The Watchers of the Trails Part 3

It would seem, however, that the fold of white shirt had found favour in those mysteriously gleaming eyes; for a minute or two later the same fly returned to the same spot. The man recognized not only its unusual size and its splendour of colour, but a broken notch on one of its wing films, the mark of the tip of a bird's beak. This time the dragon-fly came not as a fugitive from fate, but as a triumphant dispenser of fate to others. It carried between its jaws the body of a small green gra.s.shopper, which it had already partly eaten.

Fixing the enigmatic radiance of its eyes upon the man's face, the dragon-fly calmly continued its meal, using the second joints of its front pair of legs to help manipulate the rather awkward morsel. Its great round jaws crushed their prey resistlessly, while the inner mouth sucked up the juices so cleanly and instantaneously that the repast left no smallest stain upon the man's spotless shirt. When the feast was over there remained nothing of the victim but a compact, perfectly rounded, glistening green ball, the size of a pea, made up of the well-chewed sh.e.l.l-like parts of the gra.s.shopper's body. It reminded the man of the round "castings" of fur or feathers which an owl ejects after its undiscriminating banquet. Having rolled the little green ball several times between its jaws, to make sure there was no particle of nourishment left therein, the dragon-fly coolly dropped it into a crease in the shirt-bosom, and rustled away.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "A LARGE FROG RISE TO THE SURFACE JUST BELOW HER."]

It chanced that this particular and conspicuous individual of the little wolves of the air was a female. A half-hour later, when the man had almost grown tired of his watching, he again caught sight of the great fly. This time she alighted on a half-submerged log, one end of which lay on sh.o.r.e by the man's feet, while the other end was afloat in deep water, where it could rise and fall with every change in the level of the pool. Quivering and gleaming with all her subtle fires, the dragon-fly stood motionless on the log for a few seconds.

Then she backed down close to the water's edge, thrust her long, slender abdomen a good inch into the water, and curled it under her as if she were trying to sting the hidden surface of the log. In reality, as the man at once understood, she was busy laying eggs,--eggs that should presently develop into those masked and terrible larvae of hers, the little wolves of the pool. She laid the eggs in a row under the log, where there was no danger of the water receding from them. She moved along the log daintily, step by step, and her wings fluttered over the task.

The man had taken out his watch as soon as he saw what she was about, in order that he might time the egg-laying process. But he was not destined to discover what he wanted to know. The dragon-fly had been at her business for perhaps two minutes, when the man saw a large frog rise to the surface just below her. He liked all dragon-flies,--and for this one in particular he had developed a personal interest.

Suddenly and violently he jumped to his feet, hoping to chase her away from the approaching doom. But he was just too late. As he jumped, the big frog sprang, and a long, darting, cleft tongue clutched the busy fly, dragging her down. The frog disappeared with his prize,--to come to the surface again at the edge of a lily-pad, a few feet off, and blink his goggle-eyes in satisfaction. He had avenged (though about that he cared as little as he knew) the lives of a thousand tadpoles.

The Alien of the Wild

A full day's tramp back from the settlement, on the edge of a water-meadow beside the lonely Quah-Davic, stood the old woodsman's cabin. Beside it he had built a snug log-barn, stored with hay from the wild meadow. The hay he had made that August, being smitten with a desire for some touch of the civilization to which as a whole he could not reconcile himself. Then, with a still enthusiasm, he had built his barn, c.h.i.n.king its crevices scrupulously with moss and mud. He had resolved to have a cow. The dream that gave new zest to all his waking hours was the fashioning of a little farm in this sunny, sheltered s.p.a.ce about his cabin. He had grown somewhat weary of living by trap and snare and gun, hunting down the wild creatures whom he had come to regard, through lapse of the long, solitary years by the Quah-Davic, as in some sense comrade and kin to him.

It was late autumn, and the asters fading out like smoke along the river edges, when the barn was finished and the hay safe stored therein. Then the old woodsman journeyed out to the settlement to buy his cow. He found one exactly to his whimsical liking,--a small, dark red, long-horned scrub, with a look in her big, liquid eyes that made him feel she would know how to take care of herself in the perilous wilds. He equipped her with the most sonorous and far-sounding bell he could find in all the settlement. Then proudly he led her away to her new domain in the wilderness.

