glared about him, and then rose softly into the air. He wanted a darker
and more secluded place than the ribs of the wreck for his siesta. Along
the foot of the uplands to the right he marked a patch of swamp, sown
with sedgy pools and clumps of dense bushes. Just at its edge towered a
group of three immense water-poplars, whose tops he decided would serve
him as a post of outlook for his night hunting. For the moment, however,
it was close covert which he wanted, where he could escape the glare of
the sun and sleep off his great meal. Flying low over the grass-tops,
and ignoring the hushed rustle of unseen scurriers beneath, he winnowed
down the shore to the swamp and plunged into the heart of the leafiest
thicket. A half-rotted stump, close to the ground, offered him an
inviting perch, and in half a minute he was the soundest-sleeping gray
owl on this side the Arctic Circle.
Some little time after, a fussy red-winged blackbird came bustling into
the thicket, perhaps to hunt for drowsy night-moths asleep on the under
sides of the twigs. He alighted on a branch about two feet from the
Gray Visitor's head, and stared impertinently at the spectral,
motionless shape. As he stared, a pair of immense round eyes, brass
yellow and terrible, opened wide upon him. For one petrified second he
stared straight into them. Then, recovering the use of his wits, he fell
backward off his branch with a protesting squeak, and fluttered out from
the bush that held such horrors. The Gray Visitor turned his head
slowly, to see if there were any more such intruders upon his solitude,
then tranquilly went to sleep again.
It was perhaps a half-hour later when a big black mink came poking his
pointed nose into the thicket. His malicious eyes, set close together in
his cruel, triangular face, detected at once the sleeping form of the
Gray Visitor, and glowed deeply as if all at once transformed to drops
of garnet. His first impulse was to hurl himself straight upon the
slumberer's throat. But, fearless and joyous slaughterer though he was,
there was something in this gray shape that made him hesitate. He had
never before seen an owl of this ghostly color, or of even half this
size. His long, low, sinuous body gliding almost like a snake's, he
slipped up to within a couple of feet of the sleeper, and paused
irresolute.
To the mink's own ear, keen as it was, his motion was as soundless as a
moving shadow. But the ear of the owl is a miracle of sensitiveness. In
the deep of his sleep the Gray Visitor heard some warning of danger.
Just as the mink was gathering his lithe muscles for a spring, a pair of
immense, palely blazing discs opened before his face with a light so
sudden, so bright, and so hard that he recoiled in spite of himself.
The Gray Visitor had no need of thought to tell him that the long black
creature before him, with the narrow snarling mouth and venomous eyes
was dangerous. His instinct worked quicker than thought. His wings
spread, and he rose as if lifted by a breath from beneath. Then he
dipped instantly and struck downward with his knifelike, clutching
talons. In the same moment the mink sprang to meet the attack,
lengthening out his elastic body prodigiously and reaching for his
adversary's throat.
But what the mink did not know was his undoing. He did not know that
the deep covering on the Gray Visitor's throat and breast--firm,
close-lying feathers and a lavish padding of down--was an armor too
thick and resistant for even his keen teeth. He got a choking mouthful
of feathers. He even achieved to scratch the skin beneath and draw
blood. Then his savage jaws stretched wide in a choking screech as the
steel talons closed inexorably on his throat and his slim loins, and the
fiery light in his brain went out in a flame of indignation, amazed that
it in turn should suffer the fate which it had so continually and so
implacably inflicted.
The Gray Visitor was already hungry again by this time, for an owl's
digestion is astonishingly swift. He made a good meal, therefore, upon
the flesh of the mink, though that flesh is so tough, so stringy, and so
rank that few other flesh-eaters will deign to touch it unless in the
extremity of famine. Then he went to sleep again, for he had long
arrears to make up, and the hot glow of afternoon was still heavy on the
reaches of sea and grass.
[Illustration: "And the fiery light in his brain went out."]
But just after sunset, when the glow had faded, and the first thin wave
of lilac and amber came washing coolly over the wide landscape, and the
blossoms gave out new scents at the touch of the dew, and the
night-hawks twanged in the pale green upper heaven, then the Gray
Visitor awoke to eager activity. He floated upward from out his covert
like a ghost from a pool, circled over it twice, and flew off to those
high and lonely treetops which he had marked in the earlier part of the
day.
