day--that turned to his salvation. Dropping swiftly to the entrance of
the all-too-shallow tunnel, the great heron, his head bent sideways,
peered into the hole with one implacable eye. Then drawing back his
neck till it was like a coiled spring, he darted his murderous bill deep
into the hole.
Had it not been for the old mooring stake, which compelled him to change
direction, Star-Nose would have been neatly impaled, plucked forth,
hammered to death, and devoured. As it was, the dreadful weapon merely
grazed the top of his rump--scoring, indeed, a crimson gash--and struck
with a terrifying thud upon the hard wood of the stake. The impact gave
the heron a nasty jar. He drew his head back abruptly, and shook it
hard in his indignant surprise. Then, trying to look as if nothing
unusual had happened, he stepped down into the water with lofty
deliberation and composed himself to watch for fish. At this moment the
big pike came swimming past again, hoping for another chance at the
elusive Star-Nose. He was much too heavy a fish for the heron to
manage, of course; but the heron, in his wrath, stabbed down upon him
vindictively. There was a moment's struggle which made the quiet water
boil. Then the frightened fish tore himself free and darted off, with a
great red wound in his silver-grey side, to hide and sulk under the
lilypads.
In the meantime Star-Nose, though smarting from that raw but superficial
gash upon his hind-quarters, was burrowing away with concentrated zeal.
He had once more changed direction, and was heading, as true as if by
compass, for the nearest point of the home-galleries. He was not even
taking time to drive dump-shafts at the customary intervals, but was
letting the tunnel fill up behind him, as if sure that he was going to
have no further use for it. He just wanted to get home. Of course he
might have travelled much faster above ground; but the too-exciting
events of the past few hours had convinced him that, for this particular
day at least, the upper world of sun and air was not exactly a
health-resort for a dweller in the under-ways. Through all his
excitement, however, and all his eagerness for the safe home burrows,
his unquenchable appetite remained with him; and, running his tunnel as
close to the surface as he could without actually emerging, he picked up
plenty of worms and grubs and fat, helpless pupae as he went.
It was past noon, and the strong sunshine, beating straight down through
the grass and soaking through the matted roots, was making a close but
sweet and earthy-scented warmth in the tunnel, when at last Star-Nose
broke through into one of his familiar passages, well-trodden by the
feet of his tribe. Not by sight, of course,--for the darkness was black
as pitch,--but by the comfortable smell he knew exactly where he was.
Without hesitation he turned to the left, and scurried along, as fast as
he could, for the big central burrow, or lodge, where his tribe had
their headquarters and their nests. The path forked and re-forked
continually, but he was never for one instant at a loss. Here and there
he passed little short side-galleries ending in shallow pockets, which
served for the sanitation of the tribe. Here and there a ray of
green-and-gold light flashed down upon him, as he ran past one of the
exit-shafts. And then, his heart beating with his haste and his joy, he
came forth into a roomy, lightless chamber, thick with warmth and musky
smells, and filled with the pleasant rustlings and small contented
squealings of his own gregarious tribe.
*KROOF, THE SHE-BEAR*
[The next two stories are taken from _The Heart of the Ancient Wood_,
which tells how Kirstie Craig and her little daughter Miranda left the
Settlement to live by themselves in a cabin on the edge of an old wood.]
Spring came early to the clearing that year. Kirstie's autumn furrows,
dark and steaming, began to show in patches through the diminished snow.
The chips before the house and the litter about the barn, drawing the
sun strongly, were first of all uncovered; and over them, as to the
conquest of new worlds, the haughty cock led forth his dames to scratch.
"Saunders," Miranda had called him, in remembrance of a strutting beau
at the Settlement; and with the advent of April cheer, and an increasing
abundance of eggs, and an ever resounding cackle from his complacent
partlets, his conceit became insufferable. One morning, when something
she did offended his dignity, he had the presumption to face her with
beak advanced and wide-ruffled neck feathers. But Saunders did not know
Miranda. Quick as a flash of light she seized him by the legs, whirled
him around her head, and flung him headlong, squawking with fear and
shame, upon his own dunghill. It took him a good hour to recover his
self-esteem, but after that Miranda stood out in his eyes as the one
creature in the world to be respected.
