into the thick undergrowth on his right. At odd moments during the past
half-hour he had experienced a fleeting sensation of being followed;
but, absorbed in his own thoughts, he had paid no attention to it. Now,
however, he was on the sudden quite convinced of it. Yet he could have
sworn he had heard nothing, seen nothing, smelt nothing, to justify the
conviction. For nearly half a mile the trail stretched away behind him
between the giant trunks and fringing bush-growth--narrow, perfectly
straight, completely shadowed from sun and sky, but visible all the way
in that curiously transparent, glassy gloom of the under-forest world.
There was nothing behind him on the trail--at least, within a half-mile
of him. And the Presence of which he had been warned was very near. As
is so often the case with the men who dwell in the great silences, he
was conscious at times of possessing something like a sixth sense--a
kind of inexplicable and erratic power of perception which frequently
neglected to exercise itself when most needed, but which, when it did
consent to work, was never guilty of giving a false alarm. Peering with
trained eyes, wise in all woodcraft, through the tangle of the
undergrowth, he waited absolutely motionless for several minutes. A
little black-and-white woodpecker, which had been watching him, ran
nimbly up the mast of a giant pine. Nothing else stirred, and there was
no other living creature to be discerned. Yet McLaggan knew his
intuition had not fooled him. He knew now to a certainty that he was
being observed and trailed. He pondered on the fact for a little, and
then, muttering to himself, "It's a painter, sure!" he resumed his
journey.
McLaggan was not nervous, although for this journey he had left his
rifle behind him in camp, and he was aware that a panther, if it meant
mischief, was not an adversary to be scorned. But, skilled as he was in
all the lore of the wilderness folk, he knew that no panther, unless
with some bitter wrong to avenge, would willingly seek a quarrel with a
man. That powerful and crafty cat, not from cowardice but from sagacity,
recognized man for its master, and was wont to give him a wide berth
whenever possible. Another thing that McLaggan knew was that the panther
has occasionally a strange taste for following a man in secret, with
excessive caution but remarkable persistence, as if to study him and
perhaps find out the causes of his supremacy.
But McLaggan's knowledge of the wild creatures went even further than an
acquaintance with their special habits and characteristics. He knew that
it was impossible for man to know them thoroughly, because there was
always the incalculable element of individuality to make allowance
for--an element that delights in confounding the dogmatic assertions of
the naturalists. He was sure that the chances were a hundred to one
against this unseen pursuer daring to make an attack upon him or even
contemplating such a piece of rashness. But, on the other hand, he
recognized that remote hundred-and-first chance. He adjusted the straps
of his heavy pack--the cause of his leaving his rifle behind--so that he
could rid himself of it on the instant, if necessary, and he carried
loose a very effective weapon, the new axe which he had just bought at
the Settlement. It was a light, hickory-handled, general-utility axe,
such as any expert backwoodsman knows how to use with swift and deadly
effect, whether as a hand-to-hand weapon or as a missile. He was not
nervous, as we have seen, but he was annoyed that he, the old trailer of
many beasts, should thus be trailed in his turn, from whatever motive.
He kept an indignantly watchful eye on all the coverts he passed, and he
scrutinized suspiciously every considerable bough that stretched across
the trail. He had bethought him that the panther's favorite method of
attack was to drop upon his quarry's neck from above; and, in spite of
himself, the little hairs on the back of his own neck crawled at the
idea.
The trail running in from the Settlement to McLaggan's camp among the
foothills was a matter of some fifteen miles, and uphill all the way.
But in that bracing autumn air, amid those crisp shadows flecked with
October's gold, McLaggan was little conscious of the weight of his pack,
and his corded muscles felt no fatigue. Under the influence of that
unseen and unwelcome companionship behind the veil of the leafage, he
quickened his pace gradually, growing ever more and more eager to reach
his rifle and take vengeance for the troubling of his journey.
Suddenly, from far ahead, the silence was broken by the high, resonant
bugling of a bull elk. It was a poignantly musical sound, but full of
menace and defiance, and it carried a long way on that still, resilient
air. Again McLaggan regretted his rifle, for the virile fulness of that
bugling suggested an unusually fine bull and a splendid pair of antlers.
McLaggan wanted meat, to be dried for his winter larder, and he wanted
the antlers, for a really good elk head was by this time become a thing
of price. It was a possession which enthusiastic members of the
Brotherhood of the Elks were always ready to pay well for.
