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Title: Wood-folk comedies
        The play of wild-animal life on a natural stage

Author: William J. Long

Illustrator: Charles Livingston Bull

Release date: October 15, 2024 [eBook #74583]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Harper & Brothers

Credits: Susan E., David E. Brown, Sue Clark, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOOD-FOLK COMEDIES ***





WOOD-FOLK COMEDIES

[Illustration]




  BOOKS BY
  WILLIAM J. LONG

  WOOD-FOLK COMEDIES
  HOW ANIMALS TALK

  HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
  ESTABLISHED 1817




[Illustration:                                         [See p. 105

  “_Deer appear on the opposite shore, stepping daintily; the wild
  ducks glide out of their hiding place._”]




  WOOD-FOLK COMEDIES

  _The Play of Wild-Animal Life
  on a Natural Stage_

  BY
  WILLIAM J. LONG

  _Author of
  “How Animals Talk” “Brier-Patch Philosophy”
  “School of the Woods” “Northern Trails” etc._

  _Illustrated_

  [Illustration]

  _HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
  NEW YORK AND LONDON_




  WOOD-FOLK COMEDIES

  Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers
  Printed in the United States of America
  Published October, 1920

  I-U




CONTENTS


  CHAP.                                  PAGE

     I. PRELUDE: MORNING ON MOOSEHEAD       3

    II. THE BIRDS’ TABLE                   15

   III. FOX COMEDY                         32

    IV. PLAYERS IN SABLE                   44

     V. WOLVES AND WOLF TALES              57

    VI. EARS FOR HEARING                   78

   VII. HEALTH AND A DAY                   90

  VIII. NIGHT LIFE OF THE WILDERNESS      113

    IX. STORIES FROM THE TRAIL            138

     X. TWO ENDS OF A BEAR STORY          176

    XI. WHEN BEAVER MEETS OTTER           184

   XII. A NIGHT BEWITCHED                 214

  XIII. THE TRAIL OF THE LOUP-GAROU       233

   XIV. FROM A BEAVER LODGE               256

    XV. COMEDIANS ALL                     283




ILLUSTRATIONS


  “DEER APPEAR ON THE OPPOSITE SHORE, STEPPING
      DAINTILY; THE WILD DUCKS GLIDE OUT OF
      THEIR HIDING PLACE”                         _Frontispiece_

  “HE SCRAMBLED UP IT WITH ALMOST THE EASE OF A
      SQUIRREL AND DISAPPEARED INTO THE TOP”      _Facing p._ 42

  “THE REST SPREAD INTO A FAN-SHAPED FORMATION
      AS THEY CAME STRAIGHT ON”                       “       74

  “HE IS A VERY EXPERT FISHERMAN, AND FINDS PLENTY
      TO EAT WITHOUT INTERFERING WITH ANY OTHER”      “      188

  “THEIR VERY ATTITUDE MADE ME FEEL QUEER, FOR
      THEY WERE IN TOUCH WITH A MATTER OF WHICH
      I HAD NO WARNING”                               “      226

  “WITH A SUDDEN ACCESS OF COURAGE HE POUNCED
      ON HIS FIND, WHIRLED IT UP IN THE AIR,
      SCAMPERED HITHER AND YON LIKE A PLAYING
      KITTEN”                                         “      242

  “THE SILHOUETTE OF THAT QUIET BEAVER STOOD
      OUT LIKE A WATCHMAN AGAINST THE EVENING
      TWILIGHT”                                       “      266

  “THEN HE PEEKS CAUTIOUSLY AROUND THE TREE,
      AND VERY LIKELY FINDS A BLACK NOSE COMING
      TO MEET HIM”                                    “      296




WOOD-FOLK COMEDIES

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

PRELUDE: MORNING ON MOOSEHEAD


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

THE BIRDS’ TABLE


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

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

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

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




[Illustration]

FOX COMEDY


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: “_He scrambled up it with almost the ease of a squirrel
and disappeared into the top._”]

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

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

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

PLAYERS IN SABLE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

WOLVES AND WOLF TALES


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: “_The rest spread into a fan-shaped formation as they
came straight on._”]

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

EARS FOR HEARING


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

HEALTH AND A DAY

  “Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors
  ridiculous.”--EMERSON.


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

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

  I heard the merry grasshopper then sing,
    The black-clad cricket bear a second part;
  They kept one tune and played on the same string,
    Seeming to glory in their little art.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “And now from the vast of the Lord shall the waters of sleep
    Roll in on the souls of men;
    But who will reveal to our waking ken
  The forms that swim and the shapes that creep
  Under the waters of sleep?”

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

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

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

NIGHT LIFE OF THE WILDERNESS


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

STORIES OF THE TRAIL


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: _A Pretty Crisscross_

Sketch of the trail of a pair of foxes coming from _a_, at the right,
and going at _b_. Arrow points indicate the direction of the trail;
opposite points where a fox went off at a tangent, and returned,
stepping carefully in his own tracks. Single lines show where the foxes
followed one behind the other; double lines Where they ran side by
side. From _a_ to _b_ is about two hundred yards in a straight line.
Note that, when the foxes end their crisscross, they head away in the
direction they were holding when they first appeared.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

TWO ENDS OF A BEAR STORY


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

WHEN BEAVER MEETS OTTER


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: “_He is a very expert fisherman, and finds plenty to eat
without interfering with any other._”]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

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

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

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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




[Illustration]

A NIGHT BEWITCHED


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: “_Their very attitude made me feel queer, for they were
in touch with a matter of which I had no warning._”]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

THE TRAIL OF THE LOUP-GAROU


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  About the fields religiously they went
  With hallowing charms, the werewolf thence to fray.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: “_With a sudden access of courage he pounced on his
find, whirled it up in the air, scampered hither and yon like a playing
kitten._”]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

FROM A BEAVER LODGE


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: “_The silhouette of that quiet beaver stood out like a
watchman against the evening twilight._”]

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

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

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

COMEDIANS ALL


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: “_Then he peeks cautiously around the tree, and very
likely finds a black nose coming to meet him._”]

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration]


THE END




FOOTNOTES:

[1] “I use this term [struggle] in a large and metaphorical sense,
including dependence of one being on another, and including success in
leaving off spring.” (Darwin, _Origin of Species_ sixth London edition,
page 59). This loose definition of the metaphor--which makes the baby
playing with his toes a struggler because he depends on his mother, and
which makes the guinea hen a better struggler than the eagle because
one lays fifty eggs and the other only two--shows the absurdity of the
whole struggle notion. All illustrations used by Darwin, such as the
succession of forest trees, are of the same loosely-metaphorical kind.
So long as English words have any meaning, there is no more “struggle”
in the growth or death of forest trees than in waking to healthy life
at the call of the sun or in going to sleep in the drowsy twilight.

[2] The interior arrangements vary in different localities; but all
beaver houses I have examined seem to be built on the same general
plan. The following description is copied from a lodge of eight beavers
which I laid open on the Mirimichi River, in New Brunswick. It was
very clean, and a faint aroma of musk pervaded it three or four months
after the animals had gone away. The description applies to other
lodges I have opened, and is typical, I think, of all winter lodges in
the north. A beaver’s summer house is more carelessly built, and the
interior is a single large room, as described on page 275.

[3] For a description of the winter lodge, see page 197-200.




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.





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