"This ain't no menagerie we've got here, Tom. It's a Noah's Ark, that's what it be!""This ain't no menagerie we've got here, Tom. It's a Noah's Ark, that's what it be!"
"They've got sense, them two," said Brannigan. "They know who'll stand up fer 'em if them bears begin to git ugly."
"But we don't want the whole kit an' calabash pilin' in on us," said Jackson with decision. "An' we don't want to shet the door and not be able to see what's goin' on, neether. Guess I'd better fix up a kind o' barricade, so's I kin hold the pass in case of them there fee-rocious rabbits undertakin' to rush us."
With a bench and some boxes, he built a waist-high barrier across the doorway, and then he arranged for Brannigan a couch on the table, so that the invalid could look out comfortably over the barrier.
"Reserved seat in Noah's Ark for ye, Tom," said he.
"Hadn't ye better be fetchin' the canoe round to the front, where ye kin keep an eye onto it?" suggested Brannigan.
"By Jing, yes!" agreed Jackson. "If one of them slick old bears 'd take a notion to h'ist it into the water an' make off in it, I guess we'd be in the porridge."
He hitched his long legs over the barrier and stalked out coolly among the beasts.
The wild-cat and the lynx in the branches overhead laid back their ears and showed their teeth in vicious snarls; and the rabbits huddled so close together that the two packs of them heaved convulsively as each strove to get behind or underneath his neighbours. The bears sullenly drew away to the water's edge, and the huge fellow perched on the chopping-block jumped down nimbly from his perch and joined the others with a protestingwoof. The fox stood his ground and kept up his air of indifference, his native shrewdness telling him that the man was paying no heed to him whatever. The deer also did not seem greatly disturbed by Jackson's appearance, merely waving their big ears and staring interrogatively. Jackson picked up the canoe and turned it bottom side up across the doorway. Then he stepped indoors again.
About the middle of the afternoon it became evident that the water had stopped rising. It had apparently found an overflowsomehow, and there was no longer any risk of the cabin being swept away. Tired with the excitement, Brannigan fell asleep. And Jackson, with the backwoodsman's infinite capacity for doing nothing, when there is nothing to do, sat beside his barricade for hour after hour and smoked. And for hour after hour nothing happened. When night fell, he shut the door and secured it with special care.
Throughout the night it rained heavily, under a lashing wind which drove the rain in sheets against the rear of the cabin; but soon after dawn the sun came out again and shone with eager warmth. Brannigan awoke so much better that he was able to sit up and help himself to the doorway instead of being carried. The two does, thoroughly at home in the cabin, swallowed the cold pancakes, and kept close to Jackson's elbow, begging for more.
When the door was opened, it was seen that the animals had all been driven round to the front of the cabin for shelter. The spaceunder the upturned canoe was packed with rabbits. But the spirit of the bigger animals, with the exception of the deer, was now changed.
Since the rise of the flood had come to a halt—for the water was at the same mark as on the afternoon of the previous day—the predatory animals had begun to forget their fear of it and to remember that they were hungry. The truce of terror was wearing very thin. The fox, indeed, as Jackson's alert eyes presently perceived, had already broken it. At the very edge of the water, as far away as possible from the cabin and the bears, he was sitting up demurely on his haunches and licking his chaps. But a tell-tale heap of bones and blood-stained fur gave him away. In the darkness he had stolen up to the rabbits, nipped one noiselessly by the neck, and carried it off without any of its fellows being any the wiser. He could afford to wait with equanimity for the flood to go down.
The lynx had come down out of her treeand was crouching at the foot of it, eyeing first the bears and then the rabbits. She turned her tameless, moon-pale eyes upon Jackson in the doorway, and bared her teeth in a soundless snarl. Jackson, wondering what she was up to, kept perfectly still. The next moment she darted forward, belly to earth, and pounced upon the nearest rabbit. The victim screamed amazingly loud, and the packed mass of its companions seemed to boil as they trampled each other underfoot. Growling harshly, the lynx sprang back to the tree with her prey, ran up the trunk with it, and crouched in a crotch to make her meal, keeping a malignant and jealous eye upon the wild-cat on her neighbouring branch.
As if fired by this example, one of the bears made a rush upon the luckless rabbits. He struck down two with a deft stroke of his paw, dashed them to one side to remove them from the too close proximity of Jackson, and lay down comfortably to devour them.
At this second attack, the unfortunate rabbits seemed to wake up to the necessity ofdoing something radical. Two or three of those nearest the cabin made a sudden dart for the door. They jumped upon the upturned canoe, stared fearfully for an instant at Jackson, then leapt past him over the barrier and took refuge in the farthest corner of the cabin, under the bunk. Jackson, according to his prearranged plan, had made an effort to stop them, but it was a half-hearted effort, and he shook his head at Brannigan with a deprecating grin.
"'Tain'texackly healthy for the blame little scuts, out there with the bear an' the wild-cats," said he apologetically. Jackson was quite ready to shoot rabbits, of course, when they were needed for stew; but his soft, inconsistent heart had been moved at seeing the helpless things mangled by the lynx and the bear. Perfect consistency, after all, would be an unpleasant thing to live with in this excellent but paradoxical world.
The words were hardly out of Jackson's mouth when the rest of the bears came stalking up, great, black, menacing forms, to levytoll upon the rabbits. Instantly the frantic little animals began pouring in a tumultuous stream over the canoe and the barrier and into the cabin. Seeing their dinners thus unexpectedly disappearing, the bears made a rush forward.
Jackson, fearing lest they should charge straight into the cabin, sprang for his gun, and was back in the doorway again in a flash, carelessly thrusting aside with his feet the incoming flood of furry, hopping figures, but making no effort to keep it out.
