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[Illustration]
The Watchers of the Trails
A Book of Animal Life
[Illustration]
[Illustration: "A HUGE BLACK BEAR STANDING IN THE TRAIL."
(_See page 177_)]
THE WATCHERS
OF THE TRAIL
A BOOK OF ANIMAL LIFE _by_
CHARLES G D ROBERTS
_Author of_
"_The Kindred of the Wild_," "_The Heart of the
Ancient Wood_," "_Barbara Ladd_," "_The Forge in
the Forest_," "_Poems_," _etc._
[Illustration]
_With many Illustrations by_
_CHARLES LIVINGSTON BULL_
A. WESSELS COMPANY
MDCCCCVI NEW YORK
[Illustration]
_Copyright, 1904, by_
The S. S. McClure Co.
_Copyright, 1904, by_
Perry Mason Company
_Copyright, 1903, 1904, by_
Robert Howard Russell
_Copyright, 1903, by_
The Metropolitan Magazine Company
_Copyright, 1903, by_
The Success Company
_Copyright, 1902, 1903, by_
The Outing Publishing Company
_Copyright, 1902, by_
Frank Leslie Publishing House
_Copyright, 1904, by_
L. C. Page & Company
(INCORPORATED)
_All rights reserved_
Published, June, 1904
_Colonial Press_
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, Mass., U. S. A.
To
My Fellow of the Wild
Ernest Thompson Seton
[Illustration]
Prefatory Note
In the preface to a former volume[1] I have endeavoured to trace the
development of the modern animal story and have indicated what
appeared to me to be its tendency and scope. It seems unnecessary to
add anything here but a few words of more personal application.
[Footnote 1: "The Kindred of the Wild."]
The stories of which this volume is made up are avowedly fiction. They
are, at the same time, true, in that the material of which they are
moulded consists of facts,--facts as precise as painstaking
observation and anxious regard for truth can make them. Certain of the
stories, of course, are true literally. Literal truth may be attained
by stories which treat of a single incident, or of action so
restricted as to lie within the scope of a single observation. When,
on the other hand, a story follows the career of a wild creature of
the wood or air or water through wide intervals of time and space, it
is obvious that the truth of that story must be of a different kind.
The complete picture which such a story presents is built up from
observation necessarily detached and scattered; so that the utmost it
can achieve as a whole is consistency with truth. If a writer has, by
temperament, any sympathetic understanding of the wild kindreds; if
he has any intimate knowledge of their habits, with any sensitiveness
to the infinite variation of their personalities; and if he has
chanced to live much among them during the impressionable periods
of his life, and so become saturated in their atmosphere and their
environment;--then he may hope to make his most elaborate piece of
animal biography not less true to nature than his transcript of an
isolated fact. The present writer, having spent most of his boyhood on
the fringes of the forest, with few interests save those which the
forest afforded, may claim to have had the intimacies of the
wilderness as it were thrust upon him. The earliest enthusiasms which
he can recollect are connected with some of the furred or feathered
kindred; and the first thrills strong enough to leave a lasting mark
on his memory are those with which he used to follow--furtive,
apprehensive, expectant, breathlessly watchful--the lure of an unknown
trail.
There is one more point which may seem to claim a word. A very
distinguished author--to whom all contemporary writers on nature are
indebted, and from whom it is only with the utmost diffidence that I
venture to dissent at all--has gently called me to account on the
charge of ascribing to my animals human motives and the mental
processes of man. The fact is, however, that this fault is one which I
have been at particular pains to guard against. The psychological
processes of the animals are so simple, so obvious, in comparison with
those of man, their actions flow so directly from their springs of
impulse, that it is, as a rule, an easy matter to infer the motives
which are at any one moment impelling them. In my desire to avoid
alike the melodramatic, the visionary, and the sentimental, I have
studied to keep well within the limits of safe inference. Where I may
have seemed to state too confidently the motives underlying the
special action of this or that animal, it will usually be found that
the action itself is very fully presented; and it will, I think, be
further found that the motive which I have here assumed affords the
most reasonable, if not the only reasonable, explanation of that
action.
C. G. D. R.
New York, _April, 1904_.
Contents of the Book
[Illustration]
PAGE
Prefatory Note vii
The Freedom of the Black-faced Ram 3
The Master of Golden Pool 25
The Return to the Trails 45
The Little Wolf of the Pool 65
The Little Wolf of the Air 73
The Alien of the Wild 83
The Silver Frost 111
By the Winter Tide 121
The Rivals of Ringwaak 131
The Decoy 155
The Laugh in the Dark 173
The Kings of the Intervale 185
The Kill 197
The Little People of the Sycamore 211
Horns and Antlers 237
In the Deep of the Grass 247
When the Moon Is over the Corn 257
The Truce 267
The Keeper of the Water-Gate 291
When the Moose Cow Calls 311
The Passing of the Black Whelps 323
The Homeward Trail 351
[Illustration]
The Watchers of the Trails
The Freedom of the Black-faced Ram
On the top of Ringwaak Hill the black-faced ram stood motionless,
looking off with mild, yellow eyes across the wooded level, across the
scattered farmsteads of the settlement, and across the bright,
retreating spirals of the distant river, to that streak of scarlet
light on the horizon which indicated the beginning of sunrise. A few
paces below him, half-hidden by a gray stump, a green juniper bush,
and a mossy brown hillock, lay a white ewe with a lamb at her side.