When the long-horned little cow had been salted and foddered in the new barn, and when her liquid eyes had taken in the surroundings of the sunny little meadow and cabin by the lonely Quah-Davic, she was well enough content, and the mellow _tunk-a-tonk, tank tonk_ of her bell was sounded never out of ear-shot from the cabin. The meadow and the nearest fringes of the woods were range enough for her. Of the perils that might lurk in the further depths she had a wary apprehension. And the old woodsman, busy grubbing out a narrow cellar under his cabin, was happy in his purchase. The _tunk-a-tonk_ of the mellow bell was sweetest music in his ears as he worked.

Now it chanced that that autumn was one of unusual drought. In the channel of the Quah-Davic rocks appeared which the old woodsman had never seen before. The leaves fell early, before half their wonted gamut of colour was run through. They wore a livery of pallid tones--rusty-reds, cloudy light violets, grayish thin golds, ethereal russets--under a dry, pale sky. The only solid, substantial colouring was that of the enduring hemlocks and the sombre, serried firs. Then there came a mistiness in the air, making the noonday sun red and unradiant And the woodsman knew that there were forest fires somewhere up the wind.

A little anxious, he studied the signs minutely, and concluded that, the wind being light, the fires were too far distant to endanger the Quah-Davic region. Thereupon he decided to make a hurried trip to the settlement for a sack of middlings and other supplies, planning to return by night, making the round trip within the twenty-four hours in order that the little red cow should not miss more than one milking.

On the afternoon of the woodsman's going, however, the wind freshened into a gale, and the fires which had been eating leisurely way through the forest were blown into sudden fury. That same evening a hurricane of flame swept down upon the lonely cabin and the little wild meadow, cutting a mile-wide swath through the woods, jumping the Quah-Davic, and roaring on to the north. It was days before the woodsman could get back along the smoking, smouldering trail, through black, fallen trunks and dead roots which still held the persistent fire in their hearts. Of cabin and barn, of course, there was nothing left at all, save the half-dug cellar and the half-crumbled chimney. Sick at heart and very lonely, he returned to the settlement, and took up his new abode on a half-reclaimed farm on the outskirts, just where the tilth and the wilderness held each other at bay.

The red cow, meanwhile, being shrewd and alert, had escaped the conflagration. She had taken alarm early, having seen a fire in the woods once before and conceived an appreciation of its powers. Instead of flying straight before it, and being inevitably overtaken, she ran at once to the river and galloped madly down the shallow margin.

Before the flames were actually upon her, she was beyond the zone of their fury. But she felt the withering blast of them, and their appalling roar was in her ears. With starting eyes and wide, palpitating nostrils, she ran on and on, and stopped only when she sank exhausted in a rude cove. There she lay with panting sides and watched far behind her the wide red arc of terror drawn across the sky.

The next day she wandered some miles farther down the Quah-Davic, till she came to a neighbourhood where the water-meadows were strung thickly along the stream and where the pasturage, though now dry and untasty, was abundant. Back from the water-meadows was a region of low hills covered with a second growth of young birches and poplars. Among the hills were ravines thick with hemlock and spruce. Here she established herself, and at night, either because she missed the narrow quarters of her stable, or because some wild instinct within her led her to adapt herself quickly to the ways of the wild kindred, she would make her lair in the deepest and most sheltered of the ravines, where a peculiarly dense hemlock veiled the front of an overhanging rock. This retreat was almost as snug as her old stable; and, lying down with her long horns toward the opening, she felt comparatively secure. As a matter of fact, though all these woods of the Quah-Davic were populous with the furtive folk, the little red cow saw few signs of life. She was surrounded, wherever she moved, by a wide ring of resentful solitude. The inexplicable _tunk-a-tonk, tunk, tonk_ of her deep-throated bell was disquieting to all the forest kindred; and the least move of her head at night was enough to keep the most interested prowler at a distance from the lair behind the hemlock. There was not a bear, a wolf, or a panther on the Quah-Davic (there was but a single pair of panthers, indeed, within a radius of fifty miles!) that cared to investigate the fighting qualities of this keen-horned red creature with the inexplicable voice.

