March is a weary month for the wood folk. One who follows them then has
it borne in upon him continually that life is a struggle,--a keen, hard,
hunger-driven struggle to find enough to keep a-going and sleep warm
till the tardy sun comes north again with his rich living. The fall
abundance of stored food has all been eaten, except in out-of-the-way
corners that one stumbles upon in a long day's wandering; the game also
is wary and hard to find from being constantly hunted by eager enemies.
It is then that the sparrow falleth. You find him on the snow, a
wind-blown feather guiding your eye to the open where he fell in
mid-flight; or under the tree, which shows that he lost his grip in the
night. His empty crop tells the whole pitiful story, and why you find
him there cold and dead, his toes curled up and his body feather-light.
You would find more but for the fact that hunger-pointed eyes are
keener than yours and earlier abroad, and that crow and jay and mink
and wildcat have greater interest than you in finding where the sparrow
fell.
It is then, also, that the owl, who hunts the sparrow o' nights, grows
so light from scant feeding that he cannot fly against the wind. If he
would go back to his starting point while the March winds are out,
he must needs come down close to the ground and yewyaw towards
his objective, making leeway like an old boat without ballast or
centerboard.
The grouse have taken to bud-eating from necessity--birch buds mostly,
with occasional trips to the orchards for variety. They live much now
in the trees, which they dislike; but with a score of hungry enemies
prowling for them day and night, what can a poor grouse do?
When a belated snow falls, you follow their particular enemy, the fox,
where he wanders, wanders, wander's on his night's hunting. Across the
meadow, to dine on the remembrance of field mice--alas! safe now under
the crust; along the brook, where he once caught frogs; through the
thicket, where the grouse were hatched; past the bullbrier tangle, where
the covey of quail once rested nightly; into the farmyard, where the
dog is loose and the chickens are safe under lock and key, instead of
roosting in trees; across the highway, and through the swamp, and into
the big bare empty woods; till in the sad gray morning light he digs
under the wild apple tree and sits down on the snow to eat a frozen
apple, lest his stomach cry too loudly while he sleeps the day away and
tries to forget that he is hungry.
Everywhere it is the same story: hard times and poor hunting. Even the
chickadees are hard pressed to keep up appearances and have their sweet
love note ready at the first smell of spring in the air.
This was the lesson that the great woods whispered sadly when a few idle
March days found me gliding on snowshoes over the old familiar ground.
Wild geese had honked an invitation from the South Shore; but one can
never study a wild goose; the only satisfaction is to see him swing in
on broad wings over the decoys--one glorious moment ere the gun speaks
and the dog jumps and everything is spoiled. So I left gun and rifle
behind, and went off to the woods of happy memories to see how my deer
were faring.
The wonder of the snow was gone; there was left only its cold bitterness
and a vague sense that it ought no longer to cumber the ground, but
would better go away as soon as possible and spare the wood folk any
more suffering. The litter of a score of storms covered its soiled rough
surface; every shred of bark had left its dark stain where the decaying
sap had melted and spread in the midday sun. The hard crust, which made
such excellent running for my snowshoes, seemed bitterly cruel when I
thought of the starving wild things and of the abundance of food on the
brown earth, just four feet below their hungry bills and noses.
The winter bad been unusually severe. Reports had come to me from the
North Woods of deep snows, and of deer dying of starvation and cold in
their yards. I confess that I was anxious as I hurried along. Now that
the hunt was over and the deer had won, they belonged to me more than
ever more even than if the stuffed head of the buck looked down on
my hall, instead of resting proudly over his own strong shoulders. My
snowshoes clicked a rapid march through the sad gray woods, while the
March wind thrummed an accompaniment high up among the bare branches,
and the ground-spruce nodded briskly, beating time with their green
tips, as if glad of any sound or music that would break the chill
silence until the birds came back.