The bugling was several times repeated at brief intervals, and then it
was answered defiantly from far on the left. The sonorous challenges
answered each other abruptly and approached each other swiftly. McLaggan
still further hastened his pace. His gray eyes, under their shaggy
brows, blazed with excitement. He forgot all about his unseen, stealthy
pursuer. His sixth sense stopped working. He thought only of being in
time to see the duel between the two bull elks, the battle for the
lordship of the herd of indifferent cows.
To his impatience, it seemed no time at all ere the rival buglings came
together and ceased. Then his straining ears caught--very faintly and
elusively, as the imperceptible airs of the forest drew this way and
that--the dry clash of opposing antlers. It was evident that the battle
was nearer at hand than he had imagined. He broke into a noiseless trot,
hoping yet to be in time.
Presently he was so near that he could catch, amid the clash of antlers,
occasional great windy snortings and explosive, groaning grunts. All at
once these noises of battle stopped, changed, passed into a confused
scuffling mixed with groans, and then into a wild crashing of flight and
pursuit. The fight was over, but McLaggan perceived with a thrill that
the flight was coming his way.
Half a minute later the fugitive broke out into the trail and came
dashing down it, wild-eyed, nostrils blowing bloody foam and flanks
streaming crimson. McLaggan stepped politely aside to let him pass, and
he passed unheeding. He had no eyes even for the arch-foe man in this
moment of his defeat and humiliation.
But not so the victor! The most splendid specimen of a bull elk that
McLaggan's eyes had ever rested upon, he stopped short in his pursuit at
sight of the gray, erect figure standing there motionless beside the
trail. McLaggan expected him to turn and flee back to his cows and
hasten to shepherd them away from danger. But the great beast, now in
the hour of his triumph and his most arrogant ferocity, had far other
intention. He stood staring at McLaggan for several seconds, but
McLaggan saw that there was nothing like fear in that insolent and
flaming regard. The bull stamped sharply on the sod with one knife-edged
fore-hoof; and McLaggan, knowing what that meant, glanced around
discreetly for the easiest tree to climb. He was now furious at the
lack of his rifle, and vowed never again to go without it.
Fortunately for McLaggan, the great bull was no mere blind and brutal
ruffian of a fighter. Like all his aristocratic breed, he had a certain
punctilio to observe in such affairs. He had first to stamp his
challenge several times, snort vehemently, and advance his antlers in
fair warning. Then he came on, at first daintily and mincingly, and only
after that formal preliminary did he break into his furious rush.
But already McLaggan had swung himself into the tree, just out of reach,
leaving his pack at the foot.
For a little McLaggan was engrossed in wondering if he really _was_
quite out of reach, so vigorous were the rearings and thrustings of his
enemy, so agile the high strokes of those fine, destructive hoofs. Then
out of the tail of his eye he caught sight of several elk cows--the herd
stealing warily down the trail to see how it was faring with their
victorious lord. They halted, noses in air and ears pricked forward
anxiously, wondering at their lord's strange antics under the tree.
Then, all together, they wheeled about sharply, as if worked on a single
spring, and fled off in enormous bounds over and through the thickets.
McLaggan stared after them in surprise, wondering at their abrupt
flight. A moment later it was explained to him, as he saw the tawny head
and shoulders of an immense panther emerge for just the fraction of a
second into the trail.
McLaggan was gratified at this confirmation of his woodcraft, but he was
now a little anxious as to what was going to happen next. He realized
that in traveling without his rifle he had fairly coaxed the unexpected
to happen; and it seemed to him that this particular panther was not
going to play by the accepted rules of the game, or he would never have
been so audacious as to reveal himself even for that instant in the open
trail. He looked down upon his magnificent adversary raging below him,
and felt a generous impulse to give him warning of the peril lurking in
the undergrowth. As between the elk and the panther, his sympathies were
all with the elk, in spite of that misguided beast's extremely
inconvenient hostility.
"Instead of stretchin' yer fool neck that way, tryin' to get at _me_,"
he expostulated, leaning from his branch, "ye'd a sight better be
keepin' yer eyes peeled fer yer own hide. There's a durn big painter
hidin' somewheres in them bushes yonder, an' while ye're a-claw-in'
after me--which ain't no use at all--he'll be getting his claws inter
_you_, first thing ye know!"
