Whisperfoot, that great coward, came out of his brush-covert when the
moon rose. It was not his usual rising time. Ordinarily he found his
best hunting in the eerie light of the twilight hour; but for certain
reasons, his knowledge of which would be extremely difficult to explain,
he let this time go by in slumber. The general verdict of mankind has
decreed that animals cannot reason. Therefore it is somewhat awkward to
explain how Whisperfoot knew that he needn't be in a hurry, that the
moon would soon be up, and the deer would be feeding in their light. But
know all these things he did, act upon them he also did, and it all came
to the same in the end. Whether or not he could reason didn't affect the
fact that a certain chipmunk, standing at the threshold of his house to
glimpse the moonlit forest, saw him come slipping like a cloud of brown
smoke from his lair a full hour after the little creature had every
right to think that he had gone to his hunting,--and straightway tumbled
back into his house with a near attack of heart failure.
But the truth was that the chipmunk was presuming upon his own
desirability as food. His fear really wasn't justified. It would not be
altogether true to say that Whisperfoot never ate chipmunks. Sometimes
in winter, and sometimes in the dawns after an unsuccessful hunt, he ate
things a great deal smaller and many times more disagreeable than
chipmunks. But the great cat is always very proud when he first leaves
his lair. He won't look at anything smaller than a horned buck. He is a
great deal like a human hunter who will pass up a lone teal on the way
out and slay a pair of his own live-duck decoys on the way back.
Whisperfoot had slept almost since dawn. It is a significant quality in
the felines that they simply cannot keep in condition without hours and
hours of sleep. It is true that they are highly nervous creatures,
sensualists of the worst, and living intensely from twilight to dawn;
and they burn up more nervous energy in a night than Urson, the
porcupine, does in a year. In this matter of sleeping, they are in a
direct contrast to the wolves, who seemingly never sleep at all, unless
it is with one eye open, and in still greater contrast to the king of
all beasts, the elephant, who is said to slumber less per night than
that great electrical wizard whom all men know and praise.
The great cat came out yawning, as graceful a thing as treads upon the
earth. He was almost nine feet long from the tip of his nose to the end
of his tail, and he weighed as much as many a full-grown man. And he
fairly rippled when he walked, seemingly without effort, almost without
resting his cushions on the ground. He stood and yawned insolently, for
all the forest world to see. He rather hoped that the chipmunk, staring
with beady eyes from his doorway, did see him. He would just as soon
that Woof's little son, the bear cub, should see him too. But he wasn't
so particular about Woof himself, or the wolf pack whose song had just
wakened him. And above all things, he wanted to keep out of the sight of
men.
For when all things are said and done, there were few bigger cowards in
the whole wilderness world than Whisperfoot. A good many people think
that Graycoat the coyote could take lessons from him in this respect.
But others, knowing how a hunter is brought in occasionally with almost
all human resemblance gone from him because a cougar charged in his
death agony, think this is unfair to the larger animal. And it is true
that a full-grown cougar will sometimes attack horned cattle, something
that no American animal cares to do unless he wants a good fight on his
paws and of which the very thought would throw Graycoat into a spasm;
and there have been even stranger stories, if one could quite believe
them. A certain measure of respect must be extended to any animal that
will hunt the great bull elk, for to miss the stroke and get caught
beneath the churning, lashing, slashing, razor-edged front hoofs is
simply death, painful and without delay. But the difficulty lies in the
fact that these things are not done in the ordinary, rational blood of
hunting. What an animal does in its death agony, or to protect its
young, what great game it follows in the starving times of winter, can
be put to neither its debit nor its credit. A coyote will charge when
mad. A raccoon will put up a wicked fight when cornered. A hen will peck
at the hand that robs her nest. When hunting was fairly good,
Whisperfoot avoided the elk and steer almost as punctiliously as he
avoided men, which is saying very much indeed; and any kind of terrier
could usually drive him straight up a tree.
But he did like to pretend to be very great and terrible among the
smaller forest creatures. And he was Fear itself to the deer. A human
hunter who would kill two deer a week for fifty-two weeks would be
called a much uglier name than poacher; but yet this had been
Whisperfoot's record, on and off, ever since his second year. Many a
great buck wore the scar of the full stroke,--after which Whisperfoot
had lost his hold. Many a fawn had crouched panting with terror in the
thickets at just a tawny light on the gnarled limb of a pine. Many a doe
would grow great-eyed and terrified at just his strange, pungent smell
on the wind.
