wouldn't have so much consumption if you breathed purer air when
you slept."
_"Oui!"_ was the polite reply; and nothing more was said.
Long before dawn Ray sprang from bed, closed the door and stirred
up the fire. The moon, although low in the west, was still
brilliant when they made their way to where a stream trickled down
to Cedar Lake, and within a half-hour got their first deer, a fine
three-year-old buck.
They secured some smaller game during the morning, and in the
afternoon took the deer home, and skinned and dressed it. Most of
the carcass was hung up in the milk-room, but Jacques carried a
hind quarter in and suspended it beside the closed fireplace, later
cutting off steaks for supper and breakfast.
They passed a merry evening, each telling stories of his
experiences, which were so different in quality that they possessed
all the charm of novelty to the respective listeners. Again Ray set
the door ajar, after they had undressed, and in a few moments both
were asleep.
Several hours passed. Had either young man been awake, he might
have heard soft footfalls about the door. A squatty, heavily built
animal, with huge feet, bob tail, and pointed ears adorned with
tufts of hair, had traced the slaughtered deer to the farmhouse by
means of drops of blood, and now was searching eagerly for the
meat.
He sought the milk-room again and again, and even sprang to the
window-ledge, but could not get inside. Then he came back and
sniffed at the partly open door of the living-room.
The human smell was there, and he hesitated. But so, too, was the
odor of fresh venison, and his mouth watered.
A round head was thrust inside the door. The moon, peering above
the hemlocks to the southeastward, cast its rays through a window
directly upon the fresh meat.
The temptation was greater than the intruder was able to withstand.
Inch by inch he crowded past the swaying door, and silently crept
toward the venison. The two men were breathing very loudly, but
neither stirred; and at last he gathered supreme courage, and
leaped upon the meat.
It fell with a crash against the stove, and the two were awakened
simultaneously. As Jacques sprang from the bed, the animal backed,
dragging the quarter of venison toward the door. He collided with
it, knocking the billet of wood outside, and the latch fell into
place with a clash.
Finding himself a prisoner, the creature advanced, spitting and
growling, straight at Jacques, who, crying, _"Loup cervier! loup
cervier!"_ retreated to the bed.
But the pursuit did not end there. Seeing that the beast was about
to leap upon the bed, the Canadian hastily climbed one of the
posts, not a second too soon, and ensconced himself on the edge of
the canopy top, with his back pressed against the timbers of the
loft floor above.
Ray had been too much amazed to interfere at first, but now the
time seemed ripe to reopen the door and drive the lynx out. He made
a rush, but the angry creature turned and dashed at his legs so
viciously that in a couple of seconds he, too, found himself
perched precariously on the canopy of his own bed, with "prick-ears"
spitting and snarling on the coverlet.
"Can that beast climb up here, like a cat?" he asked, with no
little anxiety in his tones.
_"Oui,"_ was the reply, "he can; but _loup cerviers_ don'
climb mooch."
In a few moments the lynx went back to the venison, and began
eating it voraciously, only stopping to snarl when the young men
spoke or moved. The fire was very low, the room had been well
aired, and the two were thinly clad. Before long their teeth were
chattering.
"Eef Ah can get heem away from door, Ah'll roon an' get goon an'
feex heem!" Jacques said, with marked ill-will underlying his
quaint English. He clambered about the creaking canopy frame, which
threatened to collapse at any moment, till he reached the side
wall. Along this were suspended loops of onions. A big one hurtled
through the air and hit the intruder in the side. He whirled about
and dashed for the bed.
Babette, the family cat, had been concealed beneath this bed during
the preceding scrimmage. She now thrust out her head just in time
to be seen by the lynx, and the liveliest sort of chase about the
room ensued.
When hard pressed, she somehow reached a shelf close beside Ray,
climbed recklessly over him, her claws stabbing him in a dozen
places, and hid behind him. The lynx was thoroughly aroused, and
although clumsier and heavier, set out sturdily to follow.
Ray's hand fell on the shelf, and clutched a flat-iron, of which
there were a half-dozen in a row. Leaning forward, he struck the
oncomer a hard blow over the head. Prick-ears fell to the floor,
and rolled, writhing, struggling and half-stunned, under the bed.
"Now, Jacques, now!" Ray yelled. His host jumped, and was outside
the door in an instant. Ray grasped another flat-iron and waited.
