The Watchers of the Trails Part 2

Being thirsty as well as hungry, he pushed through the bushes,--not noiselessly, as a wild bear moves, but with crashing and tramplings, as if there were no need of secrecy in the wilds,--and lurched down to the gravelly brink. Here, as luck would have it, he found a big, dead sucker lying half-awash, which made him a meal. Then, when sharp streaks of orange along the eastern horizon were beginning to shed a mystic colour over the lake, he drew back into the woods and curled himself up for sleep behind the trunk of a big hemlock.

When the sun was about an hour high he awoke, and made haste to continue his journey. Along the lake sh.o.r.e he went, to the outlet; then down the clear, rushing Squatook; and in the afternoon he came out upon a smaller lake, over which stood sentinel a lofty, beetling mountain. At the foot of the mountain, almost seeming to duplicate it in miniature, a steep island of rock rose sharply from the water.

The bear halted on the sh.o.r.e, sniffed wistfully, and looked up at the lonely mountain. Dim memories, or emotions too dim to be cla.s.sed as memories, began to stir in the recesses of his brain. He hurried around the lake and began to climb the steeps. The lonely mountain was old Sugar Loaf. The exile had come home.

It was his feet, rather than his head, perhaps, that knew the way so well. Upward he toiled, through swamps and fir woods, over blueberry barrens and ranges of granite boulders, till, looking down, he saw the eagle flying far below him. He saw a vast, empty forest land, beaded with shining lakes,--and a picture, long covered up in his brain, came back to him. These were the great s.p.a.ces that so long ago had terrified the little cub creeping at his mother's heels. He knew now where his den was,--just behind that whitish gray rock with the juniper shrub over it. He ran eagerly to resume possession.

It was now, for the first time, that he found the wilderness less empty than he had imagined it. Another bear was in possession of the den,--and in no mood to be disturbed.

He flung himself upon the intruder with a savage roar. The next moment the two, clutched in a madly clawing embrace, went crashing through a fringe of bushes and rolled together down a twenty-foot slope of bald rock. They landed in a crevice full of roots, with a violence that half-stunned them and threw them apart. As they picked themselves up, it was plain that the exile had had the best of the tussle. His rich black fur, to be sure, was somewhat torn and b.l.o.o.d.y, but he showed no other signs of battle; while his antagonist breathed heavily and held one paw clear of the ground.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE EAGLE FLYING FAR BELOW HIM."]

The exile was quite fearless, and quite ready to fight for what he wanted, if necessary. But he was not conscious of any particular ill-will toward his a.s.sailant. What he wanted was possession of that den. Now, instead of taking advantage of his adversary's partly disabled condition, he clambered with undignified haste up the steep rock and plunged into the cave. It was certainly much smaller than he had imagined it, but it was, nevertheless, much to his taste. He turned around in it two or three times, as if to adjust it to himself, then squatted on his haunches in the entrance and looked out complacently over the airy deeps. The dispossessed bear stood for a few minutes irresolute, his small eyes red with wrath. For a moment or two he hesitated, trying to work himself up to the attack. Then discretion came to his rescue. Grumbling deep in his throat, he turned and limped away, to seek new quarters on the other side of the mountain.

Now began for the returned exile two or three months of just such a life as he had longed for. The keen and tonic winds that blew around the peak of Sugar Loaf filled his veins with vigour. Through his lack of education in the lore of the wilderness, his diet was less varied than it might have been; but this was the fat of the year, and he fared well enough. When the late berries and fruits were all gone there were sweet tubers and starchy roots to be grubbed up along the meadow levels by the water. Instinct, and a spirit of investigation, soon taught him to find the beetles and grubs that lurked under stones or in rotting logs,--and in the course of such a search he one day discovered that ants were good to eat. But the small animals with which a wild bear is p.r.o.ne to vary his diet were all absent from his bill of fare. Rabbits, woodchucks, chipmunks, wood-mice, they all kept out of his sight. His ignorance of the law of silence, the universal law of the wild, deprived him of many toothsome morsels. As for the many kinds of fungus which grew upon the mountain, he knew not which were edible and which poisonous. After an experiment with one pleasant-smelling red-skinned specimen, which gave him excruciating cramps, he left the whole race of fungi severely alone.