In the nearest tree, not far from the top, was what looked like an
immense accumulation of dead sticks. To the Gray Visitor, coming from a
region so far north that there were no tall treetops, this dark mass had
no significance. In his world of the Arctic barrens nothing of the
nature of a nest would ever be built in such an exposed position, where
the first icy hurricane screaming down from the Pole would rip it to
shreds. Therefore it never occurred to him that the clumsy platform of
dead sticks was the nest of a pair of blue herons. In fact, he had no
idea that any such creature as a blue heron existed. He flew noiselessly
to the very top of the tree and perched there some ten or a dozen feet
above the dusky platform of sticks.
All the wide, glimmering twilight world beneath him was very still and
quiet. Nothing seemed astir but the two or three night-hawks swooping
and twanging high up in the hollow heaven, and he had no thought of
hunting any such elusive quarry as the night-hawks. With a view to
startling some wary hiders into activity, he opened his beak and gave
utterance to an unearthly screeching hoot. As he did so, there was a
sharp movement on the platform of sticks, and a keen, defiant eye looked
up at him. He discerned instantly that the platform of sticks was a
nest, and that an immense bird, with an astonishingly long head and
bill, was sitting upon it.
In his own desolate north the great gray owl knew that no creature on
wings could rival him. He was the undisputed tyrant of the Polar air,
even the dashing, white chocolate-mottled hawk-owl flying precipitately
before him. It never occurred to him that this straight-billed nester
could be in any way dangerous. He dropped down upon her quite casually,
as upon a sure and easy victim.
But, before he was within striking distance, the narrow head of the
heron was drawn far back between her shoulders, and the long straight
javelin of her bill presented its point directly toward the attack.
The Gray Visitor noted what a weapon confronted him, and paused warily.
In the next instant the snaky neck of the heron uncoiled itself and the
javelin bill darted up at him like lightning. It was a false stroke on
the heron's part, for her assailant was not quite within reach. But the
Gray Visitor took note of the deadly possibilities of that darting bill,
and promptly sailed a little further out of its range.
But he was only warned, not daunted. For several minutes he circled
slowly just above the nest, now approaching, now retiring, while he
pondered the unaccustomed problem. And all the time the heron, her head
drawn back between her hunched shoulders, watched his flight
unwinkingly, and kept her menacing point at guard. On the flexible coil
of her neck her head pivoted perfectly, and from whichever quarter the
enemy approached, there was that fiery yellow point always confronting
him, waiting to dart upward and meet him full in the breast.
Suddenly he swooped again. Up came that darting stroke to meet him. But
he did not meet it. Swerving craftily, he caught the stroke in his wing
feathers and smothered it, buffeting it down. With a harsh _quah-ah_ of
despair, the heron strove to regain her position for another stroke. But
already her adversary had his clutch upon her throat. A moment more and
the long neck straightened out, and the narrow head hung limply over the
edge of the nest. The eggs, crushed in the struggle, oozed slowly down
through the loose foundations of the platform, and the great gray owl
began to tear greedily at the most lavish banquet his hunting had ever
won him.
But Nature is apt to deal remorselessly with the unprepared. And the
Gray Visitor, not being at home with his surroundings, had neglected to
prepare for the return of the dead mother's mate. Busy at his feasting,
he failed to notice at first the flapping of heavy wings. When he did
notice it he looked up sharply, his beak dripping, his round, pallid
face dappled with blood. The tall cock-heron was just settling upon the
edge of the platform. His head was drawn back between his shoulders,
behind the long yellow lance of his bill, and his eyes, hard as jewels,
met those of the murderer without any expression of rage or fear or
hate. They were as unchanging as the gemmed eyes of an idol.