Here and there the snow told stories; gay stories, tragic stories, sad,
wandering, patient stories of the little woods-people, which the
frost had hardened into crust, as if Nature would keep their memorials
forever, like the records on the sunhardened bricks of Babylon. But
would the deer live? Would the big buck's cunning provide a yard large
enough for wide wandering, with plenty of browse along the paths to
carry his flock safely through the winter's hunger? That was a story,
waiting somewhere ahead, which made me hurry away from the foot-written
records that otherwise would have kept me busy for hours.
Crossbills called welcome to me, high overhead. Nothing can starve them
out. A red squirrel rushed headlong out of his hollow tree at the first
click of my snowshoes. Nothing can check his curiosity or his scolding
except his wife, whom he likes, and the weasel, whom he is
mortally afraid of. Chickadees followed me shyly with their
blandishments--tsic-a-deeee? with that gentle up-slide of questioning.
"Is the spring really coming? Are--are you a harbinger?"
But the snowshoes clicked on, away from the sweet blarney, Leaving
behind the little flatterers who were honestly glad to see me in the
woods again, and who would fain have delayed me. Other questions,
stern ones, were calling ahead. Would the cur dogs find the yard and
exterminate the innocents? Would Old Wally--but no; Wally had the
"rheumatiz," and was out of the running. Ill-wind blew the deer good
that time; else he would long ago have run them down on snowshoes and
cut their throats, as if they were indeed his "tarnal sheep" that had
run wild in the woods.
At the southern end of a great hardwood ridge I found the first path
of their yard. It was half filled with snow, unused since the last two
storms. A glance on either side, where everything eatable within reach
of a deer's neck had long ago been cropped close, showed plainly why the
path was abandoned. I followed it a short distance before running
into another path, and another, then into a great tangle of deer ways
spreading out crisscross over the eastern and southern slopes of the
ridge.
In some of the paths were fresh deer tracks and the signs of recent
feeding. My heart jumped at sight of one great hoof mark. I had measured
and studied it too often to fail to recognize its owner. There was
browse here still, to be had for the cropping. I began to be hopeful for
my little flock, and to feel a higher regard for their leader, who
could plan a yard, it seemed, as well as a flight, and who could not be
deceived by early abundance into outlining a small yard, forgetting the
late snows and the spring hunger.
I was stooping to examine the more recent signs, when a sharp snort
made me raise my head quickly. In the path before me stood a doe, all
a-quiver, her feet still braced from the suddenness with which she had
stopped at sight of an unknown object blocking the path ahead. Behind
her two other deer checked themselves and stood like statues, unable to
see, but obeying their leader promptly.
All three were frightened and excited, not simply curious, as they would
have been had they found me in their path unexpectedly. The widespread
nostrils and heaving sides showed that they had been running hard. Those
in the rear (I could see them over the top of the scrub spruce, behind
which I crouched in the path) said in every muscle: "Go on! No matter
what it is, the danger behind is worse. Go on, go on!" Insistence was
in the air. The doe felt it and bounded aside. The crust had softened
in the sun, and she plunged through it when she struck, cr-r-runch,
cr-r-runch, up to her sides at every jump. The others followed, just
swinging their heads for a look and a sniff at me, springing from hole
to hole in the snow, and making but a single track. A dozen jumps and
they struck another path and turned into it, running as before down the
ridge. In the swift glimpses they gave me I noticed with satisfaction
that, though thin and a bit ragged in appearance, they were by no means
starved. The veteran leader had provided well for his little family.
I followed their back track up the ridge for perhaps half a mile, when
another track made me turn aside. Two days before, a single deer had
been driven out of the yard at a point where three paths met. She had
been running down the ridge when something in front met her and drove
her headlong out of her course. The soft edges of the path were cut and
torn by suspicious claw marks.
I followed her flight anxiously, finding here and there, where the snow
had been softest, dog tracks big and little. The deer was tired from
long running, apparently; the deep holes in the snow, where she had
broken through the crust, were not half the regular distance apart.
A little way from the path I found her, cold and stiff, her throat
horribly torn by the pack which had run her to death. Her hind feet were
still doubled under her, just as she had landed from her last despairing
jump, when the tired muscles could do no more, and she sank down without
a struggle to let the dogs do their cruel work.
