at the approach of dawn, the captive was once more wrapped up
securely and taken on a blind journey. When he was uncovered, and
anxiously stretched out his head, he found himself again on the edge
of that shallow pool in the marshes where fate had overtaken him. The
brown retriever was sitting on his haunches close by, regarding him
amicably. The man was fastening one end of the tether to a stake at
the water's edge, and from the east a grayness touched with chill pink
was spreading over the sky.
A moment later the surprised bird found himself standing among the wet
sedge, close to the water. With a nervous glance at the dog, whom he
shrank from with more dread than from the man, he launched himself
into the water and swam straight out from shore.
This time, surely, he was free. Next to the spacious solitudes of the
air, this was his proper element. How exquisite to the thin webs of
his feet felt the coolness of it, as he pushed against it with strong
strokes! How it curled away luxuriously from his gray, firm-feathered
breast! This was to live again, after the pain and humiliation of his
captivity! And yonder, far down the mere, and past those tall reeds
standing shadowy in the pallor, surely he would find the flock which
had moved on without him! Then, all at once, it was as if something
had clutched him by the leg. With a startled cry and a splash he
tipped forward, and his glad journey came to an end. He had reached
the limit of his tether.
Remembering his experience of the day before, he made no vain
struggle, but floated quietly for a minute or two, stricken with his
disappointment. The man and the big brown dog had disappeared; but
presently his keen and sagacious eyes detected them both, lying
motionless in a thicket of reeds. Having stared at them indignantly
for a few moments, swimming slowly to and fro and transfixing them
with first one eye and then the other, he ducked his head and began
biting savagely at the leathern wrapping on his leg. But the
uselessness of this soon appearing to him, he gave it up, and sought
to ease his despair by diving and guttering with his bill among the
roots of the oozy bottom. In this absorbing occupation he so far
forgot his miseries that all at once he tried to lift himself on the
water, flap his wings, and sound his trumpet-call. One wing did give a
frantic flap. The other surged fiercely against its bandages, sending
a throb of anguish through his frame, and the trumpet-call broke in a
single hoarse _honk_. After this he floated for a long time in
dejection, while the level rays of sunrise stole mysteriously across
the pale marshes.
The hunter, tired of his long stillness in the sedge, was just about
to stand up and stretch himself, when from far down the sky to
southward came a hollow and confused clamour. The hunter heard it, and
the brown retriever heard it; and both crouched low behind their
shelter, as motionless as stones. The wild captive, floating at the
end of his tether out on the pink-and-gold mirror of the pond, also
heard it, and stretched his fine black head aloft, rigid with
expectancy. Nearer and nearer came the thrilling voices. Blacker and
larger against the sky grew the journeying V as it approached the
marshes. The heart of the captive swelled with hope and longing. Not
his own flock, indeed, but his own kin, these free and tireless
voyagers coming confidently to safe feeding-grounds! Forgetting
everything but his great loneliness, he raised himself as high as he
could upon the water, one wing partly outspread, and called, and
called again, summoning the travellers to alight.
Hearing this kindly summons, the flock dipped at once and came
slanting steeply toward earth. In their haste they broke rank,
descending more abruptly than usual, their customary caution quite
laid aside when they saw one of their own kind waiting to receive
them. The joyous captive ducked and bowed his head in greeting. In
another moment the whole flock would have settled clamorously about
him, and he would have been happy,--but before that moment came there
came instead two bursts of flame and thunder from the covert of sedge.
And instead of the descending flock, there fell beside the captive two
heavy, fluttering gray-and-black shapes, which beat the water feebly
and then lay still.
As the betrayed and panic-stricken flock flapped away in confusion the
captive tugged frantically at his tether, crying shrilly and
struggling to follow them. In his desperation he paid no heed whatever
as the big, brown dog dashed out and triumphantly dragged the bodies
of the two victims to land. He was horrified by the terrible noise,
and the killing; but his attention was chiefly engrossed by the fact
that the flock had been frightened away, leaving him to his
loneliness. For several minutes he continued his cries, till the flock
was far out of sight. Then silence fell again on the marshes.