But it was plain that the bull did not understand English, or, at least,
McLaggan's primitive variation on English. He seemed to grow more
pugnacious than ever at the sound of these mild exhortations. He made
the most extravagant efforts to reach McLaggan's refuge with horn or
hoof. Convincing himself at last that this was impossible, he glared
about him wrathfully till his eyes fell on McLaggan's pack lying near
by.
Appearing to regard it as part of McLaggan, he fell upon it
triumphantly. His edged hoofs slashed it and smashed it, his pronged
antlers ripped it wide open, and in a dozen seconds he had sent the
contents flying in every direction. The contents were miscellaneous, as
McLaggan had been in to the Settlement for the purpose of replenishing
his stores. They included, among other items, a two-gallon tin of
molasses, a little tin of pepper enveloped in a flaring scarlet label, a
white cotton bag of flour, a paper bag of beans, and another of sugar.
The beans and the sugar went all abroad at the first attack, the big and
the little tin rolled away, and the bull devoted his attention for a
moment to the bag of flour. He ripped it wide open with his antlers,
then blew into it scornfully so that the flour puffed up into his face.
Having accomplished all this with such surprising ease, he seemed to
think he might now succeed in getting at McLaggan himself. He came under
the branch once more and glared upwards through what looked like a pair
of white goggles, so thickly were his eye-sockets rimmed with flour. He
snorted fresh defiance through wide red nostrils nicely fringed with
white.
[Illustration: "His pronged antlers ripped it wide open."]
McLaggan was now too angry to appreciate the extraordinary appearance of
his foe. At the scattering of his precious supplies, his sympathies had
gone over completely to the panther. He spat down upon his adversary in
impotent indignation.
"I hope the painter'll git ye, after all!" he cried, with a bunch of
expletives too virile for the cold exposure of the printed page.
In reply, the bull made another earnest effort to reach him. Then, once
more disappointed, he returned to the pack to see what further
satisfaction he could get out of it.
Finding that there was no resistance left in the beans, the sugar, or
the bag of flour, he went after the little scarlet tin of pepper which
had been thrown some distance and lay under a neighboring tree. He
slashed it open with a stroke of the hoof, then jabbed it with a prong
of his antlers and flung it into the air. It fell on his shoulders,
emptying most of its contents into the long hair on the ridge of his
neck. Startled at this attack, he jumped around sharply, and was just in
the middle of pounding the impertinent thing viciously under foot, when,
to his annoyance, he began to sneeze. It was such sneezing as he had
never experienced before. He spread his legs wide and devoted himself
to it with all his energies.
This was too much for McLaggan's wrath. He forgot it in an ecstasy of
delight. He was just on the point of explosion, when he saw something
which made him check himself with a choked expletive.
The panther was creeping out upon a great branch almost over the
sneezing bull's head. The next moment it dropped from the branch and
fastened teeth and claws in the bull's neck.
The bull was just in the middle of a terrific paroxysm, but the cruel
shock of this assault brought him to. With a grunt he bounded into the
air, coming down upon all four feet again, stiff-legged like a bucking
horse, as if thinking the jar might shake his assailant off. Failing in
this, he sprang violently sideways, and at the same time, being a beast
of resource, he struck back with the prongs of his antlers by jerking
his muzzle sharply upward.
In the meantime the panther was clawing and biting savagely, and seemed
likely to maintain his hold in spite of the clever tactics of his
adversary. But just at this point the pepper in the bull's mane began to
take irresistible effect, both in eyes and nostrils. The amazed panther
let out a screech of protest which ended in a convulsive sneeze. In the
midst of this convulsion, the bull side-stepped again with distressing
energy, and the panther, half-blinded and wholly bewildered, was thrown
to the ground. The maneuver was almost equally disastrous to McLaggan,
who, rocking with laughter, all but fell out of his tree.
The moment he had shaken himself clear, the bull, undaunted, whirled and
struck like lightning with his formidable fore-hoofs. With equal
alertness the panther succeeded in eluding the stroke. He doubled
lithely aside and sprang again, seeking to recover his former advantage.
