spectacle, instead of the very bridge of life, that was forming before
his eyes. Little by little the structure welded itself, the masses of
drift surging against the barrier, piling up and diving under, till it
was compacted and knit to the very bottom,--and the roar of the falls
dwindled with the diminishing of the stream. This was the moment for
which the man was waiting. Now, if ever, the jam was solid, and might
hold so until he gained the farther shore. But beyond this moment
every second of delay only served to gather the forces that were
straining to break the obstruction. He knew that in a very few minutes
the rising weight of the flood must either sweep all before it, or
flow roaring over the top of the jam in a new cataract that would
sweep the island bare. He sprang to his feet, grasped his stick, and
scanned the tumbled, precarious surface, choosing his path. Then he
turned and looked at the bear, wondering if that animal's woodcraft
were subtler than his own to distinguish when the jam was secure. He
found that the bear was eyeing him anxiously, and not looking at the
ice at all; so he chuckled, told himself that if he didn't know more
than a bear he'd no business in the woods, and stepped resolutely
forth upon the treacherous pack. Before he had gone ten paces the bear
jumped up with a whimper, and followed hastily, plainly conceding that
the man knew more than he.
In the strange, sudden quiet, the shrunken falls clamouring thinly and
the broken ice swishing against the upper side of the jam, the man
picked his way across the slippery, chaotic surface of the dam,
expecting every moment that it would crumble with a roar from under
his feet. About ten or a dozen yards behind him came the bear,
stepping hurriedly, and trembling as he looked down at the diminished
cataract. The miracle of the vanishing falls daunted his spirit most
effectively, and he seemed to think that the whole mysterious
phenomenon was of the man's creating. When the two reached shore, the
flood was already boiling far up the bank. Without so much as a thank
you, the bear scurried past his rescuer, and made off through the
timber like a scared cat. The man looked after him with a slow smile,
then turned and scanned the perilous path he had just traversed. As he
did so, the jam seemed to melt away in mid-channel. Then a terrific,
rending roar tortured the air. The mass of logs and ice, and all the
incalculable weight of imprisoned waters hurled themselves together
over the brink with a stupefying crash, and throbbing volumes of spray
leapt skyward. The woodsman's lean face never changed a muscle; but
presently, giving a hitch to his breeches under the belt, he muttered
thoughtfully:
"Blame good thing we come away when we did!"
Then, turning on his larriganed heels, he strode up the trail till the
great woods closed about him, and the raving thunders gradually died
into quiet.
[Illustration: "IT WOULD HAVE SEEMED LIKE NO MORE THAN A DARKER,
SWIFTLY-MOVING SHADOW IN THE DARK WATER."]
The Keeper of the Water-Gate
Some distance below the ice, through the clear, dark water of the
quiet-running stream, a dim form went swimming swiftly. It was a
sturdy, broad-headed, thick-furred form, a little more than a foot in
length, with a naked, flattened tail almost as long as the body. It
held its small, handlike forepaws tucked up under its chin, and swam
with quick strokes of its strong hind legs and eel-like wrigglings of
the muscular tail. It would have seemed like no more than a darker,
swiftly-moving shadow in the dark water, save for a curious burden of
air-bubbles which went with it. Its close under-fur, which the water
could not penetrate, was thickly sprinkled with longer hairs, which
the water seemed, as it were, to plaster down; and under these long
hairs the air was caught in little silvery bubbles, which made the
swimmer conspicuous even under two inches of clear ice and eighteen
inches of running water.
As he went, the swimmer slanted downward and aimed for a round hole at
the bottom of the bank. This hole was the water-gate of his winter
citadel; and he, the keeper of it, was the biggest and pluckiest
muskrat on the whole slow-winding length of Bitter Creek.