A quarter of an hour later much the same thing happened again. Another
flock, passing overhead, came clamouring fearlessly down in response
to the captive's calls, met the doom that blazed from the reed-covert,
and left two of its members gasping on the surface of the pond. This
time, however, the despair of the captive was less loud and less
prolonged. As leader, for two seasons, of his own flock, he had
necessarily learned certain simple processes of deduction. These
pitiful tragedies through which he had just passed were quite
sufficient to convince him that this particular shallow pond, though
so good a feeding-ground, was a fatal place for the voyaging geese to
visit. Further, in a dim way, his shocked and shuddering brain began
to realize that his own calling was the cause of the horrors. If he
called, the flocks came fearlessly, content with his pledge that all
was well. Upon their coming, the fire, and dreadful thunders, and
inexplicable death burst forth from the sedge; and then the great
brown dog appeared to drag his prey to shore. The whole mischief, as
it seemed to him, was the work of the dog; and it did not occur to him
that the man, who seemed fairly well-disposed and all-powerful, had
anything whatever to do with it. This idea gradually grew clear in
the captive's brain, as he swam, very slowly, to and fro upon the
brightening water. In a vague way his heart determined that he would
lure no more of his kindred to their doom. And when, a little later, a
third flock came trumpeting up the sky, the captive eyed their
approach in despairing silence.
As the beating wings drew near, stooping toward the silvery pools and
pale green levels, the captive swam back and forward in wild
excitement, aching to give the call and ease his loneliness. The
flock, perceiving him, drew nearer; but in his excited movements and
his silence its leader discerned a peril. There was something sinister
and incomprehensible in this splendidly marked bird who refused to
summon them to his feeding-ground, and kept swimming wildly back and
forth. Keeping well beyond gunshot, they circled around this smiling
but too mysterious water, to alight with great clamour and splashing
in a little, sheltered mere some two or three hundred yards farther
inland. The hunter, crouching moveless and expectant in his ambush,
muttered an exclamation of surprise, and wondered if it could be
possible that his incomparable decoy had reached an understanding of
the treacherous game and refused to play it.
"There's no smarter bird that flies than a wild gander!" he mused,
watching the great bird curiously and with a certain sympathy. "We'll
see what happens when another flock comes by!"
Meanwhile the new arrivals, over in the unseen pond behind the rushes,
were feeding and bathing with a happy clamour. They little dreamed
that a pot-hunting rustic from the village on the hills, flat on his
belly in the oozy grass, was noiselessly worming his way toward them.
Armed with an old, single-barrel duck gun, the height of his ambition
was to get a safe and easy shot at the feeding birds. No delicate
wing-shooting for him. What he wanted was the most he could get for
his powder and lead. Big and clumsy though he was, his progress
through the grass was as stealthy as that of a mink.
[Illustration: "HE LIFTED UP HIS VOICE IN A SUDDEN ABRUPT 'HONK,
HONK!'"]
It chanced that the path of the pot-hunter took him close past the
further shore of the pond where the captive was straining at his
tether and eating his heart out in determined silence. The homesick,
desolate bird would swim around and around for a few minutes, as a
caged panther circles his bounds, then stop and listen longingly to
the happy noise from over beyond the reed-fringes. At last, goaded
into a moment of forgetfulness by the urge of his desire, he lifted up
his voice in a sudden abrupt _honk, honk_!
The pot-hunter stopped his crawling and peered delightedly through the
sedgy stems. Here was a prize ready to his hand. The flock was still
far off, and might easily take alarm before he could get within range.
But this stray bird, a beauty too, was so near that he could not miss.
Stealthily he brought his heavy weapon to the shoulder; and slowly,
carefully, he took aim.
The report of the big duck gun was like thunder, and roused the
marshes. In a fury the hunter sprang from his ambush across the mere,
and ran down to the water's edge, threatening vengeance on the lout
who would fire on a decoy. The brown retriever, wild with excitement,
dashed barking up and down the shore, not knowing just what he ought
to do. Sandpipers went whistling in every direction. And the foraging
flock, startled from their security, screamed wildly and flapped off
unhurt to remoter regions of the marsh. But the lonely captive, the
wise old gander who had piloted his clan through so many hundred
leagues of trackless air, lay limp and mangled on the stained water,
torn by the heavy charge of the duck gun. The whimsical fate that
seems to play with the destinies of the wild kindreds had chosen to
let him save one flock from the slaughterer, and expiate his blameless
treason.