For perhaps a month he had the solitudes to himself, except for the big, scornful-looking eagle which always spent a portion of every day sitting on the top of a blasted pine about a hundred feet above the den. But, at length, one crisp morning, when he was down by the lakeside fishing, he found a mate. A young she-bear came out of the bushes, looked at him, then turned as if to run away,--but didn't. The exile stopped fishing, and waited civilly to see if the newcomer wanted to fight. Evidently she had no such desire.

The exile took a few steps up the beach,--which action seemed to terrify the newcomer almost into flight. Seeing this, he sat down on his haunches amiably, and waited to see what she would do. What she did, after much hesitation and delay and half-retreat, was to come up to his side and sniff trustfully but wonderingly at the great iron-studded leather collar on his neck. After that the two soon reached an understanding; and for the next six weeks or so they spent most of their time together.

Under his mate's instruction, or else by force of her example, the big bear made some progress in woodcraft, and gained some inklings of the lesson of silence. He learned, also, to distinguish between the wholesome and the poisonous fungi. He learned the sweets of a bee-tree, and how a bear must go to work to attain them. Moving through the shadows more quietly, he now had glimpses of rabbits and chipmunks, and even caught sight of a wood-mouse whisking into his hole under a root. But before he had acquired the cunning to capture any of these shy kindreds, his mate wandered away, on her own affairs intent; and he found himself once more alone. Frosts by this time were binding swale and pool. Ice was forming far out from the edges of the lake. The first snows had fallen and the great snows were threatening.

And the little she-bear was getting ready to creep into a hole and curl up for her winter's sleep. She no longer wanted company,--not even the company of this splendid, black comrade, whose collar had so filled her with admiration.

When, at length, the winter of the north had fairly settled down upon the Squatooks, the exile's ribs were well encased in fat. But that fortunate condition was not to last long. When the giant winds, laden with snow and Arctic cold, thundered and shrieked about the peak of Sugar Loaf, and in the loud darkness strange shapes of drift rode down the blast, he slept snugly enough in the narrow depths of his den. But the essential winter lore of his kind he had not learned. He had not learned to sleep away the time of storm and famine. As for instinct, it failed him altogether in this emergency. During his five years of life with the circus, he had had no chance to gratify his winter drowsiness, and gradually the power to hibernate had pa.s.sed away from him. The loss was irremediable. By this one deprivation his contact with man had ruined him for the life of nature.

When man has s.n.a.t.c.hed away from Nature one of her wild children, Nature, merciless in her resentments, is apt to say, "Keep him! He is none of mine!" And if the alien, his heart aching for his own, insists upon returning, Nature turns a face of stone against him.

Unskilled in hunting as he was, and unable to sleep, the bear was soon driven to extremes. At rare intervals he succeeded in capturing a rabbit. Once or twice, after a fierce frost had followed a wet sleet storm, he had climbed trees and found dead birds frozen to their perches. But most of the time he had nothing but starvation rations of wood-ants and buds. In the course of a few weeks he was lean as a heron, and his collar hung loose in his fur. He was growing to hate the icy and glittering desolation,--and, as he had once longed for an untried freedom, now he longed for the companionship of men.

He was now wandering far afield in his daily quest for food, sometimes not returning for three or four days at a time. Once, on an excursion over into the Madawaska Valley, he came upon a deadfall temptingly baited with pork. He rushed forward ravenously to s.n.a.t.c.h the bait,--but just in time that scent called up an ancient memory. The horror and the shock of that far-off day when such a trap had crushed his mother's life out, came back upon him. It was not the scene, exactly, that came back, but rather the memory of an anguish. Obscure as it was, it had power to master his appet.i.te and drive him to another foraging-ground. Thenceforth he foraged no more in the Madawaska Valley.

In such a desolate fashion the exile dragged through the frozen weeks, till February came in with deeper snows and fiercer frosts. At this time hunger and loneliness drove him far over to the valley of the Toledi; and here, one still and biting day, he came upon a human trail.

Delightedly he sniffed at the familiar scent, which to him, as pleasant memories of food and companionship welled up in his heart, represented nothing but kindliness. His little disagreements with his trainer were forgotten. He remembered only his unfailing friends, the manager and the clown. The trail was a broad and mixed one,--the trail of oxen, and of men with larriganed feet. It led toward a camp of lumbermen, near the river. Joyously and confidently the exile followed it. Soon he heard men's voices, and the familiar clank of chains. Then a biting breeze drew through the forest,--biting, but sweet to the bear's nostrils. It carried a savour of richness from the cook's steaming boilers. It was dinner-hour at the camp.

