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HOOF AND CLAW
[Illustration: Logo]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO
DALLAS . ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
[Illustration: "He saw Jeff with one lynx down, slashing at its throat."
_Frontispiece_]
HOOF AND CLAW
BY
CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
AUTHOR OF "KINGS IN EXILE," "NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN,"
"THE FEET OF THE FURTIVE," ETC.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1917
_All rights reserved_
Copyright, 1913, by The Illustrated Sunday Magazine and by The Cosmopolitan
Magazine.
Copyright, 1914, by The Pictorial Review Company, by The Illustrated Sunday
Magazine, by The National Sunday Magazine, by the Cosmopolitan Magazine,
and by John Adams Thayer Corporation.
COPYRIGHT, 1914
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1914
Reprinted April, 1917.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE BEAR THAT THOUGHT HE WAS A DOG 1
THE TRAIL OF THE VANISHING HERDS 26
A MASTER OF SUPPLY 49
THE WHITE WOLF 66
UP A TREE 90
THE EYES IN THE BUSH 108
THE RUNNERS OF THE HIGH PEAKS 123
THE POOL 145
THE SHADOWS AND JOHN HATCH 160
THE FISHER IN THE CHUTES 186
THE ASSAULT OF WINGS 200
THE CABIN DOOR 223
A BASKET OF FISH 243
BRANNIGAN'S MARY 259
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"He Saw Jeff with One Lynx down, Slashing at Its Throat" _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
"For a Day He Wandered Disconsolately over and about the Ruins" 14
"The Shambles of the Plain" 46
"He Found the Wolverine Head Downward in His Choicest Cellar" 62
"The Gaunt, Tirelessly Patrolling Shape of His White Sentinel" 78
"His Pronged Antlers Ripped it Wide Open" 100
"And the Fiery Light in His Brain Went Out" 116
"He Took No Pains to Choose an Easy Path" 128
The Bear that thought he was a Dog
The gaunt, black mother lifted her head from nuzzling happily at the
velvet fur of her little one. The cub was but twenty-four hours old, and
engrossed every emotion of her savage heart; but her ear had caught the
sound of heavy footsteps coming up the mountain. They were confident,
fearless footsteps, taking no care whatever to disguise themselves, so
she knew at once that they were the steps of the only creature that
presumed to go so noisily through the great silences. Her heart pounded
with anxious suspicion. She gave the cub a reassuring lick, deftly set
it aside with her great paws, and thrust her head forth cautiously from
the door of the den.
She saw a man--a woodsman in brownish-grey homespuns and heavy
leg-boots, and with a gun over his shoulder--slouching up along the
faintly marked trail which led close past her doorway. Her own great
tracks on the trail had been obliterated that morning by a soft and
thawing fall of belated spring snow--"the robin snow," as it is called
in New Brunswick--and the man, absorbed in picking his way by this
unfamiliar route over the mountain, had no suspicion that he was in
danger of trespassing. But the bear, with that tiny black form at the
bottom of the den filling her whole horizon, could not conceive that the
man's approach had any other purpose than to rob her of her treasure.
She ran back to the little one, nosed it gently into a corner, and
anxiously pawed some dry leaves half over it. Then, her eyes aflame with
rage and fear, she betook herself once more to the entrance, and
crouched there motionless to await the coming of the enemy.
The man swung up the hill noisily, grunting now and again as his
foothold slipped on the slushy, moss-covered stones. He fetched a huge
breath of satisfaction as he gained a little strip of level ledge,
perhaps a dozen feet in length, with a scrubby spruce bush growing at
the other end of it. Behind the bush he made out what looked as if it
might be the entrance to a little cave. Interested at once, he strode
forward to examine it. At the first stride a towering black form, jaws
agape and claws outstretched, crashed past the fir bush and hurled
itself upon him.
A man brought up in the backwoods learns to think quickly, or, rather,
to think and act in the same instant. Even as the great beast sprang,
the man's gun leaped to its place and he fired. His charge was nothing
more than heavy duck-shot, intended for some low-flying flock of migrant
geese or brant. But at this close range, some seven or eight feet only,
it tore through its target like a heavy mushroom bullet, and with a
stopping force that halted the animal's charge in mid-air like the blow
of a steam hammer. She fell in her tracks, a heap of huddled fur and
grinning teeth:
"Gee," remarked the man, "that was a close call!" He ejected the empty
shell and slipped in a fresh cartridge. Then he examined critically the
warm heap of fur and teeth.
Perceiving that his victim was a mother, and also that her fur was rusty
and ragged after, the winter's sleep, sentiment and the sound
utilitarianism of the backwoods stirred within him in a fine blend.
"Poor old beggar!" he muttered. "She must hev' a baby in yonder hole.
That accounts fer her kind of hasty ways. 'Most a pity I had to shoot
her jest now, when she's out o' season an' her pelt not worth the job of
strippin' it!"
Entering the half darkness of the cave, he quickly discovered the cub in
its ineffectual hiding-place. Young as it was, when he picked it up, it
whimpered with terror and struck out with its baby paws, recognizing the
smell of an enemy. The man grinned indulgently at this display of
spirit.
