WHEN BANNERTAIL WAS SCARRED FOR LIFE
IT makes indeed merry play, with just enough of excitement when you bait
the Bull, and dodge back to the fence to laugh at his impotent raging.
But it makes a very different chapter when a second Bull comes on the
other side of the fence. Then the game is over, the Bull-baiter must
find some far refuge or scramble up the nearest sheltering tree, or pay
the price.
Bannertail had an ancient feud with the big Hen-hawk, whose stick nest
was only a mile away, high in a rugged beech. There were a dozen
farmyards that paid unwilling tribute to that Hawk, a hundred little
meadows with their Mice and Meadowlarks, and one open stretch of marsh
with its Muskrats and its Ducks. But the hardwood ridges, too, he
counted on for dues. The Squirrels all were his, if only he could catch
them. Many a game had he and Bannertail, a game of life and death.
[Illustration]
They played again that morning in July. It was the same old swooping of
the whistling pinions, and the grasping of strong yellow feet with hard
black claws, grasping at nothing, where was a Graycoat half a heartbeat
back, the same flaunting silver flag, the mocking "_Grrrff, grrrff_,"
the teasing and daring of the Hawk to make another swoop. Then did that
big Hen-hawk what he should have done before. He filled the air with his
war-cry, the long screaming "_Yek-yek-yeeeek!_" Coursing low and swift
came another, his mate, the lady bandit, even fiercer than himself.
Swift and with little noise she came. And when savage old Yellow-eyes
swooped and Bannertail whisked around the tree, he whisked right into
the clutches of the deadlier she-one. He barely escaped by a marvellous
side rush around the trunk. Here again was Yellow-eyes, but right in his
face Bannertail dashed his big silvery tail. The Hawk in his haste
clutched at its nothingness, or he would have got the Graycoat. But luck
was with Bannertail, and again he dodged around the trunk. Alas, the she
Hawk was there, and struck; her mighty talons grazed his haunch, three
rips they made in his glossy, supple coat. In an instant more the
Redtail would have trussed him, for there was no cover, only the big,
outstanding trunk, with the Hen-hawks above and below. A moment more
and Bannertail's mate, helpless in the distant nest, would have seen
him borne away. But as they closed, he leaped--leaped with all his
strength, far from them into open air, and faster than they could fly in
such a place, down, down, his silver plume in function just behind him,
down a hundred feet to fall and land in a thicket of laurel, wounded and
bleeding, but safe. He scrambled into a thicker maze, and gazed with new
and tenser feelings at the baffled Hen-hawks, circling, screaming high
above him.
[Illustration]
Soon the bandits gave up. Clearly the Graycoat had won, and they flew to
levy their robber-baron tribute on some others that they held to be
their vassals.
[Illustration: A DANGEROUS GAME]
Yes, Bannertail had won, by a narrow lead. He had taken a mighty hazard
and had learned new wisdom--Never play the game with death till you have
to, for if you win one hundred times and lose once you have lost your
whole stake. On his haunch he carried, carries yet, the three long
scars, where the fur is a little paler--the brand of the robber
baroness, the slash of the claws that nearly got him.
[Illustration]
Have you noted that in the high Alleghenies, where the Graycoats seldom
see hunters of any kind, they scamper while the enemy is far away; but
they peer from upper limbs and call out little challenges? In Jersey
woods, where a wiser race has come, they never challenge a near foe;
they make no bravado rushes. They signal if they see an enemy near, then
hide away in perfect stillness till that enemy, be it Hawk in air or
Hound on earth, is far away, or in some sort ceases to be a menace.
And menfolk hunters, who tell of their feats around the glowing stove in
the winter-time, say there is a new race of Graycoats come. Any gunner
could kill one of the old sort, but it takes a great hunter such as
themselves to get one of the new. This latter-day Graycoat has gotten
much wisdom into his little brain, and one of the things he knows: "It
never pays to gamble with destruction."
The new race, they say, began in a certain hickory wood. We know that
wood, and we have seen a little how the wisdom came, and can easily
reason why it spread.
[Illustration]
_THE FIGHT WITH THE BLACK DEMON_