his keen, dark eyes flashed a glance on each of his enemies in turn.
Both dogs were now rushing upon him. The ever-imminent doom of the
wild kindred was about to lay hold of him. He half-turned, as if to
die fighting, then changed his mind, darted to the feet of the young
schoolmaster, ran up his trouser-leg, and confidently took refuge
under his coat.
"Shake him off! Shake him off! A 'coon's bite is pizen!" shouted the
farmer, in great excitement.
"Not much!" said the young schoolmaster, with decision, gathering his
coat snugly around his panting guest. "This 'coon hunt's over. This
little chap's coming home to live with me!"
The farmer stared, and then laughed good-naturedly.
"Jest as you say," said he. "Recken ye've 'arned the right to have a
say in the matter. But ye'll find 'coons is mighty mischeevous 'round
a house. Fetch the karkisses, Jake. Reckon we've done pretty well for
one night's huntin', an' there ain't goin' to be no more 'coons
messin' in the corn _this_ summer!"
In a few minutes the procession was again plodding, Indian file,
through the still, dew-fragrant, midnight woods. The little raccoon,
its heart now beating quietly, nestled in secure contentment under
the young schoolmaster's arm, untroubled even by the solemn and
deep-toned menace of a horned-owl's cry from the spiky top of a dead
hemlock near at hand. From the lake behind the hill came the long
laughter of a loon, the wildest and saddest of all the wilderness
voices. And a lonely silence settled down about the old sycamore on
the hill, solitary under the white, high-sailing moon.
Horns and Antlers
The young red and white bull was very angry. He stood by the pasture
bars grumbling, and blowing through his nostrils, and shaking his
short, straight horns, and glaring fiercely after the man, who was
driving three cows down the hill to the farmyard in the shadowy
valley. Every evening for weeks the man had come about sunset and
taken away the cows in that fashion, rudely suppressing the young
bull's efforts to accompany his herd, and leaving him to the sole
companionship of two silly and calf-like yearlings whom he scorned to
notice. For the past few evenings the bull had been trying to work
himself up to the point of fairly joining issue with the man, and
having it out with him. But there was something in the man's cool
assurance, in his steady, compelling eye, in the abrupt authority of
his voice, which made the angry animal hesitate to defy him. Certainly
the bull could see that the man was very much smaller than he,--a
pigmy, indeed, in comparison; but he felt that within that erect and
fragile-looking shape there dwelt an unknown force which no
four-footed beast could ever hope to withstand. Every evening, after
the man and cows had gone half-way down the hillside, the bull would
fall to bellowing and pawing the ground, and rolling his defiance
across the quiet valley. But when next the man came face to face with
him, and spoke to him, he would assume, in spite of himself, an
attitude of lofty and reluctant deference.
The high hill pasture, with its decaying stumps, its rounded hillocks,
its patches of withering fern and harsh dwarf juniper, was bathed in
all the colours of the autumn sunset, while the farmyard down in the
valley was already in the first purple of the twilight. The centre of
the pasture was the hilltop, roughly rounded, and naked save for one
maple-tree, now ablaze with scarlet and amber. Along the line of hills
across the dusk valley the last of the sunset laid a band of clear
orange, which faded softly through lemon and pink and violet and
tender green to the high, cold gray-blue of the dome above the hill,
where one crow was beating his way toward the tree-tops on the farther
ridge. The tranquillity of the scene was curiously at variance with
the loud vapourings of the bull, as he raged up and down behind the
bars, watched tremblingly by the pair of awestruck yearlings.
Over on the other side of the hill, behind the red maple, where the
hillocks and fern patches lay already in a cool, violet-brown shadow,
stood a high-antlered red buck, listening to the bull's ravings. He
had just come out of the woods and up to the snake fence of split
rails which bounded the pasture. With some curiosity, not unmixed with
scorn, he had sniffed at the fence, a phenomenon with which he was
unfamiliar. But the voice of the bull had promptly absorbed his
attention. There was something in the voice that irritated him,--which
seemed, though in a language he did not know, to convey a taunt and a
challenge. His fine, slim head went high. He snorted several times,
stamped his delicate hoofs, then bounded lightly over the fence and
trotted up the slope toward the shining maple.
