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WILD FOLK
[Illustration: THE PINCUSHION OF THE WOODS]
WILD FOLK
by
SAMUEL SCOVILLE, JR.
Author of "Everyday Adventures"
With Illustrations by Charles Livingston Bull and Carton Moorepark
The Atlantic Monthly Press
Boston
Copyright, 1922, by
Samuel Scoville, Jr.
Printed in the United States of America
_To my Son Gurdon Trumbull Scoville who has learned to know and
love so many of our Lesser Brethren of Earth and Air and Water
this book is dedicated_
CONTENTS
I. THE CLEANLYS 1
II. BLACKBEAR 24
III. THE SEVENTH SLEEPER 51
IV. HIGH SKY 74
V. THE LITTLE PEOPLE 85
VI. THE PATH OF THE AIR 107
VII. BLACKCAT 122
VIII. LITTLE DEATH 137
IX. BLACKCROSS 150
X. SEA OTTER 71
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_The Pincushion of the Woods_ Frontispiece
_The First Journey_ 4
_Bull Moose and Blackbear_ 44
_The Thief_ 62
_The Safe Rabbit_ 130
_The Killers_ 140
_The Fox Family_ 154
_Death in the Dark_ 158
WILD FOLK
I
THE CLEANLYS
All winter long the Barrens had slept still and white. Rows and
regiments of low pitch-pine trees, whose blue-green needles grow in
threes instead of the fives of the white or the twos of the Virginia
pines, marched for miles and miles across the drifted snow. Through
their tops forever sounded the far-away roar of the surf of the upper
air, like the rushing of mighty wings, while overhead hung a sky whose
cold blue seemed flecked with frost. The air tingled with the spicery
of myriads of pine trees. Grim black buzzards, on fringed, motionless
wings, wheeled and veered over this land of silence.
Then, with the suddenness of the South, spring came. The woods became
a shimmering pool of changing greens. The down-folded leaves of the
little lambskill stood erect again, like rabbits' ears, over
claret-colored flowers, and the soft warm air was sweet with the heavy
perfume of cream-white magnolia blossoms. On jade-green pools gleamed
the buds of yellow pond-lilies, like lumps of floating gold, and the
paler golden-club, whose blossoms look like the tongues of calla
lilies. Everywhere, as if set in snow, gleamed the green-and-gold of
the Barrens' heather above the white sand, which had been the bed of
some sea, forgotten a million years ago. In the distance, at the edges
of the Barrens, were glimpses of far-away meadows, all hazy with blue
toad-flax and rimmed with the pale gold of narrow-leaved sundrops with
their deep orange centres.
Through the woods wound a deep creek, whose water was stained brown
and steeped sweet with a million cedar roots. Unlike the singing
streams of the North, this brook ran stilly, cutting its deep way
through gold-and-white sand, and meeting never rock nor stone to make
it murmur. On its bank in the deepest part of the woods grew a vast
sweet-gum tree, covered with star-shaped leaves. Tangles of barbed
greenbrier set with fierce curved thorns, and stretches of sphagnum
bogs guarded the tree from the land side. In the enormous hollow
trunk, some fifty feet above the ground, a black hole showed.
There, one May afternoon, as the sun was westering far down the sky, a
small face appeared suddenly, framed in the dark opening. It was a
funny little face, surmounted by broad, pricked-up, pointed ears, and
masked by a black band, which stretched from above a pair of twinkling
golden eyes clear down to a small pointed muzzle. As the owner of the
face came out of the hollow and began to creep slowly and cautiously
down the side of the great tree, his fur showed in the sunlight a dull
brownish-gray, with black-tipped hairs on the back, while those on the
round little belly had white ends. Last of all appeared the
black-ringed, cylindrical tail which is the hall-mark of the aracoun,
raccoon, or coon, as red, white, and black men have variously named
the owner of said tail.
This particular little coon was the youngest of four fuzzy, cuddly,
blind babies, which had appeared in the old den-tree early in March.
His father was a wary, battle-scarred giant among his kind, who
weighed thirty pounds, measured three feet from the tip of his pointed
nose to the end of his ringed tail, and was afraid of nothing that
crawled, ran, swam, or flew.
As the little coon walked carefully, head-first, down the tree, he
showed his kinship to the bears by setting the naked black soles of
his little hind feet flat, instead of walking on his toes as most of
the flesh-eaters do. His forepaws were like tiny black hands, with a
very short little finger and the thumb the same length as the other
three long, supple fingers.
It was the first time that this particular youngster had ever ventured
out of the home-nest. A great bump in the middle of the trunk was his
undoing. He crept over the edge, but in reaching down for a safe grip
beyond, lost his hold and, with a wail of terror, fell headlong.
Fortunately for him, the gum was surrounded on three sides by shallow
pools of standing water. Into one of these the young climber fell with
a splash, and a second later was swimming for dear life back to his
family tree.
At the very first sound of that little SOS the head of Mother Coon
appeared in the opening, with three other small heads peering out from
behind her. Seeing the little coon struggling in the water, she
hurried down the tree, followed in procession by the rest of the
family, who had evidently resolved not to miss anything. By the time
she came to the bump, however, the small adventurer had reached the
trunk from which he had fallen. Fixing his sharp claws into the bark,
he climbed up the tree, bedraggled, wet, and much shocked at the
manifold dangers of life.
