So Eurypelma about-faced like a flash, and Pepsis was foiled in her

strategy. She flew up and a yard away, then returned to the attack. She

flew about in swift circles over his head, preparatory to darting in

again. But Eurypelma was ready. As she swooped viciously down, he lunged

up and forward with a half-leap, half-forward fall, and came within an

ace of striking the trailing blue-black abdomen with his reaching fangs.

Indeed it seemed to Mary and me as if they really grazed the metallic

body. But evidently they had not pierced the smooth armor. Nor had

Pepsis in that breathless moment of close quarters been able to plant

her lance. She whirled, up high this time but immediately back, although

a little more wary evidently, for she checked her downward plunge three

or four inches from the dancing champion on the ground. And so for wild

minute after minute it went on; Eurypelma always up and tip-toeing on

those strong hind legs, with open, armed mouth always toward the point

of attack, and Pepsis ever darting down, up, over, across, and in and

out in dizzy dashes, but never quite closing.

Were Mary and I excited? Not a word could we utter; only now and then a

swift intake of breath; a stifled "O" or "Ah" or "See." And then of a

sudden came the end. Pepsis saw her chance. A lightning swoop carried

her right on to the hairy champion. The quivering lance shot home. The

poison coursed into the great soft body. But at the same moment the

terrible fangs struck fair on the blue armor and crashed through it. Two

awful wounds, and the wings of dull fire beat violently only to strike

up a little cloud of dust and whirl the mangled body around and around.

Fortunately Death was merciful, and the brave amazon made a quick end.

But what of Eurypelma, the killer? Was it well with him? The sting-made

wound itself was of little moment; it closed as soon as the lancet

withdrew. But not before the delicate poison sac at its base inside the

wasp-body had contracted and squirted down the slender hollow of the

sting a drop of liquid fire. And so it was not well with Eurypelma in

his insides. Victor he seemed to be, but if he could think, he must have

had grave doubts about the joys of victory.

For a curious drowsiness was coming over him. Perhaps, disquieting

thought, it was the approaching stupor of the poison's working. His

strong long legs became limp, they would not work regularly, they could

not hold his heavy hairy body up from the ground. He would get into his

hole and rest. But it was too late. And after a few uneven steps, victor

Eurypelma settled heavily down beside his amazon victim, inert and

forevermore beyond fighting. He was paralyzed.

And so Mary and I brought him home in our collecting box, together with

the torn body of Pepsis with her wings of slow fire dulled by the dust

of her last struggles. And though it is a whole month now since

Eurypelma received his stab from the poisoned javelin of Pepsis, he has

not recovered; nor will he ever. When you touch him, he draws up slowly

one leg after another, or moves a palpus feebly. But it is living death;

a hopeless paralytic is the king.

Dear reader, you are of course as bright as Mary, and so you have

noticed, as she did right away, the close parallel between what happened

to Eurypelma and what happened to the measuring-worms brought by

Ammophila to her nest burrow as described in the first story in this

book. And so, like Mary, you realize that the vendetta or life feud

between the tarantula family and the family of Pepsis, the tarantula

hawk, is based on reasons of domestic economy rather than on those of

sentiment, which determine vendettas in Corsica and feuds in Kentucky.

To be quite plain, Pepsis fights Eurypelma to get his huge, juicy body

for food for her young; and Eurypelma fights Pepsis to keep from

becoming paralyzed provender. If Pepsis had escaped unhurt in the combat

at which Mary and I "assisted," as the French say, as enthralled

spectators, we should have seen her drag by mighty effort the limp,

paralyzed, spider giant to her nest hole not far distant--a great hole

twelve inches deep and with a side chamber at the bottom. There she

would have thrust him down the throat of the burrow, and then crawled in

and laid an egg on the helpless beast, from which in time would have

hatched the carnivorous wasp grub. Pepsis has many close allies among

the wasps, all black or steely blue with smoky or dull-bronze wings, and

they all use spiders, stung and paralyzed, to store their nest holes

with.

"Do the little black and blue wasps hunt the little spiders and the

larger ones the big spiders?" asked Mary.

"Exactly," I respond, "and the giant wasp of them all, Pepsis, the queen

of the wasp amazons, hunts only the biggest spider of them all,

Eurypelma, the tarantula king, and we have seen her do it."

"Well," says Mary, "even if she wants him for her children to eat, it's

a real vendetta, isn't it?"

"Indeed it is," I answer, "it's more real, and fiercer, and more

relentless, and more persistent than any human vendetta that ever was.

For every Pepsis mother in the world is always hunting for Eurypelmas to

fight. And not _all_ Corsicans have a vendetta on hand, nor all

Kentuckians a feud."

391

Sewell Ford (1868-) is noted for his fine

stories about horses, especially those in

_Horses Nine_, from which the following story

of "Pasha" is taken. (By permission of the

publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.)

Pasha plays a most important part in a human

romance with war as a background, and the

combination is very effective. Mr. Ford's

_Torchy_ stories are also very popular with

young people.

PASHA, THE SON OF SELIM

SEWELL FORD

Long, far too long, has the story of Pasha, son of Selim, remained

untold.

The great Selim, you know, was brought from far across the seas, where

he had been sold for a heavy purse by a venerable sheik, who tore his

beard during the bargain and swore by Allah that without Selim there

would be for him no joy in life. Also he had wept quite convincingly on

Selim's neck--but he finished by taking the heavy purse. That was how

Selim, the great Selim, came to end his days in Fayette County,

Kentucky. Of his many sons, Pasha was one.

In almost idyllic manner were spent the years of Pasha's coltdom. They

were years of pasture roaming and blue grass cropping. When the time was

ripe, began the hunting lessons. Pasha came to know the feel of the

saddle and the voice of the hounds. He was taught the long, easy lope.

He learned how to gather himself for a sail through the air over a

hurdle or a water-jump. Then when he could take five bars clean, when he

could clear an eight-foot ditch, when his wind was so sound that he

could lead the chase from dawn until high noon, he was sent to the

stables of a Virginia tobacco-planter who had need of a new hunter and

who could afford Arab blood.

In the stalls at Gray Oaks stables were many good hunters, but none

better than Pasha. Cream-white he was, from the tip of his splendid,

yard-long tail to his pink-lipped muzzle. His coat was as silk plush,

his neck as supple as a swan's, and out of his big, bright eyes there

looked such intelligence that one half expected him to speak. His lines

were all long, graceful curves, and when he danced daintily on his

slender legs one could see the muscles flex under the delicate skin.

Miss Lou claimed Pasha for her very own at first sight. As no one at

Gray Oaks denied Miss Lou anything at all, to her he belonged from that

instant. Of Miss Lou, Pasha approved thoroughly. She knew that

bridle-reins were for gentle guidance, not for sawing or jerking, and

that a riding-crop was of no use whatever save to unlatch a gate or to

cut at an unruly hound. She knew how to rise on the stirrup when Pasha

lifted himself in his stride, and how to settle close to the pig-skin

when his hoofs hit the ground. In other words, she had a good seat,

which means as much to the horse as it does to the rider.

Besides all this, it was Miss Lou who insisted that Pasha should have

the best of grooming, and she never forgot to bring the dainties which

Pasha loved, an apple or a carrot or a sugarplum. It is something, too,

to have your nose patted by a soft gloved hand and to have such a person

as Miss Lou put her arm around your neck and whisper in your ear. From

no other than Miss Lou would Pasha permit such intimacy.

No paragon, however, was Pasha. He had a temper, and his whims were as

many as those of a school-girl. He was particular as to who put on his

bridle. He had notions concerning the manner in which a currycomb should

be used. A red ribbon or a bandanna handkerchief put him in a rage,

while green, the holy color of the Mohammedan, soothed his nerves. A

lively pair of heels he had, and he knew how to use his teeth. The black

stable-boys found that out, and so did the stern-faced man who was known

as "Mars" Clayton. This "Mars" Clayton had ridden Pasha once, had ridden

him as he rode his big, ugly, hard-bitted roan hunter, and Pasha had not

enjoyed the ride. Still, Miss Lou and Pasha often rode out with "Mars"

Clayton and the parrot-nosed roan. That is, they did until the coming of

Mr. Dave.

In Mr. Dave, Pasha found a new friend. From a far Northern State was Mr.

Dave. He had come in a ship to buy tobacco, but after he had bought his

cargo he still stayed at Gray Oaks, "to complete Pasha's education," so

he said.

Many ways had Mr. Dave which Pasha liked. He had a gentle manner of

talking to you, of smoothing your flanks and rubbing your ears, which

gained your confidence and made you sure that he understood. He was firm

and sure in giving command, yet so patient in teaching one tricks, that

it was a pleasure to learn.

So, almost before Pasha knew it, he could stand on his hind legs, could

step around in a circle in time to a tune which Mr. Dave whistled, and

could do other things which few horses ever learn to do. His chief

accomplishment, however, was to kneel on his forelegs in the attitude of

prayer. A long time it took Pasha to learn this, but Mr. Dave told him

over and over again, by word and sign, until at last the son of the

great Selim could strike a pose such as would have done credit to a

Mecca pilgrim.

"It's simply wonderful!" declared Miss Lou.

But it was nothing of the sort. Mr. Dave had been teaching tricks to

horses ever since he was a small boy, and never had he found such an apt

pupil as Pasha.

Many a glorious gallop did Pasha and Miss Lou have while Mr. Dave stayed

at Gray Oaks, Dave riding the big bay gelding that Miss Lou, with all

her daring, had never ventured to mount. It was not all galloping

though, for Pasha and the big bay often walked for miles through the

wood lanes, side by side and very close together, while Miss Lou and Mr.

Dave talked, talked, talked. How they could ever find so much to say to

each other Pasha wondered.

But at last Mr. Dave went away, and with his going ended good times for

Pasha, at least for many months. There followed strange doings. There

was much excitement among the stable-boys, much riding about, day and

night, by the men of Gray Oaks, and no hunting at all. One day the

stables were cleared of all horses save Pasha.

"Some time, if he is needed badly, you may have Pasha, but not now."

Miss Lou had said. And then she had hidden her face in his cream-white

mane and sobbed. Just what the trouble was Pasha did not understand, but

he was certain "Mars" Clayton was at the bottom of it.

No longer did Miss Lou ride about the country. Occasionally she galloped

up and down the highway, to the Pointdexters and back, just to let Pasha

stretch his legs. Queer sights Pasha saw on these trips. Sometimes he

would pass many men on horses riding close together in a pack, as the

hounds run when they have the scent. They wore strange clothing, did

these men, and they carried, instead of riding-crops, big shiny knives

that swung at their sides. The sight of them set Pasha's nerves

tingling. He would sniff curiously after them and then prick forward his

ears and dance nervously.

Of course Pasha knew that something unusual was going on, but what it

was he could not guess. There came a time, however, when he found out

all about it. Months had passed when, late one night, a hard-breathing,

foam-splotched, mud-covered horse was ridden into the yard and taken

into the almost deserted stable. Pasha heard the harsh voice of "Mars"

Clayton swearing at the stable-boy. Pasha heard his own name spoken, and

guessed that it was he who was wanted. Next came Miss Lou to the

stable.

"I'm very sorry," he heard "Mars" Clayton say, "but I've got to get out

of this. The Yanks are not more than five miles behind."

"But you'll take good care of him, won't you?" he heard Miss Lou ask

eagerly.

"Oh, yes; of course," replied "Mars" Clayton, carelessly.

A heavy saddle was thrown on Pasha's back, the girths pulled cruelly

tight, and in a moment "Mars" Clayton was on his back. They were barely

clear of Gray Oaks driveway before Pasha felt something he had never

known before. It was as if someone had jabbed a lot of little knives

into his ribs. Roused by pain and fright, Pasha reared in a wild attempt

to unseat this hateful rider. But "Mars" Clayton's knees seemed glued to

Pasha's shoulders. Next Pasha tried to shake him off by sudden leaps,

sidebolts, and stiff-legged jumps. These man[oe]uvres brought vicious

jerks on the wicked chain-bit that was cutting Pasha's tender mouth

sorrily and more jabs from the little knives. In this way did Pasha

fight until his sides ran with blood and his breast was plastered thick

with reddened foam.

In the meantime he had covered miles of road, and at last, along in the

cold gray of the morning, he was ridden into a field where were many

tents and horses. Pasha was unsaddled and picketed to a stake. This

latter indignity he was too much exhausted to resent. All he could do

was to stand, shivering with cold, trembling from nervous excitement,

and wait for what was to happen next.

It seemed ages before anything did happen. The beginning was a tripping

bugle-blast. This was answered by the voice of other bugles blown here

and there about the field. In a moment men began to tumble out of the

white tents. They came by twos and threes and dozens, until the field

was full of them. Fires were built on the ground, and soon Pasha could

scent coffee boiling and bacon frying. Black boys began moving about

among the horses with hay and oats and water. One of them rubbed Pasha

hurriedly with a wisp of straw. It was little like the currying and

rubbing with brush and comb and flannel to which he was accustomed and

which he needed just then, oh, how sadly. His strained muscles had

stiffened so much that every movement gave him pain. So matted was his

coat with sweat and foam and mud that it seemed as if half the pores of

his skin were choked.

He had cooled his parched throat with a long draught of somewhat muddy

water, but he had eaten only half of the armful of hay when again the

bugles sounded and "Mars" Clayton appeared. Tightening the girths, until

they almost cut into Pasha's tender skin, he jumped into the saddle and

rode off to where a lot of big black horses were being reined into line.

In front of this line Pasha was wheeled. He heard the bugles sound once

more, heard his rider shout something to the men behind, felt the wicked

little knives in his sides, and then, in spite of aching legs, was

forced into a sharp gallop. Although he knew it not, Pasha had joined

the Black Horse Cavalry.

