The Watchers of the Trails Part 6

The Decoy

High above the flat-spread earth, their strong wings driving them at tremendous speed through the thin, cold air of dawn, the wild-goose flock journeyed north. In the shape of an irregular V they journeyed, an old gander, wise and powerful, at the apex of the aerial array. As they flew, their long necks stretched straight out, the living air thrilled like a string beneath their wing-beats. From their throats came a throbbing chorus, resonant, far-carrying, mysterious,--_honka, honka, honka, honk, honka, honk_. It seemed to be the proper utterance of alt.i.tude and s.p.a.ce.

The flight was as true as if set by a compa.s.s; but the longer limb of the V would curve and swerve sinuously from time to time as the weaker or less experienced members of the flock wavered in their alignment.

Flat, low-lying forests, and lonely meres, and rough, isolated farms sped past below the rushing voyagers,--then a black head-land, and then a wide, shallow arm of the sea. For a few minutes the glimmer of pale, crawling tides was everywhere beneath them,--then league on league of gray-green, sedgy marsh, interlaced with little pools and lanes of bright water, and crisscrossed with ranks of bulrush. The leader of the flock now stretched his dark head downward, slowing the beat of his wings, and the disciplined array started on a long decline toward earth. From its great height the flock covered nearly a mile of advance before coming within a hundred yards of the pale green levels; and all through the gradual descent the confusion of marsh, and pool, and winding creek, seemed to float up gently to meet the long-absent wanderers. At length, just over a shallow, s.p.a.cious, gra.s.sy mere, and some thirty feet above its surface, the leader decided to alight. It was an old and favoured feeding-ground, where the mud was full of tender shoots and tiny creatures of the ooze. The wings of the flock, as if on signal, turned out and upward, showing a flash of paler colour as they checked the still considerable speed of the flight.

In that pause, just before the splash of alighting, from a thick cover of sedge across the pool came two sharp spurts of flame, one after the other, followed by two thunderous reports, so close together as to seem almost like one. Turning straight over, the leader fell upon the water with a heavy splash; and immediately after him dropped his second in leadership, the strong young gander who flew next him on the longer limb of the V. The flock, altogether demoralized, huddled together for a few seconds with loud cries; then rose and flapped off seaward. Before the hunter in the sedge could get fresh cartridges into his gun, the diminished flock was out of range, making desperate haste to safer feeding-grounds.

Of the two birds thus suddenly smitten by fate, the younger, shot through the heart, lay motionless where he had dropped, a sprawl of black and white, and ashen feathers tumbled by the little ripples of the pool. But the older bird was merely winged. Recovering himself almost instantly from the shock of the wound and the fall, he made one pathetically futile effort to rise again, then started swimming down the pond, trailing his shattered wing behind him and straining his gaze toward the departing flock.

Immediately after the two shots, out from the shelter of the rushes had sprung a large, curly-coated, brown retriever. With a yelp of excitement he had dashed into the water and dragged ash.o.r.e the body of the dead bird. Now the hunter, standing up and stretching his legs as if cramped from a long lying-in-wait, started on a sharp run down the wet sh.o.r.e of the pond, whistling the retriever after him. He had noted the splendid stature of the wounded bird, and wanted to capture him alive.

Not without cause had the great gander achieved the leadership of the flock, for he possessed not only strength but intelligence. When he saw that his trailing wing so hampered his swimming that he would presently be overtaken, he turned and darted into the sedges of the opposite sh.o.r.e, trusting to the difficulties of the swamp to protect him. He did not know that the big brown retriever was almost amphibious, and more cunning than himself.

The hunter stopped, and pointed to the spot of waving reeds where the bird had disappeared.

"Fetch him, Pete!" he commanded,--"But gently, boy, ge-e-ently!" And the wise old dog understood, either from the words or from the tone in which they were uttered, that this was to be a bloodless capture.

Barking joyously, he tore around the pond to the place where the gander had vanished, and dashed splashing into the reeds. A few seconds later a tumult arose, the reeds were beaten down, and the dog reappeared, dragging his prize by the uninjured wing.

The great bird, powerful and dauntless, made a gallant fight; but he was hopelessly handicapped. His most formidable weapons were the bony elbows of his strong, untiring wings; and of both these he was now deprived, one wing being shattered, and the other in the grip of the enemy's jaws. He struck and bit and worried with his hard bill; but the dog, half-shutting his eyes, took the mauling grimly and dragged his troublesome captive into the water.

