JAGG, THE SKOOTAWAY GOAT
After the tragical deaths of Tom-Tom and Upsidaisi, my life was strangely lonely. No one who has not experienced it can realise the subtle, almost spiritual attachment which may exist between man and his kindred of the wild. The Squirrels barked at each other, but there was no bark for me except on the oak tree at my cabin door. The little Birds sang, but not for me. Whenever I approached a thicket where the woodland chorus was in rehearsal, trying to learn the Bird-calls which are printed in the books, there was a spontaneous silence which seemed to possess a positive rather than a negative quality.
I felt like a marked man. In my fevered fancy I could hear the wood creatures saying to one another: “There goes the man who lived with Little Upsidaisi. By the way, have you seen Upsidaisi lately? What a brute theman looks, to be sure! Come, let us skip, while we have the time.”
So it was that I seemed to be the centre of an ever-widening circle of departure. Feet pattered away from me in a continual diminuendo, dying at last into that mournful, unchanging silence which encompassed me like a blanket of gloom.
It is not my intention to depress the reader, but the scientific observer must make accurate records, and my mental state at the time may have been partially responsible for what followed.
Regularly, I took my walk of fourteen miles into town. At first I had contented myself with weekly visits to the post-office, but as the returned manuscripts augmented, I went every morning and took my simple breakfast at a restaurant. For some occult reason, I have never been able to make coffee even remotely resembling that customarily prepared by my immediate ancestor on the feminine side.
The long, business-like envelopes which I received every morning contributed largely to my local importance, and the gossip of theplace buzzed eternally about my head. According to some, I was an insurance agent. Others admitted me to the bar without examination, and a certain keen observer, well up in the guileful ways of commerce, thought I had paid two dollars to get my name on somebody’s “list,” thereby being guaranteed “lots of mail.”
Fortunately, no hint of my true calling escaped, and the rejection blanks continued to accumulate. I have preserved these with the idea of incorporating them in a psychological treatise onThe Gentle Art of Turning Down, which will be printed as soon as I get a publisher for the noble, epoch-making volume upon which I am at present engaged.
I had learned that editors were variable, and were not always what they seemed. A rejection was merely an indication of the man’s mood at the time he got my piece, and I have, more than once, sold the same thing to him later for a goodly sum. I offer no explanation of this, as my field is limited to animal, rather than human observations, and the Labour Union to which I belong is very strict in suchmatters. I may be permitted to add, however, that one editor, to whom I sent a mental fledgling for the second or third time, wrote me a personal letter in which he said that he was no more of a fool now than he was three months ago. I do not know what he could have meant by the statement, but I record it in the hope that someone else may.
For a long period there had been nothing in my note-book but maltese crosses and items pertaining to the weather and to my daily tasks. One morning it rained so hard that I was obliged to postpone my walk to town until afternoon. I made the journey in the usual time, secured the customary number of returned manuscripts, and bought stamps to send them out again. I thought, as I turned away, that the pursuit of literature was little more than sending out manuscripts to get money to buy stamps to send out manuscripts to get money to buy stamps to send out manuscripts to get money to buy stamps to—but I forbear. My meditations ran on like this for three pages or more, and the end was like the beginning, so what’s the use?
As I approached the station, I saw several of my fellow-townsmen headed for the north-east. They had a determined, yet pleasantly excited air which interested me, and I went back to make inquiries of the postmaster.
“Where are they going?” I asked.
“Hey?”
“I asked where they were going.”
“Who?”
I inclined my head toward the company on the far horizon. I could not incline it much, for it was heavy, being full of books.
“Oh,” said the postmaster. “Them. Over to Porcupine Hill.”
“Porcupine Hill!” I repeated in astonishment. “Where is it?”
“Follow your nose,” he replied, somewhat brusquely, slamming down the window in a way which indicated that the interview was ended.
My pulses throbbed with new joy, for here, at last, was a diversion. I lost no time in following my nose, first taking the precaution to point that useful organ in a bee-line with the disappearing company. Ultimately I joined them, to their surprise if not their pleasure.
“We’re late,” said one of them. “The show’s just beginning.”
