I take up the back

trail, planning another day.

So the days went by, one after another; the big buck, aided by

his friends the birds, held his own against my craft and

patience. He grew more wild and alert with every hunt, and kept

so far ahead of me that only once, before the snow blew, did I

have even the chance of stalking him, and then the cunning old

fellow foiled me again masterfully.

Old Wally was afield too; but, so far as I could read from the

woods' record, he fared no better than I on the trail of the

buck. Once, when I knew my game was miles ahead, I heard the

longdrawn whang of Wally's old gun across a little valley.

Presently the brush began to crackle, and a small doe came

jumping among the trees straight towards me. Within thirty feet

she saw me, caught herself at the top of her jump, came straight

down, and stood an instant as if turned to stone, with a spruce

branch bending over to hide her from my eyes. Then, when I moved

not, having no desire to kill a doe but only to watch the

beautiful creature, she turned, glided a few steps, and went

bounding away along the ridge.

Old Wally came in a little while, not following the trail,--he

had no skill nor patience for that,--but with a woodsman's

instinct following up the general direction of his game. Not far

from where the doe had first appeared he stopped, looked all

around keenly, then rested his hands on the end of his long gun

barrel, and put his chin on his hands.

"Drat it all! Never tetched 'im again. That paowder o' mine

hain't wuth a cent. You wait till snow blows,"--addressing the

silent woods at large,--"then I'll get me some paowder as is

paowder, and foller the critter, and I'll show ye"--

Old Wally said never a word, but all this was in his face and

attitude as he leaned moodily on his long gun. And I watched him,

chuckling, from my hiding among the rocks, till with curious

instinct he vanished down the ridge behind the very thicket where

I had seen the doe flash out of sight a moment before.

When I saw him again he was deep in less creditable business. It

was a perfect autumn day,--the air full of light and color, the

fragrant woods resting under the soft haze like a great bouquet

of Nature's own culling, birds, bees and squirrels frolicking all

day long amidst the trees, yet doing an astonishing amount of

work in gathering each one his harvest for the cold dark days

that were coming.

At daylight, from the top of a hill, I looked down on a little

clearing and saw the first signs of the game I was seeking. There

had been what old people call a duck-frost. In the meadows and

along the fringes of the woods the white rime lay thick and

powdery on grass and dead leaves; every foot that touched it

left a black mark, as if seared with a hot iron, when the sun

came up and shone upon it. Across the field three black trails

meandered away from the brook; but alas! under the fringe of

evergreen was another trail, that of a man, which crept and

halted and hid, yet drew nearer and nearer the point where the

three deer trails vanished into the wood. Then I found powder

marks, and some brush that was torn by buck shot, and three

trails that bounded away, and a tiny splash of deeper red on a

crimson maple leaf. So I left the deer to the early hunter and

wandered away up the hill for a long, lazy, satisfying day in the

woods alone.

Presently I came to a low brush fence running zigzag through

the woods, with snares set every few yards in the partridge and

rabbit runs. At the third opening a fine cock partridge swung

limp and lifeless from a twitch-up. The cruel wire had torn his

neck under his beautiful ruff; the broken wing quills showed

how terrible had been his struggle. Hung by the neck till dead!--

an atrocious fate to mete out to a noble bird. I followed the

hedge of snares for a couple of hundred yards, finding three

more strangled grouse and a brown rabbit. Then I sat down in

a beautiful spot to watch the life about me, and to catch the

snarer at his abominable work.

The sun climbed higher and blotted out the four trails in the

field below. Red squirrels came down close to my head to chatter

and scold and drive me out of the solitude. A beautiful gray

squirrel went tearing by among the branches, pursued by one of

the savage little reds that nipped and snarled at his heels. The

two cannot live together, and the gray must always go. Jays

stopped spying on the squirrels--to see and remember where their

winter stores were hidden--and lingered near me, whistling their

curiosity at the silent man below. None but jays gave any heed to

the five grim corpses swinging by their necks over the deadly

hedge, and to them it was only a new sensation.

Then a cruel thing happened,--one of the many tragedies that pass

unnoticed in the woods. There was a scurry in the underbrush, and

strange cries like those of an agonized child, only tiny and

distant, as if heard in a phonograph. Over the sounds a crow

hovered and rose and fell, in his intense absorption seeing

nothing but the creature below. Suddenly he swooped like a hawk

into a thicket, and out of the cover sprang a leveret (young

hare), only to crouch shivering in the open space under a

hemlock's drooping branches. There the crow headed him, struck

once, twice, three times, straight hard blows with his powerful

beak; and when I ran to the spot the leveret lay quite dead with

his skull split, while the crow went flapping wildly to the tree

tops, giving the danger cry to the flock that was gossiping in

the sunshine on the ridge across the valley.

The woods were all still after that; jays and squirrels seemed

appalled at the tragedy, and avoided me as if I were responsible

for the still little body under the hemlock tips. An hour passed;

then, a quarter-mile away, in the direction that the deer had

taken in the early morning, a single jay set up his cry, the cry

of something new passing in the woods. Two or three others joined

him; the cry came nearer. A flock of crossbills went whistling

overhead, coming from the same direction. Then, as I slipped away

into an evergreen thicket, a partridge came whirring up, and

darted by me like a brown arrow driven by the bending branches

behind him, flicking the twigs sharply with his wings as he drove

along. And then, on the path of his last forerunner, Old Wally

appeared, his keen eyes searching his murderous gibbetline

expectantly.

Now Old Wally was held in great reputation by the Nimrods of the

village, because he hunted partridges, not with "scatter-gun" and

dog,--such amateurish bungling he disdained and swore

against,--but in the good old-fashioned way of stalking with a

rifle. And when he brought his bunch of birds to market, his

admirers pointed with pride to the marks of his wondrous skill.

