the northern counties--had fought moose, both bulls and cows, before.
But he had never before faced such an antagonist as this one, and that
first slashing blow from the bull's knife-edged fore-hoof had somewhat
flurried him. Sitting back poised, with his immense hindquarters
gathered under him, and his fore-paws uplifted, he parried the smashing
strokes of his assailant with the lightning dexterity of a trained
boxer. His strength of shoulder and forearm was so enormous that if he
could have got a stroke in flat, at right angles to the bone, he would
have shattered the bull's leg to splinters. But his parrying blows
struck glancingly, and did no more than rip the hair and hide.
After a few minutes of whirlwind effort to batter down that impregnable
guard, the bull jumped back as nimbly, for all his bulk, as a young doe
startled from her drinking. His usual method of attack, except when
fighting a rival bull, was to depend upon his battering fore-hooves. But
now he changed his tactics. Lowering his head so that his vast right
antler stood out before him like a charge of bayonets, he launched
himself full upon his adversary.
With all his weight and strength behind it, that charge was practically
irresistible, if fairly faced. But the bear was too wise to face it
fairly. He swung aside, clutched the lowered antler, and held fast,
striving to pull his enemy down.
But the bull's strength and impetus were too great, and the bear was
himself thrown off his balance. Even then, however, he might probably
have recovered himself and once more established the battle upon even
terms. But he had not reckoned--he could not have been expected to
reckon--upon the unprecedented weapon of that little down-drooping left
antler. Not for nothing was the giant bull lop-horned. The dwarfed and
distorted antler hung down like a plough-share. And the bear attempted
no defence against it. Keen-spiked, it caught him in the belly and
ploughed upward. In a paroxysm he fell backwards. The bull, swinging his
hindquarters around without yielding his advantage for a second, lunged
forward with all his force, and the deadly little plough was driven home
to the bear's heart.
Peddler, from his post on top of the rock, shouted and applauded in wild
excitement, and showered encomiums, no less profane than heartfelt, upon
the victorious bull. For a minute or two the bull paid no attention,
being engrossed in goring and trampling his victim in an effort to make
it look less like a bear than an ensanguined floor-rug. At last, as if
quite satisfied with his triumph, he lifted his gory head and eyed that
voluble figure on top of the rock. It looked harmless.
"Gee, but ye kin fight!" said Peddler, glowing with admiration. "An'
ye've saved my scalp fer me this night, fer sartain. Guess I'll hev to
let ye keep them lop-sided horns o' yourn, after all!"
The bull snorted at him scornfully and turned his head to take another
prod at the unresponsive remnants of his foe. Then, paying no further
heed to the man on the rock, and craving assuagement to the fiery smart
of his wounds, he strode down into the lake and swam straight out, in
the glitter of the moon-path, toward the black line of the farther
shore.
The Aigrette
The Girl, sitting before her dressing-table, looked at the fair
reflection in her great mirror and smiled happily. Those searching
lights at either side of the mirror could find no flaw in the tender
colouring of her face, in the luminous whiteness of neck and arm and
bosom. Her wide-set eyes, like the red bow of her mouth, were kind and
gay. The brightness of her high-coiffed hair was surmounted by a tuft of
straight egret plumes, as firm, pearl-white, and delicate as a filigree
of frost.
The Girl had never looked so lovely. Never before had she worn anything
that so became her as that ethereal plume. She knew it; and the glances
of her maid, straying from her business with filmy garments and dainty
adornments, told her so. She threw a wisp of silken gossamer over her
arm and tripped eagerly down to the drawing-room.
The Man came forward to meet her, his eyes paying without stint the
tribute she was craving of him.
"There will be no one there to compare with you!" he said softly. "There
is no one anywhere to compare with you."
"It _is_ becoming, isn't it?" she answered, glowing at his praise, and
nodding her bright head to indicate the ethereal white plume.
"It is indeed," he asserted heartily. "But nothing could heighten your
beauty. You did not need it, and I'm rather afraid the bird did." He
kissed her finger-tips as he spoke, lest she should think he was being
critical.
The Girl pouted a little, being very tenderhearted, and loth to be
reminded of unpleasant things.
"I know what you mean," said she quickly, withdrawing her hand in
displeasure. "But the poor bird is dead, anyway; and if I didn't buy the
thing, some other woman would. And it's horrid of you to speak of it
now!"
The Man laughed.