When the clearing was quite bare, except along the edges of the forest,
and Kirstie was again at work on her fencing, the black-and-white cow
gave birth to a black-and-white calf, which Miranda at once claimed as
her own property. It was a very wobbly knock-kneed little heifer; but
Miranda admired it immensely, and with lofty disregard of its sex,
christened it Michael.
About this time the snow shrank away from her hollow under the pine
root, and Kroof came forth to sun herself. She had lived all winter on
nothing but the fat stored up in the spaces of her capacious frame.
Nevertheless she was not famished--she had still a reserve to come and
go on, till food should be abundant. A few days after waking up she bore
a cub. It was the custom of her kind to bear two cubs at a birth; but
Kroof, besides being by long odds the biggest she-bear ever known in
that region, had a pronounced individuality of her own, and was just as
well satisfied with herself over one cub as over two.
The hollow under the pine root was warm and softly lined--a condition
quite indispensable to the new-comer, which was about as unlike a bear
as any baby creature of its size could well manage to be. It was blind,
helpless, whimpering, more shapeless and clumsy-looking than the
clumsiest conceivable pup, and almost naked. Its tender, hairless hide
looked a poor thing to confront the world with; but its appetite was
astounding, and Kroof's milk inexhaustible. In a few days a soft dark
fur began to appear. As the mother sat, hour by hour, watching it and
suckling it, half erect upon her haunches, her fore-legs braced wide
apart, her head stretched as far down as possible, her narrow red tongue
hanging out to one side, her eyes half closed in rapture, it seemed to
grow visibly beneath her absorbing gaze. Before four weeks had passed,
the cub was covered with a jet-black coat, soft and glossy. This being
the case, he thought it time to open his eyes and look about.
He was now about the size of a small cat, but of a much heavier build.
His head, at this age, was shorter for its breadth than his mother's;
the ears much larger, fan-like and conspicuous. His eyes, very softly
vague at first, soon acquired a humorous, mischievous expression, which
went aptly with the erect, inquisitive ears. Altogether he was a fine
baby--a fair justification of Kroof's pride.
The spring being now fairly forward, and pale, whitish-green shoots
upthrusting themselves numerously through the dead leaves, and the big
crimson leaf-buds of the skunk-cabbage vividly punctuating the
sombreness of the swamp, Kroof led her infant forth to view their world.
He had no such severe and continued education to undergo as that which
falls to the lot of other youngsters among the folk of the ancient wood.
For those others the first lesson, the hardest and the most tremendous
in its necessity, was how to avoid their enemies. With this lesson
ill-learned, all other found brief term; for the noiseless drama, in
which all the folk of the forest had their parts, moved ever, through
few scenes or through many, to a tragic close. But the bear, being for
the most part dominant, had his immunities. Even the panther, swift and
fierce and masterful, never deliberately sought quarrel with the bear,
being mindful of his disastrous clutch and the lightning sweep of his
paw. The bear-cub, therefore, going with its mother till almost full
grown, gave no thought at all to enemies; and the cub with such a
giantess as Kroof for its mother might safely make a mock even at
panthers. Kroof's cub had thus but simple things to learn, following
close at his mother's flank. During the first blind weeks of his
cubhood he had, indeed, to acquire the prime virtue of silence, which
was not easy, for he loved to whimper and grumble in a comfortable
little fashion of his own. This was all right while Kroof was at home;
but when she was out foraging, then silence was the thing. This he
learned, partly from Kroof's admonitions, partly from a deep-seated
instinct; and whenever he was left alone, he held his tongue. There was
always the possibility, slight but unpleasant, of a fox or a brown cat
noting Kroof's absence, and seizing the chance to savour a delicate
morsel of sucking bear.
Wandering the silent woods with Kroof, the cub would sniff carefully at
the moist earth and budding shoots wheresoever his mother stopped to
dig. He thus learned where to find the starchy roots which form so
large a part of the bear's food in spring. He found out the important
difference between the sweet ground-nuts and the fiery bitter bulb of
the arum, or Indian turnip; and he learned to go over the grassy meadows
by the lake and dig unerringly for the wild bean's nourishing tubers.
