sheep he concluded that this was about the last place in the world where
he would be likely to find them. He began, after long self-restraint, to
curse softly under his breath, as he glared about him for the most
practical exit from the maze. All at once his face changed. The anger
faded out from his shrewd light-blue eyes. There was the trail of the
flock leading straight down the steepest and most uninviting of the
glens. It was a fresh trail, too--so absolutely fresh that some of the
trodden blades were still lifting their heads slowly from the hoof
prints.
"Gee!" muttered Allen. "Seems I don't know's much about these here
critters as I thought I did!" And he slipped noiselessly back into the
cover of a thicket.
His problem now was to keep the trail in sight while himself remaining
under cover. It was the hardest piece of tracking he had ever tackled.
The cover was dense, the slope steep and tormentedly broken. He had to
be noiseless as a mink, because he knew by hearsay that the ears of the
mountain ram were almost as keen as an owl's. And he had to keep himself
perfectly out of sight, which forced him to take the most difficult part
of the underbrush for his path. But, for all this, he was no longer
angry; he no longer heeded the flies or the heat, and when the sweat
streamed down into his eyes he merely wiped them cheerfully on his
sleeve. He felt sure now of winning the longed-for trophy of that
magnificent head, and of winning it, moreover, by his own unaided
woodcraft. Presently, through an opening in the leafy screen, he caught
a glimpse of a tranquilly pasturing ewe, not much more than two hundred
yards away. She moved slowly across his narrow line of vision and
vanished. Keyed now to the highest pitch of anticipation, with every
faculty concentrated on his purpose, he worked his silent way onward,
expecting momently to gain a view of the great ram.
But there was an element in the situation which, had he known it, would
have interfered with Allen's concentration of purpose. He was not the
only hunter of mountain sheep in that particular corner of the
mountains.
A shaggy and sly old "silver-tip," as it chanced, had had his eye for
some time on that flock. He loved mutton, and he knew it was very hard
to get, especially for a bear. He was making his approaches, therefore,
with a stealthy craft surpassing that of Pete Allen himself. So it came
about quite naturally that he saw Allen first. Thereupon he took every
precaution that Allen should not see him.
In this remote district the grizzlies had not yet learned the vital
lesson that man is by far the most formidable of all the animals. Yet a
rumor had come to him, somehow, that the insignificant creature was not
to be trifled with. There was something masterful in his bearing--as
the grizzly had observed from safe ambush on several occasions--which
suggested unknown powers, and hitherto the old silver-tip, being well
fed and having no special grudge against man, had refrained from
courting a quarrel. Now, however, he was angry. This was his own game
which the man was stalking. This was a trespass upon his own
preserves--a point in regard to which the grizzly is apt to be
sensitive. His first impulse was to rush upon the intruder at once. Then
a mixture of prudence and curiosity held him back, or, rather, delayed
his purpose. He changed his course, and began to stalk Pete Allen even
as Pete Allen was stalking the sheep. And high overhead, in the
unclouded blue, a soaring eagle, catching brief glimpses of the drama
through the openings in the leafage, gazed down upon it with unwinking,
scornful eyes.
Huge and apparently clumsy as was the bulk of the bear, he nevertheless
made his way through the tangle as soundlessly as the man, and more
swiftly. He drew gradually nearer, and, as he approached, he began to
forget the other game in a savage interest in this new and dangerous
quarry. He was not directly behind the man, but now drawing nearly
abreast of him, on the other side of the narrow steep of grass. He was
just beginning, indeed, to stiffen his sinews instinctively for the
final rush which should avenge the intrusion upon his range, when he saw
the man stop abruptly and raise something that looked like a long brown
stick to his shoulder. At this sight the bear stopped also, his wrath
not being yet quite hot enough to consume his curiosity.
Pete Allen at last had caught a clear view of the great brown ram
standing at guard not a hundred yards away. It was a beautiful, easy
shot, the target isolated and framed in green. He raised his rifle
steadily, bracing himself with knees and feet in a precarious position.
Before he could draw a bead, however, to his amazement he saw the ram
bound into the air and vanish from his narrow field of vision. Puzzled,
he lowered the rifle from his shoulder. As he did so that unknown and
quite incalculable sense which seems to have its seat in the fine hairs
on the back of one's neck and in the skin of the cheeks commanded him
to turn his head. He was just in time to see the giant form of the
grizzly burst from the underbrush and come lunging across the strip of
open.
