CHAPTER I_Kings in Exile

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KINGS IN EXILE

* * * * * *

The MacMillan Company

New York · Boston · Chicago

Dallas · San Francisco

MacMillan & Co., Limited

London · Bombay · Calcutta

Melbourne

The MacMillan Co. Of Canada, Ltd.

Toronto

* * * * * *

[Illustration: "The Gray Master."]

KINGS IN EXILE

CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS

Author of "The Backwoodsmen," Etc.

Illustrated

New York

The MacMillan Company

1912

Publishing Co. (1908-1909), The Associated Sunday

Magazines (1908), The Red Book Magazine (1908).

By The MacMillan Company.

Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1910. Reprinted

June, 1910; July, December, 1912.

Norwood Press

J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Last Bull 1

The King of the Flaming Hoops 25

The Monarch of Park Barren 70

The Gray Master 107

The Sun-Gazer 140

The Lord of the Glass House 177

Back to the Water World 196

Lone Wolf 243

The Bear's Face 276

The Duel on the Trail 297

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

"The Gray Master." _Frontispiece_

"Last Bull, standing solitary and morose on a

little knoll in his pasture." 6

"Only to be hurled back again with a vigor that

brought him to his knees." 10

"When the grizzly saw her, his wicked little

dark eyes glowed suddenly red." 32

"Almost over his head, on a limb not six feet

distant, crouched, ready to spring, the biggest

puma he had ever seen." 64

"He reached the tree just in time to swing well

up among the branches." 72

"For perhaps thirty or forty yards the bull was

able to keep up this almost incredible pace." 90

"Then the second puma pounced." 134

"He launched himself on a long, splendid sweep

over the gulf." 144

"After this the eagle came regularly every three

or four hours with food for the prisoner." 160

"And the writhing tentacles composed themselves

once more to stillness upon the bottom, awaiting

the next careless passer-by." 176

"Without the slightest hesitation he whipped up

two writhing tentacles and seized him." 188

LAST BULL

That was what two grim old sachems of the Dacotahs had dubbed him; and

though his official title, on the lists of the Zoölogical Park, was

"Kaiser," the new and more significant name had promptly supplanted

it. The Park authorities--people of imagination and of sentiment, as

must all be who would deal successfully with wild animals--had felt at

once that the name aptly embodied the tragedies and the romantic

memories of his all-but-vanished race. They had felt, too, that the

two old braves who had been brought East to adorn a city pageant, and

who had stood gazing stoically for hours at the great bull buffalo

through the barrier of the steel-wire fence, were fitted, before all

others, to give him a name. Between him and them there was surely a

tragic bond, as they stood there islanded among the swelling tides of

civilization which had already engulfed their kindreds. "Last Bull"

they had called him, as he answered their gaze with little, sullen,

melancholy eyes from under his ponderous and shaggy front. "Last

Bull"--and the passing of his race was in the name.

Here, in his fenced, protected range, with a space of grassy meadow,

half a dozen clumps of sheltering trees, two hundred yards of the run

of a clear, unfailing brook, and a warm shed for refuge against the

winter storms, the giant buffalo ruled his little herd of three tawny

cows, two yearlings, and one blundering, butting calf of the season.

He was a magnificent specimen of his race--surpassing, it was said,

the finest bull in the Yellowstone preserves or in the guarded

Canadian herd of the North. Little short of twelve feet in length, a

good five foot ten in height at the tip of his humped and huge

fore-shoulders, he seemed to justify the most extravagant tales of

pioneer and huntsman. His hind-quarters were trim and fine-lined,

built apparently for speed, smooth-haired, and of a grayish

lion-color. But his fore-shoulders, mounting to an enormous hump, were

of an elephantine massiveness, and clothed in a dense, curling,

golden-brown growth of matted hair. His mighty head was carried low,

almost to the level of his knees, on a neck of colossal strength,

which was draped, together with the forelegs down to the knees, in a

flowing brown mane tipped with black. His head, too, to the very

muzzle, wore the same luxuriant and sombre drapery, out of which

curved viciously the keen-tipped crescent of his horns. Dark, huge,

and ominous, he looked curiously out of place in the secure and

familiar tranquillity of his green pasture.

For a distance of perhaps fifty yards, at the back of the pasture, the

range of the buffalo herd adjoined that of the moose, divided from it

by that same fence of heavy steel-wire mesh, supported by iron posts,

which surrounded the whole range. One sunny and tingling day in late

October--such a day as makes the blood race full red through all

healthy veins--a magnificent stranger was brought to the Park, and

turned into the moose-range.

The newcomer was a New Brunswick bull moose, captured on the Tobique

during the previous spring when the snow was deep and soft, and

purchased for the Park by one of the big Eastern lumber-merchants. The

moose-herd had consisted, hitherto, of four lonely cows, and the

splendid bull was a prize which the Park had long been coveting. He

took lordly possession, forthwith, of the submissive little herd, and

led them off at once from the curious crowds about the gate to explore

the wild-looking thickets at the back of the pasture. But no sooner

had he fairly entered these thickets than he found his further

progress barred by the steel-meshed fence. This was a bitter

disappointment, for he had expected to go striding through miles of

alder swamp and dark spruce woods, fleeing the hated world of men and

bondage, before setting himself to get acquainted with his new

followers. His high-strung temper was badly jarred. He drew off,

shaking his vast antlers, and went shambling with spacious stride down

along the barrier towards the brook. The four cows, in single file,

hurried after him anxiously, afraid he might be snatched away from

them.

Last Bull, standing solitary and morose on a little knoll in his

pasture, caught sight of the strange, dark figure of the running

moose. A spark leapt into his heavy eyes. He wheeled, pawed the sod,

put his muzzle to the ground, and bellowed a sonorous challenge. The

moose stopped short and stared about him, the stiff hair lifting

angrily along the ridge of his massive neck. Last Bull lowered his

head and tore up the sod with his horns.

[Illustration: "Last Bull, standing solitary and morose on a little knoll

in his pasture."]

This vehement action caught the eyes of the moose. At first he stared

in amazement, for he had never seen any creature that looked like Last

Bull. The two were only about fifty or sixty yards apart, across the

little valley of the bushy swamp. As he stared, his irritation

speedily overcame his amazement. The curious-looking creature over

there on the knoll was defying him, was challenging him. At this time

of year his blood was hot and quick for any challenge. He gave vent to

a short, harsh, explosive cry, more like a grumbling bleat than a

bellow, and as unlike the buffalo's challenge as could well be

imagined. Then he fell to thrashing the nearest bushes violently with

his antlers. This, for some reason unknown to the mere human

chronicler, seemed to be taken by Last Bull as a crowning insolence.

His long, tasselled tail went stiffly up into the air, and he charged

wrathfully down the knoll. The moose, with his heavy-muzzled head

stuck straight out scornfully before him, and his antlers laid flat

along his back, strode down to the encounter with a certain deadly

deliberation. He was going to fight. There was no doubt whatever on

that score. But he had not quite made up his wary mind as to how he

would deal with this unknown and novel adversary.

They looked not so unequally matched, these two, the monarch of the

Western plains, and the monarch of the northeastern forests. Both had

something of the monstrous, the uncouth, about them, as if they

belonged not to this modern day, but to some prehistoric epoch when

Earth moulded her children on more lavish and less graceful lines. The

moose was like the buffalo in having his hind-quarters relatively

slight and low, and his back sloping upwards to a hump over the

immensely developed fore-shoulders. But he had much less length of

body, and much less bulk, though perhaps eight or ten inches more of

height at the tip of the shoulder. His hair was short, and darker than

that of his shaggy rival, being almost black except on legs and belly.

Instead of carrying his head low, like the buffalo, for feeding on the

level prairies, he bore it high, being in the main a tree-feeder. But

the greatest difference between the two champions was in their heads

and horns. The antlers of the moose formed a huge, fantastic, flatly

palmated or leaflike structure, separating into sharp prongs along the

edges, and spreading more than four feet from tip to tip. To compare

them with the short, polished crescent of the horns of Last Bull was

like comparing a two-handed broadsword to a bowie-knife. And his head,

instead of being short, broad, ponderous, and shaggy, like Last

Bull's, was long, close-haired, and massively horse-faced, with a

projecting upper lip heavy and grim.

Had there been no impregnable steel barrier between them, it is hard

to say which would have triumphed in the end, the ponderous weight and

fury of Last Bull, or the ripping prongs and swift wrath of the moose.

The buffalo charged down the knoll at a thundering gallop; but just

before reaching the fence he checked himself violently. More than once

or twice before had those elastic but impenetrable meshes given him

his lesson, hurling him back with humiliating harshness when he dashed

his bulk against them. He had too lively a memory of past

discomfitures to risk a fresh one now in the face of this insolent

foe. His matted front came against the wire with a force so cunningly

moderated that he was not thrown back by the recoil. And the keen

points of his horns went through the meshes with a vehemence which

might indeed have done its work effectively had they come in contact

with the adversary. As it was, however, they but prodded empty air.

The moose, meanwhile, had been in doubt whether to attack with his

antlers, as was his manner when encountering foes of his own kind, or

with his knife-edged fore-hoofs, which were the weapons he used

against bears, wolves, or other alien adversaries. Finally he seemed

to make up his mind that Last Bull, having horns and a most

redoubtable stature, must be some kind of moose. In that case, of

course, it became a question of antlers. Moreover, in his meetings

with rival bulls it had never been his wont to depend upon a blind,

irresistible charge,--thereby leaving it open to an alert opponent to

slip aside and rip him along the flank,--but rather to fence warily

for an advantage in the locking of antlers, and then bear down his foe

by the fury and speed of his pushing. It so happened, therefore, that

he, too, came not too violently against the barrier. Loudly his vast

spread of antlers clashed upon the steel meshes; and one short prong,

jutting low over his brow, pierced through and furrowed deeply the

matted forehead of the buffalo.

As the blood streamed down over his nostrils, obscuring one eye, Last

Bull quite lost his head with rage. Drawing off, he hurled himself

blindly upon the barrier--only to be hurled back again with a vigor

that brought him to his knees. But at the same time the moose, on the

other side of the fence, got a huge surprise. Having his antlers

against the barrier when Last Bull charged, he was forced back

irresistibly upon his haunches, with a rudeness quite unlike anything

that he had ever before experienced. His massive neck felt as if a

pine tree had fallen upon it, and he came back to the charge quite

beside himself with bewilderment and rage.

[Illustration: "Only to be hurled back again with a vigor that brought

him to his knees."]

By this time, however, the keepers and Park attendants were arriving

on the scene, armed with pitchforks and other unpleasant executors of

authority. Snorting, and bellowing, and grunting, the monstrous

duellists were forced apart; and Last Bull, who had been taught

something of man's dominance, was driven off to his stable and

imprisoned. He was not let out again for two whole days. And by that

time another fence, parallel with the first and some five or six feet

distant from it, had been run up between his range and that of the

moose. Over this impassable zone of neutrality, for a few days, the

two rivals flung insult and futile defiance, till suddenly, becoming

tired of it all, they seemed to agree to ignore each other's

existence.

After this, Last Bull's sullenness of temper appeared to grow upon

him. He was fond of drawing apart from the little herd, and taking up

his solitary post on the knoll, where he would stand for an hour at a

time motionless except for the switching of his long tail, and

staring steadily westward as if he knew where the great past of his

race had lain. In that direction a dense grove of chestnuts, maples,

and oaks bounded the range, cutting off the view of the city roofs,

the roar of the city traffic. Beyond the city were mountains and wide

waters which he could not see; but beyond the waters and the mountains

stretched the green, illimitable plains--which perhaps (who knows?) in

some faint vision inherited from the ancestors whose myriads had

possessed them, his sombre eyes, in some strange way, _could_ see.

Among the keepers and attendants generally it was said, with anxious

regret, that perhaps Last Bull was "going bad." But the head-keeper,

Payne, himself a son of the plains, repudiated the idea. _He_ declared

sympathetically that the great bull was merely homesick, pining for

the wind-swept levels of the open country (God's country, Payne called

it!) which his imprisoned hoofs had never trodden.

Be this as it may, the fact could not be gainsaid that Last Bull was

growing more and more morose. The spectators, strolling along the wide

walk which skirted the front of his range, seemed to irritate him, and

sometimes, when a group had gathered to admire him, he would turn his

low-hung head and answer their staring eyes with a kind of heavy fury,

as if he burned to break forth upon them and seek vengeance for

incalculable wrongs. This smouldering indignation against humanity

extended equally, if not more violently, to all creatures who appeared

to him as servants or allies of humanity. The dogs whom he sometimes

saw passing, held in leash by their masters or mistresses, made him

paw the earth scornfully if he happened to be near the fence. The

patient horses who pulled the road-roller or the noisy lawn-mower made

his eyes redden savagely. And he hated with peculiar zest the roguish

little trick elephant, Bong, who would sometimes, his inquisitive

trunk swinging from side to side, go lurching lazily by with a load of

squealing children on his back.

Bong, who was a favored character, amiable and trustworthy, was

allowed the freedom of the Park in the early morning, before visitors

began to arrive who might be alarmed at seeing an elephant at large.

He was addicted to minding his own business, and never paid the

slightest attention to any occupants of cage or enclosure. He was

quite unaware of the hostility which he had aroused in the perverse

and brooding heart of Last Bull.

One crisp morning in late November, when all the grass in the Park had

been blackened by frost, and the pools were edged with silver rims of

ice, and mists were white and saffron about the scarce-risen sun, and

that autumn thrill was in the air which gives one such an appetite,

Bong chanced to be strolling past the front of Last Bull's range. He

did not see Last Bull, who was nothing to him. But, being just as

hungry as he ought to be on so stimulating a morning, he did see, and

note with interest, some bundles of fresh hay on the other side of the

fence.

Now, Bong was no thief. But hay had always seemed to him a free

largess, like grass and water, and this looked like very good hay. So

clear a conscience had he on the subject that he never thought of

glancing around to see if any of the attendants were looking.

Innocently he lurched up to the fence, reached his lithe trunk

through, gathered a neat wisp of the hay, and stuffed it happily into

his curious, narrow, pointed mouth. Yes, he had not been mistaken. It

was good hay. With great satisfaction he reached in for another

mouthful.

Last Bull, as it happened, was standing close by, but a little to one

side. He had been ignoring, so far, his morning ration. He was not

hungry. And, moreover, he rather disapproved of the hay because it had

the hostile man-smell strong upon it. Nevertheless, he recognized it

very clearly as his property, to be eaten when he should feel inclined

to eat it. His wrath, then, was only equalled by his amazement when he

saw the little elephant's presumptuous gray trunk reach in and coolly

help itself. For a moment he forgot to do anything whatever about it.

But when, a few seconds later, that long, curling trunk of Bong's

insinuated itself again and appropriated another bundle of the now

precious hay, the outraged owner bestirred himself. With a curt roar,

that was more of a cough or a grunt than a bellow, he lunged forward

and strove to pin the intruding trunk to the ground.

With startled alacrity Bong withdrew his trunk, but just in time to

save it from being mangled. For an instant he stood with the member

held high in air, bewildered by what seemed to him such a gratuitous

attack. Then his twinkling little eyes began to blaze, and he

trumpeted shrilly with anger. The next moment, reaching over the

fence, he brought down the trunk on Last Bull's hump with such a

terrible flail-like blow that the great buffalo stumbled forward upon

his knees.

He was up again in an instant and hurling himself madly against the

inexorable steel which separated him from his foe. Bong hesitated for

a second, then, reaching over the fence once more, clutched Last Bull

maliciously around the base of his horns and tried to twist his neck.

This enterprise, however, was too much even for the elephant's titanic

powers, for Last Bull's greatest strength lay in the muscles of his

ponderous and corded neck. Raving and bellowing, he plunged this way

and that, striving in vain to wrench himself free from that

incomprehensible, snake-like thing which had fastened upon him. Bong,

trumpeting savagely, braced himself with widespread pillars of legs,

and between them it seemed that the steel fence must go down under

such cataclysmic shocks as it was suffering. But the noisy violence of

the battle presently brought its own ending. An amused but angry squad

of attendants came up and stopped it, and Bong, who seemed plainly the

aggressor, was hustled off to his stall in deep disgrace.

Last Bull was humiliated. In this encounter things had happened which

he could in no way comprehend; and though, beyond an aching in neck

and shoulders, he felt none the worse physically, he had nevertheless

a sense of having been worsted, of having been treated with ignominy,

in spite of the fact that it was his foe, and not he, who had retired

from the field. For several days he wore a subdued air and kept about

meekly with his docile cows. Then his old, bitter moodiness reasserted

itself, and he resumed his solitary broodings on the crest of the

knoll.

When the winter storms came on, it had been Last Bull's custom to let

himself be housed luxuriously at nightfall, with the rest of the herd,

in the warm and ample buffalo-shed. But this winter he made such

difficulty about going in that at last Payne decreed that he should

have his own way and stay out. "It will do him no harm, and may cool

his peppery blood some!" had been the keeper's decision. So the door

was left open, and Last Bull entered or refrained, according to his

whim. It was noticed, however,--and this struck a chord of answering

sympathy in the plainsman's imaginative temperament,--that, though on

ordinary nights he might come in and stay with the herd under shelter,

on nights of driving storm, if the tempest blew from the west or

northwest, Last Bull was sure to be out on the naked knoll to face it.

When the fine sleet or stinging rain drove past him, filling his

nostrils with their cold, drenching his matted mane, and lashing his

narrowed eyes, what visions swept through his troubled,

half-comprehending brain, no one may know. But Payne, with

understanding born of sympathy and a common native soil, catching

sight of his dark bulk under the dark of the low sky, was wont to

declare that _he_ knew. He would say that Last Bull's eyes discerned,

black under the hurricane, but lit strangely with the flash of keen

horns and rolling eyes and frothed nostrils, the endless and

innumerable droves of the buffalo, with the plains wolf skulking on

their flanks, passing, passing, southward into the final dark. In the

roar of the wind, declared Payne, Last Bull, out there in the night,

listened to the trampling of all those vanished droves. And though the

other keepers insisted to each other, quite privately, that their

chief talked a lot of nonsense about "that there mean-tempered old

buffalo," they nevertheless came gradually to look upon Last Bull with

a kind of awe, and to regard his surly whims as privileged.

It chanced that winter that men were driving a railway tunnel beneath

a corner of the Park. The tunnel ran for a short distance under the

front of Last Bull's range, and passed close by the picturesque

cottage occupied by Payne and two of his assistants. At this point the

level of the Park was low, and the shell of earth was thin above the

tunnel roof.

There came a Sunday afternoon, after days of rain and penetrating

January thaw, when sun and air combined to cheat the earth with an

illusion of spring. The buds and the mould breathed of April, and gay

crowds flocked to the Park, to make the most of winter's temporary

repulse. Just when things were at their gayest, with children's voices

clamoring everywhere like starlings, and Bong, the little elephant,

swinging good-naturedly up the broad white track with all the load he

had room for on his back, there came an ominous jar and rumble, like

the first of an earthquake, which ran along the front of Last Bull's

range.

With sure instinct, Bong turned tail and fled with his young charges

away across the grassland. The crowds, hardly knowing what they fled

from, with screams and cries and blanched faces, followed the

elephant's example. A moment later and, with a muffled crash, all

along the front of the range, the earth sank into the tunnel, carrying

with it half a dozen panels of Last Bull's hated fence.

Almost in a moment the panic of the crowd subsided. Every one realized

just what had happened. Moreover, thanks to Bong's timely alarm, every

one had got out of the way in good season. All fear of earthquake

being removed, the crowd flocked back eagerly to stare down into the

wrecked tunnel, which formed now a sort of gaping, chaotic ditch, with

sides at some points precipitous and at others brokenly sloping. The

throng was noisy with excited interest and with relief at having

escaped so cleanly. The break had run just beneath one corner of the

keepers' cottage, tearing away a portion of the foundation and

wrenching the structure slightly aside without overthrowing it. Payne,

who had been in the midst of his Sunday toilet, came out upon his

twisted porch, half undressed and with a shaving-brush covered with

lather in his hand. He gave one look at the damage which had been

wrought, then plunged indoors again to throw his clothes on, at the

same time sounding the hurry call for the attendants in other quarters

of the Park.

Last Bull, who had been standing on his knoll, with his back to the

throngs, had wheeled in astonishment at the heavy sound of the

cave-in. For a few minutes he had stared sullenly, not grasping the

situation. Then very slowly it dawned on him that his prison walls

had fallen. Yes, surely, there at last lay his way to freedom, his

path to the great open spaces for which he dumbly and vaguely

hungered. With stately deliberation he marched down from his knoll to

investigate.

But presently another idea came into his slow mind. He saw the

clamorous crowds flocking back and ranging themselves along the edge

of the chasm. These were his enemies. They were coming to balk him. A

terrible madness surged through all his veins. He bellowed savage

warning and came thundering down the field, nose to earth, dark,

mountainous, irresistible.

The crowd yelled and shrank back. "He can't get across!" shouted some.

But others cried: "He can! He's coming! Save yourselves!" And with

shrieks they scattered wildly across the open, making for the kiosks,

the pavilions, the trees, anything that seemed to promise hiding or

shelter from that onrushing doom.

At the edge of the chasm--at this point forming not an actual drop,

but a broken slide--Last Bull hardly paused. He plunged down, rolled

over in the débris, struggled to his feet again instantly, and went

ploughing and snorting up the opposite steep. As his colossal front,

matted with mud, loomed up over the brink, his little eyes rolling

and flaming, and the froth flying from his red nostrils, he formed a

very nightmare of horror to those fugitives who dared to look behind

them.

Surmounting the brink, he paused. There were so many enemies, he knew

not which to pursue first. But straight ahead, in the very middle of

the open, and far from any shelter, he saw a huddled group of children

and nurses fleeing impotently and aimlessly. Shrill cries came from

the cluster, which danced with colors, scarlet and yellow and blue and

vivid pink. To the mad buffalo, these were the most conspicuous and

the loudest of his foes, and therefore the most dangerous. With a

bellow he flung his tail straight in the air, and charged after them.

An appalling hush fell, for a few heart-beats, all over the field.

Then from different quarters appeared uniformed attendants, racing and

shouting frantically to divert the bull's attention. From fleeing

groups black-coated men leapt forth, armed only with their

walking-sticks, and rushed desperately to defend the flock of

children, who now, in the extremity of their terror, were tumbling as

they ran. Some of the nurses were fleeing far in front, while others,

the faithful ones, with eyes starting from their heads, grabbed up

their little charges and struggled on under the burden.

Already Last Bull was halfway across the space which divided him from

his foes. The ground shook under his ponderous gallop. At this moment

Payne reappeared on the broken porch.

One glance showed him that no one was near enough to intervene. With a

face stern and sorrowful he lifted the deadly .405 Winchester which he

had brought out with him. The spot he covered was just behind Last

Bull's mighty shoulder.

The smokeless powder spoke with a small, venomous report, unlike the

black powder's noisy reverberation. Last Bull stumbled. But recovering

himself instantly, he rushed on. He was hurt, and he felt it was those

fleeing foes who had done it. A shade of perplexity darkened Payne's

face. He fired again. This time his aim was true. The heavy expanding

bullet tore straight through bone and muscle and heart, and Last Bull

lurched forward upon his head, ploughing up the turf for yards. As his

mad eyes softened and filmed, he saw once more, perhaps,--or so the

heavy-hearted keeper who had slain him would have us believe,--the

shadowy plains unrolling under the wild sky, and the hosts of his

vanished kindred drifting past into the dark.

THE KING OF THE FLAMING HOOPS

CHAPTER I

The white, scarred face of the mountain looked straight east, over a

vast basin of tumbled, lesser hills, dim black forests, and steel-blue

loops of a far-winding water. Here and there long, level strata of

pallid mist seemed to support themselves on the tree-tops, their edges

fading off into the startling transparency that comes upon the air

with the first of dawn. But that was in the lower world. Up on the

solitary summit of White Face the daybreak had arrived. The jagged

crest of the peak shot sudden radiances of flame-crimson, then bathed

itself in a flow of rose-pinks and thin, indescribable reds and

pulsating golds. Swiftly, as the far horizon leapt into blaze, the

aërial flood spread down the mountain-face, revealing and

transforming. It reached the mouth of a cave on a narrow ledge. As the

splendor poured into the dark opening, a tawny shape, long and lithe

and sinewy, came padding forth, noiseless as itself, as if to meet

and challenge it.