"Gee, but ye're chock-full o' ginger!" said he. And then, being of an
understanding heart and an experimental turn of mind, he laid the cub
down and returned to the body of the mother. With his knife he cut off
several big handfuls of the shaggy fur and stuffed it into his pockets.
Then he rubbed his hands, his sleeves, and the breast of his coat on the
warm body.
"There, now," said he, returning to the cave and once more picking up
the little one, "I've made ye an orphant, to be sure, but I'm goin' to
soothe yer feelin's all I kin. Ye must make believe as how I'm yer mammy
till I kin find ye a better one."
Pillowed in the crook of his captor's arm, and with his nose snuggled
into a bunch of his mother's fur, the cub ceased to wonder at a problem
too hard for him, and dozed off into an uneasy sleep. And the man,
pleased with his new plaything, went gently that he might not disturb
the slumber.
Now, it chanced that at Jabe Smith's farm, on the other side of the
mountain, there had just been a humble tragedy. Jabe Smith's dog, a
long-haired brown retriever, had been bereaved of her new-born puppies.
Six of them she had borne, but five had been straightway taken from her
and drowned; for Jabe, though compassionate of heart, had wisely decided
that compassion would be too costly at the price of having his little
clearing quite overrun with dogs. For two days, in her box in a corner
of the dusky stable, the brown mother had wistfully poured out her
tenderness upon the one remaining puppy; and then, when she had run
into the house for a moment to snatch a bite of breakfast, one of
Smith's big red oxen had strolled into the stable and blundered a great
splay hoof into the box. That had happened in the morning; and all day
the brown mother had moped, whimpering and whining, about the stable,
casting long distraught glances at the box in the corner, which she was
unwilling either to approach or to quite forsake.
When her master returned, and came and looked in hesitatingly at the
stable door, the brown mother saw the small furry shape in the crook of
his arm. Her heart yearned to it at once. She fawned upon the man
coaxingly, lifted herself with her forepaws upon his coat, and reached
up till she could lick the sleeping cub. Somewhat puzzled, Jabe Smith
went and looked into the box. Then he understood.
"If you want the cub, Jinny, he's your'n all right. An' it saves me a
heap o' bother."
II
Driven by his hunger, and reassured by the smell of the handful of fur
which the woodsman left with him, the cub promptly accepted his
adoption. She seemed very small, this new mother, and she had a
disquieting odor; but the supreme thing, in the cub's eyes, was the fact
she had something that assuaged his appetite. The flavor, to be sure,
was something new, and novelty is a poor recommendation to babes of
whatever kindred; but all the cub really asked of milk was that it
should be warm and abundant. And soon, being assiduously licked and
fondled, and nursed till his little belly was round as a melon, he
forgot the cave on the mountainside and accepted Jabe Smith's barn as a
quite normal abode for small bears.
Jinny was natively a good mother. Had her own pups been left to her, she
would have lavished every care and tenderness upon them during the
allotted span of weeks, and then, with inexorable decision, she would
have weaned and put them away for their souls' good. But somewhere in
her sturdy doggish make-up there was a touch of temperament, of
something almost approaching imagination, to which this strange
foster-child of hers appealed as no ordinary puppy could ever have
done. She loved the cub with a certain extravagance, and gave herself up
to it utterly. Even her beloved master fell into a secondary place, and
his household, of which she had hitherto held herself the guardian, now
seemed to her to exist merely for the benefit of this black prodigy
which she imagined herself to have produced. The little one's astounding
growth--for the cubs of the bear are born very small, and so must lose
no time in making up arrears of stature--was an affair for which she
took all credit to herself; and she never thought of weaning him till he
himself decided the matter by preferring the solid dainties of the
kitchen. When she could no longer nurse him, however, she remained his
devoted comrade, playmate, satellite; and the cub, who was a roguish but
amiable soul, repaid her devotion by imitating her in all ways possible.
The bear being by nature a very silent animal, her noisy barking seemed
always to stir his curiosity and admiration; but his attempts to imitate
it resulted in nothing more than an occasional grunting _woof_. This
throaty syllable, his only utterance besides the whimper which signalled
the frequent demands of his appetite, came to be accepted as his name;
and he speedily learned to respond to it.
Jabe Smith, as has been already pointed out, was a man of sympathetic
discernment. In the course of no long time his discernment told him that
Woof was growing up under the delusion that he was a dog. It was perhaps
a convenience, in some ways, that he should not know he was a bear--he
might be the more secure from troublesome ancestral suggestions. But as
he appeared to claim all the privileges of his foster-mother, Jabe
Smith's foreseeing eye considered the time, not far distant, when the
sturdy and demonstrative little animal would grow to a giant of six or
seven hundred pounds in weight, and still, no doubt, continue to think
he was a dog. Jabe Smith began to discourage the demonstrativeness of
Jinny, trusting her example would have the desired effect upon the cub.
In particular, he set himself to remove from her mind any lingering
notion that she would do for a lap-dog. He did not want any such notion
as that to get itself established in Woof's young brain. Also, he broke
poor Jinny at once of her affectionate habit of springing up and
planting her forepaws upon his breast. That seemed to him a
demonstration of ardor which, if practiced by a seven-hundred-pound
bear, might be a little overwhelming.