At this point Bitter Creek was about four feet deep and ten or twelve
feet wide, with low, bushy shores subject to overflow at the slightest
freshet. Winter, setting in suddenly with fierce frost, had caught it
while its sluggish waters were still so high from the late autumn
rains that the bushes and border grasses were all awash. Now the young
ice, transparent and elastic, held them in firm fetters. The flat
world of field and wood about Bitter Creek was frozen as hard as iron,
and a biting gale, which carried a thin drift of dry, gritty snow, was
lashing it pitilessly. The branches snapped and creaked under the
cruel assault, and not a bird or beast was so hardy as to show its
head abroad. But in the muskrat's world, there under the safe ice, all
was as tranquil as a May morning. The long green and brown water-weeds
swayed softly in the faint current, with here and there a silvery
young chub or an olive-brown sucker feeding lazily among them. Under
the projecting roots lurked water-snails, and small, black, scurrying
beetles, and big-eyed, horn-jawed larvae which would change next spring
to aerial forms of radiance. And not one of them, muskrat, chub, or
larva, cared one whit for the scourge of winter on the bleak world
above the ice.
The big muskrat swam straight to the mouth of the hole, and plunged
half-way into it. Then he suddenly changed his mind. Backing out
abruptly, he darted up to the surface close under the edge of the
bank. Along the edge of the bank the ice-roof slanted upward, the
water having fallen several inches since the ice had set. This left a
covered air space, about two inches in height, all along the fringes
of the grass roots; and here the muskrat paused, head and shoulders
half out of water, to take breath. He was panting heavily, having come
a long way under water without stopping to empty and refill his
long-suffering little lungs. Two inches over his head, on the other
side of the ice, the thin, hard snow went driving and swirling, and he
could hear the alders straining under the bitter wind. His little,
bead-bright eyes, set deep in his furry face, gleamed with
satisfaction over his comfortable security.
Having fully eased his lungs, the muskrat dived again to the bottom,
and began to gnaw with fierce energy at a snaky mass of the roots of
the yellow material. Having cut off a section about as long as
himself, and more than an inch in thickness, he tugged at it fiercely
to loosen the fibres which held it to the bottom. But this particular
piece was more firmly anchored than he had expected to find it, and
presently, feeling as if his lungs would burst, he was obliged to
ascend to the air-space under the ice for a new breath. There he
puffed and panted for perhaps a minute. But he had no thought of
relinquishing that piece of succulent, crisp, white-hearted lily-root.
As soon as he had rested, he swam down again, and gripping it savagely
tore it loose at the first pull. Holding the prize lengthwise that it
might not obstruct his entrance, he plunged into the hole in the bank,
the round, black water-gate to his winter house.
The house was a most comfortable and strictly utilitarian structure.
The entrance, dug with great and persistent toil from the very bottom
of the bank, for the better discouragement of the muskrat's deadliest
enemy, the mink, ran inward for nearly two feet, and then upward on a
long slant some five or six feet through the natural soil. At this
point the shore was dry land at the average level of the water; and
over this exit, which was dry at the time of the building, the muskrat
had raised his house.
The house was a seemingly careless, roughly rounded heap of
grass-roots, long water-weeds, lily-roots and stems, and mud, with a
few sticks woven into the foundation. The site was cunningly chosen,
so that the roots and stems of a large alder gave it secure anchorage;
and the whole structure, for all its apparent looseness, was so well
compacted as to be secure against the sweep of the spring freshets.
About six feet in diameter at the base, it rose about the same
distance from the foundation, a rude, sedge-thatched dome, of which
something more than three feet now showed itself above the ice.
To the unobservant eye the muskrat house in the alders might have
looked like a mass of drift in which the rank water-grass had taken
root. But within the clumsy pile, about a foot below the centre of the
dome, was a shapely, small, warm chamber, lined with the softest
grasses. From one side of this chamber the burrow slanted down to
another and much larger chamber, the floor of which, at the present
high level of the water, was partly flooded. From this chamber led
downward two burrows,--one, the main passage, by which the muskrat had
entered, opening frankly, as we have seen, in the channel of the
creek, and the other, longer and more devious, terminating in a narrow
and cunningly concealed exit, behind a deeply submerged willow-root.
This passage was little used, and was intended chiefly as a way of
escape in case of an extreme emergency,--such as, for example, the
invasion of a particularly enterprising mink by way of the main
water-gate. The muskrat is no match for the snake-swift, bloodthirsty
mink, except in the one accomplishment of holding his breath under
water. And a mink must be very ravenous, or quite mad with the
blood-lust, to dare the deep water-gate and the long subaqueous
passage to the muskrat's citadel, at seasons of average high water. In
time of drought, however, when the entrance is nearly uncovered and
the water goes but a little way up the dark tunnels, the mink will
often glide in, slaughter the garrison, and occupy the well-built
citadel.
