October, the superb month for one who loves the forest, found me again
in the same woods, this time not to watch and, learn, but to follow the
big buck to his death. Old Wally was ahead of me; but the falling leaves
had done their work well. The deer had left the pond at his approach.
Here and there on the ridges I found their tracks, and saw them at a
distance, shy, wild, alert, ready to take care of themselves in any
emergency. The big buck led them everywhere. Already his spirit, grown
keen in long battle against his enemies, dominated them all. Even the
fawns had learned fear, and followed it as their salvation.
Then began the most fascinating experience that comes to one who haunts
the woods--the first, thrilling, glorious days of the still-hunter's
schooling, with the frost-colored October woods for a schoolroom, and
Nature herself for the all-wise teacher. Daylight found me far afield,
while the heavy mists hung low and the night smells still clung to the
first fallen leaves, moving swift and silent through the chill fragrant
mistiness of the lowlands, eye and ear alert for every sign, and face
set to the heights where the deer were waiting. Noon found me miles away
on the hills, munching my crust thankfully in a sunny opening of the
woods, with a brook's music tinkling among the mossy stones at my feet,
and the gorgeous crimson and green and gold of the hillside stretching
down and away, like a vast Oriental rug of a giant's weaving, to the
flash and blue gleam of the distant sea. And everywhere--Nature's last
subtle touches to her picture--the sense of a filmy veil let down ere
the end was reached, a soft haze on the glowing hilltops, a sheen as of
silver mist along the stream in the valley, a fleecy light-shot cloud on
the sea, to suggest more, and more beautiful, beyond the veil.
Evening found me hurrying homeward through the short twilight, along
silent wood roads from which the birds had departed, breathing deep of
the pure air with its pungent tang of ripened leaves, sniffing the first
night smells, listening now for the yap of a fox, now for the distant
bay of a dog to guide me in a short cut over the hills to where my room
in the old farmhouse was waiting.
It mattered little that, far behind me (though not so far from where
the trail ended), the big buck began his twilight wandering along
the ridges, sniffing alertly at the vanishing scent of the man on his
feeding ground. The best things that a hunter brings home are in his
heart, not in his game bag; and a free deer meant another long glorious
day following him through the October woods, making the tyro's mistakes,
to be sure, but feeling also the tyro's thrill and the tyro's wonder,
and the consciousness of growing power and skill to read in a new
language the secrets that the moss and leaves hide so innocently.
There was so much to note and learn and remember in those days! A bit of
moss with that curiously measured angular cut in it, as if the wood folk
had taken to studying Euclid,--how wonderful it was at first! The deer
had been here; his foot drew that sharp triangle; and I must measure and
feel it carefully, and press aside the moss, and study the leaves,
to know whether it were my big buck or no, and how long since he had
passed, and whether he were feeding or running or just nosing about and
watching the valley below. And all that is much to learn from a tiny
triangle in the moss, with imaginary a, b, c's clinging to the dried
moss blossoms.
How careful one had to be! Every shift of wind, every cloud shadow had
to be noted. The lesson of a dewdrop, splashed from a leaf in the early
morning; the testimony of a crushed flower, or a broken brake, or a
bending grass blade; the counsel of a bit of bark frayed from a birch
tree, with a shred of deer-velvet clinging to it,--all these were vastly
significant and interesting. Every copse and hiding place and cathedral
aisle of the big woods in front must be searched with quiet eyes far
ahead, as one glided silently from tree to tree. That depression in the
gray moss of a fir thicket, with two others near it--three deer lay down
there last night; no, this morning; no, scarcely an hour ago, and the
dim traces along the ridge show no sign of hurry or alarm. So I move on,
following surely the trail that, only a few days since, would have been
invisible as the trail of a fish in the lake to my unschooled eyes,
searching, searching everywhere for dim forms gliding among the trees,
till--a scream, a whistle, a rush away! And I know that the bluejay,
which has been gliding after me curiously the last ten minutes,--has
fathomed my intentions and flown ahead to alarm the deer, which are now
bounding away for denser cover.