Jabe Smith had no children to complicate the situation. His family
consisted merely of Mrs. Smith, a small but varying number of cats and
kittens, Jinny, and Woof. Upon Mrs. Smith and the cats Woof's delusion
came to have such effect that they, too, regarded him as a dog. The cats
scratched him when he was little, and with equal confidence they
scratched him when he was big. Mrs. Smith, as long as she was in a good
humor, allowed him the freedom of the house, coddled him with kitchen
tit-bits, and laughed when his affectionate but awkward bulk got in the
way of her outbursts of mopping or her paroxysms of sweeping. But when
storm was in the air, she regarded him no more than a black poodle. At
the heels of the more nimble Jinny, he would be chased in ignominy from
the kitchen door, with Mrs. Jabe's angry broom thwacking at the spot
where Nature had forgotten to give him a tail. At such time Jabe Smith
was usually to be seen smoking contemplatively on the woodpile, and
regarding the abashed fugitives with sympathy.
This matter of a tail was one of the obstacles which Woof had to
encounter in playing the part of a dog. He was indefatigable in his
efforts to wag his tail. Finding no tail to wag, he did the best he
could with his whole massive hindquarters, to the discomfiture of all
that got in the way. Yet, for all his clumsiness, his good-will was so
unchanging that none of the farmyard kindreds had any dread of him,
saving only the pig in his sty. The pig, being an incurable sceptic by
nature, and, moreover, possessed of a keen and discriminating nose,
persisted in believing him to be a bear and a lover of pork, and would
squeal nervously at the sight of him. The rest of the farmyard folk
accepted him at his own illusion, and appeared to regard him as a
gigantic species of dog. And so, with nothing to mar his content but the
occasional paroxysms of Mrs. Jabe's broom, Woof led the sheltered life
and was glad to be a dog.
III
It was not until the autumn of his third year that Woof began to
experience any discontent. Then, without knowing why, it seemed to him
that there was something lacking in Jabe Smith's farmyard--even in Jabe
Smith himself and in Jinny, his foster-mother. The smell of the deep
woods beyond the pasture fields drew him strangely. He grew restless.
Something called to him; something stirred in his blood and would not
let him be still. And one morning, when Jabe Smith came out in the first
pink and amber of daybreak to fodder the horses, he found that Woof had
disappeared. He was sorry, but he was not surprised. He tried to explain
to the dejected Jinny that they would probably have the truant back
again before long. But he was no adept in the language of dogs, and
Jinny, failing for once to understand, remained disconsolate.
Once clear of the outermost stump pastures and burnt lands, Woof pushed
on feverishly. The urge that drove him forward directed him toward the
half-barren, rounded shoulders of old Sugar Loaf, where the
blue-berries at this season were ripe and bursting with juice. Here in
the gold-green, windy open, belly-deep in the low, blue-jeweled bushes,
Woof feasted greedily; but he felt it was not berries that he had come
for.
When, however, he came upon a glossy young she-bear, her fine black
muzzle bedaubed with berry juice, his eyes were opened to the object of
his quest. Perhaps he thought she, too, was a dog; but, if so, she was
in his eyes a dog of incomparable charm, more dear to him, though a new
acquaintance, than even little brown Jinny, his kind mother, had ever
been. The stranger, though at first somewhat puzzled by Woof's violent
efforts to wag a non-existent tail, apparently found her big wooer
sympathetic. For the next few weeks, all through the golden, dreamy
autumn of the New Brunswick woods, the two roamed together; and for the
time Woof forgot the farm, his master, Jinny, and even Mrs. Jabe's
impetuous broom.
But about the time of the first sharp frosts, when the ground was crisp
with the new-fallen leaves, Woof and his mate began to lose interest in
each other. She amiably forgot him and wandered off by herself, intent
on nothing so much as satisfying her appetite, which had increased
amazingly. It was necessary that she should load her ribs with fat to
last her through her long winter's sleep in some cave or hollow tree.
And as for Woof, once more he thought of Jabe Smith and Jinny, and the
kind, familiar farmyard, and the delectable scraps from the kitchen, and
the comforting smell of fried pancakes. What was the chill and lonely
wilderness to him, a dog? He turned from grubbing up an ant stump and
headed straight back for home.
When he got there, he found but a chimney standing naked and blackened
over a tangle of charred ruins. A forest fire, some ten days back, had
swept past that way, cutting a mile-wide swath through the woods and
clean wiping out Jabe Smith's little homestead. It being too late in the
year to begin rebuilding, the woodsman had betaken himself to the
Settlements for the winter, trusting to begin, in the spring, the slow
repair of his fortunes.
[Illustration: "For a day he wandered disconsolately over and about the
ruins."]
Woof could not understand it at all. For a day he wandered
disconsolately over and about the ruins, whining and sniffing, and
filled with a sense of injury at being thus deserted. How glad he would
have been to hear even the squeal of his enemy, the pig, or to feel the
impetuous broom of Mrs. Jabe harassing his haunches! But even such poor
consolation seemed to have passed beyond his ken. On the second day,
being very hungry, he gave up all hope of bacon scraps, and set off to
the woods to forage once more for himself.
