BANNERTAIL FALLS INTO A SNARE
BANNERTAIL was now in fresh midsummer coat of sleekest gray. His tail
was a silver plume, and bigger than himself. His health was perfect. And
just so surely as a sick one longs to be and to stay at home, so a lusty
Squirrel hankers to go a-roaming.
Swinging from tree to tree, leaping the familiar jump-ways, he left the
family one early morning, drank deeply at the spring brook, went on
aground "hoppity-hop" for a dozen hops, then stopped to look around and
frisk his tail. Then on, and again a look around. So he left the
hickory woods, and swung a mile away, till at last he was on the far
hillside where first he met the Redhead.
High in a tasselled pine he climbed and sat, and his fine nose took in
the pleasant gum smells with the zest that came from their strangeness
as much as from their sweetness.
[Illustration]
As he sat he heard a rustling, racketty little noise in the thicket
near. Flattening to the bough and tightening in his tail he watched.
What should appear but his old enemy, the Redhead, dragging, struggling
with something on the ground, stopping to sputter out his energetic,
angry "_Snick, snick_," as the thing he dragged caught in roots and
twigs. Bannertail lay very low and watched intently. The Redsquirrel
fussed and worked with his burden, now close at hand. Bannertail saw
that it was a flat, round thing, like an acorn-cup, only many times
larger, and reddish, with a big, thick stem on the wrong side--a stem
that was white, like new-peeled wood.
Bannertail had seen such growing in the woods, once or twice; little
ones they were, but his nose and his inner guide had said: "Let them
alone." And here was this fiery little Redsquirrel dragging one off as
though he had a prize! Sometimes he lifted it bodily and made good
headway, sometimes it dragged and caught in the growing twigs. At last
it got fixed between two, and with the energy and fury that so often go
with red hair, the Redhead jerked, shoved, and heaved, and the brittle,
red-topped toadstool broke in two or three crisp pieces. As he sputtered
and Squirrel-cussed, there was a warning Bluejay note. Redhead ran up
the nearest tree; as it happened, the one in which was Bannertail, and
in an instant the enemies were face to face. "Scold and fight" is the
Redsquirrel's first impulse, but when Bannertail rose up to full height
and spread his wondrous tail the Red one was appalled. He knew his foe
again; his keen, discriminating nose got proofs of that. The memory of
defeat was with him yet. He retreated, snick-sputtering, and finally
went wholly out of sight.
When all was still, Bannertail made his way to the broken mushroom; rosy
red and beautiful its cap, snowy white its stem and its crisp, juicy
flesh.
[Illustration]
But of this he took no count. The smelling of it was his great chemic
test. It had the quaint, earthy odor of the little ones he had seen
before, and yet a pungent, food-like smell, like butternuts, indeed,
with the sharp pepper tang of the rind a little strong, and a whiff,
too, of the many-legged crawling things that he had learned to shun.
Still, it was alluring as food. And now was a crucial time, a veritable
trail fork. Had Bannertail been fed and full, the tiny little sense of
repulsion would have turned the scale, would have reasserted and
strengthened the first true verdict of his guides--"Bad, let it alone."
But it had an attractive nut-like aroma that was sweetly appetizing,
that set his mouth a-watering; and this thing turned the scale--he was
hungry.
[Illustration]
He nibbled and liked it, and nibbled yet more. And though it was a big,
broad mushroom, he stopped not till it all was gone. Food, good food it
surely was. But it was something more; the weird juices that are the
earth-child's blood entered into him and set the fountains of his life
force playing with marvellous power. He was elated. He was full of
fight. He flung out a defiant "_Qua!_" at a Hen-hawk flying over. He
rummaged through the pines to find that fighting Redsquirrel. He leaped
tree gaps that he would not at another time have dared. Yes, and he
fell, too; but the ample silver plume behind was there to land him
softly on the earth. He made a long, far, racing journey, saw hills and
woods that were new to him. He came to a big farmhouse like the one his
youth had known, but passed it by, and galloped to another hillside.
From the top of a pine he vented his wild spirits in a boisterous
song--the song of spring and fine weather, and the song of autumn time
and vigor.
The sun was low when, feeling his elation gone, feeling dumb and drowsy,
indeed, he climbed the homestead tree and glided into the old Hawk nest
to curl in his usual place beside his family.
Silvergray sniffed suspiciously; she smelled his whiskers, she
nibble-nibbled with tongue and lips at the odd-smelling specks of
whitish food on his coat, and the juices staining his face and paws.
New food; it was strange, but pleased her not. A little puzzled, she
went to sleep, and Bannertail's big tail was coverlet for all the
family.
[Illustration]
_THE ADDICT_