"It can't make you more beautiful, but if it makes you happier, that's
quite enough for me," said he. "I'm afraid that a very little pleasure
for you is of more consequence in my eyes than a thousand million
birds."
And upon this assurance the Girl forgave him.
* * * * *
The wide lagoon lay windless, shining like milky-blue glass under the
blaze of the southern sky. It was shallow, its surface broken here and
there with patches of tall gold-green reeds. Its shores seemed half
afloat, fringed as they were with gnarled, squat bushes growing directly
out of the water. This irregular bushy growth, with the green-shadowed
water beneath its branches, stretched back for several hundred yards
from the open lagoon to a dense wall of jungle, a banked mass of
violently green leafage starred with cream-white and crimson bloom.
Not cream-white, but of a coldly pure silver-white, like new snow, some
two or three score long-necked, long-legged birds flapped angularly
between the milky blue of the water and the intense, vibrant blue of the
sky, or stood half-leg deep in the shallows, motionless, watching for
their prey. They looked like bits of a Japanese screen brought to life
and sown broadcast in this sun-steeped southern wilderness. High
overhead, a black speck against the azure, a hawk wheeled slowly in vast
spirals, staring down desirously upon the peaceful lagoon. That peace he
durst not invade, for he knew and feared the lightning strokes of the
long dagger-like beaks of the white egrets.
In the top of one of the gnarled bushes at the edge of the open, right
over the water, was built a spacious but rickety-looking nest of dead
sticks. It was the most un-nestlike of nests, a mere crazy platform,
with no apparent qualifications as a home except the most perfect
ventilation. One might reasonably suppose that the first requirement in
the nest of a bird should be that it would hold eggs securely. But this
unsightly collection of sticks looked as if that was the last thing it
could be depended on to do. It was so loose and open that the eggs ought
to fall through into the water. It was so flat that any eggs which
dodged falling through should surely, according to all known laws of
Nature, be blown off by the first vigorous gust. Nevertheless, it was
clear that the rude structure had held eggs, and proved not unworthy of
its trust, for it was now occupied by four young egrets.
They were grotesque and solemn babies, these nestlings, sitting up quite
motionless on their leg-joints and half-feathered rumps, with their long
legs thrust straight out before them over the sticks, their long beaks
resting contemplatively on their nearly naked breasts, their round,
bright, unwinking eyes staring out blankly upon their little world of
gold and blue. Scattered here and there over the sweep of fringing
bushes were a dozen or so more of these rickety platforms of sticks,
each with its solemn group of stilt-legged staring young, motionless as
statues interested in nothing upon earth save the quantity of fish or
frogs which their untiring parents could supply to their unassuageable
appetites.
Above this outermost nest, with the four fledglings in it, hung for a
moment, hovering on wide wings, the great white mother egret, with a
shining orange fish in her beak. She dropped her long legs, as if
feeling for a foothold, and alighted on the edge of the crazy platform
so softly that not a stick protested. At her coming four long beaks were
lifted into the air, gaping hungrily and squawking with eagerness. All
four seemed equally ravenous. But the mother-bird knew well enough which
she had fed last, and which was most in need. She jammed the prize, with
what seemed scant ceremony, into the beak whose turn it was to get it.
The fish was thicker than the youngster's long thin neck, but it was
promptly swallowed head first. It went down slowly, with a succession of
spasms which looked agonizing, but were, in fact, ecstatic.
Before flying off again to resume her quest of fish, the mother egret
remained for a few moments on the edge of the nest, to rest and preen
herself. Her snow-pure plumage shone in the sunlight like spun silver.
Her neck feathers were prolonged in fine drooping lines far down over
her breast. From the centre of her back, between the shoulders, grew a
bunch of long, exquisitely delicate plumes, as white and apparently as
fragile as the frost-flowers on a window. These were her festal
adornment, worn, by herself and her mate alike, only in the nesting
season.
Having preened herself well, and shaken her long, snaky neck as if to
take the kinks out of it, she spread her shining wings and lifted
herself into the air. She rose, however, but a few inches, and then,
flapping and squawking wildly, she was dragged down again by some unseen
force. Her frantic struggles knocked off a corner of the nest, and swept
off one of the awkward nestlings, which fell kicking and sprawling
through the leafage and disappeared with a splash. A moment more and the
mother, for all her wild fight against the unseen fate, was drawn down
after him into the shadowed water. Then a little flat-bottomed boat, or
ducking-punt, with a man crouching in the bottom of it, came worming its
way through the narrow lane of water between the stems of the bushes.
