CHAPTER IVTHE CROWS

SOCIALLY UNATTRACTIVE

“STEADILY WINGING THEIR WAYTO THE CHOSEN SPOT”

OF all the wild life among the dunes, the crow is the most active and conspicuous. He is ever present in the daytime, and his black form seems to be intimately associated with nearly every mass and contour in the landscape.

The artists and the poets can love him, but the hand of the prosaic and the philistine is against him. His enemies are numberless, and his life is one of constant combat and elusion. The owls seek him at night, and during the day he meets antagonism in many forms. Some ornithologists have tried to find justification for the crow, but the weight of the testimony is against him. He pilfers the eggs and nestlings of the songsters, invades the newly planted cornfields, and apparently abuses every confidence reposed in him.

He has been known to take his family into fields of sprouting potatoes and, when the plants were hardly out of the ground, feed its members on thesoft tubers which were used as seed. Even very young chickens and ducks enter into his economies. He is an inveterate mischiefmaker, and by those who fail to see the attractive sides of his character, is looked upon as a general nuisance.

He cannot be considered valuable from a utilitarian point of view, but as a picturesque element he possesses many charms. Notwithstanding the sins laid at his door, this bird is of absorbing interest. His genteel insolence, his ability to cope with the wiles of his persecutors, and his complete self-assurance may well challenge our admiration.

He takes full charge of the dune country before the morning sun appears above the horizon, and maintains his vigils until the evening shadows relieve him from further responsibility. All of the happenings on the sands, and among the pines, are subjected to his careful inspection and noisy comment. His curiosity is intense, and any unusual object or event will attract his excited scrutiny and an agitated assemblage of his friends.

Like many people, he is both wise and foolish to a surprising degree. He is crafty and circumspect in his methods of obtaining food and avoiding most of his enemies, but shows a lack of judgment when his curiosity is aroused.

He will approach quite near to a person sitting still, but will retreat in great trepidation at the slightest movement. An old crow knows the difference between a cane and a gun, but a man carrying a gun can ride a horse much nearer to him than he can go on foot.

In the community life of the crows there is much material for study. Their social organization is cohesive and effective. It is impossible not to believe that they have a limited language. Different cries produce different effects among them. They undoubtedly communicate with each other. The older and wiser crows have qualities of leadership which compel or attract the obedience of the sable hordes that follow them in long processions through the air, to and from the feeding grounds, and to the roosting-places at night.

The cries of the leaders are distinctive, and the entire band will wheel and change the direction of its flight when the loud signal comes from the head of the column. These bands often number several thousand birds.

(From the Author’s Etching)NEIGHBORHOOD GOSSIP

(From the Author’s Etching)

NEIGHBORHOOD GOSSIP

After spending the day in detached groups, they gather late in the afternoon, and prepare for the flight to the roosting-grounds, which is an affair of the utmost importance and ceremony. A single scout will come ahead, and after slowly and carefully inspecting the area in the forest where the night is usually spent, he returns in the direction from which he came.

In a few minutes several crows come over the same course and apparently verify the conditions. These also return, and a little later, perhaps twenty or thirty more will appear and fly all over the territory under consideration. They go and report to the main body beyond the hills, and soon the horizon becomes black with the oncoming phalanxes, steadily winging their way to the chosen spot.

For a long time the sky above it is filled with their dark forms, circling and hovering over and among the trees. Much uncertainty seems to agitate them, and there is a great deal of noisy confusion before even comparative quiet comes. It requires about half an hour for them to get comfortably settled after their arrival. Sentinels are posted and they maintain a vigilant watch during the night.

I have sat quietly on a log and seen these multitudes settle into the trees around me in the deep woods. Although perfectly motionless, I have sometimes been detected by a watchful sentinel. His quick, loud note of alarm arouses the entire aggregation, and the air is immediately filled withthe turmoil of discordant cries and beating wings. Sacred precincts have been invaded, and an enemy is within the gates.

After much anxiety, and shifting of positions, confidence seems to be finally restored, and the black masses on the bending boughs become quiet.

A footfall on the dead leaves, the snapping of a twig, a suspicious movement among the trees, or the hoot of an owl, may alarm the wary watchers and start another uproar that will result in complete desertion of the vicinity of the suspected danger.

When morning comes, various groups visit the beach and strut along the shore, drinking and picking up stray morsels. Dead fish that have been cast in by the waves, and numerous insects crawling on the sand, are eagerly devoured. Usually before sunrise the crows have started out over the country in detached flocks.

Like all the affairs of the crows, courtship is a serious and important matter. The young male stretches his wings, struts dramatically, and performs all kinds of crow feats to attract favorable glances from the coy eyes of a black divinity whosits demurely still and waits. After the manner of female kind, she will remain obdurate as long as supplication continues. She will yield only when it ceases.

