the fish-hawk. After much searching and watching I found a great log
by the outlet where Old Whitehead often perched. There was a big eddy
hard by, on the edge of a shallow, and he used to sit on the log,
waiting for fish to come out where he could wade in and get them.
There was a sickness among the suckers that year (it comes regularly
every few years, as among rabbits), and they would come struggling out
of the deep water to rest on the sand, only to be caught by the minks
and fish-hawks and bears and Old Whitehead, all of whom were waiting
and hungry for fish.
For several days I put a big bait of trout and whitefish on the edge
of the shallows. The first two baits were put out late in the
afternoon, and a bear got them both the next night. Then I put them
out in the early morning, and before noon Cheplahgan had found them.
He came straight as a string from his watch place over the mountain,
miles away, causing me to wonder greatly what strange sixth sense
guided him; for sight and smell seemed equally out of the question.
The next day he came again. Then I placed the best bait of all in the
shallows, and hid in the dense underbrush near, with my gun.
He came at last, after hours of waiting, dropping from above the
tree-tops with a heavy rustling of pinions. And as he touched the old
log, and spread his broad white tail, I saw and was proud of the gap
which my bullet had made weeks before. He stood there a moment erect
and splendid, head, neck, and tail a shining white; even the dark
brown feathers of his body glinted in the bright sunshine. And he
turned his head slowly from side to side, his keen eyes flashing, as
if he would say, "Behold, a king!" to Chigwooltz the frog, and
Tookhees the wood mouse, and to any other chance wild creature that
might watch him from the underbrush at his unkingly act of feeding on
dead fish. Then he hopped down--rather awkwardly, it must be
confessed; for he is a creature of the upper deeps, who cannot bear to
touch the earth--seized a fish, which he tore to pieces with his claws
and ate greedily. Twice I tried to shoot him; but the thought of the
wilderness without him was upon me, and held me back. Then, too, it
seemed so mean to pot him from ambush when he had come down to earth,
where he was at a disadvantage; and when he clutched some of the
larger fish in his talons, and rose swiftly and bore away westward,
all desire to kill him was gone. There were little Cloud Wings, it
seemed, which I must also find and watch. After that I hunted him more
diligently than before, but without my gun. And a curious desire,
which I could not account for, took possession of me: to touch this
untamed, untouched creature of the clouds and mountains.
Next day I did it. There were thick bushes growing along one end of
the old log on which the eagle rested. Into these I cut a tunnel with
my hunting-knife, arranging the tops in such a way as to screen me
more effectively. Then I put out my bait, a good two hours before the
time of Old Whitehead's earliest appearance, and crawled into my den
to wait.
I had barely settled comfortably into my place, wondering how long
human patience could endure the sting of insects and the hot close air
without moving or stirring a leaf, when the heavy silken rustle
sounded close at hand, and I heard the grip of his talons on the log.
There he stood, at arm's length, turning his head uneasily, the light
glinting on his white crest, the fierce, untamed flash in his bright
eye. Never before had he seemed so big, so strong, so splendid; my
heart jumped at the thought of him as our national emblem. I am glad
still to have seen that emblem once, and felt the thrill of it.
But I had little time to think, for Cheplahgan was restless. Some
instinct seemed to warn him of a danger that he could not see. The
moment his head was turned away, I stretched out my arm. Scarcely a
leaf moved with the motion, yet he whirled like a flash and crouched
to spring, his eyes glaring straight into mine with an intensity that
I could scarce endure. Perhaps I was mistaken, but in that swift
instant the hard glare in his eyes seemed to soften with fear, as he
recognized me as the one thing in the wilderness that dared to hunt
him, the king. My hand touched him fair on the shoulder; then he shot
into the air, and went sweeping in great circles over the tree-tops,
still looking down at the man, wondering and fearing at the way in
which he had been brought into the man's power.
But one thing he did not understand. Standing erect on the log, and
looking up at him as he swept over me, I kept thinking, "I did it, I
did it, Cheplahgan, old Cloud Wings. And I had grabbed your legs, and
pinned you down, and tied you in a bag, and brought you to camp, but
that I chose to let you go free. And that is better than shooting you.
