another varmint ye hadn't no call to invite, Tom," he added, as the
rabbits again scattered in consternation, and a big lynx emerged from a
spruce thicket on which the flood was just beginning to encroach. The
lynx, too frightened at the rising water to give even one look at the
rabbits, glared about her with round, pale, savage eyes. As she caught
sight of Jackson, her fur fluffed up and she scrambled into the nearest
tree, where she crouched behind a branch.
Brannigan spared but a glance for the terrified lynx, his interest being
largely absorbed in the two does, whose trustfulness had won his heart.
Just inside the cabin door, and within reach of his arm, was a shelf,
whereon stood a tin plate containing some cold buckwheat pancakes, or
flap-jacks, left over from breakfast. A couple of these he tossed to the
does. Gentle as was the action, the nervous beasts bounded backwards,
snorting with apprehension. In a few moments, however, as if coming to
realize that the movement of Brannigan's arm had not been a hostile one,
they came forward again hesitatingly, and at length began to sniff at
the pancakes. For some moments the sniffing was distinctly supercilious.
Then one of them ventured to nibble. Half a minute more, and both
flap-jacks had been greedily gobbled. Their immense, mild eyes plainly
asking for more of the novel provender, the pair stepped a little
closer. Brannigan reached for another cake, to divide between them.
Long Jackson got up from his log, tapped the ashes from his pipe, and
came into the cabin.
"I'll be leavin' ye to entertain the ladies, Tom," said he, "while I git
dinner."
II
A cloud passing over the sun, the air grew sharply cold on the instant.
Long Jackson bundled Brannigan away from the door, and shut it
inexorably. But as Brannigan refused to be put back into his bunk,
Jackson arranged him an awkward sort of couch of benches and boxes by
the table, where he made his first "sitting-up" meal. After dinner, the
sun having come out again, he insisted upon the door being once more
thrown open, that he might drink in the medicine of the spring air and
have another look at his menagerie.
"Holy Je-hoshaphat!" exclaimed Jackson, as the door swung back. "This
ain't no menagerie we've got here, Tom. It's a Noah's Ark, that's what
it be!"
The two does, trembling with fright, were huddled against the wall of
the cabin, close beside the door, staring at an immense and gaunt-framed
bear, which was sitting up on its haunches on Jackson's chopping-block.
More than half the clearing was under water. Five more bears sat near
the chopping-block, eyeing the water fearfully and whimpering like
puppies. Quite near them, and letting his shrewd eyes survey the whole
scene with an air of lofty indifference, sat a red fox, his fur
bedraggled as if from a long and hard swim. In two compact masses, on
either side of the bears and the fox, and as far away from them as they
could get, huddled the rabbits, their eyes fairly popping from their
heads. Further away, standing hock-deep in the water, were half a dozen
more red deer, afraid to come any closer to the bears. In the branches
of the one tree--a spreading rock-maple--which had been left standing
near the cabin, crouched a lynx and a wild-cat, as far apart as
possible, and eyeing each other jealously.
One of the bears, restless in his anxiety, shifted his position and came
a little nearer to the cabin. The two does, snorting at his approach,
backed abruptly into the doorway, jamming Jackson against the doorpost.
"Oh, don't mind me, ladies!" said Jackson, with elaborate sarcasm. "Come
right along in an' set down!"
Whereupon the frightened animals, flying in the face of that tradition
of the wild creatures which teaches them to dread anything like a
_cul-de-sac_, took him at his word. Stamping their delicate hoofs in a
sort of timorous defiance to the bears, and ignoring both Jackson and
Brannigan completely, they backed into the rear of the cabin, stared
about the place curiously, and at length fell to nibbling the hay which
formed the bedding of the bunks.
"Did ever ye see the likes o' that for nerve?" demanded Jackson.
[Illustration: "This ain't no menagerie we've got here, Tom. It's a
Noah's Ark, that's what it be!"]
"They've got sense, them two," said Brannigan. "They know who'll stand
up fer 'em if them bears begin to git ugly."
"But we don't want the whole kit an' calabash pilin' in on us," said
Jackson with decision. "An' we don't want to shet the door and not be
able to see what's goin' on, neether. Guess I'd better fix up a kind o'
barricade, so's I kin hold the pass in case of them there fee-rocious
rabbits undertakin' to rush us."