(From the Author’s Etching)“THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE”

(From the Author’s Etching)

“THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE”

Several days are spent in the wooing. It often has its vicissitudes. The proverbial course of true love has its rough spots, for sometimes shiny-coated rivals come which are insistent and boisterous.They refuse to respect a privacy that is much desired, and create unwelcome disturbances.

There are battles in the tree-tops that send many black feathers down before the fickle beauty makes her final decision. She has little love for defeated suitors, and her admiration is the spoil of the victor when trouble comes.

When the love-making is over the happy pair begin the construction of the nest, which is usually composed of broken twigs or small bits of grape vine, and lined with moss or dead grass. It is generally built about thirty feet from the ground among the strong branches in the deep woods. It is jealously guarded, and combats with would-be intruders are numerous and desperate. The sharp bills are effective weapons when the home is at stake, and it is a bold invader who would risk contact with them for the sake of the mottled eggs or the tender young in the nest.

The crow may be a subtle and artful villain, and his evil ways may have brought him into disrepute, but he has picturesque quality. His black form is often an effective accent in composition, and hispresence adds character and interest to the waste places.

The black roving flocks impart a peculiar charm to the white winter landscapes. The bleak uplands and the solemn trees in the still bare woods are enlivened by the dark busy forms. They seem undaunted by the cold and but few of them migrate. During the winter storms they find what refuge they can in the seclusion of the hollows in the deep woods, and among the heavy foliage of the pines. They eke out a precarious livelihood, with scanty food and uncertain shelter, until nature becomes more heedful of their wants and again sends the springtime into the world.

This bird has his own peculiar and special ways of living, which are adapted to his own temperament and necessities. He is only a crow, and nature never intended that he should adjust himself to the convenience and desires of other forms of animal life. He is without ethics or conscience, and in this he differs little from the man with a gun.

Some of the most pleasant memories of the dunes are clustered around “Billy,” a pet crow which remained with us one summer through the kindness of a naturalist friend. He was acquired at a tender age, a small boy having abstracted him from a happy home in an old tree in the deep woods.

(From the Author’s Etching)“BILLY”

(From the Author’s Etching)

“BILLY”

His early life was devoted principally to bread and milk, hard boiled eggs, bits of meat, and other food, with which he had to be constantly supplied. A large cage was built for his protection as wellas for his confinement, until he could become domesticated and strong enough to take care of himself.

He became clamorous at unreasonable morning hours, and required constant attention during the day. His comical and whimsical ways soon found him a place in our affections, and Billy became a member of the family.

He developed a decided character of his own. When he was old enough to fly he was given his freedom, which he utilized in his own way. He would spend a large part of his time in a nearby ravine, studying the problems of crow life, but his visits to the house were frequent, and his demands insistent when he was hungry.

He would almost invariably discover the departure of any one of us who left the house, flying short distances ahead and waiting until he was overtaken, or proudly riding on our heads or shoulders, if he was not quite sure of the general direction of the expedition.

The berry patch was a great attraction to him, and if we took a basket with us he would helphimself to the fruit after it had been picked, much preferring to have the picking done for him.

One of his delights was walking back and forth on the hammock. The loose meshes seemed to fascinate him, and he would spend much time in studying its intricacies and picking at the knots. He soon became distantly acquainted with Gip, our black cocker spaniel. While no particular intimacy developed between them, each seemed to understand that the other was a part of the family. They finally got to the point where they would eat out of the same dish.

Billy was a delightful companion on many sketching trips into the dunes, and it was amusing to watch the perplexities of the wild crows when my close association with one of their own kind was observed. They could not understand the relationship, and it gave rise to much animated discussion. Billy was immediately visited when he flew into a tree top, and carefully looked over. Other crows joined in the consultations and the final verdict was not always favorable, for hostility frequently became evident, and poor Billy was compelled to leave the tree, often with cruelwounds. He was probably regarded as a heretic and a backslider, who had violated all crow traditions—a fit subject for ostracism and seclusion beyond the pale.

He promptly responded to my call when he got into trouble, or thought it might be lunch-time. He would watch with much interest the undoing of the sandwiches, and would wait expectantly on my knee for the coveted tid-bits which constituted his share of the meal.

When preparations were made for the return, Billy’s interest in the day’s proceedings seemed to flag, and he would suddenly disappear, not to be seen again until the next morning, when he would alight on the rail of the back porch and loudly demand his breakfast.

I was never able to ascertain where he spent a great part of his time. His identity was, of course, lost when he was with the other crows unless he happened to get into a storm center near the house, and we only knew him when he was with us.

He had the elemental love of color, which always begins with red, and the vermilion on my palette seemed to exercise a spell over him. Aftergetting his bill into it, he would plume and pick his feathers, and I have spent considerable time with a rag and benzine in trying to make him presentable after he had produced quite good post-impressionistic pictures on the feathers of his breast.

