I haf been married to! Jocko, da monk, run away? Nevaire! Listen. Tree
year now, Jocko and I maka da professional tour together. Jocko getta da
cent from da audience, bringa him to me. Smarta da monk—weara da
asbestos glove, taka da warm cent also. Jocko run away? Nevaire! Jocko
haf been stole!”
After long consideration, I thought so, too. I knew very well that if
any human being had stolen the Monkey, he would have been returned long
before this. My memory of the animal was that he was rather troublesome,
but of course I did not wish to say so, for fear of hurting my Uncle’s
feelings.
Eliminating the human element from the proposition, there remained only
one possible conclusion. Some animal had done it, in response to that
merciless law of the wilderness, which bids the wood people seek and
slay and devour; the law of claw and tooth and fang, from which there is
no appeal.
Jocko had not been taken from his high perch—this left tramps and
neighbours out of the question, also Coons and Owls. He had not been
left partly eaten, so that Weasels, Pole-Cats, or Minks were not
responsible. What animal could have taken Jocko away bodily? My quick,
active mind immediately answered: “A Fox!”
I said nothing to Uncle Antonio of my suspicion. In the morning, when I
went down to the lake for my bath, I found a foxglove which surely had
not been there the night before. It was a mother, then, foraging for her
young. I wondered how they liked Jocko. He was so disagreeable to me,
personally, that he would certainly have disagreed with me, even if I
had eaten him.
The next day, my suspicions were confirmed in an unexpected manner. The
ivy which grew around my door was pulled down and badly trampled upon. I
remembered the old saying, then: “Little foxes spoil the vines.” The
mother, growing bolder, must have brought her young into my dooryard.
When you are troubled by a mother Fox, you may know that her den is far
away. She never draws attention to herself in her own neighbourhood.
When you are not troubled by a mother Fox, you may know that one is near
at hand. This great truth is familiar to every Little Brother of the
Woods.
One bright afternoon, later in the week, I took my field-glass and went
to a lofty hill near by. I climbed to the summit and from that point of
vantage surveyed the surrounding country, looking for the den. I found
it, at last, under an overhanging rock, far to the south.
The mother Fox sat in the doorway with her sewing, making another glove,
doubtless, to replace the one she had so strangely lost, while her
little ones gambolled about her. I never saw more than three at any one
time, and so I concluded that there were only three in the family.
I felt wicked, spying upon this charming domestic picture, even though
it was through my field-glass and I was so far away that they would
never know they were observed. Here I was proved wrong, however. The
weary seamstress laid her work aside and stood up, brushing the threads
from her lap. She yawned, smoothed her back hair a bit, and was about to
go inside, when she paused.
With every sense alert, she leaned forward, shaded her eyes with her
hand, and stared straight at me—the man with the field-glass on the
summit of the hill so far away. I was embarrassed, but I did not move.
When she had satisfied her curiosity, she grinned at me and then,
unmistakably, winked.
She seemed to know that I was far different from that barbarous race of
men who would hunt her and her babies with dogs and guns. Her composure
was so perfect, her intuition so swift, and her wink so suggestive of
amiable deviltry, that I at once named her “Hoop-La,” which is an Indian
word signifying lady-like mischief, and so she remains in my annals to
this day.
We knew where each other lived, and we were friends—so much was already
established. I felt sure now that Hoop-La would visit me when she knew I
was at home, perhaps bringing her little ones with her, but the question
quickly arose in my mind: how should I dispose of Uncle Antonio?
That night, as delicately as I could, I told him that I had enjoyed his
brief stay with me very much and that I was sorry he must go.
“Mus’ go?” repeated Uncle, pricking up his ears, “for w’y you say zis? I
haf no mentions made of ze departure—it is wis me you haf someone else
maka da confuse.”
“Perhaps,” I answered, with rare tact. “My dreams are sometimes very
vivid.”
“I see,” said Uncle Antonio, with a child-like smile upon his calm,
high-bred face; “you hitta da pipe.”
I did not enlighten him, for it is bad manners to contradict a guest.
You must never insult people in your own house—always go to theirs.
“I have come, dear Uncle,” I continued, “to study Unnatural History. It
is an absorbing pursuit, and I fear you will find me poor company.”
“No,” returned Uncle Antonio, in his gentle, foreign way, “zat no maka
da dif to me. I lika you mucha da bet when you say nossing—nossing ’t
all. Ze more you keepa da still, ze more your Oncle lofe you.”
