The Backwoodsmen Part 18

The canoe kept close along the sh.o.r.e for guidance, as one feels one's way along a wall in the dark. The channel, moreover, was deep and clear in sh.o.r.e; while out under the mist the soft noises of ripples proclaimed to the ears of the two canoeists the presence of frequent rock and snag and shallow. Lest they should run upon unseen dangers ahead, the canoeists were travelling very slowly, the bow-man resting with his paddle across the gunwales before him, while the stern-man, his paddle noiselessly waving like the fin of a trout, did no more than keep his craft to her course and let her run with the current.

Down along the sh.o.r.e, keeping just behind the canoe and close to the water's edge, followed a small, dark, sinuous creature, its piercing eyes, bead-black with a glint of red behind them, fixed in savage curiosity upon the canoemen. It was about two feet in length, with extremely short legs, and a sharp, triangular head. As it ran--and its movements were as soundless and effortless as those of a snake--it humped its long, lithe body in a way that suggested a snake's coils.

It seemed to be following the canoe out of sheer curiosity--a curiosity, however, which was probably well mixed with malevolence, seeing that it was the curiosity of a mink. These two strange creatures moving on the water were, of course, too large and formidable for the big mink to dream of attacking them; but he could wonder at them and hate them--and who could say that some chance to do them a hurt might not arise? Stealthy, wary, and bold, he kept his distance about eight or ten feet from the canoe; and because he was behind he imagined himself unseen. As a matter of fact, however, the steersman of the canoe, wiser in woodcraft and cunninger even than he, had detected him and was watching him with interest from the corner of his eye. So large a mink, and one so daring in curiosity, was a phenomenon to be watched and studied with care. The canoeist did not take his comrade in the bow into his confidence for some minutes, lest the sound of the human voice should daunt the animal. But presently, in a monotonous, rhythmic murmur which carried no alarm to the mink's ear but only heightened its interest, he called the situation to his companion's notice; and the latter, without seeming to see, kept watch through half-closed lids.

A little way down the sh.o.r.e, close to the water's edge, something round and white caught the mink's eye. Against the soft browns and dark greys of the wet soil, the object fairly shone in its whiteness, and seemed absurdly out of place. It was a hen's egg, either dropped there by a careless hen from the pioneer's cabin near by, or left by a musk-rat disturbed in his poaching. However it had got there, it was an egg; and the canoeists saw that they no longer held the mink's undivided attention. Gently the steersman sheered out a few feet farther from the bank, and at the same time checked the canoe's headway. He wanted to see how the mink would manipulate the egg when he got to it.

The egg lay at the foot of a little path which led down the bushy bank to the water--a path evidently trodden by the pioneer's cattle. Down this path, stepping daintily and turning his long inquisitive nose and big, bright, mischievous eyes from side to side, came a racc.o.o.n. He was a small racc.o.o.n, a little shorter than the mink, but looking heavier by reason of his more stocky build and bushier, looser fur.

His purpose was to fish or hunt frogs in the pool at the foot of the path; but when he saw the egg gleaming through the misty air, his eyes sparkled with satisfaction. A long summer pa.s.sed in proximity to the pioneer's cabin had enabled him to find out that eggs were good. He hastened his steps, and with a sliding scramble, which attracted the attention of the men in the canoe, he arrived at the water's edge. But to his indignant astonishment he was not the first to arrive.

The mink was just ahead. He reached the egg, laid one paw upon it in possession, and turned with a snarl of defiance as the racc.o.o.n came down the bank. The latter paused to note the threatening fangs and malign eyes of his slim rival. Then, with that brisk gaiety which the racc.o.o.n carries into the most serious affairs of his life, and particularly into his battles, he ran to the encounter. The men in the canoe, eagerly interested, stole nearer to referee the match.

Quick as the racc.o.o.n was, his snake-like adversary was quicker.

Doubling back upon himself, the mink avoided that confident and dangerous rush, and with a lightning snap fixed hold upon his enemy's neck. But it was not, by half an inch, the hold he wanted; and his long, deadly teeth sank not, as he had planned, into the foe's throat, but into the great tough muscles a little higher up. He dared not let go to try for the deadlier hold, but locked his jaws and whipped his long body over the other's back, hoping to evade his antagonist's teeth.