The bears, reaching the packed and struggling rear rank of the fugitives before it could dissolve and gain the refuge, captured each a victim, and drew back again hastily with their prizes, still apprehensive of the silent grey figure of Jackson in the doorway. And in two minutes more all the rabbits were inside the cabin, covering the floor and struggling with each other to keep from being pushed too close to the hot stove. The two does, resenting the invasion, snorted angrily and struck at them with their sharp, agile hoofs,killing several before the rest learned to keep out of the way. One enterprising little animal sprang into the lower bunk, and was straightway followed by the nearest of his fellows, till the bunk was filled to overflowing.
"How'll ye like it, sleepin' along o' that bunch o' bed-fellers, Tom?" inquired Jackson derisively.
"Ye'll sleep with 'em yourself, Long," retorted Brannigan from his place on the table. "Ididn't let 'em in. They'reyourvisitors. Me bein' an invalid, I'm goin' to take the top bunk!"
Long Jackson scratched his head.
"What's botherin' me," said he, grown suddenly serious, "is them bears. Iftheytake it into their heads to come in an' board along of us, I'm goin' to hev a job to stop 'em. I've only four ca'tridge left, an' ther's six bear. They've et ther rabbits, an' what's one small rabbit to aralehungry bear? Here's the biggest an' hungriest comin' now!Scat!" he yelled fiercely. "Scat! You——!" And he added a string of backwoods objurgationthat this modest page would never consent to record.
Apparently abashed at this reception, the bear backed away hastily and glanced around at the landscape as if he had had no least thought of intruding.
Brannigan laughed as he had not laughed for weeks.
"That langwidge o' yourn's better'n any gun, Long!" said he.
"Guess it's saved us one ca'tridge, that time!" he acknowledged modestly. "But I'm thinkin' it won't keep 'em off when they get a mite hungrier. Ye kin curse like an Androscoggin lumber jack, but y'ain't goin' to frizzle a single hair on a bear's hide. Now, here they come agin! I'd better shoot one, an' mebbe that'll discourage 'em. Anyhow, they kin eat the one I shoot, and that'll keep 'em from hankerin' so after rabbits."
He raised his gun, but Brannigan stopped him sharply.
"Jestshet the door, ye old eejut!" he cried. "Ye know as well as I do that ef ye git a bearrale mad, an' he thinks he's cornered, there's goin' to be trouble. Jest shet the door, that's all!"
"Tobe sure! Why didn't I think o' that afore?" agreed Jackson, kicking the boxes aside and slamming the heavy door without ceremony in the face of the nearest bear, who had already lifted his fore-paws upon the canoe and was peering in wistfully at the rabbits.
With his feet in a foam of rabbits—the creatures seeming to have lost all fear of him—Jackson sat down on a box and lit his pipe, while Brannigan, leaning over from his couch on the table, tried to feed the rabbits with biscuits. The rabbits would have none of it, but the two does, greedy and jealous, came mincing forward at once to appropriate the attention and the tit-bits.
Presently the air grew unbearably hot and close, with the reek of the crowding animals and the heat of the stove. After the fashion of the backwoodsman, the men endured ittill they were gasping. Then Jackson went to the little window—which was not made to open—and prised out the sash with the edge of his axe-blade. He filled his lungs with a deep breath, drew back from the window, then sprang forward again and thrust his head out for a better look.
"It's broke!" he shouted. "The water's goin' down hand over fist!"
"It'll save a lot o' trouble," said Brannigan, with a sigh of relief.
By noon the water had disappeared, and the bears, the wild-cat, and the fox had disappeared with it. After waiting another hour, that the hungry beasts might be well out of the way, Jackson opened the door and began to turn the rabbits out. At first they refused obstinately to go, so that he had to seize them by the ears and throw them out. But presently some sign seemed to go round among them to the effect that their enemies were out of the way. Then they all began to make for the door, but quite at their leisure, and soonwere hopping off among the trees in every direction. After them at last, went the two does, without so much as once looking back.
"Durned if the place don't look kind o' lonesome without 'em!" murmured Brannigan.
"Umph!" grunted Jackson. "It's easy seein' 'tain't you that's got to do the cleanin' up after 'em. If ever ye go to hev another party like that, Tom, I'm goin' to quit."
The spring wind, mild and spicy from the spruce forests, breathed through the cabin from the open door to the open window, and a chickadee ran over his fine-drawn, bead-like refrain from the branches where the lynx and wild-cat had been crouching.
Side by side, in the position in which they were accustomed to labour at the yoke—Star on the off side, Buck on the nigh—they stood waiting in the twilight beside the pasture bars. From the alder swamp behind the pasture, coolly fragrant under the first of the dew-fall, came the ethereal fluting of a hermit thrush, most tender and most poignant of all bird songs. In the vault of the pale sky—pale violet washes of thin colour over unfathomable deeps of palest green—a wide-swooping night-hawk sounded at intervals its long, twanging note, like a stricken harpstring. The dark spruce woods beyond the barn began to give off their aromatic balsam-scent upon the evening air. A frog croaked from somewhere under the alders where the hermit was at his fluting. One of the oxen at last began to low softly and anxiously. It was long pastwatering-time. Immediately his mate repeated the complaint, but on a harsher, more insistent key. The watering trough, full to the brim, was there in full view before them, just at the other side of the cabin. It was an unheard-of thing that their master should not come at sundown to lower the bars and let them drink their fill.