Seeing him safe, Mrs. Coon at once turned back. The three little coons
turned with her, and the reversed procession started up to the hole.
The littlest of the family climbed slowly and painfully as far as the
bump, whimpering all the time. There his feelings overcame him. He was
positive that never had any little coon suffered so before. He was wet
and shaken and miserable and--his mother had deserted him.
"Err, err, err," he began to cry, softly, but exceeding sorrowfully.
It was too much even for Mother Coon's stern ideals of child-training.
Once again she crept down the tree and, stopping on the bump, fixed
her claws firmly into the bark. Stretching far over the edge, she
reached down and gripped the little coon firmly but gently by the
loose skin of his neck and, turning around, swung him safely up in
front of her between her forepaws. Then, urging him on with little
pokes from her pointed nose, she convoyed him up the tree toward the
den, from which three little heads looked down. At times the memory
of his grief would be too bitter to be borne, and he would stop and
whimper and make little soft, sobbing noises. Then Mother Coon would
pat him comfortingly with her slim, graceful paws and urge him on
until at last he was safely home again. So ended well, after all, the
first journey into the world of any of this little family.
[Illustration: THE FIRST JOURNEY]
By this time the sun was set, and the old coon climbed down the tree
to the nearest pool, for a bit of supper. As she approached, there
were squeaks and splashes, and several cricket frogs dived into the
water ahead of her. Wading in, she looked around at the woods and the
tree-tops in the darkening light, in a vacant way, as if frogs were
the very last thing she had in mind; but under the water her slim
fingers were exploring every inch of the oozy bottom with such
lightning-like speed, that in less than a minute three frogs had been
caught, killed by a skillful nip, and thrown up on the dry bank.
Convinced that there were no more left in the pool, she approached her
supper-table; but before she would eat came the ceremony and ritual of
her tribe and blood.
No raccoon, in winter or summer, by night or by day, at home or in
captivity, will willingly eat any unwashed food except green corn. One
by one the dead frogs were plunged under the water from which they had
just been taken, and were washed and re-washed and rubbed and
scrubbed, until they were clean enough to suit Mrs. Coon. Then, and
not until then, were they daintily eaten. Thereafter soft little
chirring calls from the tree-top said that her babies were ready for
their supper, too; and she climbed back to the nest, where they
snuggled against her and nuzzled and cuddled and drank of the warm
milk which would not flow much longer for them, since mother raccoons
wean their children early.
While they were still at supper, there sounded from the black depths
of the pine forest a long whickering "Whoo-oo-oo-oo," much like the
wailing call of the screech-owl. It was Father Coon on his way home
from where he had been spending the night in one of his outlying
hunting-lodges, of which he had several within a radius of a few
miles; and a little later he joined the family. He brought Mother Coon
a little tidbit in the shape of a fresh-water mussel, which, although
the shell was still dripping, she climbed down and washed before she
cracked and ate it like a nut.
After supper, the two started off on a hunting-trip, while the babies
curled up in a round ball, to sleep until they came back. The gray
hour just before dawn found the hunters crouched in the long marshy
grass at the very tip of a point of land that ran into a little pond,
which was ringed around with the stunted pines of the Barrens. Just as
the first light showed in the sky, a flock of mallards, headed by a
magnificent drake with a bright green head, swung in to feed. Never a
sign nor sound betrayed the presence of the ambushers until the drake
reached the edge of the shore. The startled bird had not even time for
one quack before there was a splash, and old Father Coon had twisted
that gay and gallant neck and was back on the shore again, with the
quivering body thrown over his shoulder.
Part of the duck was washed and eaten then and there, and the rest was
carried back to the den-tree, where the four little coons were taught
to tear off little strips of the rich, dark meat, and to wash them
repeatedly before eating. That first taste of flesh and blood forever
barred them from the warm milky fountain which had been theirs before.
From this time on, they had to hunt for themselves.
The very next night their education began. In the warm fragrant dusk,
the whole family trotted in a long, leisurely procession through the
underbrush, until they came to a broad bank of warm, white sand that
overhung the deep waters of the stream which wound its silent way like
a brown snake through the Barrens. Here, in a half-circle, the whole
family crouched and dozed comfortably, with their pointed, striped
noses on their forepaws, while the dusk deepened into the
soft-scented, velvet blackness of a summer night. For long they stayed
there, in the still patience which only the wild folk possess.
At last, over the tips of the pointed cedars the moon rose, and turned
the white beach to silver. All at once, from where a sand spit sloped
gradually into the water, sounded a tiny splash, and out into the
moonlight crawled a monstrous, misshapen object. From under a vast
black shell ridged with dull yellow a snaky neck stretched this way
and that, surmounted by a fierce head, with a keen, edged beak and
gleaming, cruel eyes which stared up and down the whole beach. It was
a snapper, one of the largest of its kind, which weighed perhaps
half-a-hundred pounds and would have filled a small washtub.
As the great turtle crawled slowly up the bank, the little coons
crouched tensely, and turned their heads to see how the veteran
hunters of the family proposed to attack this demon of the stream. As
if asleep, both of them crouched motionless; for long ago they had
learned that watchful waiting is the best policy when Mrs. Snapper
comes out of the water of a spring night. Back and forth the monster
crawled heavily, stopping to look and listen for minutes at a time.
