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But the fierce little eyes of the bear, dark and glinting red, were not the only ones that watched the beavers at their valorous toil. In the juniper scrub, a short distance up the bank of the pond, crouched two big gray lynxes, glaring down upon the scene with wide, round, pale greenish eyes, unspeakably sinister. The lynxes were gaunt with famine. Fired with the savage hope that some chance might bring a beaver within reach of their mighty spring, they had crept down, on their great, furred, stealthy pads, to the patch of juniper scrub. Here they had halted, biding their time with that long, painful patience which is the price of feeding – the price of life – among the winter-scourged kindreds. Now, when the beavers had so considerately come over to the edge of the woods, and appeared to be engrossed in some incomprehensible pulling and splashing and mud-piling, the two lynxes felt that their opportunity had arrived. Their bellies close to the snow, their broad, soft-padded feet stepping lightly as the fall of feathers, their light gray fur all but invisible among the confused moon-shadows, their round, bright eyes unwinking, they seemed almost to drift down through the thickets toward their expected prey.
Neither the bear creeping up from below the dam, nor the two lynxes stealing down from above it, had eyes or thought for anything in the world but the desperately toiling beavers. Their hunger was gnawing at their lean stomachs, the fever of the hunt was in their veins, and the kill was all but within reach. A few moments more, and the rush would come, up from the fir thickets – the long, terrible spring and pounce, down from the juniper scrub.
The work of repairing the breach was making good progress. Already the roaring overflow was coming into subjection, its loud voice dwindling to a shallow clamour. Then, something happened. Perhaps the wary sentinel on the crest of the dam detected a darker shade stirring among the firs, or a lighter grayness moving inexplicably between the bushes up the bank. Perhaps his quick nostrils caught a scent that meant danger. Perhaps the warning came to him mysteriously, flashed upon that inner sense, sometimes alert and sometimes densely slumbering, which the forest furtiveness seems to develop in its creatures. However, it came, it came. Dropping forward as if shot, the sentinel beaver brought his flat tail down upon the surface of the water with a smack that rang all up and around the borders of the pond, startling the quiet of the night. In a fraction of a second every beaver had vanished beneath the shining surface.
At the same moment, or an eye-wink later, a strange thing happened – one of those violent surprises with which the vast repression of the forest sometimes betrays itself. Maddened to see his prey escaping, the bear made his rush, launching himself, a black and uncouth mass, right down to the water's edge. Simultaneously the two lynxes shot into the air from higher up the bank, frantic with disappointed hunger. With a screech of fury, and a harsh spitting and snarling, they landed a few feet distant from the bear, and crouched flat, their stub tails twitching, their eyes staring, their tufted ears laid back upon their skulls.
Like a flash the bear wheeled, confronting the two great cats with uplifted paw and mouth wide open. Half-sitting back upon his haunches, he was ready for attack or defence. His little eyes glowed red with rage. To him it was clearly the lynxes who had frightened off the beavers and spoiled his hunting; and interference of this kind is what the wild kindreds will not tolerate. To the lynxes, on the other hand, it was obvious that the bear had caused the whole trouble. He was the clumsy interloper who had come between them and their quarry. They were on the verge of that blindness of fury which might hurl them, at any instant, tooth and claw, upon their formidable foe. For the moment, however, they had not quite lost sight of prudence. The bear was master of the forest, and they knew that even together they two were hardly a match for him.
The bear, on the other hand, was not quite sure that he was willing to pay the price of vengeance. His blood surging in the swollen veins, he growled with heavy menace, and rocking forward upon his haunches he seemed on the point of rushing in. But he knew how those powerful knife-edged claws of the lynxes could rend. He knew that their light bodies were strong and swift and elusive, their teeth almost as punishing as his own. He felt himself the master; nevertheless he realized that it would cost dear to enforce that mastery. He hesitated. Had he made the slightest forward move, the lynxes would have thrown caution to the winds, and sprung upon him. On the other hand, had the lynxes even tightened up their sinews to spring, he would have hurled himself with a roar into the battle. But as it was, both sides held themselves in leash, tense, ready, terrible in restraint. And as the moments dragged by, out on the bright surface of the pond small heads appeared, with little bright eyes watching curiously.