He discovered, also, what old stumps to tear apart when he wanted a
pleasantly acid tonic dose of the larvae of the wood-ant. Among these
serious occupations he would gambol between his mother's feet, or caper
hilariously on his hind legs. Soon he would have been taught to detect
a bee tree, and to rob it of its delectable stores without getting his
eyes stung out; but just then the mysterious forest fates dropped the
curtain on his merry little play, as a reminder that not even for the
great black bear could the rule of doom be relaxed.
Kroof's wanderings with the cub were in the neighbourhood of the
clearing, where both were sometimes seen by Miranda. The sight of the
cub so overjoyed her that she departed from her usual reticence as to
the forest-folk, and told her mother about the lovely, glossy little dog
that the nice, great dog took about with her. The only result was that
Kirstie gave her a sharp warning.
"Dog!" she exclaimed severely; "didn't I tell you Miranda, it was a
bear? Bears are mostly harmless, if you leave them alone; but an old
bear with a cub is mighty ugly. Mind what I say now, you keep by me and
don't go too nigh the edge of the woods."
And so, for the next few weeks, Miranda was watched very strictly, lest
her childish daring should involve her with the bears.
Along in the summer Kroof began to lead the cub wider afield. The
longer journeys vexed the little animal at first, and tired him; so that
sometimes he would throw himself down on his back, with pinky-white
soles of protest in the air, and refuse to go a step farther. But in
spite of the appeal of his quizzical little black snout, big ears, and
twinkling eyes, old Kroof would box him sternly till he was glad enough
to jump up and renew the march. With the exercise he got a little
leaner, but much harder, and soon came to delight in the widest
wandering. Nothing could tire him, and at the end of the journey he
would chase rabbits, or weasels, or other elusive creatures, till
convicted of futility by his mother's sarcastic comments.
These wide wanderings were, indeed, the making of him, so that he
promised to rival Kroof herself in prowess and stature; but alas! poor
cub, they were also his undoing. Had he stayed at home--but even that
might have little availed, for among the folk of the wood it is right at
home that fate most surely strikes.
One day they two were exploring far over in the next valley--the valley
of the Quah-Davic, a tract little familiar to Kroof herself. At the
noon hour Kroof lay down in a little hollow of coolness beside a spring
that _drip-drop, drip-drop, drip-dropped_ from the face of a green rock.
The cub, however, went untiringly exploring the thickets for fifty yards
about, out of sight, indeed, but scrupulously never out of ear-shot.
Near one of these thickets his nostrils caught a new and enthralling
savour. He had never, in his brief life, smelled anything at all like
it, but an unerring instinct told him it was the smell of something very
good to eat. Pushing through the leafage he came upon the source of the
fragrance. Under a slanting structure of logs he found a piece of
flesh, yellowish-white, streaked thickly with dark reddish-brown,--and,
oh, so sweet smelling! It was stuck temptingly on a forked point of
wood. His ears stood up very wide and high in his eagerness. His
sensitive nostrils wrinkled as he sniffed at the tempting find. He
decided that he would just taste it, and then go fetch his mother. But
it was a little high up for him. He rose, set his small white teeth
into it, clutched at it with his soft forepaws, and flung his whole
weight upon it to pull it down.
Kroof, dozing in her hollow of coolness, heard a small agonised screech,
cut short horribly. On the instant her great body went tearing in a
panic through the under-brush. She found the poor cub crushed flat
under the huge timbers of "a dead-fall," his glossy head and one paw
sticking out piteously, his little red tongue protruding from his
distorted mouth.
Kroof needed no second look to know in her heart he was dead, stone
dead; but in the rage of her grief she would not acknowledge it. She
tore madly at the great timber,--so huge a thing to set to crush so
small a life,--and so astonishing was the strength of her claws and her
vast forearms that in the course of half an hour she had the trap fairly
demolished. Softly she removed the crushed and shapeless body, licking
the mouth, the nostrils, the pitifully staring eyes; snuggling it
lightly as a breath, and moaning over it. She would lift the head a
little with her paw, and redouble her caresses as it fell limply aside.
Then it grew cold. This was testimony she could not pretend to ignore.
She ceased the caresses which proved so vain to keep warmth in the
little body she loved. With her snout held high in air she turned
around slowly twice, as if in an appeal to some power not clearly
apprehended; then, without another glance at her dead, she rushed off
madly through the forest.