Satisfied at last that no danger threatened her on that lonely beach,
she chose a little ridge of loose sand not ten feet from the raccoon
family, and scrabbling with her hind legs and thrusting with her
thick, strong tail in the warm sand, dug herself in. There she stayed
all the night through, until she had laid a couple of hundred
parchment-covered, cylindrical eggs, the greatest delicacy on the
whole bill of fare of the hunting folk.
Just before dawn, she pulled herself heavily out of the hole she had
dug, and the loose sand poured in after her, filling the cavity and
covering the eggs that were hidden there. Not until the turtle had
smoothed over the displaced sand and waddled back into the stream did
the head of the raccoon family make a movement. He was no coward, but
he knew too much to trust his slim paws or his pointed nose anywhere
near Mrs. Snapper's shearing jaws. When the brown water at last
closed over her monstrous body, Father Coon led his waiting family to
the bank and deftly uncovered the newly laid eggs, on which they
feasted until sunrise sent them back to bed.
As the freshness of spring melted into the hot, green sweetness of
summer, the education of the little Cleanlys went on rapidly. They
soon became experts in breakfast-botany, and learned to dig for the
nutty tubers of the wild bean, with its brown purple blossoms, the
spicy roots of the wild sarsaparilla, with its five ashlike leaves and
fuzzy ball of white blossoms, the wild ginger, the spatterdock, and a
score or so of other pleasant-tasting wild vegetables. They learned,
too, how to hunt frogs, and to grub up mussels, and to catch those
little fresh-water lobsters, the crawfish, without getting their
fingers nipped.
The Cleanly children made few mistakes, and hardly ever disobeyed
their parents. There was a reason. Disobedience among the wild folk
means death, and he who makes one mistake often never gets a chance to
make another. The sister of the littlest coon was a sad example of
this fact. She decided to become a reformer. It seemed to her that it
would be pleasanter to hunt by daylight than after dark, so she tried
it--once. On her first (and last) trip she met old Sam Carpenter, a
Piny, who always carried a shotgun with him.
Of course, accidents will happen in wild-folk families just as among
us humans, only in a wild-folk family, an accident is more apt to be
fatal. It was the oldest of the three little Cleanlys, after the
reformer had gone, who suffered first. He had been hunting in the
wildest part of the five-mile circle, which the family used, and it
was after sunrise when he scrambled out of the shallow pool where he
had been frogging.
Suddenly from a dry dense thicket near by, there was a fierce hiss
like escaping steam, and from a tangle of fern darted the mottled
brown-and-white length of a great pine snake. Its curious pointed
head, with its golden, unwinking eyes, shot forward, and the next
second a set of sharp teeth closed on the soft nose of the small coon.
Unlike the poison people, the pine snake has no fangs, and its teeth
are used only to hold its prey for the grip of its choking, crushing
coils. This particular snake was nearly eight feet long, and as thick
around as a big man's wrist. Luckily for the little coon, the thick
bushes guarded him for an instant against the smothering coils.
Dragging back from the dreadful glare of the fixed, lidless eyes, he
tried to tear loose, and squalled with all his might for his mother.
Fortunately for him, she was not far away. Anyone who had ever watched
Mrs. Coon climb carefully down a tree-trunk, or move deliberately
through the thickets, would never have identified her with the furious
figure which flashed through the bushes at the very first cry of the
little coon. Before the great snake had time to draw its coils clear
of the branches, or even to disengage its head to meet the attack,
the raccoon was upon it, and sank her sharp teeth through the
reptile's spine just back of its head. At once the shut jaws gaped,
and the little coon sprang back from the heavy body, which writhed and
twisted and beat the bushes horribly in its death agony.
Mother Coon was always practical, with an open mind in regard to
matters of diet, and while her cub whimperingly licked, with a long,
pink tongue, a much-abused little nose, she began to strip off the
speckled skin of her late opponent, and to convert it into lengths of
firm, white meat on which the whole raccoon family fed full that
night.
It was the youngest of the family who was the next victim. Again it
was Mother Coon whose love and wisdom and courage outweighed chance on
the scales of life and death. He had been exploring the shallows of
the stream near a deserted cranberry bog. All the raccoon people like
to follow the shallows of a stream, on the chance of picking up frogs,
mussels, crawfish, and other water-food. A solitary rock off a tiny
island, in shallow water close to the bank, is always a favorite spot
for a hunting coon. Old Sam Carpenter knew all about raccoon habits,
and also about one of their weaknesses.
On this night the latest-born of the family came splashing down the
warm shallows, and half waded and half swam out to a tiny sandbar some
six feet from the bank. There he crouched and scanned the water in the
moonlight, on the chance that he might catch a sluggish, red-finned
sucker as it winnowed the water through its long wrinkled tube of a
mouth. Suddenly, against the yellow sand, he saw three or four
gleaming, silver disks, brighter even than the silver-scaled shiners
which he had often tried vainly to catch. Old Sam had begged from a
traveling tinker a few scraps of bright tin and strewn them near the
little islet.
No raccoon can help investigating anything that glistens in the water,
and this one felt that he must have his hands on that treasure-trove.