Here was a bird with the head hanging by a thread of skin; there

one with its neck broken; there a furrow along the top of the

head; and here--perfect work!--a partridge with both eyes gone,

showing the course of his unerring bullet.

Not ten yards from my hiding place he took down a partridge from

its gallows, fumbled a pointed stick out of his pocket, ran it

through the bird's neck, and stowed the creature that had died

miserably, without a chance for its life, away in one of his big

pockets, a self-satisfied grin on his face as he glanced down the

hedge and saw another bird swinging. So he followed his hangman's

hedge, treating each bird to his pointed stick, carefully

resetting the snares after him and clearing away the fallen

leaves from the fatal pathways. When he came to the rabbit he

harled him dexterously, slipped him over his long gun barrel,

took his bearings in a quick look, and struck over the ridge for

another southern hillside.

Here, at last, was the secret of Wally's boasted skill in

partridge hunting with a rifle. Spite of my indignation at the

snare line, the cruel death which gaped day and night for the

game as it ran about heedlessly in the fancied security of its

own coverts, a humorous, half shame-faced feeling of admiration

would creep in as I thought of the old sinner's cunning, and

remembered his look of disdain when he met me one day, with a

"scatter-gun" in my hands and old Don following obediently at

heel. Thinking that in his long life he must have learned many

things in the woods that I would be glad to know, I had invited

him cordially to join me. But he only withered me with the

contempt in his hawk eyes, and wiggled his toe as if holding back

a kick from my honest dog with difficulty.

"Go hunting with ye? Not much, Mister. Scarin' a pa'tridge to

death with a dum dog, and then turnin' a handful o' shot loose on

the critter, an' call it huntin'! That's the way to kill a

pa'tridge, the on'y decent way"--and he pulled a bird out of his

pocket, pointing to a clean hole through the head where the eyes

had been.

When he had gone I kicked the hedge to pieces quickly, cut the

twitch-ups at the butts and threw them with their wire nooses far

into the thickets, and posted a warning in a cleft stick on the

site of the last gibbet. Then I followed Wally to a second and

third line of snares, which were treated in the same rough way,

and watched him with curiously mingled feelings of detestation

and amusement as he sneaked down the dense hillside with tread

light as Leatherstocking, the old gun over his shoulder, his

pockets bulging enormously, and a string of hanged rabbits

swinging to and fro on his gun barrel, as if in death they had

caught the dizzy motion and could not quit it while the woods

they had loved and lived in threw their long sad shadows over

them. So they came to the meadow, into which they had so often

come limping down to play or feed among the twilight shadows,

and crossed it for the last time on Wally's gun barrel,

swinging, swinging.

The leaves were falling thickly now; they formed a dry, hard

carpet over which it was impossible to follow game accurately,

and they rustled a sharp warning underfoot if but a wood mouse

ran over them. It was of little use to still-hunt the wary old

buck till the rains should soften the carpet, or a snowfall make

tracking like boys' play. But I tried it once more; found the

quarry on a ridge deep in the woods, and followed--more by

good-luck than by good management--till, late in the afternoon, I

saw the buck with two smaller deer standing far away on a half-

cleared hillside, quietly watching a wide stretch of country

below. Beyond them the ridge narrowed gradually to a long neck,

ending in a high open bluff above the river.

There I tried my last hunter's dodge--manoeuvered craftily till

near the deer, which were hidden by dense thickets, and rushed

straight at them, thinking they would either break away down the

open hillside, and so give me a running shot, or else rush

straightaway at the sudden alarm and be caught on the bluff

beyond.

Was it simple instinct, I wonder, or did the buck that had grown

old in hunter's wiles feel what was passing in my mind, and like

a flash take the chance that would save, not only his own life,

but the lives of the two that followed him? At the first alarm

they separated; the two smaller deer broke away down the

hillside, giving me as pretty a shot as one could wish. But I

scarcely noticed them; my eyes were following eagerly a swift

waving of brush tops, which told me that the big buck was jumping

away, straight into the natural trap ahead.

I followed on the run till the ridge narrowed so that I could see

across it on either side, then slowly, carefully, steadying my

nerves for the shot. The river was all about him now, too wide to

jump, too steep-banked to climb down; the only way out was past

me. I gripped the rifle hard, holding it at a ready as I moved

forward, watching either side for a slinking form among the

scattered coverts. At last, at last! and how easy, how perfectly

I had trapped him! My heart was singing as I stole along.

The tracks moved straight on; first an easy run, then a swift,

hard rush as they approached the river. But what was this? The

whole end of the bluff was under my eye, and no buck standing at

bay or running wildly along the bank to escape. The tracks moved

straight on to the edge in great leaps; my heart quickened its

beat as if I were nerving myself for a supreme effort. Would he

do it? would he dare?

A foot this side the brink the lichens were torn away where the

sharp hoofs had cut down to solid earth. Thirty feet away, well

over the farther bank and ten feet below the level where I stood,

the fresh earth showed clearly among the hoof-torn moss. Far

below, the river fretted and roared in a white rush of rapids. He

had taken the jump, a jump that made one's nostrils spread and

his breath come hard as he measured it with his eye. Somewhere,

over in the spruces' shadow there, he was hiding, watching me no

doubt to see if I would dare follow.

That was the last of the autumn woods for me. If I had only seen

him--just one splendid glimpse as he shot over and poised in

mid-air, turning for the down plunge! That was my only regret as

I turned slowly away, the river singing beside me and the shadows

lengthening along the home trail.

