rose to our feet, our one thought to aid the little brown lady in her
distress. But as we came near her—so near that my outstretched hand
almost touched her—she fluttered away out through the clearing and down
the trail, one wing dragging piteously.
[Illustration]
Of course you must know it was only a trick. Brother and I should have
known it, for we had heard of it many times. But such was the excellent
acting of the brown mother bird, with her trailing wing, her helpless
fluttering, and pitiful little cries, that we never questioned her
sincerity. Half a dozen times we almost touched her, and each time she
eluded us and fluttered a few feet ahead. Then suddenly with triumphant
whir of strong wings she rose in a graceful arc and disappeared in the
thickness of the forest shadows.
We stood and laughed—a little ruefully, for we prided ourselves upon our
woodcraft. Then I touched Brother’s arm as a thought came to me.
“Her children are back by the Fairy Ring,” I told him. “Let us hide
there and see if she will return to them.”
[Illustration]
So down the trail we sped, across the little clearing, and stooped
behind a thick screen of salal bushes. Nor had we long to wait, for
presently there was a soft flutter of wings, a scuttle of leaves, and
out from the underbrush, at almost the very spot where we had first seen
her, came the mother quail uttering a soft, piping call which meant
“Danger is past; all’s well!”
[Illustration]
As if by magic, a dozen tiny brown bodies scurried out from under
leaves, baby birds the size of bantam chicks. They eddied around and
behind her like little leaves in the wind, and she spoke to them in
soft, maternal notes, telling them perhaps of the two fierce humans from
whom she had saved them by exposing herself to capture.
[Illustration]
But quails can not count, it seems. For when the little brown mother
tripped daintily away into the deep greenery of the fern brake with her
brood at her heels, we heard a tiny, piping cry so small as to be only a
dot of sound. Following it, we came upon the place where Mrs. Quail’s
children had hidden themselves, and there we found a baby quail whose
tiny legs had been caught in a twin-flower vine, and who was trying to
wrench himself free with all his little might. It was but the work of an
instant to release the little dark brown puffball, and as I held him in
my hands he peeped shrilly and mournfully.
[Illustration]
We could not bear the thought of leaving him there in the woods on the
chance that his mother would hear him and come to him. Perhaps our doubt
of her was unjust, but at any rate I carried him down the Hill Trail,
through the orchard, and to the little log cabin. Cupped warmly in my
hands, he went to sleep, and when he woke up, he forgot that he had been
frightened, for he was a very tiny quail, and his life had been so brief
that he had not had time to learn the great fear which all too soon
becomes a part of every woods creature’s life.
[Illustration]
That night we put him in a little box with warm flannel covers over him,
which we hoped would take the place of his mother’s feathers, and the
next morning we thought to give him into the keeping of some
philanthropic hen to rear with her own children.
[Illustration]
O’Henry, the Quail Baby, did not know that he was not a chicken; but the
hens knew the difference, and there was not one lady among them, I am
sorry to say, who would stretch her maternal spirit to include him in
her family. We tried him on Sironda, the black Minorca hen, who had
obligingly hatched out and mothered everything, from Barred Plymouth
Rock chicks to white Pekin ducklings, and who had even reared a family
of lanky young turkeys. But although Sironda was fussily attentive to
her own brood of three-day-old chicks, she clucked sharply when we
shoved O’Henry in under her spreading wings, and tried to scalp him with
a vigorous peck.
Nor would Liberty, the bantam hen, accept him as a foster child. She
squawked as if he were some vicious animal, and only prompt attention on
our part saved him from a terrible death.
So we brought up O’Henry by hand and built for him a wire pen where he
could spend his days. We dared not let him loose in the poultry yard,
for it seemed that every hen, matron and maiden lady alike, resented the
presence of the little woods stranger and would have rejoiced in
scalping him.
[Illustration]
Brother and I lightened O’Henry’s captivity as much as we could. We
taught him to come to us when we whistled his family call, and we would
carry him about on our shoulders, balancing there like a tight-rope
performer. We took him with us when we rowed in our little boat on the
bay, and he would perch on the bow, keeping himself upright with
fluttering wings and tail, cocking his tiny head on one side when the
sea-gulls flew over, and uttering at times a faint and thoughtful note.