Till the snow fell deep, covering the dry gra.s.s on the meadows, the little cow throve well enough. But when the northern winter had fairly settled in, and the great white stillness lay like sleep upon the ancient wood, and the fir-trees, with their cloaking of snow, were so many spires and domes and pinnacles of glittering marble under the icy sunlight, then the wanderer would have starved if she had not chanced to be both resourceful and indomitable. From her lair under the hemlock, which was sheltered from all winds, her deeply trodden trail led both to the meadows and the birchen hill-slopes. She could paw her way down to the deep-buried gra.s.ses; but it took so much digging to uncover a few poor and unsatisfying mouthfuls that she could never have kept herself alive in this fashion. Being adaptable, however, she soon accustomed herself to browsing on the slimmest of the birch and poplar twigs, and so, having proved herself one of the fittest, she survived. When the late, reluctant spring brought the first green of sprouting gra.s.ses to the meadows of the Quah-Davic, it found the red cow a mere bag of bones, indeed, but still alive, and still presenting an undaunted pair of horns to a still distrusted world.

Into this unfriendly world, when the painted trilliums and the purple wake-robins were dotting every half-exposed glade, was born a st.u.r.dy bull-calf. His sire was a handsome black half-breed Durham which had been brought into the settlement the previous summer for the improvement of the scrubby backwoods stock. The calf was jet-black in colour. As he grew, he soon began to show hints of his sire's broad forehead and ma.s.sive fore-quarters. He had his mother's large, half-wild, discriminating eyes; and his legs, soon throwing off the straddling awkwardness of calfhood, developed his mother's almost deer-like activity.

The summer pa.s.sed uneventfully for the pair of aliens in the wilderness. With abundant pasturage on the Quah-Davic water-meadows, they had no occasion to wander into the perils of the deep wood; and the little red cow had none of that prevision of wild mothers, which leads them to instruct their young in the two great vital points of woodcraft,--the procuring of food and the avoiding of enemies. She herself knew little woodcraft save what she and the calf were absorbing together, unconsciously, day by day. For the time they needed none, their food being all about them, their enemies kept at bay by the ceaseless _tunk-a-tonk_ of the mellow bell. Thus it came about that to the black bull-calf the wilderness seemed almost empty of life, save for the birds, the insects, the squirrels, and the fish leaping in the pool. To all these the bell was a matter of indifference.

Once only, late in the autumn, did he get a glimpse of the old Quah-Davic panther. He and his mother were lying in the sun by the meadow's edge, comfortably chewing the cud, when the long, tawny beast, following their trail with more curiosity than hunger, came upon them suddenly, and stopped short about twenty paces distant. The little red cow, recognizing the most dangerous of all her possible enemies, had sprung to her feet with a bellow and lowered her defiant horns. Thereupon, the panther had slunk off with a whipped look and a drooping tail; and the little black bull conceived a poor opinion of panthers. But it was the sudden _tonk-tonking_ of the bell, not the challenge of his redoubtable mother, that had put the fierce-eyed prowler to flight.

It was much the same with the bears, who were numerous about the Quah-Davic. They regarded the noisy bell with hatred and invincible suspicion. But for that, they would probably have put the red cow's horns to the test, and in all likelihood the career of the lonely alien would have come to an end ere the snow fell. As it was, however, the black bull-calf never saw a bear in any att.i.tude save that of sulkily slinking away from his mother's neighbourhood; and therefore, in that first summer of his life, he conceived a very dangerous contempt for bears. As for the lynxes,--those soundless-footed, gray shadows of the wild,--neither he nor his mother ever saw them, so fearful were they of the voice of the bell. But their screeches and harsh caterwaulings often filled his heart with wonder. Fear he had as yet had no occasion to learn; and therefore he had little real part in the ever-watchful life of the wilderness.