For perhaps three or four long, intense minutes there was not a move made. Then the round eyes of the lynxes shifted ever so little, while the bear's eyes never faltered. The bear's was the steadier purpose, the more tenacious and resolute temper. Almost imperceptibly the lynxes shrank backward, gliding inch by inch. A swift side-glance showed them that the way of retreat was open. Then, as if both were propelled by the one vehement impulse, they bounded into the air, one whirling aside and the other almost doubling back upon his own trail. Quicker than it takes to tell it, they were fleeing like gray shadows, one over the bank and through the juniper bushes, the other up along the snowy shore of the pond, their discomfiture apparently driving them to part company. The bear, as if surprised, sat up on his haunches to stare after them. Then, with a hungry look at the beavers, now swimming openly far out in the moonlight, he turned and shambled off to find some more profitable hunting.
For a few minutes all was stillness, save for the rushing of the water over the dam. The solitude of the night had resumed its white and tranquil dominion as if nothing had ever occurred to jar its peace. Then once more the watchful sentinel appeared, sitting erect on the dam, and the diligent builders busied themselves to complete the mending of the breach.
The Terror of the Air
FROM all the lonely salt-flats and tide-washed, reedy shores of the wide estuary, the flocks of the sea-ducks had flown south. After feeding for days together amicably, golden-eyed and red-head, broad-bill and dipper, all hobnobbing and bobbing and guttering in company, without regard to difference of kin, they had at last assorted themselves into flocks of the like species and wing power, and gone off in strong-flying wedges to seek milder tides and softer skies.
Nevertheless, though the marshy levels were now stiffened with frost, and ice fringes lingered thin and brittle behind each retreating tide, and white flurries of snow went drifting over the vast, windy spaces of wave and plain, some bold, persistent waifs of life clung to these bleak solitudes. Here and there a straggler from the flocks, or a belated arrival from farther north, fed solitary and seemed sufficient to himself; while here and there a few hardy coots, revelling in the loneliness and in the forbidding harshness of the season, swam and dived among the low, leaden-coloured waves.
Across ten level miles of naked marsh-land another estuary made in from the sea. On the shore of this estuary, so shallow that for leagues along its edge it was impossible to distinguish, at high tide, just where the water ended and the solid land began, a solitary surf-duck dabbled among the gray, half-frozen grasses. Of a dull black all over, save for a patch of clear white on his head and another on the back of his neck, he made a sharp, conspicuous spot against the pallid colouring of the marshes. For all his loneliness, he seemed to be enjoying himself very well, active and engrossed, and to all appearances forgetful of the departed flocks.
Suddenly, however, he stopped feeding, and sat with head erect and watchful eyes, rising and falling gently with the pulse of the sedge-choked flood. Either some unusual sight or sound had disturbed him, or some drift of memory had stirred his restlessness. For several minutes he floated, forgetful of the savoury shelled and squirming creatures which his discriminating bill had been gathering from among the oozy sedge-roots. Then with an abrupt squawk, he flapped noisily along the surface of the water, rose into the air, and flew straight inland, mounting as he went to a height far above gunshot.
The flight of the lonely drake was toward the shores of the other estuary, ten miles southward, where in all likelihood he had some hope of finding the companionship of his kin, if not a better feeding-ground. Though his body was very heavy and massive and his wings ridiculously short for the bulk they had to sustain, he flew with tremendous speed and as straight as a bullet from a rifle. His wings, however small, were mightily muscled and as tough as steel springs, and they beat the air with such lightning strokes that the sturdy body, head and neck and legs and feet outstretched in a rigid line, was hurled through the air at a speed of something like a hundred miles an hour. As he flew, the flurries of snow gathered into a squall of whirling flakes, almost obscuring the waste of marsh-land that rushed past beneath his flight, and shutting him off alone in the upper heights of sky.
