The glory of the leaves was gone; the glory of the snow was not yet
come; and the world, smitten with bitter frost, was grey like steel.
The ice was black and clear and vitreous on the forest pools. The
clods on the ploughed field, the broken hillocks in the pasture, the
ruts of the winding backwoods road, were hard as iron and rang under
the travelling hoof. The silent, naked woods, moved only by the bleak
wind drawing through them from the north, seemed as if life had
forgotten them.
Suddenly there came a light thud, thud, thud, with a pattering of
brittle leaves; and a leisurely rabbit hopped by, apparently on no
special errand. At the first of the sounds, a small, ruddy head with
bulging, big, bright eyes had appeared at the mouth of a hole under
the roots of an ancient maple. The bright eyes noted the rabbit at
once, and peered about anxiously to see if any enemy were following.
There was no danger in sight.
Within two or three feet of the hole under the maple the rabbit
stopped, sat up as if begging, waved its great ears to and fro, and
glanced around inquiringly with its protruding, foolish eyes. As it
sat up, it felt beneath its whitey fluff of a tail something hard
which was not a stone, and promptly dropped down again on all fours to
investigate. Poking its nose among the leaves and scratching with its
fore-paws, it uncovered a pile of beech-nuts, at which it began to
sniff. The next instant, with a shrill, chattering torrent of
invective, a red squirrel whisked out from the hole under the maple,
and made as if to fly in the face of the big, good-natured trespasser.
Startled and abashed by this noisy assault, the rabbit went bounding
away over the dead leaves and disappeared among the desolate grey
arches.
The silence was effectually dispelled. Shrieking and scolding
hysterically, flicking his long tail in spasmodic jerks, and calling
the dead solitudes to witness that the imbecile intruder had uncovered
one of his treasure-heaps, the angry squirrel ran up and down the
trunk for at least two minutes. Then, his feelings somewhat relieved
by this violent outburst, he set himself to gathering the scattered
nuts and bestowing them in new and safer hiding-places.
In this task he had little regard for convenience, and time appeared
to be no object whatever. Some of the nuts he took over to a big elm
fifty paces distant, and jammed them one by one, solidly and
conscientiously, into the crevices of the bark. Others he carried in
the opposite direction, to the edge of the open where the road ran by.
These he hid under a stone, where the passing wayfarer might step over
them, indeed, but would never think of looking for them. While he was
thus occupied, an old countryman slouched by, his heavy boots making a
noise on the frozen ruts, his nose red with the harsh, unmitigated
cold. The squirrel, mounted on a fence stake, greeted him with a flood
of whistling and shrieking abuse; and he, not versed in the squirrel
tongue, muttered to himself half enviously: "Queer how them squur'ls
can keep so cheerful in this weather." The tireless little animal
followed him along the fence rails for perhaps a hundred yards, seeing
him off the premises and advising him not to return, then went back in
high feather to his task. When all the nuts were once more safely
hidden but two or three, these latter he carried to the top of a stump
close beside the hole in the maple, and proceeded to make a meal. The
stump commanded a view on all sides; and as he sat up with a nut
between his little, hand-like, clever fore-paws, his shining eyes kept
watch on every path by which an enemy might approach.
Having finished the nuts, and scratched his ears, and jumped twice
around on the stump as if he were full of erratically acting springs,
he uttered his satisfaction in a long, vibrant chir-r-r-r, and
started to re-enter his hole in the maple-roots. Just at the door,
however, he changed his mind. For no apparent reason he whisked about,
scurried across the ground to the big elm, ran straight up the tall
trunk, and disappeared within what looked like a mass of sticks
perched among the topmost branches.
The mass of sticks was a deserted crow's nest, which the squirrel, not
content with one dwelling, had made over to suit his own personal
needs. He had greatly improved upon the architecture of the crows,
giving the nest a tight roof of twigs and moss, and lining the snug
interior with fine dry grass and soft fibres of cedar-bark. In this
secure and softly swaying refuge, far above the reach of prowling
foxes, he curled himself up for a nap after his toil.
He slept well, but not long; for the red squirrel has always something
on his mind to see to. In less than half an hour he whisked out again
in great excitement, jumped from branch to branch till he was many
yards from his own tree, and then burst forth into vehement chatter.
He must have dreamed that some one was rifling his hoards, for he ran
eagerly from one hiding-place to another and examined them all
suspiciously. As he had at least two-score to inspect, it took him
some time; but not till he had looked at every one did he seem
satisfied. Then he grew very angry, and scolded and chirruped, as if
he thought some one had made a fool of him. That he had made a fool
of himself probably never entered his confident and self-sufficient
little head.
While indulging this noisy volubility he was seated on the top of his
dining-stump. Suddenly he caught sight of something that smote him
into silence and for the space of a second turned him to stone. A few
paces away was a weasel, gliding toward him like a streak of baleful
light. For one second only he crouched. Then his faculties returned,
and launching himself through the air he landed on the trunk of the
maple and darted up among the branches.
No less swiftly the weasel followed, hungry, bloodthirsty, relentless
on the trail. Terrified into folly by the suddenness and deadliness of
this peril, the squirrel ran too far up the tree and was almost
cornered. Where the branches were small there was no chance to swing
to another tree. Perceiving this mistake, he gave a squeak of terror,
then bounded madly right over his enemy's head, and was lucky enough
to catch foothold far out on a lower branch. Recovering himself in an
instant, he shot into the next tree, and thence to the next and the
next. Then, breathless from panic rather than from exhaustion, he
crouched trembling behind a branch and waited.
The weasel pursued more slowly, but inexorably as doom itself. He was
not so clever at branch-jumping as his intended prey, but he was not
to be shaken off. In less than a minute he was following the scent up
the tree wherein the squirrel was hiding; and again the squirrel
dashed off in his desperate flight. Twice more was this repeated, the
squirrel each time more panic-stricken and with less power in nerve or
muscle. Then wisdom forsook his brain utterly. He fled straight to his
elm and darted into his nest in the swaying top. The weasel, running
lithely up the ragged trunk, knew that the chase was at an end. From
this cul de sac the squirrel had no escape.
But Fate is whimsical in dealing with the wild kindreds. She seems to
delight in unlooked-for interventions. While the squirrel trembled in
his dark nest, and the weasel, intent upon the first taste of warm
blood in his throat, ran heedlessly up a bare stretch of the trunk,
there came the chance which a foraging hawk had been waiting for. The
hawk, too, had been following this breathless chase, but ever baffled
by intervening branches. Now he swooped and struck. His talons had the
grip of steel. The weasel, plucked irresistibly from his foothold, was
carried off writhing to make the great bird's feast. And the squirrel,
realizing at last that the expected doom had been somehow turned
aside, came out and chattered feebly of his triumph.