WINTER TRAILS

The snow had come, and with it a Christmas holiday. For weeks I

had looked longingly out of college windows as the first

tracking-snows came sifting down, my thoughts turning from books

and the problems of human wisdom to the winter woods, with their

wide white pages written all over by the feet of wild things.

Then the sun would shine again, and I knew that the records were

washed clean, and the hard-packed leaves as innocent of footmarks

as the beach where plover feed when a great wave has chased them

away. On the twentieth a change came. Outside the snow fell

heavily, two days and a night; inside, books were packed away,

professors said Merry Christmas, and students were scattering,

like a bevy of flushed quail, to all points of the compass for

the holidays. The afternoon of the twenty-first found me again in

my room under the eaves of the old farmhouse.

Before dark I had taken a wide run over the hills and through the

woods to the place of my summer camp. How wonderful it all was!

The great woods were covered deep with their pure white mantle;

not a fleck, not a track soiled its even whiteness; for the last

soft flakes were lingering in the air, and fox and grouse and

hare and lucivee were still keeping the storm truce, hidden deep

in their coverts. Every fir and spruce and hemlock had gone to

building fairy grottoes as the snow packed their lower branches,

under which all sorts of wonders and beauties might be hidden, to

say nothing of the wild things for whom Nature had been building

innumerable tents of white and green as they slept. The silence

was absolute, the forest's unconscious tribute to the Wonder

Worker. Even the trout brook, running black as night among its

white-capped boulders and delicate arches of frost and fern work,

between massive banks of feathery white and green, had stopped

its idle chatter and tinkled a low bell under the ice, as if only

the Angelus could express the wonder of the world.

As I came back softly in the twilight a movement in an evergreen

ahead caught my eye, and I stopped for one of the rare sights of

the woods,--a partridge going to sleep in a warm room of his own

making. He looked all about among the trees most carefully,

listened, kwit-kwitted in a low voice to himself, then, with a

sudden plunge, swooped downward head-first into the snow. I stole

to the spot where he had disappeared, noted the direction of his

tunnel, and fell forward with arms outstretched, thinking perhaps

to catch him under me and examine his feet to see how his natural

snowshoes (Nature's winter gift to every grouse) were developing,

before letting him go again. But the grouse was an old bird, not

to be caught napping, who had thought on the possibilities of

being followed ere he made his plunge. He had ploughed under the

snow for a couple of feet, then swerved sharply to the left and

made a little chamber for himself just under some snow-packed

spruce tips, with a foot of snow for a blanket over him. When I

fell forward, disturbing his rest most rudely ere he had time to

wink the snow out of his eyes, he burst out with a great whirr

and sputter between my left hand and my head, scattering snow all

over me, and thundered off through the startled woods, flicking a

branch here and there with his wings, and shaking down a great

white shower as he rushed away for deeper solitudes. There, no

doubt, he went to sleep in the evergreens, congratulating himself

on his escape and preferring to take his chances with the owl,

rather than with some other ground-prowler that might come nosing

into his hole before the light snow had time to fill it up

effectually behind him.

Next morning I was early afield, heading for a ridge where I

thought the deer of the neighborhood might congregate with the

intention of yarding for the winter. At the foot of a wild little

natural meadow, made centuries ago by the beavers, I found the

trail of two deer which had been helping themselves to some hay

that had been cut and stacked there the previous summer. My big

buck was not with them; so I left the trail in peace to push

through a belt of woods and across a pond to an old road that led

for a mile or two towards the ridge I was seeking.

Early as I was, the wood folk were ahead of me. Their tracks were

everywhere, eager, hungry tracks, that poked their noses into

every possible hiding place of food or game, showing how the

two-days' fast had whetted their appetites and set them to

running keenly the moment the last flakes were down and the storm

truce ended.

A suspicious-looking clump of evergreens, where something had

brushed the snow rudely from the feathery tips, stopped me as I

hurried down the old road. Under the evergreens was a hole in the

snow, and at the bottom of the hole hard inverted cups made by

deer's feet. I followed on to another hole in the snow (it could

scarcely be called a trail) and then to another, and another,

some twelve or fifteen feet apart, leading in swift bounds to

some big timber. There the curious track separated into three

deer trails, one of which might well be that of a ten-point buck.

Here was luck,--luck to find my quarry so early on the first day

out, and better luck that, during my long absence, the cunning

animal had kept himself and his consort clear of Old Wally and

his devices.

When I ran to examine the back trail more carefully, I found that

the deer had passed the night in a dense thicket of evergreen, on

a hilltop overlooking the road. They had come down the hill,

picking their way among the stumps of a burned clearing, stepping

carefully in each other's tracks so as to make but a single

trail. At the road they had leaped clear across from one thicket

to another, leaving never a trace on the bare even whiteness. One

might have passed along the road a score of times without

noticing that game had crossed. There was no doubt now that these

were deer that had been often hunted, and that had learned their

cunning from long experience.

I followed them rapidly till they began feeding in a little

valley, then with much caution, stealing from tree to thicket,

giving scant attention to the trail, but searching the woods

ahead; for the last "sign" showed that I was now but a few

minutes behind the deer. There they were at last, two graceful

forms gliding like gray shadows among the snow-laden branches.

But in vain I searched for a lordly head with wide rough antlers

sweeping proudly over the brow; my buck was not there. Scarcely

had I made the discovery when there was a whistle and a plunge up

on the hill on my left, and I had one swift glimpse of him, a

splendid creature, as he bounded away.

By way of general precaution, or else led by some strange sixth

sense of danger, he had left his companions feeding and mounted

the hill, where he could look back on his own track. There he had

been watching me for half an hour, till I approached too near,

when he sounded the alarm and was off. I read it all from the

trail a few moments later.