However, it was really due to Clarence, the gray gander, that O’Henry’s
life became a happy one at the cove. Clarence was full of years and
dignity, and a born philanthropist. If he had been a man, he would have
endowed orphanages and given newsboy dinners. As it was, he had a
passion for fathering the young things of the poultry yard, much to the
dismay of the various mothers.
[Illustration]
There was never a queerer sight than Clarence, the huge gander, going
the rounds of the hen-coops of a morning, making coaxing noises to lure
the young chicks out from under their mothers’ wings. The mother hens
were imprisoned to prevent their scratching in the garden, and Clarence
would shovel at the ground with his broad flat bill and pretend to drop
a worm or bug in front of the coop, with the result that half of the
lady hen’s brood would be at his heels ready to follow where he led. His
charges were always well fed, for Clarence was an excellent provider,
but the wear and tear on the feelings of the mothers must have been
terrific.
[Illustration]
It was inevitable that sooner or later the gray gander should discover
O’Henry and make him one of his family. We found Clarence in the yard
one morning, a dozen odd-sized chickens at his webbed heels. There were
two Minorca chicks that belonged to Sironda, half a dozen white Leghorn
children, a tiny cockerel with budding wings and tail who was Liberty’s
son, and a lanky young Plymouth Rock rooster, all run to legs.
We were minded to see what Clarence would think of our pet, and we let
O’Henry out of his pen. The gray gander waddled over toward the tiny
brown bird, his feathered tail wiggling from side to side, and made some
hospitable noises in his throat. Then he pulled up a tuft of grass and
dropped it before the Quail Baby by way of getting acquainted. The
chicks set upon it noisily, while O’Henry watched them, his little head
upraised, his tiny black eyes fixed on Clarence’s friendly bulk.
[Illustration]
We had no idea of letting him go gipsying with Clarence, for he had
become a well-loved playmate, and we could not be sure of his safety
when away from us. Brother stooped to pick him up, but with a long-drawn
hiss Clarence was upon him in a fury of flapping wings and snapping
bill. He did not suffer his charges to be molested while in his care;
that was clear.
So we allowed O’Henry to go jaunting with Clarence and his feathered
crew. Daily the gray gander would come into the yard with his motley
family in tow, and having gathered up O’Henry, they would be off through
the meadow, up into the orchard, not to return until the setting of the
sun. They would come straggling back in sleepy Indian file, the gray
gander at the head of the line, the chicks cheeping fretfully and glad
to nestle under the feathers of their distracted mothers. We would watch
for O’Henry and whistle the call he knew. He would come to us with his
quick, darting run and we would take him into the house for the night.
His crop was always crammed disgracefully, and his eyes were heavy with
sleep.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Sometimes O’Henry heard the call of the wild, and we wondered when he
would obey it. He had grown from a baby bird to a beautiful brown
gentleman quail, with white stripes running from his throat down over
his breast like a vest. He had a tiny topknot that lifted in moments of
excitement, and a clear “Bobwhite” whistle that Brother and I imitated,
much to his annoyance.
We would hide from him behind the rose-bush and whistle. He would come
running, his head stretched out in front of him, and on seeing us would
hunch his head in between his shoulders and blink at us reproachfully.
[Illustration]
When summer passed and autumn came to the cove, O’Henry was the only one
of Clarence’s family who still remained with the gray gander. The chicks
and ducklings had gradually grown to adulthood and forgotten the kindly
gander who had fathered them. But O’Henry still joined Clarence in his
daily excursions to the orchard or the meadow.
Then one day, late in the fall, O’Henry went back to the woods. We
grieved for him, because we loved him and because he had chosen the
hardest time of the year in which to return to wild life he knew only by
instinct. We went along the Hill Trail whistling “Oh, _Hen-ry_!” But if
he heard the call he disregarded it. He never came to us.
[Illustration]
Clarence was inconsolable. Day after day he would waddle into the
back-yard where O’Henry’s empty pen still stood, walk around it, peer
through the wire mesh, and make seductive noises of invitation. Brother
and I tried to explain to him that our baby quail had grown up and had
gone back to his kindred of the woods, but Clarence only hissed at us
and regarded us balefully. I think he suspected us of having made away
with his little comrade.