With a bench and some boxes, he built a waist-high barrier across the
doorway, and then he arranged for Brannigan a couch on the table, so
that the invalid could look out comfortably over the barrier.
"Reserved seat in Noah's Ark for ye, Tom," said he.
"Hadn't ye better be fetchin' the canoe round to the front, where ye kin
keep an eye onto it?" suggested Brannigan.
"By Jing, yes!" agreed Jackson. "If one of them slick old bears 'd take
a notion to h'ist it into the water an' make off in it, I guess we'd be
in the porridge."
He hitched his long legs over the barrier and stalked out coolly among
the beasts.
The wild-cat and the lynx in the branches overhead laid back their ears
and showed their teeth in vicious snarls; and the rabbits huddled so
close together that the two packs of them heaved convulsively as each
strove to get behind or underneath his neighbours. The bears sullenly
drew away to the water's edge, and the huge fellow perched on the
chopping-block jumped down nimbly from his perch and joined the others
with a protesting _woof_. The fox stood his ground and kept up his air
of indifference, his native shrewdness telling him that the man was
paying no heed to him whatever. The deer also did not seem greatly
disturbed by Jackson's appearance, merely waving their big ears and
staring interrogatively. Jackson picked up the canoe and turned it
bottom side up across the doorway. Then he stepped indoors again.
About the middle of the afternoon it became evident that the water had
stopped rising. It had apparently found an overflow somehow, and there
was no longer any risk of the cabin being swept away. Tired with the
excitement, Brannigan fell asleep. And Jackson, with the backwoodsman's
infinite capacity for doing nothing, when there is nothing to do, sat
beside his barricade for hour after hour and smoked. And for hour after
hour nothing happened. When night fell, he shut the door and secured it
with special care.
Throughout the night it rained heavily, under a lashing wind which drove
the rain in sheets against the rear of the cabin; but soon after dawn
the sun came out again and shone with eager warmth. Brannigan awoke so
much better that he was able to sit up and help himself to the doorway
instead of being carried. The two does, thoroughly at home in the cabin,
swallowed the cold pancakes, and kept close to Jackson's elbow, begging
for more.
When the door was opened, it was seen that the animals had all been
driven round to the front of the cabin for shelter. The space under the
upturned canoe was packed with rabbits. But the spirit of the bigger
animals, with the exception of the deer, was now changed.
Since the rise of the flood had come to a halt--for the water was at the
same mark as on the afternoon of the previous day--the predatory animals
had begun to forget their fear of it and to remember that they were
hungry. The truce of terror was wearing very thin. The fox, indeed, as
Jackson's alert eyes presently perceived, had already broken it. At the
very edge of the water, as far away as possible from the cabin and the
bears, he was sitting up demurely on his haunches and licking his chaps.
But a tell-tale heap of bones and blood-stained fur gave him away. In
the darkness he had stolen up to the rabbits, nipped one noiselessly by
the neck, and carried it off without any of its fellows being any the
wiser. He could afford to wait with equanimity for the flood to go down.
The lynx had come down out of her tree and was crouching at the foot of
it, eyeing first the bears and then the rabbits. She turned her
tameless, moon-pale eyes upon Jackson in the doorway, and bared her
teeth in a soundless snarl. Jackson, wondering what she was up to, kept
perfectly still. The next moment she darted forward, belly to earth, and
pounced upon the nearest rabbit. The victim screamed amazingly loud, and
the packed mass of its companions seemed to boil as they trampled each
other underfoot. Growling harshly, the lynx sprang back to the tree with
her prey, ran up the trunk with it, and crouched in a crotch to make her
meal, keeping a malignant and jealous eye upon the wild-cat on her
neighbouring branch.
As if fired by this example, one of the bears made a rush upon the
luckless rabbits. He struck down two with a deft stroke of his paw,
dashed them to one side to remove them from the too close proximity of
Jackson, and lay down comfortably to devour them.
At this second attack, the unfortunate rabbits seemed to wake up to the
necessity of doing something radical. Two or three of those nearest the
cabin made a sudden dart for the door. They jumped upon the upturned
canoe, stared fearfully for an instant at Jackson, then leapt past him
over the barrier and took refuge in the farthest corner of the cabin,
under the bunk. Jackson, according to his prearranged plan, had made an
effort to stop them, but it was a half-hearted effort, and he shook his
head at Brannigan with a deprecating grin.
