A little beyond the camp-fire where the man lay sleeping under those
sinister eyes, rose the slopes of a wooded ridge. The ridge was covered
with a luxuriant second growth of birch, maple, Canada fir, moose-wood,
and white spruce, the ancient forest having fallen years before under the
axes of the lumbermen. Here on the ridge, where the food they loved was
abundant, a buck, with his herd of does and fawns, had established his
winter “yard.” With their sharp, slim hoofs which cut deep into the snow,
if the deer were compelled to seek their food at large they would find
themselves at the mercy of every foe as soon as the snow lay deep enough
to impede their running. It is their custom, therefore, at the beginning
of winter, to select a locality where the food supply will not fail them,
and intersect the surface of the snow in every direction with an
inextricable labyrinth of paths. These paths are kept well trodden,
whatever snow may fall. If straightened out they would reach for many a
league. To unravel their intricacies is a task to which only the memories
of their makers are equal, and along them the deer flee like wraiths at
any alarm. If close pressed by an enemy they will leap, light as birds,
from one deep path to another, leaving no mark on the intervening barrier
of snow, and breaking the trail effectually. Thus when the snow lies
deep, the yard becomes their spacious citadel, and the despair of
pursuing lynx or panther. A herd of deer well yarded, under the
leadership of an old and crafty buck, will come safe and sleek through
the fiercest wilderness winter.
The little herd which occupied this particular yard chanced to be
feeding, in the glimmer of the winter twilight, very near the foot of the
ridge, when suddenly a faint red glow, stealing through the branches,
caught the old buck’s eye. There was a quick stamp of warning, and on the
instant the herd turned to statues, their faces all one way, their
sensitive ears, vibrating nostrils, and wide attentive eyes all striving
to interpret the prodigy. They were a herd of the deep woods. Not one of
them had ever been near the settlements. Not even the wise old leader had
ever seen a fire. This light, when the sun had set and no moon held the
sky, was inexplicable.
But to the deer a mystery means something to be solved. He has the
perilous gift of curiosity. After a few minutes of moveless watching, the
whole herd, in single file, began noiselessly threading the lower
windings of the maze, drawing nearer and nearer to the strange light.
When the first smell of the burning came to their nostrils they stopped
again, but not for long. That smell was just another mystery to be looked
into. At the smell of the frying pork they stopped again, this time for a
longer period and with symptoms of uneasiness. To their delicate nerves
there was something of a menace in that forbidding odour. But even so, it
was to be investigated; and very soon they resumed their wary advance.
A few moments more and they came to a spot where, peering through a cover
of spruce boughs, their keen eyes could see the hole in the snow, the
camp-fire, and the man seated beside it smoking his pipe. It was all very
wonderful; but instinct told them it was perilous, and the old buck
decided that the information they had acquired was sufficient for all
practical purposes of a deer’s daily life. He would go no nearer. The
whole herd stood there for a long time, forgetting to eat, absorbed in
the novelty and wonder of the scene.
The whole herd, did I say? There was one exception. To a certain young
doe that fire was the most fascinating thing in life. It drew her. It
hypnotised her. After a few minutes of stillness she could resist no
longer. She pushed past the leader of the herd and stole noiselessly
toward the shining lovely thing. The old buck signalled her back,—first
gently, then angrily; but she had grown forgetful of the laws of the
herd. She had but one thought, to get nearer to the camp-fire, and drench
her vision in the entrancing glow.
Nevertheless, for all her infatuation, she forgot not her ancestral gift
of prudence. She went noiselessly as a shadow, drifting, pausing,
listening, sniffing the air, concealing herself behind every cover. The
rest of the herd gazed after her with great eyes of resignation, then
left her to her wayward will and resumed their watching of the camp-fire.
When one member of a herd persists in disobeying orders, the rest endure
with equanimity whatever fate may befall her.
[Illustration: “STOLE NOISELESSLY TOWARD THE SHINING LOVELY THING.”]
Step by step, as if treading on egg-shells, the fascinated doe threaded
the path till she came to the lowest limit of the yard. From that point
the path swerved back up the ridge, forsaking the ruddy glow. The doe
paused, hesitating. She was still too far from the object of her
admiration and wonder; but she feared the deep snow. Her irresolution
soon passed, however. Getting behind a thick hemlock, she cautiously
raised herself over the barrier and made straight for the camp-fire.
Packed as the snow was, her light weight enabled her to traverse it
without actually floundering. She sank deep at every step, but had
perfect control of her motions, and made no more sound than if she had
been a bunch of fur blown softly over the surface. Her absorption and
curiosity, moreover, did not lead her to omit any proper precaution of
woodcraft. As she approached the fire she kept always in the dense,
confusing, shifting shadows which a camp-fire casts in the forest. These
fitful shadows were a very effectual concealment.
At last she found herself so close to the fire that only a thicket of
young spruce divided her from the edge of the hole.
Planting herself rigidly, her gray form an indeterminate shadow among the
blotches and streaks of shadow, her wide mild eyes watched the man with
intensest interest, as he knocked out his pipe, mended the fire, and
rolled himself into his blanket on the spruce boughs. When she saw that
he was asleep, she presently forgot about him. Her eyes returned to the
fire and fixed themselves upon it. The veering, diminishing flames held
her as by sorcery. All else was forgotten,—food, foes, and the herd
alike,—as she stared with childlike eagerness at the bed of red coals.
The pupils of her eyes kept alternately expanding and contracting, as the
glow in the coals waxed and waned under the fluctuating breath of passing
airs.