I quickened my steps to a run, and was presently brought up with a round turn against a rope stretched across the foot of the hill. Several strange-looking balls were rolling from the crest toward us, and a man with a note-book was registering bets, all of which, however, were in small coin.
“What is it?” I inquired in a loud, clear voice which commanded instant attention.
“Porcupines,” answered a courteous gentleman in blue overalls, a hickory shirt, and one suspender. “Every afternoon at two, when it ain’t raining, they roll down that there hill.”
“You be n’t a detective, be you?” asked an agitated voice at my elbow. It was the postmaster.
“I am not,” I returned, with freezing dignity.
“All right,” continued the postmaster. “Here, bookie, ten to one on Salina Ann. Salina’s a high roller,” he explained, turning to me, “but she ain’t in this race.”
The Porcupines came in at our feet, a hugedark one rolling under the wire three lengths ahead. Dizzy, exhausted, and panting, he sat up straight for a moment, launched a playful quill at the bookmaker, and shambled off around the hillside.
Upon the crest of a distant hill, a single figure sat in monumental silence. It had two points at the top, and I wondered what it might be. At last I concluded that it was a rock.
Throughout the long, sunny afternoon, I watched the interesting pastime with keen enjoyment. Had not my exchequer been so pitifully low, I should have staked a dime or so myself upon Salina Ann. She won three races in succession and finally retired, giddy, but triumphant.
When the last race was over, as much as four dollars had changed hands, and there were loud protests against the system of bookmaking employed. As an outsider, I was appealed to, but I declined to interfere, and, remembering the long fourteen-mile walk which lay between me and my cabin, I loosened up for the home stretch, noting, as I started, thatthe peculiar, pointed rock had disappeared from the opposite hill.
During the ninth mile from the Porcupine track, I was acutely conscious of observation. Little Brothers of the Woods can always feel the bright eyes that are turned upon them from the thickets. I paused several times, but heard nothing and saw nothing, though I put on my glasses and thus gained a sort of second sight.
Afterward, I meditated. Perhaps the ban upon me had been removed and the forest folk no longer feared to look at me. I made one maltese cross in my note-book, drawing a red circle about it to indicate possibilities, and entered a full account of the Porcupine race, which so far, according to my knowledge, has been described by only one other writer.
My sleep was more nearly normal that night than it had been since the lamentable occurrences chronicled in the previous chapter.
For a time, my life was as usual. I arose in the morning, just before sunrise, and took a cold bath in the lake. Then I built a fire and made coffee. I had postponed my trips totown until afternoon in order to attend the Porcupine races, and this condemned me to drink my own coffee, but many sacrifices must be made by the earnest student. I would wash the dishes, swishing them back and forth in the lake, sweep and dust the cabin, and, by nine o’clock, be ready to devote myself to literature.
I worked until twelve, when I prepared luncheon, cleared up again, cut wood if I needed it, and started for town. I had timed myself and learned that it took me just forty minutes to walk the fourteen miles. I thus had ample time to go to the post-office, and usually reached Porcupine Hill a few minutes before the entertainment began.
It must have been two weeks later that, in the same section of the homeward trail, I again felt myself keenly observed. It was disquieting, more especially as I beat about among the bushes for a long time without finding anything. I meditated that night in two separate meditations of one hour each, but came to no conclusions.
By the pitiless light of high noon and thebaldly truthful report of my grandmother’s cracked mirror, opportunely left in the cabin, I discovered that I was moulting at the top, and cast about for some means to remedy the condition, not caring to be a front row observer at the noble drama of Unnatural History. While in town that day, I purchased a small flask of whiskey, as I had seen in the beauty columns, more than once, that it was a good hair tonic, but I did not know whether to apply it internally or externally.
I attended the Porcupine race that afternoon, and lost forty-three cents on Salina Ann, who flunked miserably every time. Much depressed, I started homeward, just at sunset, and, in a quiet place, I attempted to improve my spirits by taking a teaspoonful of the hair tonic. I learned immediately that the remedy was not meant to be used internally, and I did not doubt that external application would produce a crop of tresses which might well be the envy of a professional musician.
A little nearer my cabin than before, I was once more conscious of the fact that I was not alone. Somewhat excited, I crept intothe thicket and swung my knapsack about violently. I distinctly detected a strange odour, which was like nothing else on earth, but otherwise all was as usual except for an inexplicable breeze blowing directly against the wind.