For most of the greater members of the wild kindred,--and for the
tribes of the deer and moose, in particular,--the month of October is
the month of love and war. Under those tender and enchanting skies,
amid the dying crimsons and purples and yellows and russets, and in
the wistfulness of the falling leaf, duels are fought to the death in
the forest aisles and high hill glades. When a sting and a tang
strike across the dreamy air, and the frosts nip crisply, then the
blood runs hot in the veins and mating-time stirs up both love and
hate. The red buck, as it happened, had been something of a laggard in
awakening to the season's summons. His antlers, this year, had been
late to mature and overlong in the velvet. When he entered the field,
therefore, he found that other bucks had been ahead of him, and that
there were no more does wandering forlorn. He had "belled" in vain for
several days, searched in vain the limits of his wonted range, and at
last set out in quest of some little herd whose leader his superior
strength might beat down and supplant. Of his own prowess, his power
to supplant all rivals, he had no doubt. But hitherto he had found
none to answer his challenge, and his humour was testy. He had no idea
what sort of an animal it was that was making such objectionable
noises on the other side of the hill; but whatever it might be, he did
not like it. He knew it was not a bear. He knew it was not a
bull-moose. And of nothing else that walked the forest did he stand in
deference, when the courage of rutting-time was upon him.
Stepping daintily, the red buck reached the top of the hill and saw
the bull below him. A formidable antagonist, surely! The buck stopped
where he was. He had now less inclination to pick a quarrel; but he
was consumed with curiosity. What could the heavy red and white beast
be up to, with his grunting and bellowing, his pawings of the sod, and
his rampings to and fro? The buck could see no object for such
defiance, no purpose to such rage. It was plain to him, however, that
those two odd-looking, rather attractive little animals, who stood
aside and watched the bull's rantings, were in no way the cause or
object, as the bull completely ignored them. Growing more and more
inquisitive as he gazed, the buck took a few steps down the slope, and
again paused to investigate.
At this point the bull caught sight of the intruder, and wheeled
sharply. His half-artificial rage against the man was promptly
forgotten. Who was this daring trespasser, advancing undismayed into
the very heart of his domain? He stared for a moment or two in
silence, lashing his tail wrathfully. Then, with a rumbling bellow
deep in his throat, he lowered his head and charged.
This was a demonstration which the red buck could very well
understand, but his ill-humour had been swallowed up in curiosity,
and he was not now so ready to fight. In fact, it was with large
apprehension that he saw that dangerous bulk charging upon him, and
his great, liquid eyes opened wide. He stood his ground, however, till
the bull was almost upon him, and then bounded lightly aside.
The bull, infuriated at this easy evasion, almost threw himself in his
effort to stop and turn quickly; and in a few seconds he charged
again. This time the charge was down-hill, which doubled its speed and
resistlessness. But again the buck sprang aside, and the bull
thundered on for a score of yards, ploughing up the turf in the fierce
effort to stop himself.
And now the big, wondering eyes of the buck changed. A glitter came
into them. It had angered him to be so hustled. And moreover, the
ponderous clumsiness of the bull filled him with contempt. When the
bull charged him for the third time, he stamped his narrow, sharp
hoofs in defiance, and stood with antlers down. At the last moment he
jumped aside no farther than was absolutely necessary, and plowed a
red furrow in the bull's flank as he plunged by.
[Illustration: "THIS TIME THE CHARGE WAS DOWN-HILL."]
Beside himself with rage, the bull changed his tactics, trying
short, close rushes and side lunges with his horns. But the buck,
thoroughly aroused, and elated with the joy of battle, was always just
beyond his reach, and always punishing him. Before the fight had
lasted ten minutes, his flanks and neck were streaming with blood.
With his matchless agility, the buck more than once sprang right over
his enemy's back. It was impossible for the bull to catch him.
Sometimes, instead of ripping with the antlers, he would rear straight
up, and slash the bull mercilessly with his knifelike hoofs. For a
time, the bull doggedly maintained the unequal struggle; but at
length, feeling himself grow tired, and realizing that his foe was as
elusive as a shadow, he lost heart and tried to withdraw. But the
buck's blood was up, and he would have no withdrawing. He followed
relentlessly, bounding and goring and slashing, till the helpless bull
was seized with panic, and ran bellowing along the fence, looking
vainly for an exit.