Occasionally he would take my pencils or brushes into the trees while I was at work, and play with them for some time, but would not return anything that he had once secured. I often had difficulty in recovering lost articles, but usually he would accidentally drop them. In such cases there would be a race between us, for he quickly became jealous of their possession.

Billy was, to a certain extent, affectionate, and would often come to be petted, alighting on my outstretched hand and holding his head down toward me. When his head feathers were stroked gently, low, contented sounds indicated the pleasure he took in the attention devoted to him.

Stories of the numerous little tricks and insinuating ways of this interesting bird could occupy many pages, but enough has been told to convey an idea of his character. Perhaps he may havebeen a rascal at heart, but his ancestry was responsible for his moral shortcomings.

One morning we missed Billy, and we possibly have never seen him since. He may have answered “the call of the wild” and joined the black company that goes over into the back country in the morning and returns to the bluffs at night, or he may have fallen a victim to indiscriminating over-confidence in mankind—a misfortune that is not confined to crows.

He left tender recollections with us. He had an engaging personality, and was a most admirable and lovable crow. Such an epitaph would be due him if he has departed from life, and a more sincere tribute could not be offered him if he still lives.

During the following year I was able to approach quite near to a crow who seemed to show slight signs of recognition. A broken pinion in his left wing, a reminiscence of a vicious battle in the fall, seemed to complete the identification of Billy. He appeared to be making his headquarters in the ravine. Further careful observation and investigation convinced me that if this crow was actually Billy, he had laid three eggs.

The name, however, meant much to us, and by simply changing its spelling to “Billie,” we preserved its pleasant associations.

A HAPPY HOME

It was a contented couple whose nest was in the gnarled branches in the ravine, where the little home was protected from the chill spring winds. In due time small, queer-looking heads appearedabove the edge of the nest, with widely opened bills that clamored continuously for the bits of food which the assiduous parents had to supply constantly. The nest required much attention. Marauding red squirrels, owls, hawks, and other enemies had to be kept away from the time the first egg was laid until the fledglings were old enough to fly. Their first attempts resulted in many falls, but they soon became experts, and one morning the entire family was gone.

They probably flew over into the back country, where food was more abundant and where they were subjected to less observation.

The nest was never used again. The twigs, little pieces of wild grapevine, and moss of which it was made, have gradually fallen away during the succeeding years, until but a few fragments remain in the tree crotch. A red lead pencil was found under the tree. Possibly “Billie” may have tucked it in among the twigs as a souvenir of former ties, or its color may have suggested esthetic adornment of a happy home.

“OLD SIPES”

BEYOND its barren wastes, inland, the dune country merges into the fertile soil and comes into contact with the highly trained selfishness which in this age of iron we call civilization. The steady waves of such a civilization have thrown upon this desolate margin some of its human derelicts—men who have failed in the strife and who have been cast ashore. Their littlehuts of driftwood are scattered here and there at long distances from each other, among the depressions and behind the big masses of sand along the shore.

Their faces wear a dejected look. They walk with shambling step, and their bearing is that of men who have received heavy blows in their early struggles, which have extinguished the light in their lives. They are, as a rule, morose and taciturn. They have become desocialized, and have sullenly sunk into the hermit lives that harmonize with the dead and tangled roots which the roving sands have left uncovered to bleach and decay in the sun and rain.

They eke out a simple existence with their nets and set-lines in the lake, and by shooting and trapping the small game which still lives in this region. The driftwood supplies them with fuel in winter, and occasional wreckage that is washed ashore sometimes adds conveniences and comparative luxury to their impoverished abodes.

The world has gone on without them, and they are content to exist in solitudes where time is measured by years, rather than by achievement.

Sometimes the bitterness of a broken heart, or the story of thwarted hopes, will come to the surface out of the turbid memories which they carry. When their confidence is inspired by sympathetic association, they will often turn back some of the hidden pages in the stories of their lives, which are almost always of vivid interest.

Feeble flashes will then light up from among the dying embers. The story is not the one of success that the world loves to hear, but it is usually the melodies in the minor keys that touch our hearts. Many of the simple narratives, told under the roof of driftwood, before the rude scrap iron stove, are full of homely philosophy, subtle wit, and tragic interest.

“Old Sipes” was a grotesque character. He was apparently somewhere in the seventies. He had but one eye, his whiskers were scraggly, unequal in distribution, and uncertain as to direction. His old faded hat and short gray coat were quite the worse for wear, and a few patches on his trousers, put on with sail stitches, added a picturesque nautical quality to his attire.

He lived in a small driftwood hut, compactlybuilt, about sixteen feet long, and perhaps ten feet wide. A rude bunk was built into one side of the single room, and another was placed about three feet above it.