The months that followed were to Pasha one long, ugly dream. Not that he

minded the hard riding by day and night. In time he became used to all

that. He could even endure the irregular feeding, the sleeping in the

open during all kinds of weather, and the lack of proper grooming. But

the vicious jerks on the torture-provoking cavalry bit, the flat sabre

blows on the flank which he not infrequently got from his ill-tempered

master, and, above all, the cruel digs of the spur-wheels--these things

he could not understand. Such treatment he was sure he did not merit.

"Mars" Clayton he came to hate more and more. Some day, Pasha told

himself, he would take vengeance with teeth and heels, even if he died

for it.

In the meantime he had learned the cavalry drill. He came to know the

meaning of each varying bugle-call, from reveille, when one began to paw

and stamp for breakfast, to mournful taps, when lights went out, and the

tents became dark and silent. Also, one learned to slow from a gallop

into a walk; when to wheel to the right or to the left, and when to

start on the jump as the first notes of a charge were sounded. It was

better to learn the bugle-calls, he found, than to wait for a jerk on

the bits or a prod from the spurs.

No more was he terror-stricken, as he had been on his first day in the

cavalry, at hearing behind him the thunder of many hoofs. Having once

become used to the noise, he was even thrilled by the swinging metre of

it. A kind of wild harmony was in it, something which made one forget

everything else. At such times Pasha longed to break into his long,

wind-splitting lope, but he learned that he must leave the others no

more than a pace or two behind, although he could have easily

outdistanced them all.

Also, Pasha learned to stand under fire. No more did he dance at the

crack of carbines or the zipp-zipp of bullets. He could even hold his

ground when shells went screaming over him, although this was hardest of

all to bear. One could not see them, but their sound, like that of great

birds in flight, was something to try one's nerves. Pasha strained his

ears to catch the note of each shell that came whizzing overhead, and,

as it passed, looked inquiringly over his shoulder as if to ask, "Now

what on earth was that?"

But all this experience could not prepare him for the happenings of that

never-to-be-forgotten day in June. There had been a period full of hard

riding and ending with a long halt. For several days hay and oats were

brought with some regularity. Pasha was even provided with an apology

for a stall. It was made by leaning two rails against a fence. Some hay

was thrown between the rails. This was a sorry substitute for the roomy

box-stall, filled with clean straw, which Pasha always had at Gray Oaks,

but it was as good as any provided for the Black Horse Cavalry.

And how many, many horses there were! As far as Pasha could see in

either direction the line extended. Never before had he seen so many

horses at one time. And men! The fields and woods were full of them;

some in brown butternut, some in homespun gray, and many in clothes

having no uniformity of color at all. "Mars" Clayton was dressed better

than most, for on his butternut coat were shiny shoulder-straps, and it

was closed with shiny buttons. Pasha took little pride in this. He knew

his master for a cruel and heartless rider, and for nothing more.

One day there was a great parade, when Pasha was carefully groomed for

the first time in months. There were bands playing and flags flying.

Pasha, forgetful of his ill-treatment and prancing proudly at the head

of a squadron of coal-black horses, passed in review before a big,

bearded man wearing a slouch hat fantastically decorated with long

plumes and sitting a great black horse in the midst of a little knot of

officers.

Early the next morning Pasha was awakened by the distant growl of heavy

guns. By daylight he was on the move, thousands of other horses with

him. Nearer and nearer they rode to the place where the guns were

growling. Sometimes they were on roads, sometimes they crossed fields,

and again they plunged into the woods where the low branches struck

one's eyes and scratched one's flanks. At last they broke clear of the

trees to come suddenly upon such a scene as Pasha had never before

witnessed.

Far across the open field he could see troop on troop of horses coming

toward him. They seemed to be pouring over the crest of a low hill, as

if driven onward by some unseen force behind. Instantly Pasha heard,

rising from the throats of thousands of riders, on either side and

behind him, that fierce, wild yell which he had come to know meant the

approach of trouble. High and shrill and menacing it rang as it was

taken up and repeated by those in the rear. Next the bugles began to

sound, and in quick obedience the horses formed in line just on the edge

of the woods, a line which stretched on either flank until one could

hardly see where it ended.

From the distant line came no answering cry, but Pasha could hear the

bugles blowing and he could see the fronts massing. Then came the order

to charge at a gallop. This set Pasha to tugging eagerly at the bit, but

for what reason he did not know. He knew only that he was part of a

great and solid line of men and horses sweeping furiously across a field

toward that other line which he had seen pouring over the hill crest.

He could scarcely see at all now. The thousands of hoofs had raised a

cloud of dust that not only enveloped the onrushing line, but rolled

before it. Nor could Pasha hear anything save the thunderous thud of

many feet. Even the shrieking of the shells was drowned. But for the

restraining bit Pasha would have leaped forward and cleared the line.

Never had he been so stirred. The inherited memory of countless desert

raids, made by his Arab ancestors, was doing its work. For what seemed a

long time this continued, and then, in the midst of the blind and

frenzied race, there loomed out of the thick air, as if it had appeared

by magic, the opposing line.

Pasha caught a glimpse of something which seemed like a heaving wall of

tossing heads and of foam-whitened necks and shoulders. Here and there

gleamed red, distended nostrils and straining eyes. Bending above was

another wall, a wall of dusty blue coats, of grim faces, and of

dust-powdered hats. Bristling above all was a threatening crest of

waving blades.

What would happen when the lines met? Almost before the query was

thought there came the answer. With an earth-jarring crash they came

together. The lines wavered back from the shock of impact and then the

whole struggle appeared to Pasha to centre about him. Of course this was

not so. But it was a fact that the most conspicuous figure in either

line had been that of the cream-white charger in the very centre of the

Black Horse regiment.

For one confused moment Pasha heard about his ears the whistle and clash

of sabres, the spiteful crackle of small arms, the snorting of horses,

and the cries of men. For an instant he was wedged tightly in the

frenzied mass, and then, by one desperate leap, such as he had learned

on the hunting field, he shook himself clear.

Not until some minutes later did Pasha notice that the stirrups were

dangling empty and that the bridle-rein hung loose on his neck. Then he

knew that at last he was free from "Mars" Clayton. At the same time he

felt himself seized by an overpowering dread. While conscious of a

guiding hand on the reins Pasha had abandoned himself to the fierce joy

of the charge. But now, finding himself riderless in the midst of a

horrid din, he knew not what to do, nor which way to turn. His only

impulse was to escape. But where? Lifting high his fine head and

snorting with terror he rushed about, first this way and then that,

frantically seeking a way out of this fog-filled field of dreadful

pandemonium. Now he swerved in his course to avoid a charging squad, now

he was turned aside by prone objects at sight of which he snorted

fearfully. Although the blades still rang and the carbines still spoke,

there were no more to be seen either lines or order. Here and there in

the dust-clouds scurried horses, some with riders and some without, by

twos, by fours, or in squads of twenty or more. The sound of shooting

and slashing and shouting filled the air.

To Pasha it seemed an eternity that he had been tearing about the field

when he shied at the figure of a man sitting on the ground. Pasha was

about to wheel and dash away when the man called to him. Surely the

tones were familiar. With wide-open, sniffing nostrils and trembling

knees, Pasha, stopped and looked hard at the man on the ground.

"Pasha! Pasha!" the man called weakly. The voice sounded like that of

Mr. Dave.

"Come, boy! Come, boy!" said the man in a coaxing tone, which recalled

to Pasha the lessons he had learned at Gray Oaks years before. Still

Pasha sniffed and hesitated.

"Come here, Pasha, old fellow. For God's sake, come here!"

There was no resisting this appeal. Step by step Pasha went nearer. He

continued to tremble, for this man on the ground, although his voice was

that of Mr. Dave, looked much different from the one who had taught him

tricks. Besides, there was about him the scent of fresh blood. Pasha

could see the stain of it on his blue trousers.

"Come, boy. Come, Pasha," insisted the man on the ground, holding out an

encouraging hand. Slowly Pasha obeyed until he could sniff the man's

fingers. Another step and the man was smoothing his nose, still speaking

gently and coaxingly in a faint voice. In the end Pasha was assured that

the man was really the Mr. Dave of old, and glad enough Pasha was to

know it.

"Now, Pasha," said Mr. Dave, "we'll see if you've forgotten your tricks,

and may the good Lord grant you haven't. Down, sir! Kneel, Pasha,

kneel!"

It had been a long time since Pasha had been asked to do this, a very

long time; but here was Mr. Dave asking him, in just the same tone as

of old, and in just the same way. So Pasha, forgetting his terror under

the soothing spell of Mr. Dave's voice, forgetting the fearful sights

and sounds about him, remembering only that here was the Mr. Dave whom

he loved, asking him to do his old trick--well, Pasha knelt.

"Easy now, boy; steady!" Pasha heard him say. Mr. Dave was dragging

himself along the ground to Pasha's side. "Steady now, Pasha; steady,

boy!" He felt Mr. Dave's hand on the pommel. "So-o-o, boy; so-o-o-o!"

Slowly, oh, so slowly, he felt Mr. Dave crawling into the saddle, and

although Pasha's knees ached from the unfamiliar strain, he stirred not

a muscle until he got the command, "Up, Pasha, up!"

Then, with a trusted hand on the bridle-rein, Pasha joyfully bounded

away through the fog, until the battle-field was left behind. Of the

long ride that ensued only Pasha knows, for Mr. Dave kept his seat in

the saddle more by force of muscular habit than anything else. A man who

has learned to sleep on horseback does not easily fall off, even though

he has not the full command of his senses. Only for the first hour or so

did Pasha's rider do much toward guiding their course. In

hunting-horses, however, the sense of direction is strong. Pasha had

it--especially for one point of the compass. This point was south. So,

unknowing of the possible peril into which he might be taking his rider,

south he went. How Pasha ever did it, as I have said, only Pasha knows;

but in the end he struck the Richmond Pike.

It was a pleading whinny which aroused Miss Lou at early daybreak. Under

her window she saw Pasha, and on his back a limp figure in a blue,

dust-covered, dark-stained uniform. And that was how Pasha's cavalry

career came to an end. That one fierce charge was his last.

* * * * *

In the Washington home of a certain Maine Congressman you may see, hung

in a place of honor and lavishly framed, the picture of a horse. It is

very creditably done in oils, is this picture. It is of a cream-white

horse, with an arched neck, clean, slim legs, and a splendid flowing

tail.

Should you have any favors of state to ask of this Maine Congressman it

would be the wise thing, before stating your request, to say something

nice about the horse in the picture. Then the Congressman will probably

say, looking fondly at the picture: "I must tell Lou--er--my wife, you

know, what you have said. Yes, that was Pasha. He saved my neck at

Brandy Station. He was one-half Arab, Pasha was, and the other half,

sir, was human."

392

Louisa de la Ramee (1839-1908), an English

novelist, is generally known by her pseudonym

"Ouida," which was the result of a child's

attempt to pronounce her first name. Her novels

had strong popular qualities: intensely

dramatic, with sentiment rather high-pitched

and always verging on the sensational. The

intense human interest is constantly present in

her work and accounts for her great vogue. Two

of her stories, "The Dog of Flanders" and

"Moufflou," have gained a permanent place in

juvenile literature. They are popular among

sixth, seventh, and eighth grade pupils.

MOUFFLOU

"OUIDA"

Moufflou's masters were some boys and girls. They were very poor, but

they were very merry. They lived in an old, dark, tumble-down place, and

their father had been dead five years; their mother's care was all they

knew; and Tasso was the eldest of them all, a lad of nearly twenty, and

he was so kind, so good, so laborious, so cheerful, so gentle, that the

children all younger than he adored him. Tasso was a gardener. Tasso,

however, though the eldest and mainly the bread-winner, was not so much

Moufflou's master as was little Romolo, who was only ten, and a cripple.

Romolo, called generally Lolo, had taught Moufflou all he knew; and that

all was a very great deal, for nothing cleverer than was Moufflou had

ever walked upon four legs.

Why Moufflou?

Well, when the poodle had been given to them by a soldier who was going

back to his home in Piedmont, he had been a white woolly creature a year

old, and the children's mother, who was a Corsican by birth, had said

that he was just like a _moufflon_, as they call sheep in Corsica. White

and woolly this dog remained, and he became the handsomest and biggest

poodle in all the city, and the corruption of Moufflou from Moufflon

remained the name by which he was known; it was silly, perhaps, but it

suited him and the children, and Moufflou he was.

They lived in an old quarter of Florence, in that picturesque zigzag

which goes round the grand church of Or San Michele, and which is almost

more Venetian than Tuscan in its mingling of color, charm, stateliness,

popular confusion, and architectural majesty. The tall old houses are

weather-beaten into the most delicious hues; the pavement is

enchantingly encumbered with peddlers and stalls and all kinds of trades

going on in the open air, in that bright, merry, beautiful Italian

custom which, alas, alas! is being driven away by new-fangled laws which

deem it better for the people to be stuffed up in close, stewing rooms

without air, and would fain do away with all the good-tempered politics

and the sensible philosophies and the wholesome chatter which the

open-street trades and street gossipry encourage, for it is good for the

populace to _sfogare_ and in no other way can it do so one-half so

innocently. Drive it back into musty shops, and it is driven at once to

mutter sedition. . . . But you want to hear about Moufflou.

Well, Moufflou lived here in that high house with the sign of the lamb

in wrought iron, which shows it was once a warehouse of the old guild of

the Arte della Lana. They are all old houses here, drawn round about

that grand church which I called once, and will call again, like a

mighty casket of oxidized silver. A mighty casket indeed, holding the

Holy Spirit within it; and with the vermilion and the blue and the

orange glowing in its niches and its lunettes like enamels, and its

statues of the apostles strong and noble, like the times in which they

were created,--St. Peter with his keys, and St. Mark with his open book,

and St. George leaning on his sword, and others also, solemn and austere

as they, austere though benign, for do they not guard the White

Tabernacle of Oreagna within?

The church stands firm as a rock, square as a fortress of stone, and the

winds and the waters of the skies may beat about it as they will, they

have no power to disturb its sublime repose. Sometimes I think of all

the noble things in all our Italy Or San Michele is the noblest,

standing there in its stern magnificence, amidst people's hurrying feet

and noisy laughter, a memory of God.