The next winter was a hard one for all the beasts of the Quah-Davic; and, ere it went by, the lair under the hemlocks was surrounded by many lynx tracks. But to neither red cow nor black calf did tracks carry much significance, and they had no thought for the perils that begirt them. Once, indeed, even the two panthers came, and turned upon them pale, bright, evil eyes. But they did not come very near. The cow shook her horns at them defiantly; and the calf shook his broadening, curly forehead at them; and wild were the clamours of the vigilant bell. The hearts of the hunting beasts turned to water at these incomprehensible voices. In their chagrin they shifted their range farther east; and for several years they came no more to the water-meadows of the Quah-Davic.

Late in the following summer, when the fireweed was beginning to crimson the open s.p.a.ces on the hillside, fate came to the water-meadows in a form which the bell was powerless to avert. An Indian, paddling down the Quah-Davic to the sea, caught sight of the red cow drinking by the waterside. He knew there was no settlement within leagues. He knew the cow was a stray, and therefore no man's property. He knew he wanted fresh meat, to say nothing of cowhide for moccasins and thongs. Up went his big smooth-bore muzzle-loader. There was a deafening, clattering report, unlike the smart detonation of a rifle. The little red cow fell on her knees, with a cough and a wild clamour of the bell, then rolled over in the shallow, shimmering water. With a whoop of exultation, the Indian thrust ash.o.r.e; and, as he did so, the black yearling, taught terror at last by the report and by the human voice, broke from his covert in a willow thicket and dashed wildly into the woods.

When he came back, hours later, the Indian had vanished, and, with that strident bellow of his, from which the calf-bleat was not yet quite gone, he trotted down the bank to look for his mother. But the smell of fresh blood, and the red spectacle which he saw on the pebbles of the river-beach, struck a new and madder terror into his heart. With stiffly uplifted tail and staring eyes, he dashed away again into the woods.

From that day he never again went near that particular meadow; neither, though for days he called to her in his loneliness, did he search any more for the mother who had so suddenly disappeared out of his life. Standing on the edge of a bluff, in the fading sunset, he would thrust his head and neck out straight and bellow his sonorous appeal. Then he would stop and listen long for an answer. And as he called, evening after evening in vain, a deeper, surer tone came into his voice, a more self-reliant, masterful look into the lonely but fearless eyes with which he surveyed the solitude.

Again came autumn to the Quah-Davic, with the pale blue smoke of asters along the meadow-ledges, the pale gold glimmer of birches on the slopes, and the wax-vermilion bunches of the rowan-berries reflected in each brown pool. By this time the black bull was of the stature of a well-grown two-year-old, ma.s.sive in the shoulder, lean and fine in limb and flank, with a cushion of dense, close, inky curls between his horns. The horns themselves--very short, thick, keen-pointed spikes of horns--were not set forward, but stood out absolutely straight on either side of his broad black head. Young though he was, he was an ominous figure to all the furtive eyes that watched him, as he stood and bellowed from his bluff in the fading sunset.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "BUT THEY DID NOT COME VERY NEAR."]

About this time it was that the young bull began to find the solitude more populous. Since the voice of the bronze bell was hushed, the wild creatures were no longer held aloof. Hitherto the red squirrels and the indifferent, arrogant porcupines were the only animals he had noticed. But now he saw an occasional slim and snaky mink at its fishing; or a red fox stealing down upon the duck asleep in the lily patch; or a weasel craftily trailing one of the brown hares which had of a sudden grown so numerous. All these strange little beasts excited his curiosity. At first he would sniff, and snort, and approach to investigate, which would lead, of course, to an immediate and discouraging disappearance. Only the fox was too haughty to disappear. He would maintain a judicious distance, but otherwise seemed to regard the inquisitive bull with utter unconcern. This unconcern, together with the musky smell of the bush-tailed red stranger, at last so aggravated the bull that he charged furiously again and again. But the fox eluded him with mocking ease, till the bull at last sulkily ignored him.

The bull's next important acquaintance was the lynx. He was lying under a scarlet maple, chewing his cud, and lazily watching a rabbit scratching its ears some dozen paces distant. Suddenly a soundless gray shadow shot from a thicket and dropped upon the rabbit. There was a squeak, a feeble scuffle; and then a big lynx, setting the claws of one paw into the prey, turned with a snarl and eyed venomously the still, dark form under the maple. This seemed like a challenge. With a mixture of curiosity and indignation, the young bull got up, grunted, pawed the earth once or twice by way of ceremony, and emerged to the encounter. But the lynx had no stomach to meet the charge of that st.u.r.dy front. He s.n.a.t.c.hed up the rabbit in his jaws and bounded away into the underbrush.