The Laugh in the Dark
Though the darkness under the great trees was impenetrable, it gave an
impression of transparency which invited the eyes to strain and peer,
as if vision might be expected to reward an adequate effort. It was
that liquid darkness which means not mist, but the utter absence of
light on a clear air; and it was filled with elusive yet almost
illuminating forest scents. To the keen nostrils of the man who was
silently mounting the trail, it seemed as if these wild aromas almost
enabled him to veritably see the trees which towered all about him, so
clearly did they differentiate to him their several species as he
passed,--the hemlock, in particular, and the birch, the black poplar,
and the aromatic balsam-fir. But his eyes, though trained to the open,
could in truth detect nothing whatever, except now and then a darting
gleam which might come from a wet leaf, or from the gaze of a watching
wood-mouse, or merely from the stirrings of the blood within his own
brain.
The man was on his way up from the lake, by an old trail long ago
familiar to his feet, to make camp for the night in a deserted lumber
shanty about a quarter of a mile back from the water. Over the dimly
glimmering, windless water, under a cloudless sky, he had groped his
way in his canoe to the old landing. Turning the canoe over his
supplies for protection in case of rain, he had set out for the lumber
shanty with only a blanket and a couple of hardtack. His rifle he had
indifferently left in the canoe, but in his right hand he carried a
paddle, to steady his steps and help him feel his way through the
dark.
Once the grayness of the open shore had faded behind him, the man
found himself walking stealthily, like the stealthiest of the wild
kindred themselves. The trail being well-worn, though long deserted by
man, his feet kept it without difficulty; but he held the paddle out
before him lest he should stumble over a windfall. Presently he took
note of the fact that the trail was marvellously smooth for one that
had been so long deserted, and with a little creeping of the skin,
which was not in any sense fear but rather an acknowledgment of
mystery, he realized that it was other than human feet which were
keeping the lonely path in use. What kind were they, he wondered,--the
great, noiseless pads of bear, or lynx, or panther, the hard hoofs of
moose or deer, or the airy, swift feet of hare and mink and marten? As
he wondered, moving more and more furtively as the spirit of the
unseen wild pervaded and possessed him, his nostrils discerned across
the savours of the trees and the mould a sudden musky scent; and he
knew that one of the frequenters of the trail was a red fox, who had
just gone by.
Impressed by a sense that he was not so utterly alone as he had
imagined himself to be, the man now obeyed one of the wary impulses of
the wood-folk. He stepped aside from the trail, feeling his way, and
leaned his back against a huge birch-tree. The ragged, ancient,
sweet-smelling bark felt familiar and friendly to his touch. Here he
stood, sniffing the still air with discrimination, testing with
initiated ears every faint forest breathing. The infinitesimal and
incessant stir of growth and change and readjustment was vaguely
audible to his fine sense, making a rhythmic background against which
the slightest unusual sound, even to the squeak of a wood-mouse, or
the falling of a worm-bitten leaf, would have fairly startled the
dark. Once he heard a twig snap, far in the depths on the other side
of the trail, and he knew that some one of the wild kindred had moved
carelessly. But on the trail nothing went by.
Had there been ever so small a glimmer of light, to enable his eyes to
play their part in this forest game, the man could have watched for an
hour as moveless as the tree on which he leaned. But in that strange,
absolute dark the strain soon grew almost intolerable. The game
certainly ceased to be amusing after an uneventful fifteen minutes had
passed. He was just about to give up, to step forth into the trail and
resume his journey to the cabin, when he caught a strange sound, which
made him stiffen back at once into watchful rigidity.
