WINTER COMES WITH THE 'WAVIES'
The loss of Tony was a loss which the whole ranche felt. Had he died
in the full swing of work, the machine must almost have broken down.
But Toby never wanted his spell of rest except when there was nothing
much to do, and he had chosen to take his 'big spell of rest' in the
same way. Still, even in the winter season, his loss made a great
deal of difference to Snap. With Tony the ranche was full-handed,
and the boy was really more or less superfluous. Now he had his
hands full. There was a man's place to supply, and he worked hard
and uncomplainingly to fill it. There are a thousand things to be
done about a ranche in winter: cattle to feed and water, wood to hew,
repairs about the ranche which want attending to, supplies to be
fetched from the nearest town. At all these things Snap took his
turn. No one cares to turn out first in the morning with a bitter
frost outside and make up the fire for the benefit of the rest. Even
strong, hard men will lie watching to see if someone else won't
volunteer, and hug themselves for their smartness when someone else
turns out before them, so that they may get up in the glow of a fire
which others have made. The 'boys' might well have insisted on
Snap's doing this, but he was popular, and no one fagged him. They
knew he was a good plucked one, so nobody bullied him. That being
so, Snap set himself the work to do, and nine mornings out of ten it
was Snap who raked up the ashes and blew the fire into a blaze, who
woke the sleepers with a joke, and had coffee ready for the elder
men. It was Snap, too, who sang the best song round the wood-fire at
night; and be sure there was nothing that went straighter to the
hearts of the cowboys than his fresh young voice rattling out the
well-remembered words of 'The Hounds of the Meynell' or Whyte
Melville's 'Place where the old Horse died.'
Some of the boys had never been in England, and knew nothing of
fox-hunting, but all loved a good horse and entered heartily into the
spirit of the song. And so it was that in the early morning, and
late in the fire-lit evening, Snap won his way to his companions'
favour. Though gently bred, they recognised him as being not only
game to the backbone, but ready and willing to do a man's work. That
once understood, they were his friends through thick and thin, always
ready to teach him anything, to make room for him in a hunting-party,
or to chaff his head off if he made a hash of either work or play.
By spring Snap was in a fair way to be a useful hand upon the ranche.
And now winter was coming down upon Rosebud in real earnest. The
first 'cold snap,' as it is called, had caught our friends as they
crossed the Rockies, and, intensified by the height at which they
were travelling, had seemed very bitter indeed. After the cold snap,
which only lasted from a week to ten days, came as it were an
aftermath of summer, a second season of sunshine and delight, which
the natives call the Indian summer. Snap began to think that the
severities of a Canadian winter were all bunkum, invented as a
background for all the terrible stories of the fur-traders of old
days. This Indian summer was just the loveliest October weather
which a healthy man could wish for, a little crisper and keener at
night than our own Octobers, but in the day so bright, so clear, so
sunny, that life (however hard the work) seemed to go to dance-music
all day long. Later on, however, there began to be signs of a
change. One by one and in little groups all the cattle had come in
of their own accord from the distant ranges. Some of them had been
feeding above the foot-hills on the sweet grass of the mountain
slopes, where in two months' time even the bighorn would not be able
to exist. As Snap rode out to shoot for the pot, or on any work
about the ranche, he would meet fresh companies of them, feeding
slowly downhill towards the low land and the river bottoms. They
were in no hurry, picking the tenderest 'feed' as they strolled
along, and camping every night wherever they happened to find
themselves, but still pressing steadily on to the warmer lands below.
As the beasts stopped and stared at the boy with great, solemn, brown
eyes of inquiry, he used to wonder at them at least as much as they
at him. How came it, he thought, that they knew the bitter white
winter was coming, although the sun was still so bright, and the
uplands flooded with golden light? Who told them? or did they
remember from the years before?
Nature, too, had put on her last robe but one. In a month, save for
the dark green of the funereal pines, it would be white everywhere.
Now, just for a season, there was colour everywhere as bright as
rainbow tints, and as short-lived. The maples were clear gold or
vivid crimson; the sugar maples often showing both colours side by
side in one gracefully pointed leaf. The hazels were red and gold,
or, like the long oval leaves of the sumach-bush, had already turned
from brilliant lake to a dull, blackish purple. They were all ready
to drop and die, but their death would be as beautiful and becoming
as their birth in spring-time, when birds were mating and woods a
tender green, or as their life among the flowers and cool, green
shadows of the luxurious summer.
As Snap lay awake at night he heard far up among the stars the clang,
it seemed to him, of trumpets, as if an army passed by to battle; or,
again, a strange, solemn cry, not from quite such a height, smote his
ear: 'honk, honk, ha, ha,' it seemed to say--a strange, unearthly
call, from things passing and unseen.
At morning, too, before dawn, he heard these cries, and a strange,
swift, whistling sound would rush over the roof of the log-house.