As long as the actual winter held off, there was no great difficulty in
this foraging. There were roots to be grubbed up, grubs, worms, and
beetles, already sluggish with the cold, to be found under stones and
logs, and ant-hills to be ravished. There were also the nests of bees
and wasps, pungent but savory. He was an expert in hunting the shy
wood-mice, lying patiently in wait for them beside their holes and
obliterating them, as they came out, with a lightning stroke of his
great paw. But when the hard frosts came, sealing up the moist turf
under a crust of steel, and the snows, burying the mouse-holes under
three or four feet of white fluff, then he was hard put to it for a
living. Every day or two, in his distress, he would revisit the clearing
and wander sorrowfully among the snow-clad ruins, hoping against hope
that his vanished friends would presently return.
It was in one of the earliest of these melancholy visits that Woof first
encountered a male of his own species, and showed how far he was from
any consciousness of kinship. A yearling heifer of Jabe Smith's, which
had escaped from the fire and fled far into the wilderness, chanced to
find her way back. For several weeks she had managed to keep alive on
such dead grass as she could paw down to through the snow, and on such
twigs of birch and poplar as she could manage to chew. Now, a mere
ragged bag of bones, she stood in the snow behind the ruins, her eyes
wild with hunger and despair.
Her piteous mooings caught the ear of a hungry old he-bear which was
hunting in the woods near by. He came at once, hopefully. One stroke of
his armed paw on the unhappy heifer's neck put a period to her pains,
and the savage old prowler fell to his meal.
But, as it chanced, Woof also had heard, from a little further off,
that lowing of the disconsolate heifer. To him it had come as a voice
from the good old days of friendliness and plenty and impetuous brooms,
and he had hastened toward the sound with new hope in his heart. He came
just in time to see, from the edge of the clearing, the victim stricken
down.
One lesson Woof had well learned from his foster-mother, and that was
the obligation resting upon every honest dog to protect his master's
property. The unfortunate heifer was undoubtedly the property of Jabe
Smith. In fact, Woof knew her as a young beast who had often shaken her
budding horns at him. Filled with righteous wrath, he rushed forward and
hurled himself upon the slayer.
The latter was one of those morose old males, who, having forgotten or
outgrown the comfortable custom of hibernation, are doomed to range the
wilderness all winter. His temper, therefore, was raw enough in any
case. At this flagrant interference with his own lawful kill, it flared
to fury. His assailant was bigger than he, better nourished, and far
stronger; but for some minutes he put up a fight which, for swift
ferocity, almost daunted the hitherto unawakened spirit of Woof. A
glancing blow of the stranger's, however, on the side of Woof's
snout--only the remnant of a spent stroke, but enough to produce an
effect on that most sensitive center of a bear's dignity--and there was
a sudden change in the conditions of the duel. Woof, for the first time
in his life, saw red. It was a veritable berserk rage, this virgin
outburst of his. His adversary simply went down like a rag baby before
it, and was mauled to abject submission, in the smother of the snow,
inside of half a minute. Feigning death, which, indeed, was no great
feigning for him at that moment, he succeeded in deceiving the
unsophisticated Woof, who drew back upon his haunches to consider his
triumph. In that second the vanquished one writhed nimbly to his feet
and slipped off apologetically through the snow. And Woof, placated by
his victory, made no attempt to follow. The ignominies of Mrs. Jabe's
broom were wiped out.
When Woof's elation had somewhat subsided, he laid himself down beside
the carcass of the dead heifer. As the wind blew on that day, this
corner of the ruins was a nook of shelter. Moreover, the body of the red
heifer, dead and dilapidated though it was, formed in his mind a link
with the happy past. It was Jabe Smith's property, and he got a certain
comfort from lying beside it and guarding it for his master. As the day
wore on, and his appetite grew more and more insistent, in an
absent-minded way he began to gnaw at the good red meat beside him. At
first, to be sure, this gave him a guilty conscience, and from time to
time he would glance up nervously, as if apprehending the broom. But
soon immunity brought confidence, his conscience ceased to trouble him,
and the comfort derived from the nearness of the red heifer was
increased exceedingly.
As long as the heifer lasted, Woof stuck faithfully to his post as
guardian, and longer, indeed. For nearly two days after the remains had
quite disappeared--save for horns and hoofs and such bones as his jaws
could not crush--he lingered. Then at last, urged by a ruthless hunger,
and sorrowfully convinced that there was nothing more he could do for
Jabe or Jabe for him, he set off again on his wanderings.
About three weeks later, forlorn of heart and exigent of belly, Woof
found himself in a part of the forest where he had never been before.
But some one else had been there; before him was a broad trail, just
such as Jabe Smith and his wood sled used to make. Here were the prints
of horses' hooves. Woof's heart bounded hopefully. He hurried along down
the trail. Then a faint, delectable savor, drawn across the sharp, still
air, met his nostrils. Pork and beans--oh, assuredly! He paused for a
second to sniff the fragrance again, and then lurched onwards at a
rolling gallop. He rounded a turn of the trail, and there before him
stood a logging camp.
To Woof a human habitation stood for friendliness and food and shelter.
He approached, therefore, without hesitation.
