There was a pleasant humming all about the bee-tree, where it stood
solitary on the little knoll upon the sunward slope of the forest. It was
an ancient maple, one side long since blasted by lightning, and now
decayed to the heart; while the other side yet put forth a green bravery
of branch and leaf. High up under a dead limb was a hole, thronged about
with diligent bees who came and went in long diverging streams against
the sun-steeped blue. A mile below, around the little, straggling
backwoods settlement, the buckwheat was in bloom; and the bees counted
the longest day too short for the gathering of its brown and fragrant
sweets.
In fine contrast to their bustle and their haste was a moveless dark
brown figure clinging to a leafy branch on the other and living side of
the tree. From a distance it might easily have been taken for a big
bird’s-nest. Far out on the limb it sat, huddled into a bristling ball.
Its nose, its whole head indeed, were hidden between its fore paws, which
childishly but tenaciously clutched at a little upright branch. In this
position, seemingly so precarious, but really, for the porcupine, the
safest and most comfortable that could be imagined, it dozed away the
idle summer hours.
From the thick woods at the foot of the knoll emerged a large black bear,
who lifted his nose and eyed shrewdly the humming streams of workers
converging at the hole in the bee-tree. For some time the bear stood
contemplative, till an eager light grew in his small, cunning,
half-humourous eyes. His long red tongue came out and licked his lips, as
he thought of the summer’s sweetness now stored in the hollow tree. He
knew all about that prosperous bee colony. He remembered when, two years
before, the runaway swarm from the settlement had taken possession of the
hole in the old maple. That same autumn he had tried to rifle the
treasure-house, but had found the wood about the entrance still too sound
and strong for even such powerfully rending claws as his. He had gone
away surly with disappointment, to scratch a few angry bees out of his
fur, and wait for the natural processes of decay to weaken the walls of
the citadel.
On this particular day he decided to try again. He had no expectation
that he would succeed; but the thought of the honey grew irresistible to
him as he dwelt upon it. He lumbered lazily up the knoll, reared his dark
bulk against the trunk, and started to climb to the attack.
But the little workers in the high-set hive found an unexpected protector
in this hour of their need. The dozing porcupine woke up, and took it
into his head that he wanted to go somewhere else. Perhaps in his dreams
a vision had come to him of the lonely little oat-field in the clearing,
where the young grain was plumping out and already full of milky
sweetness. As a rule he preferred to travel and feed by night. But the
porcupine is the last amid the wild kindreds to let convention interfere
with impulse, and he does what seems good to the whim of the moment. His
present whim was to descend the bee-tree and journey over to the
clearing.
The bear had climbed but seven or eight feet, when he heard the scraping
of claws on the bark above. He heard also the light clattering noise,
unlike any other sound in the wilderness. He knew it at once as the sound
of the loose-hung, hollow quills in a porcupine’s active tail; and
looking up angrily, he saw the porcupine curl himself downward from a
crotch and begin descending the trunk to meet him.
The bear weighed perhaps four hundred or five hundred pounds. The
porcupine weighed perhaps twenty-five pounds. Nevertheless, the bear
stopped; and the porcupine came on. When he saw the bear, he gnashed his
teeth irritably, and his quills, his wonderful panoply of finely barbed
spears, erected themselves all over his body till his usual bulk seemed
doubled. At the same time his colour changed. It was almost as if he had
grown suddenly pale with indignation; for when the long quills stood up
from among his blackish-brown fur they showed themselves all white save
for their dark keen points. Small as he was in comparison with his
gigantic opponent, he looked, nevertheless, curiously formidable. He
grunted and grumbled querulously, and came on with confidence,
obstinately proclaiming that no mere bear should for a moment divert him
from his purpose.
[Illustration: “THE BEAR EYED HIM FOR SOME MOMENTS.”]
Whether by instinct, experience, or observation, the bear knew something
about porcupines. What would honey be to him, with two or three of those
slender and biting spear-points embedded in his nose? As he thought of
it, he backed away with increasing alacrity. He checked a rash impulse to
dash the arrogant little hinderer from the tree and annihilate him with
one stroke of his mighty paw,—but the mighty paw cringed, winced, and
drew back impotent, as its sensitive nerves considered how it would feel
to be stuck full, like a pin-cushion, with inexorably penetrating points.
At last, thoroughly outfaced, the bear descended to the ground, and stood
aside respectfully for the porcupine to pass.
The porcupine, however, on reaching the foot of the trunk, discovered an
uncertainty in his mind. His whim wavered. He stopped, scratched his ears
thoughtfully first with one fore paw and then with the other, and tried
his long, chisel-like front teeth, those matchless gnawing machines, on a
projecting edge of bark. The bear eyed him for some moments, then
lumbered off into the woods indifferently, convinced that the bee-tree
would be just as interesting on some other day. But before that other day
came around, the bear encountered Fate, lying in wait for him, grim and
implacable, beneath a trapper’s deadfall in the heart of the tamarack
swamp. And the humming tribes in the bee-tree were left to possess their
honeyed commonwealth in peace.
