their voices are perhaps the hardest to interpret. A week or a month
may pass over your camp while the owls hold a league of silence, not
a sound being heard from them by night or day. Then comes a subtle
change in the air, a weather change it may be, and suddenly there are
hootings, groanings, maniacal yellings in every direction. The uncanny
creatures have their rumpus to themselves, one answering another, while
other wood folk go their quiet ways through the dusk without a sign
that they are touched by the disturbance. But at last comes an evening
when something creeps into the owl’s voice that was not there before;
no sooner does he begin to hoot than every bird or beast that hears
must lift his head to cry answer. At such times even the taciturn bears
will break their long silence, and go whooping through the woods in
obedience to some weird impulse which the owl was first to feel.
Thus it befell on one occasion, when the owls of a countryside were
calling, that a black bear suddenly began to whoop in the woods
over against my tenting place; and the curious thing was that he
was immediately answered by others, their wild cries sounding with
clocklike regularity at about three-minute intervals. Till then I had
not seen or heard a bear, though I had searched for them in places
where their signs were plentiful; but that is precisely what one
should expect, since Mooween is careful to keep out of your way, and
is one of the least talkative creatures in the wilderness. When you
stumble upon him at an unguarded moment he is apt to loose an explosive
_ough-woof!_ as he jumps for cover; or when you frighten a mother
bear away from her cubs you may hear her circling at a distance,
uttering a sharp _wheeee-oo!_ again and again; but with these natural
exceptions Mooween speaks so seldom that many woodsmen have never
heard him. Others confuse his rare call with that of the barred owl,
a bird that has half a dozen different cries besides his familiar
_Who-cooks-for-you? Who-cooks-for-you?_
On this night, however, my taciturn bears became almost vociferous; in
the space of an hour I heard more bear talk than one ordinarily hears
in an entire season. They were bold, too, surprisingly bold, when I met
three of them in a little opening not far from my tent. I had heard
these bears coming and, as I hurried to head them off, had made more
noise than I liked, not being able to see my footing. Far from being
frightened by the disturbance, they seemed to be waiting in the opening
to see what I was. The moment I appeared they rose on their hind legs,
which stopped me in my tracks. Not quite satisfied, they shambled
uneasily to and fro, occasionally sitting up for another look; and
one of them, a little fellow, had a funny way of wagging his forepaws
rapidly up and down in front of his chest. When they had enough of me,
instead of rushing off headlong with crash of brush and bumping of
logs, as bears commonly go when they meet a man, they melted into the
woods like so many shadows.
The caribou is another silent beast that finds his voice only on rare
occasions, in response to some urge that I do not yet understand. I
had met scores of the animals in winter, a few also in summer; but,
with the exception of one low call from a doe to her fawn, I had never
heard a word of caribou talk till one early-autumn night, when a herd
broke silence all together. On that night I lay broad awake in my tent,
unable to sleep or to find a reason for my sleeplessness. Some subtle
excitement was afoot; loons were crying it to the woods, owls crying
it back to the lake; so presently I made my way to an old lumber road,
thinking I would have a look at a chain of barrens under the moonlight.
These barrens (flat, treeless bogs surrounded by dense forest) are
lonely places at any time. By night, especially when the moon floods
them with pale light, and mists wave over them, and little shrouded
larches that stand on their edges seem to creep and quiver, they are
the epitome of all solitude.
As I crossed the first barren, making no sound on the thick carpet of
moss, a band of caribou filed out of the woods as if on a journey. The
strange thing to me was, not the excitement of the band or the complete
absence of fear, but that these silent brutes were now all talking, as
wild geese talk to one another continually in flight. Though they must
have seen me plainly, for I was very near, they passed without paying
me the slightest attention; all but the big bull, who came at the
end of the procession, and who evidently thought it was his business
to challenge that motionless figure standing out on the empty bog.