Half emerging from the entrance upon the high rock-platform which

formed its threshold, the puma halted, head uplifted and forepaws

planted squarely to the front. With wide, palely bright eyes she

stared out across the tremendous and mysterious landscape. As the

colored glory rushed down the mountain, rolling back the blue-gray

transparency of shadow, those inscrutable eyes swept every suddenly

revealed glade, knoll, and waterside where deer or elk might by chance

be pasturing.

She was a magnificent beast, this puma, massive of head and shoulder

almost as a lioness, and in her calm scrutiny of the spaces unrolling

before her gaze was a certain air of overlordship, as if her supremacy

had gone long unquestioned. Suddenly, however, her attitude changed.

Her eyes narrowed, her mighty muscles drew themselves together like

springs being upcoiled, she half crouched, and her head turned sharply

to the left, listening. Far down the narrow ledge which afforded the

trail to her den she had caught the sound of something approaching.

As she listened, she crouched lower and lower, and her eyes began to

burn with a thin, green flame. Her ears would flatten back savagely,

then lift themselves again to interrogate the approaching sounds. Her

anger at the intrusion upon her private domain was mixed with some

apprehension, for behind her, in a warm corner of the den, curled up

in a soft and furry ball like kittens, were her two sleeping cubs.

Her trail being well marked and with her scent strong upon it, she

knew it could be no ignorant blunderer that drew near. It was plainly

an enemy, and an arrogant enemy, since it made no attempt at stealth.

The steps were not those of any hunter, white man or Indian, of that

she presently assured herself. With this assurance, her anxiety

diminished and her anger increased. Her tail, long and thick, doubled

in thickness and began to jerk sharply from side to side. Crouching to

the belly, she crept all the way out upon the ledge and peered

cautiously around a jutting shoulder of rock.

The intruder was not yet in sight, because the front of White Face,

though apparently a sheer and awful precipice when viewed from the

valley, was in fact wrinkled with gullies and buttresses and bucklings

of the tortured strata. But the sound of his coming was now quite

intelligible to her. That softly ponderous tread, that careless

displacing of stones, those undisguised sniffings and mumblings could

come only from a bear, and a bear frankly looking for trouble. Well,

he was going to find what he was looking for. With an antagonism

handed down to her by a thousand ancestors, the great puma hated

bears.

Many miles north of White Face, on the other side of that ragged

mountain-ridge to which he formed an isolated and towering outpost,

there was a fertile valley which had just been invaded by settlers. On

every hand awoke the sharp barking of the axe. Rifle-shots startled

the echoes. Masterful voices and confident human laughter filled all

the wild inhabitants with wonder and dismay. The undisputed lord of

the range was an old silver-tip grizzly, of great size and evil

temper. Furious at the unexpected trespass on his sovereignty, yet

well aware of his powerlessness against the human creature that could

strike from very far off with lightning and thunder, he had made up

his mind at once to withdraw to some remoter range. Nevertheless, he

had lingered for some days, sullenly expecting he knew not what. These

formless expectations were most unpleasantly fulfilled when he came

upon a man in a canoe paddling close in by the steep shore of the

lake. He had hurled himself blindly down the bank, raging for

vengeance, but when he reached the water's edge, the man was far out

of reach. Then, while he stood there wavering, half minded to swim in

pursuit, the man had spoken with the lightning and the thunder, after

the terrifying fashion of his kind. The bear had felt himself stung

near the tip of the shoulder, as if by a million wasps at once, and

the fiery anguish had brought him to his senses.

It was no use trying to fight man, so he had dashed away into the

thickets, and not halted till he had put miles between himself and the

inexplicable enemy.

For two days, with occasional stops to forage or to sleep, the angry

grizzly had travelled southward, heading towards the lonely peak of

White Face. As the distance from his old haunts increased, his fears

diminished; but his anger grew under the ceaseless fretting of that

wound on his neck just where he could not reach to lick and soothe it.

The flies, however, could reach it very well, and did. As a

consequence, by the time he reached the upper slopes of White Face, he

was in a mood to fight anything. He would have charged a regiment, had

he suddenly found one in his path.

When he turned up a stone for the grubs, beetles, and scorpions which

lurked beneath it, he would send it flying with a savage sweep of his

paw. When he caught a rabbit, he smashed it flat in sheer fury, as if

he cared more to mangle than to eat.

At last he stumbled upon the trail of a puma. As he sniffed at it, he

became, if possible, more angry than ever. Pumas he had always hated.

He had never had a chance to satisfy his grudge, for never had one

dared to face his charge; but they had often snarled down defiance at

him from some limb of oak or pine beyond his reach. He flung himself

forward upon the trail with vengeful ardor. When he realized, from the

fact that it was a much-used trail and led up among the barren rocks,

that it was none other than the trail to the puma's lair, his

satisfaction increased. He would be sure to find either the puma at

home or the puma's young unguarded.

[Illustration: "When the grizzly saw her, his wicked little dark eyes

glowed suddenly red."]

When the puma, at last, saw him emerge around a curve of the trail,

and noted his enormous stature, she gave one longing, wistful look

back over her shoulder to the shadowed nook wherein her cubs lay

sleeping. Had there been any chance to get them both safely away, she

would have shirked the fight, for their sakes. But she could not carry

them both in her mouth at once up the face of the mountain. She would

not desert either one. She hesitated a moment, as if doubtful whether

or not to await attack in the mouth of the cave. Then she crept

farther out, where the ledge was not three feet wide, and crouched

flat, silent, watchful, rigid, in the middle of the trail.

When the grizzly saw her, his wicked little dark eyes glowed suddenly

red, and he came up with a lumbering rush. With his gigantic, furry

bulk, it looked as if he must instantly annihilate the slim, light

creature that opposed him. It was a dreadful place to give battle, on

that straight shelf of rock overhanging a sheer drop of perhaps a

thousand feet. But scorn and rage together blinded the sagacity of the

bear. With a grunt he charged.

Not until he was within ten feet of her did the crouching puma stir.

Then she shot into the air, as if hurled up by the release of a mighty

spring. Quick as a flash the grizzly shrank backward upon his haunches

and swept up a huge black paw to parry the assault. But he was not

quite quick enough. The puma's spring overreached his guard. She

landed fairly upon his back, facing his tail; but in the fraction of

a second she had whirled about and was tearing at his throat with

teeth and claws, while the terrible talons of her hinder paws ripped

at his flanks.

With a roar of pain and amazement the grizzly struggled to shake her

off, clutching and striking at her with paws that at one blow could

smash in the skull of the most powerful bull. But he could not reach

her. Then he reared up, and threw himself backwards against the face

of the rock, striving to crush her under his enormous weight. And in

this he almost succeeded. Just in time, she writhed around and

outward, but not quite far enough, for one paw was caught and ground

to a pulp. But at the next instant, thrust back from the rock by his

own effort, the bear toppled outward over the brink of the shelf.

Grappling madly to save himself, he caught only the bowed loins of the

puma, who now sank her teeth once more into his throat, while her

rending claws seemed to tear him everywhere at once. He crushed her in

his grip; and in a dreadful ball of screeching, roaring, biting,

mangling rage the two plunged downward into the dim abyss. Once, still

locked in the death-grip, they struck upon a jutting rock, and bounded

far out into space. Then, as the ball rolled over in falling, it came

apart; and separated now, though still very close together, the two

bodies fell sprawlingly, and vanished into the blue-shadowed deeps

which the dawn had not yet reached.

Upon this sudden and terrible ending of the fight appeared a bearded

frontiersman who had been trailing the grizzly for half an hour and

waiting for light enough to secure a sure shot. With something like

awe in his face he came, and knelt down, with hands gripping

cautiously, and peered over the dreadful brink. "Gee! But that there

cat was game!" he muttered, drawing back and sweeping a comprehensive

gaze across the stupendous landscape, as if challenging denial of his

statement. Obviously the silences were of the same opinion, for there

came no suggestion of dissent. Carefully he rose to his feet and

pressed on towards the cave.

Without hesitation he entered, for he knew that the puma's mate some

weeks before had been shot, far down in the valley. He found the

kittens asleep and began to fondle them. At his touch, and the smell

of him, they awoke, spitting and clawing with all their mother's

courage. Young as they were, their claws drew blood abundantly.

"Gritty little devils!" growled the man good-naturedly, snatching

back his hand and wiping the blood on his trouser-leg. Then he took

off his coat, threw it over the troublesome youngsters, rolled them in

it securely, so that not one protesting claw could get out, and

started back to the camp with the grumbling and uneasy bundle in his

arms.

Three months later, the two puma cubs, sleek, fat, full of gayety as

two kittens of like age, and convinced by this time that man was the

source and origin of all good things, were sold to a travelling

collector. One, the female, was sent down to a zoölogical garden on

the Pacific coast. The other, the male, much the larger and at the

same time the more even-tempered and amenable to teaching, found its

way to the cages of an animal-trainer in the East.

CHAPTER II

"King's kind of ugly to-night, seems to me; better keep yer eyes

peeled!" said Andy Hansen, the assistant trainer, the big,

yellow-haired Swede who knew not fear. Neither did he know impatience

or irritability; and so all the animals, as a rule, were on their good

behavior under his calm, masterful, blue eye. Yet he was tactful with

the beasts, and given to humoring their moods as far as convenient

without ever letting them guess it.

"Oh, you go chase yourself, Andy!" replied Signor Tomaso, the trainer,

with a strong New England accent. "If I got to look out for King, I'd

better quit the business. Don't you go trying to make trouble between

friends, Andy."

"Of course, Bill, I know he'd never try to maul _you_," explained

Hansen seriously, determined that he should not be misunderstood in

the smallest particular. "But he's acting curious. Look out he don't

get into a scrap with some of the other animals."

"I reckon I kin keep 'em all straight," answered the trainer dryly, as

he turned away to get ready for the great performance which the

audience, dimly heard beyond the canvas walls, was breathlessly

awaiting.

The trainer's name was William Sparks, and his birthplace Big

Chebeague, Maine; but his lean, swarthy face and piercing, green-brown

eyes, combined with the craving of his audiences for a touch of the

romantic, had led him to adopt the more sonorous pseudonym of "Signor

Tomaso." He maintained that if he went under his own name, nobody

would ever believe that what he did could be anything wonderful.

Except for this trifling matter of the name, there was no fake about

Signor Tomaso. He was a brilliant animal-trainer, as unacquainted with

fear as the Swede, as dominant of eye, and of immeasurably greater

experience. But being, at the same time, more emotional, more

temperamental than his phlegmatic assistant, his control was sometimes

less steady, and now and again he would have to assert his authority

with violence. He was keenly alive to the varying personalities of his

beasts, naturally, and hence had favorites among them. His especial

favorite, who heartily reciprocated the attachment, was the great

puma, King, the most intelligent and amiable of all the wild animals

that had ever come under his training whip.

As Hansen's success with the animals, during the few months of his

experience as assistant, had been altogether phenomenal, his chief

felt a qualm of pique upon being warned against the big puma. He had

too just an appreciation of Hansen's judgment, however, to quite

disregard the warning, and he turned it over curiously in his mind as

he went to his dressing-room. Emerging a few minutes later in the

black-and-white of faultless evening dress, without a speck on his

varnished shoes, he moved down along the front of the cages,

addressing to the occupant of each, as he passed, a sharp,

authoritative word which brought it to attention.

With the strange, savage smell of the cages in his nostrils, that

bitter, acrid pungency to which his senses never grew blunted, a new

spirit of understanding was wont to enter Tomaso's brain. He would

feel a sudden kinship with the wild creatures, such a direct and

instant comprehension as almost justified his fancy that in some

previous existence he had himself been a wild man of the jungle and

spoken in their tongue. As he looked keenly into each cage, he knew

that the animal whose eyes for that moment met his was in untroubled

mood. This, till he came to the cage containing the latest addition to

his troupe, a large cinnamon bear, which was rocking restlessly to

and fro and grumbling to itself. The bear was one which had been long

in captivity and well trained. Tomaso had found him docile, and clever

enough to be admitted at once to the performing troupe. But to-night

the beast's eyes were red with some ill-humor. Twice the trainer spoke

to him before he heeded; but then he assumed instantly an air of

mildest subservience. The expression of a new-weaned puppy is not more

innocently mild than the look which a bear can assume when it so

desires.

"Ah, ha! old sport! So it's you that's got a grouch on to-night; I'll

keep an eye on you!" he muttered to himself. He snapped his heavy whip

once, and the bear obediently sat up on its haunches, its great paws

hanging meekly. Tomaso looked it sharply in the eye. "Don't forget,

now, and get funny!" he admonished. Then he returned to the first

cage, which contained the puma, and went up close to the bars. The

great cat came and rubbed against him, purring harshly.

"There ain't nothing the matter with _you_, boy, I reckon," said

Tomaso, scratching him affectionately behind the ears. "Andy must have

wheels in his head if he thinks I've got to keep my eyes peeled on

_your_ account."

Out beyond the iron-grilled passage, beyond the lighted canvas walls,

the sharp, metallic noises of the workmen setting up the great

performing-cage came to a stop. There was a burst of music from the

orchestra. That, too, ceased. The restless hum of the unseen masses

around the arena died away into an expectant hush. It was time to go

on. At the farther end of the passage, by the closed door leading to

the performing cage, Hansen appeared. Tomaso opened the puma's cage.

King dropped out with a soft thud of his great paws, and padded

swiftly down the passage, his master following. Hansen slid wide the

door, admitting a glare of light, a vast, intense rustle of

excitement; and King marched majestically out into it, eying calmly

the tier on climbing tier of eager faces. It was his customary

privilege, this, to make the entrance alone, a good half minute ahead

of the rest of the troupe; and he seemed to value it. Halfway around

the big cage he walked, then mounted his pedestal, sat up very

straight, and stared blandly at the audience. A salvo of clapping ran

smartly round the tiers--King's usual tribute, which he had so learned

to expect that any failure of it would have dispirited him for the

whole performance.

Signor Tomaso had taken his stand, whip in hand, just inside the cage,

with Hansen opposite him, to see that the animals, on entry, went each

straight to his own bench or pedestal. Any mistake in this connection

was sure to lead to trouble, each beast being almost childishly

jealous of its rights. Inside the long passage an attendant was

opening one cage after another; and in a second more the animals began

to appear in procession, filing out between the immaculate Signor and

the roughly clad Swede. First came a majestic white Angora goat,

carrying high his horned and bearded head, and stepping most daintily

upon slim, black hoofs. Close behind, and looking just ready to pounce

upon him but for dread of the Signor's eye, came slinking stealthily a

spotted black-and-yellow leopard, ears back and tail twitching. He

seemed ripe for mischief, as he climbed reluctantly on to his pedestal

beside the goat; but he knew better than to even bare a claw. And as

for the white goat, with his big golden eyes superciliously half

closed, he ignored his dangerous neighbor completely, while his jaws

chewed nonchalantly on a bit of brown shoe-lace which he had picked up

in the passage.

Close behind the leopard came a bored-looking lion, who marched with

listless dignity straight to his place. Then another lion, who paused

in the doorway and looked out doubtfully, blinking with distaste at

the strong light. Tomaso spoke sharply, like the snap of his whip,

whereupon the lion ran forward in haste. But he seemed to have

forgotten which was his proper pedestal, for he hopped upon the three

nearest in turn, only to hop down again with apologetic alacrity at

the order of the cracking whip. At last, obviously flustered, he

reached a pedestal on which he was allowed to remain. Here he sat,

blinking from side to side and apparently much mortified.

The lion was followed by a running wolf, who had shown his teeth

savagely when the lion, for a moment, trespassed upon his pedestal.

This beast was intensely interested in the audience, and, as soon as

he was in his place, turned his head and glared with green, narrowed

eyes at the nearest spectators, as if trying to stare them out of

countenance. After the wolf come a beautiful Bengal tiger, its

black-and-golden stripes shining as if they had been oiled. He glided

straight to his stand, sniffed at it superciliously, and then lay down

before it. The whip snapped sharply three times, but the tiger only

shut his eyes tight. The audience grew hushed. Tomaso ran forward,

seized the beast by the back of the neck, and shook him roughly.

Whereupon the tiger half rose, opened his great red mouth like a

cavern, and roared in his master's face. The audience thrilled from

corner to corner, and a few cries came from frightened women.

The trainer paused for an instant, to give full effect to the

situation. Then, stooping suddenly, he lifted the tiger's

hind-quarters and deposited them firmly on the pedestal, and left him

in that awkward position.

"There," he said in a loud voice, "that's all the help you'll get from

me!"

The audience roared with instant and delighted appreciation. The tiger

gathered up the rest of himself upon his pedestal, wiped his face with

his paw, like a cat, and settled down complacently with a pleased

assurance that he had done the trick well.

At this moment the attention of the audience was drawn to the

entrance, where there seemed to be some hitch. Tomaso snapped his whip

sharply, and shouted savage orders, but nothing came forth. Then the

big Swede, with an agitated air, snatched up the trainer's pitchfork,

which stood close at hand in case of emergency, made swift passes at

the empty doorway, and jumped back. The audience was lifted fairly to

its feet with excitement. What monster could it be that was giving so

much trouble? The next moment, while Tomaso's whip hissed in vicious

circles over his head, a plump little drab-colored pug-dog marched

slowly out upon the stage, its head held arrogantly aloft. Volleys of

laughter crackled around the arena, and the delighted spectators

settled, tittering, back into their seats.

The pug glanced searchingly around the cage, then selecting the

biggest of the lions as a worthy antagonist, flew at his pedestal,

barking furious challenge. The lion glanced down at him, looked bored

at the noise, and yawned. Apparently disappointed, the pug turned away

and sought another adversary. He saw King's big tail hanging down

beside his pedestal. Flinging himself upon it, he began to worry it as

if it were a rat. The next moment the tail threshed vigorously, and

the pug went rolling end over end across the stage.

Picking himself up and shaking the sawdust from his coat, the pug

growled savagely and curled his little tail into a tighter screw.

Bristling with wrath, he tiptoed menacingly back toward the puma's

pedestal, determined to wipe out the indignity. This time his

challenge was accepted. Tomaso's whip snapped, but the audience was

too intent to hear it. The great puma slipped down from his pedestal,

ran forward a few steps, and crouched.

With a shrill snarl the pug rushed in. At the same instant the puma

sprang, making a splendid tawny curve through the air, and alighted

ten feet behind his antagonist's tail. There he wheeled like lightning

and crouched. But the pug, enraged at being balked of his vengeance,

had also wheeled, and charged again in the same half second. In the

next, he had the puma by the throat. With a dreadful screech the great

beast rolled over on his side and stiffened out his legs. The pug drew

off, eyed him critically to make sure that he was quite dead, then

ran, barking shrill triumph, to take possession of the victim's place.

Then the whip cracked once more. Whereupon the puma got up, trotted

back to his pedestal, mounted it, and tucked the pug protectingly away

between his great forepaws.

The applause had not quite died away when a towering, sandy-brown bulk

appeared in the entrance to the cage. Erect upon its hind legs, and

with a musket on its shoulder, it marched ponderously and slowly

around the circle, eying each of the sitting beasts--except the

wolf--suspiciously as it passed. The watchful eyes of both Signor

Tomaso and Hansen noted that it gave wider berth to the puma than to

any of the others, and also that the puma's ears, at the moment, were

ominously flattened. Instantly the long whip snapped its terse

admonition to good manners. Nothing happened, except that the pug,

from between the puma's legs, barked insolently. The sandy-brown bulk

reached its allotted pedestal,--which was quite absurdly too small for

it to mount,--dropped the musket with a clatter, fell upon all fours

with a loud _whoof_ of relief, and relapsed into a bear.

The stage now set to his satisfaction, Signor Tomaso advanced to the

centre of it. He snapped his whip, and uttered a sharp cry which the

audience doubtless took for purest Italian. Immediately the animals

all descended from their pedestals, and circled solemnly around him in

a series of more or less intricate evolutions, all except the bear,

who, not having yet been initiated into this beast quadrille, kept his

place and looked scornful. At another signal the evolutions ceased,

and all the beasts, except one of the lions, hurried back to their

places. The lion, with the bashful air of a boy who gets up to "speak

his piece" at a school examination, lingered in the middle of the

stage. A rope was brought. The Swede took one end of it, the

attendant who had brought it took the other, and between them they

began to swing it, very slowly, as a great skipping-rope. At an

energetic command from Signor Tomaso the lion slipped into the

swinging circle, and began to skip in a ponderous and shamefaced

fashion. The house thundered applause. For perhaps half a minute the

strange performance continued, the whip snapping rhythmically with

every descent of the rope. Then all at once, as if he simply could not

endure it for another second, the lion bolted, head down, clambered

upon his pedestal, and shut his eyes hard as if expecting a whipping.

But as nothing happened except a roar of laughter from the seats, he

opened them again and glanced from side to side complacently, as if to

say, "Didn't I get out of that neatly?"

The next act was a feat of teetering. A broad and massive teeter-board

was brought in, and balanced across a support about two feet high. The

sulky leopard, at a sign from Tomaso, slouched up to it, pulled one

end to the ground, and mounted. At the centre he balanced cautiously

for a moment till it tipped, then crept on to the other end, and

crouched there, holding it down as if his very life depended on it.

Immediately the white goat dropped from his pedestal, minced daintily

over, skipped up upon the centre of the board, and mounted to the

elevated end. His weight was not sufficient to lift, or even to

disturb, the leopard, who kept the other end anchored securely. But

the goat seemed to like his high and conspicuous position, for he

maintained it with composure and stared around with great

condescension upon the other beasts.

The goat having been given time to demonstrate his unfitness for the

task he had undertaken, Tomaso's whip cracked again. Instantly King

descended from his pedestal, ran over to the teeter-board, and mounted

it at the centre. The goat, unwilling to be dispossessed of his high

place, stamped and butted at him indignantly, but with one scornful

sweep of his great paw the puma brushed him off to the sawdust, and

took his place at the end of the board. Snarling and clutching at the

cleats, the leopard was hoisted into the air, heavily outweighed. The

crowd applauded; but the performance, obviously, was not yet perfect.

Now came the white goat's opportunity. He hesitated a moment, till he

heard a word from Tomaso. Then he sprang once more upon the centre of

the board, faced King, and backed up inch by inch towards the leopard

till the latter began to descend. At this point of balance the white

goat had one forefoot just on the pivot of the board. With a dainty,

dancing motion, and a proud tossing of his head, he now threw his

weight slowly backward and forward. The great teeter worked to

perfection. Signor Tomaso was kept bowing to round after round of

applause while the leopard, the goat, and King returned proudly to

their places.

After this, four of the red-and-yellow uniformed attendants ran in,

each carrying a large hoop. They stationed themselves at equal

distances around the circumference of the cage, holding the hoops out

before them at a height of about four feet from the ground. At the

command of Tomaso, the animals all formed in procession--though not

without much cracking of the whip and vehement command--and went

leaping one after the other through the hoops--all except the pug, who

tried in vain to jump so high, and the bear, who, not knowing how to

jump at all, simply marched around and pretended not to see that the

hoops were there. Then four other hoops, covered with white paper,

were brought in, and head first through them the puma led the way.

When it came to the bear's turn, the whip cracked a special signal.

Whereupon, instead of ignoring the hoop as he had done before, he

stuck his head through it and marched off with it hanging on his neck.

All four hoops he gathered up in this way, and, retiring with them to

his place, stood shuffling restlessly and grunting with impatience

until he was relieved of the awkward burden.

A moment later four more hoops were handed to the attendants. They

looked like the first lot; but the attendants took them with hooked

handles of iron and held them out at arm's length. Touched with a

match, they burst instantly into leaping yellow flames; whereupon all

the beasts, except King, stirred uneasily on their pedestals. The whip

snapped with emphasis; and all the beasts--except King, who sat eying

the flames tranquilly, and the bear, who whined his disapproval, but

knew that he was not expected to take part in this act--formed again

in procession, and ran at the flaming hoops as if to jump through them

as before. But each, on arriving at a hoop, crouched flat and scurried

under it like a frightened cat--except the white goat, which pranced

aside and capered past derisively. Pretending to be much disappointed

in them, Signor Tomaso ordered them all back to their places, and,

folding his arms, stood with his head lowered as if wondering what to

do about it. Upon this, King descended proudly from his pedestal and

approached the blazing terrors. With easiest grace and nonchalance he

lifted his lithe body, and went bounding lightly through the hoops,

one after the other. The audience stormed its applause. Twice around

this terrifying circuit he went, as indifferent to the writhing flames

as if they had been so much grass waving in the wind. Then he stopped

abruptly, turned his head, and looked at Tomaso in expectation. The

latter came up, fondled his ears, and assured him that he had done

wonders. Then King returned to his place, elation bristling in his

whiskers.

