Chapter I: Part 1

_The_
WILD HEART

_By
Emma-Lindsay Squier_

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
GENE STRATTON-PORTER

_Illustrations and Decorations by_
PAUL BRANSOM

Cosmopolitan Book Corporation
NEW YORK MCMXXII

_Copyright, 1922, by Cosmopolitan Book
Corporation, New York. All rights
reserved, including that of translation
into foreign languages, including the
Scandinavian_

_First printing_ _March, 1922_
_Second printing_ _April, 1922_

_Printed in the United States of America_

DEDICATED TO

_BASIL KING_

WITH DEEPEST GRATITUDE FOR THE INSPIRATION
AND ENCOURAGEMENT THROUGH WHICH THE WILD
HEART STORIES FOUND WRITTEN EXPRESSION,
AND FOR THE TITLE OF THE SERIES WHICH THUS
CAME INTO BEING.

THE ILLUSTRATIONS _and_ CONTENTS

PAGE Skygak discovered that catching mice was Three-Spot’s chief vocation SKYGAK 12 He circled slowly above our heads 32 U-Chu-Ka never failed to answer our call U-CHU-KA 34 For the dogs had lost the lighter scent SANCTUARY 47 He questioningly sniffed the breeze THE FAERY NIGHT 66 Cannon came charging in a whirlwind of THE FRIENDSHIP THAT feathers FAILED 82 His constant barking set the grown-ups against him STOP THIEF 101 If Clarence had been a man, he would have endowed orphanages O’HENRY 124 Timothy clung to the bottle habit TIMOTHY, THE DIRTY BEAR 145 Sometimes the bandit birds swooped down THE BANDIT BIRD 168 Her nostrils dilated at the hated human scent MY FRIEND THE PRINCESS 189 A wild thing of the deep woods, ruled by pain instead of kindliness ETHEL 208

AN INTRODUCTION
_Which might better be entitled_:
Some Youngsters Find the Wrong Parents

_By_

Gene Stratton-Porter

Since “The Wild Heart” is throbbing with the same blood that pulses in the heart of every human being who goes to the fields and woods and fraternizes with the creatures that home there, since the feet that carry a wild heart on its journey are following the same path that a few peculiar feet have made, what they have found and what the heart has learned is the same thing that similar feet have been finding and hearts have been learning since the beginning of time.

The author of this book pronounces it “very simple, having no literary style or value.” Perhaps this estimate indicates modesty on her part, but it is not the truth concerning the book. Thoreau once wrote: “It takes two to speak the truth—one to speak and the other to hear.” Those of us who have made our own path through the wilds know the truth when we hear it. The first law that can be laid down concerning any work worthy to be put into the hands of the public is the old law that every writer should write concerning matters of his own personal observation. Whenever any writer follows this old rule, working with sincerity of heart, with inborn insight concerning his chosen subject, following the promptings of a simple human heart, and using a certain facility in the choice of words, which is a gift of God primarily, that author must evolve good work. Laying down these specifications as law which governs every masterpiece that ever has been produced, it will be observed that “The Wild Heart” follows them as naturally as water flows to the sea, possibly as unconsciously.

To anyone who knows the fields and woods the book carries the conviction of truth. Those who do not know nature will not believe many of these statements, because they have not learned that when one goes into the haunts of the wild calmly, fearlessly, absolutely in tune with Nature, one is perfectly safe. The people who go to fraternize with the free creatures, to learn the secrets of Nature, to protect, to love, to fellowship with the wild, wear an invincible armor.

Enos Mills will tell you that he tramps the Rocky Mountains for weeks at a time absolutely without a weapon. Arthur Heming will tell you that he travels Canada from side to side, north and south, passing all kinds of wild creatures at all seasons and under any conditions, and nothing touches him.

I can tell you that my face has been within two feet of a coiled rattlesnake ready to strike, but it did not strike. Two minutes later a man antagonistic to the wild passed the same location and immediately the snake disclosed itself and was ready to fight.