One day the snow came, early for the Sound country, and Brother and I,
climbing the trail to the top of the hill, saw the familiar three-line
imprints of the quail track. We thought of O’Henry, our lost friend; we
hoped he was warm and that his crop was full of food.
Then one morning we heard the familiar “quit quit” of the quail very
near at hand. The sound came from an empty hen-house, and when we
approached it silently and peered through a crack, what should we see
there but a bevy of twenty quail—and O’Henry in their midst! He had not
forgotten us after all! He had brought his friends and relatives back to
the place of his childhood, where he was sure of a welcome for them.
[Illustration]
Our hands filled with cracked wheat and mixed grain, we came to the door
of the shed, softly whistling, “Oh, _Hen_-ry!” He came, as in former
days, running to us with his head stuck out in front of him, and with a
soft whir of wings was upon my shoulder, pecking contentedly at the
wheat I offered him, and wiping his bill on my cheek.
[Illustration]
All through the weeks of snow and cold we fed O’Henry’s clan, and they
learned that we were not to be feared. They surrounded us like chickens
whenever we came into the shed, for O’Henry’s trust in us had inspired
their confidence. Not only did they become accustomed to us, but to
Clarence as well. For the lonely gray gander caught sight of O’Henry one
morning, and waddled over to him, wiggling his excuse of a tail,
shoveling the ground with his flat, yellow bill, and expressing his
delight in husky quacks. The other quail at first took alarm, and there
was much whirring of wings and scurrying of tiny feet. But the gray
gander soon proved to them that his intentions were of the best. He
merely wished to provide for them. So all those weeks when we fed our
“boarders,” as we called them, Clarence stayed in the shed with the
quail family, grubbing busily at the bare ground, finding little, but
making up for the scarcity of food in kindly endeavor.
[Illustration]
When the snow melted, O’Henry’s tribe went back to the woods—and with
them went Clarence. One day we saw O’Henry and his brown cousins
scurrying up the hill, darting under ferns and bushes, calling to each
other happily—and in their wake was Clarence, the fatherly gander,
flattered into thinking that he was leading the way.
[Illustration]
It was a quaint sight, and we did not try to bring him back because we
thought he would return at sunset. But he did not. He disappeared into
the woods with the quail family, and we never saw him again. Long
afterward, hunters told us of seeing a gray gander with a flock of
quail—and they had forborne to shoot.
So we lost two friends at once, but we tried to believe that they were
happy together. How Clarence accustomed himself to the ways of the wild,
I do not know. But I do believe that somewhere the gray gander still
lives with O’Henry, and I can think of no better protector for the quail
baby and his family.
[Illustration]
_Part Eight_
THE TALE OF TIMOTHY
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
_Timothy clung to the bottle habit._
]
_Part Eight_
TIMOTHY, THE DIRTY BEAR
Perhaps it is unjust to the memory of our friend Timothy that we should
think of him as “the Dirty Bear.” I wouldn’t prejudice you against him
for the world. “Dirty” has such a reprehensible sound. But Timothy was
dirty in a perfectly legitimate way. He had a primitive soul that found
delight in grubbing in rotten stumps for maggots and in burrowing into
the soft earth for Indian potato roots. You can see that under such
circumstances he could not keep his face and paws scrupulously clean,
any more than a child can who makes mud pies. He hated water—but then,
so did we, unless we could take our baths in the Bay—and he had an
almost fanatical fear of soap. Brother, who was then reading “A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” thought Timothy might have
been a reincarnation of some eccentric hermit who had vowed never to
wash himself for the rest of his life.
[Illustration]
We knew Timothy long before he knew us. We did not know him by name, but
we knew where he lived, and we had what you might call a speaking
acquaintance with his mother. It happened thus:
One day, in our explorations along the creek bed at the end of the Hill
Trail, we came suddenly upon a hole in the bank. It was almost covered
by long, overhanging ferns, and had not a puff of wind stirred the
fronds just as we were passing, we should never have known about the
hole at all. It was on the opposite side of the creek, but we found a
place where a fallen log bridged the little stream, and the next moment
we were standing on the opposite side at the foot of the embankment,
pushing the ferns aside and peering into the depths of a black and
wonderfully inviting hole.
