Part 12 (2/2)
Ba'tiste's eyes were for lairs of gra.s.s crushed so recently that the spear leaves were even now rising; for holes in the black mould where great ripping claws had been tearing up roots; for hollow logs and rotted stumps where a black bear might have crawled to take his afternoon siesta; for punky trees which a grisly might have torn open to gobble ants' eggs; for scratchings down the bole of poplar or cottonwood where some languid bear had been sharpening his claws in midsummer as a cat will scratch chair-legs; for great pits deep in the clay banks, where some silly badger or gopher ran down to the depths of his burrow in sheer terror only to have old bruin come ripping and tearing to the innermost recesses, with scattered fur left that told what had happened.
Some soft oozy moss-padded lair, deep in the marsh with the reeds of the brittle cat-tails lifting as if a sleeper had just risen, sets Ba'tiste's pulse hopping--jumping--marking time in thrills like the lithe bounds of a pouncing mountain-cat. With tread soft as the velvet paw of a panther, he steals through the cane-brake parting the reeds before each pace, brus.h.i.+ng aside softly--silently what might crus.h.!.+--snap!--sound ever so slight an alarm to the little p.r.i.c.ked ears of a s.h.a.ggy head tossing from side to side--jerk--jerk--from right to left--from left to right--always on the listen!--on the listen!--for prey!--for prey!
”Oh, for sure, that Ba'tiste, he was but a fool-hunter,” as his comrades afterward said (it is always so very plain afterward); ”that Ba'tiste, he was a fool! What man else go step--step--into the marsh after a bear!”
But the truth was that Ba'tiste, the cunning rascal, always succeeded in coming out of the marsh, out of the bush, out of the windfall, sound as a top, safe and unscratched, with a bear-skin over his shoulder, the head swinging pendant to show what sort of fellow he had mastered.
”Dat wan!--ah!--diable!--he has long sharp nose--he was thin--thin as a barrel all gone but de hoops--ah!--voila!--he was wan ugly garcon, was dat bear!”
Where the hunters found tufts of fur on the sage brush, bits of skin on the spined cactus, the others might vow coyotes had worried a badger.
Ba'tiste would have it that the badger had been slain by a bear. The cached carca.s.s of fawn or doe, of course, meant bear; for the bear is an epicure that would have meat gamey. To that the others would agree.
And so the shortening autumn days with the s.h.i.+mmering heat of a crisp noon and the noiseless chill of starry twilights found the trappers canoeing leisurely up-stream from the northern tributaries of the Missouri nearing the long overland trail that led to the hunting-fields in Canada.
One evening they came to a place bounded by high cliff banks with the flats heavily wooded by poplar and willow. Ba'tiste had found signs that were hot--oh! so hot! The mould of an uprooted gopher hole was so fresh that it had not yet dried. This was not a region of timber-wolves. What had dug that hole? Not the small, skulking coyote--the vagrant of prairie life! Oh!--no!--the coyote like other vagrants earns his living without work, by skulking in the wake of the business-like badger; and when the badger goes down in the gopher hole, Master Coyote stands nearby and gobbles up all the stray gophers that bolt to escape the invading badger.[37] What had dug the hole? Ba'tiste thinks that he knows.
That was on open prairie. Just below the cliff is another kind of hole--a roundish pit dug between moss-covered logs and earth wall, a pit with gra.s.s clawed down into it, snug and hidden and sheltered as a bird's nest. If the pit is what Ba'tiste thinks, somewhere on the banks of the stream should be a watering-place. He proposes that they beach the canoes and camp here. Twilight is not a good time to still hunt an unseen bear. Twilight is the time when the bear himself goes still hunting. Ba'tiste will go out in the early morning. Meantime if he stumbles on what looks like a trail to the watering-place, he will set a trap.
Camp is not for the regular trapper what it is for the amateur hunter--a time of rest and waiting while others skin the game and prepare supper.
One hunter whittles the willow sticks that are to make the camp fire.
Another gathers moss or boughs for a bed. If fish can be got, some one has out a line. The kettle hisses from the cross-bar between notched sticks above the fire, and the meat sizzling at the end of a forked twig sends up a flavour that whets every appet.i.te. Over the upturned canoes bend a couple of men gumming afresh all the splits and seams against to-morrow's voyage. Then with a flip-flop that tells of the other side of the flap-jacks being browned, the cook yodels in crescendo that ”Sup--per!--'s--read--ee!”