The Gray Visitor sprang into the air, in order to give battle on more
advantageous terms. But this time he sprang a little too slowly. The
heron's head darted downward at him, as if spearing a frog. The stroke
caught him full in the wing-elbow, splitting it and totally disabling
him for flight. With a hiss of fury, he pounced at his stilt-legged
antagonist, striking out frantically with his terrific, clutching
talons. But his trailing wing jerked him sideways, so that he utterly
missed his aim and sprawled at the heron's feet. Before he could recover
himself, the avenger struck again with the full drive of his powerful
neck, and the stroke went home. The Gray Visitor dropped in a heap, with
the javelin bill clean through his throat. His round yellow eyes opened
and shut several times, and his beak snapped like a pair of castanets.
Then he lay quite still, while the heron, standing at full height on the
edge of the outraged nest, stabbed repeatedly and with slow deliberation
at the unresisting mass of shadowy feathers.
The Runners of the High Peaks
Motionless upon his knife-edged pinnacle, the great brown ram stood
poised, his gray, uplifted muzzle out-thrust toward the sunrise as if he
would sniff in its rose-red glories as they flamed across the ice peaks
of the jagged horizon. The enormous corrugated spirals of his horns lay
back over his neck and shoulders as he stood, and his arrogant eyes of
black and gold appeared half-shut as they searched the jumble of peaks,
ravines, and lake-dotted valleys outspread in still confusion beneath
him. The silence in his ears was absolute, save for the occasional throb
of thunder from a waterfall leaping out into the light of dawn a
thousand feet below, and heard only when some wandering eddy of air
pulsed upward from the depths. There was no enemy to be descried, either
in the still shadowed valleys or on the brightening slopes and steeps;
but the stately watcher kept his station, immovable, staring as if
physically hypnotized by the immensity of the vision that filled his
eyes. Then at last a white-headed eagle, passing low overhead, yelped at
him defiantly. He paid no attention to the challenge, but the harsh,
thin cry seemed to break his trance. He dropped his head and glanced
down at the narrow table-like ledge just below his pinnacle, where
another ram, smaller and less splendidly horned than himself, with six
little spike-horned ewes, cropped the short sweet grasses which grew in
the clefts of the rock.
Far down in the shadow beneath the wild ram's peak a white tent
glimmered beside the misty coils of the stream which threaded the
valley. It was quite too far off to give the ram any concern. Even his
sagacious and penetrating vision could barely make out that a man had
stepped forth from under the tent-flap and now stood motionless beside
it. His confidence would have gone to pieces in uncomprehended terror
had he known that the man, with a pair of powerful glams to his eyes,
was studying him minutely, and could see him as clearly as if he were
not more than a couple of hundred yards away.
Pete Allen was prospecting. Smitten with the wanderlust, he had struck
clear across the continent from the spruce woods and rich river meadows
of New Brunswick to the gigantic mountain chaos of the Rockies in
British Columbia. In New Brunswick he had been a hunter and guide. Now
he had forsaken the trails of moose and bear and caribou to seek the
elusive "color" in the sands of the mountain streams, or the unobtrusive
outcrop of the quartz that carries gold. But the old instincts were
still strong in him. He felt the lure of a splendid and unknown quarry.
He coveted the magnificent head of that calm watcher on the peak; and,
having heard that the wild mountain ram of the Rockies was an
extraordinarily difficult quarry to bring down, he itched to try his old
eastern woodcraft in this new chase and win the prize unaided. He had
two Indians with him as carriers, but he was determined that they should
have no part in this hunting. After he had well studied, through his
glasses, the lay of the ridges and ravines about the peak where the ram
was standing, he reentered the tent for his rifle. He stuffed some cold
meat and hard tack into his pockets, told his Indians they need not
expect him back before night, and started up the course of a small
stream which seemed to come from the shoulder of the mountain. As soon
as he plunged into the thickets he lost sight of the watcher on the
peak; but he had laid his course, and he pushed on confidently, working
around the mountain so that he might come upon the quarry with the sun
at his back. When, after an hour's hard work, pushing through matted
thickets and crossing jagged gullies, he came out upon a knoll which
commanded a view of the peak, he saw that the great ram had disappeared.
But this did not trouble him, as he felt sure he would pick up the trail
in course of time.