Wading carefully out into the shallows, he dabbled in the sand with
his slim forepaws, trying to draw some of the shining pieces in to
shore. Suddenly there was a snap that sent the water flying, a
horrible grinding pain, and the slender fingers of his right forepaw
were caught between the wicked jaws of a hidden steel trap.
"Oo-oo-oo-oo!" he cried, with the sorrowful wail of a hurt baby coon.
But this time Mother Coon was far away, around two bends of the
crooked stream, investigating a newly found mussel bed. The little
coon tried in vain to pull away from the cruel jaws, but they held him
unrelentingly. Then he attempted to gnaw his way loose, but only broke
his keen little teeth on the stubborn iron.
At first, he was easily able to keep himself above the water; yet, as
the minutes went by, the unremitting weight of the trap forced him
under more and more often, to rest from the weary, sagging pain. Each
time that he went down, it seemed easier and easier to stay there,
and to slip into oblivion under the glimmering water and forget the
torture that racked every nerve in his struggling little body. Yet, in
spite of his funny face and quiet ways, the little coon came of a
battling breed which never gives up. Once more he struggled up from
the soothing coolness of the water, and for the last time his cry for
help shuddered faintly across the Barrens. At last and at last, far
away down the stream, he heard the snap of a broken branch, and a
minute later the rapid pad-pad of flying feet along the sand, as he
fought weakly to stay above the surface, sure that the coming of his
mother meant rescue from all the treacheries that beset him.
In another minute she had reached the bank, and with a bound, her fur
bristling, was beside her cub, ready to fight for him to the last drop
of blood in her lithe, powerful body. Fortunately for her cub, the
years had brought to Mother Coon wisdom as well as courage. Once
certain as to what had happened, she decided instantly upon the stern
and only answer which the wild folk have for the snares of their cruel
human brethren. She waded out so that her back was under the exhausted
little body of her cub, and, ducking under, gripped the trap with one
of her flexible hands, strained the little paw away from it with the
other and with a few quick slashes of her sharp teeth severed the
three black, slim little fingers that the bitter jaws held fast.
As she cut off one after the other, she could feel the warm furry body
that rested upon hers thrill and quiver with the pain; but never a
sound nor a struggle came from the littlest of the coons. Another
minute, and slowly and limpingly he was creeping back to the den-tree.
Better, alas, for any child of the wild folk to go maimed and halt
through life than to fall alive into the hands of us humans!
The weeks went by. Summer waxed, until the Barrens were green waves,
starred and spangled with flowers, and echoing with bird-songs. All
through the long, warm, flower-scented nights the raccoon family
feasted and frolicked, and the little ones grew apace. One velvety
warm night, when the crescent moon had sunk in the west, Father Coon
led his family toward the farm lands, which year by year crept farther
into the Barrens. Beyond the woods they came to a field of towering
stalks, whose rustling leaves overshadowed plump ears of creamy corn,
swathed in green husks and wound with soft silk. At the sight the
leaders for once seemed to forget all their caution.
Into the field they rushed, like mad things, and, pulling down stalk
after stalk, they stripped off the husks from an ear, and took a bite
or so of the angel-food beneath, only to cast it aside and grasp
another. The little coons followed their parents' example, and pulled
and hauled and tore and chanked among the standing corn, until it
looked as if a herd of hungry cows had been there. The feasting kept
on until every coon, big and little, was brimming full of melting,
creamy corn.
As they ambled contentedly back toward the dense woods, there came a
sound which made Father Coon hurry them forward. Scarcely had they
reached the edge of the first thicket, when across the field dashed
three mongrel hounds, which belonged to Sam Carpenter, and were out
hunting to-night on their own account. There was no time to gain the
shelter of the trees. Just ahead of them one edge of the stream
touched the cleared country, while its farther bank was deep in the
Barrens. Following their leader, the whole family took to the water.
They had hardly reached the middle of the wide stream when, with a
splash, the dogs plunged in, only a few yards behind. Immediately
Father Coon dropped back, for when it comes to matters of life and
death it is always Father Coon who fights first. To-night, in spite of
numbers, the odds were all in his favor; for the raccoon is the second
cousin of those great water-weasels, the mink and the otter, and it is
as dangerous to attack him in the water as to fight a porcupine in his
tree or a bear in his den.
The first of the pack was a yellow hound, who looked big and fierce
enough to tackle anything. With a gasping bay, he ploughed forward,
open-mouthed, to grip that silent, black-masked figure which floated
so lightly in front of him--only to find it gone. At his plunge the
raccoon had dived deep, a trick which no dog has yet learned. A second
later, from behind, a slim sinewy hand closed like a clamp on the
dog's foreleg, too far forward to be reached by his snapping jaws. As
the hound lowered his head, vainly trying to bite, the raccoon
reached across with his other paw, and gripped his opponent
smotheringly by the muzzle.
Slowly, inexorably, he threw his weight against the dog's head, until
it sank below the surface. As the other dogs approached, the coon
manoeuvred so that the struggling body was always between himself
and his attackers. Never for an instant did he allow his prisoner's
head to come to the surface. Suddenly he released it, and flashed back
into the shadows. The body of the great hound floated on the surface,
with gaping jaws and unseeing eyes.