The man seized her by the dangerous beak, jerked her into the punt, put
his knee upon her neck, detached the noose of a copper-wire snare from
her leg, drew a keen hunting-knife, and deftly sliced the snowy plumes
from the flesh of her back.
Then he hurled her out into the open water, that she might not be in his
way while he rearranged the snare upon the edge of the nest in order to
catch her mate.
Half stunned, and altogether bewildered by her agony, the mother egret
flapped blindly upon the top of the water, her snowy plumage crimsoned
with her life-blood. After a few moments she succeeded in getting into
the air. Flying heavily, and lurching as she went, she flew across the
lagoon, blundered in among the bushes, and fell with her legs in the
water, her twitching wings entangled in the branches. There, after a few
vain struggles, she lay still, dying slowly--very slowly--her beak half
open, but her eyes wide and undaunted.
[Illustration: The mother egret flapped blindly upon the top of the
water.]
Not long afterwards the male egret, who had been fishing far down the
lagoon, and knew nothing of what had happened, came back to the nest
with food. He, too, was caught in the fatal snare, dragged down, scalped
of his nuptial plumes as the red savage of old scalped his enemies, and
thrown away to die at his leisure. The law of that country forbade the
shooting of the egrets in the nesting season, when alone they wore the
plumes which women crave. The plume-hunter, therefore, felt that he was
evading the law successfully if he hacked the prize from the living bird
and released it while still alive and able to fly. If the bird died
agonizingly afterwards, who was going to swear that he was the slayer?
Throughout the morning the like swift tragedy was enacted at one nest
after the other. The deadly punt slid murderously, silently, up and
down the hidden water-lanes among the bushes, and the man with the knife
did his work noiselessly, save for the threshing and splashing of his
victims.
In the course of an hour, however, for all the marauder's stealth, the
whole herony was in a state of desperate fear. Half a dozen birds had
been snared, and the others, flying high overhead and staring down with
keen, terrified eyes, had detected the slaughterer in his hiding under
the branches. They had seen him, too, resetting his snares upon the
edges of the nests. And in spite of the fact that, after doing so, he
withdrew to some distance among the bushes--as far as the cords attached
to the snares would permit--they dreaded to approach their nests again.
But there were their younglings, solemn and hungry, quite
uncomprehending of the doom which hung over them, hoarsely and
trustingly petitioning to be fed. The parent birds could not long resist
those appeals. Love and tenderness triumphed over fear, even over the
clear view of mortal peril. One after another the great white birds came
back, trembling but devoted, to their nests. One after another, sooner
or later, got a foot into that implacable wire noose, was dragged down
beneath the bushes, and thrown out weltering in its blood. There was no
escaping a trap thus baited with the appeals of the young. And before
the lagoon had taken the first of the sunset colour, there was not one
adult egret in the whole herony which had not paid the bloody price of
its devotion.
At last, when the lagoon lay like a sheet of burnished copper, the man
with the punt came out boldly from among the bushes and paddled off
toward the outlet with his bleeding trophies. As he vanished, three or
four birds, stronger and more tenacious of life than their fellows, came
flapping back to their nests, their backs and wings and thighs caked
with blood. Swaying as they perched upon the stick platforms, they
managed to feed the nestlings once more. Then, dogged in their devotion,
they flew off to continue their tasks. They never returned again, but
fell in the shallows where they stood trying to fish: and if the Fates
of the wilderness elected to be merciful, they were drowned quickly.
All night, through the star-strewn summer dark, the orphaned nestlings
kept up their harshly plaintive cries of hunger and loneliness. A pair
of owls, hearing these cries, and guessing that all could not be right
with the egret colony, came winnowing up noiselessly and took toll of
the defenceless nests. After daybreak, the wheeling hawk dropped low to
investigate, then struck wherever he found the nestlings fattest and
most tempting. Toward noon, under the pitiless downpour of the unclouded
sun, the little ones wilted like cut grass, thirst and hunger stilling
their pitiful complaints. Long before night there was not a nestling
left alive on the whole lagoon.