Up on the high ledge below the peak the spring grass was sweet, but
there was little of it. The mountain sheep, cropping hungrily with their
short, eager bites, soon exhausted their high pasturage. They lifted
their heads discontentedly, whereupon the old ram, whose supercilious
eyes nevertheless missed little of what concerned him, stepped mincingly
down from his pinnacle. Between the edged summit and the ledge where
his flock pastured was an all but perpendicular drop of smooth-faced
rock. Smooth as it looked, however, his dainty and discriminating hoofs
were able to find some unevennesses upon it, for he took it in two
effortless leaps, and landed among his followers with a shake of his
splendid horns. Then he led the way down the naked steep, now flooded
with the level radiance of the three-fourths risen sun, toward the fresh
spring pasturage along the upper limits of the timber-belt.
He took no pains to choose an easy path, this light-foot runner of the
aerial peaks. Along dizzy ledges that looked no more than a track for
lizards or a clinging place for swallows, he led the way without pause
or hesitation, the flock in single file at his heels. From ledge to
ledge he dropped, over hair-raising deeps of transparent air, with a
precision and ease that made it seem as if his sturdy frame was as
imponderable as the air itself. He ploughed down chutes and funnels of
loose stone, the _debris_ of the rock walls above. He sprang carelessly
over crevices whose bottoms were lost in blackness, till at last the
young-leaved birch and the somber pointed fir lay just below him,
skirted by the steep ribands and intersected by the narrow glens of
greening turf.
At this point the wise old ram began to go warily. In this remote corner
of the Rockies the hunter's rifle was as yet practically unknown. On the
ultimate heights, therefore, where none could follow him but the eagles
and the falcons, he had no enemies to keep watch against. For the eagles
he had small concern, except just at lambing-time, and even then each
ewe mother, with her short, spiky horns and nimble, razor-edged hoofs,
was quick and able to protect her own little one. But down here, along
the edge of the timber, were the dreaded enemies--the wolves, the
mountain lions, the black bears, and the grizzlies. The temptation of
the new grass was one not to be resisted, but the price of it was an
unsleeping watchfulness of eye and ear and wits.
[Illustration: "He took no pains to choose an easy path."]
The uppermost fringe of grass, where it thinned away into the broken
rock, was scanty and stunted; but here the great horned leader elected
to do his own pasturing, while the younger ram stood guard. The spot was
a safe one, being several hundred yards from the timber, and bounded
along its upper edge by a broken steep, which offered no obstacle
whatever to these light-footed peak-runners, but was all but impassable,
except at a crawl, to the most agile of their foes. If the gaunt gray
timber wolf should come darting, belly to earth, from the woods, for all
his swiftness the flock would be bounding lightly far up the steep, as
if lifted on a sudden wind, before he could come anywhere within reach
of them.
When he had quite satisfied his own hunger, and with lifted nostrils
sniffed suspiciously every air that drew upward from the woods, the old
ram led his flock further down into one of those steep glens where the
grass was more abundant. Or, rather, instead of leading them, he
shepherded them before him, keeping them all under his eye, and himself
guarding the rear, while the oldest and wariest of the ewes, prick-eared
and all a-quiver with suspicion, led the way, questioning every bush and
every shadow. But there was no hint of danger anywhere to be discerned;
and presently the flock was pasturing greedily on such sweet herbage as
they had not tasted since the previous year, while on a hummock near the
bottom of the glade, at the post of danger, the ram kept watch, turning
his head continually.
But enthusiasm over young pasturage may make even a mountain sheep
absent-minded. From time to time the flock straggled. Straightway it
would close up again, drawing away from the thickets. Then, in a minute
or two more, it would open out fan-wise, as each impatient feeder
followed up some vein of especially luscious herbage. Just at the point
where the slope of grass was intersected by another and narrower glade,
almost at right angles to the first, a heedless young ewe had branched
off a score or so of paces to one side, up the cross-glade. Lifting her
head suddenly, she realized her isolation, and started to rejoin her
fellows.