It was of no use to follow him, for he ran straight down wind.

The two others had gone quartering off at right angles to his

course, obeying his signal promptly, but having as yet no idea of

what danger followed them. When alarmed in this way, deer never

run far before halting to sniff and listen. Then, if not

disturbed, they run off again, circling back and down wind so

as to catch from a distance the scent of anything that follows on

their trail.

I sat still where I was for a good hour, watching the chickadees

and red squirrels that found me speedily, and refusing to move

for all the peekings and whistlings of a jay that would fain

satisfy his curiosity as to whether I meant harm to the deer, or

were just benumbed by the cold and incapable of further mischief.

When I went on I left some scattered bits of meat from my lunch

to keep him busy in case the deer were near; but there was no

need of the precaution. The two had learned the leader's lesson

of caution well, and ran for a mile, with many haltings and

circlings, before they began to feed again. Even then they moved

along at a good pace as they fed, till a mile farther on, when,

as I had forelayed, the buck came down from a hill to join them,

and all three moved off toward the big ridge, feeding as they

went.

Then began a long chase, a chase which for the deer meant a

straightaway game, and for me a series of wide circles--never

following the trail directly, but approaching it at intervals

from leeward, hoping to circle ahead of the deer and stalk them

at last from an unexpected quarter.

Once, when I looked down from a bare hilltop into a valley where

the trail ran, I had a most interesting glimpse of the big buck

doing the same thing from a hill farther on too far away for a

shot, but near enough to see plainly through my field glass. The

deer were farther ahead than I supposed. They had made a run for

it, intending to rest after first putting a good space between

them and anything that might follow. Now they were undoubtedly

lying down in some far-away thicket, their minds at rest, but

their four feet doubled under them for a jump at short notice.

Trust your nose, but keep your feet under you--that is deer

wisdom on going to sleep. Meanwhile, to take no chances, the wary

old leader had circled back, to wind the trail and watch it

awhile from a distance before joining them in their rest.

He stood stock-still in his hiding, so still that one might have

passed close by without noticing him. But his head was above the

low evergreens; eyes, ears, and nose were busy giving him perfect

report of everything that passed in the woods.

I started to stalk him promptly, creeping up the hill behind him,

chuckling to myself at the rare sport of catching a wild thing at

his own game. But before I sighted him again he grew uneasy (the

snow tells everything), trotted down hill to the trail, and put

his nose into it here and there to be sure it was not polluted.

Then--another of his endless devices to make the noonday siesta

full of contentment--he followed the back track a little way,

stepping carefully in his own footprints; branched off on the

other side of the trail, and so circled swiftly back to join his

little flock, leaving behind him a sad puzzle of disputing tracks

for any novice that might follow him.

So the interesting chase went on all day, skill against keener

cunning, instinct against finer instinct, through the white

wonder of the winter woods, till, late in the afternoon, it swung

back towards the starting point. The deer had undoubtedly

intended to begin their yard that day on the ridge I had

selected; for at noon I crossed the trail of the two from the

haystack, heading as if by mutual understanding in that

direction. But the big buck, feeling that he was followed,

cunningly led his charge away from the spot, so as to give no

hint of the proposed winter quarters to the enemy that was after

him. Just as the long shadows were stretching across all the

valleys from hill to hill, and the sun vanished into the last

gray bank of clouds on the horizon, my deer recrossed the old

road, leaping it, as in the morning, so as to leave no telltale

track, and climbed the hill to the dense thicket where they had

passed the previous night.

Here was my last chance, and I studied it deliberately. The deer

were there, safe within the evergreens, I had no doubt, using

their eyes for the open hillside in front and their noses for the

woods behind. It was useless to attempt stalking from any

direction, for the cover was so thick that a fox could hardly

creep through without alarming ears far less sensitive than a

deer's. Skill had failed; their cunning was too much for me. I

must now try an appeal to curiosity.

I crept up the hill flat on my face, keeping stump or scrub

spruce always between me and the thicket on the hilltop. The wind

was in my favor; I had only their eyes to consider. Somewhere,

just within the shadow, at least one pair were sweeping the back

track keenly; so I kept well away from it, creeping slowly up

till I rested behind a great burned stump within forty yards of

my game. There I fastened a red bandanna handkerchief to a stick

and waved it slowly above the stump.

Almost instantly there was a snort and a rustle of bushes in the

thicket above me. Peeking out I saw the evergreens moving

nervously; a doe's head appeared, her ears set forward, her eyes

glistening. I waved the handkerchief more erratically. My rifle

lay across the stump's roots, pointing straight at her;

but she was not the game I was hunting. Some more waving and

dancing of the bright color, some more nervous twitchings and

rustlings in the evergreens, then a whistle and a rush; the doe

disappeared; the movement ceased; the thicket was silent as the

winter woods behind me.

"They are just inside," I thought, "pawing the snow to get their

courage up to come and see." So the handkerchief danced on--one,

two, five minutes passed in silence; then something made me turn

round. There in plain sight behind me, just this side the fringe

of evergreen that lined the old road, stood my three deer in a

row--the big buck on the right--like three beautiful statues,

their ears all forward, their eyes fixed with intensest curiosity

on the man lying at full length in the snow with the queer red

flag above his head.

My first motion broke up the pretty tableau. Before I could reach

for my rifle the deer whirled and vanished like three winks,

leaving the heavy evergreen tips nodding and blinking behind them

in a shower of snow.

Tired as I was, I took a last run to see from the trail how it

all happened. The deer had been standing just within the thicket

as I approached. All three had seen the handkerchief; the tracks

showed that they had pawed the snow and moved about nervously.