They were a splendid pair, these two steers, and splendidly matched. Both dark red, deep and massive in the shoulder, with short, straight horns, and each with a clean white star in the centre of his broad forehead, they were so exactly alike in all external particulars, that the uninitiated eye would have been puzzled to distinguish them. Both stood also with the patient, bowed necks of those who have toiled long under the burden of the yoke. But to one at all acquainted with animals, at all versed in the psychology of the animal mind, the difference between the two was obvious. The temperaments that looked out from their big, dark eyes were different. The very patience of their bowed heads was different inexpression. The patience of Star, the off ox, was an accepting, contented patience. Curses, blows, the jabs of the ox-goad, he took mildly, as a matter of course, and, being his master's favourite, he got just as few of them as the exigencies of backwoods ploughing and hauling would permit. But with Buck it was far otherwise. In his eyes flickered always the spark of a spirit unsubdued. He had a side glance, surly yet swift, that put the observant on their guard. He never accepted the goad without a snort of resentment, a threatening shake of his short, sharp horns. And he had command of a lightning kick which had taught discretion to more than one worrying cur. Yet he was valued, even while distrusted, by his owner, because he was intelligent, well-trained, and a glutton for work, both quicker than his docile yoke-fellow and more untiring.
Between the two great red steers there was that close attachment which has been so often observed between animals long accustomed to working in the same harness. They become a habit to each other, and seem, therefore, essentialto each other's peace of mind. But on the part of Buck it was something more than this. Ill-tempered and instinctively hostile toward every one else, man or beast, he showed signs of an active devotion to his tranquil yoke-fellow, and would sometimes spend hours licking Star's neck while the latter went on chewing the cud in complacent acceptance of the attention.
The twilight gathered deeper about the lonely backwoods clearing. The night-hawk, a soaring and swooping speck in the pallid spaces of the sky, became invisible, though his strange note still twanged sonorously from time to time. The hermit hushed his fluting in the alder thicket. An owl hooted solemnly from somewhere back in the spruce woods. But still the owner of the oxen did not come to lower the bars and give admittance to the brimming trough. He was lying dead beside the brawling trout-brook, a mile or so down the tote-road, his neck broken by a flying branch from a tree which he had felled too carelessly. His dog was standing over thesprawled body, whining and pawing at it in distracted solicitude.
To the two thirsty oxen the cool smell of the waiting trough was cruelly tantalizing. To one of them it speedily became irresistible. Buck was not, by instinct, any great respecter of bounds or barriers. He began hooking impatiently at the bars, while Star gazed at him in placid wonder. The bars were solid and well set, and Buck seemed to realize almost at once that there was little to be done in that quarter. Feeling for a weak spot, he worked his way along beyond them to the first panel of the fence. It was the ordinary rough "snake" of the backwoods clearing, a zigzag structure of rough poles, supported at the angles by crossed stakes. Never very substantial, it had been broken and somewhat carelessly mended at this particular point. The top rail lifted easily under the thrust of Buck's aimlessly tossing horn. It fell down again at once into its place in the crotch of the crossed stakes, and, in falling, it struck the fumbling experimenter a sharp whack across the nose.
The hot-tempered steer, already irritated, flared up at once, and butted heavily at the fence with his massive forehead. One of the cross-stakes, already half-rotted through, broke at once, and the two top rails went down with a crash. Following up this push, he threw his ponderous weight against the remaining rails, now left unsupported, breasted them down almost without an effort, and went crashing and triumphing through into the yard. His mate, who would never himself have dreamed of such a venture as breaking bounds, stared irresolutely for a few seconds, then followed through the gap. And side by side the two slaked their thirst, plunging their broad muzzles into the cool of the trough and lifting them to blow the drops luxuriously from their nostrils.
The impulse of Star was now to turn back into the familiar pasture, according to custom. But Buck, on the other hand, was used to beingdrivenback and that always more or less under protest. For the first time in his memory, there was now no one to drive him back. Hehad a strange, new sense of freedom, of restraint removed. He was accustomed to seeing a light in the cabin window about this hour. But there was no light. The whole place seemed empty with a new kind of emptiness. Nothing was further from his fancy than to return to the pasture prison which he had just broken out of. He stood with head uplifted, as if already the galling memory of the yoke had slipped from off his neck.
For a minute or two he stood sniffing with wide nostrils, drinking deep the chill, keen-scented air. It was the same air as he had been breathing on the other side of the pasture-bars, but it smelt very different to him. Something there was in it which called him away irresistibly into the dark, unfenced depths of the forest which surrounded the clearing. He turned his great head and lowed coaxingly to his partner, who was standing beside the gap in the pasture fence and staring after him in placid question. Then he started off with a brisk step down the shadowy, pale ribbon of the road.
Star's natural impulse, after drinking, was to return to the familiar, comfortable pasture; but not without his yoke-mate. The stronger impulse ruled. With some reluctance and a good deal of bovine wonder, he swung around and hastened after Buck. The latter waited for him; and side by side, as if in yoke, though with less labouring steps, they turned off the deeply rutted highway and moved silently down a mossed old wood road into the glimmering dark of the forest.
A sure instinct in Buck's feet was leading them straight away from the Settlements, straight into the heart of the wilderness. After perhaps an hour the wood-road led out of the thick forest across a little wild meadow with a shallow brook babbling softly through it. Here the two grazed for a time, almost belly deep in the thick-flowered grass, while the bats flickered and zigzagged above them, and a couple of whip-poor-wills answered each other monotonously from opposite ends of the glade. Then they lay down side by side to chew the cud and to sleep, surrounded bythe pungent smell of the stalks of the wild parsnip which their huge bulks had crushed down.
They lay in a corner of the glade, close to the dense thickets that formed the fringe of the woods. Unaccustomed to vigilance, neither their eyes nor their ears were on the alert. A lynx crept up behind them, within a dozen paces, glared at them vindictively with its pale, malignant moon-eyes, and then ran up a tree to get a better look at these mighty intruders upon his hunting-ground. His claws made a loud rattling on the bark as he climbed, but neither of the oxen paid any attention whatever to the sound. Of course, a lynx could not, under any circumstances, be anything more than an object of mild curiosity to them, but had it been a pair of hungry panthers, they would have been equally unconscious and unwarned. They lay with their backs to the forest, looking out across the open, chewing lazily, and from time to time heaving windy breaths of deep content. Not a score of yards before their noses a trailingweasel ran down and killed a hare. At the cry of the victim Buck opened his half-closed eyes and gave a snort of disapproval. But Star paid no attention whatever to the little tragedy. All his faculties were engrossed upon his comfort and his cud.