He stopped short, came a step toward me, stopped again, and I looked
for a rare bit of bluffing. When you stand motionless near a band of
caribou in a snowstorm, and they cannot tell what you are because they
do not trust their eyes and you are to leeward of their keen noses, the
bulls will sometimes rear up on their hind legs, looking enormously
threatening as they paw the air with their broad forefeet. In this
startling demonstration the woodland caribou differs, I think, from all
other members of the deer family. But here the big bull was content to
present his antlers, shaking them fiercely in my direction. Getting no
answer to his challenge, not even a motion, he followed grunting after
his band; and I had the impression that he was glad to go, having saved
his face by doing what was expected of him.
I was on my way to the next barren when, from a point of woods on my
left, a spikehorn bull came out on the trot, making me freeze in my
tracks once more. Whether he mistook me for one of his tribe or was
a bit moonstruck, as every other creature seemed to be that night, I
could not tell. He ran up as if he had been expecting me, and thrust
his nose within a yard of my face, so near that I saw his eyes glow
like foxfire in the moonlight; then without a word he brushed past and
ran away down the caribou trail.
I had taken only a few steps after the spikehorn left me, and was about
to enter the woods to cross to the next barren, when a vixen squalled
out loudly, as a cat squalls when you step on her tail. Instantly three
or four young foxes, her cubs, undoubtedly, rushed out and scurried
all over the trail at my feet. From the woods came a lively outcry, a
petulant, bagpipey droning; but it was some time before the cubs paid
enough attention to it to dive headlong for cover. And then I heard
squalls of a different tenor, one angry, another protesting, as if some
youngster were getting nipped for his heedlessness.
Such nights come very rarely, perhaps once in a long season of watching
wild animals; and always they affect a man queerly, as if some lunacy
were abroad, and he must share it with other natural creatures. I
remember vividly one night, many years ago, so different from all
others that it seemed to do violence to my experience of the quiet
wilderness. The time was September, and the place a wild lake which is
still, I am told, the best big-game region in New Brunswick. It was
then an unhunted solitude.
During the day I had been ranging the woods, and had noticed that
flocking birds were acting strangely, as chickens grow erratic when the
barometer is rapidly falling. Yet no storm threatened; the weather,
as I remember it, had been for some days unusually brilliant. Late in
the afternoon, as I was catching a supper of trout at the inlet of the
lake, Kook’skoos the horned owl suddenly started a racket; not his deep
hunting call, but an uncanny _hoo-hooing_ up and down the scale, as if
he were possessed by some crazy notion. He was answered by others of
his kind here or there; and when I stalked the nearest, to find out
what was afoot, he upset all my notions of the solemn birds without
giving me even a hint of answer to my question. Instead of perching
on the top of a stub so as to look like a part of it, as horned owls
habitually do, he was hopping up and down a horizontal branch, as if
dancing a _pas seul_. Instead of holding perfectly still save for a
vibration of the throat when he sent forth his call, as I had often
seen him, he would swoop almost to the ground and whirl about in
fantastic circles, at the same time uttering a rapid, guttural note,
which ended in a wild yell as he sailed back to his perch.
When I reached camp after sundown, the excitement seemed to have
spread widely to others. Kupkawis the barred owl was then going about
demanding, _Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?_ and breaking out
in wild clack-clacking before anybody could answer him.
By that time there was a tingle in the air, such as one feels before an
electrical storm. Simmo, my smoky companion, was uneasy. I noticed that
his eyes had no rest, that they were searching lake or sky or somber
forest continually; but I did not question him, having learned to hold
my tongue with an Indian; nor did I know enough about the woods to
expect anything unusual. Besides, my thoughts were mostly on moose just
then. I had found a pond hidden away among low hills and caribou bogs,
its shores pitted with moose tracks, among which the slots of a monster
bull appealed to my imagination. I intended to call him that night,
and had carefully spotted the trail I must follow. When I told Simmo,
who did not like my nocturnal rambles, he broke silence to advise me
soberly.
“Now I goin’ tell you one t’ing: bes’ don’t go,” he said. “An’ if you
do go, bes’ look out; be careful. Moose not hunted here, like down
settlement way. I hear-um bull two, t’ree time, an’ he _mitcheego_,
very cross. He come quick to-night if you call-um, an’ he don’t ’fraid
of not’ing.”
