into play--the old instinct of the chase, which neither of them could
very long forget. A faint "Quack, quack, quack," came up from the lake,
and they crept to the edge of the bank, side by side, and looked down.
Above them the trees stood dreamily motionless in the mellow sunshine.
Below was a steep slope of ten or fifteen feet; beyond it a tiny strip
of sandy beach, and then the quiet water. A squadron of ducks, on their
way from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf, had taken stop-over checks for
the Glimmerglass; and now they came loitering along through the dead
bulrushes, murmuring gently, in soft, mild voices, of delicious minnows
and snails, and pausing a moment now and then to put their heads under
and dabble in the mud for some particularly choice morsel. The lynxes
crouched and waited, while their stubby tails twitched nervously, their
long, narrow pupils grew still narrower, and their paws fumbled about
among the dry pine-needles, feeling for the very best footing for the
flying leap. The ducks came on, still prattling pleasantly over their
own private affairs. Closer and closer they swam, without a thought of
death waiting for them at the top of the bank, and suddenly four
splendid sets of muscles jerked like bowstrings, four long hind-legs
straightened with a mighty thrust and shove, and two big gray creatures
shot out from the brink and came sailing down through the air with their
heads up, their tails on end, their eyes blazing, and their forepaws
stretched out to grab the nearest unhappy duck. The flock broke up with
frightened cries and a wonderful whirring of wings, and in a moment
more they were far away and going like the very wind.
[Illustration: "_They both stood still and looked at each other._"]
But two of its members stayed behind, and presently the lynxes waded out
on the beach and sat down to eat their supper together. They talked as
much over that meal as the ducks had over theirs, but the lynx language
is very different from that of the water-fowl. Instead of soft, gentle
murmurings there were low growls and snarls as the long, white claws and
teeth tore the warm red flesh from the bones. It could hardly have been
a pleasant conversation to anyone but themselves, but I suppose they
enjoyed it as much as the choicest repartee. In truth they had good
reason to be satisfied and contented with themselves and each other, and
with what they had just done, for not every flying leap is so
successful, and not every duck is as plump and juicy as the two that
they were discussing. So they talked on in angry, threatening tones,
that sounded like quarrelling, but that really meant only a fierce,
savage kind of pleasure; and when the meal was ended, and the very last
shred of duck-flesh had disappeared, they washed their faces, and
purred, and lay still a while to visit and get acquainted.
There were many other meetings during the weeks that followed--some
under as pleasant circumstances as the first, and some not. Perhaps the
best were those of the clear, sharp days of early winter, when the sky
was blue, and the sunshine was bright, and a thin carpet of fine, dry
snow covered the floor of the forest. It was cold, of course; but they
were young and strong and healthy, and their fur was thick and warm,
like the garments of a Canadian girl. The keen air set the live blood
leaping and dancing, and they frisked and frolicked, and romped and
played, and rolled each other over and over in the snow, and were as
wildly and deliciously happy as it is ever given to two animals to be.
It was too good to last long without some kind of an interruption, and
one glorious winter evening, when the full moon was flooding the woods
with the white light that brings a touch of madness, a third young lynx
came upon the scene. And then there was trouble. The Kitten's new friend
sat back in the bushes and looked on, while he and his rival squatted
face to face in the snow and sassed each other to the utmost limits of
the lynx vocabulary, their voices rising and falling in a hideous duet,
and their eyes gleaming and glowing with a pale, yellow-green fire.
Presently there was a rush, and the fur began to fly. The snow flew,
too; and the woods rang and rang again with yelling and caterwauling,
and spitting and swearing, and all manner of abuse. The rabbits heard
it, and trembled; and the partridges, down in the cedar swamp, glanced
furtively over their shoulders and were glad it was no nearer. They bit
and scratched and clawed like two little devils, and the onlooker in the
bushes must have felt a thrill of pride over the strenuous way in which
they strove for her favors. First one was on top, and then the other.
Now our Kitten had his rival by the ears, and now by the tail. One
minute heads, legs, and bodies were all mixed up in such a snarl that it
seemed as if they could never be untangled, and the next they backed off
just long enough to catch their breath, and then flew at each other's
throats more savagely than ever. It was really more difficult than you
would suppose for either of them to get a good hold of the other, partly
because their fur was so thick, and partly because Nature had purposely
made their skins very loose, with an eye to just such performances as
this. But they managed to do a good deal of damage, nevertheless; and in
the end the pretender was thoroughly whipped, and fled away in disgrace
down the long, snowy aisles of the forest, howling as he went, while
the Kitten turned slowly and painfully to the one who was at the bottom
of all this unpleasantness. His ears were slit; one eye was shut, and
the lid of the other hung very low; he limped badly with his right
hind-leg, and many were the wounds and scratches along his breast and
sides. But he didn't care. He had won his spurs.
