Hard times and easy times had long followed in turn and been taken as
matters of course; but recent years in the State of Kaskado had brought
to the Jack-rabbits a succession of remarkable ups and downs. In the
old days they had their endless fight with Birds and Beasts of Prey,
with cold and heat, with pestilence and with flies whose sting bred a
loathsome disease, and yet had held their own. But the settling of the
country by farmers made many changes.
Dogs and guns arriving in numbers reduced the ranks of Coyotes, Foxes,
Wolves, Badgers, and Hawks that preyed on the Jack, so that in a few
years the Rabbits were multiplied in great swarms; but now Pestilence
broke out and swept them away. Only the strongest--the
double-seasoned--remained. For a while a Jack-rabbit was a rarity; but
during this time another change came in. The Osage-orange hedges
planted everywhere afforded a new refuge, and now the safety of a
Jack-rabbit was less often his speed than his wits, and the wise ones,
when pursued by a Dog or Coyote, would rush to the nearest hedge
through a small hole and escape while the enemy sought for a larger one
by which to follow. The Coyotes rose to this and developed the trick of
the relay chase. In this one Coyote takes one field, another the next,
and if the Rabbit attempts the "hedge-ruse" they work from each side
and usually win their prey. The Rabbit remedy for this, is keen eyes to
see the second Coyote, avoidance of that field, then good legs to
distance the first enemy.
Thus the Jack-rabbits, after being successively numerous, scarce, in
myriads, and rare, were now again on the increase, and those which
survived, selected by a hundred hard trials, were enabled to flourish
where their ancestors could not have outlived a single season.
Their favorite grounds were, not the broad open stretches of the big
ranches, but the complicated, much-fenced fields of the farms, where
these were so small and close as to be like a big straggling village.
One of these vegetable villages had sprung up around the railway
station of Newchusen. The country a mile away was well supplied with
Jack-rabbits of the new and selected stock. Among them was a little
lady Rabbit called "Bright-eyes," from her leading characteristic as
she sat gray in the gray brush. She was a good runner, but was
especially successful with the fence-play that baffled the Coyotes. She
made her nest out in an open pasture, an untouched tract of the ancient
prairie. Here her brood were born and raised. One like herself was
bright-eyed, in coat of silver-gray, and partly gifted with her ready
wits, but in the other, there appeared a rare combination of his
mother's gifts with the best that was in the best strain of the new
Jack-rabbits of the plains.
This was the one whose adventures we have been following, the one that
later on the turf won the name of Little Warhorse and that afterward
achieved a world-wide fame.
Ancient tricks of his kind he revived and put to new uses, and ancient
enemies he learned to fight with new-found tricks.
When a mere baby he discovered a plan that was worthy of the wisest
Rabbit in Kaskado. He was pursued by a horrible little Yellow Dog, and
he had tried in vain to get rid of him by dodging among the fields and
farms. This is good play against a Coyote, because the farmers and the
Dogs will often help the Jack, without knowing it, by attacking the
Coyote. But now the plan did not work at all, for the little Dog
managed to keep after him through one fence after another, and Jack
Warhorse, not yet full-grown, much less seasoned, was beginning to feel
the strain. His ears were no longer up straight, but angling back and
at times drooping to a level, as he darted through a very little hole
in an Osage hedge, only to find that his nimble enemy had done the same
without loss of time. In the middle of the field was a small herd of
cattle and with them a calf.
There is in wild animals a curious impulse to trust any stranger when
in desperate straits. The foe behind they know means death. There is
just a chance, and the only one left, that the stranger may prove
friendly; and it was this last desperate chance that drew Jack Warhorse
to the Cows.
It is quite sure that the Cows would have stood by in stolid
indifference so far as the Rabbit was concerned, but they have a
deep-rooted hatred of a dog, and when they saw the Yellow Cur coming
bounding toward them, their tails and noses went up; they sniffed
angrily, then closed up ranks, and led by the Cow that owned the Calf,
they charged at the Dog, while Jack took refuge under a low thorn-bush.
The Dog swerved aside to attack the Calf, at least the old Cow thought
he did, and she followed him so fiercely that he barely escaped from
that field with his life.