"_'Tain't_ exackly healthy for the blame little scuts, out there with
the bear an' the wild-cats," said he apologetically. Jackson was quite
ready to shoot rabbits, of course, when they were needed for stew; but
his soft, inconsistent heart had been moved at seeing the helpless
things mangled by the lynx and the bear. Perfect consistency, after all,
would be an unpleasant thing to live with in this excellent but
paradoxical world.
The words were hardly out of Jackson's mouth when the rest of the bears
came stalking up, great, black, menacing forms, to levy toll upon the
rabbits. Instantly the frantic little animals began pouring in a
tumultuous stream over the canoe and the barrier and into the cabin.
Seeing their dinners thus unexpectedly disappearing, the bears made a
rush forward.
Jackson, fearing lest they should charge straight into the cabin, sprang
for his gun, and was back in the doorway again in a flash, carelessly
thrusting aside with his feet the incoming flood of furry, hopping
figures, but making no effort to keep it out.
The bears, reaching the packed and struggling rear rank of the fugitives
before it could dissolve and gain the refuge, captured each a victim,
and drew back again hastily with their prizes, still apprehensive of the
silent grey figure of Jackson in the doorway. And in two minutes more
all the rabbits were inside the cabin, covering the floor and struggling
with each other to keep from being pushed too close to the hot stove.
The two does, resenting the invasion, snorted angrily and struck at them
with their sharp, agile hoofs, killing several before the rest learned
to keep out of the way. One enterprising little animal sprang into the
lower bunk, and was straightway followed by the nearest of his fellows,
till the bunk was filled to overflowing.
"How'll ye like it, sleepin' along o' that bunch o' bed-fellers, Tom?"
inquired Jackson derisively.
"Ye'll sleep with 'em yourself, Long," retorted Brannigan from his place
on the table. "_I_ didn't let 'em in. They're _your_ visitors. Me bein'
an invalid, I'm goin' to take the top bunk!"
Long Jackson scratched his head.
"What's botherin' me," said he, grown suddenly serious, "is them bears.
If _they_ take it into their heads to come in an' board along of us, I'm
goin' to hev a job to stop 'em. I've only four ca'tridge left, an'
ther's six bear. They've et ther rabbits, an' what's one small rabbit to
a _rale_ hungry bear? Here's the biggest an' hungriest comin' now!
_Scat!_" he yelled fiercely. "Scat! You----!" And he added a string of
backwoods objurgation that this modest page would never consent to
record.
Apparently abashed at this reception, the bear backed away hastily and
glanced around at the landscape as if he had had no least thought of
intruding.
Brannigan laughed as he had not laughed for weeks.
"That langwidge o' yourn's better'n any gun, Long!" said he.
"Guess it's saved us one ca'tridge, that time!" he acknowledged
modestly. "But I'm thinkin' it won't keep 'em off when they get a mite
hungrier. Ye kin curse like an Androscoggin lumber jack, but y'ain't
goin' to frizzle a single hair on a bear's hide. Now, here they come
agin! I'd better shoot one, an' mebbe that'll discourage 'em. Anyhow,
they kin eat the one I shoot, and that'll keep 'em from hankerin' so
after rabbits."
He raised his gun, but Brannigan stopped him sharply.
"Jest _shet the door_, ye old eejut!" he cried. "Ye know as well as I do
that ef ye git a bear rale mad, an' he thinks he's cornered, there's
goin' to be trouble. Jest shet the door, that's all!"
"_To_ be sure! Why didn't I think o' that afore?" agreed Jackson,
kicking the boxes aside and slamming the heavy door without ceremony in
the face of the nearest bear, who had already lifted his fore-paws upon
the canoe and was peering in wistfully at the rabbits.
With his feet in a foam of rabbits--the creatures seeming to have lost
all fear of him--Jackson sat down on a box and lit his pipe, while
Brannigan, leaning over from his couch on the table, tried to feed the
rabbits with biscuits. The rabbits would have none of it, but the two
does, greedy and jealous, came mincing forward at once to appropriate
the attention and the tit-bits.
