though he knew there was no escaping it, he always squealed and
struggled while we lathered him and only ceased his whining when we had
rinsed him and put him in the sun to dry, giving him the canteen filled
with sugared water to keep him quiet.
[Illustration]
He was the merriest playfellow we ever had. He went with us
everywhere—up the Hill Trail, into the orchard, and out on the bay when
we sailed our little boat and played that we were pirates. Timothy never
objected to anything except a bath. We dressed him in outlandish
costumes, sometimes with a red bandanna tied around his head, a shawl
looped about his fat and furry body, and a wooden knife stuck in his
belt. He was always ready to wrestle with us, to climb hills with us, or
to be a pillow for our heads as Brother and I lay through the long,
drowsy, summer afternoons and read fairy-tales aloud to each other, or
described the shapes we saw in the clouds.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
When the late fall came, Timothy remembered he was a bear long enough to
have a desire to go to bed for the winter, but what chance had a tired
bear for a seasonal sleep when living in the same house with Tinker,
Three-Spot, Brother, and myself? We would drag him from his
clothes-basket while he whimpered with half-closed eyes, and Tinker
would badger him into wakefulness and a game of tag. Then the four of us
would go through the orchard up to the Hill Trail, pushing each other
into the drifts of dead leaves and playing hide and seek around the
stumps and logs.
[Illustration]
Of course Timothy could not stay with us always; that was too much to
expect. He belonged to the woods, and sooner or later he must obey their
call. He had belonged to us for almost a year, and it was only right
that the out-of-doors should at last claim her child. But when the call
of the wild did come, we were sorry in spite of ourselves, and when
Timothy’s absences came more and more frequently and the intervals of
time he spent with us lessened, we missed him sorely. We knew that soon
our playmate would be with us no more, that he would go back to the
forest whence he came, and take up the serious business of finding a
wife and of locating a tree or a hole in which to spend the next winter.
[Illustration]
The manner of his departure was dramatic, even as was his advent into
our lives. We were up on the Hill Trail, Brother and I, and we had, as
we supposed, left Timothy on the back porch sleeping in his
clothes-basket, for which he was now much too big, but to which he had
become attached through habit. On the open trail with its
sound-deadening mat of hard, brown earth we did not hear the soft,
padding feet that followed us and were not aware that our friend was
near at hand until we met a hunter, brown-faced and with a gun in hand,
near the bend in the path that we called “U-Chu-Ka’s Corner,” in memory
of our little rabbit friend.
[Illustration]
The man had a red band around his hat, I remember, and a canteen was
slung at his side. He had put it to his lips to drink when he caught
sight of us, and suddenly his eyes widened, and the hand that held the
canteen became rigid.
“Run, you kids!” he gasped out, “there’s a bear behind you!”
We turned to confront Timothy, who was standing pigeon-toed in the
middle of the trail, his face covered with loam from a rotten stump
where he had been digging for ants, his eyes blinking at us sleepily and
a trifle reproachfully for having gone off without him. But before we
could explain to the hunter that the bear behind us was a friend of
ours, the man had raised his gun and leveled it at our playfellow. I
screamed aloud and Brother, heedless of the danger flung himself in
front of the rifle.
[Illustration]
Now Timothy knew nothing of guns, but he had long and satisfactory
acquaintance with bottles and canteens. He had seen the man drink. There
was something contained therein that he, Timothy, would like. The man
would not mind sharing it—I’m sure he reasoned thus to himself—and in
that instant when the gun was pointed straight at him, he rose on his
hind feet, his furry arms outstretched, and started toward the hunter.
[Illustration]
The man with the gun forgot to pull the trigger; he forgot everything
except that a dark brown body with gleaming black eyes was advancing
upon him. He gave a little squeal of terror, and the rifle dropped from
his hands. He turned and fled down the trail with Timothy galloping on
all fours close at his heels. In spite of our breathless calls he would
not return to us, and though we ran and called and laughed at the same
time, he soon outdistanced us. When last we saw the hunter he was
disappearing over the crest of a little hillock in the trail with the
canteen bobbing behind him, and the hat with the red band made a dot of
scarlet against the underbrush where it had fallen.