* * * * *
The Girl, with snowy aigrette in her bright hair, her gloved fingers
resting on the Man's arm, stood upon the kerb outside the theatre,
waiting for a taxi. A light dogcart came by. The horse, sleek and
spirited and spoilt, was in wayward humour, and took it into its head to
give its driver trouble. The driver tried to soothe it, but it would not
be soothed. It began backing capriciously. The driver cut it smartly
with his light whip.
"Oh," cried the Girl, "see how he's beating that poor horse! What a
brute!"
"It's hurting the horse about as much," said the Man, "as if you struck
it with your fan! Moreover, the horse is behaving very badly, and must
be made to mind. It's endangering the whole traffic."
The Girl flushed, bit her lip, and withdrew her hand from the Man's arm.
Just then the summoned taxi drew up at the kerb. The Girl stepped in.
"What brutes men are!" she said. "Perhaps they can't help being cruel!
They have no intuition, so how can they understand?"
The Man glanced at the aigrette, smiled discreetly, and said nothing.
The Cabin in the Flood
Stepping into the cabin, Long Jackson said: "If that there blame jam
don't break inside o' twenty-four hour, the hull valley's goin' to be
under water, an' I'll hev to be gittin' ye out o' this in the canoe.
I've just been uncoverin' her an' rozenin' her up, an' she's as good as
noo. That's a fine piece o' winter bark ye put on to her, Tom."
From his bunk in the dark corner beyond the stove, Brannigan lifted his
shaggy face and peered wistfully out into the sunshine with sunken but
shining eyes.
"I was _afeard_ there'd be a powerful freshet after this long spell o'
thaw atop of all that rain, Long, an' the snow layin' so deep in the
woods this winter. I wisht ye'd lug me over an' lay me by the door in
the sun fer a bit, Long, ef 'tain't too much trouble. That 'ere sun'll
put new life into me bones, in case the jam _don't_ break, an' we hev
to git a move on."
After this long speech, Brannigan's head dropped wearily back on the
roll of blanket that served him as pillow. He had been desperately ill
with pneumonia, so ill that it had been impossible for Long Jackson to
go in to the Settlements for a doctor; and now, under Jackson's
assiduous nursing, he was just beginning the slow climb back to life.
"Think 'twon't be too cold fer ye by the door?" queried Jackson
anxiously.
"No, no!" protested Brannigan. "It's the sun I'm wantin', and the smell
o' spring stirrin' in the buds. That's the med'cine fer me now, Long."
Long Jackson grumbled doubtfully, holding to the strange back-country
superstition that fresh air is dangerous for sick folk. But he yielded,
as he usually did where Brannigan was concerned. He spread blankets on
the floor by the door--a little to one side to avoid the draught--then
carried his partner's gaunt form over to them, and rolled him up like a
baby, with his head well propped on a pile of skins. Then he seated
himself on the chopping-log just outside the door, and proceeded to fill
his pipe with that moist, black plug tobacco, good alike for smoking and
for chewing, which is chiefly favoured by the backwoodsman. Brannigan's
face, drinking in the sunshine as a parched lawn drinks rain, freshened
and picked up a tinge of colour. His eyes, long weary of the four grey
walls of the cabin, roved eagerly the woods that fringed the tiny
clearing.
"Anyways," said Long Jackson between puffs, as he sucked the damp
tobacco alight, "this here knoll of ourn's the highest bit o' country
fer ten miles round, and the cabin's on the highest p'int of it. 'Tain't
raly likely the water'll come clean over it, ef the jam _don't_ give
inside o' twenty-four hour. But it makes one feel kind o' safe havin'
the canoe ready."
"Yes, it's the highest bit o' country fer miles round," murmured
Brannigan dreamily, soaking in the sun. "An' I'm thinkin' we ain't the
only ones as knows it, Long. Will ye look at them rabbits down yander?
Did ever ye see so many o' them together afore?"
Jackson looked, and involuntarily laid his pipe down on the log beside
him to look again. The woods far down the slope--it was a slope so
gentle as to be hardly perceptible--were swarming with rabbits, hopping
and darting this way and that over the snow. For the snow still lingered
under the trees, though only a few patches of it, yellowing and
shrinking under the ardent sun, remained in the open of the clearing.
After staring for some moments in silence, Jackson took up his pipe
again.
"The water must be risin' mighty quick," said he. "Them rabbits are
gittin' sociable all of a sudden. They're comin' to pay ye a call, Tom,
this bein' yer fust day up."