The sound of struggling beneath the bed was unabated.
In five minutes he heard a plaintive voice calling outside:
"Where you put dem goons?"
"In the milk-room."
_"Oui,_ but where? Ah'm freezing!"
"I--I don't remember."
Jacques, saying many things in a _patois_ he had never learned
in the provincial school, went back to the milk-room. The lynx
ventured to show his head, and a flat-iron dented the floor close
beside it. Then the animal circled the room, dodged another
missile, and hid in a dark corner.
Ray could hear Jacques tossing things about in the obscurity of the
milk-room, but plainly finding no guns, and as plainly getting
colder every minute.
Something must be done at once. He clutched a flat-iron in each
hand, screwed his courage to the sticking point, and dropped to the
floor.
As he flung the door wide open, he heard the rasping of the lynx's
claws on the boards behind him. He dashed outside, threw both
flat-irons wildly at his pursuer, and jumped as far as he could to
one side. The lynx kept straight on, headed for the woods a few
rods away.
Jacques had found his gun at last. He took a flying shot in the
moonlight, hitting a tree at least a rod at the lynx's right. Then
the two went inside, enlivened the fire, and dressed as hastily as
possible.
"Consumption is bad, ver' bad for Canadians," said Jacques, a
half-hour later, picking his words with care.
Ray grinned, but made no reply.
"Night air is good; but Ah don' lak dese--dese beeg microbes eet
bring in."
SOLOMON'S GROUCH: THE STORY OF A BEAR
By Franklin W. Calkins
A pet grizzly bear had been for a number of years a feature
at Hartranft's. As a puny infant, barely able to crawl, Solomon,
as he was solemnly dubbed, was brought in off the Teton Mountains,
and as milk was scarcer than money at the horse-ranch, he was
aristocratically fed on malted milk.
On this expensive diet the cub throve amazingly. Good feeding was
continued after his weaning from the rubber nipple, and at the end
of three years Solomon had grown to be a fat wooly monster. He was
kept chained to a post in the warm season, and had an enclosed
stall in a big barn for his winter quarters. Ordinarily he was
good-natured, but he was a rough and not altogether safe
playfellow. The near-by bawling of cattle always aroused in him
ebullitions of rage.
"Solomon's got an awful grouch agin any noise bigger than what he
can make hisself," was the saying of the ranch hands.
When Joe Hartranft's sister, Mrs. Murray, and her two boys, Rufe
and Perry, came to the ranch to spend the month of June, Solomon
was promptly hustled into his stall in the barn. It was thought
best to have no boys fooling round the grizzly.
This would undoubtedly have been the safest disposition, but for an
oversight of the "stable boss." A big Percheron had been kept loose
in a closed stall adjoining Solomon's, and one day, when the bear's
voice was raised in remonstrance against his shrill neighing, he
had turned his heels loose against the partition which separated
them. His fierce battery had loosened two boards four or five feet
above the floor. And the cracks he made had gone unnoted, or at
least the mending had been neglected.
A few days after the visitors came, a fine shorthorn cow with a new
calf was turned into the barn for the day.
Men and work-horses were at work at the alfalfa-cutting, and the
bear and cow and calf were sole occupants of the barn when Rufe and
Perry mounted an outside ladder and entered its loft.
This loft, with its grain-bins, its huge empty space, its
cross-beams and braces, offered an attractive gymnasium. In one of
the bins, used chiefly for storage, they discovered a lot of
fishing-tackle, seines and spears of various sorts for taking the
salmon which annually ran up the Snake River and its tributaries.
They had ventured to drag out one of the seines and unroll it on
the floor of the loft, when the cow below them broke into
distressful bawling. Peering down a square aperture, through which
hay was lifted by machine forks in the season of storing, they saw
that the calf had got in between the wheels of two buggies which
were housed on one side of the driveway.
The feeble creature was stuck fast enough, and the helpless dam
could only bellow her distress. The boys, in spite of some fear of
the cow, would have gone down to extricate the calf, but at this
instant Solomon roused in his lair, and took a hand in the
demonstration.
His uproar became frightful as the cow, more than ever alarmed for
her calf, continued to bawl. There was a trap-door raised for
ventilation over Solomon's stall, and the boys ran eagerly to have
a look at the grizzly.