Very recently some children playing at the edge of the desert found a scorpion. They coaxed it onto a piece of bark and were carrying it around playing with it. So long as they felt no fear of the creature, it was quiescent in their hands. The instant they carried it among grown people who recognized it and were afraid, the trouble began. When the wild thing entered the atmosphere of fear and was surrounded by the taint of that acid which is exhaled from the body of any human being experiencing fear, that instant it was on guard and ready to strike.

Any human being carrying in his breast a wild heart knows instinctively how to fraternize with the wild. Anyone carrying a heart of fear and antagonism will have a troubled journey through forest or desert. The writer of this book proves that she carries a wild heart in her breast. Her records are unquestionably true. They are precisely the same things that happen to anyone having a heart in tune with Nature.

So the book passes, first, because it speaks the truth. It needs only that these records should be read to gain an idea of the degree of insight possessed by the writer. The nice comprehension of what the wild is thinking and feeling, the keen perception of the “why” of things, pass the book on the grounds of insight. The simple unassuming manner in which the record is kept proves it the emanation of a human heart without guile, effervescing love, not only for the beauties of field and forest, but for the living creatures that home there.

It is modest of the writer to say that her book has “no literary style or value,” but the book proves the reverse. Throughout will be found the value of truth, the exquisite style of utter simplicity, the best plain common word chosen to tell the plain common story; and it is a very difficult thing always to find the right words with which to tell any story. There are only about twenty thousand words in the English language. When you compare this number with the number of objects existing in the world, the number of ideas that have sprung and will spring in the human brain, it easily can be appreciated that it is sometimes difficult to find the right word by which to express one’s meaning clearly and simply; for there always is one word which, better than any other, will portray a situation or describe an object.

Any author who is actuated by sincerity will always choose the plain simple word which expresses his meaning plainly and simply. The one thing that sets apart the work of any writer is the ability to express himself in plain simple language that common people can understand and appreciate. It was on this subject that Martin Luther once said: “Hebrew, Latin, and Greek I spare until we learned ones come together, and then we make it so curled and finical that God Himself wondereth at us.”

That is precisely the reason why nine-tenths of the Nature books written in this country have been failures. They are “so curled and finical” that only the “learned ones” can understand what they are all about.

To me it is an atrocity to tag a bird, a butterfly, or a flower with several inches of Latin or Greek per each. Every living creature should have a common, simple, descriptive name that a common human being who wants to know what it is can learn and remember. I do truly believe “that God Himself wondereth at us” if He takes the time to look at many of the books to be found in our libraries concerning the most exquisite and beautiful of His creatures.

I believe that any normal man or woman would be intensely interested in the organism of a moth, the delicate parts so beautifully evolved to serve their purpose; but what common person could wade through a large volume crammed from end to end with such terms as _patagia_, _jugum_, _discocellulars_, _phagocytes_? It is such works on Nature that have kept the Nature lovers of many generations out of the fields and woods. They had not the education, the time, nor the inclination to be sufficiently “curled and finical” to be specific. They could take no one specimen and learn it, because they could not identify it. In a book such as “The Wild Heart” there is no word that a ten-year-old child can not comprehend; while there is a wonderful beauty and facility in the choice of words, in the sincerity of expression, and the sympathetic insight.

I certainly wish that a copy of this book may go into every home in the world, for two reasons: the first, that men and women may learn how anyone with a sympathetic heart devoid of fear may fraternize with the wild; and for the other very excellent reason that it may do something toward teaching parents that all children are not alike and can not possibly be run through the same groove.

Here and there in a family there is born a child with a wild heart. It is nothing less than a tragedy when such a child is cursed with the wrong parents. God gives to only a few of His children a wild heart, a musical ear, facile fingers. The man or woman who keeps a child born with the love of the woods in its heart from contact with Nature, who destroys the trust that God placed in its heart, and instils fear bred by man, does a dreadful thing, a thing that must end in disaster. Nature does not reveal her secrets to everyone. Creatures of the wild will not be brothers with any save a very few specially endowed human beings.

