The Intimates
After this experience Miranda felt herself initiated, as she had so
longed to be, into the full fellowship of the folk of the ancient wood.
Almost every day Kroof came prowling about the edges of the clearing.
Miranda was sure to catch sight of her before long and run to her with
joyous caresses. Farther than a few steps into the open the big bear
would not come, having no desire to cultivate Kirstie, or the cabin, or
the cattle, or aught that appertained to civilization. But Kirstie,
after watching from a courteous distance a few of these strange
interviews, wisely gave the child a little more latitude. Miranda was
permitted to go a certain fixed distance into the wood, but never so far
as quite to lose sight of the cabin; and this permission was only for
such times as she was with Kroof. Kirstie knew something about wild
animals; and she knew that the black bear, when it formed an attachment,
was inalienably and uncalculatingly loyal to it.
As sometimes happens in an affection which runs counter to the lines of
kinship, Kroof seemed more passionately devoted to the child than she
had been to her own cub. She would gaze with eyes of rapture, her mouth
hanging half open in foolish fondness, while Miranda, playing about her,
acquired innumerable secrets of forest-lore. Whatsoever Miranda wanted
her to do, she would strive to do, as soon as she could make out what it
was; for, in truth, Miranda’s speech, though very pleasant to her ear,
was not very intelligible to her brain. On one point, however, she was
inflexible. Perhaps for a distance of thrice her own length she would
follow Miranda out into the clearing, but farther than that she would
not go. Persuasions, petulance, argument, tears—Miranda tried them all,
but in vain. When Miranda tried going behind and pushing, or going in
front and pulling, the beast liked it, and her eyes would blink
humorously. But her mind was made up. This obstinacy, so disappointing
to Miranda, met with Kirstie’s unqualified but unexpressed approval. She
did not want Kroof’s ponderous bulk hanging about the house or loafing
around and getting in the way when she was at work in the fields.
Though Kroof was averse to civilization, she was at the same time
sagacious enough to see that she could not have Miranda always with her
in the woods. She knew very well that the tall woman with red on her
head was a very superior and mysterious kind of animal,—and that Miranda
was her cub,—a most superior kind of cub, and always to be regarded with
a secret awe, but still a cub, and belonging to the tall woman.
Therefore she was not aggrieved when she found that she could not have
Miranda with her in the woods for more than an hour or two at a time. In
that hour or two, however, much could be done; and Kroof tried to teach
Miranda many things which it is held good to know among the folk of the
ancient wood. She would sniff at the mould and dig up sweet-smelling
roots; and Miranda, observing the stems and leaves of them, soon came to
know all the edible roots of the neighbourhood. Kroof showed her, also,
the delicate dewberry, the hauntingly delicious capillaire, hidden under
its trailing vines, the insipidly sweet Indian pear, and the harmless
but rather cotton-woolly partridge-berry; and she taught her to shun the
tempting purple fruit of the trillium, as well as the deadly
snake-berry. The blueberry, dear alike to bears and men, did not grow in
the heavy-timbered forest, but Miranda had known that fruit well from
those earliest days in the Settlement, when she had so often stained her
mouth with blueberry pie. As for the scarlet clusters of the
pigeon-berry, carpeting the hillocks of the pasture, Miranda needed no
teaching from Kroof to know that these were good. Then, there were all
sorts of forest fungi, of many shapes and colours,—white, pink, delicate
yellow, shining orange covered with warts, creamy drab, streaky green,
and even strong crimson. Toadstools, Miranda called them at first, with
indiscriminating dread and aversion. But Kroof taught her better. Some,
indeed, the red ones and the warty ones in particular, the wise animal
would dash to pieces with her paw; and these Miranda understood to be
bad. In fact, their very appearance had something ominous in it, and to
Miranda’s eye they had _poison_ written all over them in big letters.