The ewe's jaws moved leisurely, as she chewed her cud and gazed up
with comfortable confidence at the sturdy figure of the ram
silhouetted against the brightening sky.
This sunrise was the breaking of the black-faced ram's first day in
the wilderness. Never before had he stood on an open hilltop and
watched the light spread magically over a wide, wild landscape. Up to
the morning of the previous day, his three years of life had been
passed in protected, green-hedged valley pastures, amid tilled fields
and well-stocked barns, beside a lilied water. This rugged, lonely,
wide-visioned world into which fortune had so unexpectedly projected
him filled him with wonder. Yet he felt strangely at ease therein. The
hedged pastures had never quite suited him; but here, at length, in
the great spaces, he felt at home. The fact was that, alike in
character and in outward appearance, he was a reversion to far-off
ancestors. He was the product of a freak of heredity.
In the fat-soiled valley-lands, some fifteen miles back of Ringwaak
Hill, the farmers had a heavy, long-wooled, hornless strain of sheep,
mainly of the Leicester breed, which had been crossed, years back, by
an imported Scotch ram of one of the horned, courageous, upland,
black-faced varieties. The effect of this hardy cross had apparently
all been bred out, save for an added stamina in the resulting stock,
which was uniformly white and hornless. When, therefore, a lamb was
born with a black face and blackish-gray legs, it was cherished as a
curiosity; and when, in time, it developed a splendid pair of horns,
it became the handsomest ram in all the valley, and a source of great
pride to its owner. But when black-faced lambs began to grow common in
the hornless and immaculate flocks, the feelings of the valley folks
changed, and word went around that the strain of the white-faced must
be kept pure. Then it was decreed that the great horned ram should no
longer sire the flocks, but be hurried to the doom of his kind and go
to the shambles.
Just at this time, however, a young farmer from the backwoods
settlement over behind Ringwaak chanced to visit the valley. The sheep
of his settlement were not only hornless, but small and light-wooled
as well, and the splendid, horned ram took his fancy. Here was a
chance to improve his breed. He bought the ram for what he was worth
to the butcher, and proudly led him away, over the hills and through
the great woods, toward the settlement on the other side of Ringwaak.
The backwoodsman knew right well that a flock of sheep may be driven,
but that a single sheep must be led; so he held his new possession
securely by a piece of stout rope about ten feet long. For an hour or
two the ram followed with an exemplary docility quite foreign to his
independent spirit. He was subdued by the novelty of his
surroundings,--the hillocky, sloping pastures, and the shadowy
solemnity of the forest. Moreover, he perceived, in his dim way, a
kind of mastery in this heavy-booted, homespun-clad, tobacco-chewing,
grave-eyed man from the backwoods, and for a long time he felt none of
his usual pugnacity. But by and by the craving for freedom began to
stir in his breast, and the blood of his hill-roving ancestors
thrilled toward the wild pastures. The glances which, from time to
time, he cast upon the backwoodsman at the other end of the rope
became wary, calculating, and hostile. This stalwart form, striding
before him, was the one barrier between himself and freedom. Freedom
was a thing of which he knew, indeed, nothing,--a thing which, to most
of his kind, would have seemed terrifying rather than alluring. But to
him, with that inherited wildness stirring in his blood, it seemed the
thing to be craved before all else.
Presently they came to a little cold spring, bubbling up beside the
road and tinkling over the steep bank. The road at this point ran
along a hillside, and the slope below the road was clothed with
blueberry and other dense shrubs. The backwoodsman was hot and
thirsty. Flinging aside his battered hat, he dropped down on his hands
and knees beside the spring and touched his lips to the water.
In this position, still holding the rope in a firm grasp, he had his
back to the ram. Moreover, he no longer looked either formidable or
commanding. The ram saw his chance. A curious change came over his
mild, yellow eyes. They remained yellow, indeed, but became cold,
sinister, and almost cruel in their expression.
The backwoodsman, as he drank, held a tight grip on the rope. The ram
settled back slightly, till the rope was almost taut. Then he launched
himself forward. His movement was straight and swift, as if he had
been propelled by a gigantic spring. His massive, broad-horned
forehead struck the stooping man with terrific force.
With a grunt of pain and amazement, the man shot sprawling over the
bank, and landed, half-stunned, in a clump of blueberry bushes. Dazed
and furious, he picked himself up, passed a heavy hand across his
scratched, smarting face, and turned to see the ram disappearing among
the thickets above the road. His disappointment so overcame his wrath
that he forgot to exercise his vigorous backwoods vocabulary, and
resumed his homeward way with his head full of plans for the
recapture of his prize.
The ram, meanwhile, trailing the length of rope behind him, was
galloping madly through the woods. He was intoxicated with his
freedom. These rough, wild, lonely places seemed to him his home. With
all his love for the wilderness, the instinct which had led him to it
was altogether faulty and incomplete. It supplied him with none of the
needful forest lore. He had no idea of caution. He had no inkling of
fear. He had no conception of the enemies that might lurk in thicket
or hollow. He went crashing ahead as if the green world belonged to
him, and cared not who might hear the brave sound of his going. Now
and then he stepped on the rope, and stumbled; but that was a small
matter.
