WAPITI
That fall when Snookie and Chinook went camping, they first made their
way back to Lookout Peak, for a few days of coasting and chasing
pack-rats and “snowshoe rabbits,” then they took a ridge trail and
journeyed clear over into a mountain valley where grazed a herd of elk.
These wapiti (American cousins of the European stag) were the largest
deer the cubs had ever seen, and one of them had the most ferocious
great wide antlers.
“I’d hate to get that bull after me,” said Snookie.
“Well, you can tell his head end from a long way off,” observed Chinook.
“By the antlers?”
“You can tell, when he’s too far away to see his horns.”
“How?”
“By his tail end. Don’t you see that big light-colored patch?” referring
to the rump spots they wore.
“That’s right,” reflected Snookie. “Look at them trailing up through the
woods.” For as the wind shifted and carried the herd the scent of the
two bears, the wapiti had taken alarm.
“I expect they can follow each other from a long way off,” reasoned
Snookie, “their tail ends show up so plainly.” Her mother had taught her
to look for the reason in everything.
“There’s always a reason,” her brother agreed. “Whoof! There’s Cougar!”
Far away across the meadow they could see the giant cat creeping
sinuously like a gray-brown shadow against the dark green of the spruce
woods. Cougar had craftily come up with the wind in his nostrils, and he
could smell the elk when they could not get his scent.
“He’ll never dare attack them,” thought Snookie, who had been chased and
wounded by a mule deer she had come too near at the rutting season.
“He won’t dare come near the bull,” said Chinook. “But I’ll bet he’d
like to catch a young cow.” But though the two cubs waited, interested,
till after dark, Cougar still crouched in the forest fringe. As night
had fallen, nothing but the light rump patches showed where the herd was
gathering to go to sleep. The cubs were mystified when, every now and
then, one of these light patches would completely disappear, when in the
dusk they could see no more than if the great animals had been swallowed
by the earth. Then as suddenly, there they would be again, “I know,”
Chinook reasoned it out. “It must be when they turn around facing this
way that we can’t see the rump spots.”
If they hadn’t still been a little afraid of Cougar, yearling cubs that
they were, they would have crept nearer to see what was going on over
there where, for aught they knew, the lion still crouched ready for a
spring. After awhile they gave it up. As an actual fact, Cougar too had
given it up, as the herd picked the very centre of the meadow in which
to sleep, and the antlered bull still kept watch over his harem.
That night, after the stars came out, the cubs made their way to the
head of a river they had been following, and against the quaking aspen
that grew in the moist ground, they stretched as high as they could
reach, and clawed the bark to show how tall they were. Chinook was
slightly larger than his sister, though she fought so well that now she
could always hold her own in a scrap. Soon, he decided, he wouldn’t have
her tagging him everywhere he went. She was always so much more
cautious, so much less ready to take a chance. She took life too
seriously. By another year or so he’d be staking out his own range,
holding it against all comers, and perhaps finding a mate. He certainly
was getting to be a big bear. He wasn’t even sure if he were really
afraid of Cougar any more. Still, he’d be happier if only the great cat
would go away. When he thought of his long winter sleeps, he didn’t like
the idea of having such a neighbor to come up on him when he wasn’t
looking. Cougar was so quick and agile!
Here in the boggy ground about the spring they caught a frog apiece, but
they were not really hungry, for all day they had been stuffing great
pawfuls of thimbleberries, elderberries, blackberries, dogwood seed and
even spiny wild gooseberries, to say nothing of several kinds of nuts
and roots, into their mouths. They had also had good luck with their
mousing. Their sides were getting fatter and fatter. They would be well
prepared for the winter cold.
After a brief nap, they started on to another mountainside to see what
that was like. In these clear altitudes the stars were so many more than
they had been in the moist lower slopes, and so much more brilliant,
that they had no trouble whatever in finding their way. Down through the
head of a canyon, then up again they climbed, till by dawn they were
once more high above timberline. Where broken slide-rock led to the
snowbanks of the peaks, they began hearing a curious little noise
halfway between a bark and a bleat. It was like no sound the cubs had
ever heard before, and it was the hardest thing in the world to tell
where it came from. Now the nasal “Eh! Eh!” seemed to sound from under
their very feet, and they would begin digging gleefully. In another
minute it would sound from away off to the right or the left, or at any
rate it seemed to (the ruse was a bit of ventriloquism). To the cubs it
was most mysterious.
When at last yellow dawn had streamed warmingly from peak to distant
peak, Chinook saw a small brown ball of fur the size of a half-grown
cottontail dart from the rock right before his eyes. As he had looked
off over the peaks, he must have glanced straight at the creature. But
it was hidden in the rock-slide before Chinook could get over his
surprise. In a few minutes it appeared on a rock higher up, but went
back into some tunnel before the cubs could get into action. Its ears
were too round for those of a bunny, though, and it had seemed to have
no tail at all. For it was a pika, a “little chief hare,” who makes hay
for its winter stores and lives alone on the highest peaks, buried under
feet of snow the better half of the year. It would make tender eating,
if only the cubs could catch it.
Thereafter they spent several hours digging among the rocks, but always,
just as they thought they surely had it cornered, the pika would squeak
from some place else. Were there several pikas, or was it only one? They
did not know, but when they got too hungry, they gave it up to hunt for
something surer.