For the second time in his life, the bear felt that he had come home.

Captive, indeed, he had been among men,--but a captive always highly valued and heedfully cared for. He never for a moment doubted that these men-creatures, who had always wanted him, would want him now.

They would chain him up, of course,--for fear he would change his mind and leave them again. But they would feed him,--all he could eat; and stare at him; and admire him. Then he would dance for them, and do foolish things with a gun, and perhaps stand on his head. Whereupon they would applaud, and laugh, and feed him with peanuts and gingerbread. His famished jaws dripped at the thought.

Within the camp one of the hands, glancing from the window, saw him just as he came in view. In an instant every man was looking out. The boldness of the animal stirred up a great excitement. His terrible leanness was noticed. He was coming straight for the door,--evidently savage, insane with hunger! And such a big fellow, too!

Men seized their axes. The boss s.n.a.t.c.hed down his big-bore Snider rifle, slipped in a cartridge, and coolly threw open the cabin door.

He was a tall, ruddy-faced, wide-mouthed man, much like the kindly manager of the show. At sight of him, standing there in the door, the bear was overjoyed, and broke into a shuffling run.

Seeing what seemed to them such reckless ferocity, the lumbermen cried out in amazement, and shouted hoa.r.s.e warnings to the boss. But the boss was a man of nerve. Raising his rifle to the shoulder, he stepped right out clear of the door. He was a dead shot, and very proud of the fact. When the bear was within thirty paces of him, he fired.

The ma.s.sive bullet sped true; and the exile fell forward on his snout without a gasp, shot through the brain.

The men gathered about the body, praising the shot, praising the prize, praising the reckless audacity which had led the beast to rush upon his doom. Then in the long, loose fur that clothed his bones they found the heavy collar. At that they all wondered. The boss examined it minutely, and stood pondering; and the frank pride upon his face gradually died into regret.

"I swan, boys," said he, presently, "if that ain't the b'ar that run away from the circus las' fall! I heard tell he was reckoned always kind!"

The Little Wolf of the Pool

The bottom of the pool (it was too small to be called a pond) was muddy, with here and there a thicket of rushes or arrow-weed stems.

Down upon the windless surface streamed the noon sun warmly. Under its light the bottom was flecked with shadows of many patterns,--circular, heart-shaped, spear-shaped, netted, and barred. There were other shadows that were no more than ghosts of shadows, cast by faint, diaphanous films of sc.u.m which scarcely achieved to blur the clear downpour of radiance, but were nevertheless perceived and appreciated by many of the delicate larval creatures which made a large part of the life of the pool.

For all its surface tranquillity and its shining summer peace, the pool was thronged with life. Beneath the surface, among the weeds and stalks, the gleams and shadows, there was little of tranquillity or peace. Almost all the many-formed and strange-shaped inhabitants of the pool were hunting or being hunted, preying or being preyed upon,--from the goggle-eyed, green-throated bullfrog under the willow root, down to the swarming animalculae which it required a microscope to see. Small crawling things everywhere dotted the mud or tried to hide under the sticks and stones. Curled fresh-water snails moved up and down the stems of the lilies. Shining little black water-bugs scurried swiftly in all directions. In sheltered places near the surface, under the leaves, wriggled the slim gray larvae of the mosquitoes. And hither and thither, in flickering shoals, darted myriads of baby minnows, from half an inch to an inch and a half in length.

In a patch of vivid sunshine, about six inches from a tangle of arrow-weed stems, a black tadpole lay basking. Light to him meant not only growth, but life. Whenever, with the slow wheeling of the sun, the shadow of a lily leaf moved over him, he wriggled impatiently aside, and settled down again on the brightest part of the mud. Most of the time he seemed to be asleep; but in reality he was keeping that incessant sharp lookout which, for the pool-dwellers, was the price of survival.

Swimming slowly up toward the other side of the arrow-weed stems, came a fantastic-looking creature, something more than an inch and a half in length. It had a long, tapering, ringed and armoured body, ending in a spine; a thick, armoured thorax, with six legs attached; and a large head, the back of which was almost covered by two big, dully staring globes of eyes. The whole front of its head--part of the eyes, and all the face--was covered by a smooth, cleft, shieldlike mask, reaching well down under the breast, and giving the creature an expression both mysterious and terrible. On its back, folded close and obviously useless, were rigidly encased attempts at wings.