The big muskrat, dragging his lily-root, mounted the narrow, black,
water-filled passage till he reached the first chamber. Here he was
met by his mate, just descending from the upper room. She promptly
appropriated the piece of lily-root, which the big muskrat meekly gave
up. He had fed full before coming, and now had no care except to
clean his draggled fur and make his toilet before mounting to the
little dry top chamber and curling himself up for a nap.
This toilet was as elaborate and painstaking as that of the cleanliest
of cats or squirrels. He was so loose-jointed, so loose-skinned, so
flexibly built in every way, that he could reach every part of his fur
with his teeth and claws at once. He would seem to pull great folds of
skin from his back around under his breast, where he could comb it the
more thoroughly. It was no trouble at all for him to scratch his left
ear with his right hind foot. He went about his task with such zeal
that in a very few minutes his fur was as fluffy and exquisite as that
of a boudoir kitten. Then he rubbed his face, eyes, and ears
vigorously with both forepaws at once in a half-childish fashion,
sitting up on his hind-quarters as he did so. This done, he flicked
his tail sharply two or three times, touched his mate lightly with his
nose, and scurried up to the little sleeping-chamber. Something less
than a foot above his head the winter gale howled, ripped the
snow-flurries, lashed the bushes, sent the snapped twigs hurtling
through the bare branches, turned every naked sod to stone. But to the
sleeping muskrat all the outside sound and fury came but as a murmur
of Jun trees.
His mate, meanwhile, was gobbling the lily-root as if she had not
eaten for a week. Sitting up like a squirrel, and clutching the end of
the root with both little forepaws, she crushed the white esculent
into her mouth and gnawed at it ravenously with the keen chisels of
her teeth. The root was as long as herself, and its weight perhaps a
sixth of her own. Yet when it was all eaten she wanted more. There
were other pieces stored in the chamber; and indeed the whole house
itself was in great part edible, being built largely of such roots and
grasses as the muskrat loves to feed on. But such stores were for
emergency use. She could forage for herself at present. Diving down
the main passage she presently issued from the water-gate, and
immediately rose to the clear-roofed air-space. Here she nibbled
tentatively at some stems and withered leafage. These proving little
to her taste, she suddenly remembered a clam-bed not far off, and
instantly set out for it. She swam briskly down-stream along the
air-space, her eyes and nose just out of the water, the ice gleaming
silvery above her head.
She had travelled in this position perhaps fifty yards when she saw,
some twelve or fifteen feet ahead of her, a lithe, dark, slender
figure with a sharp-nosed, triangular head, squeeze itself over a
projecting root which almost touched the ice. The stranger was no
larger than herself,--but she knew it was not for her to try
conclusions with even the smallest of minks. Catching a good lungful
of air, she dived on the instant, down, down, to the very bed of the
creek, and out to mid-channel.
The mink, eagerly desirous of a meal of muskrat-meat, dived also,
heading outward to interrupt the fugitive. He swam as well as the
muskrat,--perhaps faster, indeed, with a darting, eel-like, deadly
swiftness. But the stream at this point had widened to a breadth of
twelve or fifteen yards,--and this was the little muskrat's salvation.
The mink was afraid to follow her to such a distance from the
air-space. He knew that by the time he overtook her, and fixed his
teeth in her throat, he would be fairly winded; and then, with no
breathing-hole at hand, he would die terribly, bumping up against the
clear ice and staring madly through at the free air for which his
lungs were agonizing. His fierce heart failed him, and he turned back
to the air-space under the bank. But the sight of the muskrat had
whetted his appetite, and when he came to the muskrat house in the
alders, he swam down and thrust his head inside the water-gate. He
even, indeed, went half-way in; but soon instinct, or experience, or
remembered instruction, told him that the distance to the air-chamber
was too great for him. He had no more fancy to be drowned in the
muskrat's winding black tunnel, than under the clear daylight of the
ice; so he turned away, and with red, angry eyes resumed his journey
up-stream.
