the covert overlooking his back tracks. These dogs were so silent,
compared with the curs he was used to. An occasional sharp yelp, just
enough to let their masters know where they were, was all the noise they
made. They attended strictly to business. The buck did not expect to
hear anything of them for some time, but he had hardly been lying in his
covert more than five minutes when those staccato yelps came faintly to
his ears. He was startled. How had the creatures so quickly solved the
complexities of his trail? He had no apprehension of the sure cunning
with which those dogs could cut across curves and pick up the trail
anew. Still less did he realize their appalling speed. When next their
voices struck upon his ear they were so close that for an instant his
heart stood still. But his craft did not fail him. Without waiting to
see the lean, long shapes flash by, he arose and noiselessly faded
back through the covert, moving as softly as a shadow till he felt
himself out of ear-shot. Then he dashed away at top speed, determined to
put a safe distance between himself and these disconcerting adversaries.
[Illustration: "NOISELESSLY FADED BACK THROUGH THE COVERT."]
He kept on now till his heart was near bursting, and when at last he
made his strategic loop and lay down to rest and watch he felt that he
must have secured ample time to recover. But not so. Before he had half
got his wind, and while his flanks were yet heaving painfully, those
meagre but terrible cries again drew near. This time, perforce, he let
the pursuers run by, and saw that they seemed as fresh as ever. Then he
sprang up and resumed the flight, shaken by the first chill of real
terror that he had known since that forgotten day in the thicket when
the hare and the fisher jumped upon him.
His flight now led him past the back lots of Ramsay's farm, where the
cattle were pasturing. Either because his sudden fear made him seek
companionship or with an idea of confusing his scent with that of the
cattle, he leaped into the pasture and ran here and there among the
mildly wondering cows. Then he leaped the fence again at the farthest
corner, plumped into the thick underbrush, and headed toward the fields
with which he had been wont to make so free. He had just vanished in the
leafage when his pursuers appeared at the other side of the pasture.
They ran in at once among the cows, paying no heed whatever to angry
snorts and levelled horns, unravelled the trail with perfect ease,
dashed over the fence again, and darted into the underbrush with a new
note of triumph in their yelpings.
When the buck heard their voices so close behind him his knees almost
gave way. He knew he could not run much farther, and he knew his shifts
were all vain against such implacable foes as these. He half-paused,
with a brave impulse to stand at bay. But some other impulse, undefined,
but potent, urged him on toward Ramsay's farm. It was familiar ground,
and he had never suffered any hurt there. He knew that the old farmer
was most dangerous, but he was not an instant, horrible, inevitable
menace like this which was close upon his heels. Moreover, he had seen
the cattle go up to the barn-yard and take refuge there, and come away
in safety.
[Illustration: "THEN HE LEAPED THE FENCE AGAIN."]
With the last of his ebbing strength he burst forth into the open, ran
across the corn-field, passed the corner of the garden, brushed
against the end of the well-sweep, and paused before the open door of
the stable. The heavy door was carelessly propped open with a stick. In
contrast with the glare of the sunshine outside, the interior looked
black and safe. But all about, though mixed with the smell of the
cattle, was the dreaded smell of man. He wheeled aside, dimly intending
to go around the stable and resume his hopeless flight, but as he did so
the yelp of his pursuers broke louder upon his ears. He saw them break
from the woods and dart into the corn-field. This decided him. He
wheeled again, half-staggering, struck blunderingly against the stick
which propped the door open, stumbled across the threshold, ran to the
innermost depths of the stable, and fell gasping into a box stall which
Ramsay had once built for a colt. At the same moment the heavy door, no
longer propped back, swung to with a slam, the big wooden latch rising
smoothly and dropping securely into place.
When the dogs arrived and found the door shut against them they broke
into angry clamour. Once around the building they ran to see if there
was any other entrance. Then they clawed savagely at the door, barking
and growling in their balked fury. Their noise brought Ramsay on the
run from the potato-field, over the rise, where he was working. He was
surprised to see two strange dogs making such a fuss at his stable door.
Being a canny backwoodsman, however, instead of going straight to the
door, he went around behind the stable and looked in the window.