He explained this arrangement of the bunks with quite a long story about a friend of his named Bill Saunders. It seems that he and Saunders had once been shipmates. They had been around the world together, and had cruised in many far-off waters. A howling gale and a lee shore had finally put an inglorious end to the old ship and most of the crew, and left Sipes and Bill on an unknown island in the South Pacific.

His stories of the man-eating sharks and other sea monsters which infested these waters, were hair-raising, and his descriptions of the wonderful natives whom they met, indicated that somewhere a race of people exists that the ethnologists have never found—and would be much astounded if they did. His accounts of man-apes and strange reptiles, olive-skinned beauties, and fierce war-like men nearly seven feet tall, would have made a modern marine novelist pale with envy.

No ship had ever sailed that was as stanch asthe “Blue Porpoise,” and no winds had ever blown before like those that took away her proud sails and ripped the shrouds from her sides. No fish-poles had ever bent as her masts did when the ropes parted, and no waves had ever soared as high as those that broke in her faithful ribs, and cast the two shipmates high on the sands of that distant island.

After years of waiting for a friendly sail, Bill married into the royal family several times, and became a part of the kingdom. Sipes persistently resisted blandishment for nearly five years, when a small cloud of black smoke on the horizon gradually grew into a tramp steamer. A boat came ashore for fresh water, and our hero gladly became a member of the crew, leaving happy Bill in the land of luxury and promiscuous matrimony. After a long voyage he was put ashore at some gulf port and became a wanderer.

How he got into the sand hills he didn’t exactly know, but his idea was to keep as far as possible away from salt water. He had developed an antipathy for it, and felt that the lake would be quite sufficient for his future needs.

I asked him how he spent his time, and he said, “mostly smokin’ an’ thinkin’ about Bill, an’ them sirenes, an’ their little black an’ tan families, ’way off down there in the South Pacific.”

“THINKIN’ ABOUT BILL AN’ THEM SIRENES”

He hoped that Bill would change his mind and come back to a decent country. Perhaps Bill might find him here, and if he did the extra bunk would come in handy. He said that somehow he didn’t feel so lonesome with the other bunk above him, and, at night, he often thought that maybe Bill was in it.

His idea of what constitutes companionship mayappear a little crude to some of us, but after all it is our point of view that makes us happy or unhappy in this world.

I asked him if he thought Bill would be able to find him if he ever tried to, and he replied, “never you mind—you leave that to Bill. He’s a wonder.”

I regretted that he did not tell me all about what happened to Bill after he had left him on the island. This would not have been at all impossible if he had taken up the subject with the same compositional ability that he applied to the rest of his narrative.

His conversational charms were somewhat marred by a slight impediment in his speech, which he said had been acquired in trying to pronounce the names of all the foreign parts he had visited. Now that he had got settled down the impediment was becoming much less troublesome.

His brawny arms and chest were tattooed with fantastic oriental designs—fiery-mouthed dragons, coiling snakes in blue and red, and rising suns—which he said had been “put on by a Chink” when he was ashore for three weeks in Hong Kong.The intricacy and elaborateness of the work indicated that a large part of the three weeks must have been spent with the tattoo expert, for he had absorbed much more of Chinese art in the short time he had been in contact with it than most modern scholars do in a lifetime.

In answer to a delicate allusion to his missing eye, he declared that it had been blown out in a gale somewhere off the coast of Japan. The terrible winds had prevailed for nearly two weeks, and his shipmate, Bill Saunders, had lost all of his clothes during the blow. The eye had gone to leeward and was never recovered. He said it was glass anyway, and he never thought much of it. How the original eye had been lost he did not explain. He wore what he called a “hatch” over the place where the eye ought to be, and said that “as long as there was nothin’ goin’ out,” he “didn’t want nothin’ comin’ in.”

His “live eye,” as he called it, had a wide range of expression. It was shrewd and quizzical at times, occasionally merry, and often sad. It would glitter fiercely when he talked of some of his “aversions,” or told of wrongs he had suffered.In his reminiscent moods it would remain half closed, and there was a certain far-away look that seemed to wander in obscurity. This lone eye was the distinguishing feature of a personality that seemed to dominate the little world around it.

I asked this ancient mariner if he had many visitors. He replied that the artists bothered him some, but outside of that he seldom saw anybody “’cept them I have business with, an’ them two guys that live about three miles apart down the shore, an’ the game warden that comes ’long oncet in a while. If people commence buttin’ in ’ere I’m goin’ to git out, an’ go ’bout forty miles north, where I can’t hear the cars. I ain’t got much to move. The stuff’ll all go in the boat, an’ I’ll just take my ol’ flannel collar an’ the sock I keep it in, an’ skip.”