When the leader whistled they had bounded straightaway down the

steep on the other side. But the farms lay in that direction, so

they had skirted the base of the hill, keeping within the fringe

of woods and heading back for their morning trail, till the red

flag caught their eye again, and strong curiosity had halted them

for another look.

Thus the long hunt ended at twilight within sight of the spot

where it began in the gray morning stillness. With marvelous

cunning the deer circled into their old tracks and followed them

till night turned them aside into a thicket. This I discovered at

daylight next morning.

That day a change came; first a south wind, then in succession a

thaw, a mist, a rain turning to snow, a cold wind and a bitter

frost. Next day when I entered the woods a brittle crust made

silent traveling impossible, and over the rocks and bare places

was a sheet of ice covered thinly with snow.

I was out all day, less in hope of finding deer than of watching

the wild things; but at noon, as I sat eating my lunch, I heard a

rapid running, crunch, crunch, crunch, on the ridge above me. I

stole up, quietly as I could, to find the fresh trails of my

three deer. They were running from fright evidently, and

were very tired, as the short irregular jumps showed. Once, where

the two leaders cleared a fallen log, the third deer had fallen

heavily; and all three trails showed blood stains where the crust

had cut into their legs.

I waited there on the trail to see what was following--to give

right of way to any hunter, but with a good stout stick handy,

for dealing with dogs, which sometimes ran wild in the woods and

harried the deer. For a long quarter-hour the woods were all

still; then the jays, which had come whistling up on the trail,

flew back screaming and scolding, and a huge yellow mongrel,

showing hound's blood in his ears and nose, came slipping,

limping, whining over the crust. I waited behind a tree till he

was up with me, when I jumped out and caught him a resounding

thump on the ribs. As he ran yelping away I fired my rifle over

his head, and sent the good club with a vengeance to knock his

heels from under him. A fresh outburst of howls inspired me with

hope. Perhaps he would remember now to let deer alone for the

winter.

Above the noise of canine lamentation I caught the faint click of

snowshoes, and hid again to catch the cur's owner at his

contemptible work. But the sound stopped far back on the trail at

the sudden uproar.

Through the trees I caught glimpses of a fur cap and a long gun

and the hawk face of Old Wally, peeking, listening, creeping on

the trail, and stepping gingerly at last down the valley, ashamed

or afraid of being caught at his unlawful hunting. "An ill wind,

but it blows me good," I thought, as I took up the trail of the

deer, half ashamed myself to take advantage of them when tired by

the dog's chasing.

There was no need of commiseration, however; now that the dog was

out of the way they could take care of themselves very well. I

found them resting only a short distance ahead; but when I

attempted to stalk them from leeward the noise of my approach on

the crust sent them off with a rush before I caught even a

glimpse of them in their thicket.

I gave up caution then and there. I was fresh and the deer were

tired,--why not run them down and get a fair shot before the sun

went down and left the woods too dark to see a rifle sight? I had

heard that the Indians used sometimes to try running a deer down

afoot in the old days; here was the chance to try a new

experience. It was fearfully hard traveling without snowshoes, to

be sure; but that seemed only to even-up chances fairly with the

deer. At the thought I ran on, giving no heed when the quarry

jumped again just ahead of me, but pushing them steadily, mile

after mile, till I realized with a thrill that I was gaining

rapidly, that their pauses grew more and more frequent, and I had

constant glimpses of deer ahead among the trees--never of the big

buck, but of the two does, who were struggling desperately to

follow their leader as he kept well ahead of them breaking the

way. Then realizing, I think, that he was followed by strength

rather than by skill or cunning, the noble old fellow tried a

last trick, which came near being the end of my hunting

altogether.

The trail turned suddenly to a high open ridge with scattered

thickets here and there. As they labored up the slope I had the

does in plain sight. On top the snow was light, and they bounded

ahead with fresh strength. The trail led straight along the edge

of a cliff, beyond which the deer had vanished. They had stopped

running here; I noticed with amazement that they had walked with

quick short steps across the open. Eager for a sight of the buck

I saw only the thin powdering of snow; I forgot the glare ice

that covered the rock beneath. The deer's sharp hoofs had clung

to the very edge securely. My heedless feet had barely struck the

rock when they slipped and I shot over the cliff, thirty feet to

the rocks below. Even as I fell and the rifle flew from my grasp,

I heard the buck's loud whistle from the thicket where he was

watching me, and then the heavy plunge of the deer as they jumped

away.

A great drift at the foot of the cliff saved me. I picked myself

up, fearfully bruised but with nothing broken, found my rifle and

limped away four miles through the woods to the road, thinking as

I went that I was well served for having delivered the deer "from

the power of the dog," only to take advantage of their long run

to secure a head that my skill had failed to win. I wondered,

with an extra twinge in my limp, whether I had saved Old Wally by

taking the chase out of his hands unceremoniously. Above all, I

wondered--and here I would gladly follow another trail over the

same ground--whether the noble beast, grown weary with running,

his splendid strength failing for the first time, and his little,

long-tended flock ready to give in and have the tragedy over,

knew just what he was doing in mincing along the cliff's edge

with his heedless enemy close behind. What did he think and feel,

looking back from his hiding, and what did his loud whistle mean?

But that is always the despair of studying the wild things. When

your problem is almost solved, night comes and the trail ends.

When I could walk again easily vacation was over, the law was on,

and the deer were safe.

SNOW BOUND

March is a weary month for the wood folk. One who follows them

then has it borne in upon him continually that life is a

struggle,--a keen, hard, hunger-driven struggle to find enough to

keep a-going and sleep warm till the tardy sun comes north again

with his rich living. The fall abundance of stored food has all

been eaten, except in out-of-the-way corners that one stumbles

upon in a long day's wandering; the game also is wary and hard

to find from being constantly hunted by eager enemies.