A little later a prowling fox came suddenly upon them. He was surprised to find the pair so far from their pasture, where he had several times observed them in the course of his wide wanderings. His shrewd mind jumped to the idea that perhaps the settler, their master, was out with them; and while he had no objection whatever to the oxen—stupid, harmless hulks in his eyes—he had the most profound objection to their master and his gun. He slipped back into cover, encircled the whole glade stealthily till he picked up their trail, and satisfied himself that they had come alone. Then he returned and sat down on his tail deliberately in front of them, cocking his head to one side, as if inviting them to explain their presence.
Star returned his gaze with placid indifference,but Buck was annoyed. In his eyes the fox was a little sharp-nosed dog with a bushy tail and an exasperating smell. He hated all dogs, but especially little ones, because they were so elusive when they yapped at his heels. He heaved himself up with an angry snort, and charged upon the intruder. The fox, without losing his dignity at all, seemed to drift easily out of reach, to this side or that, till the ox grew tired of the futile chase. Moreover, as the fox made no sound and no demonstration of heel-snapping, Buck's anger presently faded out, and he returned to his partner's side and lay down again. And the fox, his curiosity satisfied, trotted away.
A little later there came a stealthy crashing through the darkness of the underbush in the rear. But the two oxen never turned their heads. To them the ominous sound had no significance whatever. A few paces behind them the crashing came to a sudden stop. A bear, lumbering down toward the brook-side, to grub in the soft earth for edible roots, had caught the sound of their breathing and chewing.He knew the sound, for he, too, like the fox, had prowled about the pasture fence at night. As noiselessly as a shadow he crept nearer, till he could make out the contented pair. He knew they belonged to the man, and it made him uneasy to see them there, so far from where they belonged. He sniffed the air cautiously, to see if the man was with them. No, the man was not there, that was soon obvious. He had no thought of attacking them; they were much too formidable to be meddled with. But why were they there? The circumstance was, therefore, dangerous. Perhaps the man was designing some sort of trap for him. He drew back cautiously, and made off by the way he had come. He had a wholesome respect for the man, and for all his works and belongings.
In the first, mysterious, glassy grey of dawn, when thin wisps of vapour clung curling among the grass-tops, the two wanderers got up and fell to grazing. Then Star, who was beginning to feel homesick for old pasture fields, strayed away irresolutely toward theroad for home. Buck, however, would have none of it. He marched off toward the brook, splashed through, and fell to pasturing again on the farther side. Star, not enduring to be left alone, immediately joined him.
That day the pair pressed onward, deeper and deeper into the wilds, Buck ever eager on the unknown quest, Star ever reluctant, but persuaded. As a matter of fact, had Star been resolute enough in his reluctance, had he had the independence to lie down and refuse to go farther, he would have gained the day, for Buck would never have forsaken him. But initiative ruled inertia, as is usually the case, and Buck's adventuring spirit had its way.
It was a rugged land, but hospitable enough to the wanderers in this affluent late June weather, through which Buck so confidently led the way. The giant tangle of the forest was broken by frequent wild meadows, and foaming streams, and lonely little granite-bordered lakes, and stretches of sun-steeped barren, all bronze green with blueberry scrub. There was plenty to eat, plenty to drink, andwhen the flies and the heat grew troublesome, it was pleasant to wallow in the cold, amber-brown pools. Even Star began to forget the home pasture, and content himself with the freedom which he had never craved.
How far and to what goal the urge in Buck's untamed heart would have carried them before exhausting itself, there is no telling. But he had challenged without knowledge the old, implacable sphinx of the wilderness. And suddenly, to his undoing, the challenge was accepted.
On the third day of their wanderings the pair came out upon a river too deep and wide for even Buck's daring to attempt to cross. The banks were steep—a succession of rocky bluffs, broken by deep lateral bayous, and strips of interval meadows where brooks came in through a fringe of reeds and alders. Buck turned northward, following the bank up stream, sometimes close to the edge, sometimes a little way back, wheresoever the easier path or the most tempting patches of pasturage might seem to lead. He was searching alwaysfor some feasible crossing, for his instinct led him always to get over any barrier. That his path toward the west had been barred only confirmed him in his impulse to work westward.
Late that afternoon, as they burst out, through thick bushes, into a little grassy glade, they surprised a bear-cub playing with a big yellow fungus, which he boxed and cuffed about—carefully, so as not to break his plaything—as a kitten boxes a ball. To Buck, of course, the playful cub was only another dog, which might be expected to come yapping and snapping at his heels. With an indignant snort he charged it.
The cub, at that ominous sound, looked up in astonishment. But when he saw the terrible red form dashing down upon him across the grass, he gave a squeal of terror and fled for the shelter of the trees. He was too young, however, for any great speed or agility, and he had none of the dog's artfulness in dodging. Before he could gain cover he was overtaken. Buck's massive front caught him on hishaunches, smashing him into the ground. He gave one agonized squall, and then the life was crushed out of him.
Amazed at this easy success—the first of the kind he had ever had—but immensely proud of himself, the great red ox drew off and eyed his victim for a second or two, his tail lashing his sides in angry triumph. Then he fell to goring the small black body, and tossing it into the air, and battering it again with his forehead as it came down. He was taking deep vengeance for all the yelping curs which had worried and eluded him in the past.
In the midst of this congenial exercise he caught sight, out of the corner of his eye, of a big black shape just hurling itself upon him. The mother bear, a giant of her kind, had come to the cry of her little one.