Today my heart sickens at the thought of what would have happened to me if, when I told my Mother I had been talking with the fairies and what they said and did, she had whipped me for not speaking the truth; if, when I came from the woods with my apron torn and soiled, full of dirty specimens, my heart overflowing with the wonders of my discoveries, I had been beaten and forbidden to go again. If we are to have truly great art, literature, or science in the future, many, perhaps most, of those who are to do the work will be born into this world in simple common homes like the Indiana homes in which the author of “The Wild Heart” and I were born. What we as a nation produce in wonder-work along any creative line in the future is going to depend upon the ability of parents of this generation to recognize and to foster unusual gifts in their children when they first detect them. The mother who whips a child because it happens to have been born with a wild heart does a thing so wickedly cruel that there are no words in which to describe the situation adequately. If this book will serve the one purpose of making fathers and mothers of the coming generation sympathetic and kindly to the little wild hearts that they bring into the world, it will perform a very great work indeed.

_Part One_
_The Story of_
SKYGAK
AN OLD-MAN SEA-GULL

_Skygak discovered that catching mice was Three-Spot’s chief vocation,
and he made her life a burden._

Skygak was an old-man sea-gull. He had circled and screamed over the waters of Puget Sound for many a season, and it is doubtful if there is anything in aërial lore that he did not know. He was an expert at fishing, and could swoop down on an unsuspecting smelt from a dizzy height and have the shiny fish down his gullet without so much as touching his webbed feet to the water’s surface. He could snatch up a sidling red crab before it could seek the shelter of a rock, and drop it neatly and accurately on a stone, to dart down upon the mangled remains before the juicy meal could be purloined by any of his kindred.

He knew when storms were coming, and sometimes, when the skies were clearest and the sun warmest, he would spiral up to a great height and scream in long, quavering cadences that grew louder as the rain and wind approached. Then the Siwash clam-diggers on the beach would gather up their bags and shovels and bid their women see to brushwood, for they knew the cry of the sea-gull when the Storm-God rides. They respected the gray gull’s warning.

We were children on the shores of Puget Sound, Brother and I. From our little log cabin, with its porch roof slanting low like an old-fashioned pokebonnet, we would watch the sea-gulls circle in the sky or bob lazily on the blue waters of the bay like so many feathered corks.

We knew Skygak among the other gulls, for one wing was white, the other gray. So when we saw him, we named him by a queer, fanciful name that seemed to fit a bird of air and water. And because the boat landing in front of the cabin furnished a resting place for webbed feet on sunshiny days, Skygak made it his headquarters, and we came to look for him and to be fond of him.

When we sailed in the tiny twelve-foot boat with its home-made leg-o’-mutton sail or paddled in the dugout canoe made for us by a Siwash Indian chief, we looked for Skygak in every flock of sea-gulls that passed us, and it was our superstition, made on the spur of the moment, as children’s fancies are, that if he flew over us we would have good luck, and that a wish made on the instant would come true.

But we never dreamed that Skygak of the air lanes would one day be an intimate friend of ours, for we had been told by sailor and Indian alike—and who knows more of seafaring birds than they?—that sea-gulls could not be tamed. The Siwash chief who had given us our dugout canoe knew the habits of the winged scavengers and loved them. Perhaps the primitive heart of him, held in leash by the white man’s civilization, was tuned to the wild, untamed heart of the gulls, for they flocked around his beach shanty unafraid, and ate the scraps of clams he flung to them; but he had never touched one of the gray brethren.

And so it happened, on a day of mists and clouds, that Skygak came into our lives as something more than a gray-and-white winged bird whose passage above our boat would make a wish come true.

It was a day typical of autumn in the Sound country. Gray rain pattered ceaselessly into gray waters that stretched away to meet a leaden horizon, and low-hanging clouds swirled restlessly with every gust of wind. But the smell of wet pines was in the air; the grass was green and glistening with iridescent beads. It was a day when the out-of-doors called the hardy one to don overshoes, raincoat, and sou’wester hat and fare forth to breathe the wet fragrance of woods and field, to feel the soft rain on uplifted face, and to listen for the storm cry of the gulls circling against the sky.