[Illustration]
Had we thought to look, we might have seen in the sandy slope that led
up to the hidden entrance the imprints of a foot almost human in shape,
although not nearly so large. Footprints that turned in toward each
other—and we should have known. But our minds were filled with the
fascinating possibilities of the miniature cave we had discovered.
Perhaps it was a pirate den; perhaps gnomes lived there; or perhaps we
were on the track of buried treasure.
[Illustration]
On hands and knees I led the way into the inky blackness with Brother
close behind me. The daylight behind was blotted out. For several yards
the passageway went straight ahead, then it turned suddenly to the
right; and I, turning with it, stopped so abruptly that Brother coming
behind bumped into me. A curious, powerful odor enveloped us, as of
darkness made odorous by furry bodies and warm by living things. Then
from ahead of me not more than two yards away flashed the savage gleam
of two blue-green eyes.
There was a menacing growl which set our spines to tingling, and at the
same instant came the sound of whines and a movement as of baby things
disturbed in their sleep. I was conscious of a sickish, fainting
feeling, for I realized suddenly that we were in the house of a mother
bear.
Brother needed no urging to make his exit. He was backing out on hands
and knees far more quickly than he had come in, and I was prodding him
along, followed by those menacing, hair-raising growls.
[Illustration]
Why the lady bear did not attack us is more than I can tell. The brown
bears of the northwestern woods are harmless and even friendly little
persons, but the mother when protecting her young is more ferocious than
a wildcat or a mountain lion. Perhaps Mrs. Timothy knew that our visit
was unintentional and that we meditated no harm toward her or her
children. At any rate we gained the entrance of the cave untouched and
unharmed, but we were breathing heavily and our knees were wobbling
sadly.
[Illustration]
Perhaps you think we should have stayed away from the house of the lady
bear; but we did not. We were interested, you see, in knowing how much
of a family she had, and we never went along the creek bed without
leaving some offering in the shape of food at the mouth of the hole.
Sometimes it was an apple or a leaf of lettuce, and if nothing else
availed, we broke off licorice root or fern and placed it there for her.
It was our method of apologizing for our intrusion and of expressing our
interest in the family.
One day we saw the mother bear with her children, and that is how we
came to name Timothy. She was at the mouth of the cave, half asleep in
the warm sunshine, and four cubs were rolling over each other like
gridiron heroes in a football scrimmage. They were squealing like young
pigs, and from time to time she remonstrated against their noise by a
sleepy grunt. Then, as we watched, the bear cub at the bottom of the
furry pile squeezed out and stood on his hind legs. His face was covered
with brown, sandy loam, and his squinty black eyes peered out as through
a mask. I knew a boy who lived at the head of the Bay whose face always
looked so. His name was Timothy, and that was why on the spot we so
christened the bear baby.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Our next meeting with Timothy was in the nature of a near-tragedy. We
were hunting for trilliums in Trillium Gulch, a hidden valley to which
we ourselves had cut a path from the Hill Trail. The white, lily-like
flowers starred the hillside there in the spring, and it was our fond
belief that no one came there but ourselves. Hunters and trappers go
everywhere, however, violating even such a woodland paradise as ours. As
we went down the narrow trail, pushing aside the light branches of the
alders and the firtrees, we heard a plaintive, whining cry almost human
in its poignancy. We stopped for an instant, listening, wondering. Then
we slipped softly down the path, thrust aside the interlacing ferns, and
found ourselves beside the little stream which ran like a silver ribbon
through Trillium Gulch. The sounds came from the left, and following
their lead we rounded a boulder in the trail and came upon a sight which
filled us with gasping indignation. A little brown bear with a fleck of
white on his furry throat was tugging frantically and futilely at the
jaws of a steel trap which held his two front paws in a cruel, biting
grip. There was blood upon the jagged clamps, and the face which the
little fellow turned to us was piteous in its baby misery, a little
brown face covered with loam. It was Timothy, the Dirty Bear.
[Illustration]
I do not like even now to think of the half-hour which followed. So
strong was the steel trap that the combined efforts of Brother and
myself could only pry the cruel jaws apart the fraction of an inch. We
were hampered, too, in our work of mercy by poor little Timothy, who,
not realizing that we were trying to help him, shrieked and bit at us
and scratched with his hind feet. Our hands were soon covered with
blood, and there was a long, jagged line of red on Brother’s face where
the baby bear had clawed him. But we did not pause in our efforts.