But, being half-blinded, he fell short and only got a grip with his
front claws. As he struggled savagely to make good his hold against the
plunging and the thrashing antlers of his antagonist, once more the
pepper in his nostrils began to work with power. In spite of his
passionate refusal of the gigantic titillation, his head went up in the
air, his spine straightened itself out, his jaws and his claws opened,
and the huge sneeze ripped stridently from his lungs. It ended in a
screech of rage and disappointment as he found himself once more rolling
on the ground, striking out blindly with futile claws.
As he recovered himself, he warily bounced aside, lightly as a loosed
spring. But he was not quite quick enough. One of those battering hoofs
that were playing for him so nimbly caught him on the haunch. It caught
him aslant, or it would have shattered the great joint beyond hope of
recovery. But it was enough for his catship. With a scream, he darted
off beneath a low-branched thicket, ran lamely up another tree, and
crept away from the place of his discomfiture by the path of the
interlacing branches. He wanted no elk-meat which tasted like that.
The victor stood glaring after him for half a minute, snorting and
shaking his triumphant antlers. Then he came and glared up at McLaggan,
as much as to say: "Did you see that? That's the way I'd fix you, too,
if only you'd come down here and stand up to me!"
As for his cruel wounds on flank and neck, he seemed quite unaware of
them. But he was evidently a little tired, for he made no further
attempts to reach McLaggan's refuge.
"You're sure some punkins!" declared McLaggan admiringly, wiping his
eyes on his sleeve. "Who'd ever 'a' thought any bull elk could lick a
painter _that_ quick?"
Scorning to be conciliated by compliment, the bull turned away to see if
there was any further damage he could inflict on McLaggan's belongings.
Ah, yes, to be sure, there was the bright, unsullied tin of molasses
just where he had hurled it. He pranced over and slashed at it, in spite
of McLaggan's appeals, and opened a generous gash, through which the
amber-brown stickiness came bulging forth phlegmatically. The bull eyed
this phenomenon, and then, scornful of what he could not understand,
prodded the can with an eviscerating antler. He prodded it so hard that
not only one prong but a tiny projecting fork also went clean through
the tin. Then he threw up his head sharply, expecting to toss the wreck
into the air.
To his surprise, it refused to be tossed. It just clung where it was,
and began to pour its contents down in a sticky, deliberate stream all
over his head and ears and face. He shook his antlers indignantly, and
the can thereupon threw wider its suave coils of richness, till they
laced his neck and his gashed flank. Finding that the insignificant but
obstinate thing would not let go, he lowered his antlers and struck at
it indignantly with one of his hinder hoofs. When this attempt proved
futile, he fell to rooting and prodding the ground, till the stickiness
had gathered a copious tribute of leaves and twigs and dirt. This
process not accomplishing his purpose, he lifted his head and glanced
about him with a worried air, his faith in his own prowess apparently
for the first time shaken.
McLaggan shrieked. He flung both arms and legs about his branch to keep
from falling, and clung there, gurgling.
At the strange sound of his laughter, the bull returned beneath the
branch and gazed up at him, no longer, as it seemed to McLaggan,
insolently, but reproachfully.
"Go 'way, durn ye, or ye'll be the death o' me yet!" gasped McLaggan.
Once more the bull's eyes blazed, and again he shook his antlers in
defiance. But, as he did so, the can, now quite empty and resonant,
gave forth a hollow clatter. The fire faded from the bull's eyes, and he
jumped aside nervously. The can clattered again, still in the same
place. The bull jumped yet again and shook his head more violently. The
can gave voice more clamorously. At that the courage of the valiant
fighter, whom neither rival bull nor panther nor man himself could
daunt, melted to skim milk. He broke into panic flight through the
bushes, and the hollow protestings of the can kept time to the madness
of his going.
McLaggan, with aching ribs, climbed down from his refuge and stood
surveying the wreckage of his supplies. There was nothing left worth
picking up, except his axe.
"I'm obleeged to ye for leavin' me the axe," said he. "But ye might 'a'
took it, an' welcome. The show was worth the price!"