But there was one very white and dainty-looking, sweet-smelling fungus
which she would have sworn to as virtuous. As soon as she saw it, she
thought of a peculiarly shy mushroom (she loved mushrooms), and ran to
pick it up in triumph. But Kroof thrust her aside with such rudeness
that she fell over a stump, much offended. Her indignation died away,
however, as she saw Kroof tearing and stamping the pale mushrooms to
minutest fragments, with every mark of loathing. From this Miranda
gathered that the beautiful toadstool was a very monster of crime. It
was, indeed; for it was none other than the deadly amanita, one small
morsel of which would have hushed Miranda into the sleep which does not
wake.
Though Miranda was safe under Kroof’s tutelage, it was perhaps just as
well for her at that period of her youth that she was forbidden to stray
from the clearing. For there was, indeed, one tribe among the folk of
the wood against whose anger Kroof’s protection would have very little
availed. Had Miranda gone roaming, she and Kroof, they might have found
a bee tree. It is doubtful if Kroof’s sagacity would have told her that
Miranda’s skin was not adequate to an enterprise against bee trees. The
zealous bear would have probably wanted honey for the child, and the
result would have been such as to shake Kirstie’s confidence in Kroof’s
judgment.
There were, however, several well-inhabited ant-logs in that narrow
circuit which Miranda was allowed to tread, and on a certain afternoon
Kroof discovered one of these. She was much pleased. Here was a chance
to show Miranda something very nice and very good for her health. Having
attracted the child’s attention, she ripped the rotten log to its heart,
and began licking up the swarming insects and plump white larvæ
together. Here was a treat; but the incomprehensible Miranda, with a
shuddering scream, ran away. Kroof was bewildered. She finished the
ants, however, while she was about it. Whereafter she was called upon to
hear a long lecture from Miranda, to the effect that ants were not good
to eat, and that it was very cruel to tear open their nests and steal
their eggs. Of course, as Kroof did not at all understand what she was
driving at, there was no room for an argument; which, considering the
points involved, is much to be regretted.
Though Miranda had now, so to speak, the freedom of the wood, she was
not really intimate with any of the furtive folk, saving only, of
course, the irrepressible squirrels who lived in the cabin roof. She saw
the wild creatures now very close at hand, and they went about their
business under her eye without concern. They realized that it was no use
trying with her their game of invisibility. No matter how perfect their
stillness, no matter how absolutely they made themselves one with their
surroundings, they felt her clear, unwavering, friendly eyes look them
through and through. This was at first a troubling mystery to them. Who
was this youngling,—for youth betrays itself even to the most primitive
perceptions,—who, for all her youth, set their traditions and elaborate
devices so easily at naught? Their instincts told them, however, that
she was no foe to the weakest of them; and so they let her see them at
their affairs unabashed, though avoiding her with a kind of careful awe.
Kroof, too, they all avoided, but with a difference. They knew that she
was not averse to an occasional meal of flesh meat, but that she would
not greatly trouble herself in pursuit of it. All they had to do, these
lesser folk of the wood, was to keep at a safe distance from the sweep
of her mighty paw, and they felt at ease in her neighbourhood. All but
the hare—_he_ knew that Kroof considered him and his long-eared children
a special delicacy, well worth the effort of a bear. Miranda wondered
why she could never see anything of the hare when she was out with
Kroof. She did see him sometimes, indeed; but always at a distance, and
for an instant only. On these occasions, Kroof did not see him at all;
and Miranda soon came to realize that she could see more clearly than
even the furtive folk themselves. They could hide themselves from each
other by stillness and by self-effacement; but Miranda’s eyes always
inexorably distinguished the ruddy fox from the yellow-brown, rotten log
on which he flattened himself. She instantly differentiated the moveless
nuthatch from the knot on the trunk, the squatting grouse from the
lichened stone, the wood-mouse from the curled brown leaf, the crouching
wild-cat from the mottled branch. Consequently the furtive folk
gradually began to pay her the tribute of ignoring her, which meant that