Through dark strips of forest, over rocky, tangled spaces, across
slopes of burnt barren, his progress was always upward, until, having
traversed several swampy vales and shadowy ravines, toward evening he
came out upon the empty summit of Ringwaak. On the topmost hillock he
took his stand proudly, his massive head and broad, curled horns in
splendid relief against the amber sky.
As he stood, surveying his new realm, a low bleat came to him from a
sheltered hollow close by, and, looking down, he saw a small white ewe
with a new-born lamb nursing under her flank. Here was his new realm
peopled at once. Here were followers of his own kind. He stepped
briskly down from his hillock and graciously accepted the homage of
the ewe, who snuggled up against him as if afraid at the loneliness
and the coming on of night. All night he slept beside the mother and
her young, in the sheltered hollow, and kept no watch because he
feared no foe. But the ewe kept watch, knowing well what perils might
steal upon them in the dark.
As it chanced, however, no midnight prowler visited the summit of
Ringwaak Hill, and the first of dawn found the great ram again at his
post of observation. It is possible that he had another motive besides
his interest in his new, wonderful world. He may have expected the
woodsman to follow and attempt his recapture, and resolved not to be
taken unawares. Whatever his motive, he kept his post till the sun was
high above the horizon, and the dew-wet woods gleamed as if sown with
jewels. Then he came down and began to feed with the ewe, cropping the
short, thin grass with quick bites and finding it far more sweet than
the heavy growths of his old pasture.
Late in the morning, when pasturing was over for the time, the ram and
the little ewe lay down in the shade of a steep rock, comfortably
chewing their cud, while the lamb slept at its mother's side. The ram,
deeply contented, did not observe two gray-brown, stealthy forms
creeping along the slope, from bush to rock, and from stump to
hillock. But the ewe, ever on the watch, presently caught sight of
them, and sprang to her feet with a snort of terror. She knew well
enough what a lynx was. Yet for all her terror she had no thought of
flight. Her lamb was too young to flee, and she would stay by it in
face of any fate.
The ram got up more slowly, turned his head, and eyed the stealthy
strangers with grave curiosity. Curiosity, however, changed into
hostility as he saw by the ewe's perturbation that the strangers were
foes; and a sinister glitter came into the great gold eyes which shone
so brilliantly from his black face.
[Illustration: "THROUGH DARK STRIPS OF FOREST."]
Seeing themselves discovered, the two lynxes threw aside their cunning
and rushed ravenously upon what they counted easy prey. They knew
something of the timorous hearts of sheep, and had little
expectation of resistance. But being, first of all, hungry rather than
angry, they preferred what seemed easiest to get. It was upon the lamb
and the ewe that they sprang, ignoring the ram contemptuously.
One thing which they had not reckoned with, however, was the temper of
the ewe. Before one fierce claw could reach her lamb, she had butted
the assailant so fiercely in the flank that he forgot his purpose and
turned with a snarl of rage to rend her. Meanwhile the other lynx,
springing for her neck, had experienced the unexpected. He had been
met by the lightning charge of the ram, fair in the ribs, and hurled
sprawling into a brittle, pointed tangle of dead limbs sticking up
from the trunk of a fallen tree.
Having delivered this most effective blow, the ram stepped back a pace
or two, mincing on his slender feet, and prepared to repeat it. The
lynx was struggling frantically among the branches, which stuck into
him and tore his fine fur. Just in time to escape the second assault
he got free,--but free not for fight but for flight. One tremendous,
wildly contorted leap landed him on the other side of the dead tree;
and, thoroughly cowed, he scurried away down the hillside.
The ram at once turned his attention to the ewe and her antagonist.
But the second lynx, who had not found his task so simple as he had
expected it to be, had no stomach left for one more difficult. The ewe
was bleeding about the head, and would, of course, if she had been
left to fight it out, have been worsted in a very short time. But the
enemy had felt the weight of her blows upon his ribs, and had learned
his lesson. For just a fraction of a second he turned, and defied the
ram with a screeching snarl. But when that horned, black, battering
head pitched forward at him he bounded aside like a furry gray ball
and clambered to the top of the rock. Here he crouched for some
moments, snarling viciously, his tufted ears set back against his
neck, and his stump of a tail twitching with rage, while the ram
minced to and fro beneath him, stamping defiance with his dainty
hoofs. All at once the big cat doubled upon itself, slipped down the
other side of the rock, and went gliding away through the stumps and
hillocks like a gray shadow; and the ram, perhaps to conceal his
elation, fell to grazing as if nothing out of the ordinary had
happened. The ewe, on the other hand, seeing the danger so well past,
took no thought of her torn face, but set herself to comfort and
reassure the trembling lamb.
After this, through the slow, bright hours while the sun swung hotly
over Ringwaak, the ram and his little family were undisturbed. An
eagle, wheeling, wheeling, wheeling in the depths of the blue, looked
down and noted the lamb. But he had no thought of attacking so well
guarded a prey. The eagle had a wider outlook than others of the wild
kindred, and he knew from of old many matters which the lynxes of
Ringwaak had never learned till that day.