Fancy an Indian blanket, of Angora wool, which has been used by three tribes indiscriminately, year in and year out, in sickness and in health, hanging on a clothes line with a high wind blowing. Let the wind be blowing from the east and the scientific observer be standing just west of the blanket. It will give you a faint idea of what I met in the thicket, though at the time I wrongly attributed it to the misapplication of the hair tonic.
On reaching my cabin I discovered that the flask had dropped out of my knapsack when I swung it through the undergrowth, but, rather than go back, I determined to spend another fifty cents the next day, provided that I could do so without drawing upon myself unjust suspicion.
The next day—ah, with what emotion Iwrite those words! How little do we dream, as we close our eyes in peaceful slumber, what the next day may bring forth! Careless, happy, even whistling as was my wont, I performed my simple household tasks, rejoicing in the fragrant morning air, the cheery chatter of the Squirrels, and the progress of the pan of bread I was baking over my open fire.
From the woods at the left came a brisk breeze. Someone seemed to be airing a blanket such as I have described above. Before I had time to investigate, a huge white ball rolled toward me, with no visible means of propulsion. There was no incline and the speed of it was tremendous. Deep, pointed excavations marked the trail over which it came, and my hair was raised far beyond the potential power of the lost tonic. So swiftly that I was breathless with wonder, the thing rolled into my fire.
Then there was a shrill cry of pain, but the momentum was too great, and it went straight on through, stopping on the other side of my woodland hearthstone, singed, and apparently dead. Trembling with excitement, I mademy way toward it, but before I could offer my sympathetic assistance, it had assorted itself and was standing up on four singed and shaky legs.
It was Jagg.
How a Goat had penetrated that fastness, where the hands of few white men had ever trod, was beyond me, but it was a condition and not a theory which confronted me. Here, at my hospitable door, so lately made desolate by the departure of Tom-Tom and Little Upsidaisi, was a new and wonderful creature. The singeing had overpowered the Indian blanketmotifand made way for the softer notes of the hair tonic. Jagg was plainly intoxicated, and immediately upon my recognition of it, I named him.
His suffering was pathetic. The burns were merely superficial, but he was very much soiled, and his head was swollen far beyond its normal limits. His tongue, which he promptly offered for my inspection, was dark brown and fuzzy. He sat down, stroked his brow wearily with one of his four feet (fore, if you prefer), and stuttered out an hysterical bleat.
My friends in the telegraph office used to characterise me occasionally as a Goat, and I am not prepared to admit that there is not something in the theory of reincarnation, for at that moment a great pity dominated me.
“Jagg, old man,” I said, tenderly, “you have misjudged your capacity and you are full. Come.”
He followed me into the cabin, eager, yet shamefaced, and I lifted him to my bed. I anointed his burns with carron oil and tied a cold wet bandage over his temples. He was only an ordinary Goat, with the customary tuft of spinach in the maxillary region, now badly singed, but there was something very human in the grateful look he gave me just before closing his eyes for twenty-one hours of sodden sleep.
I rolled up in an extra blanket that night and slept on the floor of the cabin, rather than disturb Jagg. We might have slept together without violating any of the precepts ofThe Ladies’ Own, for, even in high circles, people often sleep with Kids, but my natural instincts were against it and I let Jagg have the bed.
In the morning, I closely scrutinised the ground over which my butter-ball had come. At regular intervals were the deep, pointed excavations before referred to, and I surmised that they had been made by his horns. In them I appropriately planted goatsrue. My grandmother had left some seeds of this herb on the shelf in the cabin, and I had been intending to plant them for some time.
I followed the trail into the woods until I came to the thicket where I had felt myself observed. The empty flask lay on the ground and corroborated my suspicions. The branches were broken down all through the shrubbery, and the bare earth was thick with tiny hoof-marks in prints of two and three which were strangely suggestive of a waltz.
When I went back, Jagg came out of the cabin, very pale and repentant, blinking sleepily and wagging his insignificant tail. I spoke a few kind words to him and we breakfasted together.