Confronted by such an emergency the New Brunswicker fired on the
instant, and, being quite sure of himself and the bear above him, he
took a difficult shot. He aimed at the middle of the beast's throat,
trusting to sever the spinal column, for he had heard that a shot
straight through the heart often fails to stop the rush of a grizzly.
There was nothing the matter with Pete Allen's shooting or with his
nerve. But at the very fraction of a second when his finger started to
pull the trigger the whimsical Fates of the wilderness took a hand in
the game. They undermined Pete Allen's footing. As he fired he fell, and
the long, soft-nosed, deadly bullet, instead of piercing the grizzly's
spine, merely smashed through his right shoulder.
Pete Allen fell sprawling some eight or ten feet down the slope, losing
hold of his rifle in the effort to stop himself. To his anxious
indignation he saw the rifle strike a branch and bounce perversely a
dozen feet away. He scrambled for it furiously; but, before he could
quite get his grip upon it, it slipped through the branches and dropped
another dozen feet or so. At the same time, with something more near
cold terror than he had ever before experienced, he saw the dark bulk of
the grizzly wallowing down upon him, huge as a mountain. Staggered for a
few seconds by the shock of the bullet, the beast had hesitated and
turned around on his tracks, biting at the wound. Then, on three legs,
and grunting with rage, he had launched himself upon his adversary.
In the course of the next three seconds, as he struggled toward his gun,
Pete Allen thought of a thousand things, mostly unimportant. But at the
back of his brain was the cool conviction that this was the time when he
was going to pass in his checks. Those brute paws would smash him before
he could reach his rifle. But he was wrong, for again the whimsical
Fates interfered, perceiving a chance for such a trick as they had
probably never played before.
The great brown ram, his eyes nearly starting from his head, came
leaping madly up the narrow incline, his flock at his heels, blind with
fright. In the glade below one of the flock had just been pounced upon
by a puma, and another puma had sprung out at them, but missed his kill.
The ram saw the bear straight in his path, plunging across it. There was
no time to change his direction, and in his panic the peril in front was
nothing to compare with the peril behind. Had the bear been a mastodon
or a megatherium it would have been all the same to the panic-stricken
ram. With the madness of utter terror he lowered his mighty head and
charged this dark mass that barred his flight.
The bear, blazing with vengeance, had no eyes in that moment for sheep.
Suddenly something like a falling boulder crashed into his ribs,
catching him with his forefeet off the ground and almost rolling him
over. The breath belched out of his astonished lungs with a loud,
coughing grunt, and the ram went over him, spurning him with sharp
hoofs. The next moment the whole flock was passing over him, a
bewildering bombardment of small, keen, battering hoofs and woolly
bodies. Recovering from his amazement, he struck out with his unwounded
forepaw, caught the last unhappy ewe as she went over him, and hurled
her carcass, mangled and quivering, far down the slope. Then, a little
dazed, but undeterred from his vengeance, he glared about him for his
original antagonist.
Interesting and, indeed, unparalleled as the intervention of the brown
ram had been, Pete Allen had not taken time to observe it with the
minute care which so novel an incident was entitled to. He had been busy
getting his gun. Now he had it he did not hurry. With this shot he was
taking no chances. Just as the bear caught sight of him, and started at
him open-mouthed, he fired, and the animal sprawled forward, a huge
furry heap, with a ball through the base of his brain.
Back in New Brunswick Pete Allen had had the name of being a cool hand
in a corner. In that land of tried woodsmen and daring stream-drivers he
would not have gained that name without deserving it. Even as the
grizzly was in the act of falling forward Allen raised his rifle again.
He covered accurately the form of the brown ram leaping up the slope a
hundred yards away. There was his trophy, the splendid horns which he
had striven so hard to win, within his grasp at last. But something
seemed to tug suddenly at his arm--or was it at his heart? Pete Allen
had always prided himself on playing fair, in the spirit as well as in
the letter. He dropped his rifle with a growl of vexation.
"It'd be a dirty trick to put a ball into yeh," he muttered, "seein'
what a hell of a hole you've just pulled me out of!"