He yawned again, and his fangs looked white and abnormally large in the
moonlight. His great, green eyes were still clouded and languorous from
sleep. Then he began to steal up the ridge toward his hunting grounds.
Dry as the thickets were, still he seemed to traverse them with almost
absolute silence. It was a curious thing that he walked straight in the
face of the soft wind that came down from the snow fields, and yet there
wasn't a weathercock to be seen anywhere. And neither had the chipmunk
seen him wet a paw and hold it up, after the approved fashion of holding
up a finger. He had a better way of knowing,--a chill at the end of his
whiskers.
In fact, the other forest creatures did not see him at all. He took very
great precautions that they shouldn't. Whisperfoot was not a
long-distance runner, and his whole success depended on a surprise
attack, either by stalking or from ambush. In this he is different from
his fellow cowards, the wolves. Whisperfoot catches his meat fresh,
before terror has time to steal out of the heart and poison it; and
thus, he tells his cubs, he is a higher creature than the wolves. He
kept to the deepest shadow, sometimes the long, strange profile of a
pine, sometimes just the thickets of buckbrush.
And by now, he no longer cared to yawn. He was wide awake. The sleep had
gone out of his eyes and left them swimming in a curious, blue-green
fire. And the hunting madness was getting to him: that wild, exultant
fever that comes fresh to all the hunting creatures as soon as the night
comes down.
The little, breathless night sounds in the brush around him seemed to
madden him. They made a song to him, a strange, wild melody that even
such frontiersmen as Dan and Lennox could not experience. A thousand
smells brushed down to him on the wind, more potent than any wine or
lust. He began to tremble all over with rapture and excitement. But
unlike Cranston's trembling, no wilderness ear was keen enough to hear
the leaves rustling beneath him.
His excitement did not affect his hunting skill at all. In fact, he
couldn't succeed without it. A human hunter, with the same excitement
and fever, would have been rendered impotent long since. His aim would
be shattered, he would make false steps to frighten the game, and not
even Urson, the porcupine, would really have cause to fear him. The
reason is rather simple. Man has lived a civilized existence for so long
that many of the traits that make him a successful hunter have to be
laboriously re-learned. As soon as he becomes excited, he forgets his
training. The hunting cunning of a cougar, however, is inborn, and like
a great pianist, he can usually do better when he is warmed up to his
work.
Men would cross many seas for a few minutes of such wild, nerve-tingling
rapture as Whisperfoot knew as he crept into his hunting grounds. Ever
he went more cautiously, his tawny body lowering. And just as he reached
the ridge top he heard his first game.
It was just a rustle in the thickets at one side. Whisperfoot stopped
dead still, then slowly lowered his body. The only motion left was the
sinuous whipping of his tail. But he couldn't identify his game yet. He
peered with fiery eyes into the darkness. He was almost in leaping range
already.
But at once he knew that the creature that grunted and stirred in the
brush was not a deer. A deer would have detected his presence long
since, as the animal was at one side of him, instead of in front, and
would have caught his scent. Then, the wind blowing straighter, he
recognized the creature. It was just old Urson, the porcupine.
For very good reasons, Whisperfoot never attacked Urson except in
moments of utmost need. It was extremely doubtful that he spared him for
the same reason that he was spared by the wisest of the
mountaineers,--that he was game to be taken when starving and when no
other could be procured. It was rather that he was very awkward to kill
and considerably worse to eat.
It is better to dine on nightshade, says a forest law, than to eat a
porcupine; for the former innocent-looking little berry is almost as
fast a death as a rifle bullet, and the flesh of the latter animal will
torture with a hundred red-hot fires in the vitals before its eater is
driven to its eternal lair. But it isn't that the porcupine's flesh is
poison. It is just that an incautious bite on its armored body will fill
the throat and mouth with spines, needle points that work ever deeper
until they result in death. And so it is quite a tribute to
Whisperfoot's intelligence that he had killed and devoured no less than
a dozen porcupines and still lived to tell the tale.
He simply knew how to handle them. He knew an upward scoop with the end
of his claws that would tip the creature over; and then he would pounce
on the unprotected abdomen. But it was considerable trouble, and he had
to be careful of the spines all the time he was eating,--a particular
annoyance to one who habitually and savagely bolts his food. So he made
a careful detour about Urson and continued on his way. He heard the
latter squealing and rattling his quills behind him.