Buck whirled with amazing nimbleness to meet the attack. He was in time to escape the blow which would have cracked even his mighty neck, but the long, steel-hard claws of his assailant fairly raked off one side of his face, destroying one eye completely. At thesame time, with a shrill bellow, he lunged forward, driving a short, punishing horn deep into the bear's chest and hurling her back upon her haunches.
Dreadful as was his own injury, this fortunate thrust gave him the advantage for the moment. But, being unlearned in battle, he did not know enough to follow it up. He drew back to prepare for another charge, and paused to stamp the ground, and bellow, and shake his horribly wounded head.
The mother, heedless of her own deep wound, turned to sniff, whimpering, at the body of her cub. Seeing at once that it was quite dead, she wheeled like a flash and hurled herself again upon the slayer. As she wheeled she came upon Buck's blinded side. He lunged forward once again, mad for the struggle. But this time, half blind as he was, he was easily eluded, for the old bear was a skilled fighter. A monstrous weight crashed down upon his neck, just behind the ears, and the bright green world grew black before him. He stumbled heavily forward on knees andmuzzle, with a choking bellow. The bear struck again, and with the other paw tore out his throat, falling upon him and mauling him with silent fury as he rolled over upon his side.
Star, meanwhile, being ever slow of wit and of purpose, had been watching with startled eyes, unable to take in the situation, although a strange heat was beginning to stretch his veins. But when he saw his yoke-mate stumble forward on his muzzle, when he heard that choking bellow of anguish, then the unaccustomed fire found its way up into his brain. He saw red, and, with a nimbleness far beyond that of Buck at his swiftest, he launched himself into the battle.
He launched himself into the battle.He launched himself into the battle.
The bear, absorbed in the fulness of her vengeance, was taken absolutely by surprise. It was as if a ton of rock had been hurled against her flank, rolling her over and crushing her at the same time. In his rage the great red ox seemed suddenly to develop an aptitude for the battle. Twisting his head, he buried one horn deep in his adversary's belly, where he ripped and tore with the all-destructive fury of a mad rhinoceros. The bear's legs closed convulsively about his head and shoulders, but in the next instant they relaxed again, falling away loosely as that ploughing horn reached and pierced the heart. Then Star drew back, and stood shaking his head to clear the blood out of his eyes.
For two days and nights Star stood over his yoke-mate's body, leaving his post only for a few yards and for a few minutes, at long intervals, to crop a mouthful of grass or to drink at that cold stream which ran past the edge of the tragic glade. On the third day two woodsmen, passing down the river in a canoe, were surprised to hear the lowing of an ox in that desolate place, far from even the remotest settler's cabin. The lowing was persistent and appealing. They went ashore and investigated.
At the scene which they came upon in the sunny little glade they stood marvelling. After a time their shrewd conjectures, initiated as they were in all the mysteries of the wild,arrived at a fairly accurate interpretation of it all.
"It was sure some scrap, anyhow," was the final conclusion of one grizzled investigator; and "Wish't we could 'a' seen it," of the other. Then, the big red ox, with blood caked over head and horns, being too admired as well as too valuable to be left behind, they decided that one of them should stop on shore and drive him, while the other followed slowly in the canoe.
At first Star refused stolidly to budge from his dead comrade's side. But the woodsman was in winter a teamster, and what he did not know about driving oxen was not worth knowing. He cut a long white stick like an ox-goad, took his place at Star's side, gave him a firm prod in the flank, and cried in a voice of authority: "Haw, Bright!"
At the old command, although "Bright" was not the right name, Star seemed once more to feel the familiar, and to him not unpleasant, pressure of the yoke upon his neck. He swerved obediently to the left, lowering hishead and throwing his weight forward to start the imaginary load, and moved away as his new master ordered. And gradually, as he went, directed this way or that by the sharp commands of "Gee!" or "Haw!" and the light reminder of the goad, his grief for his yoke-fellow began to dull its edge. It was comforting to be once more controlled, to be snatched back into servitude from a freedom which had proved so strenuous and so terrible.
Young Stan Murray turned on his heel and went into the house for his gun. His breast boiled with pity and indignation. The hired man, coming down from the Upper Field, had just told him that two more of his sheep had been killed by the bears. The sheep were of fine stock, only lately introduced to the out-settlements, and they were Stan's special charge. These two last made seven that the bears had taken within six weeks. Stan Murray, with the robust confidence of his eighteen years, vowed that the marauder, or marauders, should be brought to an accounting without more ado, though it should take him a week to trail them down. He stuffed some hardtack biscuits and a generous lump of cheese into his pockets, saw that his Winchester repeater was duly charged, buckled onhis cartridge-belt, and started for the Upper Field.
The hired man led him to the scene of the tragedy. The two victims—both full-grown sheep—had been struck down close to the edge of the field, within a dozen yards of each other. Nothing was left of them there but their woolly skins and big sploshes of darkened blood on the stiff turf of the pasture. The carcases had evidently been dragged or carried off into the dark seclusion of the fir woods which bordered the top and farther side of the field. It was now just after midday, and Stan and the hired man agreed, after examination of all the signs, that the killing must have taken place early the previous night.
"It's a long ways from here them b'ar'll be by this time, I'm thinkin'," said the hired man. Not a native of the backwoods, he was little versed in wilderness lore.
"Not at all," corrected Murray. "Like as not they're within a half mile or so of us now. They wouldn't lug those fat sheep far. They'd just eat what they wanted an' hide therest in the bushes. And they'd come back an' finish it up when they'd slept off the first feed. What would they want to travel for, when they'd got such a dead easy thing right here?"
"Um-m-m!" grunted the hired man grudgingly. "Mebbe you're right. But I'd like to know who's been here afore us, an'rolled upthis here skin so tidy-like? T'other skin's left all of a heap, mebbe because it's so torn 'tain't no good to nobody."