The Pool
The current that went circling through its depths, keeping them always
crystal pure and sweet, was so leisurely that the clear brown mirror of
the surface was never broken, unless by some slow-wandering foam-cluster
eddied in from the frothy little falls outside, or by the dropping of a
leaf, or by the sluggish rise of a trout to some unwary skimming fly.
To the fish that dwelt in it the pool was an abiding place of
perfection. It was deep; but the entrance to it was narrow and shoal,
just spacious enough for the slow interchange of waters with the
vivifying outer current. At the same time this entrance was so set that
innumerable choice morsels, fly and beetle, grub and berry, having been
battered down over the falls, were then persuasively swept into it. It
was darkly overhung by great-limbed water-ash and maple; but when the
sun was some two or three hours past noon its downpour reached and
flooded the surface and made very wholesome basking. The bottom,
moreover, offered a judicious variety of attraction. For some way in
from the entrance it was of a clean bright sand, more or less broken
with stones. While the inner portion, right up to the perpendicular
banks and the jutting tree-roots, was floored with silted mud, fruitful
in the small, ephemeral water-growths of herb and insect.
The fish inhabiting the delectable pool were all big ones, except for a
few scattered young fry which dwelt precariously in the extremest
shallows where the big ones could not come at them. And the fish were of
just two kinds, the trout and the suckers. The suckers, lazy, pig-like,
inoffensive beings, congregated over the stretch of mud, from whose fat
surface their small, round, defenseless, downward-opening mouths sucked
up their sustenance incessantly. Their bulk, and the power of their
sinewy tails, alone protected them from the trout, whose wide, rapacious
jaws and insatiable appetite were effective in keeping the size of all
the pool-dwellers up to standard.
The trout, as a rule, had none of the reposefulness of the suckers.
They ranged restlessly, now over the mud reaches, now over the sand and
rocks, wherever quarry, large or small, might perhaps be encountered.
Frequently one or another would flash out through the narrow exit, to
hunt and test its strength in the bright turmoil of the rapids. And from
time to time one would return lazily, perhaps with the tail of a smaller
relation sticking out of its mouth, and settle down under the bank to
digest its heavy meal.
To the pair of great fish-hawks, whose huge, untidy nest, like a
cart-load of sticks and rubbish, filled the top of a tall dead pine-tree
half a mile above the falls, the pool was a ceaseless aggravation. In
the continual flight up and downstream their keen eyes were wont to
search the pool enviously. But the big fish swimming so calmly in its
depths were safe from them, because it was so overhung that they were
unable to swoop down upon it with any effective speed. In the clear open
they could drop like a wedge of steel, and flick up a darting trout from
the very lip of the fall. But the pool they could reach only by a
deliberate, flapping approach which gave even the drowsiest basker
ample time to seek refuge in the safe depths.
But there was one wild fisherman whom the pool suited exactly. A big
half-submerged root, jutting out for about three feet directly over that
section of the pool where the suckers congregated, afforded the great
lynx just the post of vantage which he loved. Here he would lie in wait
for an hour at a time, patient and immobile as the root on which he
crouched. His round, black, savage moon-face, with its pale eyes bright
and hard, its stiff whiskers, and its tufted ears, would be held down so
close to the glassy surface that the confused reflections of the
overhanging branches were unable to interfere with his vision, and he
could see with perfect clearness every detail of the transparent depths.
He would stare with endless craving at the massive suckers which lay
placidly mouthing the mud; but nothing could ever bring them near the
surface, so he knew nothing of them but that they were fat and looked
very desirable.
But it was the trout that chiefly concerned him. They had none of the
fat placidity of the suckers. One or another of them, with his gold and
silver and vermilion glinting up through the pellucid gloom, would be
forever on the move, quartering the bottom for caddis and beetle, and
now and then sailing up toward the surface to investigate some floating
atom that may chance to be a fly. Sometimes it _was_ a fly, or a moth,
or a caterpillar or some edible berry. And sometimes, too, the slow
circling of the current in the pool would bring it close to that still
watcher on the root before it caught the eye of the feeding fish. Then
the sinews of the watcher would grow rigid, his claws protrude from
their sheaths, a little green flame flicker spectrally in his eyes. As
the trout came slanting up on scarlet fin, shouldered the surface apart,
and sucked down the morsel, out from the root above him would flash a
wide-taloned paw, unerring, inescapable, scooping him from his element,
and in half a second he would be flopping convulsively among the
wintergreen leaves, far up the bank. In the next half of that fatal
second the lynx would be upon him with an exultant pounce, holding down
his slippery struggles with both forepaws, and biting through the back
of his massive neck.