Once more the coon dived and dragged down, with the same deadly grip,
the smaller of his remaining opponents. This time he went under water
with him. The dog struggled desperately, but paws have no chance
against hands. Moreover, a raccoon can stay under water nearly five
minutes, which is over a minute too long for any dog. When the coon at
last appeared on the surface, he came up alone.
At that moment old Sam, aroused by the barking and baying of his dogs,
hurried to the bank and called off his remaining hound, who was only
too glad to swim away from the death in the dark, which had overtaken
his pack mates. A moment later the victor was on his way back to the
den-tree. The next morning, in a little inlet, where an eddy of the
stream had cast them, Sam found the bodies of the dogs who had dared
to give a raccoon the odds of the stream; and he swore to himself to
kill that coon before snow flew.
Many and many a time he tried. Everywhere the old Piny saw the tracks
of the family, the front paws showing claw-marks, while the hind paws,
set flat like those of a bear, made a print like a baby's bare foot.
One track always showed three claws missing. Yet, hunt as he would, he
could never surprise any of them again by day or night, while the many
traps he sowed everywhere caught nothing.
One September night summer passed on, and the next morning there was
the tang of frost in the air. The leaves of the sour-gum, the first
tree to turn, showed blood-red. Day by day the woods gleamed, as the
frost-fire leaped from tree to tree. The blueberry bushes ran in waves
of wine along the ground, the sassafras was all sunshine-yellow, the
white oaks old-gold, while the poison-ivy flaunted the regal red and
yellow of Spain.
Before long, the Hunter's Moon of October was in the sky; and the
night it was full, assembled the first coon-hunt of the season. Sam
Carpenter was there, and Mose Butler came with his Grip, while Charlie
Rogers brought Pet--famous coon dogs, which had never been known to
run on a false scent. Came also old Hen Pine, with his famous gun. It
had a barrel only about a foot long, for once, while hunting, the old
man had slipped into a bog, plugging the muzzle of his gun with mud.
The result was that the next time Hen fired it off, half the barrel
disappeared. He claimed, however, that, barrel or no barrel, it was
the best gun in the country, bar none. Anyway, a gun was only needed
to frighten a treed coon into coming down, since the etiquette of a
coon-hunt is the same as that of a fox-hunt--only the dogs must do the
killing.
It was just before midnight when the party reached the dense woods
where Sam Carpenter had so often seen the tracks of the Cleanlys.
Early in the evening the little family had found a persimmon tree
loaded down with sweet, puckery, orange-red fruit, and were ambling
peacefully toward one of their father's hunting-lodges in an old
crow's nest. They happened to pass the neck of woods nearest Sam's
cabin just as the whole party entered it. Lanterns waved, men shouted,
and dogs yipped and bayed among the trees, as they ran sniffing here
and there, trying to locate a fresh trail.
The fierce chorus came to the hunted ones like a message of death and
doom. If they scattered, some of the little coons would inevitably be
overtaken by this pack of trained dogs, directed by veteran hunters.
If they kept together, sooner or later they would be treed, and
perhaps all perish. Once again the leader faced the last desperate
duty of the father of a raccoon family. He dropped back to meet and
hold the ranging pack until Mother Coon could hurry the little ones
home by the tree-top route.
In another minute Nip, the last remaining dog of Sam's pack, caught
the scent, and with a bay that echoed through the tangled thickets and
across the dark pools of the marshland woods, dashed along the fresh
trail. Then happened something which had never before befallen the
luckless Nip in all his days and nights of hunting. From out of the
thickets toward which the trail led rushed a black-masked figure,
hardly to be seen in the gloom. Nip's triumphant bay changed to a
dismayed yelp, as a set of sharp claws dug bloody furrows down his
face and ripped his long silky ears to ribbons.
Before he could come to close grips his opponent had disappeared into
the depths of a thicket, and Nip decided to wait for the rest of the
pack. In a moment they joined him, with Grip and Pet leading. As they
approached the thicket they, too, had the surprise of their lives.
Contrary to all precedent a hunted coon, instead of running away,
attacked them furiously. It was very irregular and disconcerting. Even
as they were disentangling themselves from the clinging greenbrier and
matted branches, they were gashed and slashed by an enemy who flashed
in and out from the bit of open ground where he had waited for them.
The leaders of the pack yelped and howled, and stopped, until
reinforced and pressed forward by the slower dogs as they came up.
Little by little the old raccoon was forced back and compelled to make
desperate dashes here and there, to avoid being surrounded. At last,
he found himself driven beyond the area of the tangled thickets and
into a stretch of open ground. Spreading out, the dogs hemmed him in
on every side except one. Guarded on his flank by a long swale of the
spiked greenbrier, he rushed along the one line left open to him, only
to find himself in the open again. Just beyond him the cranberry
growers had left a great sweet-gum tree which, with the lapse of
years, had grown to an enormous size. As the pack closed around him,
the coon made a dash for his refuge and scuttled up the trunk, while
the dogs leaped high in the air, snapping at his very heels.