I brush ahead heedlessly, knowing that caution here only wastes time,
and study the fresh trail where the quarry jumped away in alarm.
Straight down the wind it goes. Cunning old buck! He has no idea what
Bluejay's alarm was about, but a warning, whether of crow or jay or
tainted wind or snapping twig, is never lost on the wood folk. Now as he
bounds along, cleaving the woods like a living bolt, yet stopping short
every hundred yards or so to whirl and listen and sort the messages that
the wood wires bring to him, he is perfectly sure of himself and his
little flock, knowing that if danger follow down wind, his own nose will
tell him all about it. I glance at the sun; only another hour of light,
and I am six miles from home. I glance at the jay, flitting about
restlessly in a mixture of mischief and curiosity, whistling his
too-loo-loo loudly as a sign to the fleeing game that I am right here
and that he sees me. Then I take up the back trail, planning another
day.
So the days went by, one after another; the big buck, aided by his
friends the birds, held his own against my craft and patience. He grew
more wild and alert with every hunt, and kept so far ahead of me that
only once, before the snow blew, did I have even the chance of stalking
him, and then the cunning old fellow foiled me again masterfully.
Old Wally was afield too; but, so far as I could read from the woods'
record, he fared no better than I on the trail of the buck. Once, when I
knew my game was miles ahead, I heard the longdrawn whang of Wally's old
gun across a little valley. Presently the brush began to crackle, and
a small doe came jumping among the trees straight towards me. Within
thirty feet she saw me, caught herself at the top of her jump, came
straight down, and stood an instant as if turned to stone, with a spruce
branch bending over to hide her from my eyes. Then, when I moved not,
having no desire to kill a doe but only to watch the beautiful creature,
she turned, glided a few steps, and went bounding away along the ridge.
Old Wally came in a little while, not following the trail,--he had no
skill nor patience for that,--but with a woodsman's instinct following
up the general direction of his game. Not far from where the doe had
first appeared he stopped, looked all around keenly, then rested his
hands on the end of his long gun barrel, and put his chin on his hands.
"Drat it all! Never tetched 'im again. That paowder o' mine hain't
wuth a cent. You wait till snow blows,"--addressing the silent woods
at large,--"then I'll get me some paowder as is paowder, and foller the
critter, and I'll show ye--"
Old Wally said never a word, but all this was in his face and attitude
as he leaned moodily on his long gun. And I watched him, chuckling, from
my hiding among the rocks, till with curious instinct he vanished down
the ridge behind the very thicket where I had seen the doe flash out of
sight a moment before.
When I saw him again he was deep in less creditable business. It was a
perfect autumn day,--the air full of light and color, the fragrant
woods resting under the soft haze like a great bouquet of Nature's own
culling, birds, bees and squirrels frolicking all day long amidst the
trees, yet doing an astonishing amount of work in gathering each one his
harvest for the cold dark days that were coming.
At daylight, from the top of a hill, I looked down on a little clearing
and saw the first signs of the game I was seeking. There had been what
old people call a duck-frost. In the meadows and along the fringes of
the woods the white rime lay thick and powdery on grass and dead leaves;
every foot that touched it left a black mark, as if seared with a hot
iron, when the sun came up and shone upon it. Across the field three
black trails meandered away from the brook; but alas! under the fringe
of evergreen was another trail, that of a man, which crept and halted
and hid, yet drew nearer and nearer the point where the three deer
trails vanished into the wood. Then I found powder marks, and some brush
that was torn by buck shot, and three trails that bounded away, and a
tiny splash of deeper red on a crimson maple leaf. So I left the deer
to the early hunter and wandered away up the hill for a long, lazy,
satisfying day in the woods alone.
Presently I came to a low brush fence running zigzag through the woods,
with snares set every few yards in the partridge and rabbit runs. At
the third opening a fine cock partridge swung limp and lifeless from a
twitch-up. The cruel wire had torn his neck under his beautiful ruff;
the broken wing quills showed how terrible had been his struggle. Hung
by the neck till dead!--an atrocious fate to mete out to a noble bird.
