would hold it aloft in his beak, then lay it down and call loudly
_kt-kt-kt-kt-kt-kt_, as if hoping thus to lure some flock of hens to the
fair domain which he had seized. He had now dropped his quest, and was
trusting that his subjects would come to him. That afternoon his valiant
calls caught the ear of a weasel--possibly the very one which he had
seen in the morning trailing the panic-stricken rabbit. The weasel came
rushing upon him at once, too ferocious in its blood-lust for any such
emotions as surprise or curiosity, and expecting an easy conquest. The
cock saw it coming, and knew well the danger. But he was now on his own
ground, responsible for the protection of an imaginary flock. He faced
the peril unwavering. Fortunately for him, the weasel had no idea
whatever of a fighting-cock's method of warfare. When the cock evaded
the deadly rush by leaping straight at it and over it, instead of
dodging aside or turning tail, the weasel was nonplussed for just a
fraction of a second, and stood snarling. In that instant of hesitation
the cock's keen spur struck it fairly behind the ear, and drove clean
into the brain. The murderous little beast stiffened out, rolled gently
over upon its side, and lay there with the soundless snarl fixed upon
its half-opened jaws. Surprised at such an easy victory, the cock
spurred the carcase again, just to make sure of it. Then he kicked it to
one side, crowed, of course, and stared around wistfully for some
appreciation of his triumph. He could not know with what changed eyes
the squirrel--who feared weasels more than anything else on earth--was
now regarding him.
The killing of so redoubtable an adversary as the weasel must have
become known, in some mysterious fashion, for thenceforward no more of
the small marauders of the forest ventured to challenge the new lordship
of the clearing. For a week the cock ruled his solitude unquestioned,
very lonely, but sleeplessly alert, and ever hoping that followers of
his own kind would come to him from somewhere. In time, doubtless, his
loneliness would have driven him forth again upon his quest; but Fate
had other things in store for him.
Late one afternoon a grizzled woodsman in grey homespun, and carrying a
bundle swung from the axe over his shoulder, came striding up to the
cabin. The cock, pleased to see a human being once more, stalked forth
from the cabin door to meet him. The woodsman was surprised at the sight
of what he called a "reel barn-yard rooster" away off here in the wilds,
but he was too tired and hungry to consider the question carefully. His
first thought was that there would be a pleasant addition to his supper
of bacon and biscuits. He dropped his axe and bundle, and made a swift
grab at the unsuspecting bird. The latter dodged cleverly, ruffed his
neck feathers with an angry _kr-rr-rr_, hopped up, and spurred the
offending hand severely.
The woodsman straightened himself up, taken by surprise, and sheepishly
shook the blood from his hand.
"Well, I'll be damned!" he muttered, eyeing the intrepid cock with
admiration. "You're some rooster, you are! I guess you're all right.
Guess I deserved that, for thinkin' of wringin' the neck o' sech a
handsome an' gritty bird as you, an' me with plenty o' good bacon in me
pack. Guess we'll call it square, eh?"
He felt in his pocket for some scraps of biscuits, and tossed them to
the cock, who picked them up greedily and then strutted around him,
plainly begging for more. The biscuit was a delightful change after an
unvarying diet of grubs and grass. Thereafter he followed his visitor
about like his shadow, not with servility, of course, but with a certain
condescending arrogance which the woodsman found hugely amusing.
Just outside the cabin door the woodsman lit a fire to cook his evening
rasher and brew his tin of tea. The cock supped with him, striding with
dignity to pick up the scraps which were thrown to him, and then
resuming his place at the other side of the fire. By the time the man
was done, dusk had fallen; and the cock, chuckling contentedly in his
throat, tip-toed into the cabin, flew up to the top bunk, and settled
himself on his perch for the night. He had always been taught to expect
benefits from men, and he felt that this big stranger who had fed him so
generously would find him a flock to preside over on the morrow.
After a long smoke beside his dying fire, till the moon came up above
the ghostly solitude, the woodsman turned in to sleep in one of the
lower bunks, opposite to where the cock was roosting. He had heaped an
armful of bracken and spruce branches into the bunk before spreading his
blanket. And he slept very soundly.
Even the most experienced of woodsmen may make a slip at times. This
one, this time, had forgotten to make quite sure that his fire was out.