There were other visitors that came and glanced at the little family
during the quiet content of their cud-chewing. A weasel ran restlessly
over a hillock and peered down upon them with hard, bright eyes. The
big ram, with his black face and huge, curling horns, was a novel
phenomenon, and the weasel disappeared behind the hillock, only to
appear again much nearer, around a clump of weeds. His curiosity was
mingled with malicious contempt, till the ram chanced to rise and
shake his head. Then the weasel saw the rope that wriggled from the
ram's neck. Was it some new and terrible kind of snake? The weasel
respected snakes when they were large and active; so he forgot his
curiosity and slipped away from the dangerous neighbourhood.
The alarm of the weasel, however, was nothing to that of the
wood-mice. While the ram was lying down they came out of their secret
holes and played about securely, seeming to realize that the big
animal's presence was a safeguard to them. But when he moved, and they
saw the rope trail sinuously behind him through the scanty grass, they
were almost paralyzed with panic. Such a snake as that would require
all the wood-mice on Ringwaak to assuage his appetite. They fairly
fell backward into their burrows, where they crouched quivering in the
darkest recesses, not daring to show their noses again for hours.
Neither weasel nor wood-mice, nor the chickadees which came to eye him
saucily, seemed to the big ram worth a moment's attention. But when a
porcupine, his quills rattling and bristling till he looked as big
around as a half-bushel basket, strolled aimlessly by, the ram was
interested and rose to his feet. The little, deep-set eyes of the
porcupine passed over him with supremest indifference, and their owner
began to gnaw at the bark of a hemlock sapling which grew at one side
of the rock. To this gnawing he devoted his whole attention, with an
eagerness that would have led one to think he was hungry,--as, indeed,
he was, not having had a full meal for nearly half an hour. The
porcupine, of all nature's children, is the best provided for, having
the food he loves lying about him at all seasons. Yet he is for ever
eating, as if famine were in ambush for him just over the next
hillock.
Seeing the high indifference of this small, bristling stranger, the
ram stepped up and was just about to sniff at him inquiringly. Had he
done so, the result would have been disastrous. He would have got a
slap in the face from the porcupine's active and armed tail; and his
face would have straightway been transformed into a sort of anguished
pincushion, stuck full of piercing, finely barbed quills. He would
have paid dear for his ignorance of woodcraft,--perhaps with the loss
of an eye, or even with starvation from a quill working through into
his gullet. But fortunately for him the ewe understood the
peculiarities of porcupines. Just in time she noted his danger, and
rudely butted him aside. He turned upon her in a fume of amazed
indignation; but in some way she made him understand that the
porcupine was above all law, and not to be trifled with even by the
lords of the wilderness. Very sulkily he lay down again, and the
porcupine went on chiselling hemlock bark, serenely unconscious of the
anger in the inscrutable yellow eyes that watched him from the ram's
black face.
When the shadows grew long and luminous, toward evening, the ram,
following some unexplained instinct, again mounted the topmost point
of Ringwaak, and stood like a statue gazing over the vast,
warm-coloured solitude of his new domain. His yellow eyes were placid
with a great content. A little below him, the white lamb wobbling on
weak legs at her side, the ewe pastured confidently, secure in the
proved prowess of her protector. As the sun dropped below the far-off
western rim of the forest, it seemed as if one wide wave of lucent
rose-violet on a sudden flooded the world. Everything on Ringwaak--the
ram's white fleece, the gray, bleached stumps, the brown hillocks, the
green hollows and juniper clumps and poplar saplings--took on a
palpitating aerial stain. Here and there in the distance the coils of
the river gleamed clear gold; and overhead, in the hollow
amber-and-lilac arch of sky, the high-wandering night-hawks swooped
with the sweet twang of smitten strings.
Down at the foot of the northern slope of Ringwaak lay a dense cedar
swamp. Presently, out from the green fringe of the cedars, a bear
thrust his head and cast a crafty glance about the open. Seeing the
ram on the hilltop and the ewe with her lamb feeding near by, he sank
back noiselessly into the cover of the cedars, and stole around toward
the darkening eastern slope, where a succession of shrubby copses ran
nearly to the top of the hill.
The bear was rank, rusty-coated, old, and hungry; and he loved sheep.
He was an adept in stalking this sweet-fleshed, timorous quarry, and
breaking its neck with a well-directed blow as it dashed past him in a
panic. Emerging from the swamp, he crept up the hill, taking cunning
advantage of every bush, stump, and boulder. For all his awkward
looking bulk, he moved as lightly as a cat, making himself small, and
twisting and flattening and effacing himself; and never a twig was
allowed to snap, or a stone to clatter, under his broad, unerring
feet.
About this time it chanced that the backwoodsman, who had been out
nearly all day hunting for his lost prize, approached the edge of the
forest at the other side of Ringwaak,--and saw the figure of the ram
against the sky. Then, seeing also the ewe with the lamb beside her,
he knew that the game was his.
Below the top of the hill there was not a scrap of cover for a
distance of perhaps twenty paces. The bear crept to the very last
bush, the ram being occupied with the world at a distance, and the ewe
busy at her pasturing. Behind the bush--a thick, spreading
juniper--the bear crouched motionless for some seconds, his little red
eyes aglow, and his jaws beginning to slaver with eagerness. Then
selecting the unconscious ewe, because he knew she was not likely to
desert the lamb, he rushed upon his intended victim.
