won't tease you any more." And, carrying his prize carefully before him,
he turned back to the canoe. Quills glared after him, till his long
form had vanished through the trees. Then his anger cooled, and
exultation at this easy and signal triumph took its place. His spines
went down till they were hidden beneath the dark fur and he seemed to
have shrunk to half his size. The stress of his emotions having made
him hungry--_anything_ will do to make a porcupine hungry--he crawled
down to the edge of the water and fell to feasting in a patch of
arrow-weed.
* * * * * *
Autumn on the Tobique passed swiftly in a blaze of colour. A few sudden
touches of frost in the night, and then the maples stood glorious in
scarlet and crimson, the birches and poplars shimmered in pale gold, the
ash trees smouldered in dull purple, and the rowans flaunted their great
bunches of waxy orange-vermilion berries against the solid dark-green
background of hemlock and spruce. The partridge-coveys whirred on
strong wing across the glowing corridors of the forest, under a sky of
sharp cobalt. For a day or two every tree-top was elusively vocal with
the thin-drawn single notes of the migrating cedar wax-wings--notes
which were mere tiny beads of sound. The ice which formed each night
along the edges of the shallow pools flitted away each morning before
the unclouded sun was two hours high. And the air, stirred with light
breezes, sparkling, and rich with earth-scents, was like wine in the
veins of every creature alive. One night came a light sifting of snow,
in gossamer flakes which vanished at the first touch of the sun. Then
the breezes died away; the air, losing its crisp tang, grew balmy and
languorous, the sharp blue of the sky veiled itself in a tender opaline
haze; the wilderness seemed to fall asleep, its silence broken only by
the whispers of the falling leaves and, once in a while, the startling
_chirr-rr-rr_ of a red squirrel exulting over his hoard of beech-nuts.
Life for the moment had taken on the tissue of a dream. It was the
magic "Indian Summer." And folk in the scattered settlements, drinking
in the beauty and the wonder of it, were sad because they knew how
swiftly it must pass.
It passed, as it had come, in a night. Day broke steel-grey and
menacing, with a bitter wind cutting down out of the North, and in a few
hours everything was rigid with frost. Quills, though cold in reality
had small terror for his hardy and well-clad frame, had been disturbed
and annoyed by the sudden change. He didn't like the wind. It occurred
to him that a warm and sheltered retreat, like his dimly-remembered nest
in the heart of the old maple, would be a better sleeping-place than the
draughty branches of a hemlock or a spruce. In this frame of mind he
thought of a tempting-looking hole which he had noticed under a big
boulder some fifty yards or so up the backwater. He knew, to be sure,
that the hole belonged to an old dog-fox, but that fact did not trouble
him. His brain had only room for one idea at a time. He set out
straightway for that hole.
At the entrance to the den the strong smell of fox seemed to him like a
challenge, and his spines rose angrily. He had no idea whether the
owner was at home or not, and he made no attempt to find out. By way of
precaution, however, he turned round before entering and backed in,
slashing vigorously with his armed tail as he did so. The fox was not
at home. He found the retreat dry and warm--in fact, just what he
wanted. So, having well breakfasted before leaving his tree, he settled
himself down with his hind-quarters to the entrance, pretty well
blocking it, and unconcernedly went to sleep.
Presently the fox came trotting home, intent on getting out of the wind
and having a nap in his snug den. But just before the threshold he
stopped short, the fur on his neck stood up, and his eyes went green. He
had scented the trail of Quills, and it led straight into his lair.
Stealthily he tiptoed forward, peered in, and saw confronting him that
spiny tail and rump, just inside the doorway.
His blood boiled at the intruder's insolence. But he was a wise old
beast, and in his rash youth he had once been lame for a month, with a
steely quill burning and festering under his knee-joint, through having
tried to interfere with a most insignificant-looking porcupine. Curbing
his righteous wrath--as there was nothing else to do--he turned about
and with his scratching hind paws insultingly sent a shower of soiled
earth upon the slumbering Quills. Then he trotted off to seek another
retreat. Quills, thus rudely awakened, crawled forth, chattering
indignantly, and shook out the defilement from his long coat. But, as
the fox was nowhere in sight, he promptly forgot his wrath and turned
into the den again to resume his nap.
