THE FIGHT WITH THE BLACK DEMON
NEXT in importance to the Squirrels, after the towering trees with their
lavish bounty, was the brook that carried down scraps of the blue sky to
inlay them with green moss, purple logs, and gold-brown stones, that
sang its low, sweet song both day and night, and that furnished to the
family their daily drink.
"Do not drink at the pond" is a Squirrel maxim, for in it lurks the
fearful Snapping Turtle and the grinning Pike. Its banks are muddy, too,
and the water warm. It is better to drink from some low log, along the
brook itself.
[Illustration]
And do not drink in the blinding sunlight, which makes it hard to see if
danger is near; then, too, it is that the Blacksnake crawls out to seek
some basking place in the hottest sun.
[Illustration]
Yes, this is Squirrel wisdom; the morning drink is at sunrise, the
evening at sunset, when the cool shade is on the woods but darkness not
begun.
The Graycoat family held together still, though the Harvest-moon was red
in the low eastern sky. Some Squirrel families break up as soon as the
young are nearly grown. But some there are that are held together
longer, very long, by unseen bonds of sympathy with which they have been
gifted in a little larger measure than is common. Brownhead was much
away, living his own life. Still, he came home. Nyek-nyek, gentle,
graceful Nyek-nyek, clung to her mother and the old nest, like a very
weanling; and rest assured that in Squirrel-land, as in others, love is
begotten and intensified by love.
The morning drink and the morning meal were the established daily
routine. Then came a time of exercise and play. But all Squirrels that
are hale and wise take a noonday nap.
Each was stretched on one or other of the sleeping platforms, lying
lazily at ease one noontime. The day was very hot, and the sun swung
round so it glared on Nyek-nyek's sleeping-porch. Panting soon with the
heat, she decided to drink, swung to the gangway of their huge trunk and
started down the tree. The little mother, ever alert, watched the young
one go. There was in her heart just a shadow of doubt, of distrust, much
as a human mother might feel if she saw her toddler venture forth alone
into the night.
Nyek-nyek swung to the ground, coursed in billowy ripples of
silver-gray along a log, stopped on a stump to look around and
religiously fluff her tail, while mother dreamily watched through
half-closed eyes. Then out into the brilliant sunlight she went. Some
creatures are dazed and made lazy by the hot, bright glare, some find in
it a stimulant, a multiplier of their life force; it sets their senses
on a keener edge; it gifts them with new speed, intensifies their every
power.
The Graycoats are of the first kind, and of the second was Coluber, the
long, black, shiny, blue-black Snake that was lying like a limp and
myriad-linked chain flung across a big, low log--a log that sucked the
sun heat as it lay, just where the brook expanded to the pond. Never a
blink was there in those gray-green eyes, never a quiver in that long,
lithe tongue. One not knowing would have said he is dead; one knowing
him well would have said he is filling up his storage-batteries to the
full. Never a wriggle was there in even the nervous tail tip, that
nearly always switches to and fro; yet not a move of the Squirrel since
she left her sleeping porch was lost on him.
What was it gave a new pathway to the young Graycoat? Was it Mother
Carey who led her with a purpose? Not to the familiar log she went,
where the family had always found an ideal footing when they took the
morning drink, but down-stream, toward the pond and on to the little
muddy shore.
[Illustration]
The mother Squirrel saw that, and her feeling of doubt grew stronger.
She rose up to follow, but gazed a moment to see a sudden horror. Just
as the little Nyek-nyek stooped and sank her face deep to her eyes in
the cooling flood, the Blacksnake sprang, sprang from his coil as a
Blacksnake springs, when the victim is within the measured length.
