Part 4 (2/2)
But yet there remained two of the larger forest creatures that did not heed at all. One was Urson, the porcupine, whose stupidity is beyond all measuring. He was too slow and patient and dull to give attention to a rifle bullet. And the other was Graycoat the coyote, gray and strange and foam-lipped, on the hillside. Graycoat could hear nothing but strange whinings and voices that rang ever in his ears. All other sounds were obscured. The reason was extremely simple. In the dog days a certain malady sometimes comes to the wild creatures, and it is dreaded worse than drought or cold or any of the manifold terrors of their lives. No one knows what name they have for this sickness. Human beings call it hydrophobia. And the coyotes are particularly susceptible to it.
Ordinarily the name of coyote is, among the beasts, a synonym for cowardice as well as a certain kind of detested cunning. All the cowardice of a mountain lion and a wolf and a lynx put together doesn't equal the amount that Graycoat carried in the end of his tail. That doesn't mean timidity. Timidity is a trait of the deer, a gift of nature for self-preservation, and no one holds it against them. In fact, it makes them rather appealing. Cowardice is a lack of moral courage to remain and fight when nature has afforded the necessary weapons to fight with. It is sort of a betrayal of nature,--a misuse of powers. No one calls a rabbit a coward because it runs away. A warlike rabbit is something that no man has ever seen since the beginning of the world, and probably never will. Nature hasn't given the little animal any weapons.
But this is not true of the wolf or cougar. A wolf has ninety pounds of lightning-quick muscles, and teeth that are nothing but a set of very well-sharpened and perfectly arranged daggers. A cougar not only has fangs, but talons that can rend flesh more terribly than the cogs of a machine, and strength to make the air hum under his paw as he strikes it down. And so it is an extremely disappointing thing to see either of these animals flee in terror from an Airedale not half their size,--a sight that most mountain men see rather often. The fact that they act with greater courage in the famine times, and that either of them will fight to the very death when brought to bay, are not extenuating circ.u.mstances to their cowardice. A mouse will bite the hand that picks it up if it has no other choice.
A coyote is, at least in a measure, equipped for fighting. He is smaller than a wolf, and his fangs are almost as terrible. Yet a herd of determined sheep, turning to face him, puts him in a panic. The smallest dog simply petrifies him with terror. And a rifle report,--he has been known to put a large part of a county between himself and the source of the sound in the shortest possible time. If a mountain man feels like fighting, he simply calls another a coyote. It is more effective than impugning the virtue of his female ancestors. To be called a coyote means to be termed the lowest, most despised creature of which the imagination can conceive.
And besides being a perfect, unprincipled coward, he is utterly without pride. And that is saying a great deal. Most large animals have more pride than they have intelligence, particularly the bear and the moose.
A mature bear, dying before his foes, will often refrain from howling even in the greatest agony. He is simply too proud. A moose greatly dislikes to appear to run away in the presence of enemies. He will walk with the dignity of a bishop until he thinks the brush has obscured him; and then he will simply fly! And there was a dog once, long ago, which, meeting on the highways a dog that was much larger and that could not possibly be mastered, would simply turn away his eyes and pretend not to see him.
A coyote is wholly without this virtue, as well as most of the other virtues of the animal world. He not only eats carrion--because if one started to condemn all the carrion-eating animals of the forest he would soon have precious few of them left--but he also eats old shoes off rubbish piles. Unlike the wolf, he does not even find his courage in the famine times. He has cunning, but cunning is not greatly beloved in men or beasts. Most folk prefer a kindly, blundering awkwardness, a simplicity of heart and spirit, such as are to be found in Woof the bear.
But Graycoat has one tendency that makes all the other forest creatures regard him with consternation: he is extremely liable to madness. Along in dog days he is seen suddenly to begin to rush through the thickets, barking and howling and snapping at invisible enemies, with foam dropping from his terrible lips. His eyes grow yellow and strange. And this is the time that even the bull elk turns off his trail. No one cares to meet Graycoat when the hydrophobia is upon him. At such time all his cunning and his terror are quite forgotten in his agony, and he is likely to make an unprovoked charge on Woof himself.
Now Graycoat came walking stiff-legged down through the thickets. And the forest creatures, from the smallest to the great, forgot the far-off peal of the rifle bullets to get out of his way.
VI
Dan and Lennox started together up the long slope of the ridge. Dan alone was armed; Lennox went with him solely as a guide. The deer season had just opened, and it might be that Dan would want to procure one of these creatures.
”But I'm not sure I want to hunt deer,” Dan told him. ”You speak of them as being so beautiful--”
”They are beautiful, and your grandfather would never hunt them either, except for meat. But maybe you'll change your mind when you see a buck.
Besides, we might run into a lynx or a panther. But not very likely, without dogs.”
They trudged up, over the carpet of pine needles. They fought their way through a thicket of buckbrush. Once they saw the gray squirrels in the tree tops. And before Lennox had as much as supposed they were near the haunts of big game, a yearling doe sprang up from its bed in the thickets.
For an instant she stood motionless, presenting a perfect target. It was evident that she had heard the sound of the approaching hunters, but had not as yet located or identified them with her near-sighted eyes. Lennox whirled to find Dan standing very still, peering along the barrel of his rifle. But he didn't shoot. A light danced in his eyes, and his fingers crooked nervously about the trigger, but yet there was no pressure. The deer, seeing Lennox move, leaped into her terror-pace,--that astounding run that is one of the fastest gaits in the whole animal world. In the wink of an eye, she was out of sight.
”Why didn't you shoot?” Lennox demanded.
”Shoot? It was a doe, wasn't it?”
”Good Lord, of course it was a doe! But there are no game laws that go back this far. Besides--you aimed at it.”
”I aimed just to see if I could catch it through my sights. And I could.
My gla.s.ses sort of made it blur--but I think--perhaps--that I could have shot it. But I'm not going to kill does. There must be some reason for the game laws, or they wouldn't exist.”
”You're a funny one. Come three thousand miles to hunt and then pa.s.s up the first deer you see. You could almost have been your grandfather, to have done that. He thought killing a deer needlessly was almost as bad as killing a man. They are beautiful things, aren't they?”
Dan answered him with startling emphasis. But the look that he wore said more than his words.
They trudged on, and Lennox grew thoughtful. He was recalling the picture that he had seen when he had whirled to look at Dan, immediately after the deer had leaped from its bed. It puzzled him a little. He had turned to find the younger man in a perfect posture to shoot, his feet placed in exactly the position that years of experience had taught Lennox was correct; and withal, absolutely motionless. Of all the many things to learn in the wilderness, to stand perfectly still in the presence of game is one of the hardest. The natural impulse is to start,--a nervous reflex that usually terrifies the game. The principle of standing still is, of course, that it takes a certain length of time for the deer to look about after it makes its first leap from its bed, and if the hunter is motionless, the deer is usually unable to identify him as a thing to fear. It gives a better chance for a shot. What many hunters take years to learn, Dan had seemed to know by instinct. Could it be, after all, that this slender weakling, even now bowed down with a terrible malady, had inherited the true frontiersman's instincts of his ancestors?
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