With his fine comprehension, he had instantly penetrated to the heart of
things. “Staya da here,” he said, with touching dignity, “until Jocko
maka da return trip. Jocko always bringa cent when he coma da back.”
In some way, it reminded me of those stories of New England, so
plentiful in our day and generation, and always so beautifully written,
where somebody is always waiting for somebody else, who never comes. In
those rare instances where the long wait is rewarded, the emotion of the
lost one’s arrival has always been attenuated into nothingness. In a
reminiscent mood, also, I mused upon an epigram my sister made, on the
tenth anniversary of her wedding day. “Before marriage,” she said, with
a little choke in her voice, “woman spends all her life waiting for her
husband. After marriage, she spends three quarters of it in the same
way.” My brother-in-law, I may say, in explanation, was one of those
people who make it the chief business of their lives to be late to
everything.
I left a note for Hoop-La under a boulder by the path which I felt sure
she would take when she grew bolder and came to visit me. The next day,
when I went to look for it, it was gone, and I was pleased to think she
had it. At supper, however, Uncle Antonio produced it from the secret
recesses of his attire.
“I getta da dead next to you,” he said, with a merry laugh. “You gotta
da sweetheart here. Zat is ze reason w’y you maka da chase of your poor
old Oncle out. Me no leava da monk.”
The ensuing quarter of an hour was very unpleasant for me, though at
length I convinced him that I had nothing to do with the note. He would
not accept my word until I wrote a page or so for him, in another hand.
I was foxy enough to learn to write three or four different hands at
school and it has come in handy early and often since.
I soon saw, however, that I should not be troubled much with Uncle
Antonio. Every day he took long, cross-country tramps, “to finda da
monk,” as he pathetically said, and often having disagreements with
cross country tramps whom he met on the road. But he did not mind, and
his faith and hope were absolutely without limit.
Hoop-La came one day when he was absent. I first felt her bright eyes
upon me from a thicket close at hand, then I saw her tawny
orange-coloured fur, and presently she approached, walking on her hind
legs, with her magnificent tail thrown over one arm. Her tail was her
principal adornment; her paws were her chief features. She was doing the
kangaroo walk to perfection, and when I went in and brought out a paper
of cookies she did the cake walk also.
She sat near me for some time, contemplating me gravely. She could not
speak my language and I did not know hers, nevertheless a perfect
understanding was soon in operation between us. A Fox looks beyond your
eyes to your inner thought, which is not especially difficult, for the
thought-tank, as students of physiology all know, is the padding around
the optic nerve. She had not brought her fancy work—I suppose she did
not feel that she knew me well enough, or else, like many human ladies,
she did not fancy work.
At all events, it was a very formal call. At the close of it, she bowed
and went away with great dignity. Had I followed her I would have seen
capers, tail-chasing, quick turns, high kicks, and flying jumps, then a
mad gallop home, but I did not know this until I got back to the city
and read it in a book. Some of the Little Brothers of the Woods have
seen a great deal that I have unaccountably missed, but because they
have been more fortunate than I have, it does not necessarily follow
that they have lied about it.
I never saw Hoop-La’s husband, and concluded, therefore, that she was a
widow. Her ways were sufficiently winning to justify my hypothesis, and
she was as clever as any of them.
One time, she was unjustly suspected of stealing some Chickens, and the
Hounds were set upon her trail. I had gone to the hill I have spoken of
before, to add up my accounts on the summit, and I saw them, far in the
distance, headed straight for the open field just below me, where
Hoop-La was fixing up their day’s work for them.
First, she ran all around the field three times, then took a long jump
toward the centre, and wove herself in and out in a circle. Then she
took another jump and wove more circles, and so on, for the better part
of an hour. All the time, the deep bellowing of the Hounds came nearer,
but Hoop-La did not seem to be at all alarmed. It was not until the
leader of the pack struck the field and caught the scent that she took
any notice of them at all.
By a series of swift and wonderfully clever sorties, which included high
jumps and frequent wetting of her feet in the brook, she gained the
hill. Then she came up beside me, taking care, however, to keep on a
small patch of orange-coloured grass which exactly matched her coat. The
wonder of it was not that the grass should match Hoop-La, but that she
should know that it did.