He seemed to feel that he could properly criticize most of the people he had met, being practically free from frailties himself. Although he was somewhat of a pessimist, there was seldom much heartfelt bitterness in what he said. His mental attitude was usually that of a patronizing and indulgent observer. His satirical commentswere generally tempered with unconscious humor. He knew that out beyond the margins of the yellow hills lay a world of sin, for he had been in it, and his friend Bill was in it now. His philosophy did not contemplate the possible redemption of anybody he had ever met in the dunes, with one or two exceptions. He thought that most of them were “headed fer the coals.”

“Happy Cal,” was one of his pet aversions, and from a human standpoint, he considered him a total loss. They had once been friends, but Sipes was now “miffed” and there was rancor in his heart. Cal had “gone off som’eres,” but the wound was unhealed. The trouble originated over the ownership of a bunch of tangled set-lines, which had got loose somewhere out in the lake, and drifted ashore some years ago. It was conceded that neither of them had owned the lines originally, but Cal thought they ought to belong to him as he had seen them first.

Sipes descried the soggy mass and carried it up the beach to his shanty. Cal came after the prize before daylight the next morning, but found that he had been forestalled. Sipes spent two days ingetting the tangles out and had stretched the lines out to dry. One night they were mysteriously visited and cut to pieces.

A few days later a piece of board, nailed crosswise to a stake which was driven into the sand, appeared about a mile down the shore, between the two shanties. On it was the crude inscription:—“The Partys that cut them lines is knone.”

While protesting that he was perfectly innocent, Cal looked upon this as a deadly personal affront, and theentente cordialewas forever broken.

After this Sipes bored a small hole in the side of his shanty, through which he could secretly reconnoiter the landscape in Cal’s direction when occasion required. He was satisfied that Cal would be up to something some day that he would catch him at, and thus even the score.

I had noticed a similar hole in the side of Cal’s hut, during a day that I had spent with him two years before.

Since the disappearance of Cal the old man had used the peep hole to enable him to avoid the visits of a certain other individual with whom he had become disgusted. Through it he would study any distant approaching figure on the shore that looked suspicious, with an old brass marine spy glass, that he said “had bin on salt water.” If he was not pleased with his inspection, he would quietly slip out on the opposite side and disappear until the possible visitor had passed, or had called and discovered that Mr. Sipes was not in. He referred to his instrument as a “spotter,” andclaimed that it saved him a lot of misery. While more refined methods of accomplishing such an object are often used, none could be more effective.

After learning what the orifice was for, I always felt highly flattered when I found my old friend at home, although I sometimes had rather a curious sensation, in walking up the shore, feeling that far away the single brilliant eye of old Sipes might be twinkling at me through the rickety old spy glass. Astronomers tell of unseen stars in the universe, which are found only with the most powerful telescopes. These orbs, isolated in awful space, may be scrutinizing our sphere with the same curiosity as that behind the little spotter in the dim distance on the beach.

I made a practice of taking a particularly good cigar with me on these expeditions, especially for Sipes, which may have helped to account for his almost invariable presence when I arrived. He would accept it with a deprecating smile and a low bow. If the weather was pleasant he would seat himself outside on the sand, with his back against the side of the shanty, and extend his feet over the crosspiece of a dilapidated saw-bucknear the door. He would carefully remove the paper band from the cigar, light it, and tilt it to a high angle. After a few whiffs of the fragrant weed, he once sententiously remarked, “Say, this is the life!—I’d ruther be settin’ right ’ere, smokin’ this ’ereseegar, than to be some famous mutt commandin’ a ship.”

The cigar bands were always scrupulously saved. He hoped eventually to get enough of them to paste around the edges of a picture which was stuck up on his wall opposite the bunks, and was willing to smoke all the cigars that might be necessary to furnish the requisite number of bands for this frame, which he thought would “look fine.” The picture had been taken from the colored supplement of some old sporting journal, and depicted two prominent pugilists in violent action. When he had “cussed out” nearly everybody else, he would take up the case of one of these champions, who had gone into the ring once too often. His ornate vocabulary came into splendid play on these occasions, and the unfortunate “pug” had no professional reputation left when the old man had finished his remarks.

There was an interesting and formidable array of armament in Sipes’s shanty. In one corner stood an old-fashioned muzzle-loading, big bore shotgun, weighing about sixteen pounds, with rusty barrels and one broken hammer. The stock had once been split, but had been carefully repaired and bound with wire. It was a murderous looking weapon.

A heavy rifle of antiquated pattern was suspended from a couple of hooks above the bunks, but the old man explained that this piece of ordnance was “no good,” as he “couldn’t git no catritches that ’ud fit it, an’ it ’ad a busted trigger an’ a bum lock.” He had traded some skins for it years ago, and “the feller that ’ad it didn’t ’ave no catritches neither. I was stung in that trade, but them skins wasn’t worth nothin’ neither. Some day I’ll trade it off to some feller that wants a good rifle.”