Alone indeed he imagined himself, while the cold air and the streaming snowflakes whistled past his flight. But keen as were his eyes, other eyes keener than his had marked him from a loftier height, where the air was clear above the storm strata. A great Arctic goshawk, driven by some unknown whim to follow the edge of winter southward, was sailing on wide wings through the high, familiar cold. When he saw the black drake far below him, shooting through the snowflakes like a missile, his fierce eyes flamed and narrowed, his wings gave one mighty beat and then half-closed, and he dropped into the cloudy murk of the storm belt.
The drake was now about a hundred yards ahead of the great hawk, and flying at perhaps ninety miles an hour under the mere impulse of his desire to reach the other estuary. When he caught sight of the white terror pursuing him, his sturdy little wings doubled the rapidity of their stroke, till he shot forward at a rate of, perhaps, two miles a minute, his wedge-shaped body and hard, oiled plumage offering small resistance to the air even at that enormous speed. His only chance of escape, as he well knew, was to reach the water and plunge beneath it. But he could not turn back, for the terror was behind him. Straight ahead lay his only hope. There, not more than two or three minutes distant, lay his secure refuge. He could see the leaden gray expanse, touched by a gleam of cold and lonely sunlight which had pierced the obscurity of the squall. Could he reach it? If he could, he would drop into the slow wave, dive to the bottom, and hold to the roots of the swaying weeds till the terror had gone by.
A hundred yards behind came the hawk, moving like a dreadful ghost through the swirl and glimmer of the snow. His plumage was white, but pencilled with shadowy markings of pale brown. His narrowed eyes, fixed upon the fugitive, were fiercely bright and hard like glass. His hooked beak, his flat head, his strong, thick, smoothly modelled neck, were outstretched in a rigid line like those of the drake.
The long, spectral wings of the great hawk beat the air, but not with haste and violence like those of the fleeing quarry. Swift as his wingbeats were, there was a surging movement about them, an irresistible thrust, which made them seem slow and gave their working an air of absolute ease. For all this ease, however, he was flying faster than the fugitive. Slowly, yard by yard, he crept up, the distance from his victim grew narrower. The drake's wings whistled upon the wind, a strange shrill note, as of terror and despair. But the wings of the pursuing destroyer were as noiseless as sleep. He seemed less a bird than a spirit of doom, the embodiment of the implacable Arctic cold.
The astounding speed at which the two were rushing through the sky on this race of life and death brought the gleam of the estuary water hurrying up from the horizon to meet them. The terrible seconds passed. The water was not half a mile ahead. The line of the drake's flight began to slope toward earth. A few moments more, and a sudden splash in the tide would proclaim that the fugitive was safe in a refuge where the destroyer could not follow. But the noiseless wings were now just behind him, just behind and above.
At this moment the fugitive opened his beak for one despairing squawk, his acknowledgment that the game of life was lost. The next instant the hawk's white body seemed to leap forward even out of the marvellous velocity with which it was already travelling. It leaped forward, and changed shape, spreading, and hanging imminent for the least fraction of a second. The head, with slightly open beak, reached down. A pair of great black talons, edged like knives, open and clutching, reached down and forward.
The movement did not seem swift, yet it easily caught the drake in the midst of his flight. For an instant there was a slight confusion of winnowing and flapping wings, a dizzy dropping through the sky. Then the great hawk recovered his balance, steadied himself, turned, and went winging steadily inland toward a crag which he had noted, where he might devour his prey at ease. In his claws was gripped the body of the black drake, its throat torn across, its long neck and webbed feet trailing limply in the air.
In the Unknown Dark
HIS long, awkward legs trembling with excitement, his long ears pointing stiffly forward, his distended nostrils sniffing and snorting, he stared anxiously this way and that from the swirling, treacherous current to the silent man poling the scow. The river, at this point nearly half a mile wide, daunted him now that he saw it at such close quarters, though all summer he had been viewing it with equanimity from the shore. A few hundred yards above the comparatively quiet course of the ferry he saw a long line of white leaping waves, stretching from bank to bank with menacing roar, and seeming as it were about to rush down upon the slow ferry and overwhelm it. When he looked toward the other side of the scow the prospect was equally threatening. The roar from below was worse than the roar from above, and the whole river, just here so radiant with the sunset glow, grew black with gloom and white with fury as it plunged through a rocky chasm strewn with ledges. The only thing that comforted him at all and kept his fears within bounds was the patient, sturdy figure of the man, poling the scow steadily toward shore.