Down below, in the field, the hunt went on. There must have been five
hundred Dogs there, or else they ran so fast that they looked like more.
The pasture seemed to be one solid Dog, circling in and out, jumping,
leaping, and weaving strange designs upon the green sod below.
Suddenly the significance burst upon me. With her own clever body,
sentient and alive from nose to tip of tail, Hoop-La had made a quilt
pattern, and the Dogs were following it. It was like a game of living
chess, such as the barbarian kings used to play before the Republican
party got into power.
Have any of my readers ever seen a Fox laugh? Hoop-La sat beside me,
with her hands on her sides, rocking and swaying in a spasm of
merriment. Salt tears of joy rolled down her cheeks and made little
rivulets through her fur. By looking at these narrow lines, I perceived,
for the first time, the wonderful pinky fairness of her complexion.
Meanwhile the Dogs wound in and out on the trail, the pattern becoming
more and more distinct every minute. When there was a space in the
swiftly moving mass, I could see deep scars upon the surface of the
field, and this seemed to amuse Hoop-La all the more. She laughed until
I was afraid her hysterics would bring the Dogs upon us. I was sure she
could take care of herself, but I was not anxious to have my own
footsteps dogged by that pastureful of howling fiends.
One by one, the Dogs dropped out. Some of them lay flat on their backs,
utterly exhausted, and breathing like so many locomotives. Enough short
pants were made in that field that afternoon to clothe the inmates of
all the orphan asylums in North America, but Mother Nature is ever too
generous with her material—in spots.
Hoop-La was still laughing and it got worse every minute. Remembering
her sex and thinking to divert her, I took a handful of coins out of my
pocket and laid them on the grass beside her. She pawed them over
without interest for a moment or two, then her eye lit upon a penny
which was evidently fresh from the mint.
She played with it for a time, enjoying the glint of the sun on the
shining copper, then her face suddenly illumined with a bright idea.
Before I realised what she was going to do, she took it in her mouth,
walked over to the edge of the hill, sat down, and with a precision of
aim which was unusual in her sex, threw it straight down into the
pasture.
I was aghast. Hoop-La had deliberately given the Dogs a new scent!
Still, they received it without enthusiasm and she seemed very much
disappointed. I knew one thing that she did not; namely, that Dogs are
instinctively afraid of coppers.
[Illustration:
“Hoop-La sat beside me, with her hands on her sides, rocking and
swaying in a spasm of merriment.”]
When the baffled animals went home, Hoop-La descended into the field and
retrieved her financial losses. I suppose she took the coin home to her
children, and after familiarising them with its outward appearance, she
told them: “_That is man-scent._”
A week or so after that, when I sat upon the summit of the hill, with my
field-glass fixed upon the roomy piazzas of her home, it fell to my
good-fortune to see her teaching her little ones. She was a tender
mother, but a severe task-mistress, and plied the rod liberally when
they made mistakes.
She taught them how to play dead, how to manage their trails so the Dogs
could not step on them, how to pick a Squirrel’s teeth and bones, how to
catch Field Mice without a trap, how to hunt Mares’ nests, how to play
Leap Frog, and how to sing the woodland spring song. I have jotted down
the words:
“Tinkety tank, tinkety tink,
Haunt of the Weasel and haunt of the Mink;
Tinkety tank, tinkety tink,
Come little Foxes, come here and drink.”
This is the water song of the Fox family and corresponds to a college
yell. Many a night, you can hear it over the hillsides, in deep,
loud-mouthed bays that brook no delay and harbour a sinister meaning.
Among other things, she taught them these proverbs:
“Never sleep on your track until you have curled it up so much that it
makes a soft bed.
“When your leader fails you, shuffle the pack for a new deal and turn up
another trump.
“Money may not be your best friend, but it is the quickest to act in
time of trouble. Therefore, trust your scent.
“Dried up water never runs.
“Do not sleep in the river-bed when the springs that used to be there
have rusted away.
“Never travel by daylight if you can help it. Take the night express and
be there in the morning.
“If you don’t know what it is, bring it to Mamma. She will put you on.
“Never hunt for Hens in a boys’ college, nor for Mice in a female
seminary.
“A gasolene automobile overpowers everything but a Skunk.
“Don’t sit on the paint.
“If you climb telegraph poles to do the tight-rope act on the wires,
don’t eat the currents.
“Take a yellow journal with you when you are going where there is no
orange-coloured grass.