All night she wandered aimlessly, hither and thither through the low
Quah-Davic valley, over the lower slopes of the mountain, through tracts
where she had never been, but of which she took no note; and toward noon
of the following day she found herself once more in the ancient wood,
not far from the clearing. She avoided widely the old den under the
pine root, and at last threw herself down, worn out and with unsuckled
teats fiercely aching, behind the trunk of a fallen hemlock.
She slept heavily for an hour or two. Then she was awakened by the
crying of a child. She knew it at once for Miranda's voice; and being
in some way stirred by it, in spite of the preoccupation of her pain,
she got up and moved noiselessly toward the sound.
*THE INITIATION OF MIRANDA*
That same day, just after noon-meat, when Miranda had gone out with the
scraps in a yellow bowl to feed the hens, Kirstie had been taken with
what the people at the Settlement would have called "a turn." All the
morning she had felt unusually oppressed by the heat, but had thought
little of it. Now, as she was wiping the dishes, she quite
unaccountably dropped one of them on the floor. The crash aroused her.
She saw with a pang that it was Miranda's little plate of many colours.
Then things turned black about her. She just managed to reel across to
the bunk, and straightway fell upon it in a kind of faint. From this
state she passed into a heavy sleep, which lasted for several hours, and
probably saved her from some violent sickness.
When Miranda had fed the hens she did not go straight back to her
mother. Instead, she wandered off toward the edge of the dark fir-wood,
where it came down close behind the cabin. The broad light of the open
fields, now green with buckwheat, threw a living illumination far in
among the cool arcades.
Between the straight grey trunks Miranda's clear eyes saw something
move.
She liked it very much indeed. It looked to her extremely like a cat,
only larger than any cat she had seen at the Settlement, taller on its
legs, and with a queer thick stump of a tail. In fact, it was a cat,
the brown cat, or lesser lynx. Its coat was a red brown, finely mottled
with a paler shade. It had straight brushes of bristles on the tips of
its ears, like its big cousin, the Canada lynx, only much less
conspicuous than his; and the expression on the moonlike round of its
face was both fierce and shy. But it was a cat, plainly enough; and
Miranda's heart went out to it, as it sat up there in the shadows,
watching her steadily with wide pale eyes.
"Oh, pretty pussy! pretty pussy!" called Miranda, stretching out her
hands to it coaxingly, and running into the wood.
The brown cat waited unwinking till she was about ten paces off, then
turned and darted deeper into the shadows. When it was all but out of
sight it stopped, turned again, and sat up to watch the eager child. It
seemed curious as to the bit of scarlet at her neck. Miranda was now
absorbed in the pursuit, and sanguine of catching the beautiful pussy.
This time she was suffered to come almost within grasping distance,
before the animal again wheeled with an angry _pfuff_ and darted away.
Disappointed, but not discouraged, Miranda followed again; and the
little play was repeated, with slight variation, till her great eyes
were full of blinding tears, and she was ready to drop with weariness.
Then the malicious cat, tired of the game and no longer curious about
the ribbon, vanished altogether; and Miranda sat down to cry.
But she was not a child to make much fuss over a small disappointment.
In a very few minutes she jumped up, dried her eyes with the backs of
her tiny fists, and started, as she thought, for home. At first she
ran, thinking her mother might be troubled at her absence. But not
coming to the open as soon as she expected, she stopped, looked about
her very carefully, and then walked forward with continual
circumspection. She walked on, and on, till she knew she had gone far
enough to reach home five times over. Her feet faltered, and then she
stood quite still, helplessly. She knew that she was lost. All at once
the ancient wood, the wood she had longed for, the wood whose darkness
she had never feared, became lonely, menacing, terrible. She broke into
loud wailing.
This is what Kroof had heard and was coming to investigate. But other
ears heard it, too.
A tawny form, many times larger than the perfidious brown cat, but not
altogether unlike it in shape, crept stealthily toward the sound.
Though his limbs looked heavy, his paws large in comparison with his
lank body and small, flat, cruel head, his movements nevertheless were
noiseless as light. At each low-stooping, sinuous step, his tail
twitched nervously. When he caught sight of the crying child he
stopped, and then crept up more stealthily than before, crouching so low
that his belly almost touched the ground, his neck stretched out in line
with his tail.