The young woodsman laughed, for all his vexation of spirit.
"Lot you know about bears, Tom," said he. "You see, there's beentwobears here on this job, curse their dirty hides! One's a youngster, an' don't know much about skinning a sheep. He's just clawed off the skin any old way, an' made a mess of it, as you see. But the other's an old hand, evidently, an' knows what he's about—an old she, likely, an' perhaps mother of the young one.She'sknown how topeeloff the skin, rolling it up that way quite as a man might do. Now, Tom, you getalong back home, an' take the skins with you. I'm going after those two, an' I'm not coming home till I've squared up with 'em over this here deal."
For half a mile or more back into the woods the trail of the marauders was a plain one to follow. Then Murray found the remnants of the two victims hidden in a mass of thick underbush, several yards apart. The tracks of the two bears encircled the spot, a plain proclamation of ownership to any other of the wild creatures which might be inclined to trespass on that domain. And on the trunk of a tall spruce, standing close beside the hiding-place, the initiated eyes of young Murray detected another warning to intruders. The bark at a considerable height was scored by the marks of mighty claws. The larger bear, after her meal, had stretched herself like a cat, rearing herself and digging in her claws against the trunk. And the great height of her reach was a pointed announcement that her displeasure would be a perilous thing to reckon with. As Stan Murray stood, estimating thestature of his foe, his eyes began to sparkle. This would be a trophy worth winning, the hide and head of such a bear. His wrath against the slayers of his sheep died away into the emulous zest of the hunter.
The bears, their hunger satisfied, had gone on straight back into the wilderness, instead of hanging about the scene of their triumph or crawling into a neighbouring thicket, as Murray had expected, to sleep off their heavy feast. Murray thought he knew all about bears. As a matter of fact, he did know a lot about them. What he didnotknow was that no one, however experienced and sympathetic an observer, ever does achieve to knowallabout them. The bear is at the opposite pole from the sheep. He is an individualist. He does not care to do as his neighbour does. He is ever ready to adapt his habits, as well as his diet, to the varying of circumstance. He loves to depart from his rules and confound the naturalists. When you think you've got him, he turns out to be an old black stump, and laughs in his shaggy sleeve from someother hidden post of observation. He makes all the other kindred of the wild, except, perhaps, the shrewd fox, seem like foolish children beside him.
For a good hour Murray followed the trail of the two bears, at times with some difficulty, as the forest gave way in places to breadths of hard and stony barren, where the great pads left smaller trace. At last, to his annoyance, in a patch of swamp, where the trail was very clear, he realized that he was now following one bear only, and that the smaller of the two. He cast assiduously from side to side, but in vain. He harked back along the trail for several hundred yards, but he could find no sign of the other bear, nor of where she had branched off. And it was just that other that he wanted. However, he decided that as the two were working together, he would probably find the second by keeping on after the first, rather than by questing at large for a lost trail. In any case, as he now reminded himself, it was not a trophy, but vengeance for his slaughtered sheep that he was out for.
The trail he had been following hitherto had been hours old. Now, of a sudden, he noticed with a start that it had become amazingly fresh—so fresh, indeed, that he felt he might come upon his quarry at any instant. How did it happen that the trail had thus grown fresh all at once? Decidedly puzzled, he halted abruptly and sat down upon a stump to consider the problem.
At last he came to the conclusion that, somewhere to his rear, the quarry must have swerved off to one side or the other, either lain down for a brief siesta, or made a wide detour, then circled back into the old trail just a little way in advance of him. Again, it seemed, he had overshot the important and revealing point of the trail. He was nettled, disappointed in himself. His first impulse was to retrace his steps minutely, and try to verify this conclusion. Then he reflected that, after all, he had better content himself with the fact that he was now close on the heels of the fugitive, and vengeance, perhaps, almost within his grasp. To go back, for the mere sake of proving a theory,would be to lose his advantage. Moreover, the afternoon was getting on. He decided to push forward.
But now he went warily, peering to this side and to that, and scrutinizing every thicket, every stump and massive bole. He felt that he had been too confident, and made too much noise in his going. It was pretty certain that the quarry would by now be aware of the pursuit, and cunninglyonguard. Twice he had been worsted in woodcraft. He was determined that the marauders should not score off him a third time.
For another half-hour he kept on, moving now as noiselessly as a mink, and watchfully as a wood-mouse. Yet the trail went on as before, and he could detect no sign that he was gaining on the elusive quarry. At last, grown suddenly conscious of hunger, he sat down upon a mossy stone and proceeded to munch his crackers and cheese. He was getting rather out of conceit with himself, and the meal, hungry though he was, seemed tasteless.
As he sat there, gnawing discontentedly athis dry fare, he began to feel conscious of being watched. The short hairs on the back of his neck tingled and rose. He looked around sharply, but he could see nothing. Very softly he rose to his feet. With minutest scrutiny his eyes searched every object within view. The mingled shadows of the forest were confusing, of course, but his trained eyes knew how to differentiate them. Nevertheless, neither behind, nor before, nor on either side could he make out any living thing, except a little black-and-white woodpecker, which peered at him with unwinking curiosity from a gnarled trunk a dozen feet away. From the woodpecker his glance wandered upwards and interrogated the lower branches of the surrounding trees. At last he made out the gleam of a pair of pale, malevolent eyes glaring down upon him from a high branch. Then he made out the shadowy shape, flattened close to the branch, of a large wild-cat.
Murray disliked the whole tribe of the wild-cats, as voracious destroyers of game and cunning depredators upon his poultry, and his riflewent instantly to his shoulder. But he lowered it again with a short laugh. He was not bothering just then with wild-cats. He cursed himself softly as "getting nervous," and sat down again to resume his meal, satisfied that the sensation at the back of his neck was now explained.
But he had not found the true explanation, by any means. In fact, he was fooled yet again.