The little monster swam slowly by the motion of its long and strong legs, thrusting out two short, hornlike antennae over the top of its mask. It seemed to be eyeing a snail-sh.e.l.l on a stem above, and waiting for the snail's soft body to emerge from the citadel; when on a sudden, through the stems, it caught sight of the basking tadpole.

Instantly it became motionless, and sank, like a waterlogged twig, to the level of the mud. It crept around, effacing itself against the brown and greenish roots, till it was just opposite the quarry.

Then it sprang, propelling itself not only by its legs, but by the violent ejection of a little stream of water from the powerful breathing-valves near its tail.

The tadpole, as we have seen, was not asleep. With a convulsive wriggle of its tail it darted away in a panic. It was itself no mean swimmer, but it could not escape the darting terror that pursued. When the masked form was almost within reach of its victim, the mask dropped down and shot straight out, working on a sort of elbow-shaped lever, and at the same time revealed at its extremity a pair of powerful mandibles. These mandibles snapped firm hold of the victim at the base of its wriggling tail. The elbow-shaped lever drew back, till the squirming prize was held close against its captor's face. Then with swift jets from the turbine arrangement of its abdominal gills, the strange monster darted back to a retreat among the weed stems, where it could devour its prey in seclusion.

Under those inexorable jaws the tadpole soon disappeared and for a few minutes the monster rested, working its mandibles to and fro and rubbing them with its front legs before folding back that inscrutable mask over its savage face. Presently a plump minnow, more than an inch long, with a black stripe along its bronze and silver sides, swam down close by the arrow-weed stems. The big eyes of the monster never moved. But, suddenly, out shot the mask once more, revealing the face of doom behind it; and those hooked mandibles fixed themselves in the belly of the minnow. Inexorable as was the grip, it nevertheless for the moment left unimpeded the swimming powers of the victim; and he was a strong swimmer. With lashing tail and beating fins, he dragged his captor out from among the weed stems. For a few seconds there was a vehement struggle. Then the minnow was borne down upon the mud, out in the broad sheen where, a little before, the tadpole had been basking. Clutching ferociously with its six long legs, the conqueror crawled over the prey and bit its backbone in two.

Swift, strong, insatiably ravenous, immeasurably fierce, the larva of the dragon-fly (for such the little monster was) had fair t.i.tle to be called the wolf of the pool. Its appearance alone was enough to daunt all rivals. Even the great black carnivorous water-beetle, with all its strength and fighting equipment, was careful to give wide berth to that dreadful, quick-darting mask. Had these little wolves been as numerous as they were rapacious, there would soon have been left no life at all in the pool but theirs and that of the frogs. Between these there would have been a long and doubtful struggle, the frogs hunting the larvae among the weed stems, and the larvae devouring the tadpoles on their basking-grounds.

It chanced that the particular larva whose proceedings we have noted was just on the eve of that change which should transport it to the world of air. After eating the minnow it somehow failed to recover its appet.i.te, and remained, all the rest of the day and through the night, clinging to one of the weed stems. Next morning, when the sun was warm on the pool, it crawled slowly up, up, up, till it came out into a new element, and the untried air fanned it dry. Its great round eyes, formerly dull and opaque, had now grown transparent, and were gleaming like live jewels, an indescribable blend of emerald, sapphire, and amethyst. Presently its armour, now for the first time drying in the sun, split apart down the back, and a slender form, adorned with two pairs of crumpled, wet wings, struggled three-quarters of its length from the sh.e.l.l. For a short time it clung motionless, gathering strength. Then, bracing its legs firmly on the edges of the sh.e.l.l, it lifted its tail quite clear, and crawled up the weed a perfect dragon-fly, forgetful of that grim husk it was leaving behind. A few minutes later, the good sun having dried its wings, it went darting and hurtling over the pool, a gemlike, opalescent shining thing, reflected gloriously in the polished mirror beneath.

The Little Wolf of the Air

The pool lay shimmering and basking in the flood of the June sun. On three sides, east, west, and north, the willows and birches gathered close about it, their light leaf.a.ge hanging motionless in the clear, still heat. On the south side it lay open toward the thick-gra.s.sed meadows, where bees and flies of innumerable species flickered lazily over the pale crimson clover-blooms. From the clover-blooms and the vetch-blooms, the wheel-rayed daisies, and the tall umbels of the wild parsnip, strange perfumes kept distilling in the heat and pulsing in across the pool on breaths of air too soft to ruffle its surface.