The little muskrat, seeing that her enemy was disheartened, went on
cheerfully to the clam-bed. Here she clawed up from the oozy bottom
and devoured almost enough clams to make a meal for a full-grown man.
But she took longer over her meal than the man would, thereby saving
herself from an otherwise imminent indigestion. Each bivalve, as she
got it, she would carry up to the air-space among the stones,
selecting a tussock of grass on which she could rest half out of the
water. And every time, before devouring her prize, she would
carefully, though somewhat impatiently, cleanse her face of the mud
and dead leafage which seemed to be an inseparable concomitant of her
digging. When she had eaten as many clams as she could stuff into her
little body, she hastened back to join her mate in the safe nest over
the water-gate.
In the upper world the winter was a severe one, but of all its
bitterness the muskrats knew nothing, save by the growing thickness of
the ice that sheltered them. As Bitter Creek shrank to normal, winter
level, and the strong ice sank in mid-channel, the air-space along
shore increased till they had a spacious, covered corridor in which to
disport themselves. Food was all about them--an unlimited abundance of
lily-roots and clams; and once in awhile their diet was varied by the
capture of a half-torpid sucker or chub. There were no otters in
Bitter Creek; and the mink, which had investigated their water-gate so
hungrily, got caught in a trap at an open spring up-stream, where he
was accustomed to fish for eels. So the muskrats had no dangerous
enemies to mar their peace.
The spring thaws came suddenly, while the ice was yet strong, and the
flood went wide over the low banks of Bitter Creek. But the little
house among the alders withstood them sturdily. The water rose till it
filled the lower chamber. Inch by inch it crept up the last passage,
till it glistened dimly just an inch below the threshold. But it never
actually touched that threshold; and the little grass-lined retreat
stayed warm and dry. Then the ice went out, under the sun and showers
of late April, and the waters sank away as rapidly as they had risen;
and the muskrats, wild with the intoxication of spring, rolled,
played, and swam gaily hither and thither on the surface of the open
creek. They made long excursions up and down-stream for the sheer
delight of wandering, and found fresh interest in every clam-flat,
lily cove, or sprouting bed of sweet-flag. Their appetites they had
always with them; and though it was fun to chase each other, or to
roll and wallow luxuriously on the cool surface of the water when the
sun shone warm, there was nothing quite so worth while, day in and day
out, as eating. Other muskrats now appeared, the wander-spirit seizing
them all at once; and the males had many fierce fights, which left
their naked tails scarred and bleeding. But the big muskrat, from the
house in the alders, was denied the joy of battle, because none of his
rivals were so hardy as to confront him.
About this pleasant season, in the upper chamber over the water-gate,
was born a family of nine very small and very naked young muskrats.
Their big father was amiably indifferent to them, and spent most of
his time, when at home, in the lower chamber, which was now dry and
clean enough for his luxurious tastes. Their small mother, however,
was assiduous in her care; and in an exceedingly short time the
youngsters, very sleek and dark in their first fur, were investigating
the wonderful, great world beyond their water-gate. They had
prodigious appetites, and they grew prodigiously. One, on their very
first outing, got snapped up by a greedy black duck. The attention of
the little mother was just then occupied, and, never having learned to
count up to nine, she, apparently, never realized her loss; but she
was destined to avenge it, a week or two later, by eating two
new-hatched ducklings of that same black duck's brood. Another of the
little muskrats encountered fate on the threshold of his existence,
being snatched by the hungry jaws of a large pickerel, which darted
upon him like lightning from under the covert of a lily-pad. But in
this case, vengeance was instant and direct. The big muskrat chanced
to be near by. He caught the pickerel, while the latter was
preoccupied with his meal, bit clean through the back of his neck, and
then and there devoured nearly half of him. In the engrossing task of
cleaning his fur after this feast, and making his toilet, which he did
with minute nicety on a stranded log by the shore, he promptly forgot
the loss to his little family, the wrong which he had so
satisfactorily and appropriately avenged. As for the remaining seven,
they proceeded to grow up as rapidly as possible, and soon ceased to
stand in any danger of pickerel or mallard.