When Ramsay saw the shivering, tawny form and great antlers on the floor
of the stall his heart swelled with exultation. The coveted trophies
were his. He ran into the kitchen for his gun. Then he changed his mind
and picked up, instead, his long hunting-knife. When he approached the
stable door the dogs turned upon him threateningly. But the crisp voice
of authority with which he ordered them aside was something they were
quite too clever to defy. Sullenly, with red eyes of wrath, they obeyed,
waiting for their masters to arrive and support them.
Ramsay closed the door carefully behind him and strode to the box stall,
knife in hand. On its threshold he paused and scrutinized the captive
with triumphant admiration. Sure, besides the trophies of hide and
horns, there was meat enough there to do him all winter--tough, perhaps,
but sweet, seeing that it had been fatted on his choicest crops. He
looked at the animal's heaving sides and realized what a magnificent run
he must have made. Then as he stepped forward with his knife he wondered
what could have induced the beast to flee to such a refuge. The buck was
gazing up at him with wide eyes, reassured by the man's quiet. There was
no terror in that gaze, but only a sort of anxious question; and he
never flinched, though the laboured breath came quicker through his
nostrils as the man approached his head.
As Ramsay met that anxious, questioning look, the eager triumph in his
own eyes died away, and his grim mouth softened to a half-abashed,
half-quizzical smile. The bright blade in his hand slipped furtively
into his belt, as if he didn't want the buck to notice it. Then,
muttering approvingly, "Ye've fooled 'em, ain't ye!" he picked up a
little shallow tub that stood in a corner of the stall and started out
to the well to get the beast a drink.
As he closed the stable door behind him two perspiring men with guns
entered the yard from the corn-field, and were eagerly greeted by the
dogs. "Good day," said one, politely. "We're after a big buck which our
dogs here have run down for us. He must have hidden in your barn."
Ramsay eyed the visitors with ill disguised antagonism and fingered his
scraggy chin before he answered.
"Ya-as," he drawled. "I've got a mighty fine buck in there--the old
Ringwaak buck himself, as everybody's heard tell of. But, beggin' your
pardon, friends, I reckon he's goin' to stay in there for the present."
The strangers studied the old man's strong face for a moment or two in
silence, noted the latent fire in the depths of his eyes, and realized
that there was nothing to be done. Whistling the dogs to heel, they
strode off, angry and disgusted. But before they had gone far the one
who had spoken turned around.
"I'll give you fifty dollars for those horns," he said abruptly.
"Ef they're wuth fifty dollars they're good enough for me to keep,"
drawled Ramsay, never moving from where he stood. And with resentful
eyes he watched them out of sight before he went to the well.
During the next four days half the men and boys in the settlement, with
not a few of the women, visited Ramsay's barn to view the famous
captive. The buck, well fed and watered, had recovered himself in a few
hours, and seemed none the worse for his adventure. All his former
arrogance, too, had returned, and visitors were careful to keep at a
safe distance. But Ramsay he recognized, apparently, as either protector
or master, and Ramsay could enter the stall at any time. The buck would
sidle off and eye him anxiously, but show no sign of the furious anger
which the visitors excited.
To all inquiries as to what he would do with his captive Ramsay would
answer, "Sell him to circus, maybe." But it was not till several weeks
had passed and the settlement had got over its interest in the matter
that he was able to quite make up his mind. Then, one crisp autumn
morning, when the woods were all yellow and red, he went over to the
next farm and asked his neighbour, a handy young farmer, to come and
help him get the captive aboard a hay-wagon.
"Got a chance to sell him up to the Falls," he vouchsafed in brief
explanation, and the explanation was one to content the whole
settlement.
There was a strenuous hour or two before the indignant animal was roped
and trussed into helplessness. Then the bruised and panting men hoisted
the prisoner into the hay-wagon and tied him so he could not be bounced
off; and Ramsay started on the rough twenty-five mile drive to the
Falls.
About seventeen miles from Ringwaak the road crossed the Ottanoonsis,
whose wild current filled the valley with noise and formed an impassable
northern frontier to the Ringwaak region. It was generally believed that
the wild creatures of the Ringwaak region held little intercourse with
those north of the Ottanoonsis, by reason of that stream's turbulence.