The little masters of Moufflou lived right in its shadow, where the

bridge of stone spans the space between the houses and the church high

in mid-air; and little Lolo loved the church with a great love. He loved

it in the morning-time, when the sunbeams turned it into dusky gold and

jasper; he loved it in the evening-time, when the lights of its altars

glimmered in the dark, and the scent of its incense came out into the

street; he loved it in the great feasts, when the huge clusters of

lilies were borne inside it; he loved it in the solemn nights of winter;

the flickering gleam of the dull lamps shone on the robes of an apostle,

or the sculpture of a shield, or the glow of a casement-moulding in

majolica. He loved it always, and, without knowing why, he called it _la

mia chiesa_.

Lolo, being lame and of delicate health, was not enabled to go to school

or to work, though he wove the straw covering of wine-flasks and plaited

the cane matting with busy fingers. But for the most part he did as he

liked, and spent most of his time sitting on the parapet of Or San

Michele, watching the venders of earthenware at their trucks, or

trotting with his crutch (and he could trot a good many miles when he

chose) out with Moufflou down a bit of the Stocking-makers' Street,

along under the arcades of the Uffizi, and so over the Jewellers'

Bridge, and out of byways that he knew into the fields on the hill-side

upon the other bank of Arno. Moufflou and he would spend half the

day--all the day--out there in daffodil-time; and Lolo would come home

with great bundles and sheaves of golden flowers, and he and Moufflou

were happy.

His mother never liked to say a harsh word to Lolo, for he was lame

through her fault; she had let him fall in his babyhood, and the

mischief had been done to his hip never again to be undone. So she never

raised her voice to him, though she did often to the others,--to

curly-pated Cecco, and pretty black-eyed Dina, and saucy Bice, and

sturdy Beppo, and even to the good, manly, hard-working Tasso. Tasso was

the mainstay of the whole, though he was but a gardener's lad, working

in the green Cascine at small wages. But all he earned he brought home

to his mother; and he alone kept in order the lazy, high-tempered

Sandro, and he alone kept in check Bice's love of finery, and he alone

could with shrewdness and care make both ends meet and put _minestra_

always in the pot and bread always in the cupboard.

When his mother thought, as she thought indeed almost ceaselessly, that

with a few months he would be of the age to draw his number, and might

draw a high one and be taken from her for three years, the poor soul

believed her very heart would burst and break; and many a day at

twilight she would start out unperceived and creep into the great church

and pour her soul forth in supplication before the White Tabernacle.

Yet, pray as she would, no miracle could happen to make Tasso free of

military service: if he drew a fatal number, go he must, even though he

take all the lives of them to their ruin with him.

One morning Lolo sat as usual on the parapet of the church, Moufflou

beside him. It was a brilliant morning in September. The men at the

hand-barrows and at the stall were selling the crockery, the silk

handkerchiefs, and the straw hats which form the staple of the commerce

that goes on round about Or San Michele,--very blithe, good-natured, gay

commerce, for the most part, not got through, however, of course,

without bawling and screaming, and shouting and gesticulating, as if the

sale of a penny pipkin or a twopenny pie-pan were the occasion for the

exchange of many thousands of pounds sterling and cause for the whole

world's commotion. It was about eleven o'clock; the poor petitioners

were going in for alms to the house of the fraternity of San Giovanni

Battista; the barber at the corner was shaving a big man with a cloth

tucked about his chin, and his chair set well out on the pavement; the

sellers of the pipkins and pie-pans were screaming till they were

hoarse, "_Un soldo l'uno, due soldi tre!_" big bronze bells were booming

till they seemed to clang right up to the deep-blue sky; some brethren

of the Misericordia went by bearing a black bier; a large sheaf of

glowing flowers--dahlias, zinnias, asters, and daturas--was borne

through the huge arched door of the church near St. Mark and his open

book. Lolo looked on at it all, and so did Moufflou, and a stranger

looked at them as he left the church.

"You have a handsome poodle there, my little man," he said to Lolo, in a

foreigner's too distinct and careful Italian.

"Moufflou is beautiful," said Lolo, with pride. "You should see him when

he is just washed; but we can only wash him on Sundays, because then

Tasso is at home."

"How old is your dog?"

"Three years old."

"Does he do any tricks?"

"Does he!" said Lolo, with a very derisive laugh: "why, Moufflou can do

anything! He can walk on two legs ever so long; make ready, present, and

fire; die; waltz; beg, of course; shut a door; make a wheelbarrow of

himself; there is nothing he will not do. Would you like to see him do

something?"

"Very much," said the foreigner.

To Moufflou and to Lolo the street was the same thing as home; this

cheery _piazzetta_ by the church, so utterly empty sometimes, and

sometimes so noisy and crowded, was but the wider threshold of their

home to both the poodle and the child.

So there, under the lofty and stately walls of the old church, Lolo put

Moufflou through his exercises. They were second nature to Moufflou, as

to most poodles. He had inherited his address at them from clever

parents, and, as he had never been frightened or coerced, all his

lessons and acquirements were but play to him. He acquitted himself

admirably, and the crockery-venders came and looked on, and a sacristan

came out of the church and smiled, and the barber left his customer's

chin all in a lather while he laughed, for the good folk of the quarter

were all proud of Moufflou and never tired of him, and the pleasant,

easy-going, good-humored disposition of the Tuscan populace is so far

removed from the stupid buckram and whale-bone in which the new-fangled

democracy wants to imprison it.

The stranger also was much diverted by Moufflou's talents, and said,

half aloud, "How this clever dog would amuse poor Victor! Would you

bring your poodle to please a sick child I have at home!" he said, quite

aloud, to Lolo, who smiled and answered that he would. Where was the

sick child?

"At the Gran Bretagna; not far off," said the gentleman. "Come this

afternoon, and ask for me by this name."

He dropped his card and a couple of francs into Lolo's hand, and went

his way. Lolo, with Moufflou scampering after him, dashed into his own

house, and stumped up the stairs, his crutch making a terrible noise on

the stone.

"Mother, mother! see what I have got because Moufflou did his tricks,"

he shouted. "And now you can buy those shoes you want so much, and the

coffee that you miss so of a morning, and the new linen for Tasso, and

the shirts for Sandro."

For to the mind of Lolo two francs was as two millions,--source

unfathomable of riches inexhaustible!

With the afternoon he and Moufflou trotted down the arcades of the

Uffizi and down the Lung' Arno to the hotel of the stranger, and,

showing the stranger's card, which Lolo could not read, they were shown

at once into a great chamber, all gilding and fresco and velvet

furniture.

But Lolo, being a little Florentine, was never troubled by externals, or

daunted by mere sofas and chairs: he stood and looked around him with

perfect composure; and Moufflou, whose attitude, when he was not

romping, was always one of magisterial gravity, sat on his haunches and

did the same.

Soon the foreigner he had seen in the forenoon entered and spoke to him,

and led him into another chamber, where stretched on a couch was a

little wan-faced boy about seven years old; a pretty boy, but so pallid,

so wasted, so helpless. This poor little boy was heir to a great name

and a great fortune, but all the science in the world could not make him

strong enough to run about among the daisies, or able to draw a single

breath without pain. A feeble smile lit up his face as he saw Moufflou

and Lolo; then a shadow chased it away.

"Little boy is lame like me," he said, in a tongue Lolo did not

understand.

"Yes, but he is a strong little boy, and can move about, as perhaps the

suns of his country will make you do," said the gentleman, who was the

poor little boy's father. "He has brought you his poodle to amuse you.

What a handsome dog! is it not?"

"Oh, _buffins_!" said the poor little fellow, stretching out his wasted

hands to Moufflou, who submitted his leonine crest to the caress.

Then Lolo went through the performance, and Moufflou acquitted himself

ably as ever; and the little invalid laughed and shouted with his tiny

thin voice, and enjoyed it all immensely, and rained cakes and biscuits

on both the poodle and its master. Lolo crumped the pastries with

willing white teeth, and Moufflou did no less. Then they got up to go,

and the sick child on the couch burst into fretful lamentations and

outcries.

"I want the dog! I will have the dog!" was all he kept repeating.

But Lolo did not know what he said, and was only sorry to see him so

unhappy.

"You shall have the dog to-morrow," said the gentleman, to pacify his

little son; and he hurried Lolo and Moufflou out of the room, and

consigned them to a servant, having given Lolo five francs this time.

"Why, Moufflou," said Lolo, with a chuckle of delight, "if we could find

a foreigner every day, we could eat meat at supper, Moufflou, and go to

the theatre every evening?"

And he and his crutch clattered home with great eagerness and

excitement, and Moufflou trotted on his four frilled feet, the blue bow

with which Bice had tied up his curls on the top of his head, fluttering

in the wind. But, alas! even his five francs could bring no comfort at

home. He found his whole family wailing and mourning in utterly

inconsolable distress.

Tasso had drawn his number that morning, and the number was seven, and

he must go and be a conscript for three years.

The poor young man stood in the midst of his weeping brothers and

sisters, with his mother leaning against his shoulder, and down his own

brown cheeks the tears were falling. He must go, and lose his place in

the public gardens, and leave his people to starve as they might, and be

put in a tomfool's jacket, and drafted off among cursing and swearing

and strange faces, friendless, homeless, miserable! And the

mother,--what would become of the mother?

Tasso was the best of lads and the mildest. He was quite happy sweeping

up the leaves in the long alleys of the Cascine, or mowing the green

lawns under the ilex avenues, and coming home at supper-time, among the

merry little people and the good woman that he loved. He was quite

contented; he wanted nothing, only to be let alone; and they would not

let him alone. They would haul him away to put a heavy musket in his

hand and a heavy knapsack on his back, and drill him, and curse him, and

make him into a human target, a live popinjay.

No one had any heed for Lolo and his five francs, and Moufflou,

understanding that some great sorrow had fallen on his friends, sat down

and lifted up his voice and howled.

Tasso must go away!--that was all they understood. For three long years

they must go without the sight of his face, the aid of his strength, the

pleasure of his smile: Tasso must go! When Lolo understood the calamity

that had befallen them, he gathered Moufflou up against his breast, and

sat down too on the floor beside him and cried as if he would never stop

crying.

There was no help for it; it was one of those misfortunes which are, as

we say in Italian, like a tile tumbled on the head. The tile drops from

a height, and the poor head bows under the unseen blow. That is all.

"What is the use of that?" said the mother, passionately, when Lolo

showed her his five francs. "It will not buy Tasso's discharge."

Lolo felt that his mother was cruel and unjust, and crept to bed with

Moufflou. Moufflou always slept on Lolo's feet.

The next morning Lolo got up before sunrise, and he and Moufflou

accompanied Tasso to his work in the Cascine.

Lolo loved his brother, and clung to every moment whilst they could

still be together.

"Can nothing keep you, Tasso?" he said, despairingly, as they went down

the leafy aisles, whilst the Arno water was growing golden as the sun

rose.

Tasso sighed.

"Nothing, dear. Unless Gesu would send me a thousand francs to buy a

substitute."

And he knew he might as well have said, "If one could coin gold ducats

out of the sunbeams on Arno water."

Lolo was very sorrowful as he lay on the grass in the meadow where Tasso

was at work, and the poodle lay stretched beside him.

When Lolo went home to dinner (Tasso took his wrapped in a handkerchief)

he found his mother very agitated and excited. She was laughing one

moment, crying the next. She was passionate and peevish, tender and

jocose by turns; there was something forced and feverish about her which

the children felt but did not comprehend. She was a woman of not very

much intelligence, and she had a secret, and she carried it ill, and

knew not what to do with it; but they could not tell that. They only

felt a vague sense of disturbance and timidity at her unwonted manner.

The meal over (it was only bean-soup, and that is soon eaten), the

mother said sharply to Lolo, "Your aunt Anita wants you this afternoon.

She has to go out, and you are needed to stay with the children: be off

with you."

Lolo was an obedient child; he took his hat and jumped up as quickly as

his halting hip would let him. He called Moufflou, who was asleep.

"Leave the dog," said his mother, sharply. "'Nita will not have him

messing and carrying mud about her nice clean rooms. She told me so.

Leave him. I say."

"Leave Moufflou!" echoed Lolo, for never in all Moufflou's life had Lolo

parted from him. Leave Moufflou! He stared open-eyed and open-mouthed at

his mother. What could have come to her?

"Leave him, I say," she repeated, more sharply than ever. "Must I speak

twice to my own children? Be off with you, and leave the dog, I say."

And she clutched Moufflou by his long silky mane and dragged him

backwards, whilst with the other hand she thrust out of the door Lolo

and Bice.

Lolo began to hammer with his crutch at the door thus closed on him; but

Bice coaxed and entreated him.

"Poor mother has been so worried about Tasso," she pleaded. "And what

harm can come to Moufflou? And I do think he was tired, Lolo; the

Cascine is a long way; and it is quite true that Aunt 'Nita never liked

him."

So by one means and another she coaxed her brother away; and they went

almost in silence to where their Aunt Anita dwelt, which was across the

river, near the dark-red bell-shaped dome of Santa Spirito.

It was true that her aunt had wanted them to mind her room and her

babies whilst she was away carrying home some lace to a villa outside

the Roman gate, for she was a lace-washer and clear-starcher by trade.

There they had to stay in the little dark room with the two babies, with

nothing to amuse the time except the clang of the bells of the church of

the Holy Spirit, and the voices of the lemonade-sellers shouting in the

street below. Aunt Anita did not get back till it was more than dusk,

and the two children trotted homeward hand in hand, Lolo's leg dragging

itself painfully along, for without Moufflou's white figure dancing on

before him he felt very tired indeed. It was pitch dark when they got to

Or San Michele, and the lamps burned dully.

Lolo stumped up the stairs wearily, with a vague, dull fear at his small

heart.

"Moufflou, Moufflou!" he called. Where was Moufflou? Always at the first

sound of his crutch the poodle came flying towards him. "Moufflou,

Moufflou!" he called all the way up the long, dark twisting stone stair.

