Part 4 (1/2)
Presently there was a rush, and the fur began to fly. The snow flew, too; and the woods rang and rang again with yelling and caterwauling, and spitting and swearing, and all manner of abuse. The rabbits heard it, and trembled; and the partridges, down in the cedar swamp, glanced furtively over their shoulders and were glad it was no nearer. They bit and scratched and clawed like two little devils, and the onlooker in the bushes must have felt a thrill of pride over the strenuous way in which they strove for her favors. First one was on top, and then the other.
Now our Kitten had his rival by the ears, and now by the tail. One minute heads, legs, and bodies were all mixed up in such a snarl that it seemed as if they could never be untangled, and the next they backed off just long enough to catch their breath, and then flew at each other's throats more savagely than ever. It was really more difficult than you would suppose for either of them to get a good hold of the other, partly because their fur was so thick, and partly because Nature had purposely made their skins very loose, with an eye to just such performances as this. But they managed to do a good deal of damage, nevertheless; and in the end the pretender was thoroughly whipped, and fled away in disgrace down the long, snowy aisles of the forest, howling as he went, while the Kitten turned slowly and painfully to the one who was at the bottom of all this unpleasantness. His ears were slit; one eye was shut, and the lid of the other hung very low; he limped badly with his right hind-leg, and many were the wounds and scratches along his breast and sides. But he didn't care. He had won his spurs.
The story of the Kitten is told, for he was a kitten no longer.
POINTERS FROM A PORCUPINE QUILL
HE wasn't handsome--the original owner of this quill--and I can't say that he was very smart. He was only a slow-witted, homely old porky who once lived by the Glimmergla.s.s. But in spite of his slow wits and his homeliness a great many things happened to him in the course of his life.
He was born in a hollow hemlock log, on a wild April morning, when the north wind was whipping the lake with snow, and when winter seemed to have come back for a season. The Glimmergla.s.s was neither glimmering nor gla.s.sy that morning, but he and his mother were snug and warm in their wooden nest, and they cared little for the storm that was raging outside.
It has been said by some that porcupines lay eggs, the hard, smooth sh.e.l.ls of which are furnished by a kind and thoughtful Providence for the protection of the mothers from their p.r.i.c.kly offspring until the latter have fairly begun their independent existence. Other people say that two babies invariably arrive at once, and that one of them is always dead before it is born. But when my Porcupine discovered America he had neither a sh.e.l.l on his back nor a dead twin brother by his side.
Neither was he p.r.i.c.kly. He was covered all over with soft, furry, dark-brown hair. If you had searched carefully along the middle of his back you might possibly have found the points of the first quills, just peeping through the skin; but as yet the thick fur hid them from sight and touch unless you knew just where and how to look for them.
He was a very large baby, larger even than a new-born bear cub, and no doubt his mother felt a justifiable pride in his size and his general peartness. She was certainly very careful of him and very anxious for his safety, for she kept him out of sight, and no one ever saw him during those first days and weeks of his babyhood. She did not propose to have any lynxes or wild-cats or other ill-disposed neighbors fondling him until his quills were grown. After that they might give him as many love-pats as they pleased.
He grew rapidly, as all porcupine babies do. Long hairs, tipped with yellowish-white, came out through the dense fur, and by and by the quills began to show. His teeth were lengthening, too, as his mother very well knew, and between the sharp things in his mouth and those on his back and sides he was fast becoming a very formidable nursling.
Before he was two months old she was forced to wean him, but by that time he was quite able to travel down to the beach and feast on the tender lily-pads and arrow-head leaves that grew in the shallow water, within easy reach from fallen and half-submerged tree-trunks.
One June day, as he and his mother were fis.h.i.+ng for lily-pads, each of them out on the end of a big log, a boy came down the steep bank that rose almost from the water's edge. He wasn't a very attractive boy. His clothes were dirty and torn--and so was his face. His hat was gone, and his hair had not seen a comb for weeks. The mosquitoes and black-flies and no-see-'ems had bitten him until his skin was covered with blotches and his eyelids were so swollen that he could hardly see. And worst of all, he looked as if he were dying of starvation. There was almost nothing left of him but skin and bones, and his clothing hung upon him as it would on a framework of sticks. If the Porcupine could have philosophized about it he would probably have said that this was the wrong time of year for starving; and from his point of view he would have been right. June, in the woods, is the season of plenty for everybody but man. Man thinks he must have wheat-flour, and that doesn't grow on pines or maple-trees, nor yet in the tamarack swamp. But was there any wild, fierce glare in the boy's eyes, such a light of hunger as the story-books tell us is to be seen in the eyes of the wolf and the lynx when they have not eaten for days and days, and when the snow lies deep in the forest, and famine comes stalking through the trees? I don't think so. He was too weak and miserable to do any glaring, and his stomach was aching so hard from eating green gooseberries that he could scarcely think of anything else.
But his face brightened a very little when he saw the old she-porcupine, and he picked up a heavy stick and waded out beside her log. She clacked her teeth together angrily as he approached; but he paid no attention, so she drew herself into a ball, with her head down and her nose covered by her forepaws. Reaching across her back and down on each side was a belt or girdle of quills, the largest and heaviest on her whole body, which could be erected at will, and now they stood as straight as young spruce-trees. Their tips were dark-brown, but the rest of their length was nearly white, and when you looked at her from behind she seemed to have a pointed white ruffle, edged with black, tied around the middle of her body. But the boy wasn't thinking about ruffles, and he didn't care what she did with her quills. He gave her such a thrust with his stick that she had to grab at the log with both hands to keep from being shoved into the water. That left her nose unprotected, and he brought the stick down across it once, twice, three times. Then he picked her up by one foot, very gingerly, and carried her off; and our Porky never saw his mother again.