There was no sign of life about the place, except for the smoke rising
liberally from the stove-pipe chimney. The door was shut, but Woof knew
that doors frequently opened if one scratched at them and whined
persuasively. He tried it, then stopped to listen for an answer. The
answer came--a heavy, comfortable snore from within the cabin. It was
mid-morning, and the camp cook, having got his work done up, was
sleeping in his bunk the while the dinner was boiling.
Woof scratched and whined again. Then, growing impatient, he reared
himself on his haunches in order to scratch with both paws at once. His
luck favored him, for he happened to scratch on the latch. It lifted,
the door swung open suddenly, and he half fell across the threshold. He
had not intended so abrupt an entrance, and he paused, peering with
diffidence and hope into the homely gloom.
The snoring had stopped suddenly. At the rear of the cabin Woof made out
a large, round, startled face, fringed with scanty red whiskers and a
mop of red hair, staring at him from over the edge of an upper bunk.
Woof had hoped to find Jabe Smith there. But this was a stranger, so he
suppressed his impulse to rush in and wallow delightedly before the
bunk. Instead of that, he came only half-way over the threshold, and
stood there making those violent contortions which he believed to be
wagging his tail.
To a cool observer of even the most limited intelligence it would have
been clear that these contortions were intended to be conciliatory. But
the cook of Conroy's Camp was taken by surprise, and he was not a cool
observer--in fact, he was frightened. A gun was leaning against the wall
below the bunk. A large, hairy hand stole forth, reached down and
clutched the gun.
Woof wagged his haunches more coaxingly than ever, and took another
hopeful step forward. Up went the gun. There was a blue-white spurt, and
the report clashed deafeningly within the narrow quarters.
The cook was a poor shot at any time, and at this moment he was at a
special disadvantage. The bullet went close over the top of Woof's head
and sang waspishly across the clearing. Woof turned and looked over his
shoulder to see what the man had fired at. If anything was hit, he
wanted to go and get it and fetch it for the man, as Jabe and Jinny had
taught him to do. But he could see no result of the shot. He whined
deprecatingly and ventured all the way into the cabin.
The cook felt desperately for another cartridge. There was none to be
found. He remembered that they were all in the chest by the door. He
crouched back in the bunk, making himself as small as possible, and
hoping that a certain hunk of bacon on the bench by the stove might
divert the terrible stranger's attention and give him a chance to make a
bolt for the door.
But Woof had not forgotten either the good example of Jinny or the
discipline of Mrs. Jabe's broom. Far be it from him to help himself
without leave. But he was very hungry. Something must be done to win the
favor of the strangely unresponsive round-faced man in the bunk. Looking
about him anxiously, he espied a pair of greasy cowhide "larrigans"
lying on the floor near the door. Picking one up in his mouth, after the
manner of his retriever foster-mother, he carried it over and laid it
down, as a humble offering, beside the bunk.
Now, the cook, though he had been undeniably frightened, was by no means
a fool. This touching gift of one of his own larrigans opened his eyes
and his heart. Such a bear, he was assured, could harbor no evil
intentions. He sat up in his bunk.
"Hullo!" said he. "What ye doin' here, sonny? What d'ye want o' me,
anyhow?"
The huge black beast wagged his hindquarters frantically and wallowed on
the floor in his fawning delight at the sound of a human voice.
"Seems to think he's a kind of a dawg," muttered the cook thoughtfully.
And then the light of certain remembered rumors broke upon his memory.
"I'll be jiggered," said he, "ef 'tain't that there tame b'ar Jabe
Smith, over to East Fork, used to have afore he was burnt out!"
Climbing confidently from the bunk, he proceeded to pour a generous
portion of molasses over the contents of the scrap pail, because he knew
that bears had a sweet tooth. When the choppers and drivers came
trooping in for dinner, they were somewhat taken aback to find a huge
bear sleeping beside the stove. As the dangerous-looking slumberer
seemed to be in the way--none of the men caring to sit too close to
him--to their amazement the cook smacked the mighty hindquarters with
the flat of his hand, and bundled him unceremoniously into a corner.
"'Pears to think he's some kind of a dawg," explained the cook, "so I
let him come along in for company. He'll fetch yer larrigans an' socks
an' things fer ye. An' it makes the camp a sight homier, havin'
somethin' like a cat or a dawg about."
"Right you are!" agreed the boss. "But what was that noise we heard,
along about an hour back? Did you shoot anything?"
"Oh, that was jest a little misunderstandin', before him an' me got
acquainted," explained the cook, with a trace of embarrassment. "We made
it up all right."