The racc.o.o.n had lost the first point, and his large eyes blazed with pain and anger. But his dauntless spirit was not in the least dismayed. Shaking the long, black body from his back, he swung himself half round and caught his enemy's slim loins between his jaws. It was a cruelly punishing grip, and under the stress of it the mink lashed out so violently that the two, still holding on with locked jaws, rolled over into the water, smashing the egg as they fell. The canoe, now close beside them, they heeded not at all.

"Two to one on the mink!" whispered the traveller in the bow of the canoe, delightedly. But the steersman smiled, and said "Wait!"

To be in the water suited the mink well enough. A hunter of fish in their holes, he was almost as much at home in the water as a fish. But the racc.o.o.n it did not suit at all. With a splutter he relinquished his hold on the mink's loins; and the latter, perceiving the advantage, let go and snapped again for the throat. But again he miscalculated the alertness of the racc.o.o.n's st.u.r.dy muscles. The latter had turned his head the instant that the mink's jaws relaxed, and the two gnashed teeth in each other's faces, neither securing a hold. The next moment the racc.o.o.n had leaped back to dry land, turning in threatening readiness as he did so.

Though there was no longer anything to fight about, the mink's blood was up. His eyes glowed like red coals, his long, black shape looked very fit and dangerous, and his whole appearance was that of vindictive fury. The racc.o.o.n, on the other hand, though bedraggled from his ducking, maintained his gay, casual air, as if enjoying the whole affair too much to be thoroughly enraged. When the mink darted upon him, straight as a snake strikes, he met the attack with a curious little pirouette; and the next instant the two were once more locked in a death grapple.

It was some moments before the breathless watchers in the canoe could make out which was getting the advantage, so closely were the grey body and the black intertwined. Then it was seen that the racc.o.o.n was using his flexible, hand-like paws as a bear might, to hold his foe down to the punishment. Both contestants were much cut, and bleeding freely; but the mink was now getting slow, while the racc.o.o.n was as cheerfully alert as ever. At length the mink tore loose and made one more desperate reach for his favourite throat-hold. But this time it was the racc.o.o.n who avoided. He danced aside, flashed back, and caught the mink fairly under the jaw. Then, bracing himself, he shook his foe as a terrier might. And in a minute or two the long, black shape straightened out limply amid the sand and dead leaves.

When the body was quite still the racc.o.o.n let go and stood over it expectantly for some minutes. He bit it several times, and seeing that this treatment elicited no retort, suffered himself to feel a.s.sured of his victory. Highly pleased, he skipped back and forth over the body, playfully seized it with his fore-paws, and bundled it up into a heap.

Then seeming to remember the origin of the quarrel, he sniffed regretfully at the crumbled fragments of egg-sh.e.l.l. His expression of disappointment was so ludicrous that in spite of themselves the men in the canoe exploded with laughter.

As the harsh, incongruous sound startled the white stillnesses, in the lifting of an eyelid the little conqueror vanished. One of the canoeists stepped ash.o.r.e, picked up the body of the slain mink, and threw it into the canoe. As the two resumed their paddles and slipped away into the mist, they knew that from some hiding-place on the bank two bright, indignant eyes were peering after them in wonder.

Melindy and the Spring Bear

Soft, wet and tender, with a faint green filming the sodden pasture field, and a rose-pink veil covering the maples, and blue-grey catkins tinting the dark alders, spring had come to the lonely little clearing in the backwoods. From the swampy meadow along the brook's edge, across the road from the cabin and the straw-littered barn-yard, came toward evening that music which is the distinctive note of the northern spring--the thrilling, mellow, inexpressibly wistful fluting of the frogs.

The sun was just withdrawing his uppermost rim behind the far-off black horizon line of fir-tops. The cabin door stood wide open to admit the sweet air and the sweet sound. Just inside the door sat old Mrs. Griffis, rocking heavily, while the woollen sock which she was knitting lay forgotten in her lap. She was a strong-featured, muscular woman, still full of vigour, whom rheumatism had met and halted in the busy path of life. Her keen and restless eyes were following eagerly every movement of a slender, light-haired girl in a blue cotton waist and grey homespun skirt, who was busy at the other side of the yard, getting her little flock of sheep penned up for the night for fear of wild prowlers.