The story of the Kitten is told, for he was a kitten no longer.
POINTERS FROM A PORCUPINE QUILL
HE wasn't handsome--the original owner of this quill--and I can't say
that he was very smart. He was only a slow-witted, homely old porky who
once lived by the Glimmerglass. But in spite of his slow wits and his
homeliness a great many things happened to him in the course of his
life.
He was born in a hollow hemlock log, on a wild April morning, when the
north wind was whipping the lake with snow, and when winter seemed to
have come back for a season. The Glimmerglass was neither glimmering nor
glassy that morning, but he and his mother were snug and warm in their
wooden nest, and they cared little for the storm that was raging
outside.
It has been said by some that porcupines lay eggs, the hard, smooth
shells of which are furnished by a kind and thoughtful Providence for
the protection of the mothers from their prickly offspring until the
latter have fairly begun their independent existence. Other people say
that two babies invariably arrive at once, and that one of them is
always dead before it is born. But when my Porcupine discovered America
he had neither a shell on his back nor a dead twin brother by his side.
Neither was he prickly. He was covered all over with soft, furry,
dark-brown hair. If you had searched carefully along the middle of his
back you might possibly have found the points of the first quills, just
peeping through the skin; but as yet the thick fur hid them from sight
and touch unless you knew just where and how to look for them.
He was a very large baby, larger even than a new-born bear cub, and no
doubt his mother felt a justifiable pride in his size and his general
peartness. She was certainly very careful of him and very anxious for
his safety, for she kept him out of sight, and no one ever saw him
during those first days and weeks of his babyhood. She did not propose
to have any lynxes or wild-cats or other ill-disposed neighbors fondling
him until his quills were grown. After that they might give him as many
love-pats as they pleased.
He grew rapidly, as all porcupine babies do. Long hairs, tipped with
yellowish-white, came out through the dense fur, and by and by the
quills began to show. His teeth were lengthening, too, as his mother
very well knew, and between the sharp things in his mouth and those on
his back and sides he was fast becoming a very formidable nursling.
Before he was two months old she was forced to wean him, but by that
time he was quite able to travel down to the beach and feast on the
tender lily-pads and arrow-head leaves that grew in the shallow water,
within easy reach from fallen and half-submerged tree-trunks.
One June day, as he and his mother were fishing for lily-pads, each of
them out on the end of a big log, a boy came down the steep bank that
rose almost from the water's edge. He wasn't a very attractive boy. His
clothes were dirty and torn--and so was his face. His hat was gone, and
his hair had not seen a comb for weeks. The mosquitoes and black-flies
and no-see-'ems had bitten him until his skin was covered with blotches
and his eyelids were so swollen that he could hardly see. And worst of
all, he looked as if he were dying of starvation. There was almost
nothing left of him but skin and bones, and his clothing hung upon him
as it would on a framework of sticks. If the Porcupine could have
philosophized about it he would probably have said that this was the
wrong time of year for starving; and from his point of view he would
have been right. June, in the woods, is the season of plenty for
everybody but man. Man thinks he must have wheat-flour, and that doesn't
grow on pines or maple-trees, nor yet in the tamarack swamp. But was
there any wild, fierce glare in the boy's eyes, such a light of hunger
as the story-books tell us is to be seen in the eyes of the wolf and the
lynx when they have not eaten for days and days, and when the snow lies
deep in the forest, and famine comes stalking through the trees? I don't
think so. He was too weak and miserable to do any glaring, and his
stomach was aching so hard from eating green gooseberries that he could
scarcely think of anything else.
But his face brightened a very little when he saw the old she-porcupine,
and he picked up a heavy stick and waded out beside her log. She clacked
her teeth together angrily as he approached; but he paid no attention,
so she drew herself into a ball, with her head down and her nose covered
by her forepaws. Reaching across her back and down on each side was a
belt or girdle of quills, the largest and heaviest on her whole body,
which could be erected at will, and now they stood as straight as young
spruce-trees. Their tips were dark-brown, but the rest of their length
was nearly white, and when you looked at her from behind she seemed to
have a pointed white ruffle, edged with black, tied around the middle of
her body. But the boy wasn't thinking about ruffles, and he didn't care
what she did with her quills. He gave her such a thrust with his stick
that she had to grab at the log with both hands to keep from being
shoved into the water. That left her nose unprotected, and he brought
the stick down across it once, twice, three times. Then he picked her up
by one foot, very gingerly, and carried her off; and our Porky never saw
his mother again.
Perhaps we had best follow her up and see what finally became of her.