The sound was a great breath. In its suddenness and its vagueness the
listener was unable to distinguish whether it came from a dozen yards
down the trail, or a couple of dozen inches from his elbow. His nose,
however, assured him that he had not the latter alternative to face;
so he waited, his right hand upon the knife in his belt. He could hear
his heart beating.
For several minutes nothing more was heard. Then through the high
leafage overhead splashed a few big drops of rain, with the hushing
sound of a shower not heavy enough to break through. The next moment a
flash of white lightning lit up the forest aisles,--and in that moment
the man saw a huge black bear standing in the trail, not ten feet
distant. In that moment the eyes of the man and the eyes of the beast
met each other fairly. Then the blackness fell once more; and a thin
peal of midsummer thunder rolled over the unseen tree-tops.
When all was silence again the man felt uncomfortable, and regretted
the rifle which he had left under the canoe. That the bear would
attack him, unprovoked, he knew to be improbable; but he also knew
enough about bears to know that it is never well to argue too
confidently as to what they will do. The more he waited and listened,
the more he felt sure that the bear was also waiting and listening, in
an uncertainty not much unlike his own. He decided that it was for him
to take the initiative. Clapping his hands smartly, he threw back his
head, and burst into a peal of laughter.
The loud, incongruous sound shocked the silences. It almost horrified
the man himself, so unexpected, so unnatural, so inexplicable did it
seem even to his own ears. When it ceased, he knew that it had
accomplished its purpose. He heard rustling and snapping noises
swiftly diminishing in the distance, and knew that the bear was
retreating in a panic. At this he laughed again, not loudly, but to
himself, and stepped out into the trail.
But the man was not yet done with the effects of his loud challenge to
the solemnities of the dark. Hardly had he taken three steps along the
trail when a little in front of him--perhaps, as he guessed, some five
and twenty paces--there arose a slashing and crashing noise of
struggle. Branches cracked and rustled and snapped, heavy feet pounded
the earth, and a confusion of gasping grunts suggested a blind
menagerie in mortal combat. The man, fairly startled, groped his way
back to the tree, and waited behind it, knife in hand. In fact he had
a strong inclination to climb into the branches; but this impulse he
angrily restrained.
For a whole minute the daunting uproar continued, neither approaching
nor receding, and at length the man's curiosity, ever insatiable where
the mysteries of the wild were concerned, got the better of his
prudence. He lit a match and peered from behind his shelter. The
little, sudden blaze spread a sharp light, but whatever was making the
uproar went on as before, quite heedless of the singular phenomenon.
When the match died out it left the man no wiser. Then with hurried
hands he stripped some birch bark, and rolled himself a serviceable
torch. When this blazed up with its smoky flame, he held it well off
to one side and a little behind him, and made his way warily to the
scene of the disturbance.
A turn in the trail, and the mystery stood revealed. With a cry of
indignation the man darted forward, no longer cautious. What he saw
before him was a great, gaunt moose-cow reared upon her hind legs,
caught under the jaws by a villainous moose-snare. With her head high
among the branches, she lurched and kicked in a brave struggle for
life, while every effort but drew tighter the murdering noose. A few
feet away stood her lanky calf, trembling, and staring stupidly at the
light.
The man lost not a moment. Dropping his bundle and paddle, but
carefully guarding the torch, he climbed the tree above the victim,
lay out on a branch, reached down, and dexterously severed the noose
with his knife. What matter if, with his haste and her struggles, he
at the same time cut a slash in the beast's stout hide? The
blood-letting was a sorely needed medicine to her choked veins. She
fell in a heap, and for a minute or two lay gasping loudly. Then she
staggered to her feet, and stood swaying, while she nosed the calf
with her long muzzle to assure herself that it had not been hurt in
the cataclysm which had overtaken her.
The man watched her until his torch was almost gone, then climbed down
the tree (which was not a birch) to get himself another. Noticing him
now for the first time, the moose pulled herself together with a
mighty effort, and thrust the calf behind her. Could this be the enemy
who had so nearly vanquished her? For a moment the man thought she was
going to charge upon him, and he held himself in readiness to go up
the tree again. But the poor shaken beast thought better of it. Pain,
rage, fear, amazement, doubt,--all these the man fancied he could see
in her staring, bloodshot eyes. He stood quite still, pitying her, and
cursing the brutal poachers who had set the snare. Then, just before
the torch gave its last flicker, the great animal turned and led her
calf off through the woods, looking back nervously as she went.