The lynx being so silent and discreet a fisherman, his fishing never
disturbed the pool at all, or cast any shadow of doubt upon its
reputation as a haven of security and repose. The victim simply
vanished, without any fuss. Of the other dwellers in the pool not one
knew how he had vanished; not one cared; not one was troubled with
apprehension.
One hot morning as the great cat lay on the root, staring down into the
depths with his fierce moon eyes, he was disappointed to observe that on
this particular day even the trout were too indolent to stir. The heat
seemed to have taken away their appetites. As motionless and indifferent
as the suckers themselves, they hung on softly fanning fins, and took no
notice when even the most tempting morsels traversed the glassy surface.
They did not mingle with the suckers, but poised themselves
superciliously a foot or so above them, or lurked singly under the
shelter of the scattered rocks on the bottom. In vain did fly or moth,
or the most seductive squirmer of a fat grub, come circling slowly over
the surface above them. They would not so much as cock a scornful eye up
at it. They were not feeding. And when a trout won't feed he just
won't, and there's an end of it. Though just when the pangs of appetite
may come back upon him with a rush no fisherman can say with certainty.
It is such uncertainty that has taught fishermen the virtues of patience
and hope. It has also taught them unveracity, by giving them abundant
time for the weaving of tales wherewith to amuse the credulous.
The lynx, as a fisherman, was both hopeful and patient. But this morning
his patience was being sorely tried; for he was hungrier than usual, and
his hunger was particularly bent on fish. His ridiculous stump of a
tail, which was quite hidden from the sight of the pool-dwellers, began
to twitch angrily. He was almost on the point of giving up, and stealing
away to hunt rabbits, when from the corner of his eye he caught sight of
something which made his ruff bristle and every hair stand up in jealous
wrath. An intruder, a stranger, a rival whose skill as a fisherman made
his own attempts seem nothing worth, had arrived at the entrance of the
pool and was peering down into it with keen eyes.
The lynx moved, for the first time in a half hour. He turned his head
full round, and fixed his green, implacable stare upon the intruder.
The new arrival had come by way of the river, and, from his bearing, the
pool was evidently new to him. His long, sinuous, dark body lay crouched
in the middle of the entrance, hinder half in the water and head and
shoulders out of it. Sleek and glistening, with his low-set supple form,
heavy-jawed and almost dog-like face, inconspicuous ears, dark eyes, and
long, powerful tail, he presented the sharpest possible contrast in type
to the great, shadowy, moon-eyed cat, though in actual weight and bulk
the two were not greatly dissimilar.
But it was not at the silent watcher on the tree-root across the pool
that the other was looking. He was peering down, with exultant eyes,
into the peopled depths. Hunting had been bad, and he was hungry. A
moment more and he plunged downward with a heavy swirl, but smoothly, as
if oiled. The eyes of the lynx followed, with savage intentness, his
swift and fishlike dartings beneath the water.
The drowsing pool-dwellers awoke and scattered in a panic, even the
dull suckers displaying a miraculous agility. But it was not the
coarse-fleshed suckers that this discriminating fisherman was after.
As the frantic fugitives dashed this way and that, weaving strange
patterns over the bottom, and half forgetful, in their terror, of the
narrow way out to safety, the otter slashed at such as came in his way,
biting through their backbones, so that they presently rolled to the
surface, belly upward. But it was the biggest trout of the pool that he
wanted.
And one great fish there was who was fatally supreme. His supremacy had
been fatal to many smaller fish before. Now it was fatal to himself. Him
the otter chose out for his prize. Feeling himself so chosen, he flashed
frantically from side to side, and up and down, ever missing the
exit--or cleverly headed off from it--but also, for some minutes,
evading the inexorable pursuit. The otter, though a four-footed
land-dweller, was really more swift and agile in the water than any
trout; but over and over again he was balked or delayed by other
maddened fugitives getting in his way, or tempting him to delay for a
slashing bite.