While the flaming hoops were being rushed from the ring and the

audience was settling down again to the quiet of unlimited

expectation, a particularly elaborate act was being prepared. A

massive wooden stand, with shelves and seats at various heights, was

brought in. Signor Tomaso, coiling the lash of his whip and holding

the heavy handle, with its loaded butt, as a sceptre, took his place

on a somewhat raised seat at the centre of the frame. Hansen, with his

pitchfork in one hand and a whip like Tomaso's in the other, drew

nearer; and the audience, with a thrill, realized that something more

than ordinarily dangerous was on the cards. The tiger came and

stretched itself at full length before Tomaso, who at once

appropriated him as a footstool. The bear and the biggest of the lions

posted themselves on either side of their master, rearing up like the

armorial supporters of some illustrious escutcheon, and resting their

mighty forepaws apparently on their master's shoulders, though in

reality on two narrow little shelves placed there for the purpose.

Another lion came and laid his huge head on Tomaso's knees, as if

doing obeisance. By this time all the other animals were prowling

about the stand, peering this way and that, as if trying to remember

their places; and the big Swede was cracking his whip briskly, with

curt, deep-toned commands, to sharpen up their memories. Only King

seemed quite clear as to what he had to do--which was to lay his tawny

body along the shelf immediately over the heads of the lion and the

bear; but as he mounted the stand from the rear, his ears went back

and he showed a curious reluctance to fulfil his part. Hansen's keen

eyes noted this at once, and his whip snapped emphatically in the air

just above the great puma's nose. Still King hesitated. The lion paid

no attention whatever, but the bear glanced up with reddening eyes and

a surly wagging of his head. It was all a slight matter, too slight to

catch the eye or the uncomprehending thoughts of the audience. But a

grave, well-dressed man, with copper-colored face, high cheek-bones

and straight, coal-black hair, who sat close to the front, turned to a

companion and said:--

"Those men are good trainers, but they don't know everything about

pumas. _We_ know that there is a hereditary feud between the pumas and

the bears, and that when they come together there's apt to be

trouble."

The speaker was a full-blooded Sioux, and a graduate of one of the big

Eastern universities. He leaned forward with a curious fire in his

deep-set, piercing eyes, as King, unwillingly obeying the mandates of

the whip, dropped down and stretched out upon his shelf, his nervous

forepaws not more than a foot above the bear's head. His nostrils were

twitching as if they smelled something unutterably distasteful, and

his thick tail looked twice its usual size. The Sioux, who, alone of

all present, understood these signs, laid an involuntary hand of

warning upon his companion's knee.

Just what positions the other animals were about to take will never be

known. King's sinews tightened. "Ha-ow!" grunted the Sioux, reverting

in his excitement to his ancient utterance. There was a lightning

sweep of King's paw, a shout from Hansen, a _wah_ of surprise and

pain from the bear. King leaped back to the top of the stand to avoid

the expected counter-stroke. But not against him did the bear's rage

turn. The maddened beast seemed to conclude that his master had

betrayed him. With a roar he struck at Tomaso with the full force of

his terrible forearm. Tomaso was in the very act of leaping forward

from his seat, when the blow caught him full on the shoulder,

shattering the bones, ripping the whole side out of his coat, and

hurling him senseless to the floor.

The change in the scene was instantaneous and appalling. Most of the

animals, startled, and dreading immediate punishment, darted for their

pedestals,--_any_ pedestals that they found within reach,--and fought

savagely for the possession of the first they came to. The bear fell

furiously upon the body of Tomaso. Cries and shrieks arose from the

spectators. Hansen rushed to the rescue, his fork clutched in both

hands. Attendants, armed with forks or iron bars, seemed to spring up

from nowhere. But before any one could reach the spot, an appalling

screech tore across the uproar, and King's yellow body, launched from

the top of the stand, fell like a thunderbolt upon the bear's back.

The shock rolled the bear clean over. While he was clawing about

wildly, in the effort to grapple with his assailant, Hansen dragged

aside the still unconscious Tomaso, and two attendants carried him

hurriedly from the stage.

Audience and stage alike were now in a sort of frenzy. Animals were

fighting here and there in tangled groups; but for the moment all eyes

were riveted on the deadly struggle which occupied the centre of the

stage.

For all that he had less than a quarter the weight and nothing like a

quarter the bulk of his gigantic adversary, the puma, through the

advantage of his attack, was having much the best of the fight. Hansen

had no time for sentiment, no time to concern himself as to whether

his chief was dead or alive. His business was to save valuable

property by preventing the beasts from destroying each other. It

mattered not to him, now, that King had come so effectively to

Tomaso's rescue. Prodding him mercilessly with his fork, and raining

savage blows upon his head, he strove, in a cold rage, to drive him

off; but in vain. But other keepers, meanwhile, had run in with ropes

and iron bars. A few moments more and both combatants were securely

lassoed. Then they were torn apart by main force, streaming with

blood. Blinded by blankets thrown over their heads, and hammered into

something like subjection, they were dragged off at a rush and slammed

unceremoniously into their dens. With them out of the way, it was a

quick matter to dispose of the other fights, though not till after the

white goat had been killed to satisfy that ancient grudge of the

leopard's, and the wolf had been cruelly mauled for having refused to

give up his pedestal to one of the excited lions. Only the pug had

come off unscathed, having had the presence of mind to dart under the

foundations of the frame at the first sign of trouble, and stay there.

When all the other animals had been brought to their senses and driven

off, one by one, to their cages, he came forth from his hiding and

followed dejectedly, the curl quite taken out of his confident tail.

Then word went round among the spectators that Tomaso was not

dead--that, though badly injured, he would recover; and straightway

they calmed down, with a complacent sense of having got the value of

their money. The great cage was taken apart and carried off. The stage

was speedily transformed. And two trick comedians, with slippers that

flapped a foot beyond their toes, undertook to wipe out the memory of

what had happened.

CHAPTER III

The show was touring the larger towns of the Northwest. On the

following day it started, leaving Tomaso behind in hospital, with a

shattered shoulder and bitter wrath in his heart. At the next town,

Hansen took Tomaso's place, but, for two reasons, with a sadly maimed

performance. He had not yet acquired sufficient control of the animals

to dare all Tomaso's acts; and the troupe was lacking some of its most

important performers. The proud white goat was dead. The bear, the

wolf, and one of the lions were laid up with their wounds. And as for

the great puma, though _he_ had come off with comparatively little

hurt, his temper had apparently been quite transformed. Hansen could

do nothing with him. Whether it was that he was sick for Tomaso, whom

he adored, or that he stewed in a black rage over the blows and

pitchforkings, hitherto unknown to him, no one could surely say. He

would do nothing but crouch, brooding, sullen and dangerous, at the

back of his cage. Hansen noted the green light flickering fitfully

across his pale, wide eyes, and prudently refrained from pressing

matters.

He was right. For, as a matter of fact, it was against the big Swede

exclusively, and not against man in general, that King was nursing his

grudge. In a dim way it had got into his brain that Hansen had taken

sides with the bear against him and Tomaso, and he thirsted for

vengeance. At the same time, he felt that Tomaso had deserted him. Day

by day, as he brooded, the desire for escape--a desire which he had

never known before--grew in his heart. Vaguely, perhaps, he dreamed

that he would go and find Tomaso. At any rate, he would go--somewhere,

anywhere, away from this world which had turned unfriendly to him.

When this feeling grew dominant, he would rise suddenly and go

prowling swiftly up and down behind the bars of his cage like a wild

creature just caught.

Curiously enough--for it is seldom indeed that Fate responds to the

longing of such exiles from the wild--his opportunity came. Late at

night the show reached a little town among the foothills. The train

had been delayed for hours. The night was dark. Everything was in

confusion, and all nerves on edge. The short road from the station to

the field where the tents were to be set up was in bad repair, or had

never been really a road. It ran along the edge of a steep gully. In

the darkness one wheel of the van containing King's cage dropped to

the hub into a yawning rut. Under the violence of the jolt a section

of the edge of the bank gave way and crashed down to the bottom of the

gully, dragging with it the struggling and screaming horses. The cage

roof was completely smashed in.

To King's eyes the darkness was but a twilight, pleasant and

convenient. He saw an opening big enough to squeeze through; and

beyond it, beyond the wild shouting and the flares of swung lanterns,

a thick wood dark beneath the paler sky. Before any one could get down

to the wreck, he was out and free and away. Crouching with belly to

the earth, he ran noiselessly, and gained the woods before any one

knew he had escaped. Straight on he ran, watchful but swift, heading

for the places where the silence lay heaviest. Within five minutes

Hansen had half the men of the show, with ropes, forks, and lanterns,

hot on the trail. Within fifteen minutes, half the male population of

the town was engaged in an enthusiastic puma hunt. But King was

already far away, and making progress that would have been impossible

to an ordinary wild puma. His life among men had taught him nothing

about trees, so he had no unfortunate instinct to climb one and hide

among the branches to see what his pursuers would be up to. His idea

of getting away--and, perhaps, of finding his vanished master--was to

keep right on. And this he did, though of course not at top speed, the

pumas not being a race of long-winded runners like the wolves. In an

hour or two he reached a rocky and precipitous ridge, quite impassable

to men except by day. This he scaled with ease, and at the top, in the

high solitude, felt safe enough to rest a little while. Then he made

his way down the long, ragged western slopes, and at daybreak came

into a wild valley of woods and brooks.

By this time King was hungry. But game was plentiful. After two or

three humiliating failures with rabbits--owing to his inexperience in

stalking anything more elusive than a joint of dead mutton, he caught

a fat wood-chuck, and felt his self-respect return. Here he might have

been tempted to halt, although, to be sure, he saw no sign of Tomaso,

but beyond the valley, still westward, he saw mountains, which drew

him strangely. In particular, one uplifted peak, silver and sapphire

as the clear day, and soaring supreme over the jumble of lesser

summits, attracted him. He knew now that that was where he was going,

and thither he pressed on with singleness of purpose, delaying only

when absolutely necessary, to hunt or to sleep. The cage, the stage,

the whip, Hansen, the bear, even the proud excitement of the flaming

hoops, were swiftly fading to dimness in his mind, overwhelmed by the

inrush of new, wonderful impressions. At last, reaching the lower,

granite-ribbed flanks of old White Face itself, he began to feel

curiously content, and no longer under the imperative need of haste.

Here it was good hunting. Yet, though well satisfied, he made no

effort to find himself a lair to serve as headquarters, but kept

gradually working his way onward up the mountain. The higher he went,

the more content he grew, till even his craving for his master was

forgotten. Latent instincts began to spring into life, and he lapsed

into the movements and customs of the wild puma. Only when he came

upon a long, massive footprint in the damp earth by a spring, or a

wisp of pungent-smelling fur on the rubbed and clawed bark of a tree,

memory would rush back upon him fiercely. His ears would flatten

down, his eyes would gleam green, his tail would twitch, and crouching

to earth he would glare into every near-by thicket for a sight of his

mortal foe. He had not yet learned to discriminate perfectly between

an old scent and a new.

About this time a hunter from the East, who had his camp a little

farther down the valley, was climbing White Face on the trail of a

large grizzly. He was lithe of frame, with a lean, dark, eager face,

and he followed the perilous trail with a lack of prudence which

showed a very inadequate appreciation of grizzlies. The trail ran

along a narrow ledge cresting an abrupt but bushy steep. At the foot

of the steep, crouched along a massive branch and watching for game of

some sort to pass by, lay the big puma. Attracted by a noise above his

head he glanced up, and saw the hunter. It was certainly not Tomaso,

but it looked like him; and the puma's piercing eyes grew almost

benevolent. He had no ill-feeling to any man but the Swede.

Other ears than those of the puma had heard the unwary hunter's

footsteps. The grizzly had caught them and stopped to listen. Yes, he

was being followed. In a rage he wheeled about and ran back

noiselessly to see who it was that could dare such presumption.

Turning a shoulder of rock, he came face to face with the hunter, and

at once, with a deep, throaty grunt, he charged.

The hunter had not even time to get his heavy rifle to his shoulder.

He fired once, point blank, from the hip. The shot took effect

somewhere, but in no vital spot evidently, for it failed to check,

even for one second, that terrific charge. To meet the charge was to

be blasted out of being instantly. There was but one way open. The

hunter sprang straight out from the ledge with a lightning vision of

thick, soft-looking bushes far below him. The slope was steep, but by

no means perpendicular, and he struck in a thicket which broke the

full shock of the fall. His rifle flew far out of his hands. He

rebounded, clutching at the bushes; but he could not check himself.

Rolling over and over, his eyes and mouth choked with dust and leaves,

he bumped on down the slope, and brought up at last, dazed but

conscious, in a swampy hole under the roots of a huge over-leaning

tree.

[Illustration: "Almost over his head, on a limb not six feet distant,

crouched, ready to spring, the biggest puma he had ever

seen."]

Striving to clear his eyes and mouth, his first realization was that

he could not lift his left arm. The next, that he seemed to have

jumped from the frying-pan into the fire. His jaws set themselves

desperately, as he drew the long hunting-knife from his belt and

struggled up to one knee, resolved to at least make his last fight a

good one. Almost over his head, on a limb not six feet distant,

crouched, ready to spring, the biggest puma he had ever seen. At this

new confronting of doom his brain cleared, and his sinews seemed to

stretch with fresh courage. It was hopeless, of course, as he knew,

but his heart refused to recognize the fact. Then he noted with wonder

that not at him at all was the puma looking, but far over his head. He

followed that look, and again his heart sank, this time quite beyond

the reach of hope. There was the grizzly coming headlong down the

slope, foam slavering from his red jaws.

Bewildered, and feeling like a rat in a hole, the hunter tried to slip

around the base of the tree, desperately hoping to gain some post of

vantage whence to get home at least two or three good blows before the

end. But the moment he moved, the grizzly fairly hurled himself

downwards. The hunter jumped aside and wheeled, with his knife lifted,

his disabled left arm against the tree trunk. But in that same

instant, a miracle! Noiselessly the puma's tawny length shot out

overhead and fell upon the bear in the very mid-rush of the charge.

At once it seemed as if some cataclysmic upheaval were in progress.

The air, as it were, went mad with screeches, yells, snarls, and

enormous thick gruntings. The bushes went down on every side. Now the

bear was on top, now the puma. They writhed over and over, and for

some seconds the hunter stared with stupefaction. Then he recovered

his wits. He saw that the puma, for some inexplicable reason, had come

to his help. But he saw, also, that the gigantic grizzly must win.

Instead of slipping off and leaving his ally to destruction, he ran

up, waited a moment for the perfect opportunity, and drove his knife

to the hilt into the very centre of the back of the bear's neck, just

where it joined the skull. Then he sprang aside.

Strangely the noise died away. The huge bulk of the grizzly sank

slowly into a heap, the puma still raking it with the eviscerating

weapons of his hinder claws. A moment more and he seemed to realize

that he had achieved a sudden triumph. Bleeding, hideously mangled,

but still, apparently, full of fighting vigor, he disengaged himself

from the unresisting mass and looked around him proudly. His wild

eyes met those of the hunter, and the hunter had an anxious moment.

But the great beast looked away again at once, and seemed, in fact, to

forget all about the man's existence. He lay down and commenced

licking assiduously at his wounds. Filled with astonishment, and just

now beginning to realize the anguish in his broken arm, the hunter

stole discreetly away.

After an hour or two the puma arose, rather feebly, passed the body of

his slain foe without a glance, and clambered up the slope to the

ledge. He wanted a place of refuge now, a retreat that would be safe

and cool and dark. Up and up he followed the winding of that narrow

trail, and came out at last upon a rocky platform before a

black-mouthed cave. He knew well enough that he had killed the owner

of the cave, so he entered without hesitation.

Here, for two days, he lay in concealment, licking his wounds. He had

no desire to eat; but two or three times, because the wounds fevered

him, he came forth and descended the trail a little way to where he

had seen a cold spring bubbling from the rocks. His clean blood, in

that high, clean air, quickly set itself to the healing of the hurts,

and strength flowed back swiftly into his torn sinews. At dawn of the

third day he felt himself suddenly hungry, and realizing that he must

seek some small game, even though not yet ready for any difficult

hunting, he crept forth, just as the first thin glory of rose light

came washing into the cave. But before he started down the trail he

paused, and stood staring, with some dim half memory, out across the

transparent, hollow spaces, the jumbled hilltops, misty, gray-green

forests, and steel-bright loops of water to which he had at last come

home.

THE MONARCH OF PARK BARREN

CHAPTER I

From the cold spring lakes and sombre deeps of spruce forest, over

which the bald granite peak of Old Saugamauk kept endless guard, came

reports of a moose of more than royal stature, whose antlers beggared

all records for symmetry and spread. From a home-coming lumber cruiser

here, a wandering Indian there, the word came straggling in, till the

settlements about the lower reaches of the river began to believe

there might be some truth behind the wild tales. Then--for it was

autumn, the season of gold and crimson falling leaves, and battles on

the lake-shores under the white full moon--there followed stories of

other moose seen fleeing in terror, with torn flanks and bleeding

shoulders; and it was realized that the prowess of the great moose

bull was worthy of his stature and his adornment. Apparently he was

driving all the other bulls off the Saugamauk ranges.

By this time the matter became of interest to the guides. The stories

gathered in from different quarters, so it was hard to guess just

where the gigantic stranger was most likely to be found. To north and

northeast of the mountain went the two Armstrongs, seeking the

stranger's trail; while to south and southeastward explored the

Crimmins boys. If real, the giant bull had to be located; if a myth,

he had to be exploded before raising impossible hopes in the hearts of

visiting sportsmen.

Then suddenly arrived corroboration of all the stories. It came from

Charley Crimmins. He was able to testify with conviction that the

giant bull was no figment of Indian's imagination or lumberman's

inventive humor. For it was he whose search had been successful.

In fact, he might have been content to have it just a shade less

overwhelmingly successful. That there is such a thing as an

embarrassment of success was borne in upon him when he found himself

jumping madly for the nearest tree, with a moose that seemed to have

the stature of an elephant crashing through the thickets close behind

him. He reached the tree just in time to swing well up among its

branches. Then the tree quivered as the furious animal flung his bulk

against it. Crimmins had lost his rifle in the flight. He could do

nothing but sit shivering on his branch, making remarks so

uncomplimentary that the great bull, if he could have appreciated

them, would probably have established himself under that tree till

vengeance was accomplished. But not knowing that he had been insulted,

he presently grew tired of snorting at his captive, and wandered off

through the woods in search of more exciting occupation. Then,

indignant beyond words, Charley descended from his retreat, and took

his authoritative report in to the Settlements.

[Illustration: "He reached the tree just in time to swing well up among

the branches."]

At first it was thought that there would be great hunting around Old

Saugamauk, till those tremendous antlers should fall a prize to some

huntsman not only lucky but rich. For no one who could not pay right

handsomely for the chance might hope to be guided to the range where

such an unequalled trophy was to be won. But when the matter, in all

its authenticated details, came to the ears of Uncle Adam, dean of the

guides of that region, he said "_No_" with an emphasis that left no

room for argument. There should be no hunting around the slopes of

Saugamauk for several seasons. If the great bull was the terror they

made him out to be, then he had driven all the other bulls from his

range, and there was nothing to be hunted but his royal self. "Well,"

decreed the far-seeing old guide, "we'll let him be for a bit, till

his youngsters begin to grow up like him. Then there'll be no heads in

all the rest of New Brunswick like them that comes from Old

Saugamauk." This decree was accepted, the New Brunswick guides being

among those who are wise enough to cherish the golden-egged goose.

In the course of that season the giant moose was seen several times by

guides and woodsmen--but usually from a distance, as the inconsiderate

impetuosity of his temper was not favorable to close or calm

observation. The only people who really knew him were those who, like

Charley Crimmins, had looked down upon his grunting wrath from the

branches of a substantial tree.

Upon certain important details, however, all observers agreed. The

stranger (for it was held that, driven by some southward wandering

instinct, he had come down from the wild solitudes of the Gaspé

Peninsula) was reckoned to be a good eight inches taller at the

shoulders than any other moose of New Brunswick record, and several

hundredweight heavier. His antlers, whose symmetry and palmation

seemed perfect, were estimated to have a spread of sixty inches at

least. That was the conservative estimate of Uncle Adam, who had made

his observations with remarkable composure from a tree somewhat less

lofty and sturdy than he would have chosen had he had the time for

choice.

In color the giant was so dark that his back and flanks looked black

except in the strongest sunlight. His mighty head, with long, deeply

overhanging muzzle, was of a rich brown; while the under parts of his

body, and the inner surfaces of his long, straight legs, were of a

rusty fawn color. His "bell"--as the shaggy appendix that hangs from

the neck of a bull moose, a little below the throat, is called--was of

unusual development, and the coarse hair adorning it peculiarly

glossy. To bring down such a magnificent prize, and to carry off such

a trophy as that unmatched head and antlers, the greatest sportsmen of

America would have begrudged no effort or expense. But though the fame

of the wonderful animal was cunningly allowed to spread to the ears of

all sportsmen, its habitat seemed miraculously elusive. It was heard

of on the Upsalquitch, the Nipisiguit, the Dungarvan, the Little

Sou'west, but never, by some strange chance, in the country around Old

Saugamauk. Visiting sportsmen hunted, spent money, dreamed dreams,

followed great trails and brought down splendid heads, all over the

Province; but no stranger with a rifle was allowed to see the proud

antlers of the monarch of Saugamauk.

The right of the splendid moose to be called the Monarch of Saugamauk

was settled beyond all question one moonlight night when the surly old

bear who lived in a crevasse far up under the stony crest of the

mountain came down and attempted to dispute it. The wild kindreds, as

a rule, are most averse to unnecessary quarrels. Unless their food or

their mates are at stake, they will fight only under extreme

provocation, or when driven to bay. They are not ashamed to run away,

rather than press matters too far and towards a doubtful issue. A bull

moose and a bear are apt to give each other a wide berth, respecting

each other's prowess. But there are exceptions to all rules,

especially where bears, the most individual of our wild cousins, are

concerned. And this bear was in a particularly savage mood. Just in

the mating season he had lost his mate, who had been shot by an

Indian. The old bear did not know what had happened to her, but he was

ready to avenge her upon any one who might cross his path.

Unluckily for him, it was the great moose who crossed his path; and

the luck was all Charley Crimmins's, who chanced to be the spectator

of what happened there beside the moonlit lake.

Charley was on his way over to the head of the Nipisiguit, when it

occurred to him that he would like to get another glimpse of the great

beast who had so ignominiously discomfited him. Peeling a sheet of

bark from the nearest white birch, he twisted himself a "moose-call,"

then climbed into the branches of a willow which spread out over the

edge of the shining lake. From this concealment he began to utter

persuasively the long, uncouth, melancholy call by which the moose cow

summons her mate.

Sometimes these vast northern solitudes seem, for hours together, as

if they were empty of all life. It is as if a wave of distrust had

passed simultaneously over all the creatures of the wild. At other

times the lightest occasion suffices to call life out of the

stillness. Crimmins had not sounded more than twice his deceptive

call, when the bushes behind the strip of beech crackled sharply. But

it was not the great bull that stepped forth into the moonlight. It

was a cow moose. She came out with no effort at concealment, and

walked up and down the beach, angrily looking for her imagined rival.

When the uneasy animal's back was towards him, Crimmins called again,

a short, soft call. The cow jumped around as if she had been struck,

and the stiff hair along her neck stood up with jealous rage. But

there was no rival anywhere in sight, and she stood completely

mystified, shaking her ungainly head, peering into the dark

undergrowth, and snorting tempestuously as if challenging the

invisible rival to appear. Then suddenly her angry ridge of hair sank

down, she seemed to shrink together upon herself, and with a

convulsive bound she sprang away from the dark undergrowth, landing

with a splash in the shallow water along shore. At the same instant

the black branches were burst apart, and a huge bear, forepaws

upraised and jaws wide open, launched himself forth into the open.

Disappointed at missing his first spring, the bear rushed furiously

upon his intended victim, but the cow, for all her apparent

awkwardness, was as agile as a deer. Barely eluding his rush, she went

shambling up the shore at a terrific pace, plunged into the woods, and

vanished. The bear checked himself at the water's edge, and turned,

holding his nose high in the air, as if disdaining to acknowledge that

he had been foiled.

Crimmins hesitatingly raised his rifle. Should he bag this bear, or

should he wait and sound his call again a little later, in the hope of

yet summoning the great bull? As he hesitated, and the burly black

shape in the moonlight also stood hesitating, the thickets rustled and

parted almost beneath him, and the mysterious bull strode forth with

his head held high.