Presently the girl slammed the pen door, jammed the hardwood peg into the staple, ran her fingers nervously through the pale fluff of her hair, and came hurrying across the yard to the door with a smile on her delicate young face.

"_There_, Granny!" she exclaimed, with the air of one who has just got a number of troublesome little duties accomplished, "I guess no lynxes, or nothing, 'll get the sheep to-night, anyways. Now, I must go an' hunt up old 'Spotty' afore it gets too dark. I don't see what's made her wander off to-day. She always sticks around the barn close as a burr!"

The old woman smiled, knowing that the survival of a wild instinct in the cow had led her to seek some hiding-place, near home but secluded, wherein to secrete her new-born calf.

"I guess old 'Spotty' knows enough to come home when she gets ready, Child!" she answered. "She's been kept that close all winter, the snow bein' so deep, I don't wonder she wants to roam a bit now she can git 'round. Land sakes, I wish't _I_ could roam a bit, 'stead er sittin', sittin', an' knittin', knittin', mornin', noon an' night, all along of these 'ere useless old legs of mine!"

"Poor Granny!" murmured the girl, softly, tears coming into her eyes.

"I wish't we could get 'round, the two of us, in these sweet-smellin'

spring woods, an' get the first Mayflowers together! Couldn't you just try now, Granny? I believe you are goin' to walk all right again some day, just as well as any of us. Do try!"

Thus adjured, the old woman grasped the arms of her chair st.u.r.dily, set her jaw, and lifted herself quite upright. But a groan forced itself from her lips, and she sank back heavily, her face creased with pain. Recovering herself with a resolute effort, however, she smiled rather ruefully.

"Some day, mebbe, if the good Lord wills!" said she, shaking her head.

"But 'tain't this day, Melindy! You'll be the death o' me yet, Child, you're so set on me gittin' 'round ag'in!"

"Why, Granny, you did splendid!" cried the girl. "That was the best yet, the best you've ever done since I come to you. You stood just as straight as anybody for a minute. Now, I'll go an' hunt old 'Spotty.'"

And she turned toward the tiny path that led across the pasture to the burnt-woods.

But Mrs. Griffis's voice detained her.

"What's the good o' botherin' about old 'Spotty' to-night, Melindy?

Let her have her fling. Them frogs make me that lonesome to-night I can't bear to let ye a minnit out o' my sight, Child! Ther' ain't no other sound like it, to my way o' thinkin', for music nor for lonesomeness. It 'most breaks my heart with the sweetness of it, risin' an' fallin' on the wet twilight that way. But I just got to have somebody 'round when I listen to it!"

"Yes, Granny, I love it, too!" a.s.sented Melindy in a preoccupied tone, "when I ain't too bothered to listen. Just now, I'm thinkin' about old 'Spotty' out there alone in the woods, an' maybe some hungry lynxes watchin' for her to lie down an' go to sleep. You know how hungry the bears will be this spring, too, Granny, after the snow layin' deep so late. I just couldn't sleep, if I thought old 'Spotty' was out there in them queer, grey, empty woods all night. In summer it's different, an' then the woods are like home."

"Well," said her grandmother, seeing that the girl was bent upon her purpose, "if ye're skeered for old 'Spotty,' ye'd better be a little mite skeered for yerself, Child! Take along the gun. Mebbe ye might see a chipmunk a-bitin' the old cow jest awful!"

Heedless of her grandmother's gibe, Melindy, who had a very practical brain under her fluffy light hair, picked up the handy little axe which she used for chopping kindling.

"No guns for me, Granny, you know," she retorted. "This 'ere little axe's good enough for me!" And swinging it over her shoulder she went lightly up the path, her head to one side, her small mouth puckered in a vain effort to learn to whistle.