He made absolutely no sound, yet something within Miranda's sensitive
brain heard him, before he was quite within springing distance. She
stopped her crying, glanced suddenly around, and fixed a darkly clear
look upon his glaring green eyes. Poor little frightened and lonely
child though she was, there was yet something subtly disturbing to the
beast in that steady gaze of hers. It was the empty gloom, the state of
being lost, which had made Miranda's fear. Of an animal, however
fierce, she had no instinctive terror; and now, though she knew that the
cruel-eyed beast before her was the panther, it was a sort of indignant
curiosity that was uppermost in her mind.
The beast shifted his eyes uneasily under her unwavering look. He
experienced a moment's indecision as to whether or not it was well,
after all, to meddle with this unterrified, clear-gazing creature. Then
an anger grew within him. He fixed his hypnotising stare more
resolutely, and lashed his tail with angry jerks. He was working himself
up to the final and fatal spring, while Miranda watched him.
Just then a strange thing happened. Out from behind a boulder, whence
she had been eyeing the situation, shambled the huge black form of
Kroof. She was at Miranda's side in an instant; and rising upon her
hind quarters, a towering, indomitable bulk, she squealed defiance to
the panther. As soon as Miranda saw her "great big dog,"---which she
knew quite well, however, to be a bear,--she seemed to realise how
frightened she had been of the panther; and she recognised that strong
defence had come. With a convulsive sob she sprang and hid her
tear-stained little face in the bear's shaggy flank, clutching at the
soft fur with both hands. To this impetuous embrace Kroof paid no
attention, but continued to glower menacingly at the panther.
As for the panther, he was unaffectedly astonished. He lost his
stealthy, crouching, concentrated attitude, and rose to his full height;
lifted his head, dropped his tail, and stared at the phenomenon. If
this child was a protegee of Kroof's, he wanted none of her; for it
would be a day of famine indeed when he would wish to force conclusions
with the giant she-bear. Moreover, he recognised some sort of power and
prerogative in Miranda herself, some right of sovereignty, as it were,
which had made it distinctly hard for him to attack her even while she
had no other defence than her disconcerting gaze. Now, however, he saw
clearly that there was something very mysterious indeed about her. He
decided that it would be well to have an understanding with his
mate--who was more savage though less powerful than himself--that the
child should not be meddled with, no matter what chance should arise.
With this conclusion he wheeled about, and walked off indifferently,
moving with head erect and a casual air. One would hardly have known
him for the stealthy monster of five minutes before.
When he was gone Kroof lay down on her side and gently coaxed Miranda
against her body. Her bereaved heart went out to the child. Her
swollen teats, too, were hotly aching, and she had a kind of hope that
Miranda would ease that hurt. But this, of course, never came within
scope of the child's remotest idea. In every other respect, however, she
showed herself most appreciative of Kroof's attentions, stroking her
with light little hands, and murmuring to her much musical endearment,
to which Kroof lent earnest ear. Then, laying her head on the fine fur
of the bear's belly, she suddenly went fast asleep, being wearied by her
wanderings and her emotions.
Late in the afternoon, toward milking-time, Kirstie aroused herself.
She sat up with a startled air in her bunk in the corner of the cabin.
Through the window came the rays of the westering sun. She felt
troubled at having been so long asleep. And where could Miranda be?
She arose, tottering for a moment, but soon found herself steady; and
then she realised that she had slept off a sickness. She went to the
door. The hens were diligently scratching in the dust, and Saunders
eyed her with tolerance. At the fence beyond the barn the
black-and-white cow lowed for the milking; and from her tether at the
other side of the buckwheat field, Michael, the calf, bleated for her
supper of milk and hay tea. But Miranda was nowhere to be seen.
"Miranda!" she called. And then louder,--and yet louder,--and at last
with a piercing wail of anguish, as it burst upon her that Miranda was
gone. The sunlit clearing, the grey cabin, the dark forest edges, all
seemed to whirl and swim about her for an instant. It was only for an
instant. Then she snatched up the axe from the chopping log, and with a
sure instinct darted into that tongue of fir-woods just behind the
house.