The ewe, as it chanced, was about thirty-five or forty feet distant
from the enemy, as he lunged out, black and appalling, from behind the
juniper. At the same time the ram was not more than twenty or
twenty-five feet distant, straight above the lamb, in a direction at
right angles to the path of the bear. The ewe looked up with a
startled bleat, wheeled, sprang nimbly before the lamb, and faced her
doom dauntlessly, with lowered head.
[Illustration: "HE CREPT UP THE HILL."]
The ram's mild gaze changed in a flash to one of cold, yellow savagery
at the sight of the great black beast invading his kingdom. Down went
his conquering head. For just a fraction of a second his sturdy body
sagged back, as if he were about to sit down. This, so to speak, was
the bending of the bow. Then he launched himself straight down the
slope, all his strength, his weight, and the force of gravity
combining to drive home that mighty stroke.
The bear had never, in all his experience with sheep, encountered one
whose resistance was worth taking into account. The defiance of the
ewe was less than nothing to him. But as he saw, from the corner of
his eye, the huge bulk plunging down upon him, he hesitated, and half
turned, with great paw upraised for a finishing blow.
He turned not quite in time, however, and his defence was not quite
strenuous enough for the emergency. He struck like lightning, as a
bear always can, but just before the stroke could find its mark the
ram's armed forehead crashed into his ribs. The blow, catching him as
it did, was irresistible. His claws tore off a patch of wool and skin,
and ploughed red furrows across the ram's shoulder,--but the next
instant he was sprawling, his breath jarred from his lungs, against a
stump some ten feet down the slope.
As the bear struggled to his feet, furious but half-daunted with
amazement, the ram danced backward a pace or two on his nimble feet,
as if showing off, and then delivered his second charge. The
bewildered bear was again caught unready, irresolute as to whether he
should fight or flee; and again he was knocked headlong, a yard or two
further down the slope. His was not the dauntless spirit that most of
his kindred would have shown in such a case, and he would willingly
have made his escape at once if he had seen his way quite clear to do
so. But at this moment, while he hesitated, he heard a man's voice
shouting loudly, and saw the tall backwoodsman running toward him up
the hill. This sight turned his alarm into a blind panic. His feet
seemed to acquire wings as he tore madly away among the thickets. When
he was hidden by the leafage, his path could still be followed by the
crashing of dry branches and the clattering of loosened stones.
The woodsman had seen the whole incident, and was wild with enthusiasm
over the prowess of his prize. Bears had been the most dreaded scourge
of the settlement sheep-farmers, but now, as he proudly said to
himself, he had a ram that could "lick a b'ar silly!" He bore no
grudge on account of his discomfiture that morning beside the spring,
but rather thought of it with appreciation as a further evidence of
his favourite's cunning and prowess; and he foresaw, with a chuckle,
that there were painful surprises in store for the bears of the
Ringwaak range. He had made a wise purchase indeed when he saved that
splendid beast from the butcher.
Hearing the man's voice, the ram had halted in dismay just when he was
about to charge the bear a third time. He had no mind to go again into
captivity. But, on the other hand, for all his lordliness of spirit,
he felt that the man was his master. At first he lowered his head
threateningly, as if about to attack; but when the backwoodsman
shouted at him there was an authority in those tones which he could
not withstand, and he sullenly drew aside. With a good-natured laugh,
the man picked the lamb up in his arms, whereupon the mother stepped
timidly to his side, evidently having no fear. The man rubbed her nose
kindly, and stroked her ears, and gave her something from his pocket
which she ate greedily; and, as the ram looked on, the anger gradually
faded out from his yellow eyes. At length the man turned and walked
slowly down the hill, carrying the lamb. The ewe followed, crowding as
close to him as she could, and stumbling as she went because her eyes
were fixed upon her little one.
The ram hesitated. He looked at the hillside, the woods, and the sky
beginning to grow chill with the onrush of twilight. Then he looked
at the retreating figures. Suddenly he saw his world growing empty and
desolate. With an anxious bleat he trotted after the ewe, and took his
docile place a few feet behind the man's heels. The man glanced over
his shoulders, and a smile of pleasure softened his rugged face. In a
few moments the little procession disappeared in the woods, moving
toward the settlement, and Ringwaak Hill was left solitary in the
dusk, with the lonely notes of the night-hawks twanging over it.
The Master of Golden Pool
One shore of the pool was a spacious sweeping curve of the sward,
dotted with clumps of blue flag-flowers. From the green fringes of
this shore the bottom sloped away softly over a sand so deep and
glowing in its hue of orange-yellow as to give the pool the rich name
by which it was known for miles up and down the hurrying Clearwater.
The other shore was a high, overhanging bank, from whose top drooped a
varied leafage of birch, ash, poplar, and hemlock. Under this bank the
water was deep and dark, a translucent black with trembling streaks
and glints of amber. Fifty yards up-stream a low fall roared
musically; but before reaching the fresh tranquillity of the pool, the
current bore no signs of its disturbance save a few softly whirling
foam clusters. Light airs, perfumed with birch and balsam and warm
scents of the sun-steeped sward, drew over the pool from time to time,
wrinkling and clouding its glassy surface. Birds flew over it,
catching the small flies to whom its sheen was a ceaseless lure. And
huge dragon-flies, with long, iridescent bodies and great jewelled,
sinister eyes, danced and darted above it.