Brother and I, clad against the rain, stood in wonder at the shore end of the float. For there on the far end was Skygak, a miserable, dripping figure hunched dejectedly on the wet planking. His once sleek wings hung limply at his sides, his feathers were draggled and unkempt, his head was hanging miserably as if the light but steady drizzle were torment to him.

Above him soared and circled his kindred of the sky, wondering, no doubt, what was wrong, for now and again one of them would turn in a half-circle, spinning on the tip of one great wing, and scream sharply, as if in invitation to Skygak to join the airy tribe. And the old-man sea-gull would turn one eye up to the birds above him and give vent to a plaintive, longing cry. His draggled wings would flap in the rain as if sheer force of will must bear him upward, then relax hopelessly as if the effort made him more miserable.

We watched and speculated, Brother and I, for never had we seen a gull in such a plight. We saw that he was denied the water, too, for he would stalk, with the wobbly, swinging motion of a web-foot tribe, to the edge of the float, crane his neck as if about to launch himself upon the rain-beaten waves, and then retreat to the middle of the wharf once more. A gull who could neither fly nor swim! What had happened?

We took the problem to the Siwash chief a mile up the beach, mending a fish-net in his warm and smoky shanty. He listened impassively, yet with interest. And he returned with us to the float to diagnose the gull’s ailment.

When he saw Skygak, he grunted briefly but sympathetically. The bird had been caught in the swell behind a large boat—a battle-ship, probably—when it was discharging oil, he told us. It was not an uncommon thing, he said. The gull’s feathers were soaked with the heavy oil, and until it had evaporated, or until new feathers should grow, Skygak would be helpless both in the air and in the sea, and since he could not provide food for himself he would starve to death.

So spoke the Siwash chief, but his philosophy was not ours. We told each other that Skygak should not die, and we called to the wet, miserable gull that we would take care of him, but he did not even raise his head.

What should we feed him? We had neither clams nor fish, and we were afraid to go too near him, lest he mistake our friendly intentions and take to the water in self-defense, to be weighted down by his oil-soaked feathers.

With the permission of our always sympathetic mother we salvaged cookies from the jar behind the kitchen stove. We took cold griddle cakes, too, and scraps of meat and bread. And with these dainties we set about the task of winning the gray gull’s confidence and of saving him from the misfortune which had overtaken him.

Carefully and very quietly we went down the float, as near as we could approach without Skygak’s taking alarm. When he showed signs of restlessness, we advanced no further, but put a chunk of meat upon the planks and withdrew to watch and wait.

The gull, at first indifferent to everything but his unexplainable plight, gradually felt hunger’s urge, and his long neck craned toward our offering of food. Slowly he waddled toward it, a grotesque gray bundle of draggled feathers, and with one vigorous gulp the meat disappeared.

Then we tossed him a chunk of bread softened with water, and this time Skygak did not hesitate. The first morsel had aroused an appetite which for the time being supplanted misery. He stalked forward and swallowed the food, turning on us the broadside of one black eye, as if asking for more.

Nor did we refuse him. We tossed him, piece by piece, the food we had brought with us, and returned to the pantry for more. Always we placed the bread or meat a little nearer the shore and the cabin, and Skygak followed the morsels anxiously, greedily, satisfying a hunger which must have been of long and painful duration.

Early dusk was upon us when we finally succeeded in tolling the gray gull through the front yard into the chicken run, and into an unused brooder house which offered a shelter against the rainy night.

The lamps were lighted in the little log cabin when we completed our self-appointed task of making Skygak comfortable, and our only regret was that we could not give our friend a blanket. We feared he would not understand.

That was the beginning of a threesided friendship. The first few days of Skygak’s convalescence were spent in huddled misery, and he moved only when Brother or I came into the brooder house with food and water. Then the rain ceased, Indian summer came smilingly upon the Sound country, and when the sun shone warmly, Skygak decided that life was not all a haze of gloom, and he set about vigorously to restore himself to a normal condition. Hour after hour he pulled and massaged his feathers until some of the heavy oil was loosened. The sunshine helped to dry his draggled plumage, new feathers commenced to grow, and little by little Skygak became his old cocky self.