It is then that the sparrow falleth. You find him on the snow, a

wind-blown feather guiding your eye to the open where he fell in

mid-flight; or under the tree, which shows that he lost his grip

in the night. His empty crop tells the whole pitiful story, and

why you find him there cold and dead, his toes curled up and his

body feather-light. You would find more but for the fact that

hunger-pointed eyes are keener than yours and earlier abroad, and

that crow and jay and mink and wildcat have greater interest than

you in finding where the sparrow fell.

It is then, also, that the owl, who hunts the sparrow o' nights,

grows so light from scant feeding that he cannot fly against the

wind. If he would go back to his starting point while the March

winds are out, he must needs come down close to the ground and

yewyaw towards his objective, making leeway like an old boat

without ballast or centerboard.

The grouse have taken to bud-eating from necessity--birch buds

mostly, with occasional trips to the orchards for variety. They

live much now in the trees, which they dislike; but with a score

of hungry enemies prowling for them day and night, what can a

poor grouse do?

When a belated snow falls, you follow their particular enemy, the

fox, where he wanders, wanders, wander's on his night's hunting.

Across the meadow, to dine on the remembrance of field

mice--alas! safe now under the crust; along the brook, where he

once caught frogs; through the thicket, where the grouse were

hatched; past the bullbrier tangle, where the covey of quail once

rested nightly; into the farmyard, where the dog is loose and the

chickens are safe under lock and key, instead of roosting in

trees; across the highway, and through the swamp, and into the

big bare empty woods; till in the sad gray morning light he digs

under the wild apple tree and sits down on the snow to eat a

frozen apple, lest his stomach cry too loudly while he sleeps the

day away and tries to forget that he is hungry.

Everywhere it is the same story: hard times and poor hunting.

Even the chickadees are hard pressed to keep up appearances and

have their sweet love note ready at the first smell of spring in

the air.

This was the lesson that the great woods whispered sadly when a

few idle March days found me gliding on snowshoes over the old

familiar ground. Wild geese had honked an invitation from the

South Shore; but one can never study a wild goose; the only

satisfaction is to see him swing in on broad wings over the

decoys--one glorious moment ere the gun speaks and the dog jumps

and everything is spoiled. So I left gun and rifle behind, and

went off to the woods of happy memories to see how my deer were

faring.

The wonder of the snow was gone; there was left only its cold

bitterness and a vague sense that it ought no longer to cumber

the ground, but would better go away as soon as possible and

spare the wood folk any more suffering. The litter of a score of

storms covered its soiled rough surface; every shred of bark had

left its dark stain where the decaying sap had melted and spread

in the midday sun. The hard crust, which made such excellent

running for my snowshoes, seemed bitterly cruel when I thought of

the starving wild things and of the abundance of food on the

brown earth, just four feet below their hungry bills and noses.

The winter bad been unusually severe. Reports had come to me from

the North Woods of deep snows, and of deer dying of starvation

and cold in their yards. I confess that I was anxious as I

hurried along. Now that the hunt was over and the deer had won,

they belonged to me more than ever more even than if the stuffed

head of the buck looked down on my hall, instead of resting

proudly over his own strong shoulders. My snowshoes clicked a

rapid march through the sad gray woods, while the March wind

thrummed an accompaniment high up among the bare branches, and

the ground-spruce nodded briskly, beating time with their green

tips, as if glad of any sound or music that would break the chill

silence until the birds came back.

Here and there the snow told stories; gay stories, tragic

stories, sad, wandering, patient stories of the little

woods-people, which the frost had hardened into crust, as if

Nature would keep their memorials forever, like the records on

the sunhardened bricks of Babylon. But would the deer live? Would

the big buck's cunning provide a yard large enough for wide

wandering, with plenty of browse along the paths to carry his

flock safely through the winter's hunger? That was a story,

waiting somewhere ahead, which made me hurry away from the

foot-written records that otherwise would have kept me busy for

hours.

Crossbills called welcome to me, high overhead. Nothing can

starve them out. A red squirrel rushed headlong out of his hollow

tree at the first click of my snowshoes. Nothing can check his

curiosity or his scolding except his wife, whom he likes, and the

weasel, whom he is mortally afraid of. Chickadees followed me

shyly with their blandishments--tsic-a-deeee? with that gentle

up-slide of questioning. "Is the spring really coming? Are--are

you a harbinger?"

But the snowshoes clicked on, away from the sweet blarney,

Leaving behind the little flatterers who were honestly glad to

see me in the woods again, and who would fain have delayed me.

Other questions, stern ones, were calling ahead. Would the cur

dogs find the yard and exterminate the innocents? Would Old

Wally--but no; Wally had the "rheumatiz," and was out of the

running. Ill-wind blew the deer good that time; else he would

long ago have run them down on snowshoes and cut their throats,

as if they were indeed his "tarnal sheep" that had run wild in

the woods.

At the southern end of a great hardwood ridge I found the first

path of their yard. It was half filled with snow, unused since

the last two storms. A glance on either side, where everything

eatable within reach of a deer's neck had long ago been cropped

close, showed plainly why the path was abandoned. I followed it a

short distance before running into another path, and another,

then into a great tangle of deer ways spreading out crisscross

over the eastern and southern slopes of the ridge.

In some of the paths were fresh deer tracks and the signs of

recent feeding. My heart jumped at sight of one great hoof mark.

I had measured and studied it too often to fail to recognize its

owner. There was browse here still, to be had for the cropping. I

began to be hopeful for my little flock, and to feel a higher

regard for their leader, who could plan a yard, it seemed, as

well as a flight, and who could not be deceived by early

abundance into outlining a small yard, forgetting the late snows

and the spring hunger.