What Melindy and her grandmother called the "Burnt Lands" was a strip of country running back for miles from the clearing. The fire had gone over it years before, cutting a sharply defined, gradually widening path through the forest, and leaving behind it only a few scattered rampikes, or tall, naked trunks bleached to whiteness by the storms of many winters. Here and there amid these desolate s.p.a.ces, dense thickets of low growth had sprung up, making a secure hiding-place of every hollow where the soil had not had all the life scorched out of it.

Having crossed the pasture, Melindy presently detected those faint indications of a trail which the uninitiated eye finds it so impossible to see. Slight bendings and bruises of the blueberry and laurel scrub caught her notice. Then she found, in a bare spot, the unmistakable print of a cow's hoof. The trail was now quite clear to her; and it was clearly that of old "Spotty." Intent upon her quest she hurried on, heedless of the tender colours changing in the sky above her head, of the first swallows flitting and twittering across it, of the keen yet delicate fragrance escaping from every sap-swollen bud, and of the sweetly persuasive piping of the frogs from the water meadow. She had no thought at that moment but to find the truant cow and get her safely stabled before dark.

The trail led directly to a rocky hollow about a hundred yards from the edge of the pasture--perhaps a hundred and fifty yards from the doorway wherein Mrs. Griffis sat intently watching Melindy's progress.

The hollow was thick with young spruce and white birch, cl.u.s.tered about a single tall and ma.s.sive rampike.

Into this shadowy tangle the girl pushed fearlessly, peering ahead beneath the dark, balsam-scented branches. She could see, in a broken fashion, to the very foot of the rampike, across which lay a huge fallen trunk. But she could see nothing of old "Spotty," who, by reason of her vivid colouring of red and white splotches, would have been conspicuous against those dark surroundings.

There was something in the silence, combined with the absence of the cow whom she confidently expected to find, which sent a little chill to the girl's heart. She gripped her axe more tightly, and stood quite motionless, accustoming her eyes to the confused gloom; and presently she thought she could distinguish a small brownish shape lying on a mound of moss near the foot of the rampike. A moment more and she could see that it was looking at her, with big, soft eyes. Then a pair of big ears moved. She realized that it was a calf she was looking at.

Old "Spotty's" truancy was accounted for.

But where was old "Spotty"? Melindy thought for a moment, and concluded very properly that the mother, considering the calf well-hidden, had slipped away to the spring for a drink. She was on the point of stepping forward to admire the little new-comer and see if it was yet strong enough to be led home to the barn, when a stealthy rustling at the farther side of the thicket arrested her.

Certainly that could not be the cow, who was anything but stealthy in her movements. But what could it be?

Melindy had a sudden prescience of peril. But her nerves stiffened to it, and she had no thought of retreat. It might be one of those savage lynxes, spying upon the calf in its mother's absence. At this idea Melindy's small mouth itself set very grimly, and she rejoiced that she had brought the axe along. The lynx, of all the wild creatures, she regarded with special antagonism.

The stealthy movements came nearer, nearer, then suddenly died out. A moment more and a dark bulk took shape noiselessly among the fir-branches, some ten or twelve feet beyond the spot where the helpless calf was lying.

For a second Melindy's heart stood still. What was her little axe against a bear! Then she recalled the general backwoods faith that the biggest black bear would run from a human being, if only he had plenty of room to run. She looked at the helpless little one curled up on its mossy bed. She looked at the savage black shape gliding slowly forward to devour it. And her heart leaped with returning courage.

The bear, its fierce eyes glancing from side to side, was now within five or six feet of its intended prey. With a shrill cry of warning and defiance Melindy sprang forward, swinging her axe, and ordered the beast to "Git out!" She was greatly in hopes that the animal would yield to the authority of the human voice, and retire abashed.

At any other season, it is probable that the bear would have done just as she hoped it would. But now, it had the courage of a rampant spring appet.i.te. Startled it was, and disturbed, at the girl's sudden appearance and her shrill cry; and it half drew back, hesitating. But Melindy also hesitated; and the bear was quick to perceive her hesitation. For a few seconds he stood eyeing her, his head down and swinging from side to side. Then, seeming to conclude that she was not a formidable antagonist, he gave vent to a loud, grunting growl, and lurched forward upon the calf.