I followed the hedge of snares for a couple of hundred yards, finding
three more strangled grouse and a brown rabbit. Then I sat down in a
beautiful spot to watch the life about me, and to catch the snarer at
his abominable work.
The sun climbed higher and blotted out the four trails in the field
below. Red squirrels came down close to my head to chatter and scold and
drive me out of the solitude. A beautiful gray squirrel went tearing by
among the branches, pursued by one of the savage little reds that nipped
and snarled at his heels. The two cannot live together, and the gray
must always go. Jays stopped spying on the squirrels--to see and
remember where their winter stores were hidden--and lingered near me,
whistling their curiosity at the silent man below. None but jays gave
any heed to the five grim corpses swinging by their necks over the
deadly hedge, and to them it was only a new sensation.
Then a cruel thing happened,--one of the many tragedies that pass
unnoticed in the woods. There was a scurry in the underbrush, and
strange cries like those of an agonized child, only tiny and distant,
as if heard in a phonograph. Over the sounds a crow hovered and rose and
fell, in his intense absorption seeing nothing but the creature below.
Suddenly he swooped like a hawk into a thicket, and out of the cover
sprang a leveret (young hare), only to crouch shivering in the open
space under a hemlock's drooping branches. There the crow headed him,
struck once, twice, three times, straight hard blows with his powerful
beak; and when I ran to the spot the leveret lay quite dead with his
skull split, while the crow went flapping wildly to the tree tops,
giving the danger cry to the flock that was gossiping in the sunshine on
the ridge across the valley.
The woods were all still after that; jays and squirrels seemed appalled
at the tragedy, and avoided me as if I were responsible for the still
little body under the hemlock tips. An hour passed; then, a quarter-mile
away, in the direction that the deer had taken in the early morning,
a single jay set up his cry, the cry of something new passing in the
woods. Two or three others joined him; the cry came nearer. A flock
of crossbills went whistling overhead, coming from the same direction.
Then, as I slipped away into an evergreen thicket, a partridge came
whirring up, and darted by me like a brown arrow driven by the bending
branches behind him, flicking the twigs sharply with his wings as he
drove along. And then, on the path of his last forerunner, Old Wally
appeared, his keen eyes searching his murderous gibbetline expectantly.
Now Old Wally was held in great reputation by the Nimrods of the
village, because he hunted partridges, not with "scatter-gun" and
dog,--such amateurish bungling he disdained and swore against,--but in
the good old-fashioned way of stalking with a rifle. And when he brought
his bunch of birds to market, his admirers pointed with pride to the
marks of his wondrous skill. Here was a bird with the head hanging by a
thread of skin; there one with its neck broken; there a furrow along
the top of the head; and here--perfect work!--a partridge with both eyes
gone, showing the course of his unerring bullet.
Not ten yards from my hiding place he took down a partridge from its
gallows, fumbled a pointed stick out of his pocket, ran it through the
bird's neck, and stowed the creature that had died miserably, without
a chance for its life, away in one of his big pockets, a self-satisfied
grin on his face as he glanced down the hedge and saw another bird
swinging. So he followed his hangman's hedge, treating each bird to his
pointed stick, carefully resetting the snares after him and clearing
away the fallen leaves from the fatal pathways. When he came to the
rabbit he harled him dexterously, slipped him over his long gun barrel,
took his bearings in a quick look, and struck over the ridge for another
southern hillside.
Here, at last, was the secret of Wally's boasted skill in partridge
hunting with a rifle. Spite of my indignation at the snare line, the
cruel death which gaped day and night for the game as it ran about
heedlessly in the fancied security of its own coverts, a humorous, half
shame-faced feeling of admiration would creep in as I thought of the old
sinner's cunning, and remembered his look of disdain when he met me one
day, with a "scatter-gun" in my hands and old Don following obediently
at heel. Thinking that in his long life he must have learned many things
in the woods that I would be glad to know, I had invited him cordially
to join me. But he only withered me with the contempt in his hawk eyes,
and wiggled his toe as if holding back a kick from my honest dog with
difficulty.