From less than fifty yards ahead of him a little pair of red-rimmed eyes, half angry and half curious, were watching his every movement. Crouching behind two great trunks, his quarry was keeping him under wary observation, ready to slip onward like a shadow, keeping to the shelter of the thicket and bole and rock, the moment he should show the least sign of taking up the trail again.
Moreover, from a slightly greater distance to his rear, another pair of little red-rimmed eyes, less curious and more angry, also held him under observation. For an hour or more, at least, the older bear had been trailing himin her turn with practised cunning. For all her immense bulk, she had never betrayed herself by so much as the crackling of a twig; and the unconscious, complacent hunter was being hunted with a woodcraft far beyond his own. Whenever he stopped, or paused for the least moment, she came to a stop herself as instantly as if worked by the same nerve impulse, and stiffened into such stony immobility that she seemed at once to melt into her surroundings, and became invisible in the sense of being indistinguishable from them. Among mossy rocks she seemed to become a rock, among stumps a stump, among thickets a portion of the dark, shaggy undergrowth.
Having finished his crackers and cheese, Murray got up, brushed the crumbs from his jacket, flicked a hard flake of bark contemptuously at the wild-cat—which darted farther up the tree with an angry growl—and once more took up the trail. He was beginning now to wonder if he was going to accomplish anything before the light should fail him, and he hurried on at a swifter pace. A few hundredyards farther, to his considerable gratification, the trail swept around in a wide curve towards the right, and made back towards the Settlement. "Perhaps," he thought, "that fool of a bear does not know, after all, that I am on his track, and is going back for the remainder of his supper."
Encouraged by this idea, he pushed on faster still.
Then, some ten minutes later, he had reason to regret his haste. Crossing a patch of soft, open ground, his attention was caught by the fact that the footprints he was following had miraculously increased in size. Examination proved that this was no illusion. And now, for the first time, an unpleasant feeling crept over him. Apparently he was being played with. The second bear, it was evident, had slipped in and taken the place of the first, copying an old game of the hunted foxes.
Murray suddenly felt himself alone and outwitted. If it had been earlier in the day, he would not have cared; but now it would soon be night. He had no great dread of bears,as a rule. He was willing to tackle several of them at once, as long as he had his Winchester and a clear chance to use it—but after dark he would be at a grievous disadvantage. If the trail had still been leading away from home, he would probably have turned back and planned for an early start again next morning. But as his enemy was going in the right direction, he decided to follow on as fast as possible, and see if he might not succeed in obtaining a decision before dark.
The trail was now almost insolently clear, and he followed it at a lope. He gained no glimpse of the quarry even at this pace; but at least he had the satisfaction of knowing, from the increased heaviness of the footprints and the lengthening of the stride, that he was forcing his adversary to make haste. Presently it appeared that this was displeasing to the adversary. The trail went off to the left, at a sharp angle, and made for a dense cedar swamp, which Murray had no desire to adventure into at that late hour. He decided togive up the chase for the day and keep straight for home.
By this time Murray felt that his knowledge of bears was not quite so profound as he had fancied it to be. Nevertheless, he was sure of one thing. He was ready to gamble on it that, as soon as they realized he had given up trailing them, they would turn and trail him. The idea was more or less depressing to him in his present mood. He did not greatly care, however, so long as it was fairly light. He did not think that his adversaries would have the rashness to attack him even after dark, the black bear having a very just appreciation of man's power. Still, there was the chance, and it gave him something to think of. He made a hurried estimate of the distance he had yet to go, and it was with a distinct sense of relief he concluded that he would make the open fields before the closing in of dark.
The woods at this point were somewhat thick, an abundant second growth of spruce and fir. Presently they fell away before him,revealing a few acres of windy grass-land surrounding a deserted cabin. At the sight of the space of open ground Murray was seized with a new idea. His face brightened, his self-confidence returned. The bears had, so far, outdone him thoroughly in woodcraft. Well, he would now show them that he was their master in tactics.
He ran staggeringly out into the field, and fell as if exhausted. He lay for a few seconds, to make sure he was observed by his antagonists, then picked himself up, raced on across the open as fast as he could, and plunged into the thick woods on the opposite side.
As soon as he was hidden, he turned and looked behind him. The growth of bushes and rank herbage which fringed the other side of the clearing whence he had come was waving and tossing with the movement of heavy bodies. For a few moments he thought that his pursuers, grown bold with his flight, would break forth from their concealment and follow across the clearing. In that case he might count on bagging them both.
But no, they were too wary still for that. Presently the tossing of the bushes began to separate, and moved rapidly both to right and left along the skirts of the clearing. A smile of triumph spread over Murray's face.
"My turn at last!" he muttered, and ran noiselessly, keeping well hidden, down toward the left-hand corner of the field. He had an idea that it was the bigger bear which was coming to meet him in that direction, because the movement of the bushes had seemed the more violent on that side. He was himself again fully now, the zest of the hunter swallowing up all other emotions.
Just at the corner of the field, behind a heap of stones half buried in herbage, he hid himself, and lay motionless, with his rifle at his shoulder and finger on the trigger. He could hear the bear coming, for she was running more carelessly now, under the impression that the enemy was in full flight. Dry branches snapped, green branches swished and rustled, and occasionally his straining ears caught the sound of a heavy but muffled footfall.
She was almost upon him, however, before he could actually get a view of her. She came out into a space between two clumps of young fir trees, not twenty-five yards from his hiding-place, and was just passing him diagonally, offering a perfect mark. Murray's finger closed, softly and steadily, on the trigger. The heavy, soft-nosed bullet crashed through her neck, and she dropped, collapsing on the instant into nothing more than a heap of rusty-black fur.