We heard afterward that the man had not stopped running until he reached
the little town. Timothy by that time was nowhere in sight, having given
up the pursuit of the canteen in disgust.
But we never saw him again. Perhaps returning home he met a comely lady
bear and they decided to set up housekeeping together. Perhaps she even
won his heart by telling him that she knew where there was a nice bottle
full of sweetened water.
[Illustration]
Long afterward we found one day by the creek bed a ginger ale bottle
dropped there by some picknickers. It was empty, and on the gravel near
by we saw footprints almost human in shape, only smaller and toeing in
toward each other.
[Illustration]
We knew somehow that Timothy had been there. It was almost as if he had
known we would pass that way, and had left the bottle and his footprints
where we would see them to tell us that we were not forgotten, nor were
the things we had taught him.
_Part Nine_
THE BANDIT BIRD
_Part Nine_
_The_
BANDIT BIRD
[Illustration]
I hope the fact that Hector was a chicken hawk will not prejudice you
against him unduly. There are brigands, you know, who have gentlemanly
instincts, and I am sure that if Hector had been a bandit chief, he
would have spared women and children and given part of his plunderings
to charity. After all, he was not to blame for being a hawk or for
having a natural liking for live poultry. There was at times a mournful
dignity about him, as if he resented the unfair workings of a fate which
had made him a robber bird, a trespasser on the lives of other
creatures, and at enmity with every living thing.
[Illustration:
_Sometimes the bandit birds swooped down_
]
He was a beautiful hawk with gray-brown plumage, wing tips that turned
slightly upward when he flew, and a fierce and royal beak curved like a
scimitar. His eyes were very black, very bright, and very knowing. Most
of the time they were superbly disdainful. But Brother and I have seen
them when they actually seemed to smile.
It was Brother who named him, for the alliterative privilege, I suspect,
of calling him “Hector, the Horrible Hawk.” But that was only in fun.
For he was not horrible at all when we got to know him. Lazarus thinks
otherwise, very probably. But then his experience with Hector was a
trying one, and to this day—if he still lives—he carries the marks of
his eventful meeting with our friend, the robber chief.
[Illustration]
Lazarus was a pet chicken, son of Sironda, the black minorca hen. We
gave him his curious name because he had a talent for venturing very
near death’s door, and the fact that we always saved him lent
appropriateness to his name. Once when very young, no more than five
days out of his shell, he was all but scalped by a rival mother hen, and
when we answered his frantic baby peeps for help his head was bleeding
profusely, and his eyes were closed as if in death. We sprinkled water
on his tiny bill and salved his lacerated head. And he, having a strong
constitution, came back from the tomb, as it were, and lived a long and
eventful life. In order to care for him better, we kept him in the
back-yard, tucking him at night into a small box under flannel
coverings. He thrived and grew from chickhood very sturdily, and the
only ill effect that remained from his early mishap was that he was
quite bald. No feathers ever came on the spot where the lady hen had
scalped him, and we could have distinguished him from every cockerel of
his size and color in the world by that little bare place on the top of
his head.
[Illustration]
Now, when Lazarus lost his first baby down and was in that shorn and
untidy condition which always precedes the growth of real feathers, he
suddenly became lonesome for the other members of the poultry yard. He
would run the length of the wire fence, poking his head through the
small meshes, and more than once he nearly strangled to death by getting
it caught. We always rescued him just in time to save his life. So
finally we allowed him to go into the barnyard with the rest of his
kindred. It was then that Lazarus had the big adventure of his already
crowded career. His meeting with Hector lifted him to dizzy heights—and
I am not speaking figuratively. It really did. At that, it wasn’t so
much a meeting as an abduction. At least Hector intended it to be such.
[Illustration]
We were constantly on guard to keep hawks away from the ranch. They
waged merciless warfare on our chickens, pigeons, and guinea-pigs, and
there was always a loaded, double-barreled shotgun behind the kitchen
door ready for action in case of an air raid. When we heard the
frightened flapping of the pigeons as they flew in aimless circles
around the cabin and barn, we knew a hawk was somewhere overhead,
hovering with curved-up wings and cruel, bright eyes, seeking his prey,
choosing it calmly, waiting patiently the proper moment to swoop down
upon it.