He had come in answer to what he thought was the summons of his mate;

but when he saw the bear, his rage broke all bounds. He doubtless

concluded that the bear had driven his mate away. With a bawling roar

he thundered down upon the intruder.

The bear, as we have seen, was in no mood to give way. His small eyes

glowed suddenly red with vengeful fury, as he wheeled and gathered

himself, half crouching upon his haunches, to meet the tremendous

attack. In this attitude all his vast strength was perfectly poised,

ready for use in any direction. The moose, had he been attacking a

rival of his own kind, would have charged with antlers down, but

against all other enemies the weapons he relied upon were his gigantic

hoofs, edged like chisels. As he reached his sullenly waiting

antagonist he reared on his hind-legs, towering like a black rock

about to fall and crush whatever was in its path. Like pile-drivers

his fore-hoofs struck downwards, one closely following the other.

The bear swung aside as lightly as a weasel, and eluded, but only by a

hair's breadth, that destructive stroke. As he wheeled he delivered a

terrific, swinging blow, with his armed forepaw, upon his assailant's

shoulder.

The blow was a fair one. Any ordinary moose bull would have gone down

beneath it, with his shoulder-joint shattered to splinters. But this

great bull merely staggered, and stood for a second in amazement. Then

he whipped about and darted upon the bear with a sort of hoarse

scream, his eyes flashing with a veritable madness. He neither reared

to strike, nor lowered his antlers to gore, but seemed intent upon

tearing the foe with his teeth, as a mad horse might. At the sight of

such resistless fury Crimmins involuntarily tightened his grip on his

branch and muttered: "That ain't no _moose_! It's a--" But before he

could finish his comparison, astonishment stopped him. The bear,

unable with all his strength and weight to withstand the shock of that

straight and incredibly swift charge, had been rolled over and over

down the gentle slope of the beach. At the same moment the moose,

blinded by his rage and unable to check himself, had tripped over a

log that lay hidden in the bushes, and fallen headlong on his nose.

Utterly cowed by the overwhelming completeness of this overthrow, the

bear was on his feet again before his conqueror, and scurrying to

refuge like a frightened rat. He made for the nearest tree, and that

nearest tree, to Crimmins's dismay, was Crimmins's. The startled guide

swung himself hastily to a higher branch which stretched well out over

the water.

Before the great bull could recover his footing, the fugitive had

gained a good start. But desperately swift though he was, the doom

that thundered behind him was swifter, and caught him just as he was

scrambling into the tree. Those implacable antlers ploughed his

hind-quarters remorselessly, till he squealed with pain and terror.

His convulsive scrambling raised him, the next instant, beyond reach

of that punishment; but immediately the great bull reared, and struck

him again and again with his terrible hoofs, almost crushing the

victim's maimed haunches. The bear bawled again, but maintained his

clutch of desperation, and finally drew himself up to a safe height,

where he crouched on a branch, whimpering pitifully, while the victor

raged below.

At this moment the bear caught sight of Crimmins eying him steadily.

To the cowed beast this was a new peril menacing him. With a

frightened glance he crawled out on another branch, as far as it could

be trusted to support his weight. And there he clung, huddled and

shivering like a beaten puppy, looking from the man to the moose, from

the moose to the man, as if he feared they might both jump at him

together.

But the sympathies of Crimmins were now entirely with the unfortunate

bear, his fellow-prisoner, and he looked down at the arrogant tyrant

below with a sincere desire to humble his pride with a rifle-bullet.

But he was too far-seeing a guide for that. He contented himself with

climbing a little lower till he attracted the giant's attention to

himself, and then dropping half a handful of tobacco, dry and powdery,

into those snorting red nostrils.

It was done with nice precision, just as the giant drew in his breath.

He got the fullest benefit of the pungent dose; and such trivial

matters as bears and men were instantly forgotten in the paroxysms

which seized him. His roaring sneezes seemed as if they would rend

his mighty bulk asunder. He fairly stood upon his head, burrowing his

muzzle into the moist leafage, as he strove to purge the exasperating

torment from his nostrils. Crimmins laughed till he nearly fell out of

the tree, while the bear forgot to whimper as he stared in terrified

bewilderment. At last the moose stuck his muzzle up in the air and

began backing blindly over stones and bushes, as if trying to get away

from his own nose. Plump into four or five feet of icy water he

backed. The shock seemed to give him an idea. He plunged his head

under, and fell to wallowing and snorting and raising such a

prodigious disturbance that all the lake shores rang with it. Then he

bounced out upon the beach again, and dashed off through the woods as

if a million hornets were at his ears.

Weak with laughter, Crimmins climbed down out of his refuge, waved an

amiable farewell to the stupefied bear, and resumed the trail for the

Nipisiguit.

CHAPTER II

For the next two years the fame of the great moose kept growing,

adding to itself various wonders and extravagances till it assumed

almost the dimensions of a myth. Sportsmen came from all over the

world in the hope of bagging those unparalleled antlers. They shot

moose, caribou, deer, and bear, and went away disappointed only in one

regard. But at last they began to swear that the giant was a mere

fiction of the New Brunswick guides, designed to lure the hunters. The

guides, therefore, began to think it was time to make good and show

their proofs. Even Uncle Adam was coming around to this view, when

suddenly word came from the Crown Land Department at Fredericton that

the renowned moose must not be allowed to fall to any rifle. A special

permit had been issued for his capture and shipment out of the

country, that he might be the ornament of a famous Zoölogical Park and

a lively proclamation of what the New Brunswick forests could

produce.

The idea of taking the King of Saugamauk alive seemed amusing to the

guides, and to Crimmins particularly. But Uncle Adam, whose colossal

frame and giant strength seemed to put him peculiarly in sympathy with

the great moose bull, declared that it could and should be done, for

he would do it. Upon this, scepticism vanished, even from the smile of

Charley Crimmins, who voiced the general sentiment when he said,--

"Uncle Adam ain't the man to bite off any more than he can chew!"

But Uncle Adam was in no hurry. He had such a respect for his

adversary that he would not risk losing a single point in the

approaching contest. He waited till the mating season and the hunting

season were long past, and the great bull's pride and temper somewhat

cooled. He waited, moreover, for the day to come--along towards

midwinter--when those titanic antlers should loosen at their roots,

and fall off at the touch of the first light branch that might brush

against them. This, the wise old woodsman knew, would be the hour of

the King's least arrogance. Then, too, the northern snows would be

lying deep and soft and encumbering, over all the upland slopes

whereon the moose loved to browse.

Along toward mid-February word came to Uncle Adam that the Monarch had

"yarded up," as the phrase goes, on the southerly slope of Old

Saugamauk, with three cows and their calves of the previous spring

under his protection. This meant that, when the snow had grown too

deep to permit the little herd to roam at will, he had chosen a

sheltered area where the birch, poplar, and cherry, his favorite

forage, were abundant, and there had trodden out a maze of deep paths

which led to all the choicest browsing, and centred about a cluster of

ancient firs so thick as to afford covert from the fiercest storms.

The news was what the wise old woodsman had been waiting for. With

three of his men, a pair of horses, a logging-sled, axes, and an

unlimited supply of rope, he went to capture the King.

It was a clear, still morning, so cold that the great trees snapped

sharply under the grip of the bitter frost. The men went on snowshoes,

leaving the teams hitched in a thicket on the edge of a logging road

some three or four hundred yards from the "moose-yard." The sun

glittered keenly on the long white alleys which led this way and that

at random through the forest. The snow, undisturbed and accumulating

for months, was heaped in strange shapes over hidden bushes, stumps,

and rocks. The tread of the snowshoes made a furtive crunching sound

as it rhythmically broke the crisp surface.

Far off through the stillness the great moose, lying with the rest of

the herd in their shadowy covert, caught the ominous sound. He lurched

to his feet and stood listening, while the herd watched him anxiously,

awaiting his verdict as to whether that strange sound meant peril or

no.

For reasons which we have seen, the giant bull knew little of man, and

that little not of a nature to command any great respect.

Nevertheless, at this season of the year, his blood cool, his august

front shorn of its ornament and defence, he was seized with an

incomprehensible apprehension. After all, as he felt vaguely, there

was an unknown menace about man; and his ear told him that there were

several approaching. A few months earlier he would have stamped his

huge hoofs, thrashed the bushes with his colossal antlers, and stormed

forth to chastise the intruders. But now, he sniffed the sharp air,

snorted uneasily, drooped his big ears, and led a rapid but dignified

retreat down one of the deep alleys of his maze.

This was exactly what Uncle Adam had looked for. His object was to

force the herd out of the maze of alleys, wherein they could move

swiftly, and drive them floundering through the deep, soft snow, which

would wear them out before they could go half a mile. Spreading his

men so widely that they commanded all trails by which the fugitives

might return, he followed up the flight at a run. And he accompanied

the pursuit with a riot of shouts and yells and laughter, designed to

shake his quarry's heart with the fear of the unusual. Wise in all

woodcraft, Uncle Adam knew that one of the most daunting of all

sounds, to the creatures of the wild, was that of human laughter, so

inexplicable and seemingly so idle.

At other times the great bull would merely have been enraged at this

blatant clamor and taken it as a challenge. But now he retreated to

the farthest corner of his maze. From this point there were but two

paths of return, and along both the uproar was closing in upon him.

Over the edge of the snow--which was almost breast-high to him, and

deep enough to bury the calves, hopelessly deep, indeed, for any of

the herd but himself to venture through--he gave a wistful look

towards the depths of the cedar swamps in the valley, where he

believed he could baffle all pursuers. Then his courage--but without

his autumnal fighting rage--came back to him. His herd was his care.

He crowded the cows and calves between himself and the snow, and

turned to face his pursuers as they came running and shouting through

the trees.

When Uncle Adam saw that the King was going to live up to his kingly

reputation and fight rather than be driven off into the deep snow, he

led the advance more cautiously till his forces were within

twenty-five or thirty paces of the huddling herd. Here he paused, for

the guardian of the herd was beginning to stamp ominously with his

great, clacking hoofs, and the reddening light in his eyes showed that

he might charge at any instant.

He did not charge, however, because his attention was diverted by the

strange action of the men, who had stopped their shouting and begun to

chop trees. It amazed him to see the flashing axes bite savagely into

the great trunks and send the white chips flying. The whole herd

watched with wide eyes, curious and apprehensive; till suddenly a tree

toppled, swept the hard blue sky, and came down with a crashing roar

across one of the runways. The cows and calves bounded wildly, clear

out into the snow. But the King, though his eyes dilated with

amazement, stood his ground and grunted angrily.

A moment more and another tree, huge-limbed and dense, came down

across the other runway. Two more followed, and the herd was cut off

from its retreat. The giant bull, of course, with his vast stride and

colossal strength, could have smashed his way through and over the

barrier; but the others, to regain the safe mazes of the "yard," would

have had to make a detour through the engulfing snow.

Though the King was now fairly cornered, Uncle Adam was puzzled to

know what to do next. In his hesitation, he felled some more trees,

dropping the last one so close that the herd was obliged to crowd back

to avoid being struck by the falling top. This, at last, was too much

for the King, who had never before known what it was to be crowded.

While his followers plunged away in terror, burying themselves

helplessly before they had gone a dozen yards, he bawled with fury and

charged upon his tormentors.

[Illustration: "For perhaps thirty or forty yards the bull was able to

keep up this almost incredible pace."]

Though the snow, as we have seen, came up to his chest, the giant's

strength and swiftness were such that the woodsmen were taken by

surprise, and Uncle Adam, who was in front, was almost caught. In

spite of his bulk, he turned and sprang away with the agility of a

wildcat; but if his snowshoes had turned and hindered him for one half

second, he would have been struck down and trodden to a jelly in the

smother of snow. Seeing the imminence of his peril, the other woodsmen

threw up their rifles; but Uncle Adam, though extremely busy for the

moment, saw them out of the corner of his eye as he ran, and angrily

ordered them not to shoot. He knew what he was about, and felt quite

sure of himself, though the enemy was snorting at his very heels.

For perhaps thirty or forty yards the bull was able to keep up this

almost incredible pace. Then the inexorable pull of the snow began to

tell, even upon such thews as his, and his pace slackened. But his

rage showed no sign of cooling. So, being very accommodating, Uncle

Adam slackened his own pace correspondingly, that his pursuer might

not be discouraged. And the chase went on. But it went slower, and

slower, and slower, till at last it stopped with Uncle Adam still just

about six feet in the lead, and the great moose still blind-mad, but

too exhausted to go one foot farther. Then Uncle Adam chuckled softly

and called for the ropes. There was kicking, of course, and furious

lunging and wild snorting, but the woodsmen were skilful and patient,

and the King of Old Saugamauk was conquered. In a little while he lay

upon his side, trussed up as securely and helplessly as a papoose in

its birch-bark carrying-cradle. There was nothing left of his kingship

but to snort regal defiance, to which his captors offered not the

slightest retort. In his bonds he was carried off to the settlements,

on the big logging-sled, drawn by the patient horses whom he scorned.

CHAPTER III

After this ignominy, for days the King was submissive, with the sullen

numbness of despair. Life for him became a succession of stunning

shocks and roaring change. He would be put into strange box-prisons,

which would straightway begin to rush terribly through the world with

a voice of thunder. Through the cracks in the box he would watch trees

and fields and hills race by in madness of flight. He would be taken

out of the box, and murmuring crowds would gape at him till the black

mane along his neck would begin to rise in something of his old anger.

Then some one would drive the crowd away, and he would slip back into

his stupor. He did not know which he hated most,--the roaring boxes,

the fleeing landscapes, or the staring crowds. At last he came to a

loud region where there were no trees, but only what seemed to him

vast, towering, naked rocks, red, gray, yellow, brown, full of holes

from which issued men in swarms. These terrible rocks ran in endless

rows, and through them he came at last to a wide field, thinly

scattered with trees. There was no seclusion in it, no deep, dark,

shadowy hemlock covert to lie down in; but it was green, and it was

spacious, and it was more or less quiet. So when he was turned loose

in it, he was almost glad. He lifted his head, with a spark of the old

arrogance returning to his eyes. And through dilating nostrils he

drank the free air till his vast lungs thrilled with almost forgotten

life.

The men who had brought him to the park--this bleak barren he would

have called it, had he had the faculty of thinking in terms of human

speech, this range more fitted for the frugal caribou than for a

ranger of the deep forests like himself--these men stood watching him

curiously after they had loosed him from his bonds. For a few minutes

he forgot all about them. Then his eyes fell on them, and a heat crept

slowly into his veins as he looked. Slowly he began to resume his

kingship. His eyes changed curiously, and a light, fiery and fearless,

flamed in their depths. His mane began to bristle.

"It's time for us to get out of this. That fellow's beginning to

remember he has some old scores to settle up!" remarked the Director

coolly to the head-keeper and his assistants; and they all stepped

backwards, with a casual air, towards the big gate, which stood ajar

to receive them. Just as they reached it, the old fire and fury surged

back into the exile's veins, but heated seven fold by the ignominies

which he had undergone. With a hoarse and bawling roar, such as had

never before been heard in those guarded precincts, he launched

himself upon his gaolers. But they nimbly slipped through the gate and

dropped the massive bars into their sockets.

They were just in time. The next instant the King had hurled himself

with all his weight upon the barrier. The sturdy ironwork and the

panels on either side of the posts clanged, groaned, and even yielded

a fraction of an inch beneath the shock. But in the rebound they

thrust their assailant backward with startling violence. Bewildered,

he glared at the obstacle, which looked so slender, yet was so strong

to balk him of his vengeance. Then, jarred and aching, he withdrew

haughtily to explore his new domain. The Director, gazing after him,

nodded with supreme satisfaction.

"Those fellows up in New Brunswick told no lies!" said he.

"He certainly is a peach!" assented the head-keeper heartily. "When

he grows his new antlers, I reckon we will have to enlarge the park."

The great exile found his new range interesting to explore, and began

to forget his indignation. Privacy it had not, for the trees at this

season were all leafless, and there were no dense fir or spruce

thickets into which he could withdraw, to look forth unseen upon this

alien landscape. But there were certain rough boulders behind which he

could lurk. And there were films of ice, and wraiths of thin snow in

the hollows, the chill touch of which helped him to feel more or less

at home. In the distance he caught sight of a range of those high,

square rocks wherein the men dwelt; and hating them deeply, he turned

and pressed on in the opposite direction over a gentle rise and across

a little valley; till suddenly, among the trees, he came upon a

curious barrier of meshed stuff, something like a gigantic cobweb.

Through the meshes he could distinctly see the country beyond, and it

seemed to be just the country he desired, more wooded and inviting

than what he had traversed. Confidently he pushed upon the woven

obstacle; but to his amazement it did not give way before him. He eyed

it resentfully. How absurd that so frail a thing should venture to

forbid him passage! He thrust upon it again, more brusquely, to be

just as brusquely denied. The hot blood blazed to his head, and he

dashed himself upon it with all his strength. The impenetrable but

elastic netting yielded for a space, then sprang back with an

impetuosity that flung him clear off his feet. He fell with a loud

grunt, lay for a moment dismayed, then got up and eyed his

incomprehensible adversary with a blank stare. He was learning so many

strange lessons that it was difficult to assimilate them all at once.

The following morning, when he was feasting on a pile of the willow

and poplar forage which he loved, and which had appeared as if by

magic close beside the mysterious barrier, he saw some men, perhaps a

hundred yards away, throw open a section of the barrier. Forgetting to

be angry at their intrusion on his range, he watched them curiously. A

moment more, and a little herd of his own kind, apparently quite

indifferent to the men, followed them into the range. He was not

surprised at their appearance, for his nose had already told him there

were moose about. But he was surprised to see them on friendly terms

with man.

There were several cows in the herd, with a couple of awkward

yearlings; and the King, much gratified, ambled forward with huge

strides to meet them and take them under his gracious protection. But

a moment later two fine young bulls came into his view, following the

rest of the herd at a more dignified pace. The King stopped, lowered

his mighty front, laid back his ears like an angry stallion, and

grunted a hoarse warning. The stiff black hair along his neck slowly

arose and stood straight up.

The two young bulls stared in stupid astonishment at this tremendous

apparition. It was not the fighting season, so they had no jealousy,

and felt nothing but a cold indifference toward the stranger. But as

he came striding down the field his attitude was so menacing, his

stature so formidable, that they could not but realize there was

trouble brewing. It was contrary to all traditions that they should

take the trouble to fight in midwinter, when they had no antlers and

their blood was sluggish. Nevertheless, they could not brook to be so

affronted, as it were, in their own citadel.

Their eyes began to gleam angrily, and they advanced, shaking their

heads, to meet the insolent stranger. The keepers, surprised, drew

together close by the gate; while one of them left hurriedly and ran

towards a building which stood a little way off among the trees.

As the King swept down upon the herd, bigger and blacker than any bull

they had ever seen before, the cows shrank away and stood staring

placidly. They were well fed, and for the time indifferent to all else

in their sheltered world. Still, a fight is a fight, and if there was

going to be one, they were ready enough to look on.

Alas for the right of possession when it runs counter to the right of

might! The two young bulls were at home and in the right, and their

courage was sound. But when that black whirlwind from the fastnesses

of Old Saugamauk fell upon them, it seemed that they had no more

rights at all.

Side by side they confronted the onrushing doom. At the moment of

impact, they reared and struck savagely with their sharp hoofs. But

the gigantic stranger troubled himself with no such details. He merely

fell upon them, like a blind but raging force, irresistible as a

falling hillside and almost as disastrous. They both went down before

him like calves, and rolled over and over, stunned and sprawling.

The completeness of this victory, establishing his supremacy beyond

cavil, should have satisfied the King, especially as this was not the

mating season and there could be no question of rivalry. But his heart

was bursting with injury, and his thirst for vengeance was raging to

be glutted. As the vanquished bulls struggled to recover their feet,

he bounded upon the nearest and trod him down again mercilessly. The

other, meanwhile, fled for his life, stricken with shameless terror;

and the exile, leaving his victim, went thundering in pursuit,

determined that both should be annihilated. It was a terrifying sight,

the black giant, mane erect, neck out-thrust, mouth open, eyes glaring

with implacable fury, sweeping down upon the fugitive with his

terrific strides.

But just then, when another stride would have sufficed, a strange

thing happened! A flying noose settled over the pursuer's head,

tightened, jerked his neck aside, and threw him with a violence that

knocked the wind clean out of his raging body. While his vast lungs

sobbed and gasped to recover the vital air, other nooses whipped about

his legs; and before he could recover himself even enough to struggle,

he was once more trussed up as he had been by Uncle Adam amid the

snows of Saugamauk.

In this ignominious position, his heart bursting with shame and

impotence, he was left lying while his two battered victims were

lassoed and led away. Since it was plain that the King would not

suffer them to live in his kingdom, even as humble subjects, they were

to be removed to some more modest domain; for the King, whether he

deserved it or not, was to have the best reserved for him.

It was little kingly he felt, the fettered giant, as he lay there

panting on his side. The cows came up and gazed at him with a kind of

placid scorn, till his furious snortings and the undaunted rage that

flamed in his eyes made them draw back apprehensively. Then, the men

who had overthrown him returned. They dragged him unceremoniously up

to the gate, slipped his bonds, and discreetly put themselves on the

other side of the barrier before he could get to his feet. With a

grunt he wheeled and faced them with such hate in his eyes that they

thought he would once more hurl himself upon the bars. But he had

learned his lesson. For a few moments he stood quivering. Then, as if

recognizing at last a mastery too absolute even for him to challenge,

he shook himself violently, turned away, and stalked off to join the

herd.

That evening, about sundown, it turned colder. Clouds gathered

heavily, and there was the sense of coming snow in the air. A great

wind, rising fitfully, drew down out of the north. Seeing no covert to

his liking, the King led his little herd to the top of a naked knoll,

where he could look about and choose a shelter. But that great wind

out of the north, thrilling in his nostrils, got into his heart and

made him forget what he had come for. Out across the alien gloom he

stared, across the huddled, unknown masses of the dark, till he

thought he saw the bald summit of Old Saugamauk rising out of its

forests, till he thought he heard the wind roar in the spruce tops,

the dead branches clash and crack. The cows, for a time, huddled close

to his massive flanks, expecting some new thing from his vast

strength. Then, as the storm gathered, they remembered the shelter

which man had provided for them, and the abundant forage it contained.

One after the other they turned and filed away slowly down the slopes,

through the dim trees, towards the corner where they knew a gate would

stand open for them, and then a door into a warm-smelling shed. The

King, lost in his dream, did not notice their going. But suddenly,

feeling himself alone, he started and looked about. The last of the

yearlings, at its mother's heels, was just vanishing through the windy

gloom. He hesitated, started to follow, then stopped abruptly. Let

them go! They would return to him probably. Turning back to his

station on the knoll, he stood with his head held high, his nostrils

drinking the cold, while the winter night closed in upon him, and the

wind out of his own north rushed and roared solemnly in his face.

THE GRAY MASTER

CHAPTER I

Why he was so much bigger, more powerful, and more implacably savage

than the other members of the gray, spectral pack, which had appeared

suddenly from the north to terrorize their lone and scattered

clearings, the settlers of the lower Quah-Davic Valley could not

guess. Those who were of French descent among them, and full of the

old Acadian superstitions, explained it simply enough by saying he was

a _loup-garou_, or "wer-wolf," and resigned themselves to the

impossibility of contending against a creature of such supernatural

malignity and power. But their fellows of English speech, having no

such tradition to fall back upon, were mystified and indignant. The

ordinary gray, or "cloudy," wolf of the East they knew, though he was

so rare south of Labrador that few of them had ever seen one. They

dismissed them all, indifferently, as "varmin." But this unaccountable

gray ravager was bigger than any two such wolves, fiercer and more

dauntless than any ten. Though the pack he led numbered no more than

half a dozen, he made it respected and dreaded through all the wild

leagues of the Quah-Davic. To make things worse, this long-flanked,

long-jawed marauder was no less cunning than fierce. When the

settlers, seeking vengeance for sheep, pigs, and cattle slaughtered by

his pack, went forth to hunt him with dogs and guns, it seemed that

there was never a wolf in the country. Nevertheless, either that same

night or the next, it was long odds that one or more of those same

dogs who had been officious in the hunt would disappear. As for traps

and poisoned meat, they proved equally futile. They were always

visited, to be sure, by the pack, at some unexpected and

indeterminable moment, but treated always with a contumelious scorn

which was doubtless all that such clumsy tactics merited. Meanwhile

the ravages went on, and the children were kept close housed at night,

and cool-eyed old woodsmen went armed and vigilant along the lonely

roads. The French _habitant_ crossed himself, and the Saxon cursed his

luck; and no one solved the mystery.