By the time the hunters came up, the whole clamoring pack, in a
circle, was pawing at the tree. When the men saw that Pet and Grip and
Nip, whose noses had never yet betrayed them, had their paws against
the trunk with the rest, they decided that the coon had been treed,
and was still treed, which did not always follow. The vast tree was
too large around either to climb or to cut. Raising the lighted
lantern which he carried, old Hen held it back of his head and stared
straight up into the heart of the great gum. At last, sixty feet above
the ground, against the blackness of the trunk showed two dots of
flaming gold. They were the eyes of the raccoon, as it leaned out to
stare down at the yellow blotch of light below.
Posting the dogs in a wide circle around the tree, the men built up a
roaring fire and sat down to wait for the coming dawn. For long they
talked and smoked and dozed over the fire, until at last a ghostly
whiteness seemed to rise from the ground. Little by little the shadows
paled, and the spectral tree-trunks showed more distinctly against the
brightening sky, while crimson bars gleamed across the gateway of the
east.
At the shouts of the men and the yelps and barks of the dogs below,
the old coon stiffened and stared down at them unflinchingly. Hen
Pine produced his cherished weapon. Aiming carefully above the treed
animal he fired, and the heavy load splashed and crashed through the
upper branches of the tree. Grimly the great raccoon faced his fate,
as the scattering shot warned him that his only chance for life was on
the ground. Slowly but unhesitatingly he moved down the side of the
tree, while the dogs below bayed and howled and leaped high in the
air. Beyond the dogs stood the men. In their faces showed no pity for
the trapped animal, who must fight for his life against such fearful
odds.
For a moment the coon looked down impassively at his foes. Then, just
as the golden rim of the rising sun showed above the tree-tops, he
turned like lightning and sprang out into mid-air, sideways, so that
he would land close to the trunk of the tree. As he came through the
air, spread out like a huge flying squirrel, his keen claws slashed
back and forth as if he were limbering up for action. He struck the
ground lightly and was met by a wave of dogs which swept him against
the tree. There with his back guarded by the trunk he made his last
stand.
At first, it seemed as if he would be overwhelmed as the howling pack
dashed at him, but it was science against numbers. Perfectly balanced,
he ducked and sidestepped like a lightweight champion in a
street-fight, slashing with his long, keen claws so swiftly that not
one of the worrying, crowded pack escaped. With flashing, tiny,
imperceptible movements he avoided time and again the snaps and
rushes of the best hounds there. Occasionally he would be slashed by
their sharp teeth, and his grizzled coat was flecked here and there
with blood; but it was difficult to secure a firm grip on his tough
loose hide, and none of the hounds were able to secure the fatal
throat-hold, or to clamp their jaws on one of those slender flashing
paws.
For the most part, the old champion depended upon his long claws,
which ripped bloody furrows every time they got home. Only in the
clinches, when held for a moment by one or more of his opponents, did
he use the forty fighting teeth with which he was equipped. When this
happened, the dog who exchanged bites with him invariably got the
worst of the bargain. The fighting was as fast as it was furious. In
less than a minute two or three of the pack limped out of the circle
with dreadful gashed throats or crunched and shattered paws. Then
nothing could be seen but a many-colored mass, with the gray and black
always on top. Suddenly it broke, and the great raccoon, torn and
bleeding, but with an air of grim confidence, was alone with his back
against the tree, while around him in an ever-widening circle the
hounds backed away, yelping with pain.
The raccoon recovered his wind and, wily fighter that he was, changed
his tactics. Without giving the dogs time to get back their lost
courage, he suddenly dashed forward with a grating, terrifying snarl,
the first sound that had come from him throughout the battle. As he
rushed at them, his hair bristled until he seemed to swell to double
his size.
For a second the ring held. Then with a yelp the nearest dog dived out
of the way and scuttled off. His example was too much for the others.
A second more, and the ring was broken and the dogs scattered. In vain
the men tried to rally them again. They had resolved to have no
further part or lot with that coon, who, without a backward look,
moved stiffly and limpingly toward the nearest thicket.
Not until he had plunged into a tangle of greenbrier, where no dog
could follow, did that pack recover its morale. Then indeed, safe
outside the fierce thorns, they growled and barked and raved and told
of the terrible things they would do to that coon--when they caught
him.
Half an hour later, and half a league farther, from a great gum tree
on the edge of a black silent stream, came the sound of soft,
welcoming love-notes.
Father Coon was home again.
II
BLACKBEAR
It was the high-water slack of summer. Up on Seven Mountains the woods
were waves of deep lush green; and in the hot September sunshine the
birds sang again, now that the moulting-moon of August had set. Yet
there was an expectancy in the soft air. Shrill, sweet insect-notes,
unheard before, multiplied. When the trees and the grass were all
dappled with patches of dark and moonshine, the still air throbbed
with the pulsing notes of the white tree-crickets; while above their
range the high lilt of their black brethren thrilled without a pause,
the unnoticed background of all other night-notes. From the bushes,
which dripped moonlight in the clearings, a harsh voice occasionally
said, solemnly, "Katy _did_!" A week later, all the open spaces on the
fringe of the woods would be strident with the clicking choruses of
the main host of the filmy green, long-winged insects, of which these
stragglers were but the advance-guard.
One morning, from the emerald-green of a swamp maple, a single branch
flamed out a crimson-red. The ebb of the year had begun. As the days
shortened, imperceptibly the air became golden, and tasted of frost.