The Trail of the Vanishing Herds
Once again, but sluggishly, as if oppressed by apprehensions which they
could not understand, the humped and lion-fronted herds of the bison
began to gather for the immemorial southward drift. Harassed of late
years by new and terrible enemies, their herds had been so thinned and
scattered that even to the heavy brains of the fiercer old bulls a vague
idea of caution was beginning to penetrate. Hitherto it had been the
wont of the colossal hordes to deal with their adversaries in a very
direct and simple fashion--to charge and thunder down upon them, to roll
over them in an irresistible flood of angry hooves, and trample them out
of existence. Against the ancient enemies this straightforward method of
warfare had been efficacious enough, and the herds had multiplied till
the plains were black with their marching myriads. But against the new
foe--the white man, with his guns and his cunning, his cool courage and
his insatiable greed--it had been a destructive failure. The mightier
their myriads, the more irresistible the invitation to this relentless
slaughterer; and they had melted before him. At last a new instinct had
begun to stir in their crude intelligences, an instinct to scatter, to
shun the old, well-worn trails of migration, to seek pasturage in the
remoter valleys and by small streams where the white man's foot had not
yet trespassed. But as yet it was no more than the suggestion of an
instinct, too feeble and fumbling to sway the obstinate hordes. It had
come to birth too late. Here and there a little troop--perhaps half a
dozen cows under the lordship of some shaggy bull more alert and
supple-witted than his fellows--resisted the summons to assemble, and
slipped off among the wooded glades. But the rest, uneasy, yet
uncomprehending, obeyed the ancestral impulse and gathered till the
northern plains were black with them.
Then the great march began, the fateful southward drift.
The horde of the giant migrants was not a homogeneous mass, as it would
have seemed to one viewing it from a distance and a height. It was made
up of innumerable small herds, from a dozen to thirty or forty bison in
each. Each of these little groups hung together tenaciously, under the
dominance of two or three old bulls, and kept at a certain distance,
narrow but appreciable, from the herds immediately neighboring it. But
all the herds drifted southward together in full accord, now journeying,
now halting, now moving again, as if organized and ordered by some one
central and inflexible control. Rival bulls roared their challenges,
pawed the earth, fought savage duels with their battering fronts and
short, ripping horns, as they went; but always onward they pressed, the
south with its sun-steeped pastures drawing them, the north with its
menace of storm driving them before it. And the sound of their
bellowings and their tramplings rose in a heavy thunder above their
march, till the wide plain seemed to rock with it.
Countless as was their array, however, they seemed dimly conscious, with
a sort of vague, communal, unindividual sort of perception, that their
numbers and their power were as nothing in comparison with the
migrations of preceding autumns. The arrogance of irresistible might had
passed from them. They went sullenly, as if under a cloud of dark
expectation. And the separate herds hung closer to their neighbors than
had hitherto been the custom in the horde, as if seeking reassurance
against an unknown threat.
All around the far-flung outskirts of the host ran, skulking and
dodging, its accustomed, hereditary foes--the little slim, yellow-gray
coyotes and the gaunt timber wolves. The coyotes, dangerous only to the
dying or to very young calves separated from their mothers, were
practically ignored, save for an occasional angry rush on the part of
some nervous cow; and, trusting to their amazing speed, they frequently
ran far in among the herds, in the hope of spotting some sick animal and
keeping it in view till the host should pass on and leave it to its
fate. The great gray timber wolves, however, were honored with more
attention. Powerful enough alone to pull down a yearling calf, they were
always watched with savage and apprehensive eyes by the cows, and forced
to keep their distance. The stragglers, old and young, were their prey,
or sometimes a wounded bull, worsted in battle and driven from his herd,
and weak from loss of blood. In twos and threes they prowled, silent and
grimly watchful, hanging on the flanks of the host or picking their way
in its vast, betrampled, desolated trail.
On the outermost edge of the right or western wing of the bellowing host
went a compact little herd, which hung together with marked obstinacy.
It consisted of a dozen cows with their calves and yearlings, and two
adult bulls, one of which, the younger and less heavily maned, kept
diffidently at the rear and seemed to occupy the busy but subordinate
post of a sort of staff-sergeant. The other was an immense bull, with
splendid leonine front and with a watchful, suspicious look in his eyes
which contrasted sharply with the sullen stare of his fellows. He had
the wisdom learned in many eventful migrations, and he captained his
herd imperiously, being sure, in the main, as to what was best for them.
But of just one thing he seemed somewhat unsure. He appeared irresolute
as to the southward march or else as to the companionship of the host.
By hanging upon the skirts of it, he held himself ready to detach his
little herd from its company and make off among the foothills in case of
need. At the same time, by thus keeping on the outskirts of the host he
secured for his little knot of satellites the freshest and sweetest
pasturage.
However disquieting the brown bull's apprehensions, they were too vague
to let him know what it was he feared. For the accustomed perils of the
march he entertained just so much dread as befitted a sagacious
leader--no more. The skulking coyotes he disdained to notice. They might
skulk or dart about like lean shadows, as near the herd as the jealous
cows would permit, and he would never trouble to shake the polished
scimitars of his horns at them. The great gray wolves he scorned; but,
with perhaps a dim prevision of the day when he should be old and
feeble, and driven out from the herd, he could not ignore them. He
chased them off angrily if they ventured within the range of his
attention. But against an enemy whom he had learned to respect, the
Indian hunters, he kept an untiring watch, and the few white hunters,
who had already so thinned the bison host, he remembered with a fear
which was mingled with vengeful resentment. Nevertheless, even his
well-grounded fear of those human foes was not enough to account for his
almost panicky forebodings. These enemies, as he had known them, struck
always on the flanks of the host; and he had tactics to elude even the
dreadful thunder and spurted lightning of their guns. His fear was of he
knew not what and therefore it ground remorselessly upon his nerves.