"Go hunting with ye? Not much, Mister. Scarin' a pa'tridge to death with
a dum dog, and then turnin' a handful o' shot loose on the critter, an'
call it huntin'! That's the way to kill a pa'tridge, the on'y decent
way"--and he pulled a bird out of his pocket, pointing to a clean hole
through the head where the eyes had been.
When he had gone I kicked the hedge to pieces quickly, cut the
twitch-ups at the butts and threw them with their wire nooses far into
the thickets, and posted a warning in a cleft stick on the site of the
last gibbet. Then I followed Wally to a second and third line of snares,
which were treated in the same rough way, and watched him with curiously
mingled feelings of detestation and amusement as he sneaked down the
dense hillside with tread light as Leatherstocking, the old gun over his
shoulder, his pockets bulging enormously, and a string of hanged rabbits
swinging to and fro on his gun barrel, as if in death they had caught
the dizzy motion and could not quit it while the woods they had loved
and lived in threw their long sad shadows over them. So they came to the
meadow, into which they had so often come limping down to play or feed
among the twilight shadows, and crossed it for the last time on Wally's
gun barrel, swinging, swinging.
The leaves were falling thickly now; they formed a dry, hard carpet over
which it was impossible to follow game accurately, and they rustled a
sharp warning underfoot if but a wood mouse ran over them. It was of
little use to still-hunt the wary old buck till the rains should soften
the carpet, or a snowfall make tracking like boys' play. But I tried
it once more; found the quarry on a ridge deep in the woods, and
followed--more by good-luck than by good management--till, late in the
afternoon, I saw the buck with two smaller deer standing far away on a
half-cleared hillside, quietly watching a wide stretch of country below.
Beyond them the ridge narrowed gradually to a long neck, ending in a
high open bluff above the river.
There I tried my last hunter's dodge--manoeuvered craftily till near the
deer, which were hidden by dense thickets, and rushed straight at them,
thinking they would either break away down the open hillside, and so
give me a running shot, or else rush straightaway at the sudden alarm
and be caught on the bluff beyond.
Was it simple instinct, I wonder, or did the buck that had grown old in
hunter's wiles feel what was passing in my mind, and like a flash take
the chance that would save, not only his own life, but the lives of
the two that followed him? At the first alarm they separated; the two
smaller deer broke away down the hillside, giving me as pretty a shot
as one could wish. But I scarcely noticed them; my eyes were following
eagerly a swift waving of brush tops, which told me that the big buck
was jumping away, straight into the natural trap ahead.
I followed on the run till the ridge narrowed so that I could see across
it on either side, then slowly, carefully, steadying my nerves for
the shot. The river was all about him now, too wide to jump, too
steep-banked to climb down; the only way out was past me. I gripped the
rifle hard, holding it at a ready as I moved forward, watching either
side for a slinking form among the scattered coverts. At last, at last!
and how easy, how perfectly I had trapped him! My heart was singing as I
stole along.
The tracks moved straight on; first an easy run, then a swift, hard rush
as they approached the river. But what was this? The whole end of the
bluff was under my eye, and no buck standing at bay or running wildly
along the bank to escape. The tracks moved straight on to the edge in
great leaps; my heart quickened its beat as if I were nerving myself for
a supreme effort. Would he do it? would he dare?
A foot this side the brink the lichens were torn away where the sharp
hoofs had cut down to solid earth. Thirty feet away, well over the
farther bank and ten feet below the level where I stood, the fresh earth
showed clearly among the hoof-torn moss. Far below, the river fretted
and roared in a white rush of rapids. He had taken the jump, a jump that
made one's nostrils spread and his breath come hard as he measured
it with his eye. Somewhere, over in the spruces' shadow there, he was
hiding, watching me no doubt to see if I would dare follow.
That was the last of the autumn woods for me. If I had only seen
him--just one splendid glimpse as he shot over and poised in mid-air,
turning for the down plunge! That was my only regret as I turned slowly
away, the river singing beside me and the shadows lengthening along the
home trail.