As soon as Ramsay found himself across the bridge he stopped and once
more drew his hunting-knife. At the flash of the blade the captive
looked up wonderingly from his bonds. Leaning over him, the old man's
face broke into a sheepish grin. But he did not hesitate. Three or four
properly distributed strokes of the knife, and the ropes fell apart. The
captive lifted his splendid head, kicked, and struggled to his feet,
bewildered.
"Now," said Ramsay, "Git!"
As he spoke he snapped his long whip sharply. With a magnificent leap
the buck went out and over the wheels and vanished with great sailing
bounds into the wild Ottanoonsis forest. Then Ramsay turned slowly back
toward home, thinking a thrilling story for the settlement about the
cunning escape of the Ringwaak buck.
The Heron in the Reeds
Though haying was almost done on the uplands, over the wide, level,
treeless meadow-island the heavy grass stood still uncut, its rank
growth taking long to ripen. The warm wind that drew across it from time
to time in a vague, elusive rhythm was burdened with rich summer scents,
the mid-noon distillations from the vetch and clover and lily and
yellow-daisy blooms which thronged among the grass-heads, and from the
flaunting umbels of the wild parsnip which towered above them. Over this
radiant and pregnant luxuriance the air quivered softly, and hummed with
the murmur of foraging bees and flies, glad in the heat.
The island lay on the tranquil river like a splendid green enamel on
blue porcelain. Its level, at this season, lay several feet above that
of the water, and its shores, fantastically looped with little,
sweeping coves and jutting points, were fringed with deep rushes of
intense, glaucous green. Whenever the wind puffed lightly over them, the
tops of the rushes bowed gravely together in long ranks, and turned
silvery gray. Here and there above them fluttered a snipe, signalling
its hidden young, then winging off across the water to the next point,
with a clear, two-noted whistle.
On one of the little jutting points, where a log lay half-submerged in
trailing water-weeds, stood a tall blue heron balanced motionless on one
long, stilt-like leg. Its head, drawn flat back between the high
shoulders, came about ten inches above the tops of the sedge. Its long,
keen, javelin-like beak lay along its protruding breast, in readiness to
dart in any direction. Its round, gem-like eyes, hard as glass in their
glitter, took in not only the wide, blue-and-green empty landscape, but
equally every movement of the sedge-fringe and the weedy shallows
along-shore.
For some minutes the great bird was as still as a carven figure. Then,
for no apparent reason, the long neck uncoiled violently like a loosed
crossbow, and the javelin beak shot downward with a movement almost too
swift for the eye to follow. Deep into the weeds and water it
darted,--to return with a small, silvery chub securely transfixed. One
smart, sidelong blow of the wriggling fish upon the log ended its
struggles. Then the skilful fisher threw his prize up in the air, caught
it as it fell, swallowed it head foremost, and relapsed into his
watchful immobility.
This time he had not quite so long to wait. Again the coiled spring of
his neck was loosed, again that lightning lance darted downward into the
water, and returned with a kicking trophy. Now it was a large
brown-and-green frog, which the victor had more difficulty in killing.
For half a minute he whacked it savagely against the side of the log,
before he could satisfy himself that the limp, bedragged form was past
all effort to escape. Then, picking it up between the tips of his beak,
he stepped from his log, strode with awkward dignity some paces up the
shore, and hid the prize safely in the heart of a tussock of
sedge-grass. Not only for himself was the big blue heron fishing, but
also, and first of all, for certain extraordinarily hungry nestlings in
a cedar swamp behind the neighbouring hills.
Having hidden the frog, the heron raised his head and steadily surveyed
the shores. Then he spread his long wings and flapped up to a height of
seven or eight feet, where he commanded a comprehensive view of the
meadows. Assured that no peril was lurking near, he winnowed slowly
along the shore, his legs trailing ludicrously, and dropped again to
earth at the next point. The moment he touched ground and steadied
himself he became once more the moveless image of a bird, as if just
projected into solidity from the face of a Japanese screen.