I had barely read all this, and had not yet finished measuring the
largest tracks to see if it were her old enemy that, as dogs frequently
do, had gathered a pirate band about him and led them forth to the
slaughter of the innocents, when a far-away cry came stealing down
through the gray woods. Hark! the eager yelp of curs and the leading
hoot of a hound. I whipped out my knife to cut a club, and was off for
the sounds on a galloping run, which is the swiftest possible gait on
snowshoes.
There were no deer paths here; for the hardwood browse, upon which deer
depend for food, grew mostly on the other sides of the ridge. That the
chase should turn this way, out of the yard's limits showed the dogs'
cunning, and that they were not new at their evil business. They had
divided their forces again, as they had undoubtedly done when hunting
the poor doe whose body I had just found. Part of the pack hunted down
the ridge in full cry, while the rest lay in wait to spring at the
flying game as it came on and drive it out of the paths into the deep
snow, where it would speedily be at their mercy. At the thought I
gripped the club hard, promising to stop that kind of hunting for good,
if only I could get half a chance.
Presently, above the scrape of my snowshoes, I heard the deer coming,
cr-r-runch! cr-r-runch! the heavy plunges growing shorter and fainter,
while behind the sounds an eager, whining trail-cry grew into a fierce
howl of canine exultation. Something was telling me to hurry, hurry;
that the big buck I had so often hunted was in my power at last, and
that, if I would square accounts, I must beat the dogs, though they were
nearer to him now than I. The excitement of a new kind of hunt, a hunt
to save, not to kill, was tingling all over me when I circled a dense
thicket of firs with a rush, and there he lay, up to his shoulders in
the snow before me.
He had taken his last jump. The splendid strength which had carried him
so far was spent now to the last ounce. He lay resting easily in the
snow, his head outstretched on the crust before him, awaiting the
tragedy that had followed him for years, by lake and clearing and winter
yard, and that burst out behind him now with a cry to make one's nerves
shudder. The glory of his antlers was gone; he had dropped them months
before; but the mighty shoulders and sinewy neck and perfect head showed
how well, how grandly he had deserved my hunting.
He threw up his head as I burst out upon him from an utterly unexpected
quarter--the very thing that I had so often tried to do, in vain, in the
old glorious days. "Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? Well, here am I."
That is what his eyes, great, sad, accusing eyes, were saying as he laid
his head down on the snow again, quiet as an Indian at the torture, too
proud to struggle where nothing was to be gained but pity or derision.
A strange, uncanny silence had settled over the woods. Wolves cease
their cry in the last swift burst of speed that will bring the game in
sight. Then the dogs broke out of the cover behind him with a fiercer
howl that was too much for even his nerves to stand. Nothing on earth
could have met such a death unmoved. No ears, however trained, could
hear that fierce cry for blood without turning to meet it face to face.
With a mighty effort the buck whirled in the snow and gathered himself
for the tragedy.
Far ahead of the pack came a small, swift bulldog that, with no nose
of his own for hunting, had followed the pirate leader for mere love of
killing. As he jumped for the throat, the buck, with his last strength,
reared on his hind legs, so as to get his fore feet clear of the snow,
and plunged down again with a hard, swift sabre-cut of his right hoof.
It caught the dog on the neck as he rose on the spring, and ripped him
from ear to tail. Deer and dog came down together. Then the buck rose
swiftly for his last blow, and the knife-edged hoofs shot down like
lightning; one straight, hard drive with the crushing force of a ten-ton
hammer behind it--and his first enemy was out of the hunt forever.
Before he had time to gather himself again the big yellow brindle, with
the hound's blood showing in nose and ears,--Old Wally's dog,--leaped
into sight. His whining trail-cry changed to a fierce growl as he sprang
for the buck's nose.
I had waited for just this moment in hiding, and jumped to meet it. The
club came down between the two heads; and there was no reserve this
time in the muscles that swung it. It caught the brute fair on the head,
where the nose begins to come up into the skull,--and he too had harried
his last deer.