Here, however, he made a mistake. The great bird was a mighty swimmer, and indomitable; and in half a minute his captor was glad to drag him to land again. Then the hunter arrived on the scene; and the dog, gladly relinquishing so unmanageable a prisoner, sat back on his haunches, with tongue hanging out, to see what his master would do.

The dauntless gander bit furiously, and pounded with his one undamaged wing, and earned his adversary's unstinted commendation: but in a minute or two he found himself helpless, swathed like a coc.o.o.n in a stout, woollen hunting-coat, and his head ignominiously bagged in one of the sleeves. In this fashion, his heart bursting with fear and wrath, his broken wing one hot throb of anguish, he was carried under the hunter's arm for what seemed to him a whole night long. Then he was set free in a little open pen in a garden, beside a green-shuttered, wide-eaved, white cottage on the uplands.

The hunter was so kind to his captive, so a.s.siduous in his care, that the wild bird presently grew almost indifferent to his approach, and ceased to strike at him savagely with his free wing whenever he entered the pen. The other wing, well cleaned and salved, and bound in cunning splints, healed rapidly, and caused no pain save when its owner strove to flap it,--which he did, with long, desolate, appealing cries, whenever a wild-goose flock went honking musically across the evening or morning sky.

At length, while the injured wing was still in bandage, the hunter took the bird in spite of all protest, tucked the long neck and troublesome head under his arm, and attached to one leg a little leather wrapping and a long, strong cord. Then he opened the pen. The big gander strode forth with more haste than quite comported with his dignity. Straight down the slope he started, seeking the wide marshes where he expected to find his flock. Then suddenly he came to the end of his cord with a jerk, and fell forward on his breast and bill with a _honk_ of surprise. He was not free, after all, and two or three violent struggles convinced him of the fact. As soon as he realized himself still a prisoner, his keen, dark eyes turned a look of reproach upon his jailer, who was holding the other end of the cord and watching him intently. Then he slackened on the tether, and fell to cropping the short gra.s.s of the lawn as if being tied by the leg was an ancient experience. It was a great thing, after all, to be out of the pen.

"He'll do!" said the man to himself with satisfaction, as he fixed the tether to a young apple-tree. When he had gone into the house the bird stopped feeding, turned first one eye and then the other toward the empty sky, stretched his long, black neck and clean white throat, and sent out across the green s.p.a.ces his appealing and lonely cry,--_honka, honka, honka, ho-onka_!

Very early the following morning, before the stars had begun to pale at the approach of dawn, the captive was once more wrapped up securely and taken on a blind journey. When he was uncovered, and anxiously stretched out his head, he found himself again on the edge of that shallow pool in the marshes where fate had overtaken him. The brown retriever was sitting on his haunches close by, regarding him amicably. The man was fastening one end of the tether to a stake at the water's edge, and from the east a grayness touched with chill pink was spreading over the sky.

A moment later the surprised bird found himself standing among the wet sedge, close to the water. With a nervous glance at the dog, whom he shrank from with more dread than from the man, he launched himself into the water and swam straight out from sh.o.r.e.

This time, surely, he was free. Next to the s.p.a.cious solitudes of the air, this was his proper element. How exquisite to the thin webs of his feet felt the coolness of it, as he pushed against it with strong strokes! How it curled away luxuriously from his gray, firm-feathered breast! This was to live again, after the pain and humiliation of his captivity! And yonder, far down the mere, and past those tall reeds standing shadowy in the pallor, surely he would find the flock which had moved on without him! Then, all at once, it was as if something had clutched him by the leg. With a startled cry and a splash he tipped forward, and his glad journey came to an end. He had reached the limit of his tether.

Remembering his experience of the day before, he made no vain struggle, but floated quietly for a minute or two, stricken with his disappointment. The man and the big brown dog had disappeared; but presently his keen and sagacious eyes detected them both, lying motionless in a thicket of reeds. Having stared at them indignantly for a few moments, swimming slowly to and fro and transfixing them with first one eye and then the other, he ducked his head and began biting savagely at the leathern wrapping on his leg. But the uselessness of this soon appearing to him, he gave it up, and sought to ease his despair by diving and guttering with his bill among the roots of the oozy bottom. In this absorbing occupation he so far forgot his miseries that all at once he tried to lift himself on the water, flap his wings, and sound his trumpet-call. One wing did give a frantic flap. The other surged fiercely against its bandages, sending a throb of anguish through his frame, and the trumpet-call broke in a single hoa.r.s.e _honk_. After this he floated for a long time in dejection, while the level rays of sunrise stole mysteriously across the pale marshes.