they trusted her to let them alone. They kept their reserve; but under
her interested scrutiny the nuthatch would walk up the rough-barked pine
trunk and pick insects out from under the grey scales; the golden-winged
woodpecker would hunt down the fat, white grubs which he delighted in,
and hammer sharply on the dead wood a few feet above her head; the slim,
brown stoat would chase beetles among the tree roots, untroubled by her
discreet proximity; the beruffed cock-grouse would drum from the top of
his stump till the air was full of the soft thunder of his vauntings,
and his half-grown brood would dust themselves in the deserted ant-hill
in the sunniest corner of the clearing. Only the pair of crows which,
seeing great opportunities about the reoccupied clearing, had taken up
their dwelling in the top of a tall spruce close behind the cabin, held
suspiciously aloof from Miranda. They often talked her over, in harsh
tones that jarred the ancient stillness; and they considered her
intimacy with Kroof altogether contrary to the order of things. Being
themselves exemplars of duplicity, they were quite convinced that
Miranda had ulterior motives, too deep for them to fathom; and they
therefore respected her immensely. But they did not trust her, of
course. The shy rain-birds, however, trusted her, and would whistle to
each other their long, melancholy calls foretelling rain, even though
she were standing within a few steps of them, and staring at them with
all her might; and this was a most unheard-of favour on the part of the
rain-birds, who are too reticent to let themselves be heard when any one
is near enough to see them. There might be three or four uttering their
slow, inexpressibly pathetic cadences all around the clearing; but
Kirstie could never catch a glimpse of them, though many a time she
listened with deep longing in her heart as their remote voices thrilled
across the dewy oncoming of the dusk.
Miranda saw the panther only once again that year. It was about a month
after her meeting with Kroof. She was alone, just upon the edge of the
buckwheat field, and peering into the shadowy, transparent stillness to
see what she could see. What she saw sent her little heart straight up
into her mouth. There, not a dozen paces from her, lying flat along a
fallen tree, was the panther. He was staring at her, with his eyes half
shut. Startled though she was, Miranda’s experience with Kroof had made
her very self-confident. She stood moveless, staring back into those
dangerous, half-shut eyes. After a moment or two the beautiful beast
arose and stretched himself with great deliberation, reaching out and
digging in his claws, as an ordinary cat does when it stretches. At the
same time he yawned prodigiously, so that it seemed to Miranda he would
surely split to his ears, and she looked right into his great pink
throat. Then he stepped lightly down from the tree,—on the side farthest
from Miranda,—and walked away with the air of not wishing to intrude.
This same summer, too, so momentous in its events, Miranda first met
Wapiti, the delicate-antlered buck, and Ganner, the big Canada lynx.
Needless to say, they were not in company. One morning, as she sat in a
fence corner, absorbed in building a little house of twigs around a sick
butterfly, she heard a loud snort just at her elbow. Much startled, she
gave a little cry as she looked up, and something jumped back from the
fence. She saw a bright brown head, crowned with splendid, many-pronged
antlers, and a pair of large, liquid eyes looking at her with mild
wonder.
“Oh, you _be-autiful_ deer, did I frighten you?” she cried, knowing the
visitor by pictures she had seen; and she poked her little hand through
the fence in greeting. The buck seemed very curious about the scarlet
ribbon at her neck, and eyed it steadily for half a minute. Then he came
close up to the fence again, and sniffed her hand with his fine black
nostrils, opening and closing them sensitively. He let her stroke his
smooth muzzle, and held his head quite still under the caressing of her
hand. Then some unusual sound caught his ear. It was Kirstie hoeing
potatoes near by; and presently the furrow she was following brought her
into view behind the corner of the barn. The scarlet kerchief on her
hair flamed hotly in the sun. The buck raised his head high, and stared,
and finally seemed to decide that the apparition was a hostile one. With
a snort, and an impatient stamp of his polished hoof, he wheeled about
and trotted off into the wood.
Her introduction to Ganner, the lynx, was under less gracious auspices.