Now I shall find your little ones and touch them too."
For several days I had been watching Old Whitehead's lines of flight,
and had concluded that his nest was somewhere in the hills northwest
of the big lake. I went there one afternoon, and while confused in the
big timber, which gave no outlook in any direction, I saw, not Old
Whitehead, but a larger eagle, his mate undoubtedly, flying straight
westward with food towards a great cliff, that I had noticed with my
glass one day from a mountain on the other side of the lake.
When I went there, early next morning, it was Cheplahgan himself who
showed me where his nest was. I was hunting along the foot of the
cliff when, glancing back towards the lake, I saw him coming far
away, and hid in the underbrush. He passed very near, and following, I
saw him standing on a ledge near the top of the cliff. Just below him,
in the top of a stunted tree growing out of the face of the rock was a
huge mass of sticks that formed the nest, with a great mother-eagle
standing by, feeding the little ones. Both birds started away silently
when I appeared, but came back soon and swept back and forth over me,
as I sat watching the nest and the face of the cliff through my glass.
No need now of caution. Both birds seemed to know instinctively why I
had come, and that the fate of the eaglets lay in my hands if I could
but scale the cliff.
It was scaring business, that three-hundred-foot climb up the sheer
face of the mountain. Fortunately the rock was seamed and scarred with
the wear of centuries; bushes and stunted trees grew out of countless
crevices, which gave me sure footing, and sometimes a lift of a dozen
feet or more on my way up. As I climbed, the eagles circled lower and
lower; the strong rustling of their wings was about my head
continually; they seemed to grow larger, fiercer, every moment, as my
hold grew more precarious, and the earth and the pointed tree-tops
dropped farther below. There was a good revolver in my pocket, to use
in case of necessity; but had the great birds attacked me I should
have fared badly, for at times I was obliged to grip hard with both
hands, my face to the cliff, leaving the eagles free to strike from
above and behind. I think now that had I shown fear in such a place,
or shouted, or tried to fray them away, they would have swooped upon
me, wing and claw, like furies. I could see it in their fierce eyes as
I looked up. But the thought of the times when I had hunted him, and
especially the thought of that time when I had reached out of the
bushes and touched him, was upon Old Whitehead and made him fear. So I
kept steadily on my way, apparently giving no thought to the eagles,
though deep inside I was anxious enough, and reached the foot of the
tree in which the nest was made.
I stood there a long time, my arm clasping the twisted old boll,
looking out over the forest spread wide below, partly to regain
courage, partly to reassure the eagles, which were circling very near
with a kind of intense wonder in their eyes, but chiefly to make up my
mind what to do next. The tree was easy to climb, but the nest--a huge
affair, which had been added to year after year--filled the whole
tree-top, and I could gain no foothold, from which to look over and
see the eaglets, without tearing the nest to pieces. I did not want to
do that, and I doubted whether the mother-eagle would stand it. A
dozen times she seemed on the point of dropping on my head to tear it
with her talons; but always she veered off as I looked up quietly, and
Old Whitehead, with the mark of my bullet strong upon him, swept
between her and me and seemed to say, "Wait, wait. I don't understand;
but he can kill us if he will--and the little ones are in his power."
Now he was closer to me than ever, and the fear was vanishing. But so
also was the fierceness.
From the foot of the tree the crevice in which it grew led upwards to
the right, then doubled back to the ledge above the nest, upon which
Cheplahgan was standing when I discovered him. The lip of this crevice
made a dizzy path that one might follow by moving crabwise, his face
to the cliff, with only its roughnesses to cling to with his fingers.
I tried it at last, crept up and out twenty feet, and back ten, and
dropped with a great breath of relief to a broad ledge covered with
bones and fish scales, the relics of many a savage feast. Below me,
almost within reach, was the nest, with two dark, scraggly young birds
resting on twigs and grass, with fish, flesh and fowl in a gory,
skinny, scaly ring about them--the most savage-looking household into
which I ever looked unbidden.