Immensely elated, his dear sheep avenged, and his standing as a hunter vindicated at last, young Murray strode over and examined his splendid prize. It was by far the biggest black bear he had ever seen. To the other of the pair he gave not a thought; he knew that the crack of his rifle would have cured it of any further curiosity it might have had about himself. He took out his handkerchief, tied it to the end of a stick, and stuck the stick into the ground beside the heap of fur, to serve both as a mark and as a warning to possible trespassers. Then he made haste home, to fetcha lantern and the hired man, for he would not leave so splendid a skin all night to the mercies of fox and fisher and weasel and other foragers of the dark.
He was a splendid bird, a thoroughbred "Black-breasted Red" game-cock, his gorgeous plumage hard as mail, silken with perfect condition, and glowing like a flame against the darkness of the spruce forest. His snaky head—the comb and wattles had been trimmed close, after the mode laid down for his aristocratic kind—was sharp and keen, like a living spear-point. His eyes were fierce and piercing, ready ever to meet the gaze of bird, or beast, or man himself, with the unwinking challenge of their full, arrogant stare.
Perched upon a stump a few yards from the railway line, he turned that bold stare now, with an air of unperturbed superciliousness, upon the wreck of the big freight-car from which he had just escaped. He had escaped by a miracle, but little effect had that upon his bold and confident spirit. The ramshackle,overladen freight train, labouring up the too-steep gradient, had broken in two, thanks to a defective coupler, near the top of the incline a mile and a half away. The rear cars—heavy box-cars—had, of course, run back, gathering a terrific momentum as they went. The rear brakeman, his brakes failing to hold, had discreetly jumped before the speed became too great. At the foot of the incline a sharp curve had proved too much for the runaways to negotiate. With a screech of tortured metal they had jumped the track, and gone crashing down the high embankment. One car, landing on a granite boulder, had split apart like a cleft melon. The light crate in which our game-cock, a pedigree bird, was being carried to a fancier in the nearest town, some three score miles away, had survived by its very lightness. But its door had been snapped open. The cock walked out deliberately, uttered a long, lowkrr-rr-eeof ironic comment upon the disturbance, hopped delicately over the tangle of boxes and crates and agricultural implements, and flew to the top of the nearest stump.There he shook himself, his plumage being disarrayed, though his spirit was not. He flapped his wings. Then, eyeing the wreckage keenly, he gave a shrill, triumphant crow, which rang through the early morning stillness of the forest like a challenge. He felt that the smashed car, so lately his prison, was a foe which he had vanquished by his own unaided prowess. His pride was not altogether unnatural.
The place where he stood preening the red glory of his plumage was in the very heart of the wilderness. The only human habitation within a dozen miles in either direction was a section-man's shanty, guarding a siding and a rusty water-tank. The woods—mostly spruce in that region, with patches of birch and poplar—had been gone over by the lumbermen some five years before, and still showed the ravages of the insatiable axe. Their narrow "tote-roads," now deeply mossed and partly overgrown by small scrub, traversed the lonely spaces in every direction. One of these roads led straight back into the wilderness from therailway—almost from the stump whereon the red cock had his perch.
The cock had no particular liking for the neighbourhood of the accident, and when his fierce, inquiring eye fell upon this road, he decided to investigate, hoping it might lead him to some flock of his own kind, over whom he would, as a matter of course, promptly establish his domination. That there would be other cocks there, already in charge, only added to his zest for the adventure. He was raising his wings to hop down from his perch, when a wide-winged shadow passed over him, and he checked himself, glancing upwards sharply.
A foraging hawk had just flown overhead. The hawk had never before seen a bird like the bright figure standing on the stump, and he paused in his flight, hanging for a moment on motionless wing to scrutinise the strange apparition. But he was hungry, and he considered himself more than a match for anything in feathers except the eagle, the goshawk, and the great horned owl. His hesitation was but fora second, and, with a sudden mighty thrust of his wide wings, he swooped down upon this novel victim.
The big hawk was accustomed to seeing every quarry he stooped at cower paralysed with terror or scurry for shelter in wild panic. But, to his surprise, this infatuated bird on the stump stood awaiting him, with wings half lifted, neck feathers raised in a defiant ruff, and one eye cocked upwards warily. He was so surprised, in fact, that at a distance of some dozen or fifteen feet he wavered and paused in his downward rush. But it was surprise only, fear having small place in his wild, marauding heart. In the next second he swooped again and struck downwards at his quarry with savage, steel-hard talons.
He struck but empty air. At exactly the right fraction of the instant the cock had leapt upwards on his powerful wings, lightly as a thistle-seed, but swift as if shot from a catapult. He passed straight over his terrible assailant's back. In passing he struck downwards with his spurs, which were nearly three inches long,straight, and tapered almost to a needle-point. One of these deadly weapons found its mark, as luck would have it, fair in the joint of the hawk's shoulder, putting the wing clean out of action.
The marauder turned completely over and fell in a wild flutter to the ground, the cock, at the same time, alighting gracefully six or eight feet away and wheeling like a flash to meet a second attack. The hawk, recovering with splendid nerve from the amazing shock of his overthrow, braced himself upright on his tail by the aid of the one sound wing—the other wing trailing helplessly—and faced his strange adversary with open beak and one clutching talon uplifted.
The cock, fighting after the manner of his kind, rushed in to within a couple of feet of his foe and there paused, balanced for the next stroke or parry, legs slightly apart, wings lightly raised, neck feathers ruffed straight out, beak lowered and presented like a rapier point. Seeing that his opponent made no demonstration, but simply waited, watching him witheyes as hard and bright and dauntless as his own, he tried to provoke him to a second attack. With scornful insolence he dropped his guard and pecked at a twig or a grass blade, jerking the unconsidered morsel aside and presenting his point again with lightning swiftness.
The insult, however, was lost upon the hawk, who had no knowledge of the cock's duelling code. He simply waited, motionless as the stump beside him.