When the light was out, and silence had come again upon the forest,
the man resumed his journey. He travelled noisily, whistling and
stamping as he went, as a warning to all wild creatures that a man
was in their woods, and that they must give room to a master. He
carried with him now, besides his blanket and his paddle, a generous
roll of birch bark, with which to illuminate the lumber shanty before
going in. It had occurred to him that possibly some lynx or wildcat
might have taken up its dwelling therein; and if so, he was no longer
in the mood to meet it at close quarters in the dark.
The Kings of the Intervale
Far out over the pale, smooth surface of the river a crow flew,
flapping heavily. From time to time he uttered an angry and frightened
squawk. Over, under, and all around him, now darting at his eyes, now
dropping upon him like a little, arrow-pointed thunderbolt, now
slapping a derisive wing across his formidable beak, flashed a small,
dark bird whose silvery white belly now and then caught the sun.
The crow's accustomed alert self-possession was quite shattered. He
had forgotten his own powers of attack. He seemed to fear for his
eyes,--and among all the wild kindred there is no fear more horrifying
than that. When he ducked, and swerved, and tried to dodge, he did it
awkwardly, as if his presence of mind was all gone.
His assailant, less than a third of his weight, was a king-bird, whose
nest, in the crotch of an elm on the intervale meadow, the crow had
been so ill-advised as to investigate. The crow was comparatively
inexperienced, or he would have known enough to keep away from the
nests of the king-birds. But there it was, in plain sight; and he
loved eggs or tender nestlings. Before he had had time to find out
which it was that the nest contained, both the parent birds had fallen
upon him with a swift ferocity which speedily took away his appetite
for food or fight. Their beaks were sturdy and burning sharp. Their
short, powerful wings gave them a flight so swift and darting that,
for all his superior strength, he felt himself at their mercy. His one
thought was to save his eyes and escape.
Both birds chased him till he was well out over the river. Then the
female returned to her nest, leaving her mate to complete the
intruder's chastisement. Had the crow been an old and cunning bird, he
would have sought the extreme heights of air, where the king-bird is
disinclined to follow; but lacking this crow-wisdom, he kept on at the
level of the tallest tree-tops, and was forced to take his punishment.
He was, in reality, more sore and terrified than actually injured.
That darting, threatening beak of his pursuer never actually struck
his eyes. But for this, it is probable, he had only the indulgence of
the king-bird to thank. When at last the chastiser, tired of his task,
turned and flew back up the river toward the nest in the elm-crotch,
the ruffled crow took refuge out of sight, in the top of the densest
hemlock, where he rolled his eyes and preened his plumage silently for
an hour before daring again the vicissitudes of the wilderness world.
The nest to which the triumphant king-bird hurried back was
audaciously perched in plain view of every prowler. The crotch of the
elm-tree which it occupied was about twelve feet from the ground. The
intervale, or water-meadow, by the side of the river, held but a few
widely scattered trees,--trees of open growth, such as elm,
balsam-poplar, and water-ash. It was free from all underbrush. There
was nothing, therefore, to shield the nest from even the most careless
eyes; and with an insolence of fearlessness matched only by that of
the osprey, it was made the more conspicuous by having great tufts of
white wool from a neighbouring sheep-pasture woven into its bulky,
irregular frame. So irregular and haphazard, indeed, did it appear,
that it might almost have been mistaken for a bunch of rubbish left in
the tree from the time of freshet. But if the two king-birds relied on
this resemblance as a concealment, they presumed as so clever a bird
is not likely to do upon the blindness or stupidity of the wild
kindred. The wild kindred are seldom blind, and very seldom stupid,
because those members of the fellowship who are possessed of such
defects sooner or later go to feed their fellows. Hence it was that
most of the folk of the riverside, furred or feathered, knew well
enough what the big whitish-gray bunch of rubbish in the elm-crotch
was.