Part 8 (1/2)
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 him in 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, s.h.a.ggy 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 hundred yards 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 to give 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 gra.s.s-land surrounding a deserted cabin. At the sight of the s.p.a.ce 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 m.u.f.fled footfall.
She was almost upon him, however, before he could actually get a view of her. She came out into a s.p.a.ce between two clumps of young fir trees, not twenty-five yards from his hiding-place, and was just pa.s.sing 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 trespa.s.sers. Then he made haste home, to fetch a 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.
c.o.c.k-Crow
He was a splendid bird, a thoroughbred ”Black-breasted Red” game-c.o.c.k, 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 cras.h.i.+ng 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-c.o.c.k, 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 c.o.c.k walked out deliberately, uttered a long, low _krr-rr-ee_ of 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 s.p.a.ces in every direction. One of these roads led straight back into the wilderness from the railway--almost from the stump whereon the red c.o.c.k had his perch.
The c.o.c.k 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 c.o.c.ks 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 pa.s.sed 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 for a second, and, with a sudden mighty thrust of his wide wings, he swooped down upon this novel victim.