There was no wind when he went to bed, but soon afterwards a wind arose,
blowing steadily toward the cabin. It blew the darkened embers to a
glow, and little, harmless-looking flames began eating their way over
the top layer of tinder-dry chips to the equally dry wall of the cabin.
* * * * *
The cock was awakened by a bright light in his eyes. A fiery glow,
beyond the reddest of sunrises, was flooding the cabin. Long tongues of
flame were licking about the doorway. He crowed valiantly, to greet this
splendid, blazing dawn. He crowed again and yet again, because he was
anxious and disturbed. As a sunrise, this one did not act at all
according to precedent.
The piercing notes aroused the man, who was sleeping heavily. In one
instant he was out of his bunk and grabbing up his blanket and his pack.
In the next he had plunged out through the flaming doorway, and thrown
down his armful at a safe distance, cursing acidly at such a disturbance
to the most comfortable rest he had enjoyed for a week.
From within the doomed cabin came once more the crow of the cock,
shrilling dauntlessly above the crackle and venomous hiss of the flames.
"Gee whizz!" muttered the woodsman, or, rather, that may be taken as the
polite equivalent of his untrammelled backwoods expletive. "That there
red rooster's game. Ye can't leave a pardner like that to roast!"
With one arm shielding his face, he dashed in again, grabbed the cock by
the legs, and darted forth once more into the sweet, chill air, none the
worse except for frizzled eyelashes and an unceremonious trimming of
hair and beard. The cock, highly insulted, was flapping and pecking
savagely, but the man soon reduced him to impotence, if not submission,
holding him under one elbow while he tied his armed heels together, and
then swaddling him securely in his coat.
"There," said he, "I guess we'll travel together from this out, pardner.
Ye've sure saved my life; an' to think I had the notion, for a minnit,
o' makin' a meal offen ye! I'll give ye a good home, anyways, an' I
guess ye'll lick the socks offen every other rooster in the whole blame
Settlement!"
The Ledge on Bald Face
That one stark naked side of the mountain which gave it its name of Old
Bald Face fronted full south. Scorched by sun and scourged by storm
throughout the centuries, it was bleached to an ashen pallor that
gleamed startlingly across the leagues of sombre, green-purple
wilderness outspread below. From the base of the tremendous bald steep
stretched off the interminable leagues of cedar swamp, only to be
traversed in dry weather or in frost. All the region behind the mountain
face was an impenetrable jumble of gorges, pinnacles, and chasms, with
black woods clinging in crevice and ravine and struggling up desperately
towards the light.
In the time of spring and autumn floods, when the cedar swamps were
impenetrable to all save mink, otter, and musk-rat, the only way from
the western plateau to the group of lakes that formed the source of the
Ottanoonsis, on the east, was by a high, nerve-testing trail across the
wind-swept brow of Old Bald Face. The trail followed a curious ledge,
sometimes wide enough to have accommodated an ox-wagon, at other times
so narrow and so perilous that even the sure-eyed caribou went warily in
traversing it.
The only inhabitants of Bald Face were the eagles, three pairs of them,
who had their nests, widely separated from each other in haughty
isolation, on jutting shoulders and pinnacles accessible to no one
without wings. Though the ledge-path at its highest point was far above
the nests, and commanded a clear view of one of them, the eagles had
learned to know that those who traversed the pass were not troubling
themselves about eagles' nests. They had also observed another thing--of
interest to them only because their keen eyes and suspicious brains were
wont to note and consider everything that came within their purview--and
that was that the scanty traffic by the pass had its more or less
regular times and seasons. In seasons of drought or hard frost it
vanished altogether. In seasons of flood it increased the longer the
floods lasted. And whenever there was any passing at all, the movement
was from east to west in the morning, from west to east in the
afternoon.
This fact may have been due to some sort of dimly recognised convention
among the wild kindreds, arrived at in some subtle way to avoid
unnecessary--and necessarily deadly--misunderstanding and struggle. For
the creatures of the wild seldom fight for fighting's sake. They fight
for food, or, in the mating season, they fight in order that the best
and strongest may carry off the prizes.
But mere purposeless risk and slaughter they instinctively strive to
avoid. The airy ledge across Bald Face, therefore, was not a place where
the boldest of the wild kindred--the bear or the bull-moose, to say
nothing of lesser champions--would wilfully invite the doubtful combat.