He pushed open the door, and he called again, "Moufflou, Moufflou!"

But no dog answered to his call.

"Mother, where is Moufflou?" he asked, staring with blinking, dazzled

eyes into the oil-lit room where his mother sat knitting. Tasso was not

then home from work. His mother went on with her knitting; there was an

uneasy look on her face.

"Mother, what have you done with Moufflou, _my_ Moufflou?" said Lolo,

with a look that was almost stern on his ten-year-old face.

Then his mother, without looking up and moving her knitting-needles very

rapidly, said,--

"Moufflou is sold!"

And little Dina, who was a quick, pert child, cried, with a shrill

voice,--

"Mother has sold him for a thousand francs to the foreign gentleman."

"Sold him!"

Lolo grew white and grew cold as ice; he stammered, threw up his hands

over his head, gasped a little for breath, then fell down in a dead

swoon, his poor useless limb doubled under him.

When Tasso came home that sad night and found his little brother

shivering, moaning, and half delirious, and when he heard what had been

done, he was sorely grieved.

"Oh, mother, how could you do it?" he cried. "Poor, poor Moufflou! and

Lolo loves him so!"

"I have got the money," said his mother, feverishly, "and you will not

need to go for a soldier: we can buy your substitute. What is a poodle,

that you mourn about it? We can get another poodle for Lolo."

"Another will not be Moufflou," said Tasso, and yet was seized with such

a frantic happiness himself at the knowledge that he would not need go

to the army, that he too felt as if he were drunk on new wine, and had

not the heart to rebuke his mother.

"A thousand francs!" he muttered; "a thousand francs! _Dio mio!_ Who

could ever have fancied anybody would have given such a price for a

common white poodle? One would think the gentleman had bought the church

and the tabernacle!"

"Fools and their money are soon parted," said his mother, with cross

contempt.

It was true: she had sold Moufflou.

The English gentleman had called on her while Lolo and the dog had been

in the Cascine, and had said that he was desirous of buying the poodle,

which had so diverted his sick child that the little invalid would not

be comforted unless he possessed it. Now, at any other time the good

woman would have sturdily refused any idea of selling Moufflou; but that

morning the thousand francs which would buy Tasso's substitute were

forever in her mind and before her eyes. When she heard the foreigner

her heart gave a great leap, and her head swam giddily, and she thought,

in a spasm of longing--if she could get those thousand francs! But

though she was so dizzy and so upset she retained her grip on her native

Florentine shrewdness. She said nothing of her need of the money; not a

syllable of her sore distress. On the contrary, she was coy and wary,

affected great reluctance to part with her pet, invented a great offer

made for him by a director of a circus, and finally let fall a hint that

less than a thousand francs she could never take for poor Moufflou.

The gentleman assented with so much willingness to the price that she

instantly regretted not having asked double. He told her that if she

would take the poodle that afternoon to his hotel the money should be

paid to her; so she despatched her children after their noonday meal in

various directions, and herself took Moufflou to his doom. She could not

believe her senses when ten hundred-franc notes were put into her hand.

She scrawled her signature, Rosina Calabucci, to a formal receipt, and

went away, leaving Moufflou in his new owner's rooms, and hearing his

howls and moans pursue her all the way down the staircase and out into

the air.

She was not easy at what she had done.

"It seemed," she said to herself, "like selling a Christian."

But then to keep her eldest son at home,--what a joy that was! On the

whole, she cried so and laughed so as she went down the Lung' Arno that

once or twice people looked at her, thinking her out of her senses, and

a guard spoke to her angrily.

Meanwhile, Lolo was sick and delirious with grief. Twenty times he got

out of his bed and screamed to be allowed to go with Moufflou, and

twenty times his mother and his brothers put him back again and held him

down and tried in vain to quiet him.

The child was beside himself with misery. "Moufflou! Moufflou!" he

sobbed at every moment; and by night he was in a raging fever, and when

his mother, frightened, ran in and called in the doctor of the quarter,

that worthy shook his head and said something as to a shock of the

nervous system, and muttered a long word,--"meningitis."

Lolo took a hatred to the sight of Tasso, and thrust him away, and his

mother too.

"It is for you Moufflou is sold," he said, with his little teeth and

hands tight clinched.

After a day or two Tasso felt as if he could not bear his life, and went

down to the hotel to see if the foreign gentleman would allow him to

have Moufflou back for half an hour to quiet his little brother by a

sight of him. But at the hotel he was told that the _Milord Inglese_ who

had bought the dog of Rosina Calabucci had gone that same night of the

purchase to Rome, to Naples, to Palermo, _chi sa_?

"And Moufflou with him?" asked Tasso.

"The _barbone_ he had bought went with him," said the porter of the

hotel. "Such a beast! Howling, shrieking, raging all the day, and all

the paint scratched off the _salon_ door."

Poor Moufflou! Tasso's heart was heavy as he heard of that sad helpless

misery of their bartered favorite and friend.

"What matter?" said his mother, fiercely, when he told her. "A dog is a

dog. They will feed him better than we could. In a week he will have

forgotten--_che!_"

But Tasso feared that Moufflou would not forget. Lolo certainly would

not. The doctor came to the bedside twice a day, and ice and water were

kept on the aching hot little head that had got the malady with the long

name, and for the chief part of the time Lolo lay quiet, dull, and

stupid, breathing heavily, and then at intervals cried and sobbed and

shrieked hysterically for Moufflou.

"Can you not get what he calls for to quiet him with a sight of it?"

said the doctor. But that was not possible, and poor Rosina covered her

head with her apron and felt a guilty creature.

"Still, you will not go to the army," she said to Tasso. Clinging to

that immense joy for her consolation. "Only think! we can pay Guido

Squarcione to go for you. He always said he would go if anybody would

pay him. Oh, my Tasso, surely to keep you is worth a dog's life!"

"And Lolo's?" said Tasso, gloomily. "Nay, mother, it works ill to meddle

too much with fate. I drew my number; I was bound to go. Heaven would

have made it up to you somehow."

"Heaven sent me the foreigner; the Madonna's own self sent him to ease a

mother's pain," said Rosina, rapidly and angrily. "There are the

thousand francs safe to hand in the _cassone_, and what, pray, is it we

miss? Only a dog like a sheep, that brought gallons of mud in with him

every time it rained, and ate as much as any one of you."

"But Lolo?" said Tasso, under his breath.

His mother was so irritated and so tormented by her own conscience that

she upset all the cabbage broth into the burning charcoal.

"Lolo was always a little fool, thinking of nothing but the church and

the dog and nasty field-flowers," she said, angrily. "I humored him ever

too much because of the hurt to his hip, and so--and so--"

Then the poor soul made matters worse by dropping her tears into the

saucepan, and fanning the charcoal so furiously that the flame caught

her fan of cane-leaves, and would have burned her arm had not Tasso been

there.

"You are my prop and safety always. Who would not have done what I did?

Not Santa Felicita herself," she said, with a great sob.

But all this did not cure poor Lolo.

The days and the weeks of the golden autumn weather passed away, and he

was always in danger, and the small close room where he slept with

Sandro and Beppo and Tasso was not one to cure such an illness as had

now beset him. Tasso went to his work with a sick heart in the Cascine,

where the colchicum was all lilac among the meadow grass, and the ashes

and elms were taking their first flush of the coming autumnal change. He

did not think Lolo would ever get well, and the good lad felt as if he

had been the murderer of his little brother.

True, he had had no hand or voice in the sale of Moufflou, but Moufflou

had been sold for his sake. It made him feel half guilty, very unhappy,

quite unworthy of all the sacrifice that had been made for him. "Nobody

should meddle with fate," thought Tasso, who knew his grandfather had

died in San Bonifazio because he had driven himself mad over the

dream-book trying to get lucky numbers for the lottery and become a rich

man at a stroke.

It was rapture, indeed, to know that he was free of the army for a time

at least, that he might go on undisturbed at his healthful labor, and

get a rise in wages as time went on, and dwell in peace with his family,

and perhaps--perhaps in time earn enough to marry pretty flaxen-haired

Biondina, the daughter of the barber in the piazzetta. It was rapture

indeed; but then poor Moufflou!--and poor, poor Lolo! Tasso felt as if

he had bought his own exemption by seeing his little brother and the

good dog torn in pieces and buried alive for his service.

And where was poor Moufflou?

Gone far away somewhere south in the hurrying, screeching, vomiting,

braying train it made Tasso giddy only to look at as it rushed by the

green meadows beyond the Cascine on its way to the sea.

"If he could see the dog he cries so for, it might save him," said the

doctor, who stood with grave face watching Lolo.

But that was beyond any one's power. No one could tell where Moufflou

was. He might be carried away to England, to France, to Russia, to

America,--who could say? They did not know where his purchaser had gone.

Moufflou even might be dead.

The poor mother, when the doctor said that, went and looked at the ten

hundred-franc notes that were once like angels' faces to her, and said

to them,--

"Oh, you children of Satan, why did you tempt me? I sold the poor,

innocent, trustful beast to get you, and now my child is dying!"

Her eldest son would stay at home, indeed; but if this little lame one

died! Rosina Calabucci would have given up the notes and consented never

to own five francs in her life if only she could have gone back over the

time and kept Moufflou, and seen his little master running out with him

into the sunshine.

More than a month went by, and Lolo lay in the same state, his yellow

hair shorn, his eyes dilated and yet stupid, life kept in him by a

spoonful of milk, a lump of ice, a drink of lemon-water; always

muttering, when he spoke at all, "Moufflou, Moufflou, _dov' e_

Moufflou?" and lying for days together in somnolence and

unconsciousness, with the fire eating at his brain and the weight lying

on it like a stone.

The neighbors were kind, and brought fruit and the like, and sat up with

him, and chattered so all at once in one continuous brawl that they were

enough in themselves to kill him, for such is ever the Italian fashion

of sympathy in all illness.

But Lolo did not get well, did not even seem to see the light at all, or

to distinguish any sounds around him; and the doctor in plain words told

Rosina Calabucci that her little boy must die. Die, and the church so

near! She could not believe it. Could St. Mark, and St. George, and the

rest that he had loved so do nothing for him? No, said the doctor, they

could do nothing; the dog might do something, since the brain had so

fastened on that one idea; but then they had sold the dog.

"Yes; I sold him!" said the poor mother, breaking into floods of

remorseful tears.

So at last the end drew so nigh that one twilight time the priest came

out of the great arched door that is next it. Mark, with the Host

uplifted, and a little acolyte ringing the bell before it, and passed

across the piazzetta, and went up the dark staircase of Rosina's

dwelling, and passed through the weeping, terrified children, and went

to the bedside of Lolo.

Lolo was unconscious, but the holy man touched his little body and limbs

with the sacred oil, and prayed over him, and then stood sorrowful with

bowed head.

Lolo had had his first communion in the summer, and in his preparation

for it had shown an intelligence and devoutness that had won the

priest's gentle heart.

Standing there, the holy man commended the innocent soul to God. It was

the last service to be rendered to him save that very last of all when

the funeral office should be read above his little grave among the

millions of nameless dead at the sepulchres of the poor at Trebbiano.

All was still as the priest's voice ceased; only the sobs of the mother

and of the children broke the stillness as they kneeled; the hand of

Biondina had stolen into Tasso's.

Suddenly, there was a loud scuffling noise; hurrying feet came patter,

patter, patter up the stairs, a ball of mud and dust flew over the heads

of the kneeling figures, fleet as the wind Moufflou dashed through the

room and leaped upon the bed.

Lolo opened his heavy eyes, and a sudden light of consciousness gleamed

in them like a sunbeam. "Moufflou!" he murmured, in his little thin

faint voice. The dog pressed close to his breast and kissed his wasted

face.

Moufflou was come home!

And Lolo came home too, for death let go its hold upon him. Little by

little, very faintly and flickeringly and very uncertainly at the first,

life returned to the poor little body, and reason to the tormented,

heated little brain. Moufflou was his physician; Moufflou, who, himself

a skeleton under his matted curls, would not stir from his side and

looked at him all day long with two beaming brown eyes full of

unutterable love.

Lolo was happy; he asked no questions,--was too weak, indeed, even to

wonder. He had Moufflou; that was enough.

Alas! though they dared not say so in his hearing, it was not enough for

his elders. His mother and Tasso knew that the poodle had been sold and

paid for; that they could lay no claim to keep him; and that almost

certainly his purchaser would seek him out and assert his indisputable

right to him. And then how would Lolo ever bear that second

parting?--Lolo, so weak that he weighed no more than if he had been a

little bird.

Moufflou had, no doubt, traveled a long distance and suffered much. He

was but skin and bone; he bore the marks of blows and kicks; his once

silken hair was all discolored and matted; he had, no doubt, traveled

far. But then his purchaser would be sure to ask for him, soon or late,

at his old home; and then? Well, then if they did not give him up

themselves, the law would make them.

Rosina Calabucci and Tasso, though they dared say nothing before any of

the children, felt their hearts in their mouths at every step on the

stair, and the first interrogation of Tasso every evening when he came

from his work was, "Has any one come for Moufflou?" For ten days no one

came, and their first terrors lulled a little.

On the eleventh morning, a feast-day, on which Tasso was not going to

his labors in the Cascine, there came a person, with a foreign look, who

said the words they so much dreaded to hear: "Has the poodle that you

sold to an English gentleman come back to you?"

Yes: his English master claimed him!

The servant said that they had missed the dog in Rome a few days after

buying him and taking him there; that he had been searched for in vain,

and that his master had thought it possible the animal might have found

his way back to his old home: there had been stories of such wonderful

sagacity in dogs: anyhow, he had sent for him on the chance; he was

himself back on the Lung' Arno. The servant pulled from his pocket a

chain, and said his orders were to take the poodle away at once: the

little sick gentleman had fretted very much about his loss.

Tasso heard in a very agony of despair. To take Moufflou away now would

be to kill Lolo,--Lolo so feeble still, so unable to understand, so

passionately alive to every sight and sound of Moufflou, lying for hours

together motionless with his hand buried in the poodle's curls, saying

nothing, only smiling now and then, and murmuring a word or two in

Moufflou's ear.