“If you can’t smell anything, the wind is wrong, and other people are
smelling you. Turn around and it will be all right.
“Never feel ashamed of your clothes. Fox fur may not be Sealskin, but it
is expensive enough to be decent.
“Never throw an Indian off the scent. It is against the coin-mutilation
law.
“Try to use other people’s experience and profit by bad example. Pattern
after the Indians, who never moccasin.
“Let the Snakes alone; fur boas do not grow wild.
“When you drop your Rabbit’s foot, look out for falling hair.”
The instruction was interrupted by a strange animal flopping wildly
about in front of the den, as though attached to a chain. It was smaller
than Hoop-La and of a different colour. It had bright red on its head
and body, and, even at that distance, I could see a tail long enough to
make a three-volume novel. Then my heart gave a violent lunge into my
ribs. Unquestionably, it was Jocko!
I put the glass down, my hands trembling. Why had Hoop-La monkeyed with
Uncle Antonio’s pet? And what would Uncle Antonio do if he should hit
upon the truth? Would he not shoot Hoop-La and all her children and make
a Winter coat for Jocko out of their complexions? Echo answered me—he
would.
My quick, active mind was partially paralysed. The cogs were rusty and
the chains of thought creaked over them without producing any power.
What should I do?
Should I remain silent, while my blood-relation ate his heart out and
all the provisions I could buy? Should I listen, night after night, to
the heartrending strains of _Bedelia_, syncopated by a strong man’s
sobs? Every night, when playing that painful melody, Uncle was overcome
at the line: “I’ve made up my mind to steal you.” “That is it,” he would
shriek, “my Jocko haf been stole!” By a wonderful modulation, too swift
for the ordinary ear to perceive, Uncle Antonio always changed off to
_Could Ye Come Back to Me, Douglas_, and played it twice before he
ceased.
Obviously, it was up to me. In my hands were the tangled threads of
Fate, which I and I alone could unkink.
I did not sleep for three nights. On the fourth day, I walked out a
little way from the cabin—perhaps eight or ten miles. In the woods I met
Hoop-La under strange circumstances.
She was walking on her hind legs, carefully holding her magnificent tail
away from the dust and the cockleburrs. She may have believed in the
re-incarnation theory, but it was evident that she did not care to
become even a little burred. Upon her arm was an old Fox, with a scarred
face, blind and helpless, as I soon perceived. He was bald in many
places, had false teeth in both jaws, and his tail had only one new
sprout at the end of it. He paid no attention whatever to me, and I
quickly surmised that he had also lost the sense of hearing.
I knit my brows in deep thought, then instantly unravelled them. The
express thundered around the bend, and, in a flash, I understood. He was
some poor old foxy grandpa, totally deaf, whom Hoop-La had found walking
upon the railroad track and was taking home. It gave me a new insight
into her kind heart, and I was sure that if I could only make her
understand how Uncle Antonio and I felt about Jocko, she would release
him, even though the children wanted to play with him.
But to make her understand? Ah, measureless, impassable gulf that lies
between us and our kindred of the wild!
Several days later I visited the den. I could hear Jocko flopping about
on his chain in the far corner, and hear the little Foxes screaming with
delight. I did not think Hoop-La was at home, and was about to crawl in
and kidnap Jocko. Just then, as if reading my thought, she came out.
She looked at me disdainfully—contemptuously, I thought. Then she went
back, returning almost immediately with an old, worn-out rubber, which
she expressively dropped at my feet. I crept away in shame, fully
understanding her point of view.
Eventually, the thing was solved, and in a strange manner. It came about
in this way.
Uncle Antonio, like many foreign noblemen, carried with him a miniature
cooking outfit and some imported ingredients. He had said nothing about
these, being content to subsist entirely upon my humbler fare, but one
day, when I was about to start for the village, he came to me.
“You goa da town?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Looka da here,” pleaded Uncle Antonio. “You bringa sixa da pork chop,
two lar-rge can da tomat, one onion lika your head.”
“What for?” I asked, suspiciously.
Uncle Antonio’s face became radiant. “Hist!” he replied, in a stage
whisper. “Me cooka da spaghett! Nica da spaghett!”
For the first time in my life, I felt deep and abiding love for my
Uncle. Needless to say, I hastened back with the required articles.