I was stooping to examine the more recent signs, when a sharp

snort made me raise my head quickly. In the path before me stood

a doe, all a-quiver, her feet still braced from the suddenness

with which she had stopped at sight of an unknown object blocking

the path ahead. Behind her two other deer checked themselves and

stood like statues, unable to see, but obeying their leader

promptly.

All three were frightened and excited, not simply curious, as

they would have been had they found me in their path

unexpectedly. The widespread nostrils and heaving sides showed

that they had been running hard. Those in the rear (I could see

them over the top of the scrub spruce, behind which I crouched in

the path) said in every muscle: "Go on! No matter what it is, the

danger behind is worse. Go on, go on!" Insistence was in the air.

The doe felt it and bounded aside. The crust had softened in the

sun, and she plunged through it when she struck, cr-r-runch,

cr-r-runch, up to her sides at every jump. The others followed,

just swinging their heads for a look and a sniff at me, springing

from hole to hole in the snow, and making but a single track. A

dozen jumps and they struck another path and turned into it,

running as before down the ridge. In the swift glimpses they gave

me I noticed with satisfaction that, though thin and a bit ragged

in appearance, they were by no means starved. The veteran leader

had provided well for his little family.

I followed their back track up the ridge for perhaps half a mile,

when another track made me turn aside. Two days before, a single

deer had been driven out of the yard at a point where three paths

met. She had been running down the ridge when something in front

met her and drove her headlong out of her course. The soft edges

of the path were cut and torn by suspicious claw marks.

I followed her flight anxiously, finding here and there, where

the snow had been softest, dog tracks big and little. The deer

was tired from long running, apparently; the deep holes in the

snow, where she had broken through the crust, were not half the

regular distance apart. A little way from the path I found her,

cold and stiff, her throat horribly torn by the pack which had

run her to death. Her hind feet were still doubled under her,

just as she had landed from her last despairing jump, when the

tired muscles could do no more, and she sank down without a

struggle to let the dogs do their cruel work.

I had barely read all this, and had not yet finished measuring

the largest tracks to see if it were her old enemy that, as dogs

frequently do, had gathered a pirate band about him and led them

forth to the slaughter of the innocents, when a far-away cry came

stealing down through the gray woods. Hark! the eager yelp of

curs and the leading hoot of a hound. I whipped out my knife to

cut a club, and was off for the sounds on a galloping run, which

is the swiftest possible gait on snowshoes.

There were no deer paths here; for the hardwood browse, upon

which deer depend for food, grew mostly on the other sides of the

ridge. That the chase should turn this way, out of the yard's

limits showed the dogs' cunning, and that they were not new at

their evil business. They had divided their forces again, as they

had undoubtedly done when hunting the poor doe whose body I had

just found. Part of the pack hunted down the ridge in full cry,

while the rest lay in wait to spring at the flying game as it

came on and drive it out of the paths into the deep snow, where

it would speedily be at their mercy. At the thought I gripped the

club hard, promising to stop that kind of hunting for good, if

only I could get half a chance.

Presently, above the scrape of my snowshoes, I heard the deer

coming, cr-r-runch! cr-r-runch! the heavy plunges growing shorter

and fainter, while behind the sounds an eager, whining trail-cry

grew into a fierce howl of canine exultation. Something was

telling me to hurry, hurry; that the big buck I had so often

hunted was in my power at last, and that, if I would square

accounts, I must beat the dogs, though they were nearer to him

now than I. The excitement of a new kind of hunt, a hunt to save,

not to kill, was tingling all over me when I circled a dense

thicket of firs with a rush, and there he lay, up to his

shoulders in the snow before me.

He had taken his last jump. The splendid strength which had

carried him so far was spent now to the last ounce. He lay

resting easily in the snow, his head outstretched on the crust

before him, awaiting the tragedy that had followed him for years,

by lake and clearing and winter yard, and that burst out behind

him now with a cry to make one's nerves shudder. The glory of his

antlers was gone; he had dropped them months before; but the

mighty shoulders and sinewy neck and perfect head showed how

well, how grandly he had deserved my hunting.

He threw up his head as I burst out upon him from an utterly

unexpected quarter--the very thing that I had so often tried to

do, in vain, in the old glorious days. "Hast thou found me, O

mine enemy? Well, here am I." That is what his eyes, great, sad,

accusing eyes, were saying as he laid his head down on the snow

again, quiet as an Indian at the torture, too proud to struggle

where nothing was to be gained but pity or derision.

A strange, uncanny silence had settled over the woods. Wolves

cease their cry in the last swift burst of speed that will bring

the game in sight. Then the dogs broke out of the cover behind

him with a fiercer howl that was too much for even his nerves to

stand. Nothing on earth could have met such a death unmoved. No

ears, however trained, could hear that fierce cry for blood

without turning to meet it face to face. With a mighty effort the

buck. whirled in the snow and gathered himself for the tragedy.

Far ahead of the pack came a small, swift bulldog that, with no

nose of his own for hunting, had followed the pirate leader for

mere love of killing. As he jumped for the throat, the buck, with

his last strength, reared on his hind legs, so as to get his fore

feet clear of the snow, and plunged down again with a hard, swift

sabre-cut of his right hoof. It caught the dog on the neck as he

rose on the spring, and ripped him from ear to tail. Deer and dog

came down together. Then the buck rose swiftly for his last blow,

and the knife-edged hoofs shot down like lightning; one straight,

hard drive with the crushing force of a ten-ton hammer behind

it--and his first enemy was out of the hunt forever. Before he

had time to gather himself again the big yellow brindle, with the

hound's blood showing in nose and ears,--Old Wally's dog,--leaped

into sight. His whining trail-cry changed to a fierce growl as he

sprang for the buck's nose.