"The dog did come home," said Tasso, at length, in a low voice; "angels

must have shown him the road, poor beast! From Rome! Only to think of

it, from Rome! And he a dumb thing! I tell you he is here, honestly: so

will you not trust me just so far as this? Will you let me go with you

and speak to the English lord before you take the dog away? I have a

little brother sorely ill--"

He could not speak more, for tears that choked his voice.

At last the messenger agreed so far as this: Tasso might go first and

see the master, but he would stay here and have a care they did not

spirit the dog away,--"for a thousand francs were paid for him," added

the man, "and a dog that can come all the way from Rome by itself must

be an uncanny creature."

Tasso thanked him, went up-stairs, was thankful that his mother was at

mass and could not dispute with him, took the ten hundred-franc notes

from the old oak _cassone_, and with them in his breast-pocket walked

out into the air. He was but a poor working lad, but he had made up his

mind to do an heroic act. He went straightway to the hotel where the

English _milord_ was, and when he had got there remembered that still he

did not know the name of Moufflou's owner; but the people of the hotel

knew him as Rosina Calabucci's son, and guessed what he wanted, and said

the gentleman who had lost the poodle was within, up-stairs, and they

would tell him.

Tasso waited some half-hour with his heart beating sorely against the

packet of hundred-franc notes. At last he was beckoned up-stairs, and

there he saw a foreigner with a mild fair face, and a very lovely lady,

and a delicate child who was lying on a couch. "Moufflou! Where is

Moufflou?" cried the little child, impatiently, as he saw the youth

enter.

Tasso took his hat off, and stood in the door-way an embrowned, healthy,

not ungraceful figure, in his working-clothes of rough blue stuff.

"If you please, most illustrious," he stammered, "poor Moufflou has come

home."

The child gave a cry of delight; the gentleman and lady one of wonder.

Come home! All the way from Rome!

"Yes, he has, most illustrious," said Tasso, gaining courage and

eloquence; "and now I want to beg something of you. We are poor, and I

drew a bad number, and it was for that my mother sold Moufflou. For

myself, I did not know anything of it; but she thought she would buy my

substitute, and of course she could; but Moufflou is come home, and my

little brother Lolo, the little boy your most illustrious first saw

playing with the poodle, fell ill of the grief of losing Moufflou, and

for a month has lain saying nothing sensible, but only calling for the

dog, and my old grandfather died of worrying himself mad over the

lottery numbers, and Lolo was so near dying that the Blessed Host had

been brought, and the holy oil had been put on him, when all at once

there rushes in Moufflou, skin and bone, and covered with mud, and at

the sight of him Lolo comes back to his senses, and that is now ten days

ago, and though Lolo is still as weak as a new-born thing, he is always

sensible, and takes what we give him to eat, and lies always looking at

Moufflou, and smiling, and saying, 'Moufflou! Moufflou!' and, most

illustrious, I know well you have bought the dog, and the law is with

you, and by the law you claim it, but I thought perhaps, as Lolo loves

him so, you would let us keep the dog, and would take back the thousand

francs, and myself I will go and be a soldier, and heaven will take care

of them all somehow."

Then Tasso, having said all this in one breathless, monotonous

recitative, took the thousand francs out of his breast-pocket and held

them out timidly towards the foreign gentleman, who motioned them aside

and stood silent.

"Did you understand, Victor?" he said, at last, to his little son.

The child hid his face in his cushions.

"Yes, I did understand something: let Lolo keep him; Moufflou was not

happy with me."

But he burst out crying as he said it.

Moufflou had run away from him.

Moufflou had never loved him, for all his sweet cakes and fond caresses

and platefuls of delicate savory meats. Moufflou had run away and found

his own road over two hundred miles and more to go back to some little

hungry children, who never had enough to eat themselves and so,

certainly, could never give enough to eat to the dog. Poor little boy!

He was so rich and so pampered and so powerful, and yet he could never

make Moufflou love him!

Tasso, who understood nothing that was said, laid the ten hundred-franc

notes down on a table near him.

"If you would take them, most illustrious, and give me back what my

mother wrote when she sold Moufflou," he said, timidly, "I would pray

for you night and day, and Lolo would too; and as for the dog, we will

get a puppy and train him for your little _signorino_; they can all do

tricks, more or less, it comes by nature; and as for me, I will go to

the army willingly; it is not right to interfere with fate; my old

grandfather died mad because he would try to be a rich man, by dreaming

about it and pulling destiny by the ears, as if she were a kicking mule;

only, I do pray of you, do not take away Moufflou. And to think he

trotted all those miles and miles, and you carried him by train too, and

he never could have seen the road, and he had no power of speech to

ask--"

Tasso broke down again in his eloquence, and drew the back of his hand

across his wet eyelashes.

The English gentleman was not altogether unmoved.

"Poor faithful dog!" he said, with a sigh. "I am afraid we were very

cruel to him, meaning to be kind. No; we will not claim him, and I do

not think you should go for a soldier; you seem so good a lad, and your

mother must need you. Keep the money, my boy, and in payment you shall

train up the puppy you talk of, and bring him to my little boy. I will

come and see your mother and Lolo to-morrow. All the way from Rome! What

wonderful sagacity! what matchless fidelity!"

You can imagine, without any telling of mine, the joy that reigned in

Moufflou's home when Tasso returned thither with the money and the good

tidings both. His substitute was bought without a day's delay, and Lolo

rapidly recovered. As for Moufflou, he could never tell them his

troubles, his wanderings, his difficulties, his perils; he could never

tell them by what miraculous knowledge he had found his way across

Italy, from the gates of Rome to the gates of Florence. But he soon grew

plump again, and merry, and his love for Lolo was yet greater than

before.

By the winter all the family went to live on an estate near Spezia that

the English gentleman had purchased, and there Moufflou was happier than

ever. The little English boy is gaining strength in the soft air, and he

and Lolo are great friends, and play with Moufflou and the poodle puppy

half the day upon the sunny terraces and under the green orange boughs.

Tasso is one of the gardeners there; he will have to serve as a soldier

probably in some category or another, but he is safe for the time, and

is happy. Lolo, whose lameness will always exempt him from military

service, when he grows to be a man means to be a florist, and a great

one. He has learned to read, as the first step on the road of his

ambition.

"But oh, Moufflou, how _did_ you find your way home?" he asks the dog a

hundred times a week.

How indeed!

No one ever knew how Moufflou had made that long journey on foot, so

many weary miles; but beyond a doubt he had done it alone and unaided,

for if any one had helped him they would have come home with him to

claim the reward.

393

Olive Thorne Miller (1831-1918) is remembered

in the history of American juvenile literature

as a writer on birds. Her purpose was to show

truly the characteristics and habits of the

"little brothers of the air." The following

selection illustrates the style of much of her

work. Some of her books that may appropriately

be used as literature in the third, fourth, or

fifth grade are _The Children's Book of Birds_,

_Little Brothers of the Air_, _Little Folks in

Feathers and Fur_, and _Four Handed Folk_. (The

selection that follows is from the first-named

book, and is used by permission of and by

special arrangement with the publishers, The

Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.)

BIRD HABITS

OLIVE THORNE MILLER

I. WHERE HE SLEEPS

Most birds sleep on their feet.

You know how a canary goes to sleep, all puffed out like a ball, with

his head buried in the feathers of his shoulder. He may stick his bill

over behind the top of the wing, but he never "puts his head under his

wing," as you have heard.

Sometimes he stands straight up on one leg, with the other drawn up out

of sight in his feathers, but more often he sits down on the perch,

still resting on his feet. Most wild birds of the perching kind sleep in

the same way.

It is only lately that we have begun to find out where birds sleep,

because it is dark when they go to bed, and they get up before it is

light enough for us to see them.

The only way to catch them in bed is to go out in the evening, and start

them up after they have gone to sleep. And this is not very kind to the

poor little birds. Some men who are trying to learn about the habits of

birds have tried this way, and so have found out some of their

sleeping-places.

One thing they have learned is that the nest is not often used for a

bed, except for the mother while she is sitting and keeping her little

ones warm.

Robins and orioles, and others, creep into the thick branches of an

evergreen tree, close up to the trunk. Some crawl under the edge of a

haystack, others into thick vines or thorny bushes. All these are meant

for hiding-places, so that beasts that prowl about at night, and like to

eat birds, will not find them.

Tree sparrows like to sleep in holes in the ground like little caves.

The men who found these cosy little bedrooms think they are places dug

out by field mice, and other small animals, for their own use. And when

they are left, the birds are glad to take them.

When the weather is cold, some birds sleep under the snow. You may think

that would not be very warm, and it is not so warm as a bed in the house

with plenty of blankets. But it is much warmer than a perch in a tree,

with nothing but leaves to keep off the wind.

While the snow is falling, some birds find it as good as blankets for

their use. Grouse, who live on the ground, dive into a snow-bank and

snuggle down quietly, while the snow falls and covers them all over and

keeps the cold wind off. Air comes through the snow, so they do not

smother.

Some birds creep into a pile of brush that is covered with snow, and

find under the twigs little places like tents, where the snow has been

kept out by the twigs, and they sleep there, away from the wind and

storm outside.

Water birds find the best sleeping-places on the water, where they float

all night like tiny boats. Some of them leave one foot hanging down and

paddling a little, while they sleep, to keep from being washed to the

shore.

Bob-white and his family sleep in a close circle on the ground, all with

their heads turned outward, so that they can see or hear an enemy,

whichever way he comes.

Hawks and eagles are said to sleep standing, never sitting on the feet

like a canary. Some ducks and geese do even more: they sleep standing on

one foot. Woodpeckers and chimney swifts hang themselves up by their

claws, using their stiff tail for a brace, as if it were a third leg.

Some birds, like the crows, sleep in great flocks. They agree upon a

piece of woods, and all the crows for miles around come there every

night. Sometimes thousands of them sleep in this one bedroom, called a

crow roost. Robins do the same, after the young are big enough to fly so

far.

Audubon, who has told us so much about birds, once found a hollow tree

which was the sleeping-room of chimney swifts. The noise they made going

out in the morning was like the roar of a great mill-wheel.

He wanted to see the birds asleep. So in the daytime, when they were

away, he had a piece cut out at the foot of the tree, big enough to let

him in, and then put back, so the birds would not notice anything

unusual.

At night, after the swifts were abed, he took a dark lantern and went

in. He turned the light upon them little by little, so as not to startle

them. Then he saw the whole inside of the tree full of birds. They were

hanging by their claws, side by side, as thick as they could hang. He

thought there were as many as twelve thousand in that one bedroom.

II. HIS TRAVELS

Most of our birds take two long journeys every year, one in the fall to

the south, and the other in the spring back to the north. These journeys

are called "migrations."

The birds do not go all at once, but in many cases those of a kind who

live near each other collect in a flock and travel together. Each

species or kind has its own time to go.

It might be thought that it is because of the cold that so many birds

move to a warmer climate. But it is not so; they are very well dressed

to endure cold. Their feather suits are so warm that some of our

smallest and weakest birds are able to stay with us, like the chickadee

and the golden-crowned kinglet. It is simply because they cannot get

food in winter, that they have to go.

The fall travel begins soon after the first of July. The bobolink is one

of the first to leave us, though he does not start at once on his long

journey. By that time his little folk are full grown, and can take care

of themselves, and he is getting on his winter suit, or moulting.

Then some morning all the bobolinks in the country are turned out of

their homes in the meadows, by men and horses and mowing machines, for

at that time the long grass is ready to cut.

Then he begins to think about the wild rice that is getting just right

to eat. Besides, he likes to take his long journey to South America in

an easy way, stopping here and there as he goes. So some morning we miss

his cheerful call, and if we go to the meadow we shall not be able to

see a single bobolink.

There, too, are the swallows, who eat only small flying insects. As the

weather grows cooler, these tiny flies are no longer to be found. So the

swallows begin to flock, as it is called. For a few days they will be

seen on fences and telegraph wires, chattering and making a great noise,

and then some morning they will all be gone.

They spend some time in marshes and lonely places before they at last

set out for the south.

As the days grow shorter and cooler, the warblers go. These are the

bright-colored little fellows, who live mostly in the tops of trees.

Then the orioles and the thrushes and the cuckoos leave us, and most

birds who live on insects.

By the time that November comes in, few of them will be left. Birds who

can live on seeds and winter berries, such as cedar-berries and

partridge-berries, and others, often stay with us,--bluebirds, finches,

and sometimes robins.

Many birds take their journey by night. Think of it! Tiny creatures,

that all summer go to bed at dark, start off some night, when it seems

as if they ought to be asleep, and fly all night in the dark.

When it grows light, they stop in some place where they can feed and

rest. And the next night, or two or three nights later, they go on

again. So they do until they reach their winter home, hundreds or

thousands of miles away.

These night flyers are the timid birds, and those who live in the woods

and do not like to be seen,--thrushes, wrens, vireos, and others. Birds

with strong wings, who are used to flying hours every day, and bolder

birds, who do not mind being seen, take their journey by daylight.

Most of them stop now and then, a day or two at a time, to feed and

rest. They fly very high, and faster than our railroad trains can go.

In the spring the birds take their second long journey, back to their

last year's home.

How they knew their way on these journeys, men have been for many years

trying to find out. They have found that birds travel on regular roads,

or routes, that follow the rivers and the shore of the ocean. They can

see much better than we can, and even in the night they can see water.

One such road, or highway, is over the harbor of New York. When the

statue of Liberty was set up on an island in the harbor a few years ago,

it was put in the birds' path.

Usually they fly too high to mind it; but when there is a rain or fog

they come much lower, and, sad to say, many of them fly against it and

are killed.

We often see strange birds in our city streets and parks, while they are

passing through on their migration, for they sometimes spend several

days with us.