Through all the lashed turmoil the lynx never stirred, save to follow
with his hard, bright stare the lightning evolutions of the flight and
the pursuit. At last the doomed trout flashed up beneath the point of
the root, and doubled just at the surface. In that fraction of a second
when he seemed to pause for the turn, down swept the furry paw; and the
trout was hurled far up the bank. From the spot at which the trout had
so surprisingly vanished up shot the head of the otter. For one instant
the otter's dark and furious eyes blazed into the pale eyes of the lynx,
at a distance of not more than a dozen or eighteen inches. Then the lynx
was gone up the bank at a bound, to pin down and finish off the victim.
Now, there were plenty more trout in the pool to be caught, and three
dead or dying fish floating there to be picked up. But this fact to the
otter was of no account whatever. He had been robbed of his kill. His
prize had been impudently snatched from his teeth. There was room in his
soul for no emotion but the rage of the avenger. He scrambled out on to
the root and glided noiselessly up the bank.
From the point of view of the lynx, on the other hand, it was he who had
all the grievance. The pool was his own private preemption, long held
without a challenge. The otter was an insolent trespasser. As a rule,
two wild beasts of different species, if so nearly matched that the
event of a combat might be doubtful, will avoid each other discreetly.
The plain uncertainty is apt to daunt them both. They do not understand
each other's methods of fighting. And each has too much at stake. But
here, in each case, was a question of the honor of the wilds. It was a
great quarrel which neither would shirk. Having killed the writhing
fish, the lynx turned sharp about, crouched with one paw on the prize,
and eyed the approaching otter warily.
At first the otter came on with a steady rush, as if disdaining all
fence and all precaution. At a distance of half-a-dozen feet, however,
he paused, as if that pale, menacing stare of his crouching adversary
had disconcerted him. He met it fairly, however, and steadily, and it
was plain that he was in no way daunted. A moment more and he began to
creep slowly forward, very slowly, inch by inch.
To the lynx, with his more fiery but less tenacious temperament, this
very deliberate and long-drawn-out approach was more trying than a
savage rush would have been. His courage was sound, but his nerves were
jumpy. He opened his jaws wide and hissed harshly, and followed this
demonstration by a strident yowl. Neither of these appearing to impress
the creeping foe, he felt it impossible to keep still any longer. With a
sudden bounce he shot into the air, to come down, as he calculated,
square on the otter's back. But when he came down the otter's back was
no longer where he had expected it to be. It had been discreetly
removed. The next instant the otter's teeth snapped at his throat, but
missed hold by a hair's breadth. For some seconds the two gnashed
snarling in each other's faces; then, as if by common consent, they
sprang apart, and began a slow, wary circling, each impressed with a
sense of the other's prowess. That moment's clash of snarling jaw on
jaw had seemed to let in a flash of understanding upon their hot
hearts.
As they circled, each sparring for a chance to catch the other at a
disadvantage, the dead trout lay gleaming and bleeding on the turf
between them. Presently the otter made a little rush in, as if to seize
it. But at this the lynx pounced in also, with a startling growl. The
otter shrank back a little. The lynx checked his spring. In another
moment the two were once more circling and sparring for vantage as
before.
The longer the otter studied that gray, prowling, shadowy shape, with
the wide eyes, the powerful hunched hind-quarters, the long and ripping
claws, the less certain he felt of his ability to handle it, the more
surely did his fighting lust cool down. He began to think of his other
prizes in the pool, to be gathered without an effort; and, but for his
pride, he would willingly have withdrawn from the doubtful venture which
now involved him. But he was of dogged temper, and he showed no outward
sign of his irresolution. The lynx, on the other hand, being less
obstinate and of more variable mood, began to think of rabbits and such
like easy enterprises. The more he studied that low, sinewy, dark figure
with its keen teeth and punishing jaw, the less he liked it, and the
more indifferent he grew to the attractions of trout as a diet. The
radius of his menacing prowl grew gradually wider. In response the otter
discreetly drew back a few feet. The lynx paused, and glanced up into a
tree, as if suddenly interested in the flittings of a black-and-white
woodpecker. The otter sniffed inquiringly at the ground, as if
discovering a new scent there. The trout seemed to be forgotten. It lay
glistening in a patch of sun; and a large blue-bottle alighted upon it.