When the king of the Mamozekel barrens was born, he was one of the most
ungainly of all calves,—a moose-calf.
In the heart of a tamarack swamp, some leagues south from Nictau
Mountain, was a dry little knoll of hardwood and pine undiscovered by the
hunters, out of the track of the hunting beasts. Neither lynx, bear, nor
panther had tradition of it. There was little succulent undergrowth to
tempt the moose and the caribou. But there the wild plum each summer
fruited abundantly, and there a sturdy brotherhood of beeches each autumn
lavished their treasure of three-cornered nuts; and therefore the knoll
was populous with squirrels and grouse. Nature, in one of those whims of
hers by which she delights to confound the studious naturalist, had
chosen to keep this spot exempt from the law of blood and fear which
ruled the rest of her domains. To be sure, the squirrels would now and
then play havoc with a nest of grouse eggs, or, in the absence of their
chisel-beaked parents, do murder on a nest of young golden-wings; but,
barring the outbreaks of these bright-eyed incorrigible marauders,—bad to
their very toes, and attractive to their plumy tail-tips,—the knoll in
the tamarack swamp was a haven of peace amid the fierce but furtive
warfare of the wilderness.
On this knoll, when the arbutus breath of the northern spring was
scenting the winds of all the Tobique country, the king was born,—a
moose-calf more ungainly and of mightier girth and limb than any other
moose-calf of the Mamozekel. Never had his mother seen such a one,—and
she a mother of lordly bulls. He was uncouth, to be sure, in any eyes but
those of his kind,—with his high humped fore-shoulders, his long,
lugubrious, overhanging snout, his big ears set low on his big head, his
little eyes crowded back toward his ears, his long, big-knuckled legs,
and the spindling, lank diminutiveness of his hindquarters. A grotesque
figure, indeed, and lacking altogether in that pathetic, infantile
winsomeness which makes even little pigs attractive. But any one who knew
about moose would have said, watching the huge baby struggle to his feet
and stand with sturdy legs well braced, “There, if bears and bullets miss
him till his antlers get full spread, is the king of the Mamozekel.” Now,
when his mother had licked him dry, his coat showed a dark, very sombre,
cloudy, secretive brown, of a hue to be quite lost in the shadows of the
fir and hemlock thickets, and to blend consummately with the colour of
the tangled alder trunks along the clogged banks of the Mamozekel.
The young king’s mother was perhaps the biggest and most morose cow on
all the moose ranges of northern New Brunswick. She assuredly had no peer
on the barrens of the upper Tobique country. She was also the craftiest.
That was the reason why, though she was dimly known and had been blindly
hunted all the way from Nictau Lake, over Mamozekel, and down to Blue
Mountain on the main Tobique, she had never felt a bullet wound, and had
come to be regarded by the backwoods hunters with something of a
superstitious awe. It was of her craft, too, that she had found this
knoll in the heart of the tamarack swamp, and had guarded the secret of
it from the herds. Hither, at calving time, she would come by cunningly
twisted trails. Here she would pass the perilous hours in safety,
unharassed by the need of watching against her stealthy foes. And when
once she had led her calf away from the retreat, she never returned to
it, save alone, and in another year.
For three days the great cow stayed upon the knoll, feeding upon the
overhanging branch tips of mountain-ash and poplar. This was good fodder,
for buds and twigs were swollen with sap, and succulent. In those three
days her sturdy young calf made such gains in strength and stature that
he would have passed in the herd for a calf of two weeks’ growth. In
mid-afternoon of the third day she led the way down from the knoll and
out across the quaking glooms of the tamarack swamp. And the squirrels in
the budding branches chattered shrill derision about their going.
The way led through the deepest and most perilous part of the swamp; but
the mother knew the safe trail in all its windings. She knew where the
yielding surface of moss with black pools on either side was not afloat
on fathomless ooze, but supported by solid earth or a framework of
ancient tree roots. She shambled onward at a very rapid walk, which
forced the gaunt calf at her heels to break now and then into the
long-striding, tireless trot which is the heritage of his race.
For perhaps an hour they travelled. Then, in a little, partly open glade
where the good sound earth rose up sweet from the morass, and the
mountain-ash, the viburnum, and the moose-wood grew thinly, and the
ground was starred with spring blooms,—painted trillium and wake-robin,
claytonia and yellow dog-tooth and wind-flower,—they stopped. The calf,
tired from his first journeying, nursed fiercely, twitching his absurd
stub of a tail, butting at his mother’s udder with such discomforting
eagerness that she had to rebuke him by stepping aside and interrupting
his meal. After several experiences of this kind he took the hint, and
put curb upon his too robust impatience. The masterful spirit of a king
is liable to inconvenience its owner if exercised prematurely.
By this time the pink light of sunset was beginning to stain the western
curves of branch and stem and bud, changing the spring coolness of the
place into a delicate riot of fairy colour and light, intervolving form.
Some shadows deepened, while others disappeared. Certain leaves and
blossoms and pale limbs stood out with a clearness almost startling,
suddenly emphasised by the level rays, while others faded from view.
Though there was no wind, the changed light gave an effect of noiseless
movement in the glade. And in the midst of this gathering enchantment the
mother moose set herself to forage for her own meal.
Selecting a slim young birch-tree, whose top was thick with twigs and
greening buds, she pushed against it with her massive chest till it bent
nearly to the ground. Then straddling herself along it, she held it down
securely between her legs, moved forward till the succulent top was
within easy reach, and began to browse with leisurely jaws and selective
reachings out of her long, discriminating upper lip. The calf stood close
by, watching with interest, his legs sympathetically spread apart, his
head swung low from his big shoulders, his great ears swaying slowly
backward and forward, not together, but one at a time. When the mother
had finished feeding, there were no buds, twigs or small branches left on
the birch sapling; and the sunset colours had faded out of the glade.
With dusk a chilly air breathed softly through the trees, and the mother
led the way into a clump of thick balsam firs near the edge of the good
ground. In the heart of the thicket she lay down for the night, facing
away from the wind; and the calf, quick in perception as in growth, lay
down close beside her in the same position. He did not know at the time
the significance of the position, but he had a vague sense of its
importance. He was afterward to learn that enemies were liable to
approach his lair in the night, and that as long as he slept with his
back to the wind, he could not be taken unawares. The wind might be
trusted to bring to his marvellous nostrils timely notice of danger from
the rear; while he could depend upon his eyes and his spacious,
sensitive, unsleeping ears to warn him of anything ascending against the
wind to attack him in front.
[Illustration: “THE CALF STOOD CLOSE BY, WATCHING WITH INTEREST.”]
At the very first suggestion of morning the two light sleepers arose. In
the dusk of the fir thicket the hungry calf made his meal. Then they came
forth into the grayness of the spectral spring dawn, and the great cow
proceeded as before to breast down a birch sapling for fodder. Before the
sun was fairly up, they left the glade and resumed their journey across
the swamp.
It was mid-morning of a sweet-aired, radiant day when they emerged from
the swamp. Now, through a diversified country of thick forests and open
levels, the mother moose swung forward on an undeviating trail,
perceptible only to herself. Presently the land began to dip. Then a
little river appeared, winding through innumerable alders, with here and
there a pond-like expansion full of young lily-leaves; and the future
king of the Mamozekel looked upon his kingdom. But he did not recognise
it. He cared nothing for the little river of alders. He was tired, and
very hungry, and the moment his mother halted he ran up and nursed
vehemently.