In less than a week he had recovered his spirits, and his devotion to me was really extraordinary. He followed me like an unpaid bill and never took his eyes away from me except to sleep. At night he lay like a dog in my cabin door, whither he had dragged his bed, and usually waked me by prodding me playfully, in some sensitive spot, with the sharp tip of one of his horns.
“There was something very human in the grateful look he gave me just before closing his eyes.”
“There was something very human in the grateful look he gave me just before closing his eyes.”
“There was something very human in the grateful look he gave me just before closing his eyes.”
There was something mysterious in his eyes. They were fairly human in their expressiveness, and his intelligence was also of that high order which Man proudly claims as his own. I discovered it accidentally.
Most hermits, I find, are wont to relieve their solitude by declaiming poetry, and I was no exception to the rule. I knew all ofThanatopsisand most ofThe Ancient Mariner. When I recited these, Jagg always listened with an air of polite interest. One morning, however, as I built my fire, I chanced to repeat Cowper’s beautiful lines beginning: “O for a lodge in some vast wilderness!”
Immediately my attention was attracted by Jagg. He tore about madly, giving every evidence of joy, bleating loudly, and furiously wagging his stub of a tail. He stood on hishead, rising at once to the perpendicular, then as swiftly reversed. Something happened then which I could not explain, and I rubbed my eyes in wonder. A moment before he had been there and now he was nowhere in sight. I never learned how he did it, for he moved too rapidly for the eye to follow, but, according to my theory, he put his four feet together and with a single powerful muscular effort shot himself into space, alighting perhaps a quarter of a mile distant, and returning when he pleased. This gave him his sub-title in my records: “The Skootaway Goat.”
At first I was overjoyed to have the faithful animal with me, but, by insensible degrees, his companionship began to pall. He went with me once to the Porcupine race, but speedily made both of us unpopular. Again, I locked him into the cabin, but no sooner had I returned than I regretted it. He ate one of my note-books and thereby many priceless observations are lost to the world.
I bought a rope and tied him to a tree, but he joined me at Porcupine Hill with evident satisfaction at the reunion. I got a long chainfrom the village and this foiled him only once. He filed it apart with tooth and horn and acquired so insatiable an appetite for cold metal that he even hunted my pockets at night for coins. Canned goods were eaten, tin and all, as soon as I brought them home. I began to perceive, dimly, that I must part with Jagg, and ultimately regarded the notion as a relief measure passed by an overwhelming majority.
Yet ways and means were lacking, and also, possibly, the initiative. He had grown into a very handsome animal by this time, and I was so accustomed to him that the woods had an unfriendly, alien smell when I fared forth alone. I had given up the thought of tying him, and he usually went with me, quite as a matter of course.
At the post-office one morning, I received a letter from my lawyers, stating that I had fallen heir to another ancestral estate about one hundred miles south of my present habitation. My grandfather on my mother’s side had just been reaped, and this testimonial of his affection was left to me. I folded theletter idly and stood for some moments, lost in deep thought. Jagg snatched it out of my hand and ate it, but not before I had made myself master of its contents. Later on, I was thankful for the ponderous verbiage with which the idea was practically swamped, though, as it happened, the obscurity was useless, the legal description of the property being appended.
Jagg ruminated for some time upon the letter, but experienced no personal discomfort. He was very intelligent and doubtless believed, with the great Macaulay, that “a page digested is better than a book hurriedly read.”
Still we lived together—that is, Jagg lived, and I existed. The sight of him, through constant attrition, became an annoyance, and finally an irritation. He ate my clothes, tore all the love scenes out of my small but choice library of fiction, and took my article on Natural History Shams to ornament the head of his bed.
Before long I discovered an infallible method of communicating with him. I would writemy remarks on a small slip of paper, in my fine Italian hand, and feed the paper to Jagg. As soon as it was assimilated into his system, he understood, but his answers were limited. He could shake his head when he meant “no” and nod when he meant “yes.” A bleat, of indescribable tonality, meant that he was unfamiliar with the topic, or else prevented by his personal handicap from making any sort of an explanation.
For instance, one fine morning, just at sunrise, I wrote: “Jagg, I am going to the village this afternoon. Will you be a nice Goatie and stay at home?”