[Illustration]
The chickens, too, always told us when such danger was near. Prince, the
great white Plymouth Rock rooster, would set up a long-drawn cry of
warning, and the hens would burst into frenzied cackling. The whole
poultry yard would cock its head on one side to get a better view of the
air robber, then would scoot to cover of the barn or hen-houses, every
neck ruff distended. Sometimes it was a false alarm. A crow would be
flying peaceably on his business, or a sea-gull would have swerved
inland a bit. Prince took no chances. It was his duty to guard the
poultry yard, and he believed firmly in the policy of safety first.
But many times the warning was one of real danger. A hawk would indeed
be circling slowly above the barnyard, his bright eyes fixed
calculatingly on the scurrying fowls below. Then one of the grown-ups
would snatch the double-barreled shotgun from behind the kitchen door
and fire at the winged plunderer. The shot, though it did not usually
kill, always frightened the air robber away, and we would watch him fly
lazily, almost contemptuously, off toward the hill and the thick woods,
his powerful wings moving steadily and easily.
[Illustration]
Sometimes, though, the bandit birds came and swooped down on their
prey—a small chick or a baby guinea-pig—before we could prevent it. And
often a bloody bunch of feathers near the rookery would testify to the
murderous skill of a hawk and the sad fate of a hapless pigeon.
[Illustration]
It was on a day when the grown-ups had gone to town. The Old Fisherman
was mending his nets down on the float in front of the cabin. It was a
lazy summer day, and Brother and I were sitting on the porch steps
reading—the steps that were made of roughly-hewn logs.
All at once we heard the familiar danger signal of Prince, the white
rooster, and then the hens began to cackle in a very panic of fear. We
dropped our books, but before we could even start for the back-yard, we
heard another sound which seemed so impossible and so out of place that
we listened paralyzed with astonishment. It was the shrill and frenzied
peeping of a half-grown chicken in terrible distress—_and the sound came
from above us_!
[Illustration]
The next instant, as we stood staring, hardly crediting what our eyes
told us, we saw a large chicken hawk fly slowly past the cabin, no
higher than the roof of the porch. He flew so slowly and at such a short
distance from the earth because he was weighted down with a live and
struggling young cockerel, which he held grimly in his sharp talons!
There was a shout that came from our throats simultaneously,
“_Lazarus!_”
[Illustration]
For the struggling, shrilly-peeping victim was no other than our
bald-headed friend whom we had saved from death half a dozen times
before. His bare, gangling legs hung limply beneath him; his neck jerked
spasmodically with his frantic appeals for help. His wings, with their
absurd tufts of feathers, stuck out at right angles from his body, for
the hawk’s talons were buried in the flesh beneath them.
[Illustration]
At the time, you may be sure, we did not wait to make any remarks on all
these observations. With one thought Brother and I plunged through the
front door, back into the kitchen, and bumped into each other in our
eagerness to get the gun. It was Brother who seized it first, and
through the two rooms we dashed again and out into the front yard. The
hawk was flying slowly and with evident difficulty—for Lazarus was a
healthy, heavy youngster—across the open space that lay between the yard
of the cabin and the old brickyard shed which adjoined it.
Brother, bent back almost double by the weight of the heavy weapon,
pressed it against his shoulder, took careful aim, and fired. I
screamed, for there were three falls. Brother tumbled backward from the
kick of the shotgun. Lazarus hurtled to earth in a sprawl of legs and
wings and lay there, uttering feeble, choking sounds. The hawk rocketed
down, a flutter of gray-brown feathers; there was blood upon the grass
where he dropped.
[Illustration]
The Old Fisherman, hearing the commotion, came running up the float, the
wooden shuttle with which he mended nets still grasped tightly in his
hand.
Brother scrambled to his feet, blinking dazedly at the result of his
marksmanship. Our first thought was that Lazarus was killed at last. But
he was apparently only severely shaken by his fall, for presently he
walked off a little dizzily, his tender skin bleeding where the hawk’s
talons had sunk in.