The cool black depths under the bank retained their coolness through
the fiercest heats of summer, because just here the brook was joined
by the waters of an icy spring stealing down through a crevice of the
rocks; and here in the deepest recess, exacting toll of all the varied
life that passed his domain, the master of Golden Pool made his home.
For several years the great trout had held his post in the pool,
defying every lure of the crafty fisherman. The Clearwater was a
protected stream, being leased to a rich fishing club; and the master
of the pool was therefore secure against the treacherous assaults of
net or dynamite. Many times each season fishermen would come and pit
their skill against his cunning; but never a fly could tempt him,
never a silvery, trolled minnow or whirling spoon deceive him to the
fatal rush. At some new lure he would rise lazily once in awhile,
revealing his bulk to the ambitious angler,--but never to take hold.
Contemptuously he would flout the cheat with his broad flukes, and go
down again with a grand swirl to his lair under the rock.
It was only to the outside world--to the dragon-fly, and the bird, and
the chattering red squirrel in the overhanging hemlock--that the deep
water under the bank looked black. To the trout in his lair, looking
upward toward the sunlight, the whole pool had a golden glow. His
favourite position was a narrow place between two stones, where he lay
with head up-stream and belly about two inches from the sandy bottom,
gently fanning the water with his party-coloured fins, and opening and
closing his rosy gill-fringes as he breathed. In length he was
something over twenty inches, with a thick, deep body tapering finely
to the powerful tail. Like all the trout of the Clearwater, he was
silver-bellied with a light pink flush, the yellow and brown markings
on his sides light in tone, and his spots of the most high, intense
vermilion. His great lower jaw was thrust forward in a way that gave a
kind of bulldog ferocity to his expression.
The sky of the big trout's world was the flat surface of Golden Pool.
From the unknown place beyond that sky there came to his eyes but
moving shadows, arrangements of light and dark. He could not see out
and through into the air unobstructedly, as one looks forth from a
window into the world. Most of these moving shadows he understood very
well. When broad and vague, they did not, as a rule, greatly interest
him; but when they got small, and sharply black, he knew they might at
any instant break through with a splash and become real, coloured
things, probably good to eat. A certain slim little shadow was always
of interest to him unless he was feeling gorged. Experience had taught
him that when it actually touched the shining surface above, and lay
there sprawling helplessly with wet wings, it would prove to be a May
fly, which he liked. Having no rivals to get ahead of him, there was
no need of haste. He would sail up with dignity, open his great jaws,
and take in the tiny morsel.
Sometimes the moving shadows were large and of a slower motion, and
these, if they chanced to break through, would prove to be
bright-coloured moths or butterflies, or glittering beetles, or fat
black and yellow bumblebees, or lean black and yellow wasps. If he was
hungry, all these things were good for food, and his bony,
many-toothed mouth cared nothing for stings. Sometimes when he was not
at all hungry, but merely playful, he would rise with a rush at
anything breaking the sheen of his roof, slap it with his tail, then
seize it between his hard lips and carry it down with him, only to
drop it a moment later as a child might drop a toy. Once in awhile,
either in hunger or in sport, he would rise swiftly at the claws or
wing-tips of a dipping swallow; but he never managed to catch the
nimble bird. Had he, by any chance, succeeded, he would probably have
found the feathers no obstacle to his enjoyment of the novel fare.
At times it was not a shadow, but a splash, that would attract his
attention to the shining roof of his world. A grasshopper would fall
in, and kick grotesquely till he rose to end its troubles. Or a
misguided frog, pursued perhaps by some enemy on land, would dive in
and swim by with long, webbed toes. At this sight the master of the
pool would dart from his lair like a bolt from a catapult. Frogs were
much to his taste. And once in a long time even a wood-mouse, hard
pressed and panic-stricken, would leap in to swim across to the meadow
shore. The first time this occurred the trout had risen slowly, and
followed below the swimmer till assured that there was no peril
concealed in the tempting phenomenon. After that, however, he always
went at such prey with a ferocious rush, hurling himself half out of
water in his eagerness.
But it was not only to his translucent sky that the master of the
pool looked for his meat. A large part of it came down upon the
current of the brook. Bugs, grubs, and worms, of land and water, some
dead, others disabled or bewildered by their passage through the
falls, contributed to his feasting. Above all, there were the smaller
fish who were so reckless or uninformed as to try to pass through
Golden Pool. They might be chub, or suckers, or red-fin; they might
be--and more often were--kith and kin of his own. It was all the same
to the big trout, who knew as well as any gourmet that trout were
royal fare. His wide jaws and capacious gullet were big enough to
accommodate a cousin a full third of his own size, if swallowed
properly, head first. His speed was so great that any smaller fish
which he pursued was doomed, unless fortunate enough to be within
instant reach of shoal water. Of course, it must not be imagined that
the great trout was able to keep his domain quite inviolate. When he
was full fed, or sulking, then the finny wanderers passed up and down
freely,--always, however, giving wide berth to the lair under the
bank. In the bright shallows over against the other shore, the
scurrying shoals of pin-fish played safely in the sun. Once in a long
while a fish would pass, up or down, so big that the master of the
pool was willing to let him go unchallenged. And sometimes a muskrat,
swimming with powerful strokes of his hind legs, his tiny forepaws
gathered childishly under his chin, would take his way over the pool
to the meadow of the blue flag-flowers. The master of the pool would
turn up a fierce eye, and watch the swimmer's progress breaking the
golden surface into long, parabolic ripples; but he was too wise to
court a trial of the muskrat's long, chisel-like teeth.