On the shelf was a sinister looking firearm, which had once been a smooth-bore army musket. The barrel had been sawed off to within a foot of the breech. This he called his “scatter gun.” It was kept loaded with about six ounces of blackpowder, and wadded on top of this was a handful of pellets which he had made out of flour dough, mixed with red pepper, and dried in the sun. He explained that, at three rods, such a charge would go just under the skin. “It wouldn’t kill nothin’, but it ’ud be hot stuff.” He was keeping it “fer a certain purpose,” the nature of which he refused to divulge.

The intended destiny of the “hot stuff” was suggested by a story I afterwards heard from “Catfish John.” It seems that an eccentric character occasionally roamed along the beach who was a theological fanatic. He had tried to convert Sipes, and had often left tracts around the shanty when the owner was absent. He was intensely Calvinistic and utterly uncompromising in his beliefs. John did not consider that he was “quite all thar.” This unkempt individual projected his red bushy whiskers and wild eyes through Sipes’ open window one night.

“Do you believe in infant damnation?” he roared.

“Wot?” asked the dumfounded Sipes.

“’Cause if ye don’t yer jest as sure to go to hellas the sun is to rise tomorrer mornin’,” the intruder continued. He then left as suddenly as he had come. “Sipes sailed a pufectly good egg after ’im, but it didn’t stick,” remarked John.

It was Sipes’s custom to take the old shot gun over into the marshes of the back country, and shoot ducks in the fall and spring. His ideas of killing ducks were worthy of the Stone Age, for it was meat that he sought, and not sport. He always “killed ’em settin’,” and would “lay fer ’em ’till fifteen er twenty got in a bunch, an’ then let ’em ’ave both bar’ls.

“I don’t allow nobody but me to shoot that gun. It kicks like it was drivin’ some spiles, an’ so does my scatter gun. When it goes off one end is pretty near as bad as the other. I fetch them ducks home an’ salt down them I can’t use right off, an’ sometimes I git enough to last all winter.”

I suggested that lighter charges might cause less recoil, and do just as much execution.

“Not on yer life,” he replied, “if they ain’t no kick behind they won’t be no kick forrads, an’ the shot won’t go no distance. Now just lemme show you.”

In spite of my protest, he got the gun out, loaded it far beyond its maximum efficiency, and fired it at a passing flock of sandpipers, that were fortunately beyond range. The report was like a thunder clap, and when the echoes died away, and it was evident that the innocent little creatures had escaped unharmed, he explained that he “wasn’t any good at shootin’ ’em flyin’, but them shot made ’em skip all right.”

I had my own suspicions as to what had made the little birds “skip.”

His supplies of ammunition were obtained for him at the general store in the sleepy village by his old friend “Catfish John,” whose reward consisted in portions of the bloody spoil from the marshes.

Sipes’s shanty would have been a most unpleasant place to approach if hostility should develop inside of it. He “didn’t want no monkeyin’ ’round that joint, an’ they wasn’t goin’ to be none.”

It was to the old man’s credit that he let most of the wild life alone that he could not utilize. The crows, gulls, and herons along the beach did not interest him. The songsters and the littleshore birds were exempt on account of their size. They required too much ammunition, and it was too much trouble to pick them.

THE DISTURBER IN THE RAVINE

Occasionally a pair of eagles would soar around over the dune country. These he longed to kill, but he could never get near enough to them. The wary birds were inconsiderate, and “wouldn’t never light, ’cept away off.”

A “hoot’n owl” somewhere in the ravine causedhim many sleepless nights. Its prolonged and unearthly cries frequently startled him from dreams of his friend Bill off in the South Pacific, and he spent many hours prowling softly around among the trees in the darkness, trying to locate the offender. Probably the owl, in the wisdom of his kind, had kept the silent stealthy figure under observation, and was careful not to do any hooting within shooting distance,—certainly an example to be emulated. He usually resumed his lamentations when Sipes returned to his shanty.

The old man had this owl listed as one of his bitter enemies, and annihilation awaited the wily bird if he ever found it. “One hoot’n owl’s too dam’ many to have ’round,” he declared. “This critter reminds me o’ one night when I was on a ship off the coast o’ South Ameriky.

“I was aloft on one o’ the yard-arms, an’ there was a little roll on the sea. I seen some long white streaks o’ foam comin’, about two points offen the lee bow, an’ there was sumpen that shined in the moonlight mixed up in it. It seemed all yellow, an’ about two hundred feet long, an’ it flopped up an’ down. When it got close, it openedup a mouth pretty near half as big as the ship, an’ let out an awful yell. It sounded like a hoot’n owl, only ten thousand times louder an’ deeper. Then it dove down an’ went under the ship. The sails all shook, an’ my blood was froze, so I couldn’t call out to the feller at the wheel, an’ I dropped off on to the deck.

“I never found out what the cussed thing was. If I’d bin drinkin’ very much I’d ’a’ thought I had the jimmies. The wheel feller said he hadn’t noticed nothin’, but I did all the same, an’ I’ll never fergit it.

