Part 3 (2/2)
Somewhere above me, deep in the tangle of the summer wilderness, Mooween stood watching his back track, eyes, ears, and nose alert to discover what the creature was who dared frighten him out of his noonday bath.
It would be senseless to attempt to surprise him now; besides, I had no weapon of any kind.--”To-morrow, about this time, I shall be coming back; then look out, Mooween,” I thought as I marked the place and stole away to my canoe.
But the next day when I came to the place, creeping along the upper edge of the alders so as to make no noise, the pool was clear and quiet, as if nothing but the little trout that hid under the foam bubbles had ever disturbed its peace. Koskomenos was clattering about the bay below as usual. Spite of my precaution he had seen me enter the alders; but he gave me no attention whatever. He went on with his fis.h.i.+ng as if he knew perfectly that the bear had deserted his bathing pool.
It was nearly a month before I again camped on the beautiful lake.
Summer was gone. All her warmth and more than her fragrant beauty still lingered on forest and river; but the drowsiness had gone from the atmosphere, and the haze had crept into it. Here and there birches and maples flung out their gorgeous banners of autumn over the silent water.
A tingle came into the evening air; the lake's breath lay heavy and white in the twilight stillness; birds and beasts became suddenly changed as they entered the brief period of sport and of full feeding.
I was drifting about a reedy bay (the same bay in which the almost forgotten kingfisher had cheated me out of my bear, after eating a minnow that my paddle had routed out for him) shooting frogs for my table with a pocket rifle. How different it was here, I reflected, from the woods about home. There the game was already harried; the report of a gun set every living creature skulking. Here the crack of my little rifle was no more heeded than the plunge of a fish-hawk, or the groaning of a burdened elm bough. A score of fat woodc.o.c.k lay unheeding in that bit of alder tangle yonder, the ground bored like a colander after their night's feeding. Up on the burned hillside the partridges said, quit, quit! when I appeared, and jumped to a tree and craned their necks to see what I was. The black ducks skulked in the reeds. They were full-grown now and strong of wing, but the early hiding habit was not yet broken up by shooting. They would glide through the sedges, and double the bogs, and crouch in a tangle till the canoe was almost upon them, when with a rush and a frightened hark-ark! they shot into the air and away to the river. The mink, changing from brown to black, gave up his nest-robbing for honest hunting, undismayed by trap or deadfall; and up in the inlet I could see gra.s.sy domes rising above the bronze and gold of the marsh, where Musquash was building thick and high for winter cold and spring floods. Truly it was good to be here, and to enter for a brief hour into the shy, wild but unharried life of the wood folk.
A big bullfrog showed his head among the lily pads, and the little rifle, unmindful of the joys of an unharried existence, rose slowly to its place. My eye was glancing along the sights when a sudden movement in the alders on the sh.o.r.e, above and beyond the unconscious head of Chigwooltz the frog, spared him for a little season to his lily pads and his minnow hunting. At the same moment a kingfisher went rattling by to his old perch over the minnow pool. The alders swayed again as if struck; a huge bear lumbered out of them to the sh.o.r.e, with a disgruntled woof! at some twig that had switched his ear too sharply.
I slid lower in the canoe till only my head and shoulders were visible.
Mooween went nosing along-sh.o.r.e till something--a dead fish or a mussel bed--touched his appet.i.te, when he stopped and began feeding, scarcely two hundred yards away. I reached first for my heavy rifle, then for the paddle, and cautiously ”fanned” the canoe towards sh.o.r.e till an old stump on the point covered my approach. Then the little bark jumped forward as if alive. But I had scarcely started when--klrrrr! klrrr!
ik-ik--ik! Over my head swept Koskomenos with a rush of wings and an alarm cry that spoke only of haste and danger. I had a glimpse of the bear as he shot into the alders, as if thrown by a catapult; the kingfisher wheeled in a great rattling circle about the canoe before he pitched upon the old stump, jerking his tail and clattering in great excitement.
I swung noiselessly out into the lake, where I could watch the alders.
They were all still for a s.p.a.ce of ten minutes; but Mooween was there, I knew, sniffing and listening. Then a great snake seemed to be wriggling through the bushes, making no sound, but showing a wavy line of quivering tops as he went.
Down the sh.o.r.e a little way was a higher point, with a fallen tree that commanded a view of half the lake. I had stood there a few days before, while watching to determine the air paths and lines of flight that sheldrakes use in pa.s.sing up and down the lake,--for birds have runways, or rather flyways, just as foxes do. Mooween evidently knew the spot; the alders showed that he was heading straight for it, to look out on the lake and see what the alarm was about. As yet he had no idea what peril had threatened him; though, like all wild creatures, he had obeyed the first clang of a danger note on the instant. Not a creature in the woods, from Mooween down to Tookhees the wood mouse, but has learned from experience that, in matters of this kind, it is well to jump to cover first and investigate afterwards.