But even as I looked and wondered, and tried to make out what other
game had been furnished the young savages I had helped to feed, a
strange thing happened, which touched me as few things ever have among
the wild creatures. The eagles had followed me close along the last
edge of rock, hoping no doubt in their wild hearts that I would slip,
and end their troubles, and give my body as food to the young. Now, as
I sat on the ledge, peering eagerly into the nest, the great
mother-bird left me and hovered over her eaglets, as if to shield them
with her wings from even the sight of my eyes. But Old Whitehead still
circled over me. Lower he came, and lower, till with a supreme effort
of daring he folded his wings and dropped to the ledge beside me,
within ten feet, and turned and looked into my eyes. "See," he seemed
to say, "we are within reach again. You touched me once; I don't know
how or why. Here I am now, to touch or to kill, as you will; only
spare the little ones."
A moment later the mother-bird dropped to the edge of the nest. And
there we sat, we three, with the wonder upon us all, the young eagles
at our feet, the cliff above, and, three hundred feet below, the
spruce tops of the wilderness reaching out and away to the mountains
beyond the big lake. I sat perfectly still, which is the only way to
reassure a wild creature; and soon I thought Cheplahgan had lost his
fear in his anxiety for the little ones. But the moment I rose to go
he was in the air again, circling restlessly above my head with his
mate, the same wild fierceness in his eyes as he looked down. A
half-hour later I had gained the top of the cliff and started eastward
towards the lake, coming down by a much easier way than that by which
I went up. Later I returned several times, and from a distance watched
the eaglets being fed. But I never climbed to the nest again.
One day, when I came to the little thicket on the cliff where I used
to lie and watch the nest through my glass, I found that one eaglet
was gone. The other stood on the edge of the nest, looking down
fearfully into the abyss, whither, no doubt, his bolder nest mate had
flown, and calling disconsolately from time to time. His whole
attitude showed plainly that he was hungry and cross and lonesome.
Presently the mother-eagle came swiftly up from the valley, and there
was food in her talons. She came to the edge of the nest, hovered over
it a moment, so as to give the hungry eaglet a sight and smell of
food, then went slowly down to the valley, taking the food with her,
telling the little one in her own way to come and he should have it.
He called after her loudly from the edge of the nest, and spread his
wings a dozen times to follow. But the plunge was too awful; his heart
failed him; and he settled back in the nest, and pulled his head down
into his shoulders, and shut his eyes, and tried to forget that he was
hungry. The meaning of the little comedy was plain enough. She was
trying to teach him to fly, telling him that his wings were grown and
the time was come to use them; but he was afraid.
In a little while she came back again, this time without food, and
hovered over the nest, trying every way to induce the little one to
leave it. She succeeded at last, when with a desperate effort he
sprang upward and flapped to the ledge above, where I had sat and
watched him with Old Whitehead. Then, after surveying the world
gravely from his new place, he flapped back to the nest, and turned a
deaf ear to all his mother's assurances that he could fly just as
easily to the tree-tops below, if he only would.
Suddenly, as if discouraged, she rose well above him. I held my
breath, for I knew what was coming. The little fellow stood on the
edge of the nest, looking down at the plunge which he dared not take.
There was a sharp cry from behind, which made him alert, tense as a
watch-spring. The next instant the mother-eagle had swooped, striking
the nest at his feet, sending his support of twigs and himself with
them out into the air together.
He was afloat now, afloat on the blue air in spite of himself, and
flapped lustily for life. Over him, under him, beside him hovered the
mother on tireless wings, calling softly that she was there. But the
awful fear of the depths and the lance tops of the spruces was upon
the little one; his flapping grew more wild; he fell faster and
faster. Suddenly--more in fright, it seemed to me, than because he had
spent his strength--he lost his balance and tipped head downward in
the air. It was all over now, it seemed; he folded his wings to be
dashed in pieces among the trees. Then like a flash the old
mother-eagle shot under him; his despairing feet touched her broad
shoulders, between her wings. He righted himself, rested an instant,
found his head; then she dropped like a shot from under him, leaving
him to come down on his own wings. A handful of feathers, torn out by
his claws, hovered slowly down after them.