At nine o’clock, he grasped my meaning. Coming close to my knee he looked up into my face with an expression of adoring love, and sadly but firmly shook his head. I never knew him to lie, and at noon, when I started, Jagg rioted along beside me.
In town, by this time, they had decided that I was an editor on my Summer vacation, and they used to call us “The Two Bocks.” For some reason, this irritated me to such an extent that I was ready to lay out Jagg on hislast bier, but I forebore to pull the trigger through a lingering belief in re-incarnation. Suppose Jagg were my grandmother, or some other distinguished ancestor? Moreover, I knew, through the subtle workings of some sixth sense, that I could not lose him before his time.
It happened that the county authorities stopped the Porcupine races by building barriers of chicken-coop netting here and there across the hill, and the inhabitants of the village, to a man, blamed me for it. I protested my innocence, but I was an outsider and my efforts were futile. The gambling laws are rightfully stringent, but Lambs gambol, so why not Porcupines?
“’Tain’t no use o’ lyin’ about it,” said the postmaster, shifting his quid, “you’ve had it in fer us ever since Salina Ann lost you that there forty-three cents. It was a day for the mud-larks and was heavy goin’, and you should have known better than to bet on her, but you seemed to have a hunch. It’s a gent’s sport, partook of by gents, and you’d orter be able to take defeat like a gent, or else,” he added, with bitter emphasis, “git!”
Two days later, a boycott was proclaimed against me. I could buy nothing in the village except postage stamps, and I must either move or starve.
My heart was heavy, then I thought of my new possessions and the cloud lifted. My medical adviser had chased me out of town until September first, so I still had a month to live outdoors. I would go, I decided—and I would lose Jagg. I did not doubt his ability to get his living—he had got mine, whenever I had brought canned goods home.
I wrote out one morning: “Jagg, I am going to clean house,” and fed him the slip. An hour or so later he came to me and nodded intelligently, but I could see the lingering sadness upon his visage and, for the first time, it struck me that Jagg might once have been married.
Under this safe disguise, I packed my things and swept out the cabin with a broom and a pail of water. Jagg watched me intently, and I saw that I would have to deceive him if I escaped. I pondered long after I had resolved myself into a committee of ways and means, but my bright ideas were all packed away withmoth balls on the high shelf of my mind until such time as I could get to my typewriter and begin anew the bombardment of the magazines.
That night we sat in darkness, for Jagg had made a light luncheon of the only remaining candle, but I was patient and bided my time, knowing that on the morrow I would give him the last slip.
In the morning I began to scrub the cabin vigorously. When I went after another cake of soap, I saw that there was nothing left but a piece of the wrapper about the size of a curl paper, and, since I have the usual masculine aversion to curl papers and wrappers, I gave an exclamation of horror.
Jagg’s guilty face betrayed him, and I hastened to my table. “If you ate that soap,” I wrote, “you will have to stay here while I go to town for more. If you ate it, nod, and if you are willing to stay, nod. It will be better for you if you decide to stay.” These last words I underlined with red ink to give them a sinister significance.
After assimilation, Jagg came to me and nodded twice. He was evidently sincere inhis repentance, so I took my suit case, and my note-books, and set out for the station with a light heart. He sat in the door of the cabin, watching me wistfully, and the old, familiar, Indian-blanket odour sensibly decreased as I progressed.
When I boarded the train, he was nowhere in sight, and my pulses throbbed with exultation. Freedom at last, after weeks of Jagg! It was too good to believe.
I found my new cabin occupied by a morose, hickory-shirted individual christened “Abadiah,” but known simply as “Ab.” He refused to believe that I was the rightful owner of the place, and I had no way of proving it, as my evidence had been eaten. He said he’d just “squat” round there until he saw a written order to move out, and I made the best of a bad bargain. There were two cots in the cabin, so I did not mind particularly, and it was not altogether unpleasant to have someone of my own species with me after my long isolation.
Weary, but foolishly light-hearted, I went to sleep. When I awoke, I had the same old uneasy feeling of being watched, and, rubbingmy eyes, I saw, sitting on the foot of my cot—who should it be but Jagg, chewing the cud of reflection?
An old silk hat was wedged tightly over his horns, there was a baleful gleam of mockery in his singularly human eyes, and around his neck was tied an ordinary express tag, which was inscribed, simply: “Please pass the Butter.” Where he had obtained it, I do not know, but he had evidently taken the next train.