Gradually, but inexorably, winter now closed down upon the valley of the
Tobique. And it was a hard winter--for all the hunting beasts and
birds, a desperate winter. The rabbits that autumn had been smitten
with one of their periodical epidemics, and died off like flies. This
did not trouble Quills directly--a strict vegetarian, he was assured of
plenty so long as the forest stood. But indirectly it made a vital
difference to him. All the prowling and pouncing kindred--the great
horned owls and the eagles, the lynxes, foxes, martens, and minks, and
even certain surly old he-bears who were too restless to "hole-up" for
the winter--soon found themselves goaded by such a hunger as might at
any moment drive them to take unwonted risks. Quills little guessed how
often, as he was gnawing complacently at his meal of hemlock bark, he
would be watched longingly by savage and hungry eyes. But, had he
guessed it, his indifference would have remained quite unruffled. He
had all he could eat, and a warm hole to sleep in, and why should he
borrow trouble?
But one biting December afternoon, when the straight shadows of the fir
trees were stretching long and blue across the snow, Quills's
complacency got something of a shock. Just as he was crawling
luxuriously into his den, one of those great horned owls which are the
feathered Apaches of the wilderness came winnowing low overhead on wings
as silent as sleep. His round staring eyes caught sight of Quills's
hind-quarters just vanishing into the hole. There was no time to note
exactly what it was, and hunger had made the great bird rash even beyond
his wont. He swooped instantly and struck his terrible talons into the
tail and haunch.
With a loud hiss, like that of an angry cat, he let go precipitately and
fairly bounced up into the air again, both murderous talons stuck deep
with spines which seemed to burn into his sinews. He flew in haste to
the nearest branch, steadied himself with difficulty on the perch, and
set himself to the painful task of plucking out the torments with his
beak, holding up first one claw and then the other. With some of the
spines he was successful, but others he merely managed to nip off close
to the skin. His feet began to swell immediately. For several weeks he
could do no hunting, for the fiery anguish in them, but could only sit
moping in his hollow tree, where he would soon have starved but for the
food brought to him by his faithful mate.
As for Quills, this was his first experience of physical pain, and it
was his first taste of fear. Whining and squealing and grunting all at
once, he shrank into his den, and, carefully parting the spines and fur
with his nose, strove to lick the wounds made by those steel-sharp
talons. For a day or two he had no appetite, and stayed sulking in the
den. But the healthy flesh, being unpoisoned, soon healed, and Quills
was himself again, except for a certain unaccustomed watchfulness. He
did not know what creature it was which had dared to attack him, so at
sight of any strange beast whatsoever, up would go his spines and he
would put himself on guard. Even a malevolent--but to him
harmless--little weasel, or a scouting mink, he would honour with his
suspicions; and one day, when a gigantic bull moose came and stood
beneath the tree in which he was feeding, he chattered down at him
furiously and arrayed all his defences as if expecting immediate attack.
But as the huge black beast did not even trouble to look at him, his
fears were soon allayed.
A porcupine's memory, however, seems to be extraordinarily short, and
Quills's was no exception to the rule. In the course of three or four
weeks, when his wounds no longer pricked him to remembrance, he forgot
all about the affair and recovered his old indifference. One day when
he was returning to his den for a doze--and only a score of yards away
from the entrance--right into his pathway, with a noiseless pounce,
dropped a great, grey, furry beast with tufted ears, and long, white
snarling teeth, and huge pads of paws. It crouched before him, its stub
of a tail twitching, and glared upon him with pale, cruel, moon-like
eyes. Up went Quills's spines at once, and he ducked his nose between
his fore-paws; but he was determined to get to his den, so he came right
on. Seeing, however, that the intruder showed no sign of getting out of
the way, Quills suddenly turned round and came on backwards, lashing out
fiercely with his tail. The lynx was wild with hunger, but not to the
pitch of suicidal recklessness. He ached intolerably for the
well-nourished flesh that he knew lay hidden beneath those bristling
spines, but he knew the price that he would have to pay for it. With a
screech of disappointed rage, he restrained himself and slipped from the
path; and Quills, chattering noisily, disappeared into his hole.