At that same instant a lean, gray shape shot noiselessly from the
underbrush straight in her path, and leaped at her with wide jaws. With
a bleat of terror she sprang back up the cross-glade; and then, frantic
at the prospect of being cut off from the flock, she wheeled again and
tried to dodge past her assailant. The wolf, understanding her tactics,
and absolutely sure that she could not escape him, headed her off
without too violently exerting himself. He knew that here, away from her
steeps and pinnacles, she was no match for him in speed, and he knew,
too, that once she saw herself deserted by the flock her powers would
fail her in sheer panic. For a few seconds he almost played with her.
Then, getting her fairly cornered in a bend of the thickets, he sprang
savagely for her throat.
Behind him, meanwhile, the flock went bounding by, headed for their high
refuge. Last came the great ram, snorting with wrath and fear. Just as
he was passing he saw that final rush of the wolf. He saw the young ewe
penned in her corner. He heard her shrill, despairing bleat. The look of
fear faded from his yellow eyes, leaving the rage only. It was not his
wont to pit himself against the mighty timber wolf, because he had no
morbid taste for suicide, but this young ewe was a favorite. Just as the
gnashing jaws were about to snap upon the victim's neck something not
unlike the stroke of a pile-driver caught the wolf fairly on the
crupper. Aided by his own spring, it lifted him clean over the
struggling ewe's back, doubled him together, and dashed him with
stunning effect against a tree. Slowly he picked himself up, to see his
quarry and the great ram just vanishing up the glade, far beyond any
such pursuit as he was at the moment equal to. With a shamefaced air he
glanced about him. There, across the glade, stood a tawny puma, eyeing
his discomfiture through narrowed lids. This was too much. Tucking his
tail between his legs, he slunk off into the underbrush.
Having gained what he considered a safe height among the rocks, the ram
halted his followers upon a jutting buttress, where they stood huddled
about him, and stared down resentfully upon the grassy glades. Such was
their confidence in their lord, and in their own powers of flight, that
they were none of them particularly frightened, except the young ewe who
had had such a narrow escape. She, trembling and with panting sides,
crowded close against her rescuer, who, for his part, kept scrutinizing
the edges of the timber to see if the enemy were going to follow up the
attack. He saw no more of that enemy, but he caught a glimpse of the
tawny form of the puma gliding into a tree. Thereupon he decided that
this part of the mountain was no place for his flock.
He turned and made off straight up the steep, till he had put a good
mile between himself and the point of danger. Then, dropping into a
ravine till their course was quite hidden from all hostile eyes in the
timber, he led the way around the mountainside for several miles. On a
high ledge, secure from any unseen approach, the flock rested for an
hour or two, chewing the cud in peace in the vast silence of the bare
and sun-bathed peaks. When once more they descended to the timber belt
and its seductive pasturage there were three or four miles of tangled
ridge and ravine between them and the scene of their morning's
adventure.
In the meantime, Pete Allen, weary with climbing, sore with
disappointment, tormented with as many flies as his own New Brunswick
backwoods would have let loose upon him at the worst of the season, was
beginning to wonder if the hunt of the mountain sheep was as simple an
affair as he had fancied it. After climbing all the morning he had
failed to gain another glimpse of the great brown ram. At last, however,
about noon, he came upon their trail, leading down to the grass. With a
long breath of relief, he stopped, drank at a bubbling icy spring, ate
his cold bacon and crackers, and smoked a pipe. The trail was none too
fresh, so he knew there was nothing to be gained by rash haste. After
his pipe, he followed the trail down to the glades. His trained eyes
soon told him what had happened. The encounter with the wolf was an open
page to him. Having satisfied himself that there was nothing of interest
left in that patch of timber--though all the while the puma was eyeing
him with curious interest from a great branch not far overhead--he took
up the trail of the flock's flight, and started once more up the
mountain. Sweating heavily, and angrily brushing the flies from his eyes
and nose and ears, he managed to distinguish the trail for a couple of
miles along the difficult ravines, but at last, at the root of a
precipice which, in his eastern judgment, was quite impassable to
anything without wings, he lost it irretrievably.
Arguing that the flock must sooner or later return to their pasturage,
he picked his way on a long diagonal down the mountainside, traversed a
succession of grass patches, which showed never a trace of hoof print,
and at length found himself in a bewildering maze of low, abrupt ridges,
dense thickets, and narrow strips of green glade.