They were highly entertained for a moment. Hair on end, teeth
gnashing, Solomon charged back and forth in his enclosure. Then he
reared up on his hind legs and clawed at the pine planks which shut
him in. He had not long continued this performance when his claws
caught in the crack of a loosened board. There was a ripping creak
and a crash, and down came the board. Another followed, and
Solomon, ceasing his violent threats for the instant, peered
through a wide gap into another domain. His hesitation was brief;
he scrambled through, walked out of the open door of the
horse-stall into an alley, and sought wider range.
At first the boys were a little frightened, but they concluded that
Solomon would not be able to climb into the loft, and that it was
safer for them to stay above than to go down the ladder, for the
grizzly might easily push aside one of the half-dozen sliding doors
and get out of the barn.
The barn was at a considerable distance from the house, so they
determined not to alarm the women unless Solomon should get outside
and so make it necessary. They sat for a time listening to the
monotonous bawling of the cow. Solomon seemed to have lost interest
in her noise, as they heard him now and then rummaging among the
empty stalls.
They had begun to hope that the bear would not find his way out of
the stalls, when they heard him scrambling heavily.
Then came a resounding thump as he dropped from one of the open
mangers to the floor of the barn.
Almost instantly a terrific bawling and uproar broke out below.
Solomon had reached the cow at last. The boys ran to the edge of
the hay-lift and peered down. The cow was directly underneath, had
backed up against the buggies, and stood tossing her head and
bawling like a crazy thing.
Dropping their eyes below the level of the loft floor, the lads saw
Solomon coming round a pile of new alfalfa which had been unloaded
in front of the central stalls. His rage was terrific, although he
advanced slowly to the attack.
He came under the wide opening and swayed back and forth before the
cow like a tiger in its cage, roaring his threats and watching for
an opening to get by the lowered horns. He was a creature of
instinct, and with a veteran's precaution before a wicked pair of
horns.
Nevertheless the cow, in a lightning charge, caught him broadside
on, and bore him, in a swift rush, into the midst of the heap of
clover. But for that soft padding for his ribs, it would have gone
hard with Solomon. He was doubled up and thrust into the soft mass,
fighting wildly.
Bear and cow were buried in a storm of clover and flying hay. They
twisted about. Then the bear got his back braced against a stall
and his hind feet against the cow, and he bowled her into the
middle of the barn.
With a huge grunt she alighted on her side and rolled clean over.
As she scrambled to her feet, full of pluck and snorting fiercely,
Solomon issued from the midst of the alfalfa-heap, and again the
two faced each other, filling the barn with loudmouthed threats.
It was a splendid and exciting battle, but Rufe and Perry, certain
that the bear would kill the cow unless prevented, felt that they
must do something. They had heard their Uncle Joe say that, since
Solomon was getting crosser, he would give him away if anybody
could be found to come and get him.
Since nobody else was within reach, they cast about for some means
of distracting Solomon from his fell purpose. Better kill the bear,
if possible, than let him destroy a valuable farm animal. Suddenly,
as the bear came directly beneath, Perry bethought him of the
fish-spears.
In a twinkling he had one in hand, and was standing over the wide
aperture.
"That's it! That's it!" shouted Rufe. "Stab him! Stick it clear
into him! That'll keep him busy for a while!"
Solomon was again weaving back and forth before the threatening
horns, and as he came within easy reach, Perry gave him a fierce
thrust between the shoulders. As the tines pierced his muscles, the
bear reared to his hind legs with a whining roar of pain. Perry,
still clinging to the handle of the spear, was suddenly thrown off
his perch and tumbled head foremost upon the grizzly!
Thus the peril of breaking bones in falling was avoided in the
peril of rolling on the barn floor in the clutches of a mad
grizzly!
The bear had twisted his neck to seize the spear-handle, and when
Perry hit him, was bowled over on his side.
The spear-handle snapped in his teeth, and as he wrenched
frantically at the fragment, its tines were twisted, cutting deeper
into his flesh.
This wound, the first he had ever received, set Solomon crazy.
He paid not the slightest heed to boy or cow, but rolled and
threshed, biting at the fragment of spear-handle, giving vent to
his rage and pain in a hoarse, distressful roar.
Perry might easily have scrambled to his feet and escaped, but he
also was flung at full length on the floor, and instantly Solomon,
in distress, rolled over him, crushing the breath from his lungs.
The terrified Rufe, looking down upon his brother's blackened face
and the bear's wicked claws waving above it, leaped to his feet and
started to run to the barn-loft door, to scream for help.