No sooner was twilight come than a wild calling began, and the woods
were as near to noisy as I shall ever hear them. Loons were yelling,
owls hooting, ducks quacking, and foxes yapping in all directions. At
frequent intervals came the plaint of a black bear, a rare cry, and
the loneliest you will ever hear in the night. When the moon rose in a
marvelously clear sky I crossed the lake and entered the dim trail that
led to my moose pond.
I was following the trail cautiously, feeling my way between a cedar
swamp and a burnt hillside, when just ahead of me rang out a screech
that seemed to split the air. It was an appalling sound in that lonely
place; my skin wrinkled under it, like a dog’s skin under the lash.
Again it sounded, making me cringe, though I was waiting for it. It was
answered from the hill, and I began to suspect the creature that made
it when a caterwauling began which made night hideous. The beasts were
approaching each other slowly, screeching as they went, when up through
the cedar swamp came a snarling, yowling, unseen thing that sped along
the ground with the rush of an arrow. The three lynxes flew together in
a rowdydow that spoke of tearing one another to ribbons; yet they were
not fighting at all, I think, for when I crept near I could hear no
sound of struggle, but only a fiendish yelling. When the rumpus seemed
almost under my nose it ceased abruptly; there was no lynx in sight,
nor any moving shadow to say what had become of them.
At any ordinary time such an outcry seems to stun the wilderness into
deeper silence; but now it had an opposite effect, as if it were an
alarm for which wild ears had been waiting. In the dark swamp, on the
hillside flooded with pale light, even in the air overhead, alert
creatures were moving or crying in nameless excitement. As I went on,
following the dim trail, the woods on either side seemed alive with
rustlings, some of which were surely not imaginary. Wood mice were
abroad, scores of them, it seemed, for the moonlight caught the white
edges of their scurrying tails; and within a short space I passed four
or five porcupines. Every one of the prickly fellows had climbed to
the top of a slender tree, and was perched there, swaying and whining.
Birds that sleep by night were peeping or stirring in the shadows.
Herons and bitterns, which are always restless when the moon shines,
were circling by threes or fours over every lake and bog; while
questing individuals winged their way from one group to another, as if
seeking or bearing strange news.
Pausing under one of these groups, I would hear the hoarse _kruk-kruk_
of a blue heron drawing nearer, nearer. Suddenly from the air above
would come a sharp question, a challenge flung at my head, as the great
birds discovered me. Whether by night or day, nothing can remain hidden
from their bright yellow eyes. I would see a vague motion, as of wings,
emerging from the silver radiance or melting away into it, like gleams
and shadows in the eddy of a river under the moonlight. The wings would
vanish going I knew not whither; but far and wide forest and lake and
caribou barren would all be ringing to the heron’s challenge, _Quoskh?
Quoskh-quoskh?_ And I understood then why Indians call this bird the
night’s question.
[Illustration: “_Their very attitude made me feel queer, for they were
in touch with a matter of which I had no warning._”]
I had left the lake behind and was traveling through a stratum of
silence, a restful silence which I devoutly hoped might endure, when
an uproar of moose--grunts, splashings, the ring of smitten antler
blades--sounded not far away in the direction I was heading. As I
emerged from the woods upon the barren that bordered my moose pond,
two bulls were having an argument in the shallow water near shore. At
first they seemed to be fighting, mud and water flying over them as
they surged about with locked antlers; but I soon judged them to be
youngsters that were trying their strength while waiting for something
else to happen. At intervals they would listen intently to a message I
could not hear; then they would drop heads, lock antlers once more, and
strive mightily to push each other over.
As they backed away from one of these encounters the nearer bull turned
and threw his nose into the wind. The other, instead of driving brow
prongs into his rival’s flank (as he surely would have done had they
been fighting), took a step toward shore, and both stood at tense
attention. Their attitude made me feel queer, for they were in touch
with a matter of which I had no warning. Something was passing yonder
on the hill, something too fine or distant for me to sense, and the
moose were following every rumor of it minutely. Suddenly they leaped
from the water, laid their antlers back, thrust their great muzzles out
ahead of them, and raced away side by side. They passed close by my
hiding place, heading for the thing to which they had been listening.