This nervous passenger on the primitive backwoods ferry was a colt about eight months old, whose mother had died the previous day. His owner, a busy lumberman, was now sending him across the river to a neighbour's farm to be cared for, because he was of good "Morgan" strain. The ferryman had taken the precaution to hitch the end of his halter-rope to a thwart amidships, lest he should get wild and jump overboard; but the colt, though his dark brown coat was still woolly with the roughness of babyhood, had too much breadth between the eyes to be guilty of any such foolishness. He felt frightened, and strange, and very lonely; but he knew it was his business just to trust the man and keep still.
When the animal trusts the man he generally comes out all right; but once in a long while Fate interferes capriciously, and the utterly unexpected happens. Hundreds of times, and with never a mishap, the ferryman had poled his clumsy scow across the dangerous passage between the rapids – the only possible crossing-place for miles in either direction. But this evening, when the scow was just about mid-channel, for some inexplicable reason the tough and well-tried pole of white spruce snapped. It broke short off in the middle of a mighty thrust. And overboard, head first, went the ferryman.
As the man fell his foot caught in the hook of a heavy chain used for securing hay-carts and such vehicles on the scow; and as the clumsy craft swung free in the current the man was dragged beneath it. He would have been drowned in a few seconds, in such water; but at last, in the twisting, the captive foot fell clear. The man came to the surface on the upper side of the scow, made one despairing but successful clutch, got hold of the edge, and with his last strength drew himself aboard, all but suffocated, and with a broken ankle. Tricked by years of security, he had left his spare pole on the shore. There was absolutely nothing to do but let the scow drift, and pray that by some succession of miracles she might survive nine miles of rapids and gain the placid reaches below.
As the man, white and sullen, crouched on the bottom of the scow and held his ankle, the colt eyed him wonderingly. Then he eyed the river, very anxiously, and presently braced his legs wide apart as the scow gave a strange, disconcerting lurch. The roar was growing swiftly louder, and those fierce white waves appeared to be rushing right up the middle of the river to meet the scow. Daunted at the sight, he crowded as close as he could to the ferryman, and nosed him as if to call his attention to the peril.
In a very few minutes the scow was in the rapids. But the current had carried her well inshore, where there chanced to be, for several miles, a comparatively free channel, few rocks, and no disastrous ledges. She swung and wallowed sickeningly, bumping so violently that once the colt's knees gave way beneath him and twice he was all but hurled overboard. And she took in great, sloshing crests of waves till she was half-full of water. But she was not built to sink, and her ribs were sound. For miles she pounded her terrible way in safety through the bewildering tumult. At last a long jutting promontory of rock started the current on a new slant, and she was swept staggering across to the other shore. Here, for nearly two miles, she slipped with astonishing good luck down a narrow, sluice-like lane of almost smooth water. As if to compensate for this fortune, however, she was suddenly caught by a violent cross-current, snatched out of the clearway, and swept heavily over a ledge. At the foot of this ledge she was fairly smothered for some seconds. The man clung obstinately to the gunwales; and the colt, by sheer good luck, fell in the scow instead of over the side. By the time he had struggled to his feet again the scow had righted herself, and darted into a wild chaos of rocks and sluices close by the shore. Here she caught on a boulder, tipped up till she was nearly on her gunwale, and pitched the little animal clear overboard.
As the clumsy craft swung loose the very next instant, the colt was dragged along in her wake, and would have ended his adventures then and there but for the readiness of the man. Forgetting for an instant his own terrible plight, he drew his knife and slashed the rope. Thus released, the colt got his head above water and made a valiant struggle toward the shore, which was now not five yards away.