At less than half the distance, his feet caught in the meshes of
the unrolled net, and he measured his length on the floor.
As he quickly untangled a foot, the thought flashed into his mind,
"Throw this net upon the bear's legs!" In a flash he was at the
edge of the open floor and hauling the big seine in coils at his
feet.
When he had a heap to the height of his knees he gathered it in his
arms and dropped the coils upon Solomon's waving legs.
The bear's claws took instant hold of the stout meshes, and bruin,
feeling his feet entangled, wrenched at their fastenings, rolling
himself over on his side and off the body of the prostrate boy.
Perry, well-nigh smothered, had barely strength enough to crawl out
of reach of the whirlwind fight which now took place.
Even the cow was awed to silence by the uproar of Solomon's rage as
he fought with the entangling folds of the salmon net.
The seine needed no attendance. It did its own work once the
grizzly's legs had been thrust through its meshes.
Coil after coil, the hundred and fifty feet of seine came down out
of the loft as the bear rolled and pitched and tumbled. The more he
tore and threshed, the more meshes there were to enwrap and
entangle him.
In five minutes from the time its first meshes dropped upon him,
the net had Solomon so wound and bound that his legs were
immovable, and he could barely wriggle his neck.
Perry soon recovered his breath, and before they ran to the field
to tell of Solomon's plight, the two boys had the presence of mind
to pen the cow up where she could not, should she take a notion,
gore the helpless grizzly.
Amid both laughter and commiseration, blended with comments on the
pluck of the two youngsters, the ranchmen performed a surgical
operation on the helpless Solomon, extracting the spear from his
flesh. With much greater difficulty they freed him from the seine
and got him back into his lair.
A DROLL FOX-TRAP
By C. A. Stephens
When I was a boy I lived in one of those rustic neighborhoods on
the outskirts of the great "Maine woods." Foxes were plenty, for
about all those sunny pioneer clearings birch-partridges breed by
thousands, as also field-mice and squirrels, making plenty of game
for Reynard.
There were red foxes, "cross-grays," and "silver-grays;" even black
foxes were reported. These animals were the pests of the
farm-yards, and made havoc with the geese, cats, turkeys, and
chickens. In the fall of the year, particularly after the frosts,
the clearings were overrun by them night and morning. Their sharp,
cur-like barks used often to rouse us, and of a dark evening we
would hear them out in the fields, "mousing" around the
stone-heaps, making a queer, squeaking sound like a mouse, to call
the real mice out of their grass nests inside the stone-heaps.
This, indeed, is a favorite trick of Reynard.
At the time of my story, my friend Tom Edwards (ten years of age)
and myself were in the turkey business, equal partners. We owned a
flock of thirty-one turkeys. These roosted by night in a large
butternut tree in front of Tom's house--in the very top of it, and
by day they wandered about the edges of the clearings in quest of
beech-nuts, which were very plentiful that fall.
All went well till the last week in October, when, on taking the
census one morning, a turkey was found to be missing; the
thirty-one had become thirty since nightfall the previous evening.
It was the first one we had lost.
We proceeded to look for traces. Our suspicions were divided. Tom
thought it was "the Twombly boys," nefarious Sam in particular. I
thought it might have been an owl. But under the tree, in the soft
dirt, where the potatoes had recently been dug, we found
fox-tracks, and two or three ominous little wads of feathers, with
one long tail feather adrift. Thereupon we concluded that the
turkey had accidentally fallen down out of the butternut--had a
fit, perhaps--and that its flutterings had attracted the attention
of some passing fox, which had, forthwith, taken it in charge. It
was, as we regarded it, one of those unfortunate occurrences which
no care on our part could have well foreseen, and a casualty such
as turkey-raisers are unavoidably heirs to, and we bore our loss
with resignation. We were glad to remember that turkeys did not
often fall off their roosts.
This theory received something of a check when our flock counted
only twenty-nine the next morning. There were more fox-tracks, and
a great many more feathers under the tree. This put a new and
altogether ugly aspect on the matter. No algebra was needed to
figure the outcome of the turkey business at this rate, together
with our prospective profits, in the light of this new fact. It was
clear that something must be done, and at once, too, or ruin would
swallow up the poultry firm.
Rightly or wrongly, we attributed the mischief to a certain
"silver-gray" that had several times been seen in the neighborhood
that autumn.