A little later I began calling from a point of evergreen that thrust
itself into the barren from the southern side. Before me and on either
hand stretched the level bog, misty and unreal, ringed about by dark
woods. Beyond the bog to the right, whither the bulls had gone, rose
low hills with pointed spruces standing over them like sentinels. On my
left at a little distance was the pond, its placid face glimmering like
silver in the moonlight.
Such was the stage, ideal in the perfection of its setting, on which
I expected a shy and solitary actor to appear at my summons. Of the
moose-caller’s art I knew very little, having at odd times tried
to imitate Simmo, who was an excellent caller, but, like all his
secretive tribe, an unwilling teacher. Without any preliminary whining,
therefore, such as a careful caller employs on the chance that a
bull may be near, I sent the bellow of a cow-moose rolling out of my
birch-bark trumpet.
The response was immediate, and more than a little startling. Before
the echoes of my call were quiet, there came from beyond the pond on
my left a gruff _quoh!_ It was a bull barking his answer. A rattling
of antlers on alder stems, then a _sqush, sqush_ of mud to say that he
was coming. Hardly had he started when, from a hill on the opposite
side, a second bull hurled himself down with a hoarse challenge,
followed by a terrific smashing of brush. No doubt about it, he was
coming, too! When near me he swerved away for the pond or for the
other bull, and passed along the farther edge of the bog, where I
could hardly see him for the shadows. After him came another, then
in a straggling rout three or four more, I think; but they made such
commotion in the woods, threshing bushes, grunting, squealing at
times, as an old bull will, that it was impossible to keep track of
individuals. No sooner did I begin to locate one brute than a nearer or
more nerve-shaking rumpus demanded my attention.
Apparently I had blundered into a rare band of traveling moose, and
this on the one unlucky night of the year when all wild creatures were
strangely excited. For the next half-hour, it seemed (it may have
been only a few minutes; I had lost all notion of time), the uneasy
brutes went questing over the bog, both bulls and cows. The latter were
silent appearing mysteriously here or there; but the bulls seemed to be
looking for trouble. At times two or three would go smashing along the
fringes of the wood, where they appeared as grotesque shadows; again,
a solitary bull would break into the open at a slashing trot, hackles
up, bell swinging, and in his throat a _chock! chock! chock!_ which
sounded in that place and hour rather ferocious. Once a truculent pair
dashed out from opposite sides, only to range challenging down the
length of the bog to the pond, where they locked antlers for another
bullish kind of argument.
Meanwhile I was making myself as small as possible under an upturned
root, where I could see a little of what went on, but where a bull
might almost step over me before noticing anything to arouse his fear
or anger. Not a moose circled to get my wind, as a solitary bull would
surely have done; and I think that they had no inkling of a hidden
enemy. They appeared freely here or disappeared there; while I lay
close to the ground, where no air stirs, and made no lunatic attempt
to call them nearer. They were near enough. Three times out of four
you can tell what a wild beast will do, especially if he sees you or
suspects where you are, and nine times out of ten you can safely count
on his timidity; but a big beast that stumbles upon you is always
uncertain, and sometimes dangerous. Once a questing brute chanced
within a dozen yards of my point; and when a monster bull with antlers
like a pair of rocking-chairs ramped past, gritting his teeth and
grunting, one glimpse of him was enough to put the fear of God in any
man. I had no rifle, no wish to kill any of these huge beasts; neither
did I care to spend the remainder of the chill night reciting _mea
culpa_ in a tree.
The moose left the bog when their excitement cooled, trailing off in
a procession eastward, whence they had come. They traveled noisily,
contrary to all my observation; I could trace their course through the
woods long after they had vanished from sight. Their gruff calling
ceased; their crashing died away in a surge, a rustle, a shiver as of
leaves, and they were gone.
And then the blessed silence returned to brood again over the
wilderness. The owls, first to begin the tumult, were last to end;
but presently they too were quiet, save for an occasional hunting
call. On the way back to camp not a cry, not a rustle disturbed the
perfect stillness. The moon shone wondrously clear, making magic of
the familiar woods; the lake began whispering to its banks; the air
trembled at times to that rushing sound of music which is heard only on
still nights in dense forest, and which always fills one with wonder,
as if hearing at last the old harmony of the spheres. All around the
trail or the gliding canoe the great wilderness stood silent, alert,
listening.