At this point, however, fortune failed to smile upon his fishing. For
full five minutes he waited, and neither fish nor frog came within
reach. Suddenly he unlimbered, and went stalking gravely up along the
sloppy mud between the reeds and the shrunken water. As he went, his
long neck craned alternately to one side and the other, and his eyes
pierced every retreat among the rushes or the water-weeds. Sometimes he
snapped up a tiny shiner, or a big black water-beetle, which he promptly
swallowed; but he got no more prizes worth carrying back to the nest
behind the hills. He went forward somewhat briskly, therefore, being in
haste to reach a bit of good frogging-ground a little farther on. At
length, coming to the mouth of a sluggish rivulet, he started to wade
across it, not carefully observing how he set down his feet in the
tangle of weeds and eel-grass. From under the tangle came a muffled
"click." With a startled squawk he lifted his wings, as something
grabbed him by the toes, and held him fast. He was in the iron clutch of
a muskrat trap.
That one squawk was the only sound he uttered; but his powerful wings
threshed the air desperately as he strained to wrench himself free.
There was no such thing, of course, as relaxing the strong jaws of the
trap, or wrenching his foot free; but he did succeed in pulling the trap
up from its bed under the water-grass and dragging it out upon the shore
to the full limit of the light chain which held it. Having accomplished
this much, he was quiet for some minutes, while his fierce eyes
scrutinized with fear and wonder the incomprehensible creature which had
fastened upon him. After three or four frantic efforts to stab it with
his redoubtable beak, he was quick to realize that this was an
invulnerable foe. He seemed to realize, also, that it was an inanimate
foe; for after due consideration he set himself to pulling it and
feeling it with the tip of his beak, seeking some way of getting rid of
it. At last, finding all this temperate effort useless, he blazed out
into a frantic rage. He would jump, and tug, and flop, and spring into
the air, and almost wrench the captive toes from their sockets. But all
he accomplished was to make his leg ache intolerably, clear up to the
thigh. At length he desisted and stood trembling, so exhausted that he
could hardly keep his feet.
[Illustration: "HE WAS IN THE IRON CLUTCH OF A MUSKRAT TRAP."]
Meanwhile, it chanced that two boys in a birch-bark canoe were paddling
up the river. The extraordinary antics of the blue heron caught their
eyes. They had never heard that this most stately of birds was subject
to fits; and they were filled with wonder. Paddling ashore with all
speed, they momently expected the great bird to recover himself at their
approach and flop heavily away, as herons are wont to do when one seeks
to observe them too closely. When near enough, however, to see what the
trouble was, they were much elated, as they had long wanted to capture a
blue heron and observe his habits in captivity.
As the boys ran their canoe ashore the bird was just yielding to
exhaustion. His dauntless spirit, however, was by no means broken by his
misfortune. At sight of the intruders his fierce eyes hardened, and his
head drew back warily between his shoulders. "Look out! Don't go near
that beak!" shouted the elder boy, as the younger sprang forward to
secure the coveted prize.
The warning came barely in time. That long neck had flashed forward to
its full length,--and just fallen short of the enemy's stockinged leg.
"Gee whizz!" exclaimed the lad, with a nervous laugh. "If that had
struck, I guess it would have gone clean through! How are we going to
disarm him?"
"Watch me!" said the elder, as he snatched up his coat from the canoe.
This effective weapon he threw over the bird's head; and in a few
moments the captive was so securely trussed up that he could do nothing
but eye his captors with implacable and indomitable hate. The cruel trap
was removed from his toes, and their bruises carefully washed. Then very
respectfully he was deposited in the bottom of the canoe, and in high
elation the boys paddled off.
They had not gone far, however, when a thought struck them both at the
same time, and both stopped paddling. They looked at each other with
misgivings.
"Well, what is it?" asked the younger, reluctantly.
"I'm afraid," answered the elder, "it's a blame mean trick we're playing
on the old bird, at this season! Eh? What do you think?"
"Perhaps so!" assented the other with a sigh, looking wistfully down at
their prize. "I never thought about the young ones."
Without a word more they proceeded to loose the bonds of their prisoner.
The moment he was free he struck at them savagely; but they had been on
guard against such ingratitude, and got out of the way in time. Then he
sprang into the air and flapped away indignantly; while the boys stared
after him wistfully, half-repenting of their gentleness.