As the long and bitter winter drew on, burying the wilderness under five
or six feet of snow and scourging it with storm and iron frost, Quills
had many more or less similar encounters with the lynxes, and twice with
a surly old black-bear. Paradoxical as the statement may appear, he
usually faced the foe with his tail. And the result was always the same.
No prowler was prepared to pay the price which Quills would have exacted
for his carcase. But along in March, when the snow had begun to settle
heavily under a week of thaw, Quills was confronted by a new enemy
before whom his indifference melted more swiftly than the snow.
Very early one morning, when the first ghost-grey light of dawn was
beginning to glimmer through the windless forest, Quills had just come
down out of an old hemlock, when he caught sight of a strange beast
gliding over the snow some thirty or forty yards away. The stranger,
dark brown in colour, with a bushy tail, long and low-set body,
weasel-shaped head, and grizzly-grey face with black snout, was somewhat
under three feet in length. It was distinctly smaller, and at first
glance less dangerous-looking, than a lynx. But some inherited instinct
told Quills at once that this was an enemy far more to be dreaded than
the fiercest of lynxes. He had never seen a fisher before. Fortunately
for the porcupine tribe, fishers were very scarce in the valley of the
Tobique. But a chill of ancestral fear struck to Quills's heart.
The fisher, catching sight of him, whirled in his tracks and darted at
him with a light swiftness and deadly intensity of purpose very
different from the hesitating attitude of Quills's other foes. And
Quills's tactics were now different. Jutting from the snow, near the
trunk of the hemlock, was a heavy windfall, its top supported by the
lower branches of a neighbouring beech tree. Under this protection
Quills thrust his nose and head, clear to the shoulders, leaving only
his armed back and fiercely-slashing tail exposed to the assault. He
was no more than in position ere the enemy was upon him.
Now, in nine cases out of ten--perhaps even in ninety-nine out of a
hundred--the fight between a porcupine and a fisher has but one result.
The fisher eats the porcupine. He is incomparably the stronger. He is,
taking it all in all, the most savage, swift, and crafty of all the
marauders of the wilderness, and, above all else, for some reason as yet
unexplained by the naturalists, the porcupine's quills, so deadly to
others, have for him comparatively few terrors. They do not poison or
inflame his flesh, which seems to possess the faculty of soon rejecting
them and casting them forth again through the skin. All he has to do is
to flip the victim over on its back--annexing as few spines as possible
in the act--and he has the unprotected throat and belly at the mercy of
his fangs.
In the present case, however, the too-confident fisher had an
exceptional porcupine to deal with. Quills was not only unusually large
and vigorous, but, _for a porcupine_, sagacious. He had settled himself
down solidly into the snow, and when the fisher, dodging a blow of his
tail, and accepting a sharp dose of spines in the shoulder, tried to
turn him over with a twist of the paw, Quills resisted successfully,
and, with a timely swing of his haunches, stabbed his assailant's whole
flank full of spines.
The fisher had expected some resistance, some more or less futile
defence, but this was attack. Always short in temper, he flew into a
blind rage at the pain and the surprise of it. He drew back a few
inches to gain impetus for the next effort, and this was his
mistake--this, and underrating his opponent. At that very instant he
got a full, flailing stroke across his face from Quills's tail. It
filled his nose and mouth with spines--that was to be expected; but--for
the blow had surely been guided by the patron spirit of all the
porcupines--it also filled both his eyes.
With a screech of anguish he flung himself full on Quills's back and
strove to bite down through the armour of spines. But he was now
totally blind, and his jaws were stuck so full of spines as to be
practically powerless. Meanwhile his mad struggles were simply driving
deeper and deeper into all his tender underparts those terrible
four-inch spikes which clothed the back of his intended victim. All at
once the agony grew too appalling for even his indomitable spirit. He
lurched off and dragged himself away, stumbling and staggering, and
bumping into tree trunk and bush, till he reached a thicket which he
felt to be dense enough to hide his defeat. And here death came to him,
not too soon.