[Illustration]
The hawk was our next consideration. Now that we had wounded him—I say
“we,” because I felt that the responsibility was half mine—we were sorry
for his plight. He was thrashing about helplessly on the grass, one wing
dragging at his side. He was trying desperately to fly, but could not so
much as lift himself above the ground. His fierce, dark eyes blazed at
us, and his powerful, curved beak snapped menacingly when we approached
him. But at last his strength failed him, the bleeding wing spread
itself out in a fan, and he sank over on one side, his talons jerking
spasmodically. As we came nearer he regarded us with eyes that were
unafraid. They even seemed dull with apathy, as if he knew that the end
had come and that he, like the robber aristocrat that he was, must
accept it philosophically.
The Old Fisherman was for ending his life then and there. But Brother
and I could not bear to have him killed, for he was at our mercy, hurt
and helpless. For the first time in our lives we had deliberately
wounded something that lived and had feelings even as we. The knowledge
that we had fired upon him to save our friend’s life was not sufficient
excuse for us to allow the Old Fisherman to kill him.
[Illustration]
So together we caught him, tied his fierce beak so he could not snap at
us, bound his powerful legs so that his talons should not tear our
hands, then the Old Fisherman, grumblingly, but gently, bathed and
salved the injured wing. In time it would be as good as new, he told us,
but he didn’t know what our folks would say to our saving the life of a
“pesterin’, low-lived hawk.”
As he anticipated, the grown-ups were not at all pleased when they
returned from town and found Hector—he had been named by that time—tied
by one leg to a stake in the back-yard, his right wing sadly out of
focus and smeared with a clot of blood. But it was not in their kindly
hearts to kill in cold blood, so they let the hawk live.
[Illustration]
For the first few days that Hector was in our midst he did little except
to tug at the chain which bound him to the stake, slowly and
automatically, like a man taking morning exercises with rubber ropes. He
hated us and repulsed our attentions fiercely and scornfully. He refused
to eat the tempting bits of raw meat that we spread before him; he
sulked all day with his curved beak hidden in the ruffled feathers of
his breast. He was indeed like a robber chieftain in captivity. We were
patient, however, for we knew that according to Hector’s viewpoint we
had injured him without reason. He had been in search of his dinner—a
perfectly legitimate occupation for any one—and as he was carrying it
off we had not only robbed him of it, but wounded him grievously. You
can see that he had a great deal of logic on his side.
[Illustration]
But little by little his haughty antagonism melted before our daily
overtures. He no longer snapped at us when we came near, and began to
take an active interest in the food we brought him. There came a day
when he allowed me to put my hand on the soft, smooth feathers of his
head and back, and when I gently massaged his wounded wing with vaseline
he opened his beak as if to bite my hand but closed it without doing me
harm.
[Illustration]
Then, wonder of wonders, Hector began to like us. When he saw us coming
into the back-yard he would set up a sort of dancing, jumping up and
down stiff-legged, spreading out his dark wings, and straining at the
chain. His beak would snap open and shut, and his bright, black eyes
seemed actually to have a smile in them. He would allow me to salve his
injury with only the faintest suggestion of nervousness in his half-open
beak, and on the day when we unchained his leg from the stake he sat on
my hand with all the dignity of an emperor receiving his court after a
long illness.
[Illustration]
From that time on we gave Hector his liberty for a few hours each day.
And always, before releasing him, we would take the precaution to feed
him well. We did not intend to have any fatalities among the poultry if
we could help it. But even with a full stomach, he worried the barnyard
into a daily spasm of fear. For as he regained the use of his wing, he
would fly slowly, majestically, over the poultry pens, turning his head
from side to side as hawks do when they are picking their prey and
calculating the time for the swoop to earth. Brother and I believed
firmly that Hector had no intention of snatching up a chick or a pigeon,
that his daily flight was merely by way of exercise and for the dramatic
satisfaction it gave him to see the feathered crew below him so
disturbed.
[Illustration]
At any rate, he never once attempted to harm any of our live stock.
Perhaps it was because we fed him so well, but Brother and I preferred
to think it was because he was a gentleman, and that he would not betray
our confidence when we trusted him to do the right thing.
[Illustration]
This daily flight of Hector’s was most annoying to the grown-ups,
however. In the first place, the hens were not laying so well as they
had. They were frightened out of all nesting desire by Hector’s calm
aërial promenades, and were in a continual state of nervous excitement.