Yet, after all, as Arthur Kane, the young schoolmaster at Burnt Brook

Cross-Roads, began dimly to surmise, the solution was quite simple. A

lucky gold-miner, returning from the Klondike, had brought with him

not only gold and an appetite, but also a lank, implacable, tameless

whelp from the packs that haunt the sweeps of northern timber. The

whelp had gnawed his way to freedom. He had found, fought, thrashed,

and finally adopted, a little pack of his small, Eastern kin. He had

thriven, and grown to the strength and stature that were his rightful

heritage. And "the Gray Master of the Quah-Davic," as Kane had dubbed

him, was no _loup-garou_, no outcast human soul incarcerate in wolf

form, but simply a great Alaskan timber-wolf.

But this, when all is said, is quite enough. A wolf that can break the

back of a full-grown collie at one snap of his jaws, and gallop off

with the carcass as if it were a chipmunk, is about as undesirable a

neighbor, in the night woods, as any _loup-garou_ ever devised by the

_habitant's_ excitable imagination.

All up and down the Quah-Davic Valley the dark spruce woods were full

of game,--moose, deer, hares, and wild birds innumerable,--with roving

caribou herds on the wide barren beyond the hill-ridge. Nevertheless,

the great gray wolf would not spare the possessions of the settlers.

His pack haunted the fringes of the settlements with a needless

tenacity which seemed to hold a challenge in it, a direct and insolent

defiance. And the feeling of resentment throughout the Valley was on

the point of crystallizing into a concerted campaign of vengeance

which would have left even so cunning a strategist as the Gray Master

no choice but to flee or fall, when something took place which quite

changed the course of public sentiment. Folk so disagreed about it

that all concerted action became impossible, and each one was left to

deal with the elusive adversary in his own way.

This was what happened.

In a cabin about three miles from the nearest neighbor lived the Widow

Baisley, alone with her son Paddy, a lad under ten years old, and

little for his age. One midwinter night she was taken desperately ill,

and Paddy, reckless of the terrors of the midnight solitudes, ran

wildly to get help. The moon was high and full, and the lifeless

backwoods road was a narrow, bright, white thread between the silent

black masses of the spruce forest. Now and then, as he remembered

afterwards, his ear caught a sound of light feet following him in the

dark beyond the roadside. But his plucky little heart was too full of

panic grief about his mother to have any room for fear as to himself.

Only the excited amazement of his neighbors, over the fact that he had

made the journey in safety, opened his eyes to the hideous peril he

had come through. Willing helpers hurried back with him to his

mother's bedside. And on the way one of them, a keen huntsman who had

more than once pitted his woodcraft in vain against that of the Gray

Master, had the curiosity to step off the road and examine the snow

under the thick spruces. Perhaps imagination misled him, when he

thought he caught a glimpse of savage eyes, points of green flame,

fading off into the black depths. But there could be no doubt as to

the fresh tracks he found in the snow. There they were,--the

footprints of the pack, like those of so many big dogs,--and among

them the huge trail of the great, far-striding leader. All the way,

almost from his threshold, these sinister steps had paralleled those

of the hurrying child. Close to the edge of the darkness they

ran,--close, within the distance of one swift leap,--yet never any

closer!

Why had the great gray wolf, who faced and pulled down the bull moose,

and from whose voice the biggest dogs in the settlements ran like

whipped curs--why had he and his stealthy pack spared this easy prey?

It was inexplicable, though many had theories good enough to be

laughed to scorn by those who had none. The _habitants_, of course,

had all their superstitions confirmed, and with a certain respect and

refinement of horror added: Here was a _loup-garou_ so crafty as to

spare, on occasion! He must be conciliated, at all costs. They would

hunt him no more, his motives being so inexplicable. Let him take a

few sheep, or a steer, now and then, and remember that _they_, at

least, were not troubling him. As for the English-speaking settlers,

their enmity cooled down to the point where they could no longer get

together any concentrated bitterness. It was only a big rascal of a

wolf, anyway, scared to touch a white man's child, and certainly

nothing for a lot of grown men to organize about. Some of the women

jumped to the conclusion that a certain delicacy of sentiment had

governed the wolves in their strange forbearance, while others

honestly believed that the pack had been specially sent by Providence

to guard the child through the forest on his sacred errand. But all,

whatever their views, agreed in flouting the young schoolteacher's

uninteresting suggestion that perhaps the wolves had not happened, at

the moment, to be hungry.

As it chanced, however, even this very rational explanation of Kane's

was far from the truth. The truth was that the great wolf had profited

by his period of captivity in the hands of a masterful man. Into his

fine sagacity had penetrated the conception--hazy, perhaps, but none

the less effective--that man's vengeance would be irresistible and

inescapable if once fairly aroused. This conception he had enforced

upon the pack. It was enough. For, of course, even to the most

elementary intelligence among the hunting, fighting kindreds of the

wild, it was patent that the surest way to arouse man's vengeance

would be to attack man's young. The intelligence lying behind the

wide-arched skull of the Gray Master was equal to more intricate and

less obvious conclusions than that.

Among all the scattered inhabitants of the Quah-Davic Valley there was

no one who devoted quite so much attention to the wonderful gray wolf

as did the young school-teacher. His life at the Burnt Brook

Cross-Roads, his labors at the little Burnt Brook School, were neither

so exacting nor so exciting but that he had time on his hands. His

preferred expedients for spending that time were hunting, and

studying the life of the wild kindreds. He was a good shot with both

rifle and camera, and would serve himself with one weapon or the other

as the mood seized him. When life, or his dinner, went ill with him,

or he found himself fretting hopelessly for the metropolitan

excitement of the little college city where he had been educated, he

would choose his rifle. And so wide-reaching, so mysterious, are the

ties which enmesh all created beings, that it would seem to even

matters up and relieve his feelings wonderfully just to kill

something, if only a rabbit or a weasel.

But at other times he preferred the camera.

Naturally Kane was interested in the mysterious gray wolf more than in

all the other prowlers of the Quah-Davic put together. He was quite

unreasonably glad when the plans for a concerted campaign against the

marauder so suddenly fell through. That so individual a beast should

have its career cut short by an angry settler's bullet, to avenge a

few ordinary pigs or sheep, was a thing he could hardly contemplate

with patience. To scatter the pack would be to rob the Quah-Davic

solitudes of half their romance. He determined to devote himself to a

study of the great wolf's personality and characteristics, and to

foil, as far as this could be done without making himself unpopular,

such plots as might be laid for the beast's undoing.

Recognizing, however, that this friendly interest might not be

reciprocated, Kane chose his rifle rather than his camera as a weapon,

on those stinging, blue-white nights when he went forth to seek

knowledge of the gray wolf's ways. His rifle was a well-tried

repeating Winchester, and he carried a light, short-handled axe in his

belt besides the regulation knife; so he had no serious misgivings as

he trod the crackling, moonlit snow beneath the moose-hide webbing of

his snowshoes. But not being utterly foolhardy, he kept to the open

stretches of meadow, or river-bed, or snow-buried lake, rather than in

the close shadows of the forest.

But now, when he was so expectant, the wolf-pack seemed to find

business elsewhere. For nights not a howl had been heard, not a fresh

track found, within miles of Burnt Brook Cross-Roads. Then,

remembering that a watched pot takes long to boil, Kane took

fishing-lines and bait, and went up the wide, white brook-bed to the

deep lake in the hills, whence it launches its shallow flood towards

the Quah-Davic. He took with him also for companionship, since this

time he was not wolf-hunting, a neighbor's dog that was forever after

him--a useless, yellow lump of mongrel dog-flesh, but friendly and

silent. After building a hasty shelter of spruce boughs some distance

out from shore in the flooding light, he chopped holes through the ice

and fell to fishing for the big lake trout that inhabited those deep

waters. He had luck. And soon, absorbed in the new excitement, he had

forgotten all about the great gray wolf.

It was late, for Kane had slept the early part of the night, waiting

for moonrise before starting on his expedition. The air was tingling

with windless cold, and ghostly white with the light of a crooked,

waning moon. Suddenly, without a sound, the dog crept close against

Kane's legs. Kane felt him tremble. Looking up sharply, his eyes fell

on a tall, gray form, sitting erect on the tip of a naked point, not a

hundred yards away, and staring, not at him, but at the moon.

In spite of himself, Kane felt a pricking in his cheeks, a creeping of

the skin under his hair. The apparition was so sudden, and, above all,

the cool ignoring of his presence was so disconcerting. Moreover,

through that half-sinister light, his long muzzle upstretched towards

the moon, and raised as he was a little above the level on which Kane

was standing, the wolf looked unnaturally and impossibly tall. Kane

had never heard of a wolf acting in this cool, self-possessed,

arrogantly confident fashion, and his mind reverted obstinately to the

outworn superstitions of his _habitants_ friends. But, after all, it

was this wolf, not an ordinary brush-fence wolf, that he was so

anxious to study; and the unexpected was just what he had most reason

to expect! He was getting what he came for.

Kane knew that the way to study the wild creatures was to keep still

and make no noise. So be stiffened into instant immobility, and

regretted that he had brought the dog with him. But he need not have

worried about the dog, for that intelligent animal showed no desire to

attract the Gray Master's notice. He was crouched behind Kane's legs,

and motionless except for his shuddering.

For several minutes no one stirred--nothing stirred in all that frozen

world. Then, feeling the cold begin to creep in upon him in the

stillness, Kane had to lift his thick-gloved hands to chafe his ears.

He did it cautiously, but the caution was superfluous. The great wolf

apparently had no objection to his moving as much as he liked. Once,

indeed, those green, lambent eyes flamed over him, but casually, in

making a swift circuit of the shores of the lake and the black fringe

of the firs; but for all the interest which their owner vouchsafed

him, Kane might as well have been a juniper bush.

Knowing very well, however, that this elaborate indifference could not

be other than feigned, Kane was patient, determined to find out what

the game was. At the same time, he could not help the strain beginning

to tell on him. Where was the rest of the pack? From time to time he

glanced searchingly over his shoulder towards the all-concealing fir

woods.

At last, as if considering himself utterly alone, the great wolf

opened his jaws, stretched back his neck, and began howling his

shrill, terrible serenade to the moon. As soon as he paused, came

far-off nervous barkings and yelpings from dogs who hated and trembled

in the scattered clearings. But no wolf-howl made reply. The pack, for

all the sign they gave, might have vanished off the earth. And Kane

wondered what strong command from their leader could have kept them

silent when all their ancient instincts bade them answer.

As if well satisfied with his music, the great wolf continued to

beseech the moon so persistently that at last Kane lost patience. He

wanted more variety in the programme. Muttering, "I'll see if I can't

rattle your fine composure a bit, my friend!" he raised his rifle and

sent a bullet whining over the wolf's head. The wolf cocked his ears

slightly and looked about carelessly, as if to say, "What's that?"

then coolly resumed his serenade.

Nettled by such ostentatious nonchalance, Kane drove another bullet

into the snow within a few inches of the wolf's forefeet. This proved

more effective. The great beast looked down at the place where the

ball had struck, sniffed at it curiously, got up on all fours, and

turned and stared steadily at Kane for perhaps half a minute. Kane

braced himself for a possible onslaught. But it never came. Whirling

lightly, the Gray Master turned his back on the disturber of his song,

and trotted away slowly, without once looking back. He did not make

directly for the cover, but kept in full view and easy gunshot for

several hundred yards. Then he disappeared into the blackness of the

spruce woods. Thereupon the yellow mongrel, emerging from his shelter

behind Kane's legs, pranced about on the snow before him with every

sign of admiration and relief.

But Kane was too puzzled to be altogether relieved. It was not

according to the books for any wolf, great or small, to conduct

himself in this supercilious fashion. Looking back along the white

bed of the brook, the path by which he must return, he saw that the

sinking of the moon would very soon involve it in thick shadow. This

was not as he wished it. He had had enough of fishing. Gathering up

his now frozen prizes, and strapping the bag that contained them over

his shoulder, so as to leave both hands free, he set out for home at

the long, deliberate, yet rapid lope of the experienced snowshoer; and

the yellow dog, confidence in his companion's prowess now thoroughly

established, trotted on heedlessly three or four paces ahead.

Already the shadow of the woods lay halfway across the bed of the

brook, but down the middle of the strip of brightness, still some five

or six paces in breadth, Kane swung steadily. As he went, he kept a

sharp eye on the shadowed edge of his path. He had gone perhaps a

mile, when all at once he felt a tingling at the roots of his hair,

which seemed to tell him he was being watched from the darkness. Peer

as he would, however, he could catch no hint of moving forms; strain

his ears as he might, he could hear no whisper of following feet.

Moreover, he trusted to the keener senses, keener instincts, of the

dog, to give him warning of any furtive approach; and the dog was

obviously at ease.

He was just beginning to execrate himself for letting his nerves get

too much on edge, when suddenly out from the black branches just ahead

shot a long, spectral shape and fell upon the dog. There was one

choked yelp--and the dog and the terrible shape vanished together,

back into the blackness.

It was all so instantaneous that before Kane could get his rifle up

they were gone. Startled and furious, he fired at random, three times,

into cover. Then he steadied himself, remembering that the number of

cartridges in his chamber was not unlimited. Seeing to it that his axe

and knife were both loose for instant action, he stopped and

replenished his Winchester. Then he hurried on as fast as he could

without betraying haste.

As he went, he was soon vividly conscious that the wolves--not the

Gray Master alone, but the whole pack also--were keeping pace with him

through the soundless dark beyond the rim of the spruces. But not a

hint of their grim companioning could he see or hear. He felt it

merely in the creeping of his skin, the elemental stirring of the hair

at the back of his neck. From moment to moment he expected the swift

attack, the battle for his life. But he was keyed up to it. It was not

fear that made his nerves tingle, but the tense, trembling excitement

of the situation. Even against these strange, hidden forces of the

forest, his spirit felt sure of victory. He felt as if his rifle would

go up and speak, almost of itself, unerringly at the first instant of

attack, even before the adversary broke into view. But through all the

drawn-out length of those last three miles his hidden adversaries gave

no sign, save that once a dead branch, concealed under the snow,

snapped sharply. His rifle was at his shoulder, it seemed to him,

almost before the sound reached his ear. But nothing came of it. Then

a panic-mad rabbit, stretched straight out in flight, darted across

the fast narrowing brightness of his path. But nothing followed. And

at last, after what seemed to him hours, he came out upon the open

pastures overlooking Burnt Brook Settlement. Here he ran on a little

way; and then, because the strain had been great, he sat down suddenly

upon a convenient stump and burst into a peal of laughter which must

have puzzled the wolves beyond measure.

After this, though well aware that the Gray Master's inexplicable

forbearance had saved him a battle which, for all his confidence,

might quite conceivably have gone against him, Kane's interest in the

mysterious beast was uncompromisingly hostile. He was bitter on

account of the dog. He felt that the great wolf had put a dishonor

upon him; and for a few days he was no longer the impartial student of

natural history, but the keen, primitive hunter with the blood-lust

hot in his veins. Then this mood passed, or, rather, underwent a

change. He decided that the Gray Master was, indeed, too individual a

beast to be just snuffed out, but, at the same time, far too dangerous

to be left at liberty.

And now all the thought and effort that could be spared from his daily

duties at the Cross-Roads were bent to the problem of capturing the

great wolf alive. He would be doing a service to the whole Quah-Davic

Valley. And he would have the pleasure of presenting the splendid

captive to his college town, at that time greatly interested in the

modest beginnings of a zoölogical garden which its citizens were

striving to inaugurate. It thrilled his fancy to imagine a tin placard

on the front of a cage in the little park, bearing the inscription--

CANIS OCCIDENTALIS.

EASTERN NORTH AMERICA.

PRESENTED BY ARTHUR KANE, ESQ.

After a few weeks of assiduous trapping, however, Kane felt bound to

acknowledge that this modest ambition of his seemed remote from

fulfilment. Every kind of trap he could think of, that would take a

beast alive, he tried in every kind of way. And having run the whole

insidious gamut, he would turn patiently to run it all over again. Of

course, the result was inevitable, for no beast, not even such a one

as the Gray Master, is a match, in the long run, for a man who is in

earnest. Yet Kane's triumph, when it blazed upon his startled eyes at

last, was indirect. In avoiding, and at the same time uncovering and

making mock of, Kane's traps, the great wolf put his foot into

another, a powerful bear-trap, which a cunning old trapper had hidden

near by, without bait. The trap was secured to a tree by a stout

chain--and rage, strain, tear as he might, the Gray Master found

himself snared. In his silent fury he would probably have gnawed off

the captive foot, for the sake of freedom. But before he came to that,

Kane arrived and occupied his attention fully.

Kane's disappointment, at finding the splendid prize in another trap

than his own, was but momentary. He knew his successful rival would

readily part with his claims, for due consideration. But he was

puzzled as to what should be done in the immediate emergency. He

wanted to go back home for help, for ropes, straps, and a muzzle with

which he had provided himself; but he was afraid lest, in his absence,

the trapper might arrive and shoot the captive, for the sake of the

pelt and the bounty. In his uncertainty he waited, hoping that the

trapper might come soon; and by way of practice for the serious

enterprise that would come later, as well as to direct the prisoner's

mind a little from his painful predicament, Kane began trying to lasso

him with a coil of heavy cord which he carried.

His efforts in this direction were not altogether successful, but the

still fury which they aroused in the great wolf's breast doubtless

obscured the mordant anguish in his foot. One terrific leap at his

enemy, resulting in an ignominious overthrow as the chain stopped him

in mid-air, had convinced the subtle beast of the vanity of such

tactics. Crouching back, he eyed his adversary in silence, with eyes

whose hatred seemed to excoriate. But whenever the running noose at

the end of the cord came coiling swiftly at his head, with one

lightning snap of his long teeth he would sever it as with a knife. By

the time Kane had grown tired of this diversion the cord was so full

of knots that no noose would any longer run.

But at this point the old trapper came slouching up on his snowshoes,

a twinkle of elation in his shrewd, frosty, blue eyes.

"I reckon we'll show the varmint now as how he ain't no _loup-garou_!"

he remarked, lightly swinging his axe.

But Kane hastily intervened.

"_Please_ don't kill him, Dave!" he begged. "_I_ want him, bad!

What'll you take for him?"

"Just as he stands?" demanded the old trapper, with a chuckle. "I

ain't a-goin' to deliver the goods to yer door, ye know!"

"No," laughed Kane, "just as he stands, right here!"

"Well, seein' as it's you, I don't want no more'n what his pelt'ld

fetch, an' the bounty on his nose," answered the trapper.

"All right," said Kane. "You wait here a bit, will you, an' keep him

amused so's he won't gnaw his paw off; an' I'll run back to the

Cross-Roads and get some rope and things I guess I'll be needing."

When he got back with rope, straps, a big mastiff-muzzle, and a

toboggan, he found Dave in a very bad humor, and calling the

watchful, silent, crouching beast hard names. In his efforts to amuse

himself by stirring that imperturbable and sinister quiet into action,

he had come just within the range of the Gray Master's spring. Swift

as that spring was, that of the alert backwoodsman was just swift

enough to elude it--in part. Dave's own hide had escaped, but his

heavy jacket of homespun had had the back ripped clean out of it.

But now, for all his matchless strength, courage, and craft, the Gray

Master's game was played out. The fickle Fates of the wild had

pronounced against him. He could not parry two flying nooses at once.

And presently, having been choked for a few moments into

unconsciousness, he awoke to find himself bound so that he could not

move a leg, and his mighty jaws imprisoned in a strange cage of straps

and steel. He was tied upon the toboggan, and being dragged swiftly

through the forest--that free forest of which he had so long felt

himself master--at the heels of his two conquerors. His only poor

consolation was that the hideous, crunching thing had been removed

from his bleeding paw, which, however, anguished cruelly for the

soothing of his tongue.

CHAPTER II

During the strenuous and dangerous weeks while Kane was gaoler to his

dreaded captive, his respect for the grim beast's tameless spirit by

no means diminished; but he had no shadow of misgiving as to the

future to which he destined his victim. He felt that in sending the

incomparable wolf to the gardens, where he would be well cared for,

and at the same time an educative influence, he was being both just

and kind. And it was with feelings of unmixed delight that he received

a formal resolution of gratitude from the zoölogical society for his

valued and in some respects unique donation.

It was about a year and a half later that Kane had occasion to revisit

the city of his Alma Mater. As soon as possible he hurried to inspect

the little gardens, which had already marched so far towards success

as to be familiarly styled "The Zoo." There were two or three paddocks

of deer, of different North American species--for the society was

inclined to specialize on the wild kindreds of native origin. There

were moose, caribou, a couple of bears, raccoons, foxes, porcupines,

two splendid pumas, a rather flea-bitten and toothless tiger, and the

Gray Master, solitary in his cage!

A sure instinct led Kane straight to that cage, which immediately

adjoined the big double cage of the pumas. As he approached, he caught

sight of a tall, gray shape pacing, pacing, pacing, pacing to and fro

behind the bars with a sort of measured restlessness that spoke an

immeasurable monotony. When he reached the front of the cage, Kane saw

that the great wolf's eyes were noting nothing of what was about him,

but dim with some far-off vision. As he marked the look in them, and

thought of what they must be remembering and aching for, his heart

began to smite him. He felt his first pang of self-reproach, for

having doomed to ignominious exile and imprisonment this splendid

creature who had deserved, at least, to die free. As he mused over

this point, half angrily, the Gray Master suddenly paused, and his

thin nostrils wrinkled. Perhaps there still clung about Kane's clothes

some scent of the spruce woods, some pungent breath of the cedar

swamps. He turned and looked Kane straight in the eyes.

There was unmistakable recognition in that deep stare. There was

also, to Kane's sensitive imagination, a tameless hate and an

unspeakable but dauntless despair. Convicted in his own mind of a

gross and merciless misunderstanding of his wild kindreds, whom he

professed to know so well, he glanced up and saw the painted placard

staring down at him, exactly as he had anticipated----

CANIS OCCIDENTALIS.

EASTERN NORTH AMERICA.

PRESENTED BY ARTHUR KANE, ESQ.

The sight sickened him. He had a foolish impulse to tear it down and

to abase himself with a plea for pardon before the silent beast behind

the bars. But when he looked again, the Gray Master had turned away,

and was once more, with indrawn, far-off vision in his eyes, pacing,

pacing, pacing to and fro. Kane felt overwhelmed with the intolerable

weariness of it, as if it had been going on, just like that, ever

since he had pronounced this doom upon his vanquished adversary, and

as if it would go on like that forever. In vain by coaxing word, by

sharp, sudden whistle, by imitations of owl, loon, and deer calls,

which brought all the boys in the place admiringly about him, did he

strive to catch again the attention of the captive. But not once

more, even for the fleeting fraction of a second, would the Gray

Master turn his eyes. And presently, angry and self-reproachful, Kane

turned on his heel and went home, pursued by the enthusiasm of the

small boys.

After this, Kane went nearly every day to the little "Zoo"; but never

again did he win the smallest hint of notice from the Gray Master. And

ever that tireless pacing smote him with bitterest self-reproach. Half

unconsciously he made it a sort of penance to go and watch his victim,

till at last he found himself indulging in sentimental, idiotic

notions of trying to ransom the prisoner. Realizing that any such

attempt would make him supremely ridiculous, and that such a dangerous

and powerful creature could not be set free anywhere, he consoled

himself with a resolve that never again would he take captive any of

the freedom-loving, tameless kindreds of the wilderness. He would kill

them and have cleanly done with it, or leave them alone.

One morning, thinking to break the spell of that eternal, hopeless

pacing by catching the Gray Master at his meals, Kane went up to the

gardens very early, before any of the usual visitors had arrived. He

found that the animals had already been fed. The cages were being

cleaned. He congratulated himself on his opportune arrival, for this

would give him a new insight into the ways of the beasts with their

keepers.

The head-keeper, as it chanced, was a man of long experience with wild

animals, in one of the chief zoölogical parks of the country. Long

familiarity, however, had given him that most dangerous gift,

contempt. And he had lost his position through that fault most

unforgivable in an animal keeper, drunkenness. Owing to this fact, the

inexperienced authorities of this little "Zoo" had been able to obtain

his services at a comparatively moderate wage--and were congratulating

themselves on the possession of a treasure.