The hunter, tired of his long stillness in the sedge, was just about to stand up and stretch himself, when from far down the sky to southward came a hollow and confused clamour. The hunter heard it, and the brown retriever heard it; and both crouched low behind their shelter, as motionless as stones. The wild captive, floating at the end of his tether out on the pink-and-gold mirror of the pond, also heard it, and stretched his fine black head aloft, rigid with expectancy. Nearer and nearer came the thrilling voices. Blacker and larger against the sky grew the journeying V as it approached the marshes. The heart of the captive swelled with hope and longing. Not his own flock, indeed, but his own kin, these free and tireless voyagers coming confidently to safe feeding-grounds! Forgetting everything but his great loneliness, he raised himself as high as he could upon the water, one wing partly outspread, and called, and called again, summoning the travellers to alight.

Hearing this kindly summons, the flock dipped at once and came slanting steeply toward earth. In their haste they broke rank, descending more abruptly than usual, their customary caution quite laid aside when they saw one of their own kind waiting to receive them. The joyous captive ducked and bowed his head in greeting. In another moment the whole flock would have settled clamorously about him, and he would have been happy,--but before that moment came there came instead two bursts of flame and thunder from the covert of sedge.

And instead of the descending flock, there fell beside the captive two heavy, fluttering gray-and-black shapes, which beat the water feebly and then lay still.

As the betrayed and panic-stricken flock flapped away in confusion the captive tugged frantically at his tether, crying shrilly and struggling to follow them. In his desperation he paid no heed whatever as the big, brown dog dashed out and triumphantly dragged the bodies of the two victims to land. He was horrified by the terrible noise, and the killing; but his attention was chiefly engrossed by the fact that the flock had been frightened away, leaving him to his loneliness. For several minutes he continued his cries, till the flock was far out of sight. Then silence fell again on the marshes.

A quarter of an hour later much the same thing happened again. Another flock, pa.s.sing overhead, came clamouring fearlessly down in response to the captive's calls, met the doom that blazed from the reed-covert, and left two of its members gasping on the surface of the pond. This time, however, the despair of the captive was less loud and less prolonged. As leader, for two seasons, of his own flock, he had necessarily learned certain simple processes of deduction. These pitiful tragedies through which he had just pa.s.sed were quite sufficient to convince him that this particular shallow pond, though so good a feeding-ground, was a fatal place for the voyaging geese to visit. Further, in a dim way, his shocked and shuddering brain began to realize that his own calling was the cause of the horrors. If he called, the flocks came fearlessly, content with his pledge that all was well. Upon their coming, the fire, and dreadful thunders, and inexplicable death burst forth from the sedge; and then the great brown dog appeared to drag his prey to sh.o.r.e. The whole mischief, as it seemed to him, was the work of the dog; and it did not occur to him that the man, who seemed fairly well-disposed and all-powerful, had anything whatever to do with it. This idea gradually grew clear in the captive's brain, as he swam, very slowly, to and fro upon the brightening water. In a vague way his heart determined that he would lure no more of his kindred to their doom. And when, a little later, a third flock came trumpeting up the sky, the captive eyed their approach in despairing silence.

As the beating wings drew near, stooping toward the silvery pools and pale green levels, the captive swam back and forward in wild excitement, aching to give the call and ease his loneliness. The flock, perceiving him, drew nearer; but in his excited movements and his silence its leader discerned a peril. There was something sinister and incomprehensible in this splendidly marked bird who refused to summon them to his feeding-ground, and kept swimming wildly back and forth. Keeping well beyond gunshot, they circled around this smiling but too mysterious water, to alight with great clamour and splashing in a little, sheltered mere some two or three hundred yards farther inland. The hunter, crouching moveless and expectant in his ambush, muttered an exclamation of surprise, and wondered if it could be possible that his incomparable decoy had reached an understanding of the treacherous game and refused to play it.

"There's no smarter bird that flies than a wild gander!" he mused, watching the great bird curiously and with a certain sympathy. "We'll see what happens when another flock comes by!"