Then, too, when Prince gave the danger signal and all the hens ran for
cover with their chicks, the grown-ups would dash out of the house each
time ready to fire upon a strange marauder, only to be confronted with
Hector making peaceable spirals above the hen-houses. He would come to
us when we whistled shrilly, and would sit quietly on my wrist to nibble
at a piece of cooky as if he had never had a carnivorous thought in his
life.
[Illustration]
I should like to tell you that he and Lazarus became friends after the
hawk had become partially domesticated, but such was never the case.
Lazarus used to come stalking into the back-yard, his legs much too long
for the rest of him, and a tiny, serrated, red comb sticking up from the
bald spot on his head. His body was still almost bare, though a generous
tuft of feathers on his tail showed where he might in time expect some
real plumage. He still carried the scars of his aërial adventure under
his wings. He would approach Hector cautiously, craning his neck in and
out with a curious rubberized effect, and would stop at a safe distance,
turning his head on one side, giving Hector a timorous inspection from
the broadside of one amber eye. And Hector would return the look
scornfully, his curved beak giving him a morose, sneering expression.
His whole attitude seemed to say, “Never mind, I’ll get you next time!”
As Hector grew stronger and could fly better, the grown-ups gave the
ultimatum that we must dispose of him in some way. It was too dangerous,
they said, to have a chicken hawk around the ranch. In vain we argued
that Hector was a gentleman, that he would not bother any of our
poultry. But to our sorrow, they said that he should be taken to the
city and presented to the zoölogical gardens there.
[Illustration]
Brother and I told Hector what was going to happen to him, and that it
was not in our power to prevent his going, and it seemed to us that he
was very thoughtful afterward. We shall always believe that what
happened was the direct result of the grown-ups’ decision to send him
into captivity, although, you understand, we could not blame them. They
had been more than kind to our somewhat dangerous guest.
The next day when we released our robber chieftain from his stake, he
flew up over the cabin roof, circled once around it, then flew northward
along the beach and was soon out of sight. When night came Hector did
not return. And though Brother and I stood in the yard whistling until
we were breathless, there was no sudden swoop of a gray-brown bird from
the air, no Hector to curve sharp talons gently around my wrist.
[Illustration]
The next morning, when we went for milk at the neighboring ranch, we
knew why our friend had not come back to us. On the fence outside the
barn, hung limply over the pickets just as he had fallen, was a draggled
bunch of gray-brown feathers that had once been our beautiful Hector,
the Robber Chief. The wide wings were powerless now, the body was
riddled with fine shot, the once proud head with its curved beak drooped
pitifully. The fierce dark eyes were closed. Never again would Hector
perform his dance of joy at our coming, never again would he stare
appraisingly at Lazarus, or frighten the hens and pigeons with his lazy
circles above their heads.
The rancher told us he had shot the hawk the day before. And he could
not understand why we wept over the blood-stained bunch of feathers. He
did not know that Hector was a friend of ours—and a gentleman.
Brother and I always thought that Hector deliberately courted death
rather than spend his life in yearning captivity. And I, for one, am
glad he did. For no one else would have understood him and loved him as
we did.
[Illustration:
_Her nostrils dilated at the hated human scent._
]
_Part Ten_
MY FRIEND THE PRINCESS
This is not my story, except incidentally. It is the story of a Bengal
tigress named Princess, with a coat of dull gold striped with ebony. A
restless, sullen tigress, padding the length of her narrow cage, with
amber eyes staring out at some vision beyond the iron bars, with tawny
lips half drawn back from white, pointed fangs. A tigress with something
high and noble in her steady pacing, her air of absolute detachment from
everything around her. When I met her I was no longer a child living
near Puget Sound, but had quite grown up and moved to California, and to
city life far from my woodland friends of earlier and sweeter years.
[Illustration]
Princess lives in a motion-picture studio’s menagerie now, but there was
a time when she knew the hot, marshy smell of the Bengal jungles, when
she crouched, tense in every muscle, to spring upon a fat bullock, when
she padded through narrow jungle trails to drink at the hidden pool
which only the forest creatures knew.
[Illustration]