His affection for Brother and me was as apparent as was his dislike for all other members of the human race. The grown-ups he would not trust, and passers-by annoyed and alarmed him. But he would follow us about wherever we went, stalking along behind us with grotesque dignity, and when invited, would fly up on my shoulder or on Brother’s to receive bits of food from our fingers and to snap playfully at us with his great, powerful bill when we pretended to box with him.

The liberty of the ranch was his, but his favorite spot was a corner of the front porch where he would sit for hours in solemn contemplation of the bay in front. People who went by on the trail looked in wonder at the gray gull apparently very much at home in a little log cabin.

Soon he learned to eat with the chickens, and when the bran mash was spread for them in a long, wooden trough, Skygak would be there before the bucket was emptied. Then, as the hens came flocking around, the gull would spread his magnificent wings, open his huge beak to its widest extent, and scream shrilly and fiercely, laying about him with his yellow beak like a warrior swinging a deadly sword. The startled poultry, unused to this changeling of the sea and sky, would scurry away with distressed and frightened cackles, and Skygak would eat his fill at the trough, pausing occasionally to administer punishment to any daring cockerel who ventured too near. Many a bunch of feathers have I seen hanging from his bill, like a scalplock hung from the belt of an Indian brave, mute witness to a battle of brief but bloody duration.

Our animals soon learned that this wandering guest was to be respected. Tinker, the rat terrier, learned to his cost that Skygak was not a hen to be chased from the front porch, if he chose to stay there.

Between our cat, Three-Spot, and the gull, a bitter feud developed, which had for its beginning such a small thing as a mouse. One had been killed in a trap, and Brother tendered it to Skygak as an experiment. The delicacy was new, but wholly acceptable, and with one ecstatic snap of his beak Skygak swallowed it, and afterward, as Brother averred, fairly licked his chops. Three-Spot sulked and gloomed because of the slight, but her cup of woe was not full.

For in some mysterious manner, Skygak discovered that catching mice was Three-Spot’s chief vocation, and he made her life a burden. One morning we heard an outraged yowl from the cat and an answering scream from Skygak. On the back porch we found the two, Three-Spot crouched over a dead mouse, eyes gleaming dangerously, tail switching from side to side, and every hair erect. The bird was advancing cautiously, but relentlessly, wings outspread, beak wide open, screaming and snapping at every step. Three-Spot did not lack courage, but her experience had not included juggernaut gulls, and when the terrifying yellow beak was hard upon her, she fled, spitting venomously, and Skygak, like a disreputable robber chief, swallowed her hard-earned prize in one mouthful.

From that time, when he was not following Brother and me, or dozing on the front porch, or bullying the hens, he was trailing Three-Spot about, a relentless gray shadow, and if the luckless cat succeeded in keeping for herself one mouse that she caught, it was when Skygak was asleep in the brooder house.

Slowly but surely the old-man sea-gull recovered from his affliction. Some of the oil-soaked feathers dropped out, and new ones took their place, and he risked short flights from time to time, cautiously at first, as if not sure of his powers, and then with increasing confidence. He ventured out into the water with perfect ease, and we knew it would be but a short time before he had completely regained his health.

When first he flew we were afraid we had lost him, but he returned at night-time, hungry and eager to be taken up on my shoulder. After that, when he flew, it was to come back to us as naturally as if we, and not the sea-gulls, were his kindred.

But there came a day when a feeling of restlessness was in the air. Brother and I, attuned to the moods of the woods and of out-of-door things, felt it keenly, and we were not surprised when we saw overhead the V formation of the wild geese flying southward.

Then the sea-gulls commenced to scream in short, sharp cadences, and a flock of the gray-and-white birds flew overhead, rising higher and higher as is the habit of the gray ones when the migrating call comes.

Skygak heard the call—that we could not doubt—for he was restless and would stretch himself on tiptoe, flapping his wings, turning his head up to the sky where a gray cloud of birds were flying. Then he would scream—short, broken cries as if torn by indecision. He loved us, we knew, but he was of the air lanes; the gray gulls were his kindred. Sooner or later he must go with them.