All that he could do in the grip of that mad flood was, needless to say, very little, but it chanced to be enough, for it brought him within the grasp of a strong eddy. A moment later he was dashed violently into shoal water. As he fought to a footing he saw the scow wallowing away down the torrent. Then he found himself, he knew not how, on dry land. The falls roared behind him. They might, it seemed, rush up at any instant and clutch him again. Blind and sick with panic, he dashed into the woods, and went galloping and stumbling straight inland. At last he sank trembling in the deep grass of a little brookside meadow.
Being of sturdy stock, the brown colt soon recovered his wind. Then, feeling nervous in the loneliness of the woods and the deepening shadows, he snatched a few mouthfuls of grass and started to try and find his way home. Obeying some deep-seated instinct, he set his face aright, and pushed forward through the thick growths.
His progress, however, was slow. Among the trees the twilight was now gathering, and the dark places filled his young heart with vague but dreadful apprehensions, so that at every few steps he would stop and stare backward over his shoulder. Presently he came out upon another open glade, and cheered by the light, he followed this glade as long as it seemed to lead in the right direction. Once a wide-winged, noiseless shadow sailed over his head, and he shied with a loud snort of terror. He had never before seen an owl. And once he jumped back wildly, as a foraging mink rustled through the herbage just before him. But for all the alarms that kept his baby heart quivering, he pressed resolutely forward, longing for the comfort of his mother's flank, and the familiar stall in the barn above the ferry.
As he reached the end of the glade his apprehensive ears caught a curious sound, a sort of dry rustling, which came from the fringe of the undergrowth. He halted, staring anxiously at the place the strange sound came from. Immediately before him was the prostrate and rotting trunk of an elm-tree, its roots hidden in the brushwood, its upper end projecting into the grass and weeds of the glade. As the colt stood wondering, a thickset, short-legged, grayish coloured animal, covered with long, bristling quills, emerged from the leafage and came crawling down the trunk toward him. It looked no larger than the black-and-white dog which the colt was accustomed to seeing about the farmyard, but its fierce little eyes and its formidable quills made him extremely nervous.
The porcupine came directly at him, with an ill-natured squeaking grunt. The colt backed away a foot or two, snorting, then held his ground. He had never yielded ground to the black-and-white dog. Why should he be afraid of this clumsy little creature? But when, at last, the porcupine drew so near that he could have touched it with his outstretched nose, instead of making any such great mistake as that he flung his head high in air, wheeled about, and lashed out furiously with his hinder hoofs. One hoof caught the porcupine fairly on the snout and sent it whirling end over end into the thicket, where it lay stretched out lifeless, as a feast for the first hungry prowler that might chance by. Not greatly elated by his victory, the magnitude of which he in no way realized, the colt plunged again into the woods and continued his journey.
By this time the sun had dropped completely behind the wooded hills, and here in the deep forest the dark seemed to come on all at once. The colt's fears now crowded upon him so thickly that he could hardly make any progress at all. He was kept busy staring this way and that, and particularly over his shoulders. A mass of shadow, denser than the rest, – a stump, a moss-grown boulder, – would seem to his frightened eyes a moving shape, just about to spring upon him. He would jump to one side, his baby heart pounding between his ribs, only to see another and huger shadow on the other side, and jump back again. The sudden scurrying of a wood-mouse over the dry spruce-needles made his knees tremble beneath him. At last, coming to two tall, straight-trunked saplings growing close together just before the perpendicular face of a great rock, he was vaguely reminded of the cow-stanchions near his mother's stall in the barn. To his quivering heart this was in some way a refuge, as compared with the terrible spaciousness of the forest. He could not make himself go any farther, but crowded up as close as possible against the friendly trees and waited.
He had no idea, of course, what he was waiting for, unless he had some dim expectation that his dead mother, or his owner, or the man on the ferryboat would come and lead him home. His instinct taught him that the dark of the wilderness held unknown perils for him, though his guarded babyhood had afforded him no chance to learn by experience. Young as he was, he took up the position which gave his peculiar weapons opportunity for exercise. Instead of backing up against the trees and the rock, and facing such foes as the dread dark might send upon him, he stood with his back toward the danger and his formidable heels in readiness, while over first one shoulder, then the other, his eyes and ears kept guard. The situation was one that might well have cowed him completely; but the blood in his baby veins was that of mettled ancestors, and terrified though he was, and trembling, his fear did not conquer his spirit.