Two other curs had leaped aside with quick instinct the moment they saw
me, and vanished into the thickets, as if conscious of their evil doing
and anxious to avoid detection. But the third, a large collie,--a dog
that, when he does go wrong, becomes the most cunning and vicious
of brutes,--flew straight at my throat with a snarl like a gray wolf
cheated of his killing. I have faced bear and panther and bull moose
when the red danger-light blazed into their eyes; but never before or
since have I seen such awful fury in a brute's face. It swept over me
in an instant that it was his life or mine; there was no question or
alternative. A lucky cut of the club disabled him, and I finished the
job on the spot, for the good of the deer and the community.
The big buck had not moved, nor tried to, after his last great effort.
Now he only turned his head and lifted it wearily, as if to get away
from the intolerable smell of his dog enemies that lay dying under his
very nose. His great, sorrowful, questioning eyes were turned on me
continually, with a look that only innocence could possibly meet. No
man on earth, I think, could have looked into them for a full moment and
then raised his hand to slay.
I approached very quietly, and dragged the dogs away from him, one by
one. His eyes followed me always. His nostrils spread, his head came up
with a start when I flung the first cur aside to leeward. But he made no
motion; only his eyes had a wonderful light in them when I dragged his
last enemy, the one he had killed himself, from under his very head and
threw it after the others. Then I sat down quietly in the snow, and we
were face to face at last.
He feared me--I could hardly expect otherwise, while a deer has
memory--but he lay perfectly still, his head extended on the snow, his
sides heaving. After a little while he made a few bounds forward, at
right angles to the course he had been running, with marvelous instinct
remembering the nearest point in the many paths out of which the pack
had driven him. But he stopped and lay quiet at the first sound of my
snowshoes behind him. "The chase law holds. You have caught me; I am
yours,"--this is what his sad eyes were saying. And sitting down quietly
near him again, I tried to reassure him. "You are safe. Take your own
time. No dog shall harm you now."--That is what I tried to make him feel
by the very power of my own feeling, never more strongly roused than now
for any wild creature.
I whistled a little tune softly, which always rouses the wood folk's
curiosity; but as he lay quiet, listening, his ears shot back and forth
nervously at a score of sounds that I could not hear, as if above the
music he caught faint echoes of the last fearful chase. Then I brought
out my lunch and, nibbling a bit myself, pushed a slice of black bread
over the crust towards him with a long stick.
It was curious and intensely interesting to watch the struggle. At first
he pulled away, as if I would poison him. Then a new rich odor began to
steal up into his hungry nostrils. For weeks he had not fed full; he had
been running hard since daylight, and was faint and exhausted. And in
all his life he had never smelled anything so good. He turned his head
to question me with his eyes. Slowly his nose came down, searching for
the bread. "If he would only eat!-that is a truce which I would
never break," I kept thinking over and over, and stopped eating in my
eagerness to have him share with me the hunter's crust. His nose touched
it; then through his hunger came the smell of the man--the danger smell
that had followed him day after day in the beautiful October woods, and
over white winter trails when he fled for his life, and still the man
followed. The remembrance was too much. He raised his head with an
effort and bounded away.
I followed slowly, keeping well out to one side of his trail, and
sitting quietly within sight whenever he rested in the snow. Wild
animals soon lose their fear in the presence of man if one avoids all
excitement, even of interest, and is quiet in his motions. His fear was
gone now, but the old wild freedom and the intense desire for life--a
life which he had resigned when I appeared suddenly before him, and the
pack broke out behind--were coming back with renewed force. His bounds
grew longer, firmer, his stops less frequent, till he broke at last
into a deer path and shook himself, as if to throw off all memory of the
experience.
From a thicket of fir a doe, that had been listening in hiding to the
sounds of his coming and to the faint unknown click, which was the voice
of my snowshoes, came out to meet him. Together they trotted down the
path, turning often to look and listen, and vanished at last, like gray
shadows, into the gray stillness of the March woods.