Perhaps we had best follow her up and see what finally became of her.
Half a mile from the scene of the murder the boy came upon a woman and a little girl. I sha'n't try to describe them, except to say that they were even worse off than he. Perhaps you read in the papers, some years ago, about the woman and the two children who were lost for several weeks in the woods of northern Michigan.
”I've got a porky,” said the boy.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”_High up in the top of a tall hemlock._”]
He dropped his burden on the ground, and they all stood around and looked at it. They were hungry--oh, so hungry!--but for some reason they did not seem very eager to begin. An old porcupine with her clothes on is not the most attractive of feasts, and they had no knife with which to skin her, no salt to season the meat, no fire to cook it, and no matches with which to start one. Rubbing two sticks together is a very good way of starting a fire when you are in a book, but it doesn't work very well in the Great Tahquamenon Swamp. And yet, somehow or other--I don't know how, and I don't want to--they ate that porcupine. And it did them good. When the searchers found them, a week or two later, the woman and the boy were dead, but the little girl was still alive, and for all I know she is living to this day.
Let us return to the Glimmergla.s.s. The young Porcupine ought to have mourned deeply for his mother, but I grieve to say that he did nothing of the kind. I doubt if he was even very lonesome. His brain was smaller, smoother, and less corrugated than yours is supposed to be; its wrinkles were few and not very deep; and it may be that the b.u.mp of filial affection was quite polished, or even that there wasn't any such b.u.mp at all. Anyhow, he got along very well without her, dispensing with her much more easily than the woman and the boy and girl could have.
He watched stolidly while the boy killed her and carried her off, and a little later he was eating lily-pads again.
As far as his future prospects were concerned, he had little reason for worrying. He knew pretty well how to take care of himself, for that is a kind of knowledge which comes early to young porcupines. Really, there wasn't much to learn. His quills would protect him from most of his enemies, if not from all of them; and, what was still better, he need never suffer from a scarcity of food. Of all the animals in the woods the porcupine is probably the safest from starvation, for he can eat anything from the soft green leaves of the water-plants to the bark and the small twigs of the tallest hemlock. Summer and winter, his storehouse is always full. The young lions may lack, and suffer hunger, and seek their meat from G.o.d; but the young porky has only to climb a tree and set his teeth at work. All the woods are his huckleberry.
And, by the way, our Porcupine's teeth were a great inst.i.tution, especially the front ones, and were well worthy of a somewhat detailed description. They were long and sharp and yellow, and there were two in the upper jaw and two in the lower, with a wide gap on each side between them and the molars. They kept right on growing as long as he lived, and there is no telling how far they would have gone if there had been nothing to stop them. Fortunately, he did a great deal of eating and chewing, and the constant friction kept them worn down, and at the same time served to sharpen them. Like a beaver's, they were formed of thin sh.e.l.ls of hard enamel in front, backed up by softer pulp behind; and of course the soft parts wore away first, and left the enamel projecting in sharp, chisel-like edges that could gnaw crumbs from a hickory axe-handle.
The next few months were pleasant ones, with plenty to eat, and nothing to do but keep his jaws going. By and by the leaves began to fall, and whenever the Porky walked abroad they rustled around him like silk skirts going down the aisle of a church. A little later the beechnuts came down from the sky, and he feasted more luxuriously than ever. His four yellow chisels tore the brown sh.e.l.ls open, his molars ground the sweet kernels into meal, and he ate and ate till his short legs could hardly keep his fat little belly off the ground.
Then came the first light snow, and his feet left tracks which bore a faint resemblance to a baby's--that is, if your imagination was sufficiently vigorous. The snow grew deeper and deeper, and after a while he had to fairly plough his way from the hollow log to the tree where he took his meals. It was hard work, for his clumsy legs were not made for wading, and at every step he had to lift and drag himself forward, and then let his body drop while he s.h.i.+fted his feet. A porcupine's feet will not go of themselves, the way other animals' do.
They have to be picked up one at a time and lifted forward as far as they can reach--not very far at the best, for they are fastened to the ends of very short legs. It almost seems as if he could run faster if he could drop them off and leave them behind. One evening, when the snow was beginning to freeze again after a thawing day, he lay down to rest for a few minutes; and when he started on, some of his quills were fast in the hardening crust and had to be left behind. But no matter how difficult the walk might be, there was always a good square meal at the end of it, and he pushed valiantly on till he reached his dinner-table.
Sometimes he stayed in the same tree for several days at a time, quenching his thirst with snow, and sleeping in a crotch.
He was not by any means the only porcupine in the woods around the Glimmergla.s.s, although weeks sometimes pa.s.sed without his seeing any of his relations. At other times there were from one to half a dozen porkies in the trees close by, and when they happened to feel like it they would call back and forth to each other in queer, harsh, and often querulous voices.
One afternoon, when he and another porcupine were occupying trees next each other, two land-lookers came along and camped for the night between them. Earlier in the day the men had crossed the trail of a pack of wolves, and they talked of it as they cut their firewood, and, with all the skill of the _voyageurs_ of old, cooked their scanty supper, and made their bed of balsam boughs. The half-breed was much afraid that they would have visitors before morning, but the white man only laughed at the idea.