On this particular morning, Biddell was not by any means himself. He

was cleaning the cage of the two pumas, and making at the same time

desperate efforts to keep his faculties clear and avoid betraying his

condition. The two big cats seemed to observe nothing peculiar in his

manner, and obeyed him, sulkily, as usual; but Kane noticed that the

great wolf, though pacing up and down according to his custom, had his

eyes on the man in the next cage, instead of upon his own secret

visions. Biddell had driven the two pumas back through the door which

led from the open cage to the room which served them for a den, and

closed the door on them. Then, having finished his duties there, he

unfastened the strong door between this cage and that of the Gray

Master, and stepped through, leaving the door slightly ajar.

Biddell was armed, of course, with a heavy-pronged fork, but he

carried it carelessly as he went about his work, as if he had long

since taught the sombre wolf to keep at a distance. But to-day the

wolf acted curiously. He backed away in silence, as usual, but eyed

the man fixedly with a look which, as it seemed to Kane, showed

anything rather than fear. The stiff hair rose slightly along his neck

and massive shoulders. Kane could not help congratulating himself that

he was not in the keeper's place. But he felt sure everything was all

right, as Biddell was supposed to know his business.

When Biddell came to the place where the wolf was standing, the latter

made way reluctantly, still backing, and staring with that sinister

fixity which Kane found so impressive. He wondered if Biddell noticed.

He was just on the point of speaking to him about it, through the

bars, when he chanced to glance aside to the cage of the pumas.

Biddell, in his foggy state of mind, had forgotten to close an inner

door connecting the two rooms in the rear. The pumas had quietly

passed through, and emerged again into their cage by the farther

entrance. Catching sight of the door into the wolf's cage standing

ajar, they had crept up to it; and now, with one great noiseless paw,

the leader of the two was softly pushing it open.

Kane gave an inarticulate yell of warning. No words were needed to

translate that warning to the keeper, who was sobered completely as he

flashed round and saw what was happening. With a sharp command he

rushed to drive the pumas back and close the gate. But one was already

through, and the other blocked the way.

At this tense instant, while Kane glanced swiftly aside to see if any

help were in sight, the Gray Master launched himself across the cage.

Kane could not see distinctly, so swiftly did it happen, whether the

man or the intruding puma was the object of that mad rush. But in the

next second the man was down, on his face, with the silent wolf and

the screeching puma locked in a death grapple on top of him.

[Illustration: "Then the second puma pounced."]

Horrified, and yelling for help, Kane tore at the bars, but there was

no way of getting in, the door being locked. He saw that the wolf had

secured a hold upon the puma's throat, but that the great cat's claws

were doing deadly work. Then the second puma pounced, with a screech,

upon the Gray Master's back, bearing him down.

At this moment Biddell rolled out from under the raving, writhing

heap, and staggered to his feet, bleeding, but apparently uninjured.

With his fork and his booted foot he threw himself upon the combatants

furiously, striving to separate them. After what seemed to Kane an age

he succeeded in forcing off the second puma and driving it through the

gate, which he shut. Then he returned to the fight.

But he had little more to do now, for the fight was over. Though no

wolf is supposed to be a fair match for a puma, the Gray Master, with

his enormous strength and subtle craft, might perhaps have held his

own against his first antagonist alone. But against the two he was

powerless. The puma, badly torn, now crouched snarling upon his

unresisting body. Biddell forced the victor off and drove him into a

corner, where he lay lashing his sides with heavy, twitching tail.

The keeper was sober enough now. One long look at the great wolf's

body satisfied him it was all over. He turned and saw Kane's white

face pressed against the bars. With a short laugh he shook himself,

to make sure he was all sound, then pushed the body of the Gray Master

gently with his foot. Yet there was respect, not disrespect, in the

gesture.

"I wouldn't have had that happen for a thousand dollars, Mr. Kane!"

said he in a voice of keen regret. "That was a great beast, an' we'll

never get another wolf to match him."

Kane was on the point of saying that it would _not_ have happened but

for certain circumstances which it was unnecessary for him to specify.

He realized, however, that he was glad it had happened, glad the long

pacing, pacing, pacing was at an end, glad the load of his

self-reproach was lifted off. So he said something quite different.

"Well, Biddell, he's _free_! And maybe, when all's said, that was just

what he was after!"

Then he turned and strode hurriedly away, more content in his heart

than he had felt for days.

THE SUN-GAZER

CHAPTER I

To Jim Horner it seemed as if the great, white-headed eagle was in

some way the uttered word of the mountain and the lake--of the lofty,

solitary, granite-crested peak, and of the deep, solitary water at its

base. As his canoe raced down the last mad rapid, and seemed to snatch

breath again as it floated out upon the still water of the lake, Jim

would rest his paddle across the gunwales and look upward expectantly.

First his keen, far-sighted, gray eyes would sweep the blue arc of

sky, in search of the slow circling of wide, motionless wings. Then,

if the blue was empty of this far shape, his glance would range at

once to a dead pine standing sole on a naked and splintered shoulder

of the mountain which he knew as "Old Baldy." There he was almost sure

to see the great bird sitting, motionless and majestic, staring at the

sun. Floating idly and smoking, resting after his long battle with

the rapids, he would watch, till the immensity and the solitude would

creep in upon his spirit and oppress him. Then, at last, a shrill

yelp, far off and faint, but sinister, would come from the pine-top;

and the eagle, launching himself on open wings from his perch, would

either wheel upward into the blue, or flap away over the serried

fir-tops to some ravine in the cliffs that hid his nest.

One day, when Jim came down the river and stopped, as usual, to look

for the great bird, he scanned in vain both sky and cliff-side. At

last he gave up the search and paddled on down the lake with a sense

of loss. Something had vanished from the splendor of the solitude. But

presently he heard, close overhead, the beat and whistle of vast

wings, and looking up, he saw the eagle passing above him, flying so

low that he could catch the hard, unwinking, tameless stare of its

black and golden eyes as they looked down upon him with a sort of

inscrutable challenge. He noted also a peculiarity which he had never

seen in any other eagle. This one had a streak of almost black

feathers immediately over its left eye, giving it a heavy and sinister

eyebrow. The bird carried in the clutch of its talons a big,

glistening lake trout, probably snatched from the fish-hawk; and Jim

was able to take note of the very set of its pinion-feathers as the

wind hummed in their tense webs. Flying with a massive power quite

unlike the ease of his soaring, the eagle mounted gradually up the

steep, passed the rocky shoulder with its watch-tower pine, and

disappeared over the edge of a ledge which looked to Horner like a

mere scratch across the face of the mountain.

"There's where his nest is, sure!" muttered Horner to himself. And

remembering that cold challenge in the bird's yellow stare, he

suddenly decided that he wanted to see an eagle's nest. He had plenty

of time. He was in no particular hurry to get back to the settlement

and the gossip of the cross-roads store. He turned his canoe to land,

lifted her out and hid her in the bushes, and struck back straight for

the face of "Old Baldy."

The lower slope was difficult to climb, a tangle of tumbled boulders

and fallen trunks, mantled in the soundless gloom of the fir-forest.

Skilled woodsman though he was, Horner's progress was so slow, and the

windless heat became so oppressive to his impatience, that he was

beginning to think of giving up the idle venture, when suddenly he

came face to face with a perpendicular and impassable wall of cliff.

This curt arrest to his progress was just what was needed to stiffen

his wavering resolution. He understood the defiance which his ready

fancy had found in the stare of the eagle. Well, he had accepted the

challenge. He would not be baffled by a rock. If he could not climb

over it, he would go round it; but he would find the nest.

With an obstinate look in his eyes, Horner began to work his way along

the foot of the cliff towards the right. Taking advantage of every

inch of ascent that he could gain, he at last found, to his

satisfaction, that he had made sufficient height to clear the gloom of

the woods. As he looked out over their tops, a light breeze cooled his

wet forehead, and he pressed on with fresh vigor. Presently the slope

grew a trifle easier, the foothold surer, and he mounted more rapidly.

The steely lake, and the rough-ridged, black-green sea of the fir-tops

began to unroll below him. At last he rounded an elbow of the steep,

and there before him, upthrust perhaps a hundred feet above his head,

stood the outlying shoulder of rock, crowned with its dead pine, on

which he was accustomed to see the eagle sitting. Even as he looked,

motionless, there came a rushing of great wings; and suddenly there

was the eagle himself, erect on his high perch, and staring, as it

seemed to Horner, straight into the sun.

When Horner resumed his climbing, the great bird turned his head and

gazed down upon him with an ironic fixity which betrayed neither dread

nor wonder. Concluding that the nest would be lying somewhere within

view of its owner's watch-tower, Horner now turned his efforts towards

reaching the dead pine. With infinite difficulty, and with a few

bruises to arm and leg, he managed to cross the jagged crevice which

partly separated the jutting rock-pier from the main face of the

cliff. Then, laboriously and doggedly, he dragged himself up the

splintered slope, still being forced around to the right, till there

fell away below him a gulf into which it was not good for the nervous

to look. Feeling that a fate very different from that of Lot's wife

might be his if he should let himself look back too indiscreetly, he

kept his eyes upon the lofty goal and pressed on upwards with a haste

that now grew a trifle feverish. It began to seem to him that the

irony of the eagle's changeless stare might perhaps not be

unjustified.

Not till Horner had conquered the steep and, panting but elated,

gained the very foot of the pine, did the eagle stir. Then, spreading

his wings with a slow disdain, as if not dread but aversion to this

unbidden visitor bade him go, he launched himself on a long, splendid

sweep over the gulf, and then mounted on a spacious spiral to his

inaccessible outlook in the blue. Leaning against the bleached and

scarred trunk of the pine, Horner watched this majestic departure for

some minutes, recovering his breath and drinking deep the cool and

vibrant air. Then he turned and scanned the face of the mountain.

[Illustration: "He launched himself on a long, splendid sweep over the

gulf."]

There it lay, in full view--the nest which he had climbed so far to

find. It was not more than a hundred yards away. Yet, at first sight,

it seemed hopelessly out of reach. The chasm separating the ledge on

which it clung from the outlying rock of the pine was not more than

twenty feet across; but its bottom was apparently somewhere in the

roots of the mountain. There was no way of passing it at this point.

But Horner had a faith that there was a way to be found over or around

every obstacle in the world, if only one kept on looking for it

resolutely enough. To keep on looking for a path to the eagle's nest,

he struggled forward, around the outer slope of the buttress, down a

ragged incline, and across a narrow and dizzy "saddle-back," which

brought him presently upon another angle of the steep, facing

southeast. Clinging with his toes and one hand, while he wiped his

dripping forehead with his sleeve, he looked up--and saw the whole

height of the mountain, unbroken and daunting, stretched skyward above

him.

But to Horner the solemn sight was not daunting in the least.

"Gee!" he exclaimed, grinning with satisfaction. "I _hev_ circumvented

that there cervice, sure's death!"

Of the world below he had now a view that was almost overpoweringly

unrestricted; but of the mountain, and his scene of operations, he

could see only the stretch directly above him. A little calculation

convinced him, however, that all he had to do was to keep straight on

up for perhaps a hundred and fifty feet, then, as soon as the slope

would permit, work around to his left, and descend upon the nest from

above. Incidentally, he made up his mind that his return journey

should be made by another face of the mountain--any other, rather than

that by which he had rashly elected to come.

It seemed to Horner like a mile, that last hundred and fifty feet; but

at last he calculated that he had gained enough in height. At the same

time he felt the slope grow easier. Making his way towards the left,

he came upon a narrow ledge, along which he could move easily

side-wise, by clinging to the rock. Presently it widened to a path by

which he could walk almost at ease, with the wide, wild solitude, dark

green laced with silver watercourses, spread like a stupendous

amphitheatre far below him. It was the wilderness which he knew so

well in detail, yet had never before seen as a whole; and the sight,

for a few moments, held him in a kind of awed surprise. When, at last,

he tore his gaze free from the majestic spectacle, there, some ten or

twelve yards below his feet, he saw the object of his quest.

It was nothing much to boast of in the way of architecture, this nest

of the Kings of the Air--a mere cart-load of sticks and bark and

coarse grass, apparently tumbled at haphazard upon the narrow ledge.

But in fact its foundations were so skilfully wedged into the crevices

of the rock, its structure was so cunningly interwoven, that the

fiercest winds which scourged that lofty seat were powerless against

it. It was a secure throne, no matter what tempests might rage around

it.

Sitting half erect on the nest were two eaglets, almost full grown,

and so nearly full feathered that Horner wondered why they did not

take wing at his approach. He did not know that the period of

helplessness with these younglings of royal birth lasted even after

they looked as big and well able to take care of themselves as their

parents. It was a surprise to him, also, to see that they were quite

unlike their parents in color, being black all over from head to tail,

instead of a rich brown with snow-white head, neck, and tail. As he

stared, he slowly realized that the mystery of the rare "black eagle"

was explained. He had seen one once, flying heavily just above the

tree-tops, and imagined it a discovery of his own. But now he reached

the just conclusion that it had been merely a youngster in its first

plumage.

As he stared, the two young birds returned his gaze with interest,

watching him with steady, yellow, undaunted eyes from under their

flat, fierce brows; with high-shouldered wings half raised, they

appeared quite ready to resent any familiarity which the strange

intruder might be contemplating.

Horner lay face downward on his ledge, and studied the perpendicular

rock below him for a way to reach the next. He had no very definite

idea what he wanted to do when he got there; possibly, if the

undertaking seemed feasible, he might carry off one of the royal brood

and amuse himself with trying to domesticate it. But, at any rate, he

hoped to add something, by a closer inspection, to his rather

inadequate knowledge of eagles.

And this hope, indeed, as he learned the next moment, was not

unjustified. Cautiously he was lowering himself over the edge, feeling

for the scanty and elusive foothold, when all at once the air was

filled with a rush of mighty wings, which seemed about to overwhelm

him. A rigid wing-tip buffeted him so sharply that he lost his hold on

the ledge. With a yell of consternation, which caused his assailant to

veer off, startled, he fell backwards, and plunged down straight upon

the nest.

It was the nest only that saved him from instant death. Tough and

elastic, it broke his fall; but at the same time its elasticity threw

him off, and on the rebound he went rolling and bumping on down the

steep slopes below the ledge, with the screaming of the eagles in his

ears, and a sickening sense in his heart that the sunlit world

tumbling and turning somersaults before his blurred sight was his last

view of life. Then, to his dim surprise, he was brought up with a

thump; and clutching desperately at a bush which scraped his face, he

lay still. At the same moment a flapping mass of feathers and fierce

claws landed on top of him, but only to scramble off again as swiftly

as possible with a hoarse squawk. He had struck one of the young

eagles in his fall, hurled it from the nest, and brought it down with

him to this lower ledge which had given him so timely a refuge.

For several minutes, perhaps, he lay clutching the bush desperately

and staring straight upwards. There he saw both parent eagles whirling

excitedly, screaming, and staring down at him; and then the edge of

the nest, somewhat dilapidated by his strange assault, overhanging the

ledge about thirty feet above. At length his wits came back to him,

and he cautiously turned his head to see if he was in danger of

falling if he should relax his hold on the bush. He was in bewildering

pain, which seemed distributed all over him; but in spite of it he

laughed aloud, to find that the bush, to which he hung so desperately,

was in a little hollow on a spacious platform, from which he could not

have fallen by any chance. At that strange, uncomprehended sound of

human laughter the eagles ceased their screaming for a few moments and

wheeled farther aloof.

With great difficulty and anguish Horner raised himself to a sitting

position and tried to find out how seriously he was hurt. One leg was

quite helpless. He felt it all over, and came to the conclusion that

it was not actually broken; but for all the uses of a leg, for the

present at least, it might as well have been putty, except for the

fact that it pained him abominably. His left arm and shoulder, too,

seemed to be little more than useless encumbrances, and he wondered

how so many bruises and sprains could find place on one human body of

no more than average size. However, having assured himself, with

infinite relief, that there were no bones broken, he set his teeth

grimly and looked about to take account of the situation.

CHAPTER II

The ledge on which he had found refuge was apparently an isolated one,

about fifty or sixty feet in length, and vanishing into the face of

the sheer cliff at either end. It had a width of perhaps twenty-five

feet; and its surface, fairly level, held some soil in its rocky

hollows. Two or three dark-green seedling firs, a slim young silver

birch, a patch or two of wind-beaten grass, and some clumps of

harebells, azure as the clear sky overhead, softened the bareness of

this tiny, high-flung terrace. In one spot, at the back, a spread of

intense green and a handbreadth of moisture on the rock showed where a

tiny spring oozed from a crevice to keep this lonely oasis in the

granite alive and fresh.

At the farthest edge of the shelf, and eying him with savage dread,

sat the young eagle which had fallen with him. Horner noticed, with a

kind of sympathy, that even the bird, for all his wings, had not come

out of the affair without some damage; for one of its black wings was

not held up so snugly as the other. He hoped it was not broken. As he

mused vaguely upon this unimportant question, his pain so exhausted

him that he sank back and lay once more staring up at the eagles, who

were still wheeling excitedly over the nest. In an exhaustion that was

partly sleep and partly coma, his eyes closed. When he opened them

again, the sun was hours lower and far advanced towards the west, so

that the ledge was in shadow. His head was now perfectly clear; and

his first thought was of getting himself back to the canoe. With

excruciating effort he dragged himself to the edge of the terrace and

looked down. The descent, at this point, was all but perpendicular for

perhaps a hundred feet. In full possession of his powers, he would

find it difficult enough. In his present state he saw clearly that he

might just as well throw himself over as attempt it.

Not yet disheartened, however, he dragged himself slowly towards the

other end of the terrace, where the young eagle sat watching him. As

he approached, the bird lifted his wings, as if about to launch

himself over and dare the element which he had not yet learned to

master. But one wing drooped as if injured, and he knew the attempt

would be fatal. Opening his beak angrily, he hopped away to the other

end of the terrace. But Horner was paying no heed to birds at that

moment. He was staring down the steep, and realizing that this ledge

which had proved his refuge was now his prison, and not unlikely to

become also his tomb.

Sinking back against a rock, and grinding his teeth with pain, he

strove to concentrate his attention upon the problem that confronted

him. Was he to die of thirst and hunger on this high solitude before

he could recover sufficiently to climb down? The thought stirred all

his dogged determination. He _would_ keep alive, and that was all

there was about it. He _would_ get well, and then the climbing down

would be no great matter. This point settled, he dismissed it from his

consideration and turned his thoughts to ways and means. After all,

there was that little thread of a spring trickling from the rock! He

would have enough to drink. And as for food--how much worse it would

have been had the ledge been a bare piece of rock! Here he had some

grass, and the roots of the herbs and bushes. A man could keep himself

alive on such things if he had will enough. And, as a last resource,

there was the young eagle! This idea, however, was anything but

attractive to him; and it was with eyes of good-will rather than of

appetite that he glanced at his fellow-prisoner sitting motionless at

the other extremity of the ledge.

"It'ld be hard lines, pardner, ef I should hev to eat you, after all!"

he muttered, with a twisted kind of grin. "We're both of us in a hole,

sure enough, an' I'll play fair as long as I kin!"

As he mused, a great shadow passed over his head, and looking up, he

saw one of the eagles hovering low above the ledge. It was the male,

his old acquaintance, staring down at him from under that strange,

black brow. He carried a large fish in his talons, and was plainly

anxious to feed his captive young, but not quite ready to approach

this mysterious man-creature who had been able to invade his eyrie as

if with wings. Horner lay as still as a stone, watching through

half-closed lids. The young eagle, seeing food so near, opened its

beak wide and croaked eagerly; while the mother bird, larger but

wilder and less resolute than her mate, circled aloof with sharp cries

of warning. At last, unable any longer to resist the appeals of his

hungry youngster, the great bird swooped down over him, dropped the

fish fairly into his clutches, and slanted away with a hurried

flapping which betrayed his nervousness.

As the youngster fell ravenously upon his meal, tearing it and

gulping the fragments, Horner drew a deep breath.

"There's where I come in, pardner," he explained. "When I kin git up

an appetite for that sort of vittles, I'll go shares with you, ef

y'ain't got no objection!"

Having conceived this idea, Horner was seized with a fear that the

captive might presently gain the power of flight and get away. This

was a thought under which he could not lie still. In his pocket he

always carried a bunch of stout salmon-twine and a bit of copper

rabbit-wire, apt to be needed in a hundred forest emergencies. He

resolved to catch the young eagle and tether it securely to a bush.

His first impulse was to set about this enterprise at once. With

excruciating effort he managed to pull off his heavy woollen

hunting-shirt, intending to use it as the toreador uses his mantle, to

entangle the dangerous weapons of his adversary. Then he dragged

himself across to the other end of the ledge and attempted to corner

the captive. For this he was not quite quick enough, however. With a

flop and a squawk the bird eluded him, and he realized that he had

better postpone the undertaking till the morrow. Crawling back to his

hollow by the bush, he sank down, utterly exhausted. Not till the

sharp chill which comes with sunset warned him of its necessity, was

he able to grapple with the long, painful problem of getting his shirt

on again.

Through the night he got some broken sleep, though the hardness of his

bed aggravated every hurt he had suffered. On the edge of dawn he saw

the male eagle come again--this time more confidently and

deliberately--to feed the captive. After he was gone, Horner tried to

move, but found himself now, from the night's chill and the austerity

of his bed, altogether helpless. Not till the sun was high enough to

warm him through and through, and not till he had manipulated his legs

and arms assiduously for more than an hour, did his body feel as if it

could ever again be of any service to him. Then he once more got off

his shirt and addressed himself to the catching of the indignant bird

whom he had elected to be his preserver.

Though the anguish caused by every movement was no less intense than

it had been the afternoon before, he was stronger now and more in

possession of his faculties. Before starting the chase, he cut a strip

from his shirt to wind around the leg of the young eagle, in order

that he might be able to tether it tightly without cutting the flesh.

The bird had suddenly become most precious to him!

Very warily he made his approaches, sidling down the ledge so as to

give his quarry the least possible room for escape. As he drew near,

the bird turned and faced him, with its one uninjured wing lifted

menacingly and its formidable beak wide open. Holding the heavy shirt

ready to throw, Horner crept up cautiously, so intent now upon the

game that the anguish in the leg which he dragged stiffly behind him

was almost forgotten. The young bird, meanwhile, waited, motionless

and vigilant, its savage eyes hard as glass.

At last a faint quiver and shrinking in the bird's form, an

involuntary contracting of the feathers, gave warning to Horner's

experienced eye that it was about to spring aside. On the instant he

flung the shirt, keeping hold of it by the sleeve. By a singular piece

of luck, upon which he had not counted at all, it opened as he threw

it, and settled right over the bird's neck and disabled wing, blinding

and baffling it completely. With a muffled squawk it bounced into the

air, both talons outspread and clawing madly; but in a second Horner

had it by the other wing, pulling it down, and rolling himself over

upon it so as to smother those dangerous claws. He felt them sink

once into his injured leg, but that was already anguishing so

vehemently that a little more or less did not matter. In a few moments

he had his captive bundled up with helplessness, and was dragging it

to a sturdy bush near the middle of the terrace. Here, without much

further trouble, he wrapped one of its legs with the strip of flannel

from his shirt, twisted on a hand-length of wire, and then tethered it

safely with a couple of yards of his doubled and twisted cord.

Just as he had accomplished this to his satisfaction, and was about to

undo the imprisoning shirt, it flashed across his mind that it was

lucky the old eagles had not been on hand to interfere. He glanced

upward--and saw the dark form dropping like a thunderbolt out of the

blue. He had just time to fling himself over on his back, lifting his

arm to shield his face, and his foot to receive the attack, when the

hiss of that lightning descent filled his ears. Involuntarily he half

closed his eyes. But no shock came, except a great buffet of air on

his face. Not quite daring to grapple with that ready defence, the

eagle had opened its wings when within a few feet of the ledge, and

swerved upward again, where it hung hovering and screaming. Horner saw

that it was the female, and shook his fist at her in defiance. Had it

been his old acquaintance and challenger, the male, he felt sure that

he would not have got off so easily.

Puzzled and alarmed, the mother now perched herself beside the other

eaglet, on the edge of the nest. Then, keeping a careful eye upon her,

lest she should return to the attack, Horner dexterously unrolled the

shirt, and drew back just in time to avoid a vicious slash from the

talons of his indignant prisoner. The latter, after some violent

tugging and flopping at his tether and fierce biting at the wire,

suddenly seemed to conclude that such futile efforts were undignified.

He settled himself like a rock and stared unwinkingly at his captor.