A few days later, as the bull again lay under the scarlet maple and looked out contemplatively over his yellow autumn world, a large bear lumbered past, taking his own well-beaten trail to the waterside. The bull lurched to his feet, and stood on guard, for this was a formidable-looking stranger. But the bear, fed fat with autumn berries, was at peace with all the world. He gave the black bull a shrewd glance out of his little cunning eyes, and paid no further attention; and the bull, seeing no incentive to a quarrel, snorted doubtfully and lay down again. After this he saw several more bears, but, being well fed and lazy, they made no effort to molest him. Then, one unfortunate day, as he came up dripping from his favourite pool, he met one face to face.

The bear was surprised, and halted. He half-settled back upon his haunches, as if to turn aside and yield the path. Then he thought better of it and held his ground, being at the moment good-natured enough, but careful of his dignity, as a bear is apt to be. The young bull, however, was enraged at this obstinate intrusion upon his trail.

He was unlucky enough to remember how often he had seen bears slink off to avoid his mother's charge. With an angry bellow, he lifted his tail, lowered his head, and launched himself upon the intruder.

The bear, poising himself upon three legs, gracefully and lightly avoided the attack, and at the same instant delivered a terrific buffet upon the young bull's neck. The blow struck low, where the muscles were corded and ma.s.sive, or the neck would have been broken.

As it was, the bull went staggering to his knees at one side of the trail, the blood spurting from his wounds. In that moment he realized that he was not yet a match for a full-grown bear. Smarting with pain and wrath, he rushed on up the trail, and hid himself in the old lair under the hemlock. When again, some days later, he met another bear, he made haste to yield the right of way.

In the wild, as in the world, to be once beaten is to invite the fist of fate. While the young bull's wounds were still red and raw, there came a big-antlered, high-shouldered bull-moose to the bluff overlooking the Quah-Davic. The moose was surprised at sight of the short-legged, black animal on the bluff. But it was rutting season, and his surprise soon gave way to indignation. The black bull, whose careless eyes had not yet noticed the visitor, began to bellow as was his evening wont. The moose responded with a hoa.r.s.e, bleating roar, thrashed the bushes defiantly with his antlers, and shambled up to the attack. The bull, astonished and outraged, stood his ground boldly, and at the first charge got in a daunting blow between the enemy's antlers. But he was not yet strong enough or heavy enough to hold so tough an antagonist, and, after a very few minutes of fierce grunting and pushing, he was thrust clear over the bank and sent rolling down into the river. All next day he sulked, but when night came he returned to the bluff, his eyes red with rage. He found the moose before him, but not alone. A tall, dingy-coloured, antlerless cow was there, fondling her mate's neck and ears with her long, flexible muzzle. This sight gave the young bull a new and uncomprehended fury, under the impulse of which he would have attacked an elephant. But the moose, thus interrupted in his wooing, was far more dangerous than he had been the night before. Like a whirlwind of devastation he rushed to meet the intruder; and the young bull was hopelessly overmatched.

Within five minutes he was gored, beaten down, pounded from the field, and driven bellowing through the bushes. For several weeks he hardly showed himself in the open meadows, but lurked all day in the thickets, nursing his wounds and his humiliation.

The next winter set in early and severe, driving the drowsy bears into their winter quarters and their long, snow-comforted sleep before they had time to get hungry and dangerous. The lynxes, no longer mystified by the voice of the bell, came prowling about the lair beneath the hemlock, but the sullen front and angry, lonely eyes of the black bull held them in awe. Not even in the worst of the cold, when they had taken to hunting together in a loosely organized pack, did they dare to trouble the bull. When spring came, it found him a big, burly three-year-old, his temper beginning to sour with an unhappiness which he did not understand; and by the time the bears came hungry from their winter sleep he was quite too formidable to be meddled with.

Stung by humiliating memories, he attacked with fury every bear he saw; and they soon learned to give him a wide berth.