Half a mile from the scene of the murder the boy came upon a woman and a
little girl. I sha'n't try to describe them, except to say that they
were even worse off than he. Perhaps you read in the papers, some years
ago, about the woman and the two children who were lost for several
weeks in the woods of northern Michigan.
"I've got a porky," said the boy.
[Illustration: "_High up in the top of a tall hemlock._"]
He dropped his burden on the ground, and they all stood around and
looked at it. They were hungry--oh, so hungry!--but for some reason they
did not seem very eager to begin. An old porcupine with her clothes on
is not the most attractive of feasts, and they had no knife with which
to skin her, no salt to season the meat, no fire to cook it, and no
matches with which to start one. Rubbing two sticks together is a very
good way of starting a fire when you are in a book, but it doesn't work
very well in the Great Tahquamenon Swamp. And yet, somehow or other--I
don't know how, and I don't want to--they ate that porcupine. And it did
them good. When the searchers found them, a week or two later, the woman
and the boy were dead, but the little girl was still alive, and for all
I know she is living to this day.
Let us return to the Glimmerglass. The young Porcupine ought to have
mourned deeply for his mother, but I grieve to say that he did nothing
of the kind. I doubt if he was even very lonesome. His brain was
smaller, smoother, and less corrugated than yours is supposed to be; its
wrinkles were few and not very deep; and it may be that the bump of
filial affection was quite polished, or even that there wasn't any such
bump at all. Anyhow, he got along very well without her, dispensing with
her much more easily than the woman and the boy and girl could have.
He watched stolidly while the boy killed her and carried her off, and a
little later he was eating lily-pads again.
As far as his future prospects were concerned, he had little reason for
worrying. He knew pretty well how to take care of himself, for that is a
kind of knowledge which comes early to young porcupines. Really, there
wasn't much to learn. His quills would protect him from most of his
enemies, if not from all of them; and, what was still better, he need
never suffer from a scarcity of food. Of all the animals in the woods
the porcupine is probably the safest from starvation, for he can eat
anything from the soft green leaves of the water-plants to the bark and
the small twigs of the tallest hemlock. Summer and winter, his
storehouse is always full. The young lions may lack, and suffer hunger,
and seek their meat from God; but the young porky has only to climb a
tree and set his teeth at work. All the woods are his huckleberry.
And, by the way, our Porcupine's teeth were a great institution,
especially the front ones, and were well worthy of a somewhat detailed
description. They were long and sharp and yellow, and there were two in
the upper jaw and two in the lower, with a wide gap on each side between
them and the molars. They kept right on growing as long as he lived, and
there is no telling how far they would have gone if there had been
nothing to stop them. Fortunately, he did a great deal of eating and
chewing, and the constant friction kept them worn down, and at the same
time served to sharpen them. Like a beaver's, they were formed of thin
shells of hard enamel in front, backed up by softer pulp behind; and of
course the soft parts wore away first, and left the enamel projecting in
sharp, chisel-like edges that could gnaw crumbs from a hickory
axe-handle.
The next few months were pleasant ones, with plenty to eat, and nothing
to do but keep his jaws going. By and by the leaves began to fall, and
whenever the Porky walked abroad they rustled around him like silk
skirts going down the aisle of a church. A little later the beechnuts
came down from the sky, and he feasted more luxuriously than ever. His
four yellow chisels tore the brown shells open, his molars ground the
sweet kernels into meal, and he ate and ate till his short legs could
hardly keep his fat little belly off the ground.
Then came the first light snow, and his feet left tracks which bore a
faint resemblance to a baby's--that is, if your imagination was
sufficiently vigorous. The snow grew deeper and deeper, and after a
while he had to fairly plough his way from the hollow log to the tree
where he took his meals. It was hard work, for his clumsy legs were not
made for wading, and at every step he had to lift and drag himself
forward, and then let his body drop while he shifted his feet. A
porcupine's feet will not go of themselves, the way other animals' do.
They have to be picked up one at a time and lifted forward as far as
they can reach--not very far at the best, for they are fastened to the
ends of very short legs. It almost seems as if he could run faster if he
could drop them off and leave them behind. One evening, when the snow
was beginning to freeze again after a thawing day, he lay down to rest
for a few minutes; and when he started on, some of his quills were fast
in the hardening crust and had to be left behind. But no matter how
difficult the walk might be, there was always a good square meal at the
end of it, and he pushed valiantly on till he reached his dinner-table.
Sometimes he stayed in the same tree for several days at a time,
quenching his thirst with snow, and sleeping in a crotch.
He was not by any means the only porcupine in the woods around the
Glimmerglass, although weeks sometimes passed without his seeing any of
his relations. At other times there were from one to half a dozen
porkies in the trees close by, and when they happened to feel like it
they would call back and forth to each other in queer, harsh, and often
querulous voices.