[Illustration: "THEY MIGHT BE--AND MORE OFTEN WERE--KITH AND KIN OF
HIS OWN."]
There were two occasions, never to be effaced from his sluggish
memory, on which the master of the pool had been temporarily routed
from his mastership and driven in a panic from his domain. Of these
the less important had seemed to him by far the more appalling.
Once, on a summer noonday, when the pool was all of a quiver with
golden light, and he lay with slow-waving fins close to the coldest
up-gushing of the spring which cooled his lair, the shining roof of
his realm had been shattered and upheaved with a tremendous splash. A
long, whitish body, many times his own length, had plunged in and
dived almost to the bottom. This creature swam with wide-sprawling
limbs, like a frog, beating the water, and leaping, and uttering
strange sounds; and the disturbance of its antics was a very
cataclysm to the utmost corners of the pool. The trout had not stayed
to investigate the horrifying phenomenon, but had darted madly
down-stream for half a mile, through fall and eddy, rapid and shallow,
to pause at last, with throbbing sides and panting gills, in a little
black pool behind a tree root. Not till hours after the man had
finished his bath, and put on his clothes, and strode away whistling
up the shore, did the big trout venture back to his stronghold. He
found it already occupied by a smaller trout, whom he fell upon and
devoured, to the assuaging of his appetite and the salving of his
wounded dignity. But for days he was tremulously watchful, and ready
to dart away if any unusually large shadow passed over his amber
ceiling. He was expecting a return of the great, white, sprawling
visitor.
His second experience was one which he remembered with cunning
wariness rather than with actual terror. Yet this had been a real
peril, one of the gravest with which he could be confronted in the
guarded precincts of Golden Pool. One day he saw a little lithe black
body swimming rapidly at the surface, its head above the water. It was
about ten feet away from his lair, and headed up-stream. The strange
creature swam with legs, like a muskrat, instead of with fins like a
fish, but it was longer and slenderer than a muskrat; and something in
its sinister shape and motion, or else some stirring of an inherited
instinct, filled the big trout with apprehension as he looked.
Suddenly the stranger's head dipped under the surface, and the
stranger's eyes sought him out, far down in his yellow gloom. That
narrow-nosed, triangular head with its pointed fangs, those bright,
cruel, undeceivable eyes, smote the trout with instant alarm. Here was
an enemy to be avoided. The mink had dived at once, going through the
water with the swiftness and precision of a fish. Few trout could have
escaped. But the master of the pool, as we have seen, was no ordinary
trout. The promptness of his cunning had got him under way in time.
The power of his broad and muscular tail shot him forth from his lair
just before the mink got there. And before the baffled enemy could
change his direction, the trout was many feet away, heading up for the
broken water of the rapids. The mink followed vindictively, but in the
foamy stretch below the falls he lost all track of the fugitive. Angry
and disappointed he scrambled ashore, and, finding a dead sucker
beside his runway, seized it savagely. As he did so, there was a
smart click, and the jaws of a steel trap, snapping upon his throat,
rid the wilderness of one of its most bloodthirsty and implacable
marauders. A half-hour later the master of the pool was back in his
lair, waving his delicate, gay-coloured fins over the yellow sand, and
lazily swallowing a large crayfish. One claw of the crayfish projected
beyond his black jaw; and, being thus comfortably occupied, he turned
an indifferent eye upon the frightened swimming of a small green frog,
which had just then fallen in and disturbed the sheen of his amber
roof.
Very early one morning, when all his world was of a silvery gray, and
over the glassy pallor of his roof thin gleams of pink were mingled
with ghostly, swirling mist-shadows, a strange fly touched the
surface, directly above him. It had a slender, scarlet, curving body,
with long hairs of yellow and black about its neck, and brown and
white wings. It fell upon the water with the daintiest possible
splash, just enough to catch his attention. Being utterly unlike
anything he had ever seen before, it aroused his interest, and he
slanted slowly upward. A moment later a second fly touched the water,
a light gray, mottled thing, with a yellow body, and pink and green
hairs fringing its neck. This, too, was strange to him. He rolled a
foot higher, not with any immediate idea of trying them, but under his
usual vague impulse to investigate everything pertaining to his pool.
Just then the mist-swirls lifted slightly, and the light grew
stronger, and against the smooth surface he detected a fine, almost
invisible, thread leading from the head of each fly. With a derisive
flirt of his tail he sank back to the bottom of his lair. Right well
he knew the significance of that fine thread.
The strange flies skipped lightly over the surface of the pool, in a
manner that to most trout would have seemed very alluring. They moved
away toward a phenomenon which he just now noticed for the first time,
a pair of dark, pillar-like objects standing where the water was about
two feet deep, over toward the further shore. These dark objects moved
a little, gently. Then the strange flies disappeared. A moment later
they dropped again, and went through the same performance. This was
repeated several times, the big trout watching with interest mingled
with contempt. There was no peril for him in such gauds.