For perhaps a hundred yards the conquering buck pursued, now half in
malice, half in sport, but always punishing, punishing. Then, suddenly
growing tired of it, he stopped, and went daintily mincing his steps
back to where the two yearlings stood huddled in awe. They shrank,
staring wildly, as he approached, but for some reason did not run
away. Sniffing at them curiously, and not finding their scent to his
taste, he lifted his slim muzzle, and "belled" sonorously several
times, pausing between the calls to listen for an answer from the
forest. Then, receiving no reply, he seemed to remember his
interrupted quest, and moved off over the hill through the fading
light.
In the Deep of the Grass
Misty gray green, washed with tints of the palest violet, spotted with
red clover-blooms, white oxeyes, and hot orange Canada lilies, the
deep-grassed levels basked under the July sun. A drowsy hum of bees
and flies seemed to distil, with warm aromatic scents, from the
sun-steeped blooms and grass-tops. The broad, blooming, tranquil
expanse, shimmering and softly radiant in the heat, seemed the very
epitome of summer. Now and again a small cloud-shadow sailed across
it. Now and again a little wind, swooping down upon it gently, bent
the grass-tops all one way, and spread a sudden silvery pallor. Save
for the droning bees and flies there seemed to be but one live
creature astir between the grass and the blue. A solitary marsh-hawk,
far over by the rail fence, was winnowing slowly, slowly hither and
thither, lazily hunting.
All this was in the world above the grass-tops. But below the
grass-tops was a very different world,--a dense, tangled world of dim
green shade, shot with piercing shafts of sun, and populous with
small, furtive life. Here, among the brown and white roots, the
crowded green stems and the mottled stalks, the little earth kindreds
went busily about their affairs and their desires, giving scant
thought to the aerial world above them. All that made life significant
to them was here in the warm, green gloom; and when anything chanced
to part the grass to its depths they would scurry away in unanimous
indignation.
On a small stone, over which the green closed so thickly that, when he
chanced to look upward, he caught but the scantiest shreds of sky, sat
a half-grown field-mouse, washing his whiskers with his dainty claws.
His tiny, bead-like eyes kept ceaseless watch, peering through the
shadowy tangle for whatever might come near in the shape of foe or
prey. Presently two or three stems above his head were beaten down,
and a big green grasshopper, alighting clumsily from one of his blind
leaps, fell sprawling on the stone. Before he could struggle to his
long legs and climb back to the safer region of the grass-tops, the
little mouse was upon him. Sharp, white teeth pierced his green mail,
his legs kicked convulsively twice or thrice, and the faint
iridescence faded out of his big, blank, foolish eyes. The mouse made
his meal with relish, daintily discarding the dry legs and wing-cases.
Then, amid the green debris scattered upon the stone, he sat up, and
once more went through his fastidious toilet.
But life for the little mouse in his grass-world was not quite all
watching and hunting. When his toilet was complete, and he had amiably
let a large black cricket crawl by unmolested, he suddenly began to
whirl round and round on the stone, chasing his own tail. As he was
amusing himself with this foolish play, another mouse, about the same
size as himself, and probably of the same litter, jumped upon the
stone, and knocked him off. He promptly retorted in kind; and for
several minutes, as if the game were a well-understood one, the two
kept it up, squeaking soft merriment, and apparently forgetful of all
peril. The grass-tops above this play rocked and rustled in a way that
would certainly have attracted attention had there been any eyes to
see. But the marsh-hawk was still hunting lazily at the other side of
the field, and no tragedy followed the childishness.
Both seemed to tire of the sport at the same instant; for suddenly
they stopped, and hurried away through the grass on opposite sides of
the stone, as if remembered business had just called to them. Whatever
the business was, the first mouse seemed to forget it very speedily,
for in half a minute he was back upon the stone again, combing his
fine whiskers and scratching his ears. This done to his satisfaction,
he dropped like a flash from his seat, and disappeared into a small
hollow beneath it. As he did so, a hairy black spider darted out, and
ran away among the roots.