Finally, by the aid of a stout stick, we managed to open the jaws of the
vicious trap, and the poor little fellow, his front paws cruelly torn
and bleeding, whimpering like a baby, sat down on his haunches and began
to lick his wounded paws, stopping at intervals to hold them out in
front of him like a child whose finger is hurt and wants it made well by
a kiss.
Strangely enough, he was not afraid of us now, and when I took him in my
arms his plaintive whimpering gradually ceased, and he licked at his
paws solicitously.
[Illustration]
No doubt we should have taken Timothy back to his mother and trusted to
nature to heal his grievous hurts. But nature would take too long, and
in the meantime he would suffer cruelly. He was such a little bear, you
know, and had not yet achieved the stoicism which makes the older woods
creatures almost indifferent to pain. So even at the cost of causing his
mother a great deal of worry at his prolonged absence, we took him down
the hill with us to the log cabin to receive first aid treatment for his
wounds.
That is how Timothy, the Dirty Bear, became a friend of ours. Fate in
the form of a hunter prevented us from taking him back to his home in
the creek bank. The poor lady bear was shot the next day. One of her
cubs was captured and the other two children escaped to the woods to
live as best they could. So Timothy belonged to us, and he was the
merriest of playmates.
[Illustration]
When we rescued him from the trap he was a very tiny bear, being no
larger than Tinker, our black and tan rat terrier. He slept in a
clothes-basket on the back porch, sometimes having for a bedfellow
Three-Spot, the mottled black and white cat. Three-Spot at first had
been greatly alarmed by Timothy’s rough and sportive overtures of
friendship. But when she found that by boxing his ears she could correct
his manners and set him to yelping with fright, she took to imposing
upon his good nature by making him serve at night for a mattress. In the
morning we would find the two of them curled up together, Timothy
snoring gently and Three-Spot digging her paws into his soft, thick fur
with a purr that was a monotone of content.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Brother and I did not know whether Timothy’s mother had weaned him from
a milk diet, but we felt that we would be safeguarding his digestion if
we brought him up on liquid food for a time at least, so we rowed into
town especially to purchase a bottle with a strong rubber nipple
attached. The druggist asked if there was a baby at our house, and we
told him yes—what kind of baby, we did not state.
[Illustration]
Whether or not we were following the same system of dietetics that Mrs.
Bear would have employed in bringing up her child, Timothy really did
thrive on his liquid menu. Even after he outgrew the necessity for milk,
he clung to the bottle habit and would sample the contents of any bottle
he found. We used to bring him ginger ale from town and soda pop of all
flavors. If nothing else was handy, we filled a battered old canteen
with sweetened water, and he would tilt back on his hind legs, hold the
canteen perpendicularly aloft, close his eyes, and drink it slowly,
making funny little rumbling noises deep in his throat which, Brother
maintained, were imitations of Three-Spot’s purring. Once he got hold of
a bottle of kerosene and had closed his eyes in anticipatory ecstasy
before the taste of the first terrible mouthful reached his throat. I
shall never forget the look of pained disillusion on Timothy’s face. He
threw the bottle from him, coughed and sputtered, gagged once or twice
as if deathly sick, and then waddled off to the spring, walking
pigeon-toed, and with uncomprehending anguish in the very tilt of his
furry hind quarters. That should have cured him of his liking for
promiscuous bottles, but it did not—as you shall see.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
We worried a little at first as to what else we should give him besides
milk, but we need not have concerned ourselves. Timothy’s appetite was
without limits, and he could eat anything—bread, meat scraps, griddle
cakes, or cold potatoes. On top of the civilized food we fed him he
hunted on his own account for certain roots he liked, clawed the bark
from fallen logs to get the white grubs underneath, and buried his head
at the foot of hollow stumps where the red ants had made their hills.
After an hour or two of such foraging, he would return to us, his face
and paws besmeared with loam and covered with cobwebs, his furry coat
rusty with sand and tagged by twigs and strands of blackberry vine. He
would blink at us questioningly, a trifle shamefacedly, running his
small red tongue along the sides of his mouth, and we would shake our
heads and say mournfully, “Oh, Timothy, you dirty, dirty bear!”