It was perhaps an hour after this, when the sun had grown hot, and

Horner, having slaked his thirst at the spring in the rock, had tried

rather ineffectually to satisfy his hunger on grass roots, that the

male eagle reappeared, winging heavily from the farthest end of the

lake. From his talons dangled a limp form, which Horner presently made

out to be a duck.

"Good!" he muttered to himself. "I always did like fowl better'n

fish."

When the eagle arrived, he seemed to notice something different in

the situation, for he wheeled slowly overhead for some minutes,

uttering sharp yelps of interrogation. But the appeals of the

youngster at last brought him down, and he delivered up the prize. The

moment he was gone, Horner crept up to where the youngster was already

tearing the warm body to pieces. Angry and hungry, the bird made a

show of fighting for his rights; but his late experience with his

invincible conqueror had daunted him. Suddenly he hopped away, the

full length of his tether; and Horner picked up the mangled victim.

But his appetite was gone by this time; he was not yet equal to a diet

of raw flesh. Tossing the prize back to its rightful owner, he

withdrew painfully to grub for some more grass roots.

[Illustration: "After this the eagle came regularly every three or four

hours with food for the prisoner."]

After this the eagle came regularly every three or four hours with

food for the prisoner. Sometimes it was a fish--trout, or brown

sucker, or silvery chub--sometimes a duck or a grouse, sometimes a

rabbit or a muskrat. Always it was the male, with that grim black

streak across the side of his white face, who came. Always Horner made

a point of taking the prize at once from the angry youngster, and then

throwing it back to him, unable to stomach the idea of the raw flesh.

At last, on the afternoon of the third day of his imprisonment, he

suddenly found that it was not the raw flesh, but the grass roots,

which he loathed. While examining a fine lake-trout, he remembered

that he had read of raw fish being excellent food under the right

conditions. This was surely one of those right conditions. Picking

somewhat fastidiously, he nevertheless managed to make so good a meal

off that big trout that there was little but head and tail to toss

back to his captor.

"Never mind, pardner!" he said seriously. "I'll divide fair nex' time.

But you know you've been havin' more'n your share lately."

But the bird was so outraged that for a long time he would not look at

these remnants, and only consented to devour them, at last, when

Horner was not looking.

After this Horner found it easy enough to partake of his prisoner's

meals, whether they were of fish, flesh, or fowl; and with the

ice-cold water from the little spring, and an occasional mouthful of

leaves and roots, he fared well enough to make progress towards

recovery. The male eagle grew so accustomed to his presence that he

would alight beside the prisoner, and threatened Horner with that old,

cold stare of challenge, and frequently Horner had to drive him off

in order to save his share of the feast from the rapacity of the

eaglet. But as for the female, she remained incurably suspicious and

protesting. From the upper ledge, where she devoted her care to the

other nestling, she would yelp down her threats and execrations, but

she never ventured any nearer approach.

For a whole week the naked hours of day and dark had rolled over the

peak before Horner began to think himself well enough to try the

descent. His arm and shoulder were almost well, but his leg, in spite

of ceaseless rubbing and applications of moist earth, remained

practically helpless. He could not bear his weight on it for a second.

His first attempt at lowering himself showed him that he must not be

in too great haste. It was nearly a week more before he could feel

assured, after experiments at scaling the steep above him, that he was

fit to face the terrible steep below. Then he thought of the eaglet,

his unwilling and outraged preserver! After a sharp struggle, of which

both his arms and legs bore the marks for months, he caught the bird

once more and examined the injured wing. It was not broken; and he saw

that its owner would be able to fly all right in time, perhaps as

soon as his more fortunate brother in the nest above. Satisfied on

this point, he loosed all the bonds and jumped back to avoid the

indomitable youngster's retort of beak and claws. Unamazed by his

sudden freedom, the young eagle flopped angrily away to the farther

end of the ledge; and Horner, having resumed his useful shirt, started

to climb down the mountain, whose ascent he had so heedlessly

adventured nearly two weeks before. As he lowered himself over the

dizzy brink, he glanced up, to see the male eagle circling slowly

above him, gazing down at him with the old challenge in his unwinking,

golden eyes.

"I reckon you win!" said Horner, waving the imperturbable bird a grave

salutation. "But you're a gentleman, an' I thank you fer your kind

hospitality."

It was still early morning when Horner started to descend the

mountain. It was dusk when he reached the lake and flung himself down,

prostrated with fatigue and pain and strain of nerve, beside his

canoe. From moment to moment, through spells of reeling faintness and

spasmodic exhaustion, the silent gulfs of space had clutched at him,

as if the powers of the solitude and the peak had but spared him so

long to crush him inexorably in the end. At last, more through the

sheer indomitableness of the human spirit than anything else, he had

won. But never afterwards could he think of that awful descent without

a sinking of the heart. For three days more he made his camp by the

lake, recovering strength and nerve before resuming his journey down

the wild river to the settlements. And many times a day his

salutations would be waved upward to that great, snowy-headed,

indifferent bird, wheeling in the far blue, or gazing at the sun from

his high-set watch-tower of the pine.

CHAPTER III

Two or three years later, it fell in Horner's way to visit a great

city, many hundreds of miles from the gray peak of "Old Baldy." He was

in charge of an exhibit of canoes, snowshoes, and other typical

products of his forest-loving countrymen. In his first morning of

leisure, his feet turned almost instinctively to the wooded gardens

wherein the city kept strange captives, untamed exiles of the

wilderness, irreconcilable aliens of fur and hide and feather, for the

crowds to gape at through their iron bars.

He wandered aimlessly past some grotesque, goatish-looking deer which

did not interest him, and came suddenly upon a paddock containing a

bull moose, two cows, and a yearling calf. The calf looked ungainly

and quite content with his surroundings. The cows were faded and

moth-eaten, but well fed. He had no concern for them at all. But the

bull, a splendid, black-shouldered, heavy-muffled fellow, with the new

antlers just beginning to knob out from his massive forehead, appealed

to him strongly. The splendid, sullen-looking beast stood among his

family, but towered over and seemed unconscious of them. His long,

sensitive muzzle was held high to catch a breeze which drew coolly

down from the north, and his half-shut eyes, in Horner's fancy, saw

not the wires of his fence, but the cool, black-green fir thickets of

the north, the gray rampikes of the windy barrens, the broad lily

leaves afloat in the sheltered cove, the wide, low-shored lake water

gleaming rose-red in the sunset.

"It's a shame," growled Horner, "to keep a critter like that shut up

in a seven-by-nine chicken-pen!" And he moved on, feeling as if he

were himself a prisoner, and suddenly homesick for a smell of the

spruce woods.

It was in this mood that he came upon the great dome-roofed cage

containing the hawks and eagles. It was a dishevelled, dirty place,

with a few uncanny-looking dead trees stuck up in it to persuade the

prisoners that they were free. Horner gave a hasty glance and then

hurried past, enraged at the sight of these strong-winged adventurers

of the sky doomed to so tame a monotony of days. But just as he got

abreast of the farther extremity of the cage, he stopped, with a queer

little tug at his heart-strings. He had caught sight of a great,

white-headed eagle, sitting erect and still on a dead limb close to

the bars, and gazing through them steadily, not at him, but straight

into the eye of the sun.

"Shucks! It ain't possible! There's millions o' bald eagles in the

world!" muttered Horner discontentedly.

It was the right side of the bird's head that was turned towards him,

and that, of course, was snowy white. Equally, of course, it was as,

Horner told himself, the height of absurdity to think that this grave,

immobile prisoner gazing out through the bars at the sun could be his

old friend of the naked peak. Nevertheless, something within his heart

insisted it was so. If only the bird would turn his head! At last

Horner put two fingers between his mouth, and blew a whistle so

piercing that every one stared rebukingly, and a policeman came

strolling along casually to see if any one had signalled for help. But

Horner was all unconscious of the interest which he had excited. In

response to his shrill summons the eagle had slowly, very

deliberately, turned his head, and looked him steadily in the eyes.

Yes, there was the strange black bar above the left eye, and there,

unbroken by defeat and captivity, was the old look of imperturbable

challenge!

Horner could almost have cried, from pity and homesick sympathy. Those

long days on the peak, fierce with pain, blinding bright with sun,

wind-swept and solitary, through which this great, still bird had kept

him alive, seemed to rush over his spirit all together.

"Gee, old pardner!" he murmured, leaning as far over the railing as he

could. "But ain't you got the grit! I'd like to know who it was served

this trick on you. But don't you fret. I'll get you out o' this, ef it

takes a year's arnings to do it! You wait an' see!" And with his jaws

set resolutely he turned and strode from the gardens. That bird should

not stay in there another night if he could help it.

Horner's will was set, but he did not understand the difficulties he

had to face. At first he was confronted, as by a stone wall, by the

simple and unanswerable fact that the bird was not for sale at any

price. And he went to bed that night raging with disappointment and

baffled purpose. But in the course of his efforts and angry

protestations he had let out a portion of his story--and this, as a

matter of interest, was carried to the president of the society which

controlled the gardens. To this man, who was a true naturalist and not

a mere dry-as-dust cataloguer of bones and teeth, the story made a

strong appeal, and before Horner had quite made up his mind whether to

get out a writ of _habeas corpus_ for his imprisoned friend, or commit

a burglary on the cage, there came a note inviting him to an interview

at the president's office. The result of this interview was that

Horner came away radiant, convinced at last that there was heart and

understanding in the city as well as in the country. He had agreed to

pay the society simply what it might cost to replace the captive by

another specimen of his kind; and he carried in his pocket an order

for the immediate delivery of the eagle into his hands.

To the practical backwoodsman there was no fuss or ceremony now to be

gone through. He admired the expeditious fashion in which the keeper

of the bird-house handled his dangerous charge, coming out of the

brief tussle without a scratch. Trussed up as ignominiously as a

turkey--proud head hooded, savage talons muffled, and skyey wings

bound fast, the splendid bird was given up to his rescuer, who rolled

him in a blanket without regard to his dignity, and carried him off

under his arm like a bundle of old clothes.

Beyond the outskirts of the city Horner had observed a high, rocky,

desolate hill which seemed suited to his purpose. He took a street

car and travelled for an hour with the bundle on his knees. Little his

fellow-passengers guessed of the wealth of romance, loyalty, freedom,

and spacious memory hidden in that common-looking bundle on the knees

of the gaunt-faced, gray-eyed man. At the foot of the hill, at a space

of bare and ragged common, Horner got off. By rough paths, frequented

by goats, he made his way up the rocky slope, through bare ravines and

over broken ridges, and came at last to a steep rock in a solitude,

whence only far-off roofs could be seen, and masts, and bridges, and

the sharp gleam of the sea in the distance.

This place satisfied him. On the highest point of the rock he

carefully unfastened the bonds of his prisoner, loosed him, and jumped

back with respect and discretion. The great bird sat up very straight,

half raised and lowered his wings as if to regain his poise, looked

Horner dauntlessly in the eye, then stared slowly about him and above,

as if to make sure that there were really no bars for him to beat his

wings against. For perhaps a full minute he sat there. Then, having

betrayed no unkingly haste, he spread his wings to their full splendid

width and launched himself from the brink. For a few seconds he

flapped heavily, as if his wings had grown unused to their function.

Then he got his rhythm, and swung into a wide, mounting spiral, which

Horner watched with sympathetic joy. At last, when he was but a

wheeling speck in the pale blue dome, he suddenly turned and sailed

off straight towards the northeast, with a speed which carried him out

of sight in a moment.

Horner drew a long breath, half wistful, half glad.

"Them golden eyes of yourn kin see a thunderin' long ways off,

pardner," he muttered, "but I reckon even you can't make out the top

of 'Old Baldy' at this distance. It's the eyes o' your heart ye must

have seen it with, to make for it so straight!"

THE LORD OF THE GLASS HOUSE

CHAPTER I

In the sheltered Caribbean cove the water was warm as milk, green and

clear as liquid beryl, and shot through with shimmering sun. Under

that stimulating yet mitigated radiance the bottom of the cove was

astir with strange life, grotesque in form, but brilliant as jewels or

flowers. Long, shining weeds, red, yellow, amber, purple, and olive,

waved sinuously among the weed-like sea-anemones which outshone them

in colored sheen. Fantastic pink-and-orange crabs sidled awkwardly but

nimbly this way and that. Tiny sea-horses, yet more fantastic, slipped

shyly from one weed-covert to another, aware of a possible peril in

every gay but menacing bloom. And just above this eccentric life of

the shoal sea-floor small fishes of curious form shot hither and

thither, live, darting gleams of gold and azure and amethyst. Now and

again a long, black shadow would sail slowly over the scene of

freakish life--the shadow of a passing albacore or barracouta.

Instantly the shining fish would hide themselves among the shining

shells, and every movement, save that of the unconsciously waving

weeds, would be stilled. But the sinister shadow would go by, and

straightway the sea-floor would be alive again, busy with its affairs

of pursuit and flight.

The floor of the cove was uneven, by reason of small, shell-covered

rocks and stones being strewn over it at haphazard. From under the

slightly overhanging base of one of these stones sprouted what seemed

a cluster of yellowish gray, pink-mottled weed-stems, which sprawled

out inertly upon the mottled bottom. Over the edge of the stone came

swimming slowly one of the gold-and-azure fish, its jewelled,

impassive eyes on the watch for some small prey. Up from the bottom,

swift as a whip-lash, darted one of those inert-looking weed-stems,

and fastened about the bright fish just behind the gills.

Fiercely the shining one struggled, lashing with tail and fins till

the water swirled to a boil over the shell-covered rock, and the

sea-anemones all about shut their gorgeous, greedy flower-cups in a

panic. But the struggle was a vain one. Slowly, inexorably, that

mottled tentacle curled downward with its prey, and a portion of the

under side of the rock became alive! Two ink-black eyes appeared,

bulging, oval, implacable; and between them opened a great, hooked

beak, like a giant parrot's. There was no separate head behind this

gaping beak, but eyes and beak merely marked the blunt end of a

mottled, oblong, sac-like body.

[Illustration: "And the writhing tentacles composed themselves once more

to stillness upon the bottom, awaiting the next careless

passer-by."]

As the victim was drawn down to the waiting beak, among the bases of

the tentacles, all the tentacles awoke to dreadful life, writhing in

aimless excitement, although there was no work for them to do. In a

few seconds the fish was torn asunder and engulfed--those inky eyes

the while unwinking and unmoved. A darker, livid hue passed fleetingly

over the pallid body of the octopus. Then it slipped back under the

shelter of the rock; and the writhing tentacles composed themselves

once more to stillness upon the bottom, awaiting the next careless

passer-by. Once more they seemed mere inert trailers of weed, not

worth the notice of fish or crab. And soon the anemones near by

reopened their treacherous blooms of yellow and crimson.

Whether because there was something in the gold-and-azure fish that

disturbed his inward content, or because his place of ambush had

somehow grown distasteful to his soft, unarmored body, the octopus

presently bestirred himself and crawled forth into the open, walking

awkwardly on the incurled tips of his tentacles. It looked about as

comfortable a method of progression as for a baby to creep on the back

of its hands. The traveller himself did not seem to find it altogether

satisfactory, for all at once he sprang upward nimbly, clear of the

bottom, and gathered his eight tentacles into a compact parallel bunch

extending straight out past his eyes. In this attitude he was no

longer clumsy, but trim and swift-looking. Beneath the bases of the

tentacles, on the under side of the body, a sort of valve opened

spasmodically and took in a huge gulp of water, which was at once

ejected with great force through a tube among the tentacles. Driven by

the strange propulsion of this pulsating stream, the elongated shape

shot swiftly on its way, but travelling backward instead of forward.

The traveller had apparently taken his direction with care before he

started, however, for he made his way straight to another rock,

weedier and more overhanging than the first. Here he stopped, settled

downward, and let his tentacles once more sprawl wide, preparatory to

backing his spotted body-sac into its new quarters.

This was the moment when he was least ready for attack or defence;

and just at this moment a foraging dolphin, big-jawed and hungry, shot

down upon him through the lucent green, mistaking him, perhaps, for an

overgrown but unretaliating squid. The assailant aimed at the big,

succulent-looking body, but missed his aim, and caught instead one of

the tentacles which had reared themselves instantly to ward off the

attack. Before he realized what was happening, another tentacle had

curled about his head, clamping his jaws firmly together so that he

could not open them to release his hold; while yet others had wrapped

themselves securely about his body.

The dolphin was a small one; and such a situation as this had never

come within range of his experience. In utter panic he lashed out with

his powerful tail and darted forward, carrying the octopus with him.

But the weight upon his head, the crushing encumbrance about his body,

were too much for him, and bore him slowly downward. Suddenly two

tentacles, which had been trailing for an anchorage, got grip upon the

bottom--and the dolphin's frantic flight came to a stop abruptly. He

lashed, plunged, whirled in a circle, but all to no purpose. His

struggles grew weaker. He was drawn down, inexorably, till he lay

quivering on the sand. Then the great beak of the octopus made an end

of the matter, and the prey was dragged back to the lair beneath the

weed-covered rock.

A long time after this, a shadow bigger and blacker than that of any

albacore--bigger than that of any shark or saw-fish--drifted over the

cove. There was a splash, and a heavy object came down upon the

bottom, spreading the swift stillness of terror for yards about. The

shadow ceased drifting, for the boat had come to anchor. Then in a

very few minutes, because the creatures of the sea seem unable to fear

what does not move, the life of the sea-floor again bestirred itself,

and small, misshapen forms that did not love the sunlight began to

convene in the shadow of the boat.

Presently, from over the side of the boat descended a dark tube, with

a bright tip that seemed like a kind of eye. The tube moved very

slowly this way and that, as if to let the eye scan every hiding-place

on the many-colored bottom. As it swept over the rock that sheltered

the octopus, it came to a stop. Those inert, sprawling things that

looked like weeds appeared to interest it. Then it was softly

withdrawn.

A few moments later, a large and tempting fish appeared at the surface

of the water, and began slowly sinking straight downward in a most

curious fashion. The still eyes of the octopus took note at once. They

had never seen a fish behave that way before; but it plainly was a

fish. A quiver of eagerness passed through the sprawling tentacles,

for their owner was already hungry again. But the prize was still too

far away, and the tentacles did not move. The curious fish, however,

seemed determined to come no nearer, and at last the waiting tentacles

came stealthily to life. Almost imperceptibly they drew themselves

forward, writhing over the bottom as casually as weeds adrift in a

light current. And behind them those two great, inky, impassive eyes,

and then the fat, mottled, sac-like body, emerged furtively from under

the rock.

The bottom, just at this point, was covered with a close brown weed,

and almost at once the body of the octopus and his tentacles began to

change to the same hue. When the change was complete, the gliding

monster was almost invisible. He was now directly beneath that

incomprehensible fish; but the fish had gently risen, so that it was

still out of reach.

For a few seconds the octopus crouched, staring upward with motionless

orbs, and gathering himself together. Then he sprang straight up, like

a leaping spider. He fixed two tentacles upon the tantalizing prey;

then the other tentacles straightened out, and with a sharp jet of

water from his propulsion tube he essayed to dart back to his lair.

To his amazement, the prey refused to come. In some mysterious way it

managed to hold itself--or was held--just where it was. Amazement gave

way to rage. The monster wrapped his prize in three more tentacles,

and then plunged his beak into it savagely. The next instant he was

jerked to the surface of the water. A blaze of fierce sun blinded him,

and strong meshes enclosed him, binding and entangling his tentacles.

In such an appalling crisis most creatures of sea or land would have

been utterly demoralized by terror. Not so the octopus. Maintaining

undaunted the clutch of one tentacle upon his prize, he turned the

others, along with the effectual menace of his great beak, to the

business of battle. The meshes fettered him in a way that drove him

frantic with rage, but two of his tentacles managed to find their way

through, and writhed madly this way and that in search of some

tangible antagonist on which to fasten themselves. While they were yet

groping vainly for a grip, he felt himself lifted bodily forth into

the strangling air, and crowded--net, prey, and all--into a dark and

narrow receptacle full of water.

This fate, of course, was not to be tamely endured. Though he was

suffocating in the unnatural medium, and though his great, unwinking

eyes could see but vaguely outside their native element, he was all

fight. One tentacle clutched the rim of the metal vessel; and one

fixed its deadly suckers upon the bare black arm of a half-seen

adversary who was trying to crowd him down into the dark prison. There

was a strident yell. A sharp, authoritative voice exclaimed: "Look

out! Don't hurt him! _I'll_ make him let go!" But the next instant the

frightened darky had whipped out a knife and sliced off a good foot of

the clutching tentacle. As the injured stump shrank back upon its

fellows like a spade-cut worm, the other tentacle was deftly twisted

loose from its hold on the rim, and the captive felt himself forced

down into the narrow prison. A cover was clapped on, and he found

himself in darkness, with his prey still gripped securely. Upset and

raging though he was, there was nothing to be done about it, so he

fell to feasting indignantly upon the prize for which he had paid so

dear.

CHAPTER II

Left to himself, the furious prisoner by and by disentangled himself

from the meshes of the net, and composed himself as well as he could

in his straitened quarters. Then for days and days thereafter there

was nothing but tossing and tumbling, blind feeding, and

uncomprehended distress; till at last his prison was turned upside

down and he was dropped unceremoniously into a great tank of glass and

enamel that glowed with soft light. Bewildered though he was, he took

in his surroundings in an instant, straightened his tentacles out

before him, and darted backwards to the shelter of an overhanging rock

which he had marked on the floor of the tank. Having backed his

defenceless body under that shield, he flattened his tentacles

anxiously among the stones and weeds that covered the tank-bottom, and

impassively stared about.

It was certainly an improvement on the black hole from which he had

just escaped. Light came down through the clear water, but a cold,

white light, little like the green and gold glimmer that illumined

the slow tide in his Caribbean home. The floor about him was not

wholly unfamiliar. The stones, the sand, the colored weeds, the

shells,--they were like, yet unlike, those from which he had been

snatched away. But on three sides there were white, opaque walls, so

near that he could have touched them by stretching out a tentacle.

Only on the fourth side was there space--but a space of gloom and

inexplicable moving confusion from which he shrank. In this direction

the floor of sand and stones and weeds ended with a mysterious

abruptness; and the vague openness beyond filled him with uneasiness.

Pale-colored shapes, with eyes, would drift up, sometimes in crowds,

and stare in at him fixedly. It daunted him as nothing else had ever

done, this drift of peering faces. It was long before he could teach

himself to ignore them. When food came to him,--small fish and crabs,

descending suddenly from the top of the water,--at such times the

faces would throng tumultuously in that open space, and for a long

time the many peering eyes would so disconcert him as almost to spoil

his appetite. But at last he grew accustomed even to the faces and the

eyes, and disregarded them as if they were so much passing seaweed,

borne by the tide. His investigating tentacles had shown him that

between him and the space of confusion there was an incomprehensible

barrier fixed, which he could see through but not pass; and that if he

could not get out, neither could the faces get in to trouble him.

Thus, well fed and undisturbed, the octopus grew fairly content in his

glass house, and never guessed the stormy life of the great city

beyond his walls. For all he knew, his comfortable prison might have

been on the shore of one of his own Bahaman Keys. He was undisputed

lord of his domain, narrow though it was; and the homage he received

from the visitors who came to pay him court was untiring.

His lordship had been long unthreatened, when one day, had he not been

too indifferent to notice them, he might have seen that the faces in

the outer gloom were unusually numerous, the eyes unusually intent.

Suddenly there was the accustomed splash in the water above him. That

splash had come to him to mean just food, unresisting victims, and his

tentacles were instantly alert to seize whatever should come within

reach.

This time the splash was unusually heavy, and he was surprised to see

a massive, roundish creature, with a little, pointed tail sticking

out behind, a small, snake-like head stretched out in front, and two

little flippers outspread on each side. With these four flippers the

stranger came swimming down calmly towards him. He had never seen

anything at all like this daring stranger; but without the slightest

hesitation he whipped up two writhing tentacles and seized him. The

faces beyond the glass surged with excitement.

When that abrupt and uncompromising clutch laid hold upon the turtle,

his tail, head, and flippers vanished as if they had never been, and

his upper and lower shells closed tight together till he seemed

nothing more than a lifeless box of horn. Absolutely unresisting, he

was drawn down to the impassive eyes and gaping beak of his captor.

The tentacles writhed all over him, stealthily but eagerly

investigating. Then the great parrot-beak laid hold on the shell,

expecting to crush it. Making no impression, however, it slid

tentatively all over the exasperating prize, seeking, but in vain, for

a weak point.

[Illustration: "Without the slightest hesitation he whipped up two

writhing tentacles and seized him."]