Sprang with his rows of teeth agape, clinched on her neck, and in a
trice the heavy coils, tense with energy, ridged with muscle,
flash-lapped around her neck and loins, gripped in an awful grip, while
the lithe, live scaly tail wrapped round a branch to anchor both killer
and victim to the place. One shriek of "_Qua_," another fainter, and a
final gasp, and no more sound from Nyek-nyek. But she struggled, a
hopeless, helpless struggle. The mother saw it all. Fear of that
terrible Snake was forgotten. Not one moment did she pause. She did not
clamber down that tree. She leaped to the next and a lower yet, and
along a log; five heart-beats put her on the spot; and with all her
force she drove her teeth into the hard, scaly coil of the beast that
she held in mortal fear. With a jerk the monster quit his neck hold on
the young one. She was helpless, bound in his coil, and the Snake's
dread jaws with the rows of pointed teeth clamped on the mother's neck,
and another fold of that long, hellish length was hitched around her
throat. Scratch she could and struggle, but bite she could not, for the
coil held her as in a vise. For a moment only could she make a sound,
the long, long, screaming "_Queeee_," the Squirrel call for help; and
Bannertail, lazily dozing on his sunning perch, sprang up and set his
ears acock.
[Illustration]
It was not repeated, but the sound of struggle was there, and the
keen-eyed father Squirrel saw the flash of a silver tail, the signal of
his kind. And from that perch high in the air he leaped in one long,
parachuting leap; he landed on the ground, and in three mighty bounds he
was at the place. The horror of the Snake was on him. It set his coat
a-bristling; but it did not hold him back. It only added desperation to
his onset. Clutching that devilish scaly neck with both his arms, he
drove in his chisel teeth and ground them in, down to the very bone, as
Silvergray could not have done. He worked and tugged and stabbed again,
and the Snake, sensing a new and stronger foe, relaxed on Silvergray,
snapped with his hateful jaws, seized Bannertail's strong shoulder just
where he best could stand it--where the skin is thick and strong the
Blacksnake drove in and gripped. And Bannertail, as quick, quit his
first hold on the coil that was strangling Nyek-nyek, and by good luck,
or maybe by better wisdom than his own, drove, fighting fierce, into the
demon's throat, the weak spot in that scaly armor. Deep sank the
Squirrel's teeth, and pangs of mortal agony went thrilling through the
reptile's length. But he was strong, and a desperate fighter, too. The
coils unloosed on the senseless form of Nyek-nyek and lapped in a
trice on Bannertail, three times round, straining, crushing, while his
rows of cruel fangs were sunk in the Squirrel's silvery side.
[Illustration: THE BATTLE WITH THE BLACKSNAKE]
[Illustration]
But in throwing all his force against Bannertail he released the little
Gray mother. She flung herself again on the black horror, and bit with
all her power the head that was gripped on the shoulder of her mate.
Very narrow is the demon reptile's head, and only one place was open,
offered to her grip. She bit with all her force across the eyes, her
long, sharp chisels entered in. His eyes were pierced, his brain was
stung. With an agonizing last convulsion he wrenched on Bannertail,
then, quivering with a palsy that changed to a springing open of the
coils, he dashed his head from side to side, lashed his tail, heaved
this way and that, coiled up, then straightened out. The Squirrels
leaped back, the monster lashed in writhing convolutions, felt the cool
water that he could no longer see, went squirming out upon it, working
his frothy jaws, lashing, thrashing with his tail. Then up from the
darkest depths came a hideous goggle-eyed head, a monstrous head, as big
as a Squirrel's whole body, and on it a horny beak, which, opening,
showed a huge red maw, and the squirming Blacksnake was seized by the
bigger brute. Crushed and broken in those mighty jaws was the Black
One's supple spine; torn open by those great claws was his belly, ended
was his life. The Snapper sank, taking the Blacksnake with him. It was
the finish of an ancient feud between them, and down in the dark depths
of the pond the Water Demon feasted on the body of his foe.
[Illustration]
And Bannertail, the brave fighter, with the heroic little Mother and
Nyek-nyek now revived, drew quickly back to safety. A little cut they
were, but mostly breathless, their very wind squeezed out by those dread
coils. The ripples on the pool had scarcely died before they were all
three again in the dear old nest, with Brownhead back anew from a far
journey. Without words, were they to tell of their thrills and fears, or
their joy; but this reaction came: They cuddled up in the nest, a little
closer than before, a little more at one, a little less to feel the
scatteration craze that comes in most wild families when the young are
grown; which meant these young will have for a little longer the good
offices of their parents, and are thereby fitted a little better for the
life-battle, a little more likely to win.
Is it not by such accumulating little things that brain and brawn and
the world success of every dominating race of creatures has been built?
[Illustration]
_THE PROPERTY LAW AMONG ANIMALS_