The sky seemed haunted in these late autumn days. One morning as the
mists rose Snap got a glimpse of these passing armies of the air.
Far away up in the clouds was a great V-shaped body of birds, the
point of the V a single swan cleaving his way westward from his
summer haunts in the Arctic Circle to the warmer regions of British
Columbia and the mud-flats of the mouth of the Frazer River. On
other days he saw Canada geese in thousands, and snow geese (or
wavies) in hundreds of thousands, all passing on the same great
high-road from Hudson Bay to the West.
'Snap,' said old Wharton one morning, 'hurry up, I've just seen a
gang of wavies go up the crik, flying pretty low down. I reckon they
aren't going far, and young wavy is mighty good eating.'
Snap was not long getting the big duck-gun down from its peg on the
beam, nor long in loading it with a great charge of shot as big as
small peas.
'It ain't like shooting quail, you see,' said Wharton, 'these wavies
want almost as much killing as a grizzly.'
'What are you going to take, Dick?' asked Snap.
'Oh, I'll just take the Winchester,' replied his friend; 'you let me
have the first cut at them with a ball, and then as they get up let
'em have both barrels of your blunderbuss right in the thick of them.'
'All right, come along,' urged Snap.
'No hurry, my boy; they have come a longish way, those wavies, and I
guess they'll take a goodish time lunching on them mud-flats and
beaver meadows,' replied his less excitable companion, whose eyes
nevertheless gleamed with all the excitement of a genuine wild-fowler.
By-and-by, as the two hurried down the river-bed, they could hear a
loud and excited gabbling, a thousand geese all talking at once.
'Talking like senators,' muttered old Dick; 'one would think they
were paid for the job, but I expect as they've seen some country to
talk about in the last day or two, between this and Hudson.'
'Last two or three days! why, how fast do they fly, Dick?' whispered
Snap.
'Wal,' replied he, 'I guess I never travelled with them much, but I
should say about sixty miles more or less an hour, and they'll keep
it up too; but dry up now, for the cunning varmint put out regular
scouts, and they'll hear us talking a quarter of a mile off.'
Round the mud-flats and hollows which the geese were on was a fringe
of brush and reeds. Through this the two gunners forced their way.
As they did so the gabbling ceased as if by magic.
'Quick, quick,' whispered Wharton, pressing forward, and as they
reached the edge Snap caught a glimpse of a huge bunch of geese, all
drawn together on a little bare island in the stream, their long
necks stretched to the utmost, their whole attitude one of suspicion
and anxiety, and the wings of one or two of them half lifted for
flight. Old Dick's rifle rang out the signal for them to go--all but
two, that is to say--for the old man's bullet stopped the wanderings
of two of them for ever. As they rose in a cloud Snap clapped the
big gun to his shoulder and let drive amongst them.
'Not bad, my boy,' cried Wharton, 'but why in thunder don't you shoot
again? Hulloa! well, I am sugared, ha, ha, ha!' laughed the old man
as, turning round, he saw Snap slowly picking himself up out of a
mud-hole in which he had lately lain full length. 'Why, does that
gun kick,' continued Wharton, 'or what's the matter? How much had it
in it, I wonder?'
'Well,' replied Snap, 'I put about three and a half drams of powder
and a good lot of shot into it, but I've fired as big a charge before
at home.'
'You put a charge in, did you?' asked Dick; 'then that explains it,
because I put one in too when you went back into the house for caps.
I didn't know as you'd loaded her. No wonder she kicked; the wonder
is that she didn't bust.'
Remembering the charge which he had put in for the benefit of the
geese, Snap quite agreed with his friend, and, rubbing his shoulder
somewhat ruefully, proceeded to collect the dead. Five geese lay
outstretched on the mud island, one with his head cut clean off by
Wharton's bullet, and another knocked into a cocked hat by the same
missile. Three were Snap's birds, and three or four more 'winged'
ones were scattered about on the stream and river-banks.
Having retrieved these, they turned home, well loaded and highly
pleased with themselves. On the way back Snap noticed two more geese
floating down with the stream, close under the bank. In spite of the
kick he had received from his gun at the last discharge, Snap could
not resist the temptation to bag another brace, and was creeping up
for a shot when Wharton stopped him with:
'Hold hard, you've shot them birds once; they are both winged birds,
and if we can catch 'em alive they will be worth a lot to us.'
It was soon evident that Wharton was right, for, though the geese saw
their enemies and tried to hide their heads under the opposite bank,
they could not rise from the water. And then began a chase which
wore out Dick's temper and Snap's wind before it was over. Although
the men plunged into the water, and kept both sides of the stream
guarded, they couldn't for the life of them get hold of the wily
ganders, who flapped and swam, dodging cleverly, or hissing with
outstretched necks and angry yellow eyes, unceasingly. When they had
caught them at last it was late in the afternoon, and by the time
they had gone back to fetch the dead geese which they had abandoned
during the chase, and walked with them to the ranche, it was already
getting dark. As they left the river a whistling sound overhead made
them look up.