It would take far too much space to relate in detail the plans we
laid and put in execution to catch that fox during the next two
weeks. I recollect that we set three traps for him to no purpose,
and that we borrowed a fox-hound to hunt him with, but merely
succeeded in running him to the burrow in a neighboring rocky
hill-side, whence we found it quite impossible to dislodge the wily
fellow.
Meanwhile the fox (or foxes) had succeeded in getting two more of
the turkeys.
Heroes, it is said, are born of great crises. This dilemma of ours
developed Tom's genius.
"I'll have that fox," he said, when the traps failed; and when the
hound proved of no avail he still said: "I'll have him yet."
"But how?" I asked. Tom said he would show me. He brought a
two-bushel basket and went out into the fields. In the stone-heaps,
and beside the old logs and stumps, there were dozens of deserted
mouse-nests, each a wad of fine dry grass as large as a quart box.
These were gathered up, and filled the great basket.
"There," said he, triumphantly, "don't them smell _mousey_?"
They did, certainly; they savored as strongly of mice as Tom's
question of bad grammar.
"And don't foxes catch mice?" demanded Tom, confidently.
"Yes, but I don't see how that's going to catch the fox," I said.
"Well, look here, then, I'll show ye," said he. "Play you's the
fox; and play 't was night, and you was prowling around the fields.
Go off now out there by that stump."
Full of wonder and curiosity, I retired to the stump. Tom,
meantime, turned out the mass of nests, and with it completely
covered himself. The pile now resembled an enormous mouse-nest, or
rather a small hay-cock. Pretty soon I heard a low, high-keyed,
squeaking noise, accompanied by a slight rustle inside the nest.
Evidently there were mice in it; and, feeling my character as fox
at stake, I at once trotted forward, then crept up, and, as the
rustling and squeaking continued, made a pounce into the grass--as
I had heard it said that foxes did when mousing. Instantly two spry
brown hands from out the nest clutched me with a most vengeful
grip. As a fox, I struggled tremendously. But Tom overcame me
forthwith, choked me nearly black in the face, then, in dumb show,
knocked my head with a stone.
"D'ye see, now!" he demanded.
I saw.
"But a fox would bite you," I objected.
"Let him bite," said Tom. "I'll resk him when once I get these two
bread-hooks on him. And he can't smell me through the mouse-nests
either."
That night we set ourselves to put the stratagem in operation. With
the dusk we stole out into the field where the stone-heaps were,
and where we had oftenest heard foxes bark. Selecting a nook in the
edge of a clump of raspberry briars which grew about a great
pine-stump, Tom lay down, and I covered him up completely with the
contents of the big basket. He then practiced squeaking and
rustling several times to be sure that all was in good trim. His
squeaks were perfect successes--made by sucking the air sharply
betwixt his teeth.
"Now be off," said Tom, "and don't come poking around, nor get in
sight, till you hear me holler."
Thus exhorted, I went into the barn and established myself at a
crack on the back side, which looked out upon the field where Tom
was ambushed.
Tom, meanwhile, as he afterward told me, waited till it had grown
dark, then began squeaking and rustling at intervals, to draw the
attention of the fox when first he should come out into the
clearing, for foxes have ears so wonderfully acute, that they are
able to hear a mouse squeak twenty rods away, it is said.
An hour passed. Tom must have grown pretty tired of squeaking. It
was a moonless evening, though not very dark. I could see objects
at a little distance through the crack, but could not see so far as
the stump. It got rather dull, watching there; and being amidst
nice cozy straw, I presently went to sleep, quite unintentionally.
I must have slept some time, though it seemed to me but a very few
minutes.
What woke me was a noise--a sharp suppressed yelp. It took me a
moment to understand where I was, and why I was there. A sound of
scuffling and tumbling on the ground at some distance assisted my
wandering wits, and I rushed out of the barn and ran toward the
field. As I ran, two or three dull whacks came to my ear.
"Got him, Tom?" I shouted, rushing up.
Tom was holding and squeezing one of his hands with the other and
shaking it violently. He said not a word, and left me to poke about
and stumble on the limp warm carcass of a large fox that lay near.
"Bite ye?" I exclaimed, after satisfying myself that the fox was
dead.
"Some," said Tom; and that was all I could get from him that night.
We took the fox to the house and lighted a candle. It was the
"silver-gray."