Meanwhile the new arrivals, over in the unseen pond behind the rushes, were feeding and bathing with a happy clamour. They little dreamed that a pot-hunting rustic from the village on the hills, flat on his belly in the oozy gra.s.s, was noiselessly worming his way toward them.

Armed with an old, single-barrel duck gun, the height of his ambition was to get a safe and easy shot at the feeding birds. No delicate wing-shooting for him. What he wanted was the most he could get for his powder and lead. Big and clumsy though he was, his progress through the gra.s.s was as stealthy as that of a mink.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HE LIFTED UP HIS VOICE IN A SUDDEN ABRUPT 'HONK, HONK!'"]

It chanced that the path of the pot-hunter took him close past the further sh.o.r.e of the pond where the captive was straining at his tether and eating his heart out in determined silence. The homesick, desolate bird would swim around and around for a few minutes, as a caged panther circles his bounds, then stop and listen longingly to the happy noise from over beyond the reed-fringes. At last, goaded into a moment of forgetfulness by the urge of his desire, he lifted up his voice in a sudden abrupt _honk, honk_!

The pot-hunter stopped his crawling and peered delightedly through the sedgy stems. Here was a prize ready to his hand. The flock was still far off, and might easily take alarm before he could get within range.

But this stray bird, a beauty too, was so near that he could not miss.

Stealthily he brought his heavy weapon to the shoulder; and slowly, carefully, he took aim.

The report of the big duck gun was like thunder, and roused the marshes. In a fury the hunter sprang from his ambush across the mere, and ran down to the water's edge, threatening vengeance on the lout who would fire on a decoy. The brown retriever, wild with excitement, dashed barking up and down the sh.o.r.e, not knowing just what he ought to do. Sandpipers went whistling in every direction. And the foraging flock, startled from their security, screamed wildly and flapped off unhurt to remoter regions of the marsh. But the lonely captive, the wise old gander who had piloted his clan through so many hundred leagues of trackless air, lay limp and mangled on the stained water, torn by the heavy charge of the duck gun. The whimsical fate that seems to play with the destinies of the wild kindreds had chosen to let him save one flock from the slaughterer, and expiate his blameless treason.

The Laugh in the Dark

Though the darkness under the great trees was impenetrable, it gave an impression of transparency which invited the eyes to strain and peer, as if vision might be expected to reward an adequate effort. It was that liquid darkness which means not mist, but the utter absence of light on a clear air; and it was filled with elusive yet almost illuminating forest scents. To the keen nostrils of the man who was silently mounting the trail, it seemed as if these wild aromas almost enabled him to veritably see the trees which towered all about him, so clearly did they differentiate to him their several species as he pa.s.sed,--the hemlock, in particular, and the birch, the black poplar, and the aromatic balsam-fir. But his eyes, though trained to the open, could in truth detect nothing whatever, except now and then a darting gleam which might come from a wet leaf, or from the gaze of a watching wood-mouse, or merely from the stirrings of the blood within his own brain.

The man was on his way up from the lake, by an old trail long ago familiar to his feet, to make camp for the night in a deserted lumber shanty about a quarter of a mile back from the water. Over the dimly glimmering, windless water, under a cloudless sky, he had groped his way in his canoe to the old landing. Turning the canoe over his supplies for protection in case of rain, he had set out for the lumber shanty with only a blanket and a couple of hardtack. His rifle he had indifferently left in the canoe, but in his right hand he carried a paddle, to steady his steps and help him feel his way through the dark.

Once the grayness of the open sh.o.r.e had faded behind him, the man found himself walking stealthily, like the stealthiest of the wild kindred themselves. The trail being well-worn, though long deserted by man, his feet kept it without difficulty; but he held the paddle out before him lest he should stumble over a windfall. Presently he took note of the fact that the trail was marvellously smooth for one that had been so long deserted, and with a little creeping of the skin, which was not in any sense fear but rather an acknowledgment of mystery, he realized that it was other than human feet which were keeping the lonely path in use. What kind were they, he wondered,--the great, noiseless pads of bear, or lynx, or panther, the hard hoofs of moose or deer, or the airy, swift feet of hare and mink and marten? As he wondered, moving more and more furtively as the spirit of the unseen wild pervaded and possessed him, his nostrils discerned across the savours of the trees and the mould a sudden musky scent; and he knew that one of the frequenters of the trail was a red fox, who had just gone by.