Then through the lengthening nights the frost-fires began to blaze.
The swamp maples deepened to a copper-red and ended a yolk-yellow. On
the uplands, the sugar maples were all peach-red and yellow-ochre, and
the antlers of the staghorn sumac were badged with old-gold and
dragon's-blood red. The towering white ashes were vinous-purple, with
an overlying bloom of slaty-violet, shading to a bronze-yellow. The
scented trefoil leaves of the sassafras were all buttercup-yellow and
peach-red, and the sturdy oaks were burnt-umber.
Richest of all were the robes of the red oaks. They were dyed a dull
carmine-lake, while the narrow leaves of the beeches drifted down in
sheaves of gamboge-yellow arrow-heads. Closer to the ground was the
arrow-wood, whose straight branches the Indians used for arrow-shafts
before the days of gunpowder. Its serrated leaves were a dull garnet.
Lower still, the fleshy leaves of the pokeberry were all
carmine-purple above and Tyrian rose beneath. Everywhere were the
fragrant Indian-yellow leaves of the spice-bush, sweeter than any
incense of man's making; while its berries, which cure fevers, were a
dark, glossy red, quite different from the coral-red and orange
berries of the bittersweet, with its straw-yellow leaves. The fierce
barbed cat-brier showed leaves varying from a morocco-red to the
lightest shade of yolk-yellow, at times attaining to pure scarlet, the
only leaf of the forest so honored.
Through this riot of color, and along a web of dim trails, a great
animal passed swiftly and soundlessly, dull black in color, save for a
brownish muzzle and a white diamond-shaped patch in the centre of its
vast chest. This color, the humped hind quarters, and the head
swinging low on a long neck could belong to none other than the
blackbear, the last survivor of the three great carnivora of our
Eastern forests. It moved with a misleading loose-jointed gait, which
seemed slow. Yet no man can keep ahead of a bear, as many a hunter has
found to his cost.
Not so wise as the wolf, nor so fierce as the panther, the blackbear
has outlived them both. "When in doubt, _run_!" is his motto; and,
like Descartes, the wise blackbear founds his life on the doctrine of
doubt. As for the unwise--they are dead. To be sure, even this saving
rule of conduct would not keep him alive in these days of repeating
rifles, were it not for his natural abilities. A bear can hear a
hunter a quarter of a mile away, and scent one for over a mile if the
wind be right. He may weigh three hundred pounds and be over two feet
wide, yet he will slip like a shadow through tangled underbush, and
feed all day safely in a berry-patch, with half a dozen hunters
peering and hiding and lurking and looking for him.
To-day, as this particular bear faced the wind, it was evident from
her smaller size and more pointed head that she was of the attractive
sex. Her face was neither concave, like the grizzly bear, nor convex,
like the polar bear, but showed almost straight lines; and as she
stood there, black against the glowing background of the changing
leaves, her legs, with their flat-set feet, seemed comically like the
booted legs of some short fat man. The only part of the naming
color-scheme which appealed to her was that which she could eat.
Purple plums of the sweet-viburnum, wild black bitter cherries,
thick-skinned fox-grapes, shriveled rasping frost-grapes,
huckleberries with their six crackling seeds, blueberries whose seeds
are too small to be noticed--Mrs. Bear raked off quarts and gallons
and barrels of them all with her great claws, yet never swallowed a
green or imperfect one among the number. The fact that the bear is one
of the Seven Sleepers accounted for the appetite of this one. Although
the blackbear wears a fur coat four inches thick, and a waistcoat of
fat of the same thickness, it has found that rent is cheaper than
board, and spends the winter underground, living on the fat which it
has stored up during the fall. Some of the Sleepers, like the
chipmunk, take a light lunch to bed with them, in case they may be
hungry during the long night, and fill a little storehouse before they
turn in for their long winter nap. The bear and the woodchuck,
however, prefer to act the part of the storehouse personally; all of
which accounted for the appetite of this bear through the crisp fall
days. Ordinarily a creature of the twilight and the early dawn, yet
now she hunted through the broad daylight and far into the night, and
devoured with the utmost enthusiasm food of all kinds by the
hundredweight. Some of the selections on her menu-card would have been
impossible to any other animal than the leather-lined blackbear, the
champion animal sword-swallower.
One warm September morning, she began her day with a gallon of berries
which about exhausted the blueberry-patch where she had been feeding.
Thereupon she started to wander along her fifteen-mile range, in
search for stronger food. She found it. In a damp part of the woods
she dug up, and swallowed without flinching, many of the wrinkled flat
bulbs of the wild arum or Jack-in-the-pulpit. The juice of these roots
contains a multitude of keen microscopic crystals, which affect a
human tongue like a mixture of sulphuric acid and powdered glass;
nor does water assuage the pain in the least. Beyond the
Jacks-in-the-pulpits grew clumps of the broad juicy, ill-smelling
leaves of the skunk-cabbage, which bears the first flower of the year.
Mrs. Bear ate these greedily, although the tiniest drop of their
corroding juice will blister the mouth of any human.