394

Ernest Thompson Seton (1860--) was born in

England, but has lived most of his life in

America. He began his career as an artist. He

made more than 1,000 drawings of birds and

animals for the _Century Dictionary_. Later he

began to write about animals and has achieved

unusual success in that field. His _Wild

Animals at Home_, _Wild Animal Ways_, _The

Biography of a Grizzly_, and _Wild Animals I

Have Known_ are all greatly enjoyed by young

people. ("The Poacher and the Silver Fox" is

taken from the first-mentioned book, by

permission of the publishers, Doubleday, Page &

Co., Garden City, New York.)

THE POACHER AND THE SILVER FOX

ERNEST THOMPSON SETON

How is it that all mankind has a sneaking sympathy with a poacher? A

burglar or a pickpocket has our unmitigated contempt; he clearly is a

criminal; but you will notice that the poacher in the story is

generally a reckless daredevil with a large and compensatory amount of

good-fellow in his make-up--yes, I almost said, of good citizenship. I

suppose, because in addition to the breezy, romantic character of his

calling, seasoned with physical danger as well as moral risk, there is

away down in human nature a strong feeling that, in spite of man-made

laws, the ancient ruling holds that "wild game belongs to no man till

some one makes it his property by capture." It may be wrong, it may be

right, but I have heard this doctrine voiced by red men and white, as

primitive law, once or twice; and have seen it lived up to a thousand

times.

Well, Josh Cree was a poacher. This does not mean that every night in

every month he went forth with nefarious tricks and tools, to steal the

flesh and fur that legally were not his. Far from it. Josh never poached

but once. But that's enough; he had crossed the line, and this is how it

came about:

As you roll up the Yellowstone from Livingston to Gardiner you may note

a little ranch-house on the west of the track with its log stables, its

corral, its irrigation ditch, and its alfalfa patch of morbid green. It

is a small affair, for it was founded by the handiwork of one honest

man, who with his wife and small boy left Pennsylvania, braved every

danger of the plains, and secured this claim in the late '80's. Old man

Cree--he was only forty, but every married man is "Old Man" in the

West--was ready to work at any honest calling from logging or sluicing

to grading and muling. He was strong and steady, his wife was steady and

strong. They saved their money, and little by little they got the small

ranch-house built and equipped; little by little they added to their

stock on the range with the cattle of a neighbour, until there came the

happy day when they went to live on their own ranch--father, mother, and

fourteen-year-old Josh, with every prospect of making it pay. The

spreading of that white tablecloth for the first time was a real

religious ceremony, and the hard workers gave thanks to the All-father

for His blessing on their every effort.

One year afterward a new event brought joy: there entered happily into

their happy house a little girl, and all the prairie smiled about them.

Surely their boat was well beyond the breakers.

But right in the sunshine of their joy the trouble cloud arose to block

the sky. Old man Cree was missing one day. His son rode long and far on

the range for two hard days before he sighted a grazing pony, and down a

rocky hollow near, found his father, battered and weak, near death, with

a broken leg and a gash in his head.

He could only gasp "Water" as Josh hurried up, and the boy rushed off to

fill his hat at the nearest stream.

They had no talk, for the father swooned after drinking, and Josh had to

face the situation; but he was Western trained. He stripped himself of

all spare clothing, and his father's horse of its saddle blanket; then,

straightening out the sick man, he wrapped him in the clothes and

blanket, and rode like mad for the nearest ranch-house. The neighbour, a

young man, came at once, with a pot to make tea, an axe, and a rope.

They found the older Cree conscious but despairing. A fire was made, and

hot tea revived him. Then Josh cut two long poles from the nearest

timber and made a stretcher, or travois, Indian fashion, the upper ends

fast to the saddle of a horse, while the other ends trailed on the

ground. Thus by a long, slow journey the wounded man got back. All he

had prayed for was to get home. Every invalid is sure that if only he

can get home all will soon be well. Mother was not yet strong, the baby

needed much care, but Josh was a good boy, and the loving best of all

was done for the sick one. His leg, set by the army surgeon of Fort

Yellowstone, was knit again after a month, but had no power. He had no

force; the shock of those two dire days was on him. The second month

went by, and still he lay in bed. Poor Josh was the man of the place

now, and between duties, indoors and out, he was worn body and soul.

Then it was clear they must have help. So Jack S---- was engaged at the

regular wages of $40 a month for outside work, and a year of struggle

went by, only to see John Cree in his grave, his cattle nearly all gone,

his widow and boy living in a house on which was still $500 of the

original mortgage. Josh was a brave boy and growing strong, but

unboyishly grave with the weight of care. He sold off the few cattle

that were left, and set about keeping the roof over his mother and baby

sister by working a truck farm for the market supplied by the summer

hotels of the Park, and managed to come out even. He would in time have

done well, but he could not get far enough ahead to meet that 10 per

cent mortgage already overdue.

The banker was not a hard man, but he was in the business for the

business. He extended the time, and waited for interest again and again,

but it only made the principal larger, and it seemed that the last ditch

was reached, that it would be best to let the money-man foreclose,

though that must mean a wipe-out and would leave the fatherless family

homeless.

Winter was coming on, work was scarce, and Josh went to Gardiner to see

what he could get in the way of house or wage. He learned of a chance to

'substitute' for the Park mail-carrier, who had sprained his foot. It

was an easy drive to Fort Yellowstone, and there he readily agreed, when

they asked him, to take the letters and packages and go on farther to

the Canyon Hotel. Thus it was that on the 20th day of November 189-,

Josh Cree, sixteen years old, tall and ruddy, rode through the snow to

the kitchen door of the Canyon Hotel and was welcomed as though he were

old Santa Claus himself.

Two Magpies on a tree were among the onlookers. The Park Bears were

denned up, but there were other fur-bearers about. High on the wood-pile

sat a Yellow Red Fox in a magnificent coat. Another was in front of the

house, and the keeper said that as many as a dozen came some days. And

sometimes, he said, there also came a wonderful Silver Fox, a size

bigger than the rest, black as coal, with eyes like yellow diamonds, and

a silver frosting like little stars on his midnight fur.

"My! but he's a beauty. That skin would buy the best team of mules on

the Yellowstone." That was interesting and furnished talk for a while.

In the morning when they were rising for their candlelight breakfast,

the hotel man glancing from the window exclaimed, "Here he is now!" and

Josh peered forth to see in the light of sunrise something he had often

heard of, but never before seen, a coal-black Fox, a giant among his

kind. How slick and elegant his glossy fur, how slim his legs, and what

a monstrous bushy tail; and the other Foxes moved aside as the patrician

rushed in impatient haste to seize the food thrown out by the cook.

"Ain't he a beauty?" said the hotel man. "I'll bet that pelt would fetch

five hundred."

Oh, why did he say "five hundred," the exact sum, for then it was that

the tempter entered into Josh Cree's heart. Five hundred dollars! just

the amount of the mortgage. "Who owns wild beasts? The man that kills

them," said the tempter, and the thought was a live one in his breast as

Josh rode back to Fort Yellowstone.

At Gardiner he received his pay, $6.00, for three days' work and,

turning it into groceries, set out for the poor home that soon would be

lost to him, and as he rode he did some hard and gloomy thinking. On his

wrist there hung a wonderful Indian quirt of plaited rawhide and

horsehair with beads on the shaft, and a band of Elk teeth on the butt.

It was a pet of his, and "good medicine," for a flat piece of elkhorn

let in the middle was perforated with a hole, through which the distant

landscape was seen much clearer--a well-known law, an ancient trick, but

it made the quirt prized as a thing of rare virtue, and Josh had refused

good offers for it. Then a figure afoot was seen, and coming nearer, it

turned out to be a friend, Jack Day, out a-gunning with a .22 rifle. But

game was scarce and Jack was returning to Gardiner empty-handed and

disgusted. They stopped for a moment's greeting when Day said: "Huntin's

played out now. How'll you swap that quirt for my rifle?" A month before

Josh would have scorned the offer. A ten-dollar quirt for a five-dollar

rifle, but now he said briefly: "For rifle with cover, tools and

ammunition complete, I'll go ye." So the deal was made and in an hour

Josh was home. He stabled Grizzle, the last of their saddle stock, and

entered.

Love and sorrow dwelt in the widow's home, but the return of Josh

brought its measure of joy. Mother prepared the regular meal of tea,

potatoes, and salt pork; there was a time when they had soared as high

as canned goods, but those prosperous days were gone. Josh was dandling

baby sister on his lap as he told of his trip, and he learned of two

things of interest: First, the bank must have its money by February;

second, the stable at Gardiner wanted a driver for the Cook City stage.

Then the little events moved quickly. His half-formed plan of getting

back to the Canyon was now frustrated by the new opening, and, besides

this, hope had been dampened by the casual word of one who reported that

"that Silver Fox had not been seen since at the Canyon."

Then began long days of dreary driving through the snow, with a noon

halt at Yancey's and then three days later the return, in the cold, the

biting cold. It was freezing work, but coldest of all was the chill

thought at his heart that February 1st would see him homeless.

Small bands of Mountain Sheep he saw at times on the slope of Evarts,

and a few Blacktail, and later, when the winter deepened, huge bull Elk

were seen along the trail. Sometimes they moved not more than a few

paces to let him pass. These were everyday things to him, but in the

second week of his winter work he got a sudden thrill. He was coming

down the long hill back of Yancey's when what should he see there,

sitting on its tail, shiny black with yellow eyes like a huge black cat

unusually long and sharp in the nose, but a wonderful Silver Fox!

Possibly the same as the one he saw at the Canyon, for that one he knew

had disappeared and there were not likely to be two in the Park. Yes, it

might be the same, and Josh's bosom surged with mingled feelings. Why

did he not carry that little gun? Why did he not realize? were the

thoughts that came--$500! A noble chance! broad daylight only

twenty-five yards! and gone!

The Fox was still there when Josh drove on. On the next trip he brought

the little rifle. He had sawed off the stock so he could hide it easily

in his overcoat if need be. No man knew that he carried arms, but the

Foxes seemed to know. The Red ones kept afar and the Black one came no

more. Day after day he drove and hoped but the Black Fox has cunning

measured to his value. He came not, or if he came, was wisely hidden,

and so the month went by, till late in the cold Moon of Snow he heard

old Yancey say, "There's a Silver Fox bin a-hanging around the stable

this last week. Leastwise Dave says he seen him." There were soldiers

sitting around that stove, game guardians of the Park, and still more

dangerous, a scout, the soldiers' guide, a mountaineer. Josh turned not

an inch, he made no sound in response, but his heart gave a jump. Half

an hour later he went out to bed his horses for the night, and peering

around the stable he saw a couple of shadowy forms that silently shifted

until swallowed by the gloom.

Then the soldiers came to bed their horses, and Josh went back to the

stove. His big driving coat hung with the little sawed-off rifle in the

long pocket. He waited till the soldiers one by one went up the ladder

to the general bunk-room. He rose again, got the lantern, lighted it,

carried it out behind the lonely stable. The horses were grinding their

hay, the stars were faintly lighting the snow. There was no one about as

he hung the lantern under the eaves outside so that it could be seen

from the open valley, but not from the house.

A faint Yap-yah of a Fox was heard on the piney hillside, as he lay down

on the hay in the loft, but there were no signs of life on the snow. He

had come to wait all night if need be, and waited. The lantern might

allure, it might scare, but it was needed in this gloom, and it tinged

the snow with faint yellow light below him. An hour went by, then a

big-tailed form came near and made a little bark at the lantern. It

looked very dark, but it had a paler patch on the throat. This waiting

was freezing work; Josh's teeth were chattering in spite of his

overcoat. Another gray form came, then a much larger black one shaped

itself on the white. It dashed at the first, which fled, and the second

one followed but a little and then sat down on the snow, gazing at that

bright light. When you are sure, you are so sure--Josh knew him now, he

was facing the Silver Fox. But the light was dim. Josh's hand trembled

as he bared it to lay the back on his lips and suck so as to make a

mousey squeak. The effect on the Fox was instant. He glided forward

intent as a hunting cat. Again he stood in, oh! such a wonderful pose,

still as a statue, frozen like a hiding Partridge, unbudging as a lone

kid Antelope in May. And Josh raised--yes, he had come for that--he

raised that fatal gun. The lantern blazed in the Fox's face at twenty

yards; the light was flung back doubled by its shining eyes; it looked

perfectly clear. Josh lined the gun, but, strange to tell, the sights so

plain were lost at once, and the gun was shaking like a sorghum stalk

while the Gopher gnaws its root. He laid the weapon down with a groan,

cursed his own poor trembling hand, and in an instant the wonder Fox was

gone.

Poor Josh! He wasn't bad-tongued, but now he used all the evil words he

had ever heard, and he was Western bred. Then he reacted on himself.

"The Fox might come back!" Suddenly he remembered something. He got out

a common sulphur match. He wet it on his lips and rubbed it on the

muzzle sight: Then on each side of the notch on the breech sight. He

lined it for a tree. Yes! surely! What had been a blur of blackness had

now a visible form.

A faint bark on a far hillside might mean a coming or a going Fox. Josh

waited five minutes, then again he squeaked on his bare hand. The effect

was a surprise when from the shelter of the stable wall ten feet below

there leaped the great dark Fox. At fifteen feet it paused. Those yellow

orbs were fiery in the light and the rifle sights with the specks of

fire were lined. There was a sharp report and the black-robed fur was

still and limp in the snow.

Who can tell the crack of a small rifle among the louder cracks of green

logs splitting with the fierce frost of a Yellowstone winter's night?

Why should travel-worn travelers wake at each slight, usual sound? Who

knows? Who cares?

And afar in Livingston what did the fur dealer care? It was a great

prize. Or the banker? he got his five hundred, and mother found it easy

to accept the Indians' creed: "Who owns wild beasts? The man who kills

them."

"I did not know how it would come," she said; "I only knew it would

come, for I prayed and believed."

We know that it came when it meant the most. The house was saved. It was

the turn in their fortune's tide, and the crucial moment of the change

was when those three bright sulphur spots were lined with the living

lamps in the head of the Silver Fox. Yes! Josh was a poacher. Just once.