As the summer wore along, his loneliness grew more bitter and distracting. He would spend sometimes a full hour upon the bluff, when the yellow day was fading into dusk, bellowing his calls across the stillness, and waiting for he knew not what reply. He was now a huge and daunting figure. When, at last, came round again the full October moon, and the spirit of mating went abroad on the crisp air, he grew more restless than ever. Then, one night, on a clear white stretch of sand some distance down the sh.o.r.e, he saw a cow-moose standing close by the water. He was much interested, and half unconsciously began to move in her direction. When she stretched out her long, ungainly head and uttered her harsh call, he answered with a soft, caressing bellow.

But at almost the same instant her call was answered by another and a very different voice; and a tall bull-moose strode out arrogantly upon the sand.

The black bull's heart swelled with wrath and longing. With a roar he charged down from the bluff; and the moose, diverted from his wooing, turned to meet the a.s.sault. But he was no match for this dreadful black bulk that descended upon him with the resistlessness of doom. He went down at the first crash, a pathetic sprawl of long limbs and long, ineffective, beautiful antlers; and barely escaping with his life, he fled away into the thickets. Then, satisfied with his victory, the black bull lifted his head and turned to the watching cow.

The cow, after the manner of her kind appreciating a conqueror, awaited somewhat doubtfully his approach. But when he was within a few feet of her, wonder and interest gave way to terror. His bulk, his blackness, his square, mighty head, his big, blazing eyes, and short, thick muzzle filled her with repulsion and amazement. His voice, too, though unmistakably caressing and persuasive, was too daunting in its strangeness. With a wild snort, she turned and fled into the woods with a speed that he could not hope to match.

After this experience the black bull's loneliness grew almost intolerable, and his temper so bad that he would go raging up and down the woods in search of bears to chase. The winter cooled him down somewhat, and in the spring his temper was not so raw. But he was now troubled with a spirit of wandering, and kept ranging the woods in every direction, only returning to the young green of the water-meadow once or twice a day.

One afternoon, however, there came a change. He was browsing irritably near the bank when he heard voices that made him look up sharply. A canoe was pa.s.sing up-stream, poled by two men. It pa.s.sed slowly, surging against the current. As he looked at the men, a dreadful memory stirred within him. He recalled the loud report which had driven him mad with fear on that day when the red cow disappeared. He remembered an appalling sight on the beach of that lower meadow which he had never visited since. His eyes went red. With a grunt of fury, he thundered down the bank and out knee-deep into the current.

The men in the canoe were astonished, and hastily pushed over toward the other sh.o.r.e. The one in the bow laid down his pole and reached back for his rifle. But the man in the stern intervened.

"What's the good o' shootin' him?" said he. "He can't git at us here, an' we ain't a-wantin' for grub. Let him be!"

"That's so!" said the other, picking up his pole again. "But ain't he handsome? An' mad, eh? How do you suppose he come here, anyways?"

"Strayed!" grunted the man in the stern, bending to his pole as the canoe met a heavier rush of the current.

As the two voyagers pursued their strenuous way up-stream, rock and eddy and "rip" consuming all their attention, the furious bull kept abreast of them along the sh.o.r.e, splashing in the shallows and bellowing his challenge, till at length a deep insetting of the current compelled him to mount the bank, along which he continued his vain pursuit for several miles. At last a stretch of dense swamp headed him off, and the canoe vanished from his sight.

He was now in unknown territory, miles away from his meadows. His rage against the men had all died out, but some faint stirring of inherited instincts impelled him to follow for companionship. Had they suddenly reappeared, close at hand, doubtless his rage would have burst forth anew. But when they were gone, he had to follow. A dim intuition told him that where they were going dwelt some kind of relief for his loneliness. He skirted the swamp, rejoined the river, and kept slowly on his way up-stream, pasturing as he went. He had turned his back for ever on the water-meadows and the life of which he could not be a part, and was off on the quest for that unknown which he felt to be his own.

After two days of leisurely journeying he pa.s.sed through a belt of burnt lands, and had his curiosity mildly excited by a blackened chimney rising from a heap of ruins near the water. Through this burnt land he travelled swiftly; and about dawn of the fourth day of his quest he came out upon the pasture-lands skirting the rear of the settlement.