Beyond the skunk-cabbage patch, on a limb of a shadbush, she
discovered a gray cone somewhat larger than a Rugby football, made of
many layers of pulpy wood-fibre paper. In and out of an opening in the
smaller end buzzed sullenly a procession of great, flat-faced,
black-and-white hornets. No insect is treated with more respect by the
wild folk than the hornet. Horses, dogs, and even men, have been
killed by enraged swarms. Unlike the single-action bee, whose barbed
sting can be used but once, the hornet is a repeater. It can and will
sting as early and as often as circumstances demand, and is most
liberal in its estimate. Moreover, every sting is as painful as a
bullet from a small-calibre revolver. Yet the bear approached the
nest without any hesitation and, rearing up on her hind quarters, with
one scoop of her paw brought the oval to the ground and was instantly
enshrouded in a furious, buzzing, stinging cloud. Unmoved by their
attacks, the imperturbable animal proceeded to gobble down both the
nest and its contents, licking up grubs, half-grown hornets, and
full-armed fighters alike, with her long flexible tongue, and
swallowing great masses of the gray soft paper. When at last only a
few scattered survivors were left, she lumbered off and followed a
path which, like all bear-trails, led at last to one of the dry,
pleasant, wind-swept hillsides that the bear-people love so well.
There she spent a happy hour before a vast ant-hill erected by fierce
red-and-black soldier ants. Sinking first one forepaw and then the
other deep into the loose earth, she would draw them out covered with
swarming, biting ants, which she carefully licked off, evidently
relishing their stinging, sour taste.
Thereafter, filled full of berries, bulbs, skunk-cabbage, hornets, and
ants, Mrs. Bear decided to call it a day, and curled herself up to
sleep under the roots of a fallen pine.
Another day she discovered groves of oak trees loaded down with
acorns. Better than any botanist she knew which were sweetest; and for
a week she ate acorns from the white oaks, the tips of whose leaves
are rounded, and the chestnut-oaks, whose leaves are serrated like
those of the chestnut tree. Then came a morning when, from a far-away
valley, floated a sound which sent her hurrying down from her tree,
although it was only the bell-like note of the flappy-eared hound
which belonged to Rashe Weeden, the trapper, who lived in the Hollow.
Yet the bear knew that a hound meant a hunter, and that a hunter meant
death. Only a straightaway run for miles and hours could save her, if
the hound were on her trail. Weeks of feasting had left her in no
condition for any such Marathon work.
Yet somewhere, during the hard-earned years of her long life, she had
learned another answer to this attack of the trailing hound. Down the
mountainside, straight toward the approaching dog she hurried,
following a deeply marked path. It led directly under the overhanging
branch of a great red oak. She followed it beyond the tree, and then
doubled and, directly under the limb, circled and confused the trail.
Then, still following her back track, she passed the tree and,
returning to it by a long detour, climbed it from the farther side,
and in a moment was hidden among the leaves. Nearer and nearer came
the tuneful note of the hunting dog who had betrayed so many and many
of the wood-folk to their death. Suddenly, as he caught the fresh
scent, his voice went up half an octave, and he rushed along the faint
path until he reached the red-oak tree. There he paused to puzzle out
the tangled trail. As he sniffed back and forth under the overhanging
limb, there was a tiny rustle in the leaves above him, hardly as loud
as a squirrel would make. Then a black mass shot down like a
pile-driver, a sheer twenty feet. The hound never knew what struck
him, and it was not until an hour later that Rashe Weeden found his
flattened carcass.
"Looked as if he'd been stepped on by one of them circus elephants,"
he confided afterwards to old Fred Dean, who lived over on the
Barrack, near him.
"Elephants be mighty scurce on Seven Mountains," objected the old man;
and the passing of that hound remains a mystery on the Barrack to this
day.
One bitter gray afternoon, when the flaming leaves had died down to
dull browns and ochres, word came to the wild folk that winter was on
its way to Seven Mountains. Little flurries of stinging snow whirled
through the air, and the wind shrieked across the marshland where the
bear was still hunting for food. As the long grass of the tussocks
streamed out like tow-colored hair, she shambled deep into the nearest
wood, until behind the massed tree-trunks she was safe from the fierce
fingers of the north wind, which howled like a wolf overhead. From
that day she stopped the search for food and started house-hunting.
Back and forth, up and down the mountains, in and out of the swamps,
across the uplands and along the edges of the hills, she hurried for
days at a time.
At last, on a dry slope, she found what she wanted. Deep in the
withered grass showed a vast chestnut stump. Starting above this on
the slope, in the very centre of a tangled thicket she dug a slanting
tunnel. The entrance was narrow, like the neck of a jug, and was so
small that it did not seem possible that the bear could ever push her
huge shoulders through. When it reached the stump, however, it widened
out into an oval chamber partly walled in by buttressed roots. Against
the slope she dug a wide flat shelf, which she covered deep with dry
leaves and soft grass, and sank beside the stump a small air-hole,
which led into the lower end of the burrow. With the same skill with
which she had picked and sorted berries, with her huge paws she
removed every trace of the fresh earth displaced by her digging. Then
she piled loose brush neatly around the entrance to the burrow, and
crawled in. Turning around at the foot of the tunnel, she crept back
head-first and, reaching out her paw, carefully corked the jug with
the brush which she dragged deep over the opening. Then, six feet
underground, on her dry warm bed, she curled up for a four months'
nap.