395

David Starr Jordan (1851--) was for many years

president, now president emeritus, of Leland

Stanford Junior University, and is known

internationally for his books on science and on

the prevention of war; he also is author of

several books for children. The story that

follows is taken from his _Science Sketches_,

by permission of the publishers, A. C. McClurg

& Co., Chicago. It may stand as a perfect

illustration of the modern informational story

based on recognized scientific facts. "The

Story of a Stone," from the same book, is

equally good. These stories may be taught in

the seventh or eighth grade.

THE STORY OF A SALMON

DAVID STARR JORDAN

In the realm of the Northwest Wind, on the boundary-line between the

dark fir-forests and the sunny plains, there stands a mountain,--a

great white cone two miles and a half in perpendicular height. On its

lower mile the dense fir-woods cover it with never-changing green; on

its next half-mile a lighter green of grass and bushes gives place in

winter to white; and on its uppermost mile the snows of the great ice

age still linger in unspotted purity. The people of Washington Territory

say that their mountain is the great "King-pin of the Universe," which

shows that even in its own country Mount Tacoma is not without honor.

Flowing down from the southwest slope of Mount Tacoma is a cold, clear

river, fed by the melting snows of the mountain. Madly it hastens down

over white cascades and beds of shining sands, through birch-woods and

belts of dark firs, to mingle its waters at last with those of the great

Columbia. This river is the Cowlitz; and on its bottom, not many years

ago, there lay half buried in the sand a number of little orange-colored

globules, each about as large as a pea. These were not much in

themselves, but great in their possibilities. In the waters above them

little suckers and chubs and prickly sculpins strained their mouths to

draw these globules from the sand, and vicious-looking crawfishes picked

them up with their blundering hands and examined them with their

telescopic eyes. But one, at least, of the globules escaped their

curiosity, else this story would not be worth telling. The sun shone

down on it through the clear water, and the ripples of the Cowlitz said

over it their incantations, and in it at last awoke a living being. It

was a fish,--a curious little fellow, not half an inch long, with great,

staring eyes, which made almost half his length, and with a body so

transparent that he could not cast a shadow. He was a little salmon, a

very little salmon; but the water was good, and there were flies and

worms and little living creatures in abundance for him to eat, and he

soon became a larger salmon. Then there were many more little salmon

with him, some larger and some smaller, and they all had a merry time.

Those who had been born soonest and had grown largest used to chase the

others around and bite off their tails, or, still better, take them by

the heads and swallow them whole; for, said they, "Even young salmon are

good eating." "Heads I win, tails you lose," was their motto. Thus, what

was once two small salmon became united into a single larger one, and

the process of "addition, division, and silence" still went on.

By-and-by, when all the salmon were too large to be swallowed, they

began to grow restless. They saw that the water rushing by seemed to be

in a great hurry to get somewhere, and it was somehow suggested that its

hurry was caused by something good to eat at the other end of its

course. Then they all started down the stream, salmon-fashion,--which

fashion is to get into the current, head up-stream; and thus to drift

backward as the river sweeps along.

Down the Cowlitz River the salmon went for a day and a night, finding

much to interest them which we need not know. At last they began to grow

hungry; and coming near the shore, they saw an angle-worm of rare size

and beauty floating in an eddy of the stream. Quick as thought one of

them opened his mouth, which was well filled with teeth of different

sizes, and put it around the angle-worm. Quicker still he felt a sharp

pain in his gills, followed by a smothering sensation, and in an instant

his comrades saw him rise straight into the air. This was nothing new to

them; for they often leaped out of the water in their games of

hide-and-seek, but only to come down again with a loud splash not far

from where they went out. But this one never came back, and the others

went on their course wondering.

At last they came to where the Cowlitz and the Columbia join, and they

were almost lost for a time; for they could find no shores, and the

bottom and the top of the water were so far apart. Here they saw other

and far larger salmon in the deepest part of the current, turning

neither to the right nor to the left, but swimming right on up-stream,

just as rapidly as they could. And these great salmon would not stop for

them, and would not lie and float with the current. They had no time to

talk, even in the simple sign language by which fishes express their

ideas, and no time to eat. They had important work before them, and the

time was short. So they went on up the river, keeping their great

purposes to themselves; and our little salmon and his friends from the

Cowlitz drifted down the stream.

By-and-by the water began to change. It grew denser, and no longer

flowed rapidly along; and twice a day it used to turn about and flow the

other way. Then the shores disappeared, and the water began to have a

different and peculiar flavor,--a flavor which seemed to the salmon much

richer and more inspiring than the glacier-water of their native

Cowlitz. There were many curious things to see,--crabs with hard shells

and savage faces, but so good when crushed and swallowed! Then there

were luscious squid swimming about; and, to a salmon, squid are like

ripe peaches and cream. There were great companies of delicate sardines

and herring, green and silvery, and it was such fun to chase and capture

them! Those who eat sardines packed in oil by greasy fingers, and

herrings dried in the smoke, can have little idea how satisfying it is

to have a meal of them, plump and sleek and silvery, fresh from the sea.

Thus the salmon chased the herrings about, and had a merry time. Then

they were chased about in turn by great sea-lions,--swimming monsters

with huge half-human faces, long thin whiskers, and blundering ways. The

sea-lions liked to bite out the throat of a salmon, with its precious

stomach full of luscious sardines, and then to leave the rest of the

fish to shift for itself. And the seals and the herrings scattered the

salmon about, till at last the hero of our story found himself quite

alone, with none of his own kind near him. But that did not trouble him

much, and he went on his own way, getting his dinner when he was hungry,

which was all the time, and then eating a little between meals for his

stomach's sake.

So it went on for three long years; and at the end of this time our

little fish had grown to be a great, fine salmon of twenty-two pounds'

weight, shining like a new tin pan, and with rows of the loveliest round

black spots on his head and back and tail. One day, as he was swimming

about, idly chasing a big sculpin with head so thorny that he never was

swallowed by anybody, all of a sudden the salmon noticed a change in the

water around him.

Spring had come again, and south-lying snow-drifts on the Cascade

Mountains once more felt that the "earth was wheeling sunwards." The

cold snow waters ran down from the mountains and into the Columbia

River, and made a freshet on the river. The high water went far out into

the sea, and out in the sea our salmon felt it on his gills. He

remembered how the cold water used to feel in the Cowlitz when he was a

little fish. In a blundering, fishy fashion he thought about it; he

wondered whether the little eddy looked as it used to look, and whether

caddis-worms and young mosquitoes were really as sweet and tender as he

used to think they were. Then he thought some other things; but as the

salmon's mind is located in the optic lobes of his brain, and ours is in

a different place, we cannot be quite certain what his thoughts really

were.

What our salmon did, we know. He did what every grown salmon in the

ocean does when he feels the glacier-water once more upon his gills. He

became a changed being. He spurned the blandishment of soft-shelled

crabs. The pleasures of the table and of the chase, heretofore his only

delights, lost their charms for him. He turned his course straight

toward the direction whence the cold water came, and for the rest of his

life never tasted a mouthful of food. He moved on toward the

river-mouth, at first playfully, as though he were not really certain

whether he meant anything after all. Afterward, when he struck the full

current of the Columbia, he plunged straight forward with an unflinching

determination that had in it something of the heroic. When he had passed

the rough water at the bar, he was not alone. His old neighbors of the

Cowlitz, and many more from the Clackamas and the Spokane and Des Chutes

and Kootenay,--a great army of salmon,--were with him. In front were

thousands pressing on, and behind them were thousands more, all moved by

a common impulse which urged them up the Columbia.

They were all swimming bravely along where the current was deepest, when

suddenly the foremost felt something tickling like a cobweb about their

noses and under their chins. They changed their course a little to brush

it off, and it touched their fins as well. Then they tried to slip down

with the current, and thus leave it behind. But, no! the thing, whatever

it was, although its touch was soft, refused to let go, and held them

like a fetter. The more they struggled, the tighter became its grasp,

and the whole foremost rank of the salmon felt it together; for it was a

great gill-net, a quarter of a mile long, stretched squarely across the

mouth of the river.

By-and-by men came in boats, and hauled up the gill-net and the helpless

salmon that had become entangled in it. They threw the fishes into a

pile in the bottom of the boat, and the others saw them no more. We that

live outside the water know better what befalls them, and we can tell

the story which the salmon could not.

All along the banks of the Columbia River, from its mouth to nearly

thirty miles away, there is a succession of large buildings, looking

like great barns or warehouses, built on piles in the river, high enough

to be out of the reach of floods. There are thirty of these buildings,

and they are called canneries. Each cannery has about forty boats, and

with each boat are two men and a long gill-net. These nets fill the

whole river as with a nest of cobwebs from April to July, and to each

cannery nearly a thousand great salmon are brought every day. These

salmon are thrown in a pile on the floor; and Wing Hop, the big

Chinaman, takes them one after another on the table, and with a great

knife dexterously cuts off the head, the tail, and the fins; then with a

sudden thrust he removes the intestines and the eggs. The body goes into

a tank of water; and the head is dropped into a box on a flat-boat, and

goes down the river to be made into salmon oil. Next, the body is

brought to another table; and Quong Sang, with a machine like a

feed-cutter, cuts it into pieces each just as long as a one-pound can.

Then Ah Sam, with a butcher-knife, cuts these pieces into strips just as

wide as the can. Next Wan Lee, the "China boy," brings down a hundred

cans from the loft where the tinners are making them, and into each puts

a spoonful of salt. It takes just six salmon to fill a hundred cans.

Then twenty Chinamen put the pieces of meat into the cans, fitting in

little strips to make them exactly full. Ten more solder up the cans,

and ten more put the cans into boiling water till the meat is thoroughly

cooked, and five more punch a little hole in the head of each can to let

out the air. Then they solder them up again, and little girls paste on

them bright-colored labels showing merry little cupids riding the happy

salmon up to the cannery door, with Mount Tacoma and Cape Disappointment

in the background; and a legend underneath says that this is "Booth's,"

or "Badollet's Best," or "Hume's," or "Clark's," or "Kinney's Superfine

Salt Water Salmon." Then the cans are placed in cases, forty-eight in a

case, and five hundred thousand cases are put up every year. Great ships

come to Astoria, and are loaded with them; and they carry them away to

London and San Francisco and Liverpool and New York and Sidney and

Valparaiso; and the man at the corner grocery sells them at twenty cents

a can.

All this time our salmon is going up the river, eluding one net as by a

miracle, and soon having need of more miracles to escape the rest;

passing by Astoria on a fortunate day,--which was Sunday, the day on

which no man may fish if he expects to sell what he catches,--till

finally he came to where nets were few, and, at last, to where they

ceased altogether. But there he found that scarcely any of his many

companies were with him; for the nets cease when there are no more

salmon to be caught in them. So he went on, day and night, where the

water was deepest, stopping not to feed or loiter on the way, till at

last he came to a wild gorge, where the great river became an angry

torrent, rushing wildly over a huge staircase of rocks. But our hero did

not falter; and summoning all his forces, he plunged into the Cascades.

The current caught him and dashed him against the rocks. A whole row of

silvery scales came off and glistened in the water like sparks of fire,

and a place on his side became black-and-red, which, for a salmon, is

the same as being black-and-blue for other people. His comrades tried to

go up with him; and one lost his eye, one his tail, and one had his

lower jaw pushed back into his head like the joint of a telescope. Again

he tried to surmount the Cascades; and at last he succeeded, and an

Indian on the rocks above was waiting to receive him. But the Indian

with his spear was less skillful than he was wont to be, and our hero

escaped, losing only a part of one of his fins; and with him came one

other, and henceforth these two pursued their journey together.

Now a gradual change took place in the looks of our salmon. In the sea

he was plump and round and silvery, with delicate teeth in a symmetrical

mouth. Now his silvery color disappeared, his skin grew slimy, and the

scales sank into it; his back grew black, and his sides turned red,--not

a healthy red, but a sort of hectic flush. He grew poor, and his back,

formerly as straight as need be, now developed an unpleasant hump at the

shoulders. His eyes--like those of all enthusiasts who forsake eating

and sleeping for some loftier aim--became dark and sunken. His

symmetrical jaws grew longer and longer, and meeting each other, as the

nose of an old man meets his chin, each had to turn aside to let the

other pass. His beautiful teeth grew longer and longer, and projected

from his mouth, giving him a savage and wolfish appearance, quite at

variance with his real disposition. For all the desires and ambitions of

his nature had become centered into one. We may not know what this one

was, but we know that it was a strong one; for it had led him on and

on,--past the nets and horrors of Astoria; past the dangerous Cascades;

past the spears of Indians; through the terrible flume of the Dalles,

where the mighty river is compressed between huge rocks into a channel

narrower than a village street; on past the meadows of Umatilla and the

wheat-fields of Walla Walla; on to where the great Snake River and the

Columbia join; on up the Snake River and its eastern branch, till at

last he reached the foot of the Bitter Root mountains in the Territory

of Idaho, nearly a thousand miles from the ocean which he had left in

April. With him still was the other salmon which had come with him

through the Cascades, handsomer and smaller than he, and, like him,

growing poor and ragged and tired.

At last, one October afternoon, our finny travelers came together to a

little clear brook, with a bottom of fine gravel, over which the water

was but a few inches deep. Our fish painfully worked his way to it; for

his tail was all frayed out, his muscles were sore, and his skin covered

with unsightly blotches. But his sunken eyes saw a ripple in the stream,

and under it a bed of little pebbles and sand. So there in the sand he

scooped out with his tail a smooth round place, and his companion came

and filled it with orange-colored eggs. Then our salmon came back again;

and softly covering the eggs, the work of their lives was done, and, in

the old salmon fashion, they drifted tail foremost down the stream.

They drifted on together for a night and a day, but they never came to

the sea. For the salmon has but one life to live, and it ascends the

river but once. The rest lies with its children. And when the April

sunshine fell on the globules in the gravel, these were wakened into

life. With the early autumn rains, the little fishes were large enough

to begin their wanderings. They dropped down the current in the old

salmon fashion. And thus they came into the great river and drifted away

to the sea.