Presently the air grew unbearably hot and close, with the reek of the
crowding animals and the heat of the stove. After the fashion of the
backwoodsman, the men endured it till they were gasping. Then Jackson
went to the little window--which was not made to open--and prised out
the sash with the edge of his axe-blade. He filled his lungs with a deep
breath, drew back from the window, then sprang forward again and thrust
his head out for a better look.
"_It's broke!_" he shouted. "The water's goin' down hand over fist!"
"It'll save a lot o' trouble," said Brannigan, with a sigh of relief.
By noon the water had disappeared, and the bears, the wild-cat, and the
fox had disappeared with it. After waiting another hour, that the hungry
beasts might be well out of the way, Jackson opened the door and began
to turn the rabbits out. At first they refused obstinately to go, so
that he had to seize them by the ears and throw them out. But presently
some sign seemed to go round among them to the effect that their enemies
were out of the way. Then they all began to make for the door, but quite
at their leisure, and soon were hopping off among the trees in every
direction. After them at last, went the two does, without so much as
once looking back.
"Durned if the place don't look kind o' lonesome without 'em!" murmured
Brannigan.
"Umph!" grunted Jackson. "It's easy seein' 'tain't you that's got to do
the cleanin' up after 'em. If ever ye go to hev another party like that,
Tom, I'm goin' to quit."
The spring wind, mild and spicy from the spruce forests, breathed
through the cabin from the open door to the open window, and a chickadee
ran over his fine-drawn, bead-like refrain from the branches where the
lynx and wild-cat had been crouching.
The Brothers of the Yoke
Side by side, in the position in which they were accustomed to labour at
the yoke--Star on the off side, Buck on the nigh--they stood waiting in
the twilight beside the pasture bars. From the alder swamp behind the
pasture, coolly fragrant under the first of the dew-fall, came the
ethereal fluting of a hermit thrush, most tender and most poignant of
all bird songs. In the vault of the pale sky--pale violet washes of thin
colour over unfathomable deeps of palest green--a wide-swooping
night-hawk sounded at intervals its long, twanging note, like a stricken
harpstring. The dark spruce woods beyond the barn began to give off
their aromatic balsam-scent upon the evening air. A frog croaked from
somewhere under the alders where the hermit was at his fluting. One of
the oxen at last began to low softly and anxiously. It was long past
watering-time. Immediately his mate repeated the complaint, but on a
harsher, more insistent key. The watering trough, full to the brim, was
there in full view before them, just at the other side of the cabin. It
was an unheard-of thing that their master should not come at sundown to
lower the bars and let them drink their fill.
They were a splendid pair, these two steers, and splendidly matched.
Both dark red, deep and massive in the shoulder, with short, straight
horns, and each with a clean white star in the centre of his broad
forehead, they were so exactly alike in all external particulars, that
the uninitiated eye would have been puzzled to distinguish them. Both
stood also with the patient, bowed necks of those who have toiled long
under the burden of the yoke. But to one at all acquainted with animals,
at all versed in the psychology of the animal mind, the difference
between the two was obvious. The temperaments that looked out from their
big, dark eyes were different. The very patience of their bowed heads
was different in expression. The patience of Star, the off ox, was an
accepting, contented patience. Curses, blows, the jabs of the ox-goad,
he took mildly, as a matter of course, and, being his master's
favourite, he got just as few of them as the exigencies of backwoods
ploughing and hauling would permit. But with Buck it was far otherwise.
In his eyes flickered always the spark of a spirit unsubdued. He had a
side glance, surly yet swift, that put the observant on their guard. He
never accepted the goad without a snort of resentment, a threatening
shake of his short, sharp horns. And he had command of a lightning kick
which had taught discretion to more than one worrying cur. Yet he was
valued, even while distrusted, by his owner, because he was intelligent,
well-trained, and a glutton for work, both quicker than his docile
yoke-fellow and more untiring.
Between the two great red steers there was that close attachment which
has been so often observed between animals long accustomed to working in
the same harness. They become a habit to each other, and seem,
therefore, essential to each other's peace of mind. But on the part of
Buck it was something more than this. Ill-tempered and instinctively
hostile toward every one else, man or beast, he showed signs of an
active devotion to his tranquil yoke-fellow, and would sometimes spend
hours licking Star's neck while the latter went on chewing the cud in
complacent acceptance of the attention.