One afternoon, when he and another porcupine were occupying trees next
each other, two land-lookers came along and camped for the night between
them. Earlier in the day the men had crossed the trail of a pack of
wolves, and they talked of it as they cut their firewood, and, with all
the skill of the _voyageurs_ of old, cooked their scanty supper, and
made their bed of balsam boughs. The half-breed was much afraid that
they would have visitors before morning, but the white man only laughed
at the idea.
The meal was hardly finished when they lay down between their
blankets--the white man to sleep, and the half-breed to listen, listen,
listen for the coming of the wolves. Beyond the camp-fire's little
circle of ruddy light, vague shadows moved mysteriously, as if living
things were prowling about among the trees and only waiting for him to
fall asleep. Yet there was no wolf-howl to be heard, nor anything else
to break the silence of the winter night, save possibly the dropping of
a dead branch, or the splitting open of a tree-trunk, torn apart by the
frost. And by and by, in spite of himself, the half-breed's eyelids
began to droop.
But somebody else was awake--awake, and tempted with a great temptation.
The porcupine--not ours, but the other one--had caught the fragrance of
coffee and bacon. Here were new odors--different from anything that had
ever before tickled his nostrils--strange, but indescribably delicious.
He waited till the land-lookers were snoring, and then he started down
the tree. Half-way to the ground he encountered the cloud of smoke that
rose from the camp-fire. Here was another new odor, but with nothing
pleasant about it. It stung his nostrils and made his eyes smart, and he
scrambled up again as fast as he could go, his claws and quills rattling
on the bark. The half-breed woke with a start. He had heard
something--he was sure he had--the wolves were coming, and he gave the
white man a punch in the ribs.
"Wake up, wake up, m'shoor!" he whispered, excitedly. "The wolves are
coming. I can hear them on the snow."
The white man was up in a twinkling, but by that time the porcupine hod
settled himself in a crotch, out of reach of the smoke, and the woods
were silent again. The two listened with all their ears, but there was
not a sound to be heard.
"You must have been dreaming, Louis."
The half-breed insisted that he had really heard the patter of the
wolves' feet on the snow-crust, but the timber cruiser laughed at him,
and lay down to sleep again. An hour later the performance was repeated,
and this time the white man was angry.
"Don't you wake me up again, Louis. You're so rattled you don't know
what you're doing."
Louis was silenced, but not convinced, and he did not let himself go to
sleep again. The fire was dying down, and little by little the
smoke-cloud grew thinner and thinner until it disappeared entirely. Then
the half-breed heard the same sound once more, but from the tree
overhead, and not from across the snow. He waited and watched, and
presently a dark-brown animal, two or three feet in length and about
the shape of an egg, came scrambling cautiously down the trunk. The
porky reached the ground in safety, and searched among the tin plates
and the knives and forks until he found a piece of bacon rind; but he
got just one taste of it, and then Louis hit him over the head with a
club. Next morning the land-lookers had porcupine soup for breakfast,
and they told me afterward that it was very good indeed.
Our Porky had seen it all. He waited till the men had tramped away
through the woods, with their packs on their backs and their snow-shoes
on their feet, and then he, too, came down from his tree on a tour of
investigation. His friend's skin lay on the snow not very far away--if
you had pulled the quills and the longer hairs out of it, it would have
made the pelt which the old fur-traders sometimes sold under the name of
"spring beaver"--but he paid no attention to it. The bacon rind was what
interested him most, and he chewed and gnawed at it with a relish that
an epicure might have envied. It was the first time in all his
gluttonous little life that he had ever tasted the flavor of salt or
wood-smoke; and neither lily-pads, nor beechnuts, nor berries, nor
anything else in all the woods could compare with it. Life was worth
living, if only for this one experience; and it may be that he stowed a
dim memory of it away in some dark corner of his brain, and hoped that
fortune would some day be good to him and send him another rind.
The long, long winter dragged slowly on, the snow piled up higher and
deeper, and the cold grew sharper and keener. Night after night the
pitiless stars seemed sucking every last bit of warmth out of the old
earth and leaving it dead and frozen forever. Those were the nights when
the rabbits came out of their burrows and stamped up and down their
runways for hours at a time, trying by exercise to keep from freezing to
death, and when the deer dared not lie down to sleep. And hunger came
with the cold and the deep snow. The buck and the doe had to live on
hemlock twigs till they grew thin and poor. The partridges were buried
in the drifting snow, and starved to death. The lynxes and the wild-cats
hunted and hunted and hunted, and found no prey; and it was well for the
bears and the woodchucks that they could sleep all winter and did not
need food. Only the Porcupine had plenty and to spare. Starvation had no
terrors for him.