If, therefore, it had been somehow arrived at that there should be no
disastrous meetings, no face-to-face struggles for the right of way, at
a spot where dreadful death was inevitable for one or both of the
combatants, that would have been in no way inconsistent with the
accepted laws and customs of the wilderness. On the other hand, it is
possible that this alternate easterly and westerly drift of the wild
creatures--a scanty affair enough at best of times--across the front of
Bald Face was determined in the first place, on clear days, by their
desire not to have the sun in their eyes in making the difficult
passage, and afterwards hardened into custom. It was certainly better to
have the sun behind one in treading the knife-edge pass above the
eagles.
Joe Peddler found it troublesome enough, that strong, searching glare
from the unclouded sun of early morning full in his eyes, as he worked
over toward the Ottanoonsis lakes. He had never attempted the crossing
of Old Bald Face before, and he had always regarded with some scorn the
stories told by Indians of the perils of that passage. But already,
though he had accomplished but a small portion of his journey, and was
still far from the worst of the pass, he had been forced to the
conclusion that report had not exaggerated the difficulties of his
venture. However, he was steady of head and sure of foot, and the higher
he went in that exquisitely clear, crisp air, the more pleased he felt
with himself. His great lungs drank deep of the tonic wind which surged
against him rhythmically, and seemed to him to come unbroken from the
outermost edges of the world. His eyes widened and filled themselves,
even as his lungs, with the ample panorama that unfolded before them. He
imagined--for the woodsman, dwelling so much alone, is apt to indulge
some strange imaginings--that he could feel his very spirit enlarging,
as if to take full measure of these splendid breadths of sunlit,
wind-washed space.
Presently, with a pleasant thrill, he observed that just ahead of him
the ledge went round an abrupt shoulder of the rock-face at a point
where there was a practically sheer drop of many hundreds of feet into
what appeared a feather-soft carpet of tree-tops. He looked shrewdly to
the security of his footing as he approached, and also to the
roughnesses of the rock above the ledge, in case a sudden violent gust
should chance to assail him just at the turn. He felt that at such a
spot it would be so easy--indeed, quite natural--to be whisked off by
the sportive wind, whirled out into space, and dropped into that green
carpet so far below.
In his flexible oil-tanned "larrigans" of thick cowhide, Peddler moved
noiselessly as a wild-cat, even over the bare stone of the ledge. He was
like a grey shadow drifting slowly across the bleached face of the
precipice. As he drew near the bend of the trail, of which not more than
eight or ten paces were now visible to him, he felt every nerve grow
tense with exhilarating expectation. Yet, even so, what happened was the
utterly unexpected.
Around the bend before him, stepping daintily on her fine hooves, came a
young doe. She completely blocked the trail just on that dizzy edge.
Peddler stopped short, tried to squeeze himself to the rock like a
limpet, and clutched with fingers of iron at a tiny projection.
The doe, for one second, seemed petrified with amazement. It was
contrary to all tradition that she should be confronted on that trail.
Then, her amazement instantly dissolving into sheer madness of panic,
she wheeled about violently to flee. But there was no room for even her
lithe body to make the turn. The inexorable rock-face bounced her off,
and with an agonised bleat, legs sprawling and great eyes starting from
their sockets, she went sailing down into the abyss.
With a heart thumping in sympathy, Peddler leaned outward and followed
that dreadful flight, till she reached that treacherously soft-looking
carpet of tree-tops and was engulfed by it. A muffled crash came up to
Peddler's ears.
"Poor leetle beggar!" he muttered. "I wish't I hadn't scared her so.
But I'd a sight rather it was her than me!"
Peddler's exhilaration was now considerably damped. He crept cautiously
to the dizzy turn of the ledge and peered around. The thought upon which
his brain dwelt with unpleasant insistence was that if it had been a
surly old bull-moose or a bear which had confronted him so unexpectedly,
instead of that nervous little doe, he might now be lying beneath that
deceitful green carpet in a state of dilapidation which he did not care
to contemplate.
Beyond the turn the trail was clear to his view for perhaps a couple of
hundred yards. It climbed steeply through a deep re-entrant, a mighty
perpendicular corrugation of the rock-face, and then disappeared again
around another jutting bastion. He hurried on rather feverishly, not
liking that second interruption to his view, and regretting, for the
first time, that he had no weapon with him but his long hunting-knife.
He had left his rifle behind him as a useless burden to his climbing.