When Ab woke up, he viewed the new arrival with disfavour, which was promptly reciprocated by said arrival.
“Likely lookin’ animile,” grunted Ab. “Whose is it?”
“It seems to be ours,” I answered, with a hollow laugh.
“Smells like thunder, don’t it?” asked Ab.
Jagg bleated five times in rapid succession and plunged out into the fresh air, then turned toward the spring where we got our drinking water and took off the brakes. Before any one could prevent him, he had taken a bath in the spring and emerged dripping wet, with his hat still on.
Ab’s disgust knew no bounds. “Bilin’ the water won’t help it none now,” he said. “Reckon we’ll have to drink bug juice.” He drew a flask from his pocket and took a long draught, smacking his lips with evident enjoyment.
Here Jagg did his Skootaway stunt, and Ab blinked. There was not even a glimmer of white in the air—one merely had the impression that something had gone by.
“Say, pardner,” said Ab, brokenly, “tell me the truth. Have I got ’em, or was there a Goat with a plug hat on settin’ here a minute ago?”
“The Goat and the hat were both here,” I assured him, and he sighed in relief. “I suppose,” he continued, meditatively, “that we both orter take the pledge.”
Jagg returned in time for breakfast and sat opposite us. The dislike between him and Ab speedily ripened into hate, and I could see that a catastrophe was due before long, but I made no allusion to it.
“What be you goin’ to call the beast?” asked Ab.
“Haven’t thought about it,” I returned, shortly.
“I suppose he wouldn’t need to be called,” remarked Ab. “He seems to be here most of the time.”
I smiled as pleasantly as could be expected under the circumstances, and Ab went on with his part of the sketch. “Too bad he ain’t a Sheep.”
“Why?” I asked, seeing that he was waiting for the question.
“Had a fool friend once,” observed Ab, “with one of them high-toned stock farms. He had one cussed old Sheep of some fancy breed that he paid five thousand dollars for. The boys used to call him Hi-ram.”
I made no answer, being busy with the dishes, and Ab retreated into the shrubbery. “Say,” he yelled, from a respectful distance, “be you English?”
My blood burned to be at him, but I did not wish to quarrel with the only human being for miles around, nor to lower myself to the level of my kindred of the wild, who fight it out with claw and tooth and fang. Jagg, who was sittingnear me, snorted loudly with anger and the hair on the back of his neck bristled.
He came to me, and by repeated significant gestures made me understand that he wished me to remove his hat. I did so, but with difficulty.
When Ab appeared at dinner time, Jagg took no apparent notice of him. The kettle was singing cheerily and the delicious scent of the frying bacon was abroad in the landscape. “Ab,” I called, “get some more sticks and put them on the fire.”
He bent over the cheerful flame and replenished the blaze with an armful of chips which he had found in the woods. Jagg was not a part of the domestic scene and I did not know where he was, but I heard a loud imprecation, saw Ab careening madly in midair, and fancied that I saw a glimmer of white just over the shrubbery.
My quick, active mind at once inferred that I should have to add Ab’s biography to my great work:The Lives of the Bunted.
Nothing was said, and on the surface, at least, all things were as usual, but I saw the red gleam of implacable hate in the faces ofmy two companions, and dreaded the deadly combat which must soon take place.
For a week or more there was comparative peace, then, one morning when I opened my cabin door to admit the fresh air of dawn, I saw a pathetic sight. On my threshold, faithful to the last, was Jagg, stark and stiff and cold in death.
He lay flat on his back, his eyes wide open, and his feet were at right angles to his body. Therigor mortishad already set in to such an extent that I felt as if I had struck a picket fence when I endeavoured to pass. It was characteristic of him, perhaps, that he could not even die without arranging some kind of a trap for me to fall into. I was obliged to move him before I could get outdoors, and the undertaking proved unusually difficult.
I gave him a decent burial, and painted him a headstone, but I never saw Ab again. The Goat’s body was bloated in a way which led me to suspect poison, and, as time goes on, my suspicion becomes stronger, for the end of a wild animal is always a tragedy, and Jagg was unquestionably wild.