'More geese,' said Wharton: 'I guess they're making for them
mud-flats too--please the pigs, we'll have a good time to-morrow
evening.'
And so they had for a good many evenings, the two winged geese being
used as decoys, and Snap and Wharton (the latter now armed with a
gun) being hidden carefully in reedy ambushes hard by. It was
intensely exciting work, sitting there waiting until one of the many
legions of birds which passed incessantly overhead lowered to the
water on which the decoy sat. At first Snap could make nothing of
the shooting, and, to tell the truth, Wharton was not a bit better.
He wasn't used, he said, 'to these blessed scatter-guns,' which
'weren't of no account alongside of a rifle.' If a single duck came
along, Snap never hit it. If a long string passed over him, and he
fired at the leading bird, sometimes nothing happened, but oftener
the fourth or fifth bird, at an interval of several yards, came down
with a thump, gratifying to the pot-hunter, but not complimentary to
the young gunner, who felt that he had missed his mark by as many
yards as there were birds in front of the one which he bagged. After
a good deal of practice he began to learn not only how far to shoot
in front of the swift-flying birds, but how to swing with them,
_i.e._ to keep his gun moving as he fired. Being younger than
Wharton, and having shot a little at home, he soon learnt to beat the
old man, who, if he could possibly help it, would not waste powder on
a flying shot at all.
What most astonished Snap in this wonderful migration was that all
the birds killed in the first day or two were young birds. Later on,
flocks of old ones began to arrive, but all the advance guard, as it
were, of the bird army, whether wavies or brent, swans or duck, were
birds of that season only; birds who had never, could never, have
travelled that road before. 'It is wonderful enough,' thought Snap,
'to see the cattle all come wandering in with no one to drive them
from the pastures, which will soon be all snow and ice; it is
wonderful that the birds should know that winter is coming, and be
able to find their way from the bleak, frost-bound north to the more
genial climates in which they winter; but that the bird-babies, born
this summer only, should lead the way, is most wonderful of all.
They can't remember! Who is it who leads them?' And, so thinking,
the boy lay down to rest, and the loud clanging of the swans, and the
call of the geese, and sharp whistling of the ducks' wings all told
the same story, and if even a sparrow can't fall to the ground
without His knowing, Snap thought he didn't fear the future so long
as the One who guided the swans through the night and the darkness
would guide him too.
This migration, which took place in November, lasted only a week or
ten days, though a few late detachments kept passing perhaps for a
week after the main body had gone over.
There were ten 'wavies,' or snow-geese, for every other bird which
passed, and next to them in number were the Canadian geese and brent.
The brent we know at home, or at least all dwellers by the shore know
him, for he is the chief object of the punt-gunner's pursuit, and was
at one time so common in England that up in Lancashire, where they
thought he grew from the barnacles which cover ships' bottoms and
breakwaters, a brace of brent were sold for three-pence. If he was
as good then as a corn-fed Canada goose is now, I should like to have
lived in those days, but I fancy he never was so dainty a bird as his
Canadian cousin. The wavy, or snow-goose, is so numerous that the
Canadian Acts of Parliament, which protect all other ducks and geese,
leave this poor fellow unprotected; but then the snow-goose is like
the sands on the sea-shore for number, and most of the year he dwells
either in the frozen North or on Siberian tundras where gunners can't
get at him.
He is a handsome bird, the snow-goose, and the older he gets the
handsomer he is. As a youngster he is white all over, except his
head and the tips of his wings, his head being yellowish-red and his
wing-tips black. As he grows older his head grows whiter, until at
last there is nothing to mark him out from the icebergs and snow
amongst which his life is passed, except those two or three black
feathers in his wing.
The Canada goose is almost as black as his fellow-traveller is white;
a dark, smart-looking, and jauntily moving bird, not much unlike a
brent, with a neat white collar round his neck.
These two species, together with swans of two sorts, 'trumpeters' and
'whistlers,' and half a dozen kinds of duck--widgeon and shoveller,
pochard, pintail, and wood-duck--kept Snap, gun and mind, busy for a
fortnight, and if the bag was not always heavy the pleasure was
great, for Snap was what every really good sportsman is, more a
naturalist than a mere shooter, and loved to watch the birds, even
though they never came within range.
One evening the darkness came on without even a single wing to break
the stillness. As he came down to the 'hide,' as his ambuscade was
called, he put up one of those quaintly-named little ducks, a
'buffle-headed butter-ball,' but, disdaining to fire at this, he
never fired a shot all night.
It was the final warning that winter was coming at last. Next day
the clouds were low and yellow. Towards evening the big flakes came
floating down. Next morning the world was white from river to
mountain-top. The pines were snow-plumed, the rivers frost-bound; a
bitter cold seemed to sting you as you put your face out of doors;
the whole five blankets and the rug were wanted above you at night.
Winter had come!