A minute or two after the disappearance of the mouse, a creature came
along which appeared gigantic in the diminutive world of the grass
folk. It was nearly three feet long, and of the thickness of a man's
finger. Of a steely gray black, striped and reticulated in a
mysterious pattern with a clear whitish yellow, it was an ominous
shape indeed, as it glided smoothly and swiftly, in graceful curves,
through the close green tangle. The cool shadows and thin lights
touched it flickeringly as it went, and never a grass-top stirred to
mark its sinister approach. Without a sound of warning it came
straight up to the stone, and darted its narrow, cruel head into the
hole.
There was a sharp squeak, and instantly the narrow head came out
again, ejected by the force of the mouse's agonized spring. But the
snake's teeth were fastened in the little animal's neck. The doom of
the green world had come upon him while he slept.
But doomed though he was, the mouse was game. He knew there was no
poison in those fangs that gripped him, and he struggled desperately
to break free. His powerful hind legs kicked the ground with a force
which the snake, hampered at first by the fact of its length being
partly trailed out through the tangle, was unable to quite control.
With unerring instinct,--though this was the first snake he had ever
encountered,--the mouse strove to reach its enemy's back and sever the
bone with the fine chisels of his teeth. But it was just this that the
snake was watchful to prevent. Three times in his convulsive leaps the
mouse succeeded in touching the snake's body,--but with his feet only,
never once with those destructive little teeth. The snake held him
inexorably, with a steady, elastic pressure which yielded just so far,
and never quite far enough. And in a minute or two the mouse's brave
struggles grew more feeble.
All this, however,--the lashing and the wriggling and the
jumping,--had not gone on without much disturbance to the grass-tops.
Timothy head and clover-bloom, oxeye and feathery plume-grass, they
had bowed and swayed and shivered till the commotion, very conspicuous
to one looking down upon the tranquil, flowery sea of green, caught
the attention of the marsh-hawk, which at that moment chanced to be
perching on a high fence stake. The lean-headed, fierce-eyed,
trim-feathered bird shot from his perch, and sailed on long wings over
the grass to see what was happening. As the swift shadow hovered over
the grass-tops, the snake looked up. Well he understood the
significance of that sudden shade. Jerking back his fangs with
difficulty from the mouse's neck, he started to glide off under the
thickest matting of the roots. But lightning quick though he was, he
was not quite quick enough. Just as his narrow head darted under the
roots, the hawk, with wings held straight up, and talons reaching
down, dropped upon him, and clutched the middle of his back in a grip
of steel. The next moment he was jerked into the air, writhing and
coiling, and striking in vain frenzy at his captor's mail of hard
feathers. The hawk flew off with him over the sea of green to the top
of the fence stake, there to devour him at leisure. The mouse, sore
wounded but not past recovery, dragged himself back to the hollow
under the stone. And over the stone the grass-tops, once more still,
hummed with flies, and breathed warm perfumes in the distilling
heat.
When the Moon Is over the Corn
In the mystical transparency of the moonlight the leafy world seemed
all afloat. The solid ground, the trees, the rail fences, the serried
ranks of silver-washed corn seemed to have lost all substantial
foundation. Everything lay swimming, as it were, upon a dream. The
light that poured down from the round, gold-white, high-sailing moon
was not ordinary moonlight, but that liquid enchantment which the
sorceress of the heavens sheds at times, and notably at the ripe of
the summer, lest earth should forget the incomprehensibility of
beauty. A little to one side, beyond the corn-field and over a billowy
mass of silvered leafage, stood the gray, clustered roofs of a
backwoods farmstead.
In the top of a tall, slim poplar, leaning out from the edge of the
woods and over the fence that marked the bounds of the wilderness,
clung a queer-looking, roundish object, gently swaying in the magic
light. It might almost have been mistaken for a huge, bristly
bird's-nest, but for the squeaky grunts of satisfaction which it kept
emitting at intervals. Whether it was that the magic of the moonlight
had got into its blood, driving it to strange pastimes, or that it was
merely indulging an established taste for the game of "Rock-a-bye-baby,"
observation made it plain that the porcupine was amusing itself by
swinging in the tree-top. Any other of the woods folk would have chosen
for their recreation a less conspicuous spot than this poplar-top thrust
out over the open field. But the porcupine feared nobody, and was quite
untroubled by bashfulness. He cared not a jot who heard, saw, or derided
him. It was a pleasant world; and for all that had ever been shown him
to the contrary, it belonged to him.