No game was now in season, no skins in condition to be worth the
shooting, and he had food enough for the journey in his light pack. He
had not contemplated the possibility of any beast, even bear or
bull-moose, daring to face him, because he knew that, except in
mating-time, the boldest of them would give a man wide berth. But, as he
now reflected, here on this narrow ledge even a buck or a lynx would
become dangerous, finding itself suddenly at bay.
The steepness of the rise in the trail at this point almost drove
Peddler to helping himself with his hands. As he neared the next turn,
he was surprised to note, far out to his right, a soaring eagle, perhaps
a hundred feet below him. He was surprised, too, by the fact that the
eagle was paying no attention to him whatever, in spite of his invasion
of the great bird's aerial domain. Instinctively he inferred that the
eagle's nest must be in some quite inaccessible spot at safe distance
from the ledge. He paused to observe from above, and thus fairly near at
hand, the slow flapping of those wide wings, as they employed the wind
to serve the majesty of their flight. While he was studying this,
another deduction from the bird's indifference to his presence flashed
upon his mind. There must be a fairly abundant traffic of the wild
creatures across this pass, or the eagle would not be so indifferent to
his presence. At this thought he lost his interest in problems of
flight, and hurried forward again, anxious to see what might be beyond
the next turn of the trail.
His curiosity was gratified all too abruptly for his satisfaction. He
reached the turn, craned his head around it, and came face to face with
an immense black bear.
The bear was not a dozen feet away. At sight of Peddler's gaunt dark
face and sharp blue eyes appearing thus abruptly and without visible
support around the rock, he shrank back upon his haunches with a
startled "woof."
As for Peddler, he was equally startled, but he had too much discretion
and self-control to show it. Never moving a muscle, and keeping his body
out of sight so that his face seemed to be suspended in mid-air, he
held the great beast's eyes with a calm, unwinking gaze.
The bear was plainly disconcerted. After a few seconds he glanced back
over his shoulder, and seemed to contemplate a strategic movement to the
rear. As the ledge at this point was sufficiently wide for him to turn
with due care, Peddler expected now to see him do so. But what Peddler
did not know was that dim but cogent "law of the ledge," which forbade
all those who travelled by it to turn and retrace their steps, or to
pass in the wrong direction at the wrong time. He did not know what the
bear knew namely--that if that perturbed beast _should_ turn, he was
sure to be met and opposed by other wayfarers, and thus to find himself
caught between two fires.
Watching steadily, Peddler was unpleasantly surprised to see the
perturbation in the bear's eyes slowly change into a savage
resentment--resentment at being baulked in his inalienable right to an
unopposed passage over the ledge. To the bear's mind that grim,
confronting face was a violation of the law which he himself obeyed
loyally and without question. To be sure, it was the face of man, and
therefore to be dreaded. It was also mysterious, and therefore still
more to be dreaded. But the sense of bitter injustice, with the
realisation that he was at bay and taken at a disadvantage, filled him
with a frightened rage which swamped all other emotion. Then he came on.
His advance was slow and cautious by reason of the difficulty of the
path and his dread lest that staring, motionless face should pounce upon
him just at the perilous turn and hurl him over the brink. But Peddler
knew that his bluff was called, and that his only chance was to avoid
the encounter. He might have fled by the way he had come, knowing that
he would have every advantage in speed on that narrow trail. But before
venturing up to the turn he had noted a number of little projections and
crevices in the perpendicular wall above him. Clutching at them with
fingers of steel and unerring toes, he swarmed upwards as nimbly as a
climbing cat. He was a dozen feet up before the bear came crawling and
peering around the turn.
Elated at having so well extricated himself from so dubious a situation,
Peddler gazed down upon his opponent and laughed mockingly. The sound of
that confident laughter from straight above his head seemed to daunt the
bear and thoroughly damp his rage. He crouched low, and scurried past
growling. As he hurried along the trail at a rash pace, he kept casting
anxious glances over his shoulder, as if he feared the man were going to
chase him. Peddler lowered himself from his friendly perch and continued
his journey, cursing himself more than ever for having been such a fool
as not to bring his rifle.
In the course of the next half-hour he gained the highest point of the
ledge, which here was so broken and precarious that he had little
attention to spare for the unparalleled sweep and splendour of the view.
He was conscious, however, all the time, of the whirling eagles, now far
below him, and his veins thrilled with intense exhilaration. His
apprehensions had all vanished under the stimulus of that tonic
atmosphere. He was on the constant watch, however, scanning not only the
trail ahead--which was now never visible for more than a hundred yards
or so at a time--and also the face of the rock above him, to see if it
could be scaled in an emergency.