The Eyes in the Bush
Low over the wide, pallid, almost unruffled expanse of tide a great
ghost-gray bird came flapping shoreward heavily. The shore, drowsing
under the June sun, was as flat and seemingly as limitless as the sea,
except to the right, where the unfenced levels of the grass foamed
golden-green along the fringe of the wooded hills. Between the waveless
pallor of the water and the windless warm glow of the grass was drawn a
narrow riband of copper red--the smooth mud flats left naked by the
tide. Just at the edge of the grass the bleached ribs of an ancient
fishing-smack, borne thither years ago in some tempestuous conspiracy of
wind and tide, stood up nakedly from the dry red mud, and seemed to beg
the leaning grass to cover them. Upon one of these gray ribs the great
gray bird alighted, balancing himself unsteadily for a moment, as if in
the last stage of exhaustion, and then settling to an immobility that
seemed to make him a portion of the wreck itself.
For the better part of an hour the Gray Visitor never stirred, never
ruffled a feather--not even when a gorgeous black-and-red butterfly
alighted, with softly fanning wings, within a foot of him; not even when
a desperate mouse, chased by a weasel, squeaked loudly in the
grass-roots behind him. The bees and flies kept up a soft hum, the very
voice of sleep, among the clover blossoms scattered through the grass,
and the hot scents of the wild parsnip steamed up over the levels like
an unseen incense. The still air quivered, glassy clear. Along the other
side of the strip of red began a soft, frothy hiss, as the first of the
flood-tide came seething back across the flats. A heavy black-and-yellow
bumble bee, with a loud, inquiring boom, swung in headlong circles over
the wreck, more than once almost brushing the feathers of the motionless
stranger. A sudden flock of sand-pipers puffed down along the shore,
alighted, piping mellowly, on the mud just beyond the wreck, and
flickered gray and white as they bobbed their stiff little tails up and
down in their feeding.
But the great gray owl never moved a feather. For an hour he sat there
with fast-shut eyes in the broad blaze of the sunshine, while life crept
slowly back along his indomitable but exhausted nerves. An estray from
the Polar North, he had been blown far out to sea in a hurricane. Taking
refuge on a small iceberg, he had been carried south till the berg,
suddenly disintegrating, had forced him to dare the long landward
flight. The last of his strength had barely sufficed him to gain the
shore and the refuge of this perch upon the ribs of the ancient wreck.
At last he opened his immense round yellow eyes--discs of flaming yellow
glass with the pupils contracted to mere pinheads in the glare of the
unshadowed light. Revolving his round, catlike head very slowly upon his
shoulders, as if it were moved by clockwork, he surveyed his strange
surroundings. The conspicuousness of his perch and the intensity of the
sunlight were distasteful to him. Lifting his wide wings, he hopped down
into the interior of the wreck, which was half-filled with mud and
_debris_. Here, though the side-planking was all fallen away so that
prying eyes could see through and through the ribs in every direction,
there was yet a sort of seclusion, with some shadow to ease his dazzled
eyes.
Having recovered somewhat from his numbing exhaustion, the Gray Visitor
became conscious of the pangs of his famine. He sat motionless as
before, but now with all his senses on the alert. His ears--so sensitive
that he could hear innumerable and tell-tale sounds where a human ear
would have perceived nought but a drowsy silence--caught a chorus of
rustlings, squeaks, and rushes, which told him that the neighboring
depths of the grass were populous with the mouse folk and their kindred.
At one point the grass-fringe came so close to the wreck that its spears
were thrusting in between the ribs. The Gray Visitor hopped over to this
point, and waited hopefully, like a cat at a frequented mouse-hole.
He had been but a few moments settled in his ambush when a fat,
sly-faced water-rat came ambling into the wreck at the other end of the
keel, nosing this way and that among the _debris_ for sleepy beetles.
Keen as were the rat's eyes, they did not notice the ghost-gray erect
figure sitting up like a post beside the grass-fringe. The Visitor
waited till the rat should come within reach of an unerring pounce. His
sinews stiffened themselves in tense readiness. Then something like a
brown wedge dropped out of the sky. There was a choked squeal, and the
rat lay motionless under the talons of a mottle brown marsh-hawk, which
fell instantly to tearing its victim, as if obliged to lunch in a hurry.
The downy wings of the Gray Visitor lifted. His swoop was as soft,
soundless and effortless as if he had been but a wisp of feathers blown
on a sudden puff of wind. His mighty talons closed on the neck and back
of the feasting hawk. There was a moment's convulsive flapping of the
mottled brown wings beneath the overshadowing gray ones. Then the
stranger set himself voraciously to the first square meal which had come
his way for days. When he had finished, there was little left of either
the hawk or the water-rat.