Though fairly omnivorous in his tastes, the big muskrat, like all his
tribe, was so content with his lilies, flag-root, and clams, that he
was not generally regarded as a foe by the birds and other small
people of the wilderness. He was too well fed to be a keen hunter.
Having learned (and taught his fellows) to avoid muskrat-traps, the
big muskrat enjoyed his lazy summer life on Bitter Creek with a
care-free spirit that is permitted to few, indeed, of the furtive
kindred of the wild. There was no mink, as we have seen, to beware of;
and as for hawks, he ignored them as none of the other small wild
creatures--squirrels, hares, or even the fierce and fearless
weasel--could afford to do. The hawks knew certain inconvenient
capacities of his kind. When, therefore, that sudden alarm would ring
clamorous over the still, brown woods, that shrill outcry of the
crows, jays, and king-birds, which sends every weak thing trembling to
cover, the big muskrat would sit up, untroubled, on his log, and go on
munching his flag-root with as fine an unconcern as if he had been
a bear or a bull moose.
[Illustration: "WITH A SCREAM OF PAIN AND FEAR, THE BIRD DROPPED
HIM."]
But one day, one late, rose-amber afternoon, when the gnats were
dancing over the glassy creek, he was startled out of this confidence.
He was standing in shallow water, digging out an obstinate, but
tempting root, when there arose a sudden great outcry from all the
birds. It meant "A hawk!--A hawk!--A hawk!--A hawk!" He understood it
perfectly; but he never lifted his head from his task. Next moment
there was a mighty rush of wind in his ears; a thunderbolt seemed to
strike him, frightful claws gripped him, piercing his back, and he was
swept into the air. But it was a young hawk, unversed in the way of
the muskrat, which had seized him. What those steely claws really
clutched was little more than a roll of loose skin. Hurt, but not
daunted, the muskrat twisted his head up and back, and sank his long,
punishing incisors into the enemy's thigh. He did not hang on, in
bulldog fashion, but cut, cut, cut, deep through the bird's hard
feather armour, and into the cringing red strata of veins and muscles.
With a scream of pain and fear, the bird dropped him, and he fell into
the water. At first, he dived deep, fearing a second attack, and came
up under a tangle of grasses, from which he could peer forth unseen.
Then, perceiving that the hawk had vanished, he, by and by, came out
of the grass, and paddled to his favourite log. He was bleeding
profusely, and his toilet that evening was long and painful. But in a
few days he was as well as ever, with an added confidence.
About this time, however, a small, inquisitive, and particularly
bloodthirsty mink came down from the upper waters of the creek, where
game had grown scarce under the ravages of her insatiable and
implacable family. One of her special weaknesses was for muskrat-meat,
and many a muskrat house she had invaded so successfully that the
long, smothering, black, drowned galleries had no more terrors for
her.
She came to the house in the alders. She noted its size, and realized
that here, indeed, was good hunting. She swam down to the water-gate
at the bottom of the channel, poked her nose in, and returned to the
surface for a full supply of air. Then, with great speed, she dived
again, and disappeared within the blackness of the water-gate.
It chanced that the big muskrat was just descending. From the inner
darkness he saw the enemy clearly, before her savage, little, peering
eyes could discover him. He knew all the deadliness of the peril. He
could easily have escaped, turning back and fleeing by the other
passage while the foe went on to her bloody work in the chambers.
There was no time to warn the rest.
But flight was far from the big muskrat's mind in that crucial moment.
Not panic, but a fierce hate blazed in his usually good-natured eyes.
With a swift, strenuous kick of his powerful hind legs, he shot
downward upon the enemy, and grappled with her in the narrow tunnel.
The mink had seen him just before he fell upon her, and quicker than
thought itself had darted up her snake-like jaws to gain the fatal
throat-hold. But long success had made her over-confident. No muskrat
had ever, within her experience, even tried to fight her. This present
impetuous attack she mistook for a frantic effort to crowd past her
and escape. Half careless, therefore, she missed the fatal hold, and
caught only a mouthful of yielding skin. Before she could try
again--borne down and hampered as she was by the muskrat's weight--a
set of long, tenacious teeth, crunching and cutting, met in the side
of her face, just at the root of the jaw.