Supper over, a trap or two may be set in likely places. The men may take a plunge; for in spite of their tawny skins, these earth-coloured fellows have closer acquaintance with water than their appearance would indicate. The man-smell is as acute to the beast's nose as the rank fur-animal-smell is to the man's nose; and the first thing that an Indian who has had a long run of ill-luck does is to get a native ”sweating-bath” and make himself clean.
On the ripple of the flowing river are the red bars of the camp fire.
Among the willows, perhaps, the bole of some birch stands out white and spectral. Though there is no wind, the poplars s.h.i.+ver with a fall of wan, faded leaves like snow-flakes on the grave of summer. Red bills and whisky-jacks and lonely phoebe-birds came fluttering and pecking at the crumbs. Out from the gray thicket bounds a cottontail to jerk up on his hind legs with surprise at the camp fire. A blink of his long ear, and he has bounded back to tell the news to his rabbit family. Overhead, with shrill clangour, single file and in long wavering <big>V</big> lines, wing geese migrating southward for the season. The children's hour, has a great poet called a certain time of day? Then this is the hour of the wilderness hunter, the hour when ”the Mountains of the Setting Sun” are flooded in fiery lights from zone to zenith with the snowy heights overtopping the far rolling prairie like clouds of opal at poise in mid-heaven, the hour when the camp fire lies on the russet autumn-tinged earth like a red jewel, and the far line of the prairie fire billows against the darkening east in a tide of vermilion flame.
Unless it is raining, the _voyageurs_ do not erect their tent; for they will sleep in the open, feet to the fire, or under the canoes, close to the great earth, into whose very fibre their beings seem to be rooted.
And now is the time when the hunters spin their yarns and exchange notes of all they have seen in the long silent day. There was the prairie chicken with a late brood of half-grown clumsy clucking chicks amply able to take care of themselves, but still clinging to the old mother's care. When the hunter came suddenly on them, over the old hen went, flopping broken-winged to decoy the trapper till her children could run for shelter--when--lo!--of a sudden, the broken wing is mended and away she darts on both wings before he has uncased his gun! There are the stories of bear hunters like Ba'tiste sitting on the other side of the fire there, who have been caught in their own bear traps and held till they died of starvation and their bones bleached in the rusted steel.
That story has such small relish for Ba'tiste that he hitches farther away from the others and lies back flat on the ground close to the willow under-tangle with his head on his hand.
”For sure,” says Ba'tiste contemptuously, ”n.o.body doesn't need no tree to climb here! Sacre!--cry wolf!--wolf!--and for sure!--diable!--de beeg loup-garou will eat you yet!”
Down somewhere from those stars overhead drops a call silvery as a flute, clear as a piccolo--some night bird lilting like a mote on the far oceans of air. The trappers look up with a movement that in other men would be a nervous start; for any shrill cry pierces the silence of the prairie in almost a stab. Then the men go on with their yarn telling of how the Blackfeet murdered some traders on this very ground not long ago till the gloom gathering over willow thicket and encircling cliffs seems peopled with those marauding warriors. One man rises, saying that he is ”goin' to turn in” and is taking a step through the dark to his canoe when there is a dull pouncing thud. For an instant the trappers thought that their comrade had stumbled over his boat. But a heavy groan--a low guttural cry--a shout of ”Help--help--help Ba'tiste!” and the man who had risen plunged into the cras.h.i.+ng cane-brake, calling out incoherently for them to ”help--help Ba'tiste!”
In the confusion of cries and darkness, it was impossible for the other two trappers to know what had happened. Their first thought was of the Indians whose crimes they had been telling. Their second was for their rifles--and they had both sprung over the fire where they saw the third man striking--striking--striking wildly at something in the dark. A low worrying growl--and they descried the Frenchman rolling over and over, clutched by or clutching a huge furry form--hitting--plunging with his knife--struggling--screaming with agony.
”It's Ba'tiste! It's a bear!” shouted the third man, who was attempting to drive the brute off by raining blows on its head.
Man and bear were an indistinguishable struggling ma.s.s. Should they shoot in the half-dark? Then the Frenchman uttered the scream of one in death-throes: ”Shoot!--shoot!--shoot quick! She's striking my face!--she's striking my face----”
And before the words had died, sharp flashes of light cleft the dark--the great beast rolled over with a coughing growl, and the trappers raised their comrade from the ground.
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