I had waited for just this moment in hiding, and jumped to meet

it. The club came down between the two heads; and there was no

reserve this time in the muscles that swung it. It caught the

brute fair on the head, where the nose begins to come up into the

skull,--and he too had harried his last deer.

Two other curs had leaped aside with quick instinct the moment

they saw me, and vanished into the thickets, as if conscious of

their evil doing and anxious to avoid detection. But the third, a

large collie,--a dog that, when he does go wrong, becomes the

most cunning and vicious of brutes,--flew straight at my throat

with a snarl like a gray wolf cheated of his killing. I have

faced bear and panther and bull moose when the red danger-light

blazed into their eyes; but never before or since have I seen

such awful fury in a brute's face. It swept over me in an instant

that it was his life or mine; there was no question or

alternative. A lucky cut of the club disabled him, and I finished

the job on the spot, for the good of the deer and the community.

The big buck had not moved, nor tried to, after his last great

effort. Now he only turned his head and lifted it wearily, as if

to get away from the intolerable smell of his dog enemies that

lay dying under his very nose. His great, sorrowful, questioning

eyes were turned on me continually, with a look that only

innocence could possibly meet. No man on earth, I think, could

have looked into them for a full moment and then raised his hand

to slay.

I approached very quietly, and dragged the dogs away from him,

one by one. His eyes followed me always. His nostrils spread, his

head came up with a start when I flung the first cur aside to

leeward. But he made no motion; only his eyes had a wonderful

light in them when I dragged his last enemy, the one he had

killed himself, from under his very head and threw it after the

others. Then I sat down quietly in the snow, and we were face to

face at last.

He feared me--I could hardly expect otherwise, while a deer has

memory--but he lay perfectly still, his head extended on the

snow, his sides heaving. After a little while he made a few

bounds forward, at right angles to the course he had been

running, with marvelous instinct remembering the nearest point in

the many paths out of which the pack had driven him. But he

stopped and lay quiet at the first sound of my snowshoes behind

him. "The chase law holds. You have caught me; I am yours,"--this

is what his sad eyes were saying. And sitting down quietly near

him again, I tried to reassure him. "You are safe. Take your own

time. No dog shall harm you now."--That is what I tried to make

him feel by the very power of my own feeling, never more strongly

roused than now for any wild creature.

I whistled a little tune softly, which always rouses the wood

folk's curiosity; but as he lay quiet, listening, his ears shot

back and forth nervously at a score of sounds that I could not

hear, as if above the music he caught faint echoes of the last

fearful chase. Then I brought out my lunch and, nibbling a bit

myself, pushed a slice of black bread over the crust towards him

with a long stick.

It was curious and intensely interesting to watch the struggle.

At first he pulled away, as if I would poison him. Then a new

rich odor began to steal up into his hungry nostrils. For weeks

he had not fed full; he had been running hard since daylight, and

was faint and exhausted. And in all his life he had never smelled

anything so good. He turned his head to question me with his

eyes. Slowly his nose came down, searching for the bread. "If he

would only eat!-that is a truce which I would never break," I

kept thinking over and over, and stopped eating in my eagerness

to have him share with me the hunter's crust. His nose touched

it; then through his hunger came the smell of the man--the danger

smell that had followed him day after day in the beautiful

October woods, and over white winter trails when he fled for his

life, and still the man followed. The remembrance was too much.

He raised his head with an effort and bounded away.

I followed slowly, keeping well out to one side of his trail, and

sitting quietly within sight whenever he rested in the snow. Wild

animals soon lose their fear in the presence of man if one avoids

all excitement, even of interest, and is quiet in his motions.

His fear was gone now, but the old wild freedom and the intense

desire for life--a life which he had resigned when I appeared

suddenly before him, and the pack broke out behind--were coming

back with renewed force. His bounds grew longer, firmer, his

stops less frequent, till he broke at last into a deer path and

shook himself, as if to throw off all memory of the experience.

From a thicket of fir a doe, that had been listening in hiding to

the sounds of his coming and to the faint unknown click, which

was the voice of my snowshoes, came out to meet him. Together

they trotted down the path, turning often to look and listen, and

vanished at last, like gray shadows, into the gray stillness of

the March woods.

GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES

Cheokhes, the mink.

Ch'geegee-lokh, the chickadee.

Cheplahgan, the bald eagle.

Chigwooltz, the bullfrog.

Clote Scarpe, a legendary hero, like Hiawatha, of the Northern

Indians. Pronounced variously, Clote Scarpe, Groscap, Gluscap,

etc.

Deedeeaskh, the blue jay.

Hukweem, the great northern diver, or loon.

Ismaques, the fish-hawk.

Kagax, the weasel.

Kakagos, the raven.

Keeokuskh, the muskrat.

Keeonekh, the otter.

Killooleet, the white-throated sparrow.

Kookooskoos, the great horned owl.

Koskomenos, the kingfisher.

Kupkawis, the barred owl.

Kwaseekho, the sheldrake.

Lhoks, the panther.

Malsun, the wolf.

Meeko,the red squirrel.

Megaleep, the caribou.

Milicete, the name of an Indian tribe; written also Malicete.

Mitches, the birch partridge, or ruffed grouse.

Moktaques, the hare.

Mooween, the black bear.

Musquash, the muskrat.

Nemox, the fisher.

Pekquam, the fisher.

Seksagadagee, the Canada grouse, or spruce partridge.

Skooktum, the trout.

Tookhees, the wood grouse.

Upweekis, the Canada lynx.

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