Soon after he had taken his stand in this strange and desolate stabling, from a little way back in the underbrush there came a pounce, a scuffle, and a squeal, more scuffle, and then silence. He could not even guess what was happening, but whatever it was, it was terrible to him. For some moments there came, from the same spot, little, soft, ugly, thickish sounds. These stopped abruptly. Immediately afterwards there was a hurried beating of wings, and something floated over him. The big owl had been disturbed at its banquet. A few seconds more and the watcher's ears caught a patter of light footsteps approaching. Next he saw a faint gleam of eyes, which seemed to scrutinize him steadily, fearlessly, indifferently, for perhaps the greater part of a minute. Then they vanished, with more patter of light footsteps; and as they disappeared a wandering puff of night air brought to the colt's nostrils a musky scent which he knew. It was the smell of a red fox, such as he had seen once prowling around his owner's barn-yard. This smell, from its associations, was comforting rather than otherwise, and he would have been glad if the fox had stayed near.
For some time now there was stillness all about the big rock, the owl's kill and the passing of the fox having put all the small wild creatures on their guard. Little by little the colt was beginning to get used to the situation. He was even beginning to relax the tense vigilance of his watching, when suddenly his heart gave a leap and seemed to stand still. Just about ten paces behind him he saw a pair of pale, green-gleaming eyes, round, and set wider apart than those of the fox, slowly floating toward him. At the same time his nostrils caught a scent which was absolutely unknown to him, and peculiarly terrifying.
As these two dreadful eyes drew near, the colt's muscles grew tense. Then he distinguished a shadowy, crouching form behind the eyes; and he gathered his haunches under him for a desperate defense. But the big lynx was wary. This long-legged creature who stood thus with his back to him and eyed him with watchful, sidelong glances was something he did not understand. Before he came within range of the colt's heels he swerved to one side and stole around at a safe distance, investigating. He was astonished, and at first discomfited, to find that, whichever way he circled, the unknown animal under the rock persisted in keeping his back to him. For perhaps half an hour, with occasional intervals of motionless crouching, he kept up this slow circling, unable to allay his suspicions. Then, apparently making up his mind that the unknown was not a dangerous adversary, or perhaps in some subtle way detecting his youth, he crept closer. He crept so close, indeed, that he felt emboldened to spring; and he was just about to do so.
Just at this moment, luckily just the right moment, the colt let loose the catapult of his strong haunches. His hoofs struck the lynx fairly in the face, and hurled him backwards against a neighbouring tree.
Half-stunned, and his wind knocked out, the big cat picked himself up with a sharp spitting and snarling, and slunk behind the tree. Then he turned tail and ran away, thoroughly beaten. The strange animal had a fashion in fighting which he did not know how to cope with; and he had no spirit left for further lessons.
After this the night wore on without great event, though with frequent alarms which kept the colt's nerves ceaselessly on the rack. Now it was the faint, almost imperceptible sound of a hunting weasel; now it was the erratic scurrying of the wood-mice; now it was the loud but muffled thumping of a hare, astonished at this long-limbed intruder upon the wilderness domains. The colt was accustomed to sleeping well through the night, and this protracted vigil upon his feet (for he was afraid to lie down) exhausted him. When the first spectral gray of dawn began to work its magic through the forest, his legs were trembling so that he could hardly stand. When the first pink rays crept in beneath the rock, he sank down and lay for half an hour, not sleeping, but resting. Then he got up and resumed his homeward journey, very hungry, but too desperate with chill and homesickness to stop and eat.
He had travelled perhaps a mile, when he caught the sound of heavy, careless footsteps, and stopped. Staring anxiously through the trees, he saw a woodsman striding along the trail, with an axe over his shoulder. At sight of one of those beings that stood to him for protection, and kindly guidance, and shelter, his terror and loneliness all slipped away. He gave a shrill, loud whinny of delight, galloped forward with much crashing of underbrush, and snuggled a coaxing muzzle under the arm of the astonished woodsman.