For the present, however, there were none of these human enemies near,
and the host rolled on southward, with its bellowings and its
tramplings, unmolested. Neither Indians nor white men approached this
stage of the migration. The autumn days were sunny, beneath a sky bathed
in dream. The autumn nights were crisp with tonic frost, and in the pink
freshness of the dawn a wide-flung mist arose from the countless puffing
nostrils and the frost-rimed, streaming manes. Pasturage was abundant,
the tempers of the great bulls were bold and pugnacious, and nothing
seemed less likely than that any disaster could menace so mighty and
invincible a host. Yet Brown Bull was uneasy. From time to time he would
lift his red-rimmed nostrils, sniff the air in every direction, and scan
the summits of the foothills far on the right, as if the unknown peril
which he apprehended was likely to come from that direction.
As day by day passed on without event, the diffused anxiety of the host
quite died away. But Brown Bull, with his wider sagacity or more
sensitive intuition, seemed to grow only the more apprehensive and the
more vigilant. His temper did not improve under the strain, and his
little troop of followers was herded with a severity which must have
taxed, for the moment, their faith in its beneficence.
The host lived, fought, fed, as it went, halting only for sleep and the
hours of rest. In this inexorable southward drift the right flank passed
one morning over a steep little knoll, the crest of which chanced to be
occupied by Brown Bull and his herd just at the moment when the moving
ranks came to a halt for the forenoon siesta. It was such a post of
vantage as Brown Bull loved. He stood there sniffing with wide, wet
nostrils, and searching the horizon for danger. The search was vain, as
ever; but just behind him, and closer in toward the main body of the
host, he saw something that made his stretched nerves thrill with anger.
An old bull had just been driven out from a neighboring herd, deposed
from his lordship and hideously gored by a younger and stronger rival.
Staggering from his wounds, and overwhelmed with a sudden terror of
isolation, he tried to edge his way into the herd next behind him. He
was ejected mercilessly. From herd to herd he staggered, met always by a
circle of lowered horns and angry eyes, and so went stumbling back to
that lonely doom which, without concern, he had seen meted out to so
many of his fellows, but had never thought of as possible to himself.
This pitiful sight, of course, was nothing to Brown Bull. It hardly even
caught his eye, still less his interest. Had he been capable of
formulating his indifferent thoughts upon the matter, they would have
taken some such form as: "Serve him right for being licked!" But when at
last the wounded outcast was set upon by four big timber wolves and
pulled, bellowing, to his knees, that was another affair. Brown Bull
could not tolerate the sight of the gray wolves triumphing. With a roar
of rage he charged down the knoll. His herd, astonished but obedient,
lowered their massive heads and charged at his heels. The wolves snarled
venomously, forsook their prize, and vanished. Brown Bull led the charge
straight on and over the body of the dying outcast, trampling it into
dreadful shapelessness. Then, halting abruptly, he looked about him in
surprise. The wolves were gone. His rage passed from him. He led his
followers tranquilly back to their place on the knoll, to the
accompaniment of puzzled snortings from the neighbor herds.
The herd fell to feeding at once, as if nothing in the least unusual had
happened. But Brown Bull, after cropping the sweet, tufted grass for a
few minutes, was seized with one of his pangs of apprehension, and
raised his head for a fresh survey of the distance. This time he did not
resume his feeding, but stood for several minutes shifting his feet
uneasily until he had quite satisfied himself that the ponies which he
saw emerging from a cleft in the foothills were not a harmless wild
troop, but carried each a red rider. He had reached the Indian country,
and his place on the flank of the host, as his craft and experience told
him, was no longer a safe one.
For a little, Brown Bull stood irresolute, half inclined to lead his
followers away from the host and slip back into the wooded foothills
whence they had come. Then, either moved by a remembrance of the harsh
winter of the north, or drawn by the pull of the host upon his
gregarious heart, he lost the impulse. Instead of forsaking the host, he
led his herd down the knoll and insinuated it into a gap in the ranks.
Here Brown Bull was undoubtedly a trespasser. But instead of forcing a
combat or, rather, a succession of combats, he contented himself with
holding his straitened ground firmly rather than provocatively. His
towering bulk and savage, resolute bearing made the nearest bulls
unwilling to challenge his intrusion. Little by little the herds yielded
way, half unconsciously, seeking merely their own convenience. Little by
little, also, Brown Bull continued his crafty encroachments, till at
length, after perhaps a couple of hours of maneuvering, he had his
charges some four or five hundred yards in from the exposed flank and
well placed near the front of the march, where the pasturage was still
sweet and untrampled.
The Indians, sweeping up on their mad ponies, rode close to the flank of
the host and chose their victims at leisure. Killing for meat and not
for sport, they selected only young cows in good condition, and were too
sparing of their powder to shoot more than they needed. They clung to
the host for some hours, throwing the outer fringe of it into confusion,
but attracting little attention from the herds beyond their reach. Once
in a while some bull, more fiery than his fellows, would charge with
blind, uncalculating valor upon these nimble assailants, only to be at
once shot down for his hide. But for the most part, none but those herds
actually assailed paid much attention to what was going on. They
instinctively crowded away from the flying horsemen, the flames and
thunder of the guns. But their numbers and the nearness of their
companions seemed to give them a stolid sense of security even when the
swift death was almost upon them. As for Brown Bull, all this was just
what he had expected and made provision against. The assault came
nowhere near his own charges, so he treated it as none of his affair.