Soon after the bear had left the knoll, the porcupine appeared to make up
his mind as to what he wanted to do. With an air of fixed purpose he
started down the knoll, heading for the oat-field and the clearing which
lay some half-mile distant through the woods. As he moved on the ground,
he was a somewhat clumsy and wholly grotesque figure. He walked with a
deliberate and precise air, very slowly, and his legs worked as if the
earth were to them an unfamiliar element. He was about two and a half
feet long, short-legged, solid and sturdy looking, with a nose curiously
squared off so that it should not get in the way of his gnawing. As he
confronted you, his great chisel teeth, bared and conspicuous, appeared a
most formidable weapon. Effective as they were, however, they were not a
weapon which he was apt to call into use, save against inanimate and
edible opponents; because he could not do so without exposing his weak
points to attack,—his nose, his head, his soft, unprotected throat. His
real weapon of offence was his short, thick tail, which was heavily armed
with very powerful quills. With this he could strike slashing blows, such
as would fill an enemy’s face or paws with spines, and send him howling
from the encounter. Clumsy and inert it looked, on ordinary occasions;
but when need arose, its muscles had the lightning action of a strong
steel spring.
As the porcupine made his resolute way through the woods, the manner of
his going differed from that of all the other kindreds of the wild. He
went not furtively. He had no particular objection to making a noise. He
did not consider it necessary to stop every little while, stiffen himself
to a monument of immobility, cast wary glances about the gloom, and sniff
the air for the taint of enemies. He did not care who knew of his coming;
and he did not greatly care who came. Behind his panoply of biting spears
he felt himself secure, and in that security he moved as if he held in
fee the whole green, shadowy, perilous woodland world.
A wood-mouse, sitting in the door of his burrow between the roots of an
ancient fir-tree, went on washing his face with his dainty paws as the
porcupine passed within three feet of him. Almost any other forest
traveller would have sent the timid mouse darting to the depths of his
retreat; but he knew that the slow-moving figure, however terrible to
look at, had no concern for wood-mice. The porcupine had barely passed,
however, when a weasel came in view. In a flash the mouse was gone, to
lie hidden for an hour, with trembling heart, in the furthest darkness of
his burrow.
Continuing his journey, the porcupine passed under a fallen tree. Along
the horizontal trunk lay a huge lynx, crouched flat, movelessly watching
for rabbit, chipmunk, mink, or whatever quarry might come within his
reach. He was hungry, as a lynx is apt to be. He licked his chaps, and
his wide eyes paled with savage fire, as the porcupine dawdled by beneath
the tree, within easy clutch of his claws. But his claws made no least
motion of attack. He, too, like the bear, knew something about
porcupines. In a few moments, however, when the porcupine had gone on
some ten or twelve feet beyond his reach, his feelings overcame him so
completely that he stood up and gave vent to an appalling scream of rage.
All the other wild things within hearing trembled at the sound, and were
still; and the porcupine, startled out of his equipoise, tucked his nose
between his legs, and bristled into a ball of sharp defiance. The lynx
eyed him venomously for some seconds, then dropped lightly from the
perch, and stole off to hunt in other neighbourhoods, realising that his
reckless outburst of bad temper had warned all the coverts for a quarter
of a mile around. The porcupine, uncurling, grunted scornfully and
resumed his journey.
Very still, and lonely and bright the clearing lay in the flooding
afternoon sunshine. It lay along beside a deeply rutted, grass-grown
backwoods road which had been long forgotten by the attentions of the
road-master. It was enclosed from the forest in part by a dilapidated
wall of loose stones, in part by an old snake fence, much patched with
brush. The cabin which had once presided over its solitude had long
fallen to ruin; but its fertile soil had saved it from being forgotten. A
young farmer-lumberman from the settlement a couple of miles away held
possession of it, and kept its boundaries more or less intact, and made
it yield him each year a crop of oats, barley, or buckwheat.
Emerging from the woods, the porcupine crawled to the top of the stone
wall and glanced about him casually. Then he descended into the cool,
light-green depths of the growing oats. Here he was completely hidden,
though his passage was indicated as he went by the swaying and commotion
among the oat-tops.
The high plumes of the grain, of course, were far above the porcupine’s
reach; and for a healthy appetite like his it would have been tedious
work indeed to pull down the stalks one by one. At this point, he
displayed an ingenious resourcefulness with which he is seldom credited
by observers of his kind. Because he is slow in movement, folk are apt to
conclude that he is slow in wit; whereas the truth is that he has fine
reserves of shrewdness to fall back on in emergency. Instead of pulling
and treading down the oats at haphazard, he moved through the grain in a
small circle, leaning heavily inward. When he had thus gone around the
circle several times, the tops of the grain lay together in a convenient
bunch. This succulent sheaf he dragged down, and devoured with relish.