He had no expectation of an emergency, because he knew nothing of the
law of the ledge. Having already met a doe and a bear, he naturally
inferred that he would not be likely to meet any other of the elusive
kindreds of the wild, even in a whole week of forest faring. The shy and
wary beasts are not given to thrusting themselves upon man's dangerous
notice, and it was hard enough to find them, with all his woodcraft,
even when he was out to look for them. He was, therefore, so surprised
that he could hardly believe his eyes when, on rounding another
corrugation of the rock-face, he saw another bear coming to meet him.
"Gee!" muttered Peddler to himself. "Who's been lettin' loose the
menagerie? Or hev I got the nightmare, mebbe?"
The bear was about fifty yards distant--a smaller one than its
predecessor, and much younger also, as was obvious to Peddler's
initiated eye by the trim glossiness of its coat. It halted the instant
it caught sight of Peddler. But Peddler, for his part, kept right on,
without showing the least sign of hesitation or surprise. This bear,
surely, would give way before him. The beast hesitated, however. It was
manifestly afraid of the man. It backed a few paces, whimpering in a
worried fashion, then stopped, staring up the rock-wall above it, as if
seeking escape in that impossible direction.
"If ye're so skeered o' me as ye look," demanded Peddler, in a crisp
voice, "why in h--ll don't ye turn an' vamoose, 'stead o' backin' an'
fillin' that way? Ye can't git up that there rock, 'less ye're a fly."
The ledge at that point was a comparatively wide and easy path; and the
bear at length, as if decided by the easy confidence of Peddler's
tones, turned and retreated. But it went off with such reluctance,
whimpering anxiously the while, that Peddler was forced to the
conclusion there must be something coming up the trail which it was
dreading to meet. At this idea Peddler was delighted, and hurried on as
closely as possible at the retreating animal's heels. The bear, he
reflected, would serve him as an excellent advance guard, protecting him
perfectly from surprise, and perhaps, if necessary, clearing the way for
him. He chuckled to himself as he realised the situation, and the bear,
catching the incomprehensible sound, glanced nervously over its shoulder
and hastened its retreat as well as the difficulties of the path would
allow.
The trail was now descending rapidly, though irregularly, towards the
eastern plateau. The descent was broken by here and there a stretch of
comparatively level going, here and there a sharp though brief rise, and
at one point the ledge was cut across by a crevice some four feet in
width. As a jump, of course, it was nothing to Peddler; but in spite of
himself he took it with some trepidation, for the chasm looked
infinitely deep, and the footing on the other side narrow and
precarious. The bear, however, had seemed to take it quite carelessly,
almost in its stride, and Peddler, not to be outdone, assumed a similar
indifference.
It was not long, however, before the enigma of the bear's reluctance to
retrace its steps was solved. The bear, with Peddler some forty or fifty
paces behind, was approaching one of those short steep rises which broke
the general descent. From the other side of the rise came a series of
heavy breathings and windy grunts.
"Moose, by gum!" exclaimed Peddler. "Now, I'd like to know if _all_ the
critters hev took it into their heads to cross Old Bald Face to-day!"
The bear heard the gruntlings also, and halted unhappily, glancing back
at Peddler.
"Git on with it!" ordered Peddler sharply. And the bear, dreading man
more than moose, got on.
The next moment a long, dark, ominous head, with massive, overhanging
lip and small angry eyes, appeared over the rise. Behind this formidable
head laboured up the mighty humped shoulders and then the whole towering
form of a moose-bull. Close behind him followed two young cows and a
yearling calf.
"Huh! I guess there's goin' to be some row!" muttered Peddler, and cast
his eyes up the rock-face, to look for a point of refuge in case his
champion should get the worst of it.
At sight of the bear the two cows and the yearling halted, and stood
staring, with big ears thrust forward anxiously, at the foe that barred
their path. But the arrogant old bull kept straight on, though slowly,
and with the wariness of the practised duellist. At this season of the
year his forehead wore no antlers, indeed, but in his great knife-edged
fore-hooves he possessed terrible weapons which he could wield with
deadly dexterity. Marking the confidence of his advance, Peddler grew
solicitous for his own champion, and stood motionless, dreading to
distract the bear's attention.