In a kettle, over the fire, Uncle Antonio fried the pork chops and the
onion to a deep seal brown, then added the contents of both cans of
tomatoes. He salted the mixture liberally, then from his pack brought
two large cloves of garlic and a bottle of paprika. He sliced the garlic
in, sprinkled it with the paprika, and, by some means known only to
himself, decreased the heat.
All day the appetising compound simmered. At night, Uncle Antonio
pressed the entire mixture through a sieve that he had in his kit, and
set it aside. Then he prepared a kettle of boiling water, with a
tablespoonful of salt in it, and from the inside of his organ took out a
great bundle of spaghetti, the tubes being very small, and something
over a yard and a half long.
“Nica da spaghett,” crooned Uncle, stroking it fondly. “Maka da
wonderful moosic!”
He boiled it twenty minutes by my jewelled repeater, drained it, put
some on my plate, poured a liberal quantity of the sauce over it, and
passed me a bottle of grated cheese, which, until now, he had kept in
his hat.
I tasted of it with some misgivings, but instantly I was Uncle’s.
Through my system vibrated a single joyous thought—I had watched him and
I knew how to do it.
I must have eaten nearly a peck of it. There was some left, and when I
went to bed I put it outside, for fear I should get up and eat it in the
night.
In the morning I crept out, hungrily, thinking to steal a march upon
Uncle, but, to my astonishment, the plate looked as if it had been
washed, and all the sauce was gone!
I made a loud exclamation of pained surprise, and Uncle Antonio came
out, fully dressed. He slept in his clothes to save time and trouble.
“Oh,” he shrieked, tearing his hair, “eet ees Jocko! Jocko haf been here
in ze night w’ile I sleep! Jocko lova da spaghett! He always washa da
plate for me!”
He tore around like a madman, looking for his pet, but of course he
found nothing. I saw something, but wisely held my tongue about it. A
box of Hoop-La’s footprints had been left on the doorstep and there was
a bundle of her tracks a little farther on in the wood.
Like Minerva from the head of Jove, a great scheme presented itself, all
ready to be worked out. That afternoon, I climbed to my observatory, and
with my powerful field-glass saw Hoop-La on the veranda of her home,
grinning, licking her chops, and occasionally patting her stomach with
an air of satisfaction.
That night I said to my esteemed relation: “Uncle Antonio, if you will
fix up another pail of that spaghetti, borrow a Horse, and trust me
implicitly, I think I can restore Jocko to your empty arms.”
He looked at me suspiciously, then assailed me with a torrent of
questions, to all of which I made no reply. He spent the night preparing
more sauce, and at dawn he set out for the nearest village, twenty-one
and a half miles distant, to borrow a Horse.
About noon, he rode in, put up the Horse in the bridle chamber attached
to the premises, and cooked a savoury mess of spaghetti. My mouth
watered, but I dared not hesitate. I mounted, took the plate, and rode
off toward Hoop-La’s den.
As I had hoped, she was at home. I tied the plunging steed, whose mouth
was dripping and who regarded the spaghetti yearningly, and advanced to
the front piazza.
Sniffing hungrily, she came out, and I heard the frenzied clankings of
Jocko’s chain. “Come, Hoop-La,” I said, though my voice trembled. She
called her children, and in a moment they were all eating greedily.
As I had planned, poor, imprisoned Jocko came out to the end of his
chain. It did not permit him to go farther than a foot from the
entrance, but that was sufficient for my purpose. Quick as a flash, I
unfastened the chain from his collar, took the thoroughly frightened
animal in my arms, and ran for dear life to the Horse.
I was none too soon. With an angry snarl, Hoop-La followed me, but she
had already eaten too heartily to do her best work on the rough track
which lay ahead of us. She clung to the Horse’s tail, growling and
snarling in baffled rage, her claws and teeth urging the trembling steed
into a foaming gallop.
My hat flew off and many of my most valuable ideas blew out through my
ears, never to return, but Jocko, terrorised into death-like stillness,
lay quietly inside my coat.
Somehow or other, I kept my seat, and thus we dashed into Uncle
Antonio’s presence. When she saw the strange man, Hoop-La let go and
slunk back into the woods, defeated and ashamed.
“_Jocko!_” screamed Uncle, in a passion of joy, as his long-lost pet
flew into his arms. “_Bambino! Cara mia!_” Fine family feeling compels
me to draw a veil over that affecting reunion.