For some minutes after his defeated foe had gone, Quills remained with
his head thrust under the branch, chattering fierce defiance and lashing
wildly with his tail. Then very cautiously he backed off and looked
about him. He had been roughly mauled. His spines and fur were
dishevelled, and he was bleeding from some deep scratches where his
assailant's claws had got home. But he was not seriously the worse from
his terrible encounter, and he had beaten, fairly and overwhelmingly,
the terrible killer of porcupines. His sombre and solitary spirit
glowed with triumph. Rather hurriedly he crawled on to his lair, and
there set himself to a much-needed toilet. And outside his retreat the
first long, level rays of the sunrise crept across the snow, touching
the trunks of the birches and the poplars to a mystical rose-pink and
saffron.
*STRIPES THE UNCONCERNED*
On the edge of evening, when the last of the light was gathered in the
pale-green upper sky, and all the world of the quiet backwoods clearings
was sunken in a soft violet dusk, a leisurely and self-possessed little
animal came strolling among the ancient stumps and mossy hillocks of the
open upland sheep-pasture. He was about the size of an average cat, but
shorter of leg, with a long, sharp-muzzled head, and he carried his
broad feathery tail very high in a graceful arch, like a squirrel in
good humour. Unlike most other creatures of the wild, his colouring was
such as to make him conspicuous rather than to conceal him. He was
black, with a white stripe down his face, a white patch on the back of
his neck, and a white stripe all the way along each side of his body.
And, also unlike the rest of the furtive folk, he seemed quite
unconcerned to hide his movements from observation. Neither was he for
ever glancing this way and that, as if on the watch for enemies. Rather
he had the air of being content that his enemies should do the
watching--and avoid him.
The skunk--for such was the undignified appellation of this very
dignified personality of the wilderness--was pleasantly engrossed in his
own business. That business, at the moment, consisted in catching the
big, fat, juicy, copper-brown "June-bugs" as they emerged from their
holes in the sod, crawled up the bending grass-stems, and spread their
wings for their heavy evening flight. It was easy hunting, and he had
no need of haste. To snap up these great slow and clumsy beetles as
they clung upon the grass-stems was as easy as picking strawberries,
and, indeed, not altogether dissimilar, as he would nip off the hard,
glossy wing-cases of the big beetles as one nips off the hull of the
berry before munching the succulent morsel.
Having slept the day through in his snug burrow, in the underbrush which
fringed the forest edge of the clearing, he had come forth into the dewy
twilight equipped with a fine appetite. He had come with the definite
purpose of hunting "June-bugs," this being the season, all too brief,
for that highly-favoured delicacy. At first he had thought of nothing
else; but when he had taken the edge off his hunger, he began to
consider the chances of varying his diet. As he seized an unlucky
beetle, close to the edge of a flat, spreading juniper bush, a brooding
ground-sparrow flew up, with a startled _cheep_, from under his very
nose. He dropped the beetle and made a lightning pounce at the bird.
But her wing had flicked him across the eyes, confusingly, and he missed
her. He knew well enough, however, what her presence there among the
warm grass-tussocks meant. He went nosing eagerly under the juniper
bush, and soon found a nest with four little brown-mottled eggs in it.
Tiny though they were, they made a tit-bit very much to his taste, all
the more so that they were very near hatching. Having licked his jaws
and fastidiously polished the fur of his shrewd, keen face, he sauntered
off to see what other delicacies the evening might have in store for
him.
A little further on, toward the centre of the pasture, he came upon a
flat slab of rock, its surface sloping toward the south, its southward
edge slightly overhanging and fringed with soft grass. He knew the rock
well--knew how its bare surface drank in the summer sun all day long,
and held the warmth throughout the dew-chill nights. He knew, too, that
other creatures besides himself might very well appreciate this genial
warmth. Stealthily, and without the smallest disturbance of the grassy
fringe, he sniffed along the overhanging edge of the rock. Suddenly he
stiffened, and his sharp snout darted in under the rock. Then he jerked
back, with the writhing tail of a snake between his jaws.