When he had abundantly satisfied his craving for young oats, he crawled
out upon the open sward by the fence, and carelessly sampled the bark of
a seedling apple-tree. While he was thus engaged a big, yellow dog came
trotting up the wood-road, poking his nose inquisitively into every bush
and stump in the hope of finding a rabbit or chipmunk to chase. He
belonged to the young farmer who owned the oat-field; and when, through
the rails of the snake fence, he caught sight of the porcupine, he was
filled with noisy wrath. Barking and yelping,—partly with excitement, and
partly as a signal to his master who was trudging along the road far
behind him,—he clambered over the fence, and bore down upon the
trespasser.
The porcupine was not greatly disturbed by this loud onslaught, but he
did not let confidence make him careless. He calmly tucked his head under
his breast, set his quills in battle array, and awaited the event with
composure.
Had he discovered the porcupine in the free woods, the yellow dog would
have let him severely alone. But in his master’s oat-field, that was a
different matter. Moreover, the knowledge that his master was coming
added to his zeal and rashness; and he had long cherished the ambition to
kill a porcupine. He sprang forward, open-jawed,—and stopped short when
his fangs were just within an inch or two of those bristling and defiant
points. Caution had come to his rescue just in time.
For perhaps half a minute he ran, whining and baffled, around the
not-to-be daunted ball of spines. Then he sat down upon his haunches,
lifted up his muzzle, and howled for his master to come and help him.
As his master failed to appear within three seconds, his impatience got
the better of him, and he again began running around the porcupine,
snapping fiercely, but never coming within two or three inches of the
militant points. For a few moments these two or three inches proved to be
a safe distance. Such a distance from the shoulders, back, and sides was
all well enough. But suddenly, he was so misguided as to bring his teeth
together within a couple of inches of the armed but quiescent tail. This
was the instant for which the porcupine had been waiting. The tail
flicked smartly. The big dog jumped, gave a succession of yelping cries,
pawed wildly at his nose, then tucked his tail between his legs,
scrambled over the fence, and fled away to his master. The porcupine
unrolled himself, and crawled into an inviting hole in the old stone
wall.
About ten minutes later a very angry man, armed with a fence-stake,
appeared at the edge of the clearing with a cowed dog at his heels. He
wanted to find the porcupine which had stuck those quills into his dog’s
nose. Mercifully merciless, he had held the howling dog in a grip of iron
while he pulled out the quills with his teeth; and now he was after
vengeance. Knowing a little, but not everything, about porcupines, he
searched every tree in the immediate neighbourhood, judging that the
porcupine, after such an encounter, would make all haste to his natural
retreat. But he never looked in the hole in the wall; and the yellow dog,
who had come to doubt the advisability of finding porcupines, refused
firmly to assist in the search. In a little while, when his anger began
to cool, he gave over the hunt in disgust, threw away the fencestake, bit
off a goodly chew from the fig of black tobacco which he produced from
his hip-pocket, and strode away up the grassy wood-road.
For perhaps half an hour the porcupine dozed in the hole among the
stones. Then he woke up, crawled out, and moved slowly along the top of
the wall.
There was a sound of children’s voices coming up the road; but the
porcupine, save for a grumble of impatience, paid no attention. Presently
the children came in sight,—a stocky little boy of nine or ten, and a
lank girl of perhaps thirteen, making their way homeward from school by
the short cut over the mountain. Both were barefooted and barelegged,
deeply freckled, and with long, tow-coloured locks. The boy wore a shirt
and short breeches of blue-gray homespun, the breeches held up
precariously by one suspender. On his head was a tattered and battered
straw; and in one hand he swung a little tin dinner-pail. The girl wore
the like blue-gray homespun for a petticoat, with a waist of bright red
calico, and carried a limp pink sunbonnet on her arm.
“Oh, see the porkypine!” cried the girl, as they came abreast of the
stone wall.
“By gosh! Let’s kill it!” exclaimed the stocky little boy, starting
forward eagerly, with a prompt efflorescence of primitive instincts. But
his sister clutched him by the arm and anxiously restrained him.
“My lands, Jimmy, you musn’t go near a porkypine like that!” she
protested, more learned than her brother in the hoary myths of the
settlements. “Don’t you know he can fling them quills of his’n at you,
an’ they’ll go right through an’ come out the other side?”
“By gosh!” gasped the boy, eyeing the unconcerned animal with
apprehension, and edging off to the furthermost ditch. Hand in hand,
their eyes wide with excitement, the two children passed beyond the stone
wall. Then, as he perceived that the porcupine had not seemed to notice
them, the boy’s hunting instinct revived. He stopped, set down the tin
dinner-pail, and picked up a stone.
“No, you don’t, Jimmy!” intervened the girl, with mixed emotions of
kindliness and caution, as she grabbed his wrist and dragged him along.
“Why, Sis?” protested the boy, hanging back, and looking over his
shoulder longingly. “Jest let me fling a stone at him!”
“No!” said his sister, with decision. “He ain’t a-hurtin’ us, an’ he’s
mindin’ his own business. An’ I reckon maybe he can fling quills as fur
as you can fling stones!”
Convinced by this latter argument, the boy gave up his design, and
suffered his wise sister to lead him away from so perilous a
neighbourhood. The two little figures vanished amid the green glooms
beyond the clearing, and the porcupine was left untroubled in his
sovereignty.