It was all the work of an instant before I lost them among the trees
far below. And when I found them again with my glass, the eaglet was
in the top of a great pine, and the mother was feeding him.
And then, standing there alone in the great wilderness, it flashed
upon me for the first time just what the wise old prophet meant;
though he wrote long ago, in a distant land, and another than Cloud
Wings had taught her little ones, all unconscious of the kindly eyes
that watched out of a thicket: "As the eagle stirreth up her nest,
fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them,
beareth them on her wings,--so the Lord."
VII. UPWEEKIS THE SHADOW.
[Illustration: Upweekis]
"Long 'go, O long time 'go," so says Simmo the Indian, Upweekis the
lynx came to Clote Scarpe one day with a complaint. "See," he said,
"you are good to everybody but me. Pekquam the fisher is cunning and
patient; he can catch what he will. Lhoks the panther is strong and
tireless; nothing can get away from him, not even the great moose. And
Mooween the bear sleeps all winter, when game is scarce, and in summer
eats everything,--roots and mice and berries and dead fish and meat
and honey and red ants. So he is always full and happy. But my eyes
are no good; they are bright, like Cheplahgan the eagle's, yet they
cannot see anything unless it moves; for you have made every creature
that hides just like the place he hides in. My nose is worse; it
cannot smell Seksagadagee the grouse, though I walk over him asleep
in the snow. And my feet make a noise in the leaves, so that Moktaques
the rabbit hears me, and hides, and laughs behind me when I go to
catch him. And I am always hungry. Make me now like the shadows that
play, in order that nothing may notice me when I go hunting."
So Clote Scarpe, the great chief who was kind to all animals, gave
Upweekis a soft gray coat that is almost invisible in the woods,
summer or winter, and made his feet large, and padded them with soft
fur; so that indeed he is like the shadows that play, for you can
neither see nor hear him. But Clote Scarpe remembered Moktaques the
rabbit also, and gave him two coats, a brown one for summer and a
white one for winter. Consequently he is harder than ever to see when
he is quiet; and Upweekis must still depend upon his wits to catch
him. As Upweekis has few wits to spare, Moktaques often sees him close
at hand, and chuckles in his form under the brown ferns, or sits up
straight under the snow-covered hemlock tips, and watches the big lynx
at his hunting.
Sometimes, on a winter night, when you camp in the wilderness, and the
snow is sifting down into your fire, and the woods are all still, a
fierce screech breaks suddenly out of the darkness just behind your
wind-break of boughs. You jump to your feet and grab your rifle; but
Simmo, who is down on his knees before the fire frying pork, only
turns his head to listen a moment, and says: "Upweekis catch-um rabbit
dat time." Then he gets closer to the fire, for the screech was not
pleasant, and goes on with his cooking.
You are more curious than he, or you want the big cat's skin to take
home with you. You steal away towards the cry, past the little
_commoosie_, or shelter, that you made hastily at sundown when the
trail ended. There, with your back to the fire and the _commoosie_
between, the light does not dazzle your eyes; you can trace the
shadows creeping in and out stealthily among the underbrush. But if
Upweekis is there--and he probably is--you do not see him. He is a
shadow among the shadows. Only there is this difference: shadows move
no bushes. As you watch, a fir-tip stirs; a bit of snow drops down.
You gaze intently at the spot. Then out of the deep shadow two living
coals are suddenly kindled. They grow larger and larger, glowing,
flashing, burning holes into your eyes till you brush them swiftly
with your hand. A shiver runs over you, for to look into the eyes of
a lynx at night, when the light catches them, is a scary experience.
Your rifle jumps to position; the glowing coals are quenched on the
instant. Then, when your eyes have blinked the fascination out of
them, the shadows go creeping in and out again, and Upweekis is lost
amongst them.