"We'll be havin' other callers besides rabbits, I'm thinkin'," said
Brannigan, the dreaminess in his voice and eyes giving way to a pleased
excitement. This was better than his bunk in the dark corner of the
cabin. "What's that, now, way down behind them yaller birch trunks?" he
added eagerly. "I guess it's a bear, Long."
"It's two bear," corrected Jackson. "So long as it's jest rabbits, all
right, but we ain't entertainin' bears this mornin'. Grub's too scarce,
an' bears is hungry this time o' year. Gee! There's two more down by the
spring. Guess I'd better git the gun."
"Wait a bit, Long," expostulated Brannigan. "They're so afeard o' the
water, they'll be harmless as the rabbits. No good shootin' 'em now,
when their pelts ain't worth the skinnin'. Let 'em be, an' see what
they'll do. They hain't got no place else to go to, to git out o' the
water."
"Let 'em climb a tree!" grumbled Jackson. But he sat down again on his
log. "Ye're right, anyhow, Tom," he continued, after a moment's
consideration. "What's the good o' spilin' good skins by shootin' 'em
now? An' if they're not too skeered to death to know they're hungry,
they kin eat the rabbits. An', anyhow, the ca'tridges is pretty nigh
gone. Come along, Mr. Bear, an' bring yer wife an' all yer relations!"
As if in response to this invitation, the bears all moved a little
nearer, whining uneasily and glancing back over their shoulders, and
close behind them could now be seen gleams of the swiftly up-creeping
flood, where the sunlight struck down upon it through the leafless
hardwood trees. But around to the left and the rear of the cabin the
trees were dense evergreens, spruce and fir, beneath whose shade the
flood came on unseen.
As the worried bears approached, the belt of rabbits swarmed out along
the edges of the clearing, the hinder ranks pushing forward the
reluctant front ones. These, fearing the open and the human form sitting
before the cabin, tried to regain shelter by leaping back over the heads
of those who thrust them on. But far more than that unmoving human
figure they feared the whimpering bears and the silent, pursuing flood.
So in a very few minutes the rabbits were all in the open, hopping about
anxiously and waving their long ears, a few of the bolder ones even
coming up to within forty or fifty feet of the cabin to stare curiously
at Long Jackson on his log.
Presently from behind the cabin, stepping daintily, with heads held high
and wide nostrils sniffing the air apprehensively, came two young does,
and stopped short, glancing back and forth from Jackson to the bears,
from the bears to Jackson. After a few seconds' hesitation, they seemed
to make up their minds that they liked Jackson better than the bears,
for they came a few steps nearer and looked timidly in at Brannigan.
"This ain't North Fork Valley, Long. It's Barnum's Menagerie, that's
what it's gittin' to be!" remarked Brannigan, speaking softly, lest he
should alarm the does.
"Ay, an' still they come!" said Jackson, pointing with his pipe down the
slope to the right. Brannigan lifted his head and craned his neck to see
who "they" were.
They were a huge bull-moose, followed by three cows and a couple of
yearlings, who crowded close upon their leader's heels as they caught
sight of the bears. The great bull, though without antlers at this
season, haughtily ignored the bears, who, as he well knew, would have
small inclination to venture within reach of his battering hoofs. The
little herd had been swimming. With dripping flanks, they stalked up
through the trees and out into the clearing, the swarm of rabbits
parting before them like a wave. At sight of Jackson on his log, the
bull stopped and stood staring morosely. He was not afraid of bears, but
men were another matter. After a heavy pondering of the situation, he
led the way across the corner of the clearing, then down into the flood
again and off, heading for the uplands at the foot of the valley, some
five or six miles away.
"He don't seem to like the looks o' ye, Long," murmured Brannigan.
"No more'n I do his'n," answered Jackson. "But I guess he'd 'a' been
welcome to stop, seein' as we ain't standin' on ceremony, an' our cards
is out to everybody. Come one, come all! But, no, I bar Mr. and Mrs.
Skunk. Ye're a soft-hearted old eejut, Tom, an' never like to hurt
nobody's feelin's, but I do hope now ye didn't go an' send cards to Mr.
and Mrs. Skunk."
Brannigan chuckled. He was feeling better and more like himself already.
"I don't believe they'll be comin'," he answered, evading the point of
the invitation. "Like as not, they're cut off in their holes an'
drownded, 'less they've took to the trees in time. They ain't no great
travellers, ye know, Long."