I paddled swiftly to the point, landed and crept to a rock from which I could just see the fallen tree. Mooween was coming. ”My bear this time,”
I thought, as a twig snapped faintly. Then Koskomenos swept into the woods, hovering over the brush near the b.u.t.t of the old tree, looking down and rattling--klrrrik, clear out! klrrr-ik, clear out! There was a heavy rush, such as a bear always makes when alarmed; Koskomenos swept back to his perch; and I sought the sh.o.r.e, half inclined to make my next hunting more even-chanced by disposing of one meddlesome factor. ”You wretched, noisy, clattering meddler!” I muttered, the front sight of my rifle resting fair on the blue back of Koskomenos, ”that is the third time you have spoiled my shot, and you won't have another chance.--But wait; who is the meddler here?”
Slowly the bent finger relaxed on the trigger. A loon went floating by the point, all unconscious of danger, with a rippling wake that sent silver reflections glinting across the lake's deep blue. Far overhead soared an eagle, breeze-borne in wide circles, looking down on his own wide domain, unheeding the man's intrusion. Nearer, a red squirrel barked down his resentment from a giant spruce trunk. Down on my left a heavy splash and a wild, free tumult of quacking told where the black ducks were coming in, as they had done, undisturbed, for generations.
Behind me a long roll echoed through the woods--some young c.o.c.k partridge, whom the warm sun had beguiled into drumming his spring love-call. From the mountain side a cow moose rolled back a startling answer. Close at hand, yet seeming miles away, a chipmunk was chunking sleepily in the suns.h.i.+ne, while a nest of young wood mice were calling their mother in the gra.s.s at my feet. And every wild sound did but deepen the vast, wondrous silence of the wilderness.
”After all, what place has the roar of a rifle or the smell of sulphurous powder in the midst of all this blessed peace?” I asked half sadly. As if in answer, the kingfisher dropped with his musical plash, and swept back with exultant rattle to his watchtower.--”Go on with your clatter and your fis.h.i.+ng. The wilderness and the solitary place shall still be glad, for you and Mooween, and the trout pools would be lonely without you. But I wish you knew that your life lay a moment ago in the bend of my finger, and that some one, besides the bear, appreciates your brave warning.”
Then I went back to the point to measure the tracks, and to estimate how big the bear was, and to console myself with the thought of how I would certainly have had him, if something had not interfered--which is the philosophy of all hunters since Esau.
It was a few days later that the chance came of repaying Koskomenos with coals of fire. The lake surface was still warm; no storms nor frosts had cooled it. The big trout had risen from the deep places, but were not yet quickened enough to take my flies; so, trout hungry, I had gone trolling for them with a minnow. I had taken two good fish, and was moving slowly by the mouth of the bay, Simmo at the paddle, when a suspicious movement on the sh.o.r.e attracted my attention. I pa.s.sed the line to Simmo, the better to use my gla.s.ses, and was scanning the alders sharply, when a cry of wonder came from the Indian. ”O bah cosh, see!
das second time I catchum, Koskomenos.” And there, twenty feet above the lake, a young kingfisher--one of Koskomenos' frowzy-headed, wild-eyed-youngsters--was whirling wildly at the end of my line. He had seen the minnow trailing a hundred feet astern and, with more hunger than discretion, had swooped for it promptly. Simmo, feeling the tug but seeing nothing behind him, had struck promptly, and the hook went home.
I seized the line and began to pull in gently. The young kingfisher came most unwillingly, with a continuous clatter of protest that speedily brought Koskomenos and his mate, and two or three of the captive's brethren, in a wild, clamoring about the canoe. They showed no lack of courage, but swooped again and again at the line, and even at the man who held it. In a moment I had the youngster in my hand, and had disengaged the hook. He was not hurt at all, but terribly frightened; so I held him a little while, enjoying the excitement of the others, whom the captive's alarm rattle kept circling wildly about the canoe. It was noteworthy that not another bird heeded the cry or came near. Even in distress they refused to recognize the outcast. Then, as Koskomenos hovered on quivering wings just over my head, I tossed the captive close up beside him. ”There, Koskomenos, take your young chuckle-head, and teach him better wisdom. Next time you see me stalking a bear, please go on with your fis.h.i.+ng.”
But there was no note of grat.i.tude in the noisy babel that swept up the bay after the kingfishers. When I saw them again, they were sitting on a dead branch, five of them in a row, chuckling and clattering all at once, unmindful of the minnows that played beneath them. I have no doubt that, in their own way, they were telling each other all about it.
MEEKO THE MISCHIEF-MAKER
There is a curious Indian legend about Meeko the red squirrel--the Mischief-Maker, as the Milicetes call him--which is also an excellent commentary upon his character. Simmo told it to me, one day, when we had caught Meeko coming out of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r's hole with the last of a brood of fledgelings in his mouth, chuckling to himself over his hunting.
Long ago, in the days when Clote Scarpe ruled the animals, Meeko was much larger than he is now, large as Mooween the bear. But his temper was so fierce, and his disposition so altogether bad that all the wood folk were threatened with destruction. Meeko killed right and left with the temper of a weasel, who kills from pure l.u.s.t of blood. So Clote Scarpe, to save the little woods-people, made Meeko smaller--small as he is now. Unfortunately, Clote Scarpe forgot Meeko's disposition; that remained as big and as bad as before. So now Meeko goes about the woods with a small body and a big temper, barking, scolding, quarreling and, since he cannot destroy in his rage as before, setting other animals by the ears to destroy each other.
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