That is the last as well as the first impression of a northern forest,
the impression of listening. Though silent, it is never dead nor even
asleep; it is alive and awake, as a man is most awake when living in
his own thoughts. You may range the vast solitude for hours and start
no living thing; but you have never a thought that the woods are
deserted. No, they are only hiding their wild creatures, which may step
forth at any moment. Day or night, summer or winter, the wilderness is
always animate. As you move through it on careful feet, awed by its
mystery or sublimity, you are every instant in the presence of life, a
life so full and deep that silence is its only expression.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE TRAIL OF THE LOUP-GAROU
A howling as of wolves fetched me wide-awake one night in my winter
camp in Quebec. The sound was familiar enough in that lonely place;
yet because it has a fascination for me, an appeal which I can neither
satisfy nor explain, I must don whatever warm thing I could lay hands
on in the darkness, and go out where I could hear better.
The night was still and nipping cold. Big northern stars glittered
over the spruce tops. The light of a waning moon wrought its magic on
the frozen lake, its beautiful enchantment on the brooding forest.
Under its spell every stately tree had an outline of burnished silver;
massive rocks became shadowy and unreal; remote things drew near,
and over nearer things was drawn a transparent veil, making them seem
remote and mysterious. Through every dim avenue of the snowy woods went
a luminous mist, working its wondrous transformation till one seemed to
live in a world of dreams and illusions.
The howling ceased as I opened the camp door, but not before I had
caught its general direction. In hope of hearing it again and of
locating the wolves for my next day’s hunting, I headed toward them,
following a snowshoe trail deep into the moonlit woods.
Suddenly to the northward a cry broke out, not the many-tongued uproar
for which I listened, but a moan, a wail of unimaginable woe. A wolf’s
voice, certainly, but a queer one, so unlike any other that I forgot
all else in trying to read its meaning. This was no lunatic baying of
the moon, such as must bring response from many wolves, each sitting
alone with his nose to the sky. It was not the trail-cry that a wolf
utters when he jumps big game and wants the pack to close in. It had
no resemblance to the thrilling food call, which brings every hungry
wolf within hearing to a kill; nor was it like the howl of a she-wolf,
leader of the pack, when she calls her cubs to the hunting, and they
come with the clamor of hounds unleashed. A single wolf, unanswered,
was voicing some wild emotion in a cry for which I had no explanation.
He would begin with a falsetto note, a wail like the keen of a
banshee; without a break he would slide down to a full-chested roar, a
monstrous, earth-filling sound, and taper off in a moan that made the
woods shudder.
“If that brute matches his voice, he must be the father of all wolves,”
I thought, feeling a chill in my spine that was not of the frosty
night. “In the morning I shall run his trail to find out what he is
doing, and get him if I can. Perhaps he is the loup-garou himself!”
Thus naturally, to a wailing accompaniment, I fell to thinking of a
fearsome beast, the werewolf of Oriental and Western, of medieval
and ancient belief. Even such wide limits of space or time are too
narrow; the superstition has flourished wherever wolves and men are
found. In corners of modern Europe and on fringes of the Canadian
wilderness are people who still believe it; yes, and tremble. In all
folklore, in Malory’s _Morte d’Arthur_, in books of witchcraft and
books of werewolves, in judgments of criminal courts and acts of
parliaments,--through all human records runs the red trail of the
loup-garou, haunting the lonely roads, waylaying belated travelers,
laying the spell of unearthly fear on all who hear his voice on a
winter night.
Everywhere in these old records, as in tales still told by the
Habitant’s fireside, the monster has the same gruesome qualities. He
is a man “not of one skin” who assumes the form of a beast to gratify
a debased appetite for human flesh. While in this shape he has the
ferocity of the brute, the intelligence of a man, the cunning of his
master the devil. Fear and pity are alike unknown to him. He is not to
be shaken from any trail, nor can he be slain by mortal weapons. Being
under an evil spell, only magic can overcome him, or bell, book and
candle if you have no magic handy. As Drayton wrote:
About the fields religiously they went
With hallowing charms, the werewolf thence to fray.