After a time he got tired of swinging and squeaking. He straightened
himself out, slowly descended the tree, and set off along the top of
the fence toward the farmyard. Never before had it occurred to him to
visit the farmyard; but now that the moon had put the madness into his
head, he acted upon the whim without a moment's misgiving. Unlike the
rest of the wild kindreds, he stood little in awe of either the works
or the ways of man.
[Illustration: "SET OFF ALONG THE TOP OF THE FENCE."]
Presently the fence turned off at a sharp angle to the way he had
chosen to go. He descended, and crawled in leisurely fashion along an
unused, grassy lane, wandering from side to side as he went, as if
time were of no concern to him. About a hundred feet from the fence he
came to a brook crossing the lane. Spring freshets had carried away
the little bridge, doubtless years before, and now the stream was
spanned by nothing but an old tree-trunk, carelessly thrown across.
Upon the end of this,--for him an ample bridge,--the porcupine
crawled, never troubling himself to inquire if another passenger might
chance to be crossing from the other side.
At the very same moment, indeed, another passenger raised furtive,
padded paws, and took possession of the opposite end of the bridge. It
was a huge bob-cat, with stubby tail and wide, pale green, unwinking
eyes. It had come stealing down from the thick woods to visit the
farmyard,--driven, perhaps, by the same moon-madness that stirred the
porcupine. But at the edge of the silent farmyard, white and tranquil
under the flooding radiance, the man-smell on the bars had brought the
bob-cat to a sudden halt. No moon-madness could make the cautious cat
forget the menace of that smell. It had turned in its tracks, and
concluded to look for woodchucks in the corn-field.
When the bob-cat had taken a few paces along the log, it paused and
glared at the porcupine vindictively, its eyes seeming to emit faint,
whitish flames. The porcupine, on the other hand, came right on,
slowly and indifferently, as if unaware of the bob-cat's presence. The
latter crouched down, flattened back its ears, dug long, punishing
claws into the bark, opened its sharp-toothed jaws, and gave a savage
spitting snarl. Was it possible that this insignificant, blundering,
sluggish creature, this pig of the tree-tops, was going to demand the
right of way? The porcupine, unhurried, continued to advance, nothing
but an increased elevation of his quills betraying that he was aware
of an opponent. The cat's absurd stub of a tail twitched
spasmodically, and for a few seconds it seemed as if rage might get
the better of discretion. But all the wild creatures know the
qualities of that fine armory of quills carried by the porcupine. The
big cat pulled himself together with a screech, ran back, and sprang
off to a rock on the bank, whence he spat impotently while the
porcupine crawled by.
So leisurely was the progress of the bristling little adventurer that
it was a good half-hour ere he reached the farmyard bars. Here he
stopped, and sniffed curiously. But it was no dread of the dreaded
man-smell that delayed him. The bars had been handled by many hot,
toiling hands; and the salt of their sweat had left upon the wood a
taste which the porcupine found pleasant. Here and there, up and down,
he gnawed at the discoloured surfaces. Then, when the relish was
exhausted, he climbed down on the inside, and marched deliberately up
the middle of the yard toward the kitchen door. His quills made a dry,
rustling noise as he went; his claws rattled on the chips, and in the
unshadowed open he was most audaciously in evidence. His bearing was
not defiant, but self-reliant, as of one who minded his own business
and demanded to be let alone. From the stables across the yard came
the stamping of horses' hoofs; a turkey in the tree behind the
barn _quit-quitted_ warningly; and a long-drawn, high-pitched
_kwee-ee-ee-ee-ee_ of inquiry came from the wakeful Leghorn cock in
the poultry-house. To all these unfamiliar sounds the porcupine turned
the deaf ear of self-contained indifference.
At this moment around from the front door-step came the farmer's big
black and white dog, to see what was exciting his family. He was a
wise dog, and versed in the lore of the wilderness. Had the intruder
been a bear he would have sought to attract its attention, and raised
an outcry to summon his master to the fray. But a porcupine! He was
too wary to attack it, and too dignified to make any fuss over it.
With a scornful _woof_, he turned away, and strolled into the garden,
to dig up an old bone which he had buried in the cucumber-bed.