Above this unruffled surface the air was full of dancing life. Gnats hung in little, whirling nebulae; mosquitoes, wasplike flies, and whirring, shard-winged beetles, pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed each other in intricate lines of flight; and, here and there, lucently flashing on long, transparent, veined wings, darted the dragon-flies in their gemlike mail. Their movements were so swift, powerful, and light that it was difficult, in spite of their size and radiant colour, to detect the business that kept the dragon-flies so incessantly and tirelessly in action. Sometimes two or three would hurtle out for a brief expedition over the blossoming meadow. Often one would alight for a moment on a leaf or twig in the sun, and lie there gleaming, its two pairs of wings flatly outspread in a way that showed every delicate interlacing of the nerves. Then it would rise again into the air with a bold, vehement spring; and when ever it began its flight, or whenever it abruptly changed the direction of its flight, its wings would make a dry, sharp, rustling sound.

The business that so occupied these winged and flashing gems, these darting iridescences, was in truth the universal business of hunting.

But there were few indeed among all the kindred of earth, air, and water whose hunting was so savage and so ravenous as that of these slender and spiritlike beings. With appet.i.tes insatiable, ferocity implacable, strength and courage prodigious for their stature, to call them the little wolves of the air is perhaps to wrong the ravening gray pack whose howlings strike terror down the corridors of the winter forest. Mosquitoes and gnats they hunted every moment, devouring them in such countless numbers as to merit the grat.i.tude of every creature that calls the mosquito its foe. But every summer fly, also, was acceptable prey to these indomitable hunters, every velvet-bodied moth, every painted b.u.t.terfly. And even the envenomed wasp, whose weapon no insect can withstand, was not safe. If the dragon-fly could catch her engrossed in some small slaughter of her own, and, pouncing upon her from above, grip the back of her armed abdomen in his great grinding jaws, her sting could do nothing but dart out vainly like a dark, licking flame; and she would prove as good a meal as the most unresisting bluebottle or horse-fly.

Down to the pool, through the luxurious shadows of the birches, came a man, and stretched himself against a leaning trunk by the waterside.

At his approach, all the business of life and death and mating in his immediate neighbourhood came to a halt, and most of the winged kindred, except the mosquitoes, drew away from him. The mosquitoes, to whom he had become, so to speak, in a measure acclimatized, attacked him with less enthusiasm than they would have displayed in the case of a stranger, and failed to cause him serious annoyance. He fixed himself in a position that was thoroughly comfortable, and then lay quite still.

The man's face was under the shadow of the birch-tree, but his body lay out in the full sun, and the front of his soft white summer shirt made a patch of sharp light against the surrounding tones of brown and green. When it had for a time remained quite still, the patch of whiteness attracted attention, and various insects alighted upon it to investigate. Presently the man noticed a very large steel-blue dragon-fly on rustling wings balancing in the air a few feet in front of him. At this moment, from a branch overhead, a hungry shrike dashed down. The dragon-fly saw the peril just in time; and, instead of fleeing desperately across the pool, to be almost inevitably overtaken by the strong-winged bird, it dashed forward and perched for refuge on a fold of the dazzling white shirt. The foiled shrike, with an angry and astonished twitter, flew off to a tree across the pool.

For perhaps a minute the great fly stood with moveless, wide-spread wings, scintillating aerial hues as if its body was compacted of a million microscopic prisms. The transparent tissue of its wings was filled with a finer and more elusive iridescence. The great rounded, globose, overlapping jaws, half as big as the creature's whole head, kept opening and shutting, as if to polish their edges. The other half of its head was quite occupied by two bulging, brilliant spheres of eyes, which seemed to hold in their transparent yet curiously impenetrable depths a shifting light of emerald and violet. These inscrutable and enormous eyes--each one nearly as great in circ.u.mference as the creature's body--rolled themselves in a steady stare at the man's face, till he felt the skin of his cheeks creep at their sinister beauty. It seemed to him as if a spirit hostile and evil had threatened him from beneath those shining eyes; and he was amused to experience, for all his interest, a sense of half-relief when the four beautiful wings hurtled crisply and the creature darted away.