The twilight gathered deeper about the lonely backwoods clearing. The
night-hawk, a soaring and swooping speck in the pallid spaces of the
sky, became invisible, though his strange note still twanged sonorously
from time to time. The hermit hushed his fluting in the alder thicket.
An owl hooted solemnly from somewhere back in the spruce woods. But
still the owner of the oxen did not come to lower the bars and give
admittance to the brimming trough. He was lying dead beside the brawling
trout-brook, a mile or so down the tote-road, his neck broken by a
flying branch from a tree which he had felled too carelessly. His dog
was standing over the sprawled body, whining and pawing at it in
distracted solicitude.
To the two thirsty oxen the cool smell of the waiting trough was cruelly
tantalizing. To one of them it speedily became irresistible. Buck was
not, by instinct, any great respecter of bounds or barriers. He began
hooking impatiently at the bars, while Star gazed at him in placid
wonder. The bars were solid and well set, and Buck seemed to realize
almost at once that there was little to be done in that quarter. Feeling
for a weak spot, he worked his way along beyond them to the first panel
of the fence. It was the ordinary rough "snake" of the backwoods
clearing, a zigzag structure of rough poles, supported at the angles by
crossed stakes. Never very substantial, it had been broken and somewhat
carelessly mended at this particular point. The top rail lifted easily
under the thrust of Buck's aimlessly tossing horn. It fell down again at
once into its place in the crotch of the crossed stakes, and, in
falling, it struck the fumbling experimenter a sharp whack across the
nose.
The hot-tempered steer, already irritated, flared up at once, and butted
heavily at the fence with his massive forehead. One of the cross-stakes,
already half-rotted through, broke at once, and the two top rails went
down with a crash. Following up this push, he threw his ponderous weight
against the remaining rails, now left unsupported, breasted them down
almost without an effort, and went crashing and triumphing through into
the yard. His mate, who would never himself have dreamed of such a
venture as breaking bounds, stared irresolutely for a few seconds, then
followed through the gap. And side by side the two slaked their thirst,
plunging their broad muzzles into the cool of the trough and lifting
them to blow the drops luxuriously from their nostrils.
The impulse of Star was now to turn back into the familiar pasture,
according to custom. But Buck, on the other hand, was used to being
_driven_ back and that always more or less under protest. For the first
time in his memory, there was now no one to drive him back. He had a
strange, new sense of freedom, of restraint removed. He was accustomed
to seeing a light in the cabin window about this hour. But there was no
light. The whole place seemed empty with a new kind of emptiness.
Nothing was further from his fancy than to return to the pasture prison
which he had just broken out of. He stood with head uplifted, as if
already the galling memory of the yoke had slipped from off his neck.
For a minute or two he stood sniffing with wide nostrils, drinking deep
the chill, keen-scented air. It was the same air as he had been
breathing on the other side of the pasture-bars, but it smelt very
different to him. Something there was in it which called him away
irresistibly into the dark, unfenced depths of the forest which
surrounded the clearing. He turned his great head and lowed coaxingly to
his partner, who was standing beside the gap in the pasture fence and
staring after him in placid question. Then he started off with a brisk
step down the shadowy, pale ribbon of the road.
Star's natural impulse, after drinking, was to return to the familiar,
comfortable pasture; but not without his yoke-mate. The stronger impulse
ruled. With some reluctance and a good deal of bovine wonder, he swung
around and hastened after Buck. The latter waited for him; and side by
side, as if in yoke, though with less labouring steps, they turned off
the deeply rutted highway and moved silently down a mossed old wood road
into the glimmering dark of the forest.
A sure instinct in Buck's feet was leading them straight away from the
Settlements, straight into the heart of the wilderness. After perhaps an
hour the wood-road led out of the thick forest across a little wild
meadow with a shallow brook babbling softly through it. Here the two
grazed for a time, almost belly deep in the thick-flowered grass, while
the bats flickered and zigzagged above them, and a couple of
whip-poor-wills answered each other monotonously from opposite ends of
the glade. Then they lay down side by side to chew the cud and to sleep,
surrounded by the pungent smell of the stalks of the wild parsnip which
their huge bulks had crushed down.