The prize was a big black-and-yellow garter snake, not far from three
feet long--not venomous, but full of energy and fight. It tried to
cling to its hiding-place; but the shrewd skunk, instead of attempting
to pull it out straight, like a cork from a bottle-neck, ran forward a
pace or two and, as it were, "peeled" it forth. It doubled out, struck
him smartly in the face with its harmless fangs, and then coiled itself
about his neck and fore-legs. There was a moment of confused
rough-and-tumble, but the skunk knew just how to handle this kind of
antagonist. Having bitten the reptile's tail clean through, he
presently, with the help of his practised little jaws, succeeded in
getting hold of it by the back, an inch or two behind the head. This
ended the affair, as a struggle, and the victor proceeded to round off
his supper on snake. He managed to put away almost all but the head and
tail, and then, after a meticulous toilet to fur and paws--for he was as
fastidiously cleanly as a cat--he sauntered back toward his burrow in
the underbrush, to refresh himself with a nap before seeking further
adventures.
Directly in his path stood three or four young seedling firs, about two
feet high, in a dense cluster. Half a dozen paces beyond this tiny
thicket a big red fox, belly to earth, was soundlessly stalking some
quarry, perhaps a mouse, which could be heard ever so faintly rustling
the grass-stems at the edge of the thicket. To the skunk, with his
well-filled belly, the sound had no interest. He rounded the thicket
and came face to face with the fox.
Neither in size, strength, nor agility was he any match for the savage
red beast which stood in his path, and was quite capable, indeed, of
dispatching him in two snaps of his long, lean jaws. But he was not in
the least put out. Watchful, but cool, he kept straight on, neither
delaying nor hastening his leisurely and nonchalant progress. The fox,
on the other hand, stopped short. He was hungry. His hunting was
interfered with, for that rustling under the fir-branches had stopped.
His fine red brush twitched angrily. Nevertheless, he had no stomach to
tackle this easy-going little gentleman in the black-and-white stripes.
Showing his long white teeth in a vindictive but noiseless snarl, he
stepped aside. And the skunk, glancing back with bright eyes of
vigilance and understanding, passed on as if the twilight world belonged
to him. He knew--and he knew his enemy knew as well--that he carried
with him a concealed weapon of such potency that no fox, unless
afflicted with madness, would ever willingly run up against it.
Reaching his burrow in the underbrush without further adventure, he
found it empty. His mate and her young ones--now three-quarters
grown--were scattered away foraging for themselves over the wide,
forest-scented clearings. It was a spacious burrow, dug by a sturdy,
surly old wood-chuck, who, though usually as pugnacious as a badger and
an obstinate stickier for his rights, had in this case yielded without a
fight to the mild-mannered little usurper, and humped off in disgust to
hollow a new abode much deeper in the forest, where such a mischance
would not be likely to happen to him again. Under the tenancy of the
skunk family the burrow was sweet and dry and daintily kept. With a
little grumble of content deep in his throat he curled himself up and
went to sleep.
When he woke and set forth again to renew his foraging, although he had
only slept an hour, his vigorous digestion had quite restored his
appetite. He had no more thought for June-bugs. He wanted bigger game,
more red-blooded and with some excitement in it. He thought of the
farmyard, half a mile away across the clearings, down over the round of
the upland. It was weeks now since he had visited it. There might be
something worth picking up. There might be a mother-hen with chickens,
in a pen which he could find a way into. There might be a hen sitting
on her clutch of eggs in a stolen nest under the barn. He had
discovered in previous seasons that most sitting hens had their nests
provided for them in secure places which he could in no way manage to
come at. But he had also found that sometimes a foolish and
secretive--and very young--hen will _hide_ her nest in some such
out-of-the-way place as under the barn floor, where the troublesome
human creatures who preside over the destinies of hens cannot get at it.
Here she keeps her precious eggs all to herself till she has enough to
cover comfortably, and then she proceeds to the pleasant task of
brooding them, and has things all her own way till some night-prowler
comes along and convicts her, finally and fatally, of her folly.
A full moon, large and ruddy like a ripe pumpkin, was just rising behind
the jagged black tops of the spruce forest. It threw long, fantastic,
confusing shadows across the dewy hillocks of the pasture. Hither and
thither, in and out and across the barred streaks of light, darted the
wild rabbits, gambolling as if half beside themselves, as if smitten
with a mid-summer madness by the capricious magic of the night. But if
mad, they retained enough sound sense to keep ever at a prudent distance
from the leisurely striped wayfarer who appeared so little interested in
their sport. Though they were bigger than he, they knew that, if they
should venture within reach of his pounce, his indifference would vanish
and his inexorable fangs would be in their throats.