It was a good old plan--one that doubtless came from the days when
Buffalo and Coyote played the parts of Cow and Dog. Jack never forgot
it, and more than once it saved his life.
In color as well as in power he was a rarity.
Animals are colored in one or other of two general plans: one that
matches them with their surroundings and helps them to hide--this is
called "protective"; the other that makes them very visible for several
purposes--this is called "directive." Jack-rabbits are peculiar in
being painted both ways. As they squat in their form in the gray brush
or clods, they are soft gray on their ears, head, back, and sides; they
match the ground and cannot be seen until close at hand--they are
protectively colored. But the moment it is clear to the Jack that the
approaching foe will find him, he jumps up and dashes away. He throws
off all disguise now, the gray seems to disappear; he makes a lightning
change, and his ears show snowy white with black tips, the legs are
white, his tail is a black spot in a blaze of white. He is a
black-and-white Rabbit now. His coloring is all directive. How is it
done? Very simply. The front side of the ear is gray, the back, black
and white. The black tail with its white halo, and the legs, are tucked
below. He is sitting on them. The gray mantle is pulled down and
enlarged as he sits, but when he jumps up it shrinks somewhat, all his
black-and-white marks are now shown, and just as his colors formerly
whispered, "I am a clod," they now shout aloud, "I am a Jack-rabbit."
Why should he do this? Why should a timid creature running for his life
thus proclaim to all the world his name instead of trying to hide?
There must be some good reason. It must pay, or the Rabbit would never
have done it.
The answer is, if the creature that scared him up was one of his own
kind--i.e., this was a false alarm--then at once, by showing his
national colors, the mistake is made right. On the other hand, if it be
a Coyote, Fox, or Dog, they see at once, this is a Jack-rabbit, and
know that it would be waste of time for them to pursue him. They say in
effect, "This is a Jack-rabbit, and I cannot catch a Jack in open
race." They give it up, and that, of course, saves the Jack a great
deal of unnecessary running and worry. The black-and-white spots are
the national uniform and flag of the Jacks. In poor specimens they are
apt to be dull, but in the finest specimens they are not only larger,
but brighter than usual, and the Little Warhorse, gray when he sat in
his form, blazed like charcoal and snow, when he flung his defiance to
the Fox and buff Coyote, and danced with little effort before them,
first a black-and-white Jack, then a little white spot, and last a
speck of thistledown, before the distance swallowed him.
Many of the farmers' Dogs had learned the lesson: "A grayish Rabbit you
may catch, but a very black-and-white one is hopeless." They might,
indeed, follow for a time, but that was merely for the fun of a chivvy,
and his growing power often led Warhorse to seek the chase for the sake
of a little excitement, and to take hazards that others less gifted
were most careful to avoid.
Jack, like all other wild animals, had a certain range or country which
was home to him, and outside of this he rarely strayed. It was about
three miles across, extending easterly from the centre of the village.
Scattered through this he had a number of "forms," or "beds" as they
are locally called. These were mere hollows situated under a sheltering
bush or bunch of grass, without lining excepting the accidental grass
and in-blown leaves. But comfort was not forgotten. Some of them were
for hot weather; they faced the north, were scarcely sunk, were little
more than shady places. Some for the cold weather were deep hollows
with southern exposure, and others for the wet were well roofed with
herbage and faced the west. In one or other of these he spent the day,
and at night he went forth to feed with his kind, sporting and romping
on the moonlight nights like a lot of puppy Dogs, but careful to be
gone by sunrise, and safely tucked in a bed that was suited to the
weather.
The safest ground for the Jacks was among the farms, where not only
Osage hedges, but also the newly arrived barb-wire, made hurdles and
hazards in the path of possible enemies. But the finest of the forage
is nearer to the village among the truck-farms--the finest of forage
and the fiercest of dangers. Some of the dangers of the plains were
lacking, but the greater perils of men, guns, Dogs, and impassable
fences are much increased. Yet those who knew Warhorse best were not at
all surprised to find that he had made a form in the middle of a
market-gardener's melon-patch. A score of dangers beset him here, but
there was also a score of unusual delights and a score of holes in the
fence for times when he had to fly, with at least twoscore of
expedients to help him afterward.