Presently the flies disappeared for good. A few minutes later two
others came in their place,--one a tiny, white, moth-like thing, the
other a big, bristling bunch of crimson hairs. The latter stirred,
far back in his dull memory, an association of pain and fear, and he
backed deeper into his watery den. It was a red hackle; and in his
early days, when he was about eight inches long and frequented the
tail of a shallow, foamy rapid, he had had experience of its sharp
allurements. The little moth he ignored, but he kept an eye on the red
hackle as it trailed and danced hither and thither across the pool.
Once, near the other side, he saw a misguided fingerling dart from
under a stone in the shallow water and seize the gay morsel. The
fingerling rose, with a jerk, from the water, and was no more seen. It
vanished into the unknown air; and the master of the pool quailed as
he marked its fate. After this, the pair of dark, pillar-like objects
moved away to the shore, no longer careful, but making a huge,
splashing noise. No more strange flies appeared; and the gold light of
full day stole down to the depths of the pool. Soon, flies which the
master well knew, with no fine threads attached to them, began to
speck the surface over him, and he fed, in his lazy way, without
misgiving.
The big trout had good reason for his dread of the angler's lure. His
experience with the red hackle had given him the wisdom which had
enabled him to live through all the perils of a well-known
trout-stream and grow to his present fame and stature. Behind that red
hackle which hooked him in his youth had been a good rod, a crafty
head, and a skilful wrist. His hour had sounded then and there, but
for a fortunate flaw in the tackle. The leader had parted just at the
drop, and the terrified trout (he had taken the tail fly) had darted
away frantically through the rapids with three feet of fine gut
trailing from his jaw. For several weeks he trailed that hampering
thread, and carried that red hackle in the cartilage of his upper jaw;
and he had time to get very familiar with them. He grew thin and
slab-sided under the fret of it before he succeeded, by much nosing in
gravel and sand, in wearing away the cartilage and rubbing his jaw
clear of the encumbrance. From that day forward he had scrutinized all
unfamiliar baits or lures to see if they carried any threadlike
attachment.
When any individual of the wild kindreds, furred, feathered, or
finned, achieves the distinction of baffling man's efforts to undo
him, his doom may be considered sealed. There is no beast, bird, or
fish so crafty or so powerful but some one man can worst him, and will
take the trouble to do it if the game seems to be worth while. Some
lure would doubtless have been found, some scheme devised for the
hiding of the line, whereby the big trout's cunning would have been
made foolishness. Some swimming frog, some terrified, hurrying mouse,
or some great night-moth flopping down upon the dim water of a
moonless night, would have lulled his suspicions and concealed the
inescapable barb; and the master of the pool would have gone to swell
the record of an ingenious conqueror. He would have been stuffed, and
mounted, and hung upon the walls of the club-house, down at the mouth
of the Clearwater. But it pleased the secret and inscrutable deities
of the woods that the end of the lordly trout should come in another
fashion.
It is an unusual thing, an unfortunate and pitiful thing, when death
comes to the wild kindred by the long-drawn, tragic way of
overripeness. When the powers begin to fail, the powers which enabled
them to conquer, or to flee from, or to outwit their innumerable
foes,--then life becomes a miserable thing for them. But that is not
for long. Fate meets them in the forest trails or the flowing
water-paths; and they have grown too dull to see, too heavy to flee,
too indifferent to contend. So they are spared the anguish of slow,
uncomprehending decrepitude.
But to the master of Golden Pool Fate came while he was yet master
unchallenged, and balked the hopes of many crafty fishermen. It came
in a manner not unworthy of the great trout's dignity and fame, giving
him over to swell no adversary's triumph, betraying him to no
contemptible foe.
One crisp autumn morning, when leaves were falling all over the
surface of the pool, and insects were few, and a fresh tang in the
water was making him active and hungry, the big trout was swimming
hither and thither about his domain instead of lying lazily in his
deep lair. He chanced to be over in the shallows near the grassy
shore, when he saw, at the upper end of the pool, a long, dark body
slip noiselessly into the water. It was not unlike the mink in form,
but several times larger. It swam with a swift movement of its
forefeet, while its hind legs, stretched out behind with the tail,
twisted powerfully, like a big sculling oar. Its method, indeed,
combined the advantages of that of the quadruped and that of the fish.
The trout saw at once that here was a foe to be dreaded, and he lay
quite still against a stone, trusting to escape the bright eyes of the
stranger.
But the stranger, as it happened, was hunting, and the stranger was an
otter. The big trout was just such quarry as he sought, and his bright
eyes, peering restlessly on every side, left no corner of the pool
uninvestigated. They caught sight of the master's silver and vermilion
sides, his softly waving, gay-coloured fins.
With a dart like that of the swiftest of fish, the stranger shot
across the pool. The trout darted madly toward his lair. The otter was
close upon him, missing him by a fin's breadth. Frantic now with
terror, the trout shot up-stream toward the broken water. But the
otter, driven not only by his forefeet but by that great combined
propeller of his hind legs and tail, working like a screw, swam
faster. Just at the edge of the broken water he overtook his prey. A
set of long, white teeth went through the trout's backbone. There was
one convulsive twist, and the gay-coloured fins lay still, the silver
and vermilion body hung limp from the captor's jaws.