Impressed by a sense that he was not so utterly alone as he had imagined himself to be, the man now obeyed one of the wary impulses of the wood-folk. He stepped aside from the trail, feeling his way, and leaned his back against a huge birch-tree. The ragged, ancient, sweet-smelling bark felt familiar and friendly to his touch. Here he stood, sniffing the still air with discrimination, testing with initiated ears every faint forest breathing. The infinitesimal and incessant stir of growth and change and readjustment was vaguely audible to his fine sense, making a rhythmic background against which the slightest unusual sound, even to the squeak of a wood-mouse, or the falling of a worm-bitten leaf, would have fairly startled the dark. Once he heard a twig snap, far in the depths on the other side of the trail, and he knew that some one of the wild kindred had moved carelessly. But on the trail nothing went by.

Had there been ever so small a glimmer of light, to enable his eyes to play their part in this forest game, the man could have watched for an hour as moveless as the tree on which he leaned. But in that strange, absolute dark the strain soon grew almost intolerable. The game certainly ceased to be amusing after an uneventful fifteen minutes had pa.s.sed. He was just about to give up, to step forth into the trail and resume his journey to the cabin, when he caught a strange sound, which made him stiffen back at once into watchful rigidity.

The sound was a great breath. In its suddenness and its vagueness the listener was unable to distinguish whether it came from a dozen yards down the trail, or a couple of dozen inches from his elbow. His nose, however, a.s.sured him that he had not the latter alternative to face; so he waited, his right hand upon the knife in his belt. He could hear his heart beating.

For several minutes nothing more was heard. Then through the high leaf.a.ge overhead splashed a few big drops of rain, with the hushing sound of a shower not heavy enough to break through. The next moment a flash of white lightning lit up the forest aisles,--and in that moment the man saw a huge black bear standing in the trail, not ten feet distant. In that moment the eyes of the man and the eyes of the beast met each other fairly. Then the blackness fell once more; and a thin peal of midsummer thunder rolled over the unseen tree-tops.

When all was silence again the man felt uncomfortable, and regretted the rifle which he had left under the canoe. That the bear would attack him, unprovoked, he knew to be improbable; but he also knew enough about bears to know that it is never well to argue too confidently as to what they will do. The more he waited and listened, the more he felt sure that the bear was also waiting and listening, in an uncertainty not much unlike his own. He decided that it was for him to take the initiative. Clapping his hands smartly, he threw back his head, and burst into a peal of laughter.

The loud, incongruous sound shocked the silences. It almost horrified the man himself, so unexpected, so unnatural, so inexplicable did it seem even to his own ears. When it ceased, he knew that it had accomplished its purpose. He heard rustling and snapping noises swiftly diminishing in the distance, and knew that the bear was retreating in a panic. At this he laughed again, not loudly, but to himself, and stepped out into the trail.

But the man was not yet done with the effects of his loud challenge to the solemnities of the dark. Hardly had he taken three steps along the trail when a little in front of him--perhaps, as he guessed, some five and twenty paces--there arose a slashing and crashing noise of struggle. Branches cracked and rustled and snapped, heavy feet pounded the earth, and a confusion of gasping grunts suggested a blind menagerie in mortal combat. The man, fairly startled, groped his way back to the tree, and waited behind it, knife in hand. In fact he had a strong inclination to climb into the branches; but this impulse he angrily restrained.

For a whole minute the daunting uproar continued, neither approaching nor receding, and at length the man's curiosity, ever insatiable where the mysteries of the wild were concerned, got the better of his prudence. He lit a match and peered from behind his shelter. The little, sudden blaze spread a sharp light, but whatever was making the uproar went on as before, quite heedless of the singular phenomenon.

When the match died out it left the man no wiser. Then with hurried hands he stripped some birch bark, and rolled himself a serviceable torch. When this blazed up with its smoky flame, he held it well off to one side and a little behind him, and made his way warily to the scene of the disturbance.

A turn in the trail, and the mystery stood revealed. With a cry of indignation the man darted forward, no longer cautious. What he saw before him was a great, gaunt moose-cow reared upon her hind legs, caught under the jaws by a villainous moose-snare. With her head high among the branches, she lurched and kicked in a brave struggle for life, while every effort but drew tighter the murdering noose. A few feet away stood her lanky calf, trembling, and staring stupidly at the light.