396

Probably no short-story writer now living is

better known than Rudyard Kipling, an English

author born in Bombay, India, in 1865. Among

his many stories are some that may be classed

as juvenile romantic nature literature.

_Just-So Stories_ is a collection of humorous

stories of this type, excellent for the fifth

and sixth grades. _The Jungle Book_ and _The

Second Jungle Book_, of a more serious nature,

may be used in the seventh and eighth grades.

The story that follows, taken from one of his

earlier volumes, illustrates well Mr. Kipling's

style of writing. It is suitable for the

seventh or eighth grade.

MOTI GUJ--MUTINEER

RUDYARD KIPLING

Once upon a time there was a coffee-planter in India who wished to clear

some forest land for coffee-planting. When he had cut down all the trees

and burned the underwood, the stumps still remained. Dynamite is

expensive and slow fire slow. The happy medium for stump-clearing is the

lord of all beasts, who is the elephant. He will either push the stump

out of the ground with his tusks, if he has any, or drag it out with

ropes. The planter, therefore, hired elephants by ones and twos and

threes, and fell to work. The very best of all the elephants belonged to

the very worst of all the drivers or mahouts; and this superior beast's

name was Moti Guj. He was the absolute property of his mahout, which

would never have been the case under native rule: for Moti Guj was a

creature to be desired by kings, and his name, being translated, meant

the Pearl Elephant. Because the British government was in the land,

Deesa, the mahout, enjoyed his property undisturbed. He was dissipated.

When he had made much money through the strength of his elephant, he

would get extremely drunk and give Moti Guj a beating with a tent-peg

over the tender nails of the forefeet. Moti Guj never trampled the life

out of Deesa on these occasions, for he knew that after the beating was

over, Deesa would embrace his trunk and weep and call him his love and

his life and the liver of his soul, and give him some liquor. Moti Guj

was very fond of liquor--arrack for choice, though he would drink

palm-tree toddy if nothing better offered. Then Deesa would go to sleep

between Moti Guj's forefeet, and as Deesa generally chose the middle of

the public road, and as Moti Guj mounted guard over him, and would not

permit horse, foot, or cart to pass by, traffic was congested till Deesa

saw fit to wake up.

There was no sleeping in the daytime on the planter's clearing: the

wages were too high to risk. Deesa sat on Moti Guj's neck and gave him

orders, while Moti Guj rooted up the stumps--for he owned a magnificent

pair of tusks; or pulled at the end of a rope--for he had a magnificent

pair of shoulders--while Deesa kicked him behind the ears and said he

was the king of elephants. At evening time Moti Guj would wash down his

three hundred pounds' weight of green food with a quart of arrack, and

Deesa would take a share, and sing songs between Moti Guj's legs till it

was time to go to bed. Once a week Deesa led Moti Guj down to the river,

and Moti Guj lay on his side luxuriously in the shallows, while Deesa

went over him with a coir-swab and a brick. Moti Guj never mistook the

pounding blow of the latter for the smack of the former that warned him

to get up and turn over on the other side. Then Deesa would look at his

feet and examine his eyes, and turn up the fringes of his mighty ears in

case of sores or budding ophthalmia. After inspection the two would

"come up with a song from the sea," Moti Guj, all black and shining,

waving a torn tree branch twelve feet long in his trunk, and Deesa

knotting up his own long wet hair.

It was a peaceful, well-paid life till Deesa felt the return of the

desire to drink deep. He wished for an orgy. The little draughts that

led nowhere were taking the manhood out of him.

He went to the planter, and "My mother's dead," he said, weeping.

"She died on the last plantation two months ago, and she died once

before that when you were working for me last year," said the planter,

who knew something of the ways of nativedom.

"Then it's my aunt, and she was just the same as a mother to me," said

Deesa, weeping more than ever. "She has left eighteen small children

entirely without bread, and it is I who must fill their little

stomachs," said Deesa, beating his head on the floor.

"Who brought you the news?" said the planter.

"The post," said Deesa.

"There hasn't been a post here for the past week. Get back to your

lines!"

"A devastating sickness has fallen on my village, and all my wives are

dying," yelled Deesa, really in tears this time.

"Call Chihun, who comes from Deesa's village," said the planter.

"Chihun, has this man got a wife?"

"He?" said Chihun. "No. Not a woman of our village would look at him.

They'd sooner marry the elephant."

Chihun snorted. Deesa wept and bellowed.

"You will get into a difficulty in a minute," said the planter. "Go back

to your work!"

"Now I will speak Heaven's truth," gulped Deesa, with an inspiration. "I

haven't been drunk for two months. I desire to depart in order to get

properly drunk afar off and distant from this heavenly plantation. Thus

I shall cause no trouble."

A flickering smile crossed the planter's face. "Deesa," said he, "you've

spoken the truth, and I'd give you leave on the spot if anything could

be done with Moti Guj while you're away. You know that he will only obey

your orders."

"May the light of the heavens live forty thousand years. I shall be

absent but ten little days. After that, _upon_ my faith and honor and

soul, I return. As to the inconsiderable interval, have I the gracious

permission of the heaven-born to call up Moti Guj?"

Permission was granted, and in answer to Deesa's shrill yell, the mighty

tusker swung out of the shade of a clump of trees where he had been

squirting dust over himself till his master should return.

"Light of my heart, protector of the drunken, mountain of might, give

ear!" said Deesa, standing in front of him.

Moti Guj gave ear, and saluted with his trunk. "I am going away!" said

Deesa.

Moti Guj's eyes twinkled. He liked jaunts as well as his master. One

could snatch all manner of nice things from the road-side then.

"But you, you fussy old pig, must stay behind and work."

The twinkle died out as Moti Guj tried to look delighted. He hated

stump-hauling on the plantation. It hurt his teeth.

"I shall be gone for ten days, oh delectable one! Hold up your near

forefoot and I'll impress the fact upon it, warty toad of a dried

mud-puddle." Deesa took a tent-peg and banged Moti Guj ten times on the

nails. Moti Guj grunted and shuffled from foot to foot.

"Ten days," said Deesa, "you will work and haul and root the trees as

Chihun here shall order you. Take up Chihun and set him on your neck!"

Moti Guj curled the tip of his trunk, Chihun put his foot there, and was

swung on to the neck. Deesa handed Chihun the heavy _ankus_--the iron

elephant goad.

Chihun thumped Moti Guj's bald head as a paver thumps a curbstone.

Moti Guj trumpeted.

"Be still, hog of the backwoods! Chihun's your mahout for ten days. And

now bid me good-by, beast after mine own heart. Oh, my lord, my king!

Jewel of all created elephants, lily of the herd, preserve your honored

health; be virtuous. Adieu!"

Moti Guj lapped his trunk round Deesa and swung him into the air twice.

That was his way of bidding him good-by.

"He'll work now," said Deesa to the planter. "Have I leave to go?"

The planter nodded, and Deesa dived into the woods. Moti Guj went back

to haul stumps.

Chihun was very kind to him, but he felt unhappy and forlorn for all

that. Chihun gave him a ball of spices, and tickled him under the chin,

and Chihun's little baby cooed to him after work was over, and Chihun's

wife called him a darling; but Moti Guj was a bachelor by instinct, as

Deesa was. He did not understand the domestic emotions. He wanted the

light of his universe back again--the drink and the drunken slumber, the

savage beatings and the savage caresses.

None the less he worked well, and the planter wondered. Deesa had

wandered along the roads till he met a marriage procession of his own

caste, and, drinking, dancing, and tippling, had drifted with it past

all knowledge of the lapse of time.

The morning of the eleventh day dawned, and there returned no Deesa.

Moti Guj was loosed from his ropes for the daily stint. He swung clear,

looked round, shrugged his shoulders, and began to walk away, as one

having business elsewhere.

"Hi! ho! Come back you!" shouted Chihun. "Come back and put me on your

neck, misborn mountain! Return, splendor of the hill-sides! Adornment of

all India, heave to, or I'll bang every toe off your fat forefoot!"

Moti Guj gurgled gently, but did not obey. Chihun ran after him with a

rope and caught him up. Moti Guj put his ears forward, and Chihun knew

what that meant, though he tried to carry it off with high words.

"None of your nonsense with me," said he. "To your pickets, devil-son!"

"Hrrump!" said Moti Guj, and that was all--that and the forebent ears.

Moti Guj put his hands in his pockets, chewed a branch for a toothpick,

and strolled about the clearing, making fun of the other elephants who

had just set to work.

Chihun reported the state of affairs to the planter, who came out with a

dog-whip and cracked it furiously. Moti Guj paid the white man the

compliment of charging him nearly a quarter of a mile across the

clearing and "Hrrumphing" him into his veranda. Then he stood outside

the house, chuckling to himself and shaking all over with the fun of it

as an elephant will.

"We'll thrash him," said the planter. "He shall have the finest

thrashing ever elephant received. Give Kala Nag and Nazim twelve foot of

chain apiece, and tell them to lay on twenty."

Kala Nag--which means Black Snake--and Nazim were two of the biggest

elephants in the lines, and one of their duties was to administer the

graver punishment, since no man can beat an elephant properly.

They took the whipping-chains and rattled them in their trunks as they

sidled up to Moti Guj, meaning to hustle him between them. Moti Guj had

never, in all his life of thirty-nine years, been whipped, and he did

not intend to begin a new experience. So he waited, waving his head from

right to left, and measuring the precise spot in Kala Nag's fat side

where a blunt tusk could sink deepest. Kala Nag had no tusks; the chain

was the badge of his authority; but for all that, he swung wide of Moti

Guj at the last minute, and tried to appear as if he had brought the

chain out for amusement. Nazim turned round and went home early. He did

not feel fighting fit that morning and so Moti Guj was left, standing

alone with his ears cocked.

That decided the planter to argue no more, and Moti Guj rolled back to

his amateur inspection of the clearing. An elephant who will not work

and is not tied up is about as manageable as an eighty-one-ton gun loose

in a heavy seaway. He slapped old friends on the back and asked them if

the stumps were coming away easily; he talked nonsense concerning labor

and the inalienable rights of elephants to a long "nooning"; and,

wandering to and fro, he thoroughly demoralized the garden till sundown,

when he returned to his picket for food.

"If you won't work, you shan't eat," said Chihun, angrily. "You're a

wild elephant, and no educated animal at all. Go back to your jungle."

Chihun's little brown baby was rolling on the floor of the hut, and

stretching out its fat arms to the huge shadow in the doorway. Moti Guj

knew well that it was the dearest thing on earth to Chihun. He swung out

his trunk with a fascinating crook at the end, and the brown baby threw

itself, shouting upon it. Moti Guj made fast and pulled up till the

brown baby was crowing in the air twelve feet above his father's head.

"Great Lord!" said Chihun. "Flour cakes of the best, twelve in number,

two feet across and soaked in rum, shall be yours on the instant, and

two hundred pounds weight of fresh-cut young sugar-cane therewith. Deign

only to put down safely that insignificant brat who is my heart and my

life to me!"

Moti Guj tucked the brown baby comfortably between his forefeet, that

could have knocked into toothpicks all Chihun's hut, and waited for his

food. He ate it, and the brown baby crawled away. Moti Guj dozed and

thought of Deesa. One of many mysteries connected with the elephant is

that his huge body needs less sleep than anything else that lives. Four

or five hours in the night suffice--two just before midnight, lying down

on one side; two just after one o'clock, lying down on the other. The

rest of the silent hours are filled with eating and fidgeting, and long

grumbling soliloquies.

At midnight, therefore, Moti Guj strode out of his pickets, for a

thought had come to him that Deesa might be lying drunk somewhere in the

dark forest with none to look after him. So all that night he chased

through the undergrowth, blowing and trumpeting and shaking his ears. He

went down to the river and blared across the shallows where Deesa used

to wash him, but there was no answer. He could not find Deesa, but he

disturbed all the other elephants in the lines, and nearly frightened to

death some gypsies in the woods.

At dawn Deesa returned to the plantation. He had been very drunk indeed,

and he expected to get into trouble for outstaying his leave. He drew a

long breath when he saw that the bungalow and the plantation were still

uninjured, for he knew something of Moti Guj's temper, and reported

himself with many lies and salaams. Moti Guj had gone to his pickets for

breakfast. The night exercises had made him hungry.

"Call up your beast," said the planter; and Deesa shouted in the

mysterious elephant language that some mahouts believe came from China

at the birth of the world, when elephants and not men were masters. Moti

Guj heard and came. Elephants do not gallop. They move from places at

varying rates of speed. If an elephant wished to catch an express train

he could not gallop, but he could catch the train. So Moti Guj was at

the planter's door almost before Chihun noticed that he had left his

pickets. He fell into Deesa's arms, trumpeting with joy, and the man and

beast wept and slobbered over each other, and handled each other from

head to heel to see that no harm had befallen.

"Now we will get to work," said Deesa. "Lift me up, my son and my joy!"

Moti Guj swung him up, and the two went to the coffee-clearing to look

for difficult stumps.

The planter was too astonished to be very angry.

397

Among the writers of nature fiction, probably

no one deserves higher rank than Charles G. D.

Roberts (1860--), a Canadian. Mr. Roberts does

not tell of his own adventures. His stories are

truly nature fiction because the characters are

animals and the purpose is to reveal the nature

of these characters by showing how they would

act when placed in various imaginary

situations. _Kings in Exile_, from which the

following selection is taken, is a book of

splendid stories of large animals. Other

excellent books by Mr. Roberts, suitable for

the seventh and eighth grades, are _Hoof and

Claw_, _Children of the Wild_, _Secret Trails_,

and _Watchers of the Trails_, ("Last Bull" is

used by permission of the publishers, The

Macmillan Co., New York.)

LAST BULL

CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS

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

though his official title, on the lists of the Zoological 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.

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.

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 headkeeper, 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 on-rushing 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 debris, 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.