This went on for several minutes, while the watching faces outside the

glass gazed in tense expectancy. Then at last the patience of the

octopus gave way. In a sudden fury he threw himself upon the

exasperating shell, tumbling it over and over, biting at it madly,

wrenching it insanely with all his tentacles. And the faces beyond the

glass surged thrillingly, wondering how long the turtle would stand

such treatment.

Shut up within his safe armor, the turtle all at once grew tired of

being tumbled about, and his wise discretion forsook him. He did not

mind being shut up, but he objected to being knocked about. Some

prudence he had, to be sure, but not enough to control his short

temper. Out shot his narrow, vicious-looking head, with its dull eyes

and punishing jaws, and fastened with the grip of a bulldog upon the

nearest of the tentacles, close to its base. A murmur arose outside

the glass.

The rage of the octopus swelled to a frenzy, and in his contortions

the locked fighters bumped heavily against the glass, making the faces

shrink back. The small stones on the bottom were scattered this way

and that, and the fine silt rose in a cloud that presently obscured

the battle.

Had the turtle had cunning to match his courage, the lordship of the

glass house might have changed holders in that fight. Had he fixed his

unbreakable grip in the head of his foe, just above the beak, he

would have conquered in the end. But as it was, he had now a

vulnerable point, and at last the octopus found it. His beak closed

upon the exposed half of the turtle's head, and slowly, inexorably,

sheared it clean off just behind the eyes. The stump shrank instantly

back into the shell; and the shell became again the unresisting

plaything of the tentacles, which presently, as if realizing that it

had no more power to retaliate, flung it aside. In a few minutes the

silt settled. Then the eager faces beyond the glass saw the lord of

the tank crouching motionless before his lair, his ink-like eyes as

impassive and implacable as ever, while the turtle lay bottom side up

against the glass, no more to be taken account of than a stone.

BACK TO THE WATER WORLD

CHAPTER I

An iron coast, bleak, black, and desolate, without harborage for so

much as a catboat for leagues to north or south. A coast so pitiless,

so lashed forever by the long, sullen rollers of the North Atlantic,

so tormented by the shifting and treacherous currents of the tide

between its chains of outlying rocky islets, that no ship ever

ventured willingly within miles of its uncompromising menace. A coast

so little favored by summer that even in glowing August the sun could

reach it seldom through its cold and drenching fogs.

Perhaps half a mile off shore lay the islands--some of them, indeed,

mere ledges, deathtraps for ships, invisible except at low tide, but

others naked hills of upthrust rock, which the highest tides and

wildest hurricanes could not overwhelm. Even on the loftiest of them

there was neither grass, bush, nor tree to break the jagged outlines,

but day and night, summer and winter long, the sea-birds clamored

over them, and brooded by the myriad on their upper ledges.

These islands were fretted, on both their landward and their seaward

sides, by innumerable caves. In one of these caves, above the reach of

the highest tide, and facing landward, so that even in the wildest

storms no waves could invade it, the pup of the seal first opened his

mild eyes upon the misty northern daylight.

Of all the younglings of the wild, he was perhaps the most winsome,

with his soft, whitish, shadowy-toned, close, woolly coat, his round,

babyish head, his dark, gentle eyes wide with wonder at everything to

be seen from the cave mouth. He lay usually very near the entrance,

but partly hidden from view by a ragged horn of rock. While

alone--which was a good part of the time, indeed, like most

fishermen's children--he would lie so still that his woolly little

form was hardly to be distinguished from the rock that formed his

couch. He had no desire to attract public attention--for the only

public that might have been attracted to attend consisted of the pair

of great sea eagles whose shadows sometimes swooped aross the ledge,

or of an occasional southward-wandering white bear. As for the

innumerable gulls, and gannets, and terns, and lesser auks, which

made the air forever loud about these lonely islets, nothing could

have induced them to pay him any attention whatever. They knew him,

and his people, to be harmless; and that was all their winged and

garrulous companies were concerned to know.

But to the little seal, on the other hand, the noisy birds were

incessantly interesting. Filled with insatiable curiosity, his mild

eyes gazed out upon the world. The sea just below the cave was, of

course, below his line of vision; but at a distance of some hundred

yards or so--a distance which varied hugely with the rising and

falling of the tide--he caught sight of the waves, and felt himself

strangely drawn to them. Whether leaden and menacing under the drift

of rain and the brooding of gray clouds, or green-glinting under the

sheen of too rare sunshine, he loved them and found them always

absorbing. The sky, too, was worth watching, especially when white

fleeces chased each other across a patch of blue, or wonderful colors,

pallid yet intense, shot up into it at dawn from behind a far-off line

of saw-toothed rocks.

The absences of the mother seal were sometimes long, for it required

many fish to satisfy her appetite and keep warm her red blood in

those ice-cold arctic currents. Fish were abundant, to be sure, along

that coast, where the invisible fruitfulness of the sea made

compensation for the blank barrenness of the land; but they were swift

and wary, and had to be caught, one at a time, outwitted and

outspeeded in their own element. The woolly cub, therefore, was often

hungry before his mother returned. But when, at last, she came,

flopping awkwardly up the rocky slope, and pausing for an instant to

reconnoitre, as her round, glistening head appeared over the brink of

the ledge, the youngster's delight was not all in the satisfying of

his hunger and in the mothering of his loneliness. As he snuggled

under her caress, the salty drip from her wet, sleek sides thrilled

him with a dim sense of anticipation. He connected it vaguely with

that endless, alluring dance of the waves beyond his threshold.

When he had grown a few days older, the little seal began to turn his

attention from the brighter world outside to the shadows that

surrounded him in his cave. His interest was caught at once by a

woolly gray creature like himself, only somewhat smaller, which lay

perhaps seven or eight feet away, at the other side of the cave, and

farther back. He had not realized before that his narrow retreat was

the home of two families. Being of a companionable disposition, he

eyed his newly discovered neighbor with immense good-will. Finding no

discouragement in the mild gaze that answered his, he presently raised

himself on his flippers, and with laborious, ungainly effort flopped

himself over to make acquaintance. Both youngsters were too

unsophisticated for ceremony, too trusting for shyness, so in a very

few minutes they were sprawling over each other in great content.

In this baby comradeship the stranger's mother, returning to her

household duties, found them. She was smaller and younger than our

Pup's dam, but with the same kindly eyes and the same salty-dripping

coat. So, when her own baby fell to nursing, the Pup insisted

confidently on sharing the entertainment. The young mother protested,

and drew herself away uneasily, with little threatening grunts; but

the Pup, refusing to believe she was in earnest, pressed his point so

pertinaciously that at length he got his way. When, half an hour

later, the other mother returned to her charge, well filled with fish

and well disposed toward all the world, she showed no discontent at

the situation. She belonged to the tribe of the "Harbor Seals," and,

unlike her pugnacious cousins, the big "Hoods," she was always

inclined towards peace and a good understanding. There was probably

nothing that could have brought the flame of wrath into her confiding

eyes, except an attack upon her young, on whose behalf she would have

faced the sea-serpent himself. Without a moment's question, she joined

the group; and henceforth the cave was the seat of a convenient

partnership in mothers.

It was perhaps a week or two later, when the islands were visited by a

wonderful spell of sun and calm. It was what would have been called,

farther south, Indian summer. All along the ledges, just above the

mark of the diminished surf, the seals lay basking in the glow. The

gulls and mews clamored rapturously, and squabbled with gay zest over

the choicer prizes of their fishing. It appeared to be generally known

that the bears, displeased at the warmth, had withdrawn farther north.

The sea took on strange hues of opal and lilac and thrice-diluted

sapphire. Even the high black cliffs across the charmed water veiled

their harshness in a skyey haze. It was a time for delicious

indolence, for the slackening of vigilance, for the forgetfulness of

peril. And it was just at this very time that it came the young

seal's way to get his first lesson in fear.

He was lying beside his mother, about a dozen feet out from the mouth

of the cave. A few steps away basked his little cave-mate--alone for

the moment, because its mother had flung herself vehemently down the

slope to capture a wounded fish which had just been washed ashore. As

she reached the water's edge, a wide shadow floated across the rocks.

She wheeled like a flash and scrambled frantically up the steep. But

she was too late. She saw the other mothers near by throw their bodies

over those of their young, and lift their faces skyward with bared,

defiant fangs. She saw her own little one, alone in the bright open,

gaze around in helpless bewilderment and alarm. He saw her coming, and

lifting himself on his weak flippers, started towards her with a

little cry. Then came a terrible hissing of wings in the air above,

and he cowered, trembling. The next instant, with a huge buffet of

wind in all the upturned faces, a pair of vast, dark pinions were

outspread above the trembler; great clutching talons reached down and

seized him by neck and back; and his tiny life went out in a throttled

whimper. The nearest seal, the mother of the Pup, reared on her

flippers and lunged savagely at the marauder. But all she got was a

blinding slash of rigid wing-tips across her face. Then, launching

himself from the brink of the slope, the eagle flapped scornfully away

across the water toward the black cliffs, his victim hanging limply

from his claws. And all along the ledges the seals barked furiously

after him.

The Pup, whom death had brushed so closely, could not be persuaded for

hours to leave the shelter of his mother's side, even after she had

led him back to the cave. But now he found himself the exclusive

proprietor of two mothers; for the bereaved dam, thenceforth, was no

less assiduously devoted to him than his own parent. With such care,

and with so abundant nourishment, he throve amazingly, outstripping in

growth all the other youngsters of his age along the ledges. His

terror quickly passed away from him; but the results of the lesson

long remained, in the vigilance with which his glance would sweep the

sky, and question every approach of wings more wide than those of gull

or gannet.

It was not long after this grim chance that the Pup's woolly coat

began to change. A straight, close-lying under-fur pushed swiftly into

view, and the wool dropped out--a process which a certain sense of

irritation in his skin led him to hasten by rubbing his back and

sides against the rock. In an astonishingly short time his coat grew

like his mother's--a yellowish gray, dotted irregularly with blackish

spots, and running to a creamy tone under the belly. As soon as this

change was completed to his mother's satisfaction, he was led down

close to the water's edge, where he had never been allowed before.

Eagerly as he loved the sight of the waves, and the salty savor of

them, when the first thin crest splashed up and soused him he shrank

back daunted. It was colder, too, that first slap in his face, than he

had expected. He turned, intending to retreat a little way up the

rocks and consider the question, in spite of the fact that there was

his little mother in the water, swimming gayly a few feet out from

shore and coaxing him with soft cries. He was anxious to join her--but

not just yet. Then, all at once the question was decided for him. His

real mother, who was just behind him, suddenly thrust her muzzle under

his flank, and sent him rolling into deep water.

He came up at once, much startled. Straightway he found that he could

move in the water much more easily and naturally than on shore--and he

applied the discovery to getting ashore again with all possible

haste. But his mother, awaiting him at the edge, shoved him off

relentlessly.

Feeling much injured, he turned and swam out to his other mother. Here

the first one joined him; and in a few minutes amazement and

resentment alike were lost in delight, as he began to realize that

this, at last, was life. Here, and not sprawling half helplessly on

the rocks, was where he belonged. He swam, and dived, and darted like

a fish, and went wild with childish ecstasy. He had come to his own

element. After this, he hardly ever returned to the cave, but slept

close at the side of one or the other of his mothers, on the open

rocks just a few feet above the edge of tide.

A little later came a period of mad weather, ushering in the autumn

storms. Snow and sleet drove down out of the north, and lay in great

patches over the more level portions of the islets above tide. The

wind seemed as if it would lift the islets bodily and sweep them away.

The vast seas, green and black and lead-color, thundered down upon the

rocks as if they would batter them to fragments. The ledges shuddered

under the incessant crashing. When the snow stopped, on its heels came

the vanguard of the arctic cold. The ice formed instantly in all the

pools left by the tide. Along the edges of the tide it was ground to a

bitter slush by the perpetual churning of the waves.

After a week or two of this violence, the seals--who, unlike their

polar cousins, the "Harps" and the "Hoods," were no great lovers of

storm and the fiercer cold--began to feel discontented. Presently a

little party of them, not more than a score in all, with a few of the

stronger youngsters of that season, on a sudden impulse left their

stormy ledges and started southward. The Pup, who, thanks to his

double mothering, was far bigger and more capable than any of his

mates, went with his partner-mothers in the very forefront of the

migration.

Straight down along the roaring coast they kept, usually at a distance

of not more than half a mile from shore. They had, of course, no

objection to going farther out, but neither had they any object in

doing so, since the fish-life on which they fed as they journeyed was

the more abundant where the sea began to shoal. With their slim,

sleek, rounded bodies, thickest at the fore flippers and tapering

finely to tail and muzzle, each a lithe and close-knit structure of

muscle and nerve-energy, they could swim with astounding speed; and

therefore, although there was no hurry whatever, they went along at

the pace of a motor-boat.

All this time the gale was lashing the coast, but it gave them little

concern. Down in the black troughs of the gigantic rollers there was

always peace from the yelling of the wind--a tranquillity wherein the

gulls and mews would snatch their rest after being buffeted too long

about the sky. Near the tops of the waves, of course, it was not good

to be, for the gale would rip the crests off bodily and tear them into

shreds of whipping spray. But the seals could always dive and slip

smoothly under these tormented regions. Moreover, if weary of the

tossing surfaces and the tumult of the gale, they had only to sink

themselves down, down, into the untroubled gloom beneath the

wave-bases, where greenish lights gleamed or faded with the passing of

the rollers overhead, and where strange, phosphorescent shapes of life

crawled or clung among the silent rocks. Longer than any other

red-blooded animal, except the whale, could their lungs go without

fresh oxygen; so, though they knew nothing of those great depths where

the whales sometimes frequent, it was easy for them to go deep enough

to get below the storm.

Sometimes a break in the coast-line, revealing the mouth of an inlet,

would tempt the little band of migrants. Hastening shoreward, they

would push their way inland between the narrowing banks, often as far

as the head of tide, gambolling in the quiet water, and chasing the

salmon fairly out upon the shoals. Like most discriminating creatures,

they were very fond of salmon, but it was rarely, except on such

occasions as this, that they had a chance to gratify their taste.

After perhaps a week of this southward journeying, the travellers

found themselves one night at the head of a little creek where the

tide lapped pleasantly on a smooth, sandy beach. They were already

getting into milder weather, and here, a half mile inland, there was

no wind. The sky was overcast, and the seals lay in contented security

along the edge of the water. The blacker darkness of a fir forest came

down to within perhaps fifty paces of their resting-place. But they

had no anxieties. The only creatures that they had learned to fear on

shore besides man were the polar bears; and they knew they were now

well south of that deadly hunter's range. As for eagles, they did not

hunt at night; and, moreover, they were a terror only in the

woolly-coated, baby stage of a seal's existence.

But it often enough happens that wild animals, no less than human

beings, may be ignorant of something which their health requires them

to know. There was another bear in Labrador--a smallish, rusty-coated,

broad-headed, crafty cousin of the ordinary American black bear. And

one of these, who had acquired a taste for seal, along with some

cleverness in gratifying that taste, had his headquarters, as it

chanced, in that near-neighboring fir wood.

The Pup lay crowded in snugly between his two mothers. He liked the

warmth of being crowded; for the light breeze, drawing up from the

water, was sharp with frost. There is such a thing, however, as being

just a little too crowded, and presently, waking up with a protest, he

pushed and wriggled to get more space. As he did so, he raised his

head. His keen young eyes fell upon a black something a little blacker

than the surrounding gloom.

The black something was up the slope halfway between the water and the

wood. It looked like a mass of rock. But the Pup had a vague feeling

that there had been no rock thereabouts when he went to sleep. A

thrill of apprehension went up and down his spine, raising the

stiffish hairs along his neck. Staring with all his eyes through the

dimness, he presently saw the black shape move. Yes, it was drawing

nearer. With a shrill little bark of terror he gave the alarm, at the

same time struggling free and hurling himself toward the water.

In that same instant the bear rushed, coming down the slope as it were

in one plunging jump. The seals, light sleepers all, were already

awake and floundering madly back to the water. But for one of them,

and that one the Pup's assistant mother, the alarm came too late. Just

as she was turning, bewildered with terror of she knew not what, the

dark bulk of the bear landed upon her, crushing her down. A terrific

blow on the muzzle broke her skull, and she collapsed into a quivering

mass. The rest of the band, after a moment of loud splashing, swam off

noiselessly for the safe retreat of the outer ledges. And the bear,

after shaking the body of his victim to make sure it was quite dead,

dragged it away with a grunt of satisfaction into the fir wood.

After this tragedy, though the travellers continued to ascend the

creeks and inlets when the whim so moved them, they took care to

choose for sleep the ruder security of outlying rocks and islands,

and cherished, by night and by day, a wholesome distrust of

dark fir woods. But for all their watchfulness their journeying was

care-free and joyous, and from time to time, as they went, their

light-heartedness would break out into aimless gambols, or something

very like a children's game of tag. Nothing, however, checked their

progress southward, and presently, turning into the Belle Isle

Straits, they came to summer skies and softer weather. At this point,

under the guidance of an old male who had followed the southward track

before, they forsook the Labrador shore-line and headed fearlessly out

across the strait till they reached the coast of Newfoundland. This

coast they followed westward till they gained the Gulf of St.

Lawrence, then, turning south, worked their way down the southwest

coast of the great Island Province, past shores still basking in the

amethystine light of Indian summer, through seas so teeming with fish

that they began to grow lazy with fatness. Here the Pup and other

younger members of the company felt inclined to stay. But their elders

knew that winter, with the long cold, and the scanty sun, and the

perilous grinding of tortured ice-floes around the shore-rocks, would

soon be upon them; so the journey was continued. On they pressed,

across the wide gateway of the Gulf, from Cape Ray to North Cape, the

eastern point of Nova Scotia. Good weather still waited upon their

wayfaring, and they loitered onward gayly, till, arriving at the

myriad-islanded bay of the Tuskets, near the westernmost tip of the

peninsula, they could not, for sheer satisfaction, go farther. Here

was safe seclusion, with countless inaccessible retreats. Here was

food in exhaustless plenty; and here was weather benignant enough for

any reasonable needs.

It was just here, off the Tuskets, that the Pup got another lesson.

Hitherto his ideas of danger had been altogether associated with the

land where eagles swooped out of a clear sky and bears skulked in the

darkness, and where, moreover, he himself was incapable of swift

escape. But now he found that the sea, too, held its menace for the

gentle kindred of the seals. It was a still, autumnal morning, blue

and clear, with a sunny sparkle on sea and air. The seals were most of

them basking luxuriously on the seaward ledges of one of the outermost

islands, while half a dozen of the more energetic were amusing

themselves with their game of tag in the deep water. Pausing for a

moment to take breath, after a sharp wrestling-match far down among

the seaweeds, the Pup's observant eyes caught sight of a small, black

triangular object cutting swiftly the smooth surface of the swells.

He stared at it curiously. It was coming towards him, but it did not,

to his uninitiated eyes, look dangerous. Then he became conscious of a

scurrying of alarm all about him; and cries of sharp warning reached

him from the sentinels on the ledge. Like a flash he dived, at an

acute angle to the line of approach of the mysterious black object.

Even in the instant, it was close upon him, and he caught sight of a

long, terrible, gray shape, thrice as long as a seal, which turned on

one side in its rush, showing a whitish belly, and a gaping,

saw-toothed mouth big enough to take him in at one gulp. Only by a

hair's-breadth did he avoid that awful rush, carrying with him as he

passed the sound of the snapping jaws and the cold gleam of the

shark's small, malignant eye.

Hideously frightened, he doubled this way and that, with a nimbleness

that his huge pursuer could not hope to match. It took the shark but a

few seconds to realize that this was a vain chase. An easier quarry

caught his eye. He darted straight shoreward, where the deep water ran

in abruptly to the very lip of the ledge. The Pup came to the surface

to watch. One of the younger seals, losing its wits utterly with

fright, and forgetting that its safety lay in the deep water where it

could twist and dodge, was struggling frantically to clamber out upon

the rocks. It had almost succeeded, indeed. It was just drawing up its

narrow, tail-like hind flippers, when the great, rounded snout of the

shark shot into the air above it. The monstrous shape descended upon

it, and fell back with it into the water, leaving only a splash and

trickle of blood upon the lip of the ledge. The other seals tossed

their heads wildly, jumped about on their fore-flippers, and barked in

lively dismay; and in a few moments, as if the matter had been put to

vote and carried unanimously, they betook themselves in haste to one

of the inner islands, where they knew that the shark, who hates shoal

water, would not venture to follow them.

In this sheltered archipelago the little herd might well have passed

the winter. But after a few weeks of content the southing spirit again

seized upon the old male who had hitherto been the unquestioned

leader. At this point, however, his authority went to pieces. When he

resumed the southward wandering, less than half the herd accompanied

him. But among those faithful were the Pup and his mild-eyed mother.

Rounding the extremity of Nova Scotia, the travellers crossed the

wide mouth of the Bay of Fundy, and lingered a few days about the

lofty headlands of Grand Manan. By this time they had grown so

accustomed to ships of all kinds, from the white-sailed fishing-smack

to the long, black, churning bulk of the ocean liner, that they no

longer heeded them any more than enough to give them a wide berth. One

and all, these strange apparitions appeared quite indifferent to

seals, so very soon the seals became almost indifferent to them. Off

the island of Campobello, however, something mysterious occurred which

put an end to this indifference, although none of the band could

comprehend it.

A beautiful, swift, white craft, with yellow gleams flashing here and

there from her deck as the sun caught her polished brasswork, was

cleaving the light waves northward. The seals, their round, dark heads

bobbing above the water at a distance of perhaps three hundred yards

from her port-quarter, gazed at the spectacle with childlike interest.

They saw a group of men eying them from the deck of the swift monster.

All at once from this group spurted two thin jets of flame. The Pup

heard some tiny vicious thing go close over his head with a cruel

whine, and _zip_ sharply through a wave-crest just beyond. On the

instant, even before the sharp clatter of the two reports came to

their ears, all the seals dived, and swam desperately to get as far

away as possible from the terrifying bright monster. When they came to

the surface again, they were far out of range. But the restless old

male, their leader, was not among them. The white yacht was steaming

away into the distance, with its so-called sportsmen congratulating

themselves that they had almost certainly killed something. The little

band of seals waited about the spot for an hour or two, expecting the

return of their chief; and then, puzzled and apprehensive, swam away

toward the green-crested shore-line of Maine.

Here, lacking a leader, their migration came to an end. There seemed

no reason to go farther, since here was everything they wanted. The

Pup, by this time an expert pursuer of all but the swiftest fish, was

less careful now to keep always within his mother's reach, though the

affection between the two was still ardent. One day, while he was

swimming some little distance apart from the herd, he noticed a

black-hulled boat rocking idly on the swells near by. It was too near

for his comfort, so he dived at once, intending to seek a safer

neighborhood. But as luck would have it, he had hardly plunged below

the surface when he encountered an enormous school of young herring.

What throngs of them there were! And how crowded together! Never had

he seen anything like it. They were darting this way and that in

terrific excitement. He himself went wild at once, dashing hither and

thither among them with snapping jaws, destroying many more than he

could eat. And still they seemed to throng about him ever the more

closely. At last he got tired of it, and dashed straight ahead to

clear the shoal. The next moment, to his immeasurable astonishment, he

was checked and flung back by a fine, invisible barrier. No, it was

not quite invisible. He could see a network of meshes before him.

Puzzled and alarmed, he shot up to the surface to reconnoitre.

As his head rose above the water, his heart fairly stopped for a

second with dismay. The black side of the fishing boat was just above

him, and the terrifying eyes of men looked straight down into his.

Instantly he dived again, through the ever thickening masses of the

herring. But straightway again he met the fine, invincible barrier of

the net. Frantically he struggled to break through it, but only

succeeded in coiling it about him till he could not move a flipper.

And while he wriggled there impotently, under the squirming myriads of

the fish, he was lifted out into the air and dragged into the boat.

Seeing the damage he had wrought in their catch, the fishermen were

for knocking their captive straightway on the nose. But as he lay

there, looking up with innocent eyes of wonder and appeal through the

meshes, something in his baby helplessness softened the captain's

heart.

"Hold hard, Jim," he ordered, staying a big sailor's hand. "Blamed if

the little varmint ain't got eyes most as soft as my Libby's. I reckon

he'll make a right purty pet fer the kid, an' kind of keep her from

frettin' after her canary what died last Sunday."

"He don't much resemble a canary, Ephraim," laughed Jim, dropping the

belaying-pin.

"I reckon he'll fill the bill fine, all the same," said the captain.

So the Pup was carried prisoner to Eastport.