“I had some ter’ble experiences off down there in that part o’ the gorgofy. We sailed fer months an’ months, an’ never seen nothin’ but the big waves an’ the sky. There was a lot o’ latitude an’ longitude, an’ me an’ Bill used to offen wonder, when we was roostin’ out on the bowsprit smokin’ at night, what ’ud happen if we butted into one o’ them lines that’s always runnin’ up an’ down an’ sideways on them salt water maps.

“There was ter’ble perils all the time. Sometimes we’d run among icebergs, an waterspouts, an’ cyclones, an’ we wallered in bilin’ seas, an’ theskies was black as yer hat, an’ we got lost on the ocean a couple o’ times, an’ we got smashed up on that island I told ye about. You bet this lake’s plenty wet enough fer me, an’ I’m goin’ to spatter ’round right ’ere, an’ if Bill was only ’ere instid o’ cavortin’ ’round with them South Pacific floozies, I’d be all right.”

Some of Sipes’s many sea yarns sounded suspiciously like stories I had read in early youth, but I generally gave him the benefit of the doubt, as he did not need to be strictly truthful to be entertaining. In one instance he related a thrilling tale in which his experiences were practically identical with those of the hero in a favorite yellow covered treasure of years ago. I rather tactlessly called his attention to that fact. He at once replied, “Now you see how queer some things git ’round in this world.I was that feller.”

After that I considered comment hopeless, and simply listened.

Perhaps this lonely philosopher may have solved one of the problems of existence that have baffled more serious and deeper thinkers. He has perfectly adjusted himself to his environment, and hislife is complete and happy within it. Even his many aversions give him more pleasure than pain. His memories afford him abundant and pleasant society, and he is able, psychologically, to import his friend Bill when he needs him. Beyond these things he apparently has no desires. To use his own expression,—“the great an’ pow’rful o’ the earth ’as got nothin’ on me.”

That priceless jewel, contentment, is his, and the kindly fates could do little more for one who wore a crown.

“Happy Cal”

ONE of the nondescript beach characters bears, or did bear, the somewhat deceptive sobriquet of “Happy Cal.” His little shanty was on the sand about two hundred feet from the lake. The grizzled head, the gnarled rugged hands, the sinewy but slightly bent figure, betokened one who had met tempests on the highways of life. The deep set gray eyes were without luster, although they occasionally twinkled with quiet humor.

The slightly retreating chin, which could be discerned through the white beard when his profile was against the light, offered a key to thefrailty of his character. The power of combat was not there. He had yielded to the storms. He said they called him “Happy Cal” because he wasn’t happy at all.

One dreary forenoon, when the black clouds piled up over the lake in the northwest and the big drops began to come, I went to Cal’s shanty and was cordially asked to put my sketching outfit behind an old soap-box back of the door. It is needless to say that he had acquired this soap-box when it was empty. A long cigar and the recollection of a former visit put him at his ease.

The rain increased, and the breakers began to roar on the beach. The wind whistled through the crevices in the side of the shanty, and Cal went out to stuff them with some strips of rotten canvas that he had probably picked up along the shore. It was quite characteristic of Cal to delay this stuffing until stern necessity made it imperative.

He came in dripping wet, and asked if I happened to have a bottle with me. The stove was a metamorphosed hot-water tank. The rusty cylinder had been found somewhere among somejunk years before. He had made an opening in the front for the wood, a hole in the bottom provided for the draft and the egress of the ashes, and a stove pipe, that had seen better days, led through a hole in the irregular roof.

A fire was soon singing in the cylinder, and under its genial warmth Happy Cal became reminiscent.

“I’ve had some mighty strange experiences since I’ve bin livin’ ’ere,” he began. “About nine years ago they was a shipwreck out ’ere that raised the devil with all on board an’ with me too. Nobody got drownded, but it would ’ave bin a good thing if some of ’em had.

“It was late in November an’ nobody ’ad any business navigatin’ the lake, ’less they ’ad to, ’cause when it gits to blowin’ out ’ere at that time o’ year, it blows without any trouble at all. A big gale come up in the night an’ the breakers was tearin’ away at a great rate, an’ they swashed ’most up to the shanty. I was settin’ up in the bunk playin’ sollytare, an’ wonderin’ if the shanty was goin’ to git busted up, when I thought I heard voices. I lit my lantern an’ went out to see whatwas doin’ an’ I saw a light a little ways out an’ heard somebody yellin’.

“There was a big schooner almost on the shore. She was poundin’ up an’ down on the bottom in about five feet o’ water. The big rollers was takin’ ’er up an’ smashin’ ’er down so you could hear it a mile. Pretty soon the light went out an’ after that four o’ the wettest fellers y’ ever seen came pilin’ in with the breakers. I grabbed one of ’em that was bein’ washed back agin’, an’ after that I got another one that seemed to be pretty near dead. The other two got out all right by themselves, but they was pretty shaky. They helped me git the others up to the shanty, an’ they was a sight o’ pity when we got ’em there.

