Bright August sunlight was flooding the Swamp in the morning. Everything
seemed soaking in the warm radiance. A little brown swamp-sparrow was
teetering on a long rush in the pond. Beneath him there were open spaces
of dirty water that brought down a few scraps of the blue sky, and
worked it and the yellow duck-weed into an exquisite mosaic, with a
little wrong-side picture of the bird in the middle. On the bank behind
was a great vigorous growth of golden green skunk-cabbage, that cast
dense shadow over the brown swamp tussocks.
The eyes of the swamp-sparrow were not trained to take in the color
glories, but he saw what we might have missed; that two of the
numberless leafy brown bumps under the broad cabbage-leaves were
furry living things, with noses that never ceased to move up and down,
whatever else was still.
It was Molly and Rag. They were stretched under the skunk-cabbage, not
because they liked its rank smell, but because the winged ticks could
not stand it at all and so left them in peace.
Rabbits have no set time for lessons, they are always learning; but what
the lesson is depends on the present stress, and that must arrive before
it is known. They went to this place for a quiet rest, but had not been
long there when suddenly a warning note from the ever-watchful bluejay
caused Molly's nose and ears to go up and her tail to tighten to her
back. Away across the Swamp was Olifant's big black and white dog,
coming straight toward them.
"Now," said Molly, "squat while I go and keep that fool out of
mischief." Away she went to meet him and she fearlessly dashed across
the dog's path.
"Bow-ow-ow," he fairly yelled as he bounded after Molly, but she kept
just beyond his reach and led him where the million daggers struck fast
and deep, till his tender ears were scratched raw, and guided him at
last plump into a hidden barbed-wire fence, where he got such a gashing
that he went homeward howling with pain. After making a short double,
a loop and a baulk in case the dog should come back, Molly returned to
find that Rag in his eagerness was standing bolt upright and craning his
neck to see the sport.
This disobedience made her so angry that she struck him with her hind
foot and knocked him over in the mud.
One day as they fed on the near clover field a red-tailed hawk came
swooping after them. Molly kicked up her hind legs to make fun of him
and skipped into the briers along one of their old pathways, where
of course the hawk could not follow. It was the main path from the
Creekside Thicket to the Stove-pipe brushpile. Several creepers had
grown across it, and Molly, keeping one eye on the hawk, set to work and
cut the creepers off. Rag watched her, then ran on ahead, and cut some
more that were across the path. "That's right," said Molly, "always keep
the runways clear, you will need them often enough. Not wide, but clear.
Cut everything like a creeper across them and some day you will find you
have cut a snare." "A what?" asked Rag, as he scratched his right ear
with his left hind foot.
"A snare is something that looks like a creeper, but it doesn't grow and
it's worse than all the hawks in the world," said Molly, glancing at the
now far-away red-tail, "for there it hides night and day in the runway
till the chance to catch you comes."
"I don't believe it could catch me," said Rag, with the pride of youth
as he rose on his heels to rub his chin and whiskers high up on a smooth
sapling. Rag did not know he was doing this, but his mother saw and knew
it was a sign, like the changing of a boy's voice, that her little one
was no longer a baby but would soon be a grown-up Cottontail.
V
There is magic in running water. Who does not know it and feel it? The
railroad builder fearlessly throws his bank across the wide bog or lake,
or the sea itself, but the tiniest ril of running water he treats with
great respect, studies its wish and its way and gives it all it seems to
ask. The thirst-parched traveller in the poisonous alkali deserts holds
back in deadly fear from the sedgy ponds till he finds one down whose
centre is a thin, clear line, and a faint flow, the sign of running,
living water, and joyfully he drinks.
There is magic in running water, no evil spell can cross it. Tam
O'Shanter proved its potency in time of sorest need. The wild-wood
creature with its deadly foe following tireless on the trail scent,
realizes its nearing doom and feels an awful spell. Its strength is
spent, its every trick is tried in vain till the good Angel leads it
to the water, the running, living water, and dashing in it follows the
cooling stream, and then with force renewed--takes to the woods again.
There is magic in running water. The hounds come to the very spot and
halt and cast about; and halt and cast in vain. Their spell is broken by
the merry stream, and the wild thing lives its life.
And this was one of the great secrets that Raggylug learned from his
mother--"after the Brierrose, the Water is your friend."
One hot, muggy night in August, Molly led Rag through the woods. The
cotton-white cushion she wore under her tail twinkled ahead and was his
guiding lantern, though it went out as soon as she stopped and sat on
it. After a few runs and stops to listen, they came to the edge of the
pond. The hylas in the trees above them were singing 'sleep, sleep,'
and away out on a sunken log in the deep water, up to his chin in the
cooling bath, a bloated bullfrog was singing the praises of a 'jug o'
rum.'
"Follow me still," said Molly, in rabbit, and 'flop' she went into the
pond and struck out for the sunken log in the middle. Rag flinched but
plunged with a little 'ouch,' gasping and wobbling his nose very fast
but still copying his mother. The same movements as on land sent him
through the water, and thus he found he could swim, On he went till he
reached the sunken log and scrambled up by his dripping mother on the
high dry end, with a rushy screen around them and the Water that
tells no tales. After this on warm black nights when that old fox from
Springfield came prowling through the Swamp, Rag would note the place of
the bullfrog's voice, for in case of direst need it might be a guide
to safety. And thenceforth the words of the song that the bullfrog sang
were 'Come, come, in danger come.'
This was the latest study that Rag took up with his mother--it was
really a post-graduate course, for many little rabbits never learn it at
all.