Sometimes, indeed, you see him again. Moktaques, the big white hare,
who forgets a thing the moment it is past, sees you standing there and
is full of curiosity. He forgets that he was being hunted a moment
ago, and comes hopping along to see what you are. You back away toward
the fire. He scampers off in a fright, but presently comes hopping
after you. Watch the underbrush behind him sharply. In a moment it
stirs stealthily, as if a shadow were moving it; and there is the
lynx, stealing along in the snow with his eyes blazing. Again
Moktaques feels that he is hunted, and does the only safe thing; he
crouches low in the snow, where a fir-tip bends over him, and is still
as the earth. His color hides him perfectly.
Upweekis has lost the trail again; he wavers back and forth, like a
shadow under a swinging lamp, turning his great head from side to
side. He cannot see nor hear nor smell his game; but he saw a bit of
snow fly a moment ago, and knows that it came from Moktaques' big
pads. Don't stir now; be still as the great spruce in whose shadow
you stand; and, once in a hunter's lifetime perhaps, you will see a
curious tragedy.
The lynx settles himself in the snow, with all four feet close
together, ready for a spring. As you watch and wonder, a screech rings
out through the woods, so sharp and fierce that no rabbit's nerves can
stand it close at hand and be still. Moktaques jumps straight up in
the air. The lynx sees it, whirls, hurls himself at the spot. Another
screech, a different one, and then you know that it's all over.
And that is why Upweekis' cry is so fierce and sudden on a winter
night. Your fire attracts the rabbits. Upweekis knows this, or is
perhaps attracted himself and comes also, and hides among the shadows.
But he never catches anything unless he blunders onto it. That is why
he wanders so much in winter and passes twenty rabbits before he
catches one. So when he knows that Moktaques is near, watching the
light, but remaining himself invisible, Upweekis crouches for a
spring; then he screeches fearfully. Moktaques hears it and is
startled, as anybody else would be, hearing such a cry near him. He
jumps in a fright and pays the penalty.
If the lynx is a big one, and very hungry, as he generally is in
winter, you may get some unpleasant impressions of him in another way
when you venture far from your fire. His eyes blaze out at you from
the darkness, just two big glowing spots, which are all you see, and
which disappear at your first motion. Then as you strain your eyes,
and watch and listen, you feel the coals upon you again from another
place; and there they are, under a bush on your left, creeping closer
and blazing deep red. They disappear suddenly as the lynx turns his
head, only to reappear and fascinate you from another point. So he
plays with you as if you were a great mouse, creeping closer all the
time, swishing his stub tail fiercely to lash himself up to the
courage point of springing. But his movements are so still and shadowy
that unless he follows you as you back away to the fire, and so comes
within the circle of light, the chances are that you will never see
him.
Indeed the chances are always that way, day or night, unless you turn
hunter and set a trap for him in the rabbit paths which he follows
nightly, and hang a bait over it to make him look up and forget his
steps. In summer he goes to the burned lands for the rabbits that
swarm in the thickets, and to rear his young in seclusion. You find
his tracks there all about, and the marks of his killing; but though
you watch and prowl all day and come home in the twilight, you will
learn little. He hears you and skulks away amid the lights and
shadows of the hillside, and so hides himself--in plain sight,
sometimes, like a young partridge--that he manages to keep a clean
record in the notebook where you hoped to write down all about him.
In winter you cross his tracks, great round tracks that wander
everywhere through the big woods, and you think: Now I shall find him
surely. But though you follow for miles and learn much about him,
finding where he passed this rabbit close at hand, without suspecting
it, and caught that one by accident, and missed the partridge that
burst out of the snow under his very feet,--still Upweekis himself
remains only a shadow of the woods. Once, after a glorious long tramp
on his trail, I found the spot where he had been sleeping a moment
before. But beside that experience I must put fifty other trails that
I have followed, of which I never saw the end nor the beginning. And
whenever I have found out anything about Upweekis it has generally
come unexpectedly, as most good things do.