“I put some more wood in the stove an’ gave ’em all some whisky. They was about a pint left in a gallon jug that I got about a week before, with some money I got fer a bunch o’ rabbits. I don’t drink much, but I like to keep sumpen in the shanty in case somebody should git ship-wrecked, an’ it might be me, but I ain’t got none now. I went on the water wagon about an hourago, an’ I’m afraid I’m goin’ to fall off if I git a chance.

“Them fellers lapped up the booze like it was milk, an’ when they found they wasn’t any more they got mad an’ said I was runnin’ a temperance joint. Then they asked me sarcastic if I had any soft drinks, an’ I told ’em they’d find plenty outside. I fried ’em some fish an’ they et up all the crackers I had. Then one of ’em got my pipe an’ smoked it.

“They were a tough lot an’ when they got all dried out an’ fed they got to cussin’ each other. I told ’em if they wanted to fight to git out fer I didn’t want no scrappin’ in the shanty. Then two of ’em clinched an’ I shoved ’em out doors. Then the others went out an’ pitched on both of ’em. After that they all piled inside agin’ an’ over went the stove. In a few minutes the place looked like it ’ad bin blowed up. We got the stove up after a while, but I lit out up the ravine an’ stayed there pretty near the rest o’ the night, waitin’ fer a calm in the shanty. Hell was poppin’ down there an’ ev’ry minute I was expectin’ to see the sides fly out.

“’Long toward mornin’ I took a sneak down an’ peeked in. Them sailors was all settin’ in there quiet as lambs, playin’ cards with my deck an’ usin’ all my matches fer chips. I opened the door an’ spoke pleasant like to ’em but they told me to git out fer the place ’ad changed hands. After a while, when they found they couldn’t make the stove work, they let me in an’ we had some coffee.”

There are some visitors who make calls, others who come and visit, and still others who make visitations. It was not difficult to classify Cal’s guests as he proceeded with his story.

“It seems that them devils,” continued Cal, “had started down the lake with a load o’ slabs an’ some lumber from one o’ the saw mills up north. One of ’em’s name was Burke, an’ ’e got to scrappin’ with the cap’n, a feller named Swanson, about the grub they had on board. The other two butted in an’ said they wasn’t goin’ to eat no more beans, an’ the feller at the wheel headed the vessel—the Mud Hen ’er name was—straight fer the coast, an’ swore ’e’d hold ’er there ’till the cap’n ’ud tell where some canned things was that’e knew ’e had on board hid, an’ a’ big jug that they seen ’im put on the night before they sailed. They was about a mile off shore when the wind struck ’em, an’ one o’ the wheel ropes busted, an’ before they could git things fixed up they blowed in.

“They was all sore at the cap’n an’ the cap’n an’ the other two was sore at the feller at the wheel, an’ ’e was sore at the whole bunch fer cussin’ ’im, an’ so when they all got soaked it didn’t help things any, an’ when they got dried out they begun beatin’ each other up.

“Olson, the one that ’ad bin pretty near drownded, couldn’t talk much English, but him an’ me sort o’ took to each other after a couple o’ days, an’ ’e told me all about the doin’s on the boat.

“Swanson an’ Burke took my gun an’ went over in the back country an’ shot some tame ducks an’ brought ’em back to the shanty an’ wanted me to fix ’em up to cook. When I was pickin’ ’em on the beach the owners come over. They’d heard the shots an’ they found some tracks an’ seen where they was some feathers. I told ’em I didn’t havenothin’ to do with it, but as I was settin’ there undressin’ the fowls they seemed to think I had, an’ I had a lot o’ trouble fixin’ things up.

“All this time the ol’ boat was layin’ in the shallow water keeled over sideways, an’ badly busted up. We climbed into ’er an’ got out a lot o’ stuff, an’ that bunch was mighty glad to git the beans, an’ so was I. We found the cap’n’s jug an’ the cans, an’ that night things broke loose agin, an’ they all went on a bat. They went the limit an’ acted like a lot o’ wild Indians. I poured about a quart out o’ the jug into a bottle an’ hid it in some bushes, but they got to that, too. I told ’em I was just tryin’ to save it fer ’em till the next day, but they got sore about it. They only let me have two drinks from the whole jug.

“The next night they set the ol’ wreck afire an’ lit out. What they done that fer I can’t make out. After she burnt down to the water, some big combers washed ’er up on the beach one night an’ you can see what’s left of ’er stickin’ up out there yet. They was a lot o’ good stuff in that boat fer a nice new big cabin fer me, an’ I felt awful bad about it. I saw the tracks of two of ’em goin’ up the

Back to Index Next