Michael, the calf, who had been growing excellently all summer, was kept
tethered during the daytime to a stake in a corner of the wild-grass
meadow, about fifty yards from the edge of the forest. A little nearer
the cabin was a long thicket of blackberry brakes and elder bushes and
wild clematis, forming a dense tangle, in which Miranda had, with great
pains and at the cost of terrific scratches, formed herself a delectable
hiding-place. Here she would play house, and sometimes take a nap, in
the hot mornings, while her mother would be at work acres away, at the
very opposite side of the clearing.
One day, about eleven in the morning, Michael was lying at the limit of
her tether nearest the cabin, when she saw a strange beast come out of
the forest and halt to look at her. The animal was of a greyish rusty
brown, very pale on the belly and neck, and nearly as tall as Michael
herself; but its body was curiously short in proportion to the length of
its powerful legs. It had a perfectly round face, with round glaring
eyes, long stiff black tufts on the tips of its sharp-pointed ears, and
a fierce-looking, whitish brown whisker brushed away, as it were, from
under its chin. Its tail was a mere thick, brown stump of a tail,
looking as if it had been chopped off short. The creature gazed all
around, warily; then crouched low, its hind quarters rather higher in
the air than its fore shoulders, and stepping softly, came straight for
Michael.
[Illustration: She sprang up, . . . her whole weight straining on the
tether]
Inexperienced as Michael was, she knew that this was nothing less than
death itself approaching her. She sprang up, her awkward legs spread
wide apart, her whole weight straining on the tether, her eyes, rolling
white, fixed in horror on the dreadful object. From her throat came a
long, shrill bleat of appeal and despair.
There was no mistaking that cry. It brought Miranda from her playhouse
in an instant. In the next instant she took in the situation. “Mother!
_Mothe-e-er!_” she screamed at the top of her voice, and flew to the
defence of her beloved Michael.
The lynx, at this unexpected interference, stopped short. Miranda did
not look formidable, and he was not alarmed by any means. But she looked
unusual,—and that bit of bright red at her throat might mean something
which he did not understand,—and there was something not quite natural,
something to give him pause, in a youngster displaying this reckless
courage. For a second or two, therefore, he sat straight up like a cat,
considering; and his tufted ears the while, very erect, with the strange
whiskers under his chin, gave him an air that was fiercely dignified.
His hesitation, however, was but for a moment. Satisfied that Miranda
did not count, he came on again, more swiftly; and Miranda, seeing that
she had failed to frighten him away, just flung her arms around
Michael’s neck and screamed.
The scream should have reached Kirstie’s ear across the whole breadth of
the clearing; but a flaw of wind carried it away, and the cabin
intervened to dull its edge. Other ears than Kirstie’s, however, heard
it; heard, too, and understood Michael’s bleating. The black-and-white
cow was far away, in another pasture. (Kirstie saw her running
frantically up and down along the fence, and thought the flies were
tormenting her.) But just behind the thicket lay the two steers, Bright
and Star, contemplatively chewing their midday cud. Both had risen
heavily to their feet at Michael’s first appeal. As Miranda’s scream
rang out, Bright’s sorrel head appeared around the corner of the
thicket, anxious to investigate. He stopped at sight of Ganner, held his
muzzle high in air, snorted loudly, and shook his head with a great show
of valour. Immediately after him came Star, the black-and-white brindle.
But of a different temper was he. The moment his eyes fell upon
Michael’s foe and Miranda’s, down went his long, straight horns, up went
his brindled tail, and with a bellow of rage he charged.
The gaunt steer was an antagonist whom Ganner had no stomach to face.
With an angry snarl, which showed Miranda a terrifying set of white
teeth in a very red mouth, he turned his stump of a tail, laid flat his
tufted ears, and made for the forest with long, splendid leaps, his
exaggerated hind legs seeming to volley him forward like a ball. In
about five seconds he was out of sight among the trees; and Star,
snorting and switching his tail, stood pawing the turf haughtily in
front of Miranda and Michael.
It was Miranda who named the big lynx “Ganner” that day; because, as she
told her mother afterward, that was what he said when Star came and
drove him away.