The Indians withdrew long before nightfall; but the following day
brought others, and for a week or more there was never a day without
this harassing attack upon one flank or another of the host, or
sometimes upon both flanks at once. Again and again, as the outer ranks
dwindled, Brown Bull found himself nearing the danger zone, and
discreetly on each occasion he worked his herd in a few hundred yards
nearer the center.
Then, for a space of some days, the attacks of the Indians ceased, and
the wolves and coyotes came back to dog the trail of the diminished
host. But Brown Bull was not unduly elated by this respite. He held his
followers to their place near the center of the march, and maintained
his firm and apprehensive vigilance untiringly. The days were now hot
and cloudless, and so dry that the host seemed literally to drink up
every brook or pond it passed, and an irritating dust-cloud overhung
the rear of the trampling hoofs.
But these few days of peace were but prelude to harsher trial. From
somewhere far to the left came now a band of white hunters, who rode
around the host and attacked it on both flanks at once. They killed more
heedlessly and brutally than the Indians, for the sake of the hides
rather than for meat, each man hurriedly marking his own kill and then
dashing on to seek more victims. Each night they camped, and in the cool
of the morning overtook the slow-moving host on their tireless mustangs.
The trail of stripped red carcasses which they left behind them glutted
all the wolves, coyotes, and carrion crows for leagues about, and
affronted the wholesome daylight of the plains. This visitation lasted
for five or six days, and the terror it created spread inwards to the
very heart of the host. Gradually the host quickened its march, leaving
itself little time for feeding and only enough rest for the vitally
essential process of rumination. At last the white marauders, satiated
with slaughter, dropped behind, and immediately the host, now shrunken
by nearly a third, slackened its pace and seemed to forget its
punishment. Phlegmatic and short of memory, the herds were restored to
content by a day of heavy rain, which laid the dust, and freshened their
hides, and instilled new sweetness into the coarse plains grasses. But
Brown Bull's apprehensions redoubled, and he grew lean with watching.
The path of migration--the old path, known to the ancestors of this host
for many generations--now led for many days along the right bank of a
wide and turbulent but usually shallow river. The flat roar of the
yellow flood upon its reefs and sand banks, mixed with the bellowings
and tramplings of the host to form a thunder which could be heard in the
far-off foothills, transmuted there to a murmur like the sea.
There came now a day of intense and heavy heat, with something in the
air which made the whole host uneasy. They stopped pasturing, and the
older bulls and cows sniffed the dead air as if they detected some
strange menace upon it. Toward the middle of the afternoon a mysterious
haze, of a lovely rosy saffron hue, appeared in the southeast beyond
the river. It spread up the hot, turquoise-blue sky with a terrifying
rapidity, blotting out the empty plain as it approached. Soon all the
eyes of the host were turned upon it. Suddenly, at the heart of the rosy
haze, a gigantic yellow-black column took shape, broad at the base and
spreading wide at the summit, till it lost itself in a swooping canopy
of blackish cloud. It drew near at frightful speed, spinning as it came,
and licking up the surface of the plain beneath.
Brown Bull, whose herd was just now in the front rank of the host, stood
motionless for some seconds, till he had judged the exact direction of
the spinning column. Then, with a wild bellow, he lunged forward at a
gallop, apparently to meet the oncoming doom. His herd charged close at
his heels, none questioning his leadership, and the whole host followed,
heads down, blind with panic.
Two or three minutes more, and the sky overhead was darkened. An
appalling hum, as of giant wires, drowned the thunder of the galloping
host. The hum shrilled to a monstrous and rending screech, and the
spinning column swept across the river, wiping it up to the bottom of
the channel as it passed. Brown Bull's herd felt a sickening emptiness
in their lungs, and then a wind which almost lifted them from their
feet; and their knees failed them in their terror. But their leader had
calculated cunningly, and they were well past the track of doom. The
cyclone caught the hinder section of the host diagonally, whirled it
into the air like so many brown leaves, and bore it onward to be strewn
in hideous fragments over the plain behind. Immediately the sky cleared.
There was no more wind, but a chilly, throbbing breath. The yelling of
the cyclone sank away, and the river could be heard once more brawling
over its reefs and bars. A full third of the host had been blotted from
existence. The survivors, still trembling, remembered that they were
hungry, and fell to cropping the gritty and littered grass.
On the following day the shrunken host forded the river, which at this
point turned sharply westward across the path of the migration. The
river had risen suddenly owing to a cloudburst further up its course,
and many of the weaklings and youngsters of the host were swept away in
the passage. But Brown Bull's herd, well guarded and disciplined, got
over without loss; and for the next few days, there being no peril in
sight, its wary captain suffered it to lead the march.
And now they came into a green and fertile and well-watered land, where
it would have been comforting to linger and recover their strength. But
here, once more, the white man came against them.