In the Deep of the Silences
I
In the ancient wild there were three great silences that held their
habitations unassailed. They were the silence of the deep of the lake,
the silence of the dark heart of the cedar swamp, and the silence of the
upper air, high above the splintered peak of the mountain.
To this immeasurable quiet of upper air but one of all the earth sounds
could come. That one sound was of such quality that it seemed rather to
intensify the silence than disturb it. It was so absolutely alone, so
naked of all that murmurous background which sustains yet obscures the
individual sounds of earth's surface, that it served merely as an accent
to the silence. It was the fine, vibrant hiss of the smitten air against
the tense feathers of the soaring eagle.
[Illustration: "HIS COURSE TOOK HIM FAR OUT OVER THE SOUNDLESS SPACES."]
Through the immense, unclouded solitude the eagle swung majestically in
a great circle. At one point in the vast, deliberate swing he was
directly above the bald, deep-riven peak of granite upthrust from its
mantling forest of firs,--directly above it, at a height of not more
than a few hundred feet. The rest of his course took him far out over
the soundless spaces of the landscape, which formed an enormous bowl
rimmed by the turquoise horizon. The bowl was all a many-shaded green,
stains of the light green of birch and poplar blending with the austere
green-black of fir, cedar, and hemlock. Here and there through the dense
colour gleamed sharply the loops and coils of three watercourses and at
the centre of the bowl, glowing in the transparent brilliancy of the
northern day, shone the clear mirror of the lake. At that point of his
aerial path when the eagle swung farthest from the peak, he hung
straight over the middle of the lake and looked down into its depths.
Though no lightest breath was astir far down on the lake surface and not
a tree-top swayed in the forest, up here where the eagle was soaring
streamed a viewless and soundless wind. So it came about that at some
portions of his swing the eagle's wide, apparently moveless wings would
tilt a little, careening ever so slightly, and their tense-webbed
feathers would set themselves at a delicately different angle to the
air-current. When this took place, there would be a different note in
that strange whisper. The vibrant hiss would change to a faint, ghostly
humming, which again would fade away as the rigid feathers readjusted
themselves to another point of the gigantic curve.
Over the soaring black wings the intense sapphire of the zenith thrilled
and melted; but the eyes of the eagle were not directed upward, since
there was nothing above him but sky, and air, and the infinitude of
silence. As he swung, his gleaming, snow-white head and neck were
stretched downward toward the earth. His fierce yellow eyes, unwavering,
brilliant, and clear like crystal, deep set beneath straight,
overhanging brows, searched the far panorama with an incredibly piercing
gaze. At such a distance that the most penetrating human eye--the eye of
a sailor, a plains' ranger, a backwoods' huntsman, or an enumerator of
the stars--could not discern him in his soundless altitude, he could
mark the fall of a leaf or the scurry of a mouse in the sedge-grass.
Though the range of his marvellous vision was so vast, the eagle could
not see beneath the surfaces of the lake except when he soared straight
over it. At one point in his course the baffling reflections of the
surface vanished, and his gaze pierced to the bottom. But from all other
points the lake presented to him either a mirror of stainless blue, or a
dazzling shield of bright steel.
For an hour or more, on wide, untiring wings, the great bird sailed and
watched. The furtive life of the wilderness, all unaware of that high
impending doom, revealed itself to him, yet he saw nothing to draw him
down out of his realm of silence.
Except for that mysterious whisper of the smitten air in his own wings,
it was to the eagle as if all the action and movement of earth had been
struck dumb. Once he saw a black cow moose, tormented with flies, lurch
out madly from the thickets and plunge wallowing into the lake. High
splashed and flashed the water about her floundering bulk; but not a
whisper of it came up to him. Once he saw a pair of swimming loons
stretching their necks alternately as high as they could above the
water, and opening wide their straight, sharp beaks. He well knew the
strident, wild cries with which they were answering each other, setting
loose a rout of crazy echoes all up and down the shores. But not a
ghost of an echo reached him. It was all dumb show. And once, on the
lower slope of the mountain, an ancient fir-tree, its foothold on the
rocks worn away by frost and flood of countless seasons, fell into the
ravine. He saw the mighty downward sweep and plunge, the convulsion of
branches below; but of the sullen roar that startled the mountainside no
faintest sound arose to him.