His flights grew longer, and once we did not see him for three days. Even when he was with us, he was ill at ease. The wild heart of him was longing for the untrammeled freedom of the winds and the sea, and gaunt cliffs untouched by foot of man. He forgot to box with us; he no longer bullied the poultry yard; he even neglected to watch for Three-Spot’s trophies of the hunt.

And then he went away. A week passed, and we mourned him bitterly. It was not so much his going—we knew we must expect that—but we had wanted to tell him good-by when he left, to wave our hands to him and wish him Godspeed, to watch him until he was only a speck in the sky. The Siwash chief said Skygak would never come back—but he did, once more.

It was on a day of crystal clearness, when the clouds were like tiny white boats in the sky. We stood in the yard, hand in hand, watching the wild geese pass overhead and the flocks of sea-gulls flying high above them. From the west came a gray cloud of the seabirds, with one gull flying far in the lead. And as we watched, the leader left the flock of winging gulls and, like a falling star, swooped down upon us, spiraling lower and lower. We held our breath as we watched, for somehow, we knew, we knew—

A flash of one white wing showed clearly. I tried to speak, but no words came. Closer and closer came the bird, Skygak, our old-man sea-gull, and when he was no higher than the roof of the house, he circled slowly above our heads. Then he screamed twice—long, plaintive cries that we knew meant farewell.

We were crying, but we waved our hands to him and called, “Good-by, good-by!” And slowly he rose once more, the white of one white wing melting into gray. Higher and higher he winged, to take his place at the head of the flock.... He was just a speck against the sky, and still we called our farewells to him in words choked with tears—the specks vanished into cloudy distance—Skygak had gone forever.

_He circled slowly above our heads_
]

But it was not without a thought of us. We shall always believe that he halted the winged caravan to tell us good-by—and the Siwash chief believes it, too.

_Introducing_
U-CHU-KA
THE JUMPER

_Part Two_
U-CHU-KA

Upon the Hill Trail, which Brother and I called ours because we loved it so, you may yet see a little clearing made in the midst of red huckleberry bushes, Oregon grape, and dark green salal shrubs. As long as we lived in the little cabin by the bay, we never allowed underbrush to creep into this spot on the Hill Trail, for it was sacred to the memory of U-Chu-Ka, the only monument we could give him.

U-Chu-Ka was a tiny rabbit—a “jack-rabbit,” I suppose natural historians would have called him. But we gave him the name that in the Chinook language means “the jumper,” and we never called him anything else.

_Part Two_
U-CHU-KA
THE JUMPER

_He never failed to
answer our call_
]

I remember the day we first saw him—a wee baby rabbit he was, escaped somehow from his mother’s vigilance, and so much interested in the big world outside the burrow where he had spent his short life that he hardly knew whether to be afraid of us or merely curious. In such a case he no doubt remembered his mother’s warning, for he “froze.” By this I mean that he remained rigid, the tan of his fur blending with the mottled greenery and the brown tones of the forest undergrowth. But Brother and I could “freeze” too, having learned the art from the woods creatures whom we knew and loved. So we stood perfectly still, and then it was a case of seeing who could hold out the longer.

It was U-Chu-Ka who finally capitulated in the battle of freezing. His curiosity became greater than his fear, and he sat up on his haunches, his tiny forefeet held primly over his stomach, his ears—much too long for him—tilted questioningly in our direction, and his black dot of a nose twitching ceaselessly.

We were, I am sure, the first human beings U-Chu-Ka had seen, and although behind him were countless rabbit traditions as to what fearful creatures humans were, U-Chu-Ka, being so young, was possessed of optimism and confidence. Brother and I were so happy when the little fellow with his soft brown eyes decided that we were friends to be trusted! Oh, if we had only realized that there were other people not so friendly to little brown rabbits, whom U-Chu-Ka might have the misfortune to meet!

But we never thought of that. Our one realization was that here was a new woods friend, and we set ourselves to the task of winning his heart.

It was not hard. Indeed, when I think of it now, it seems so pitifully easy. And I wonder, if every one knew just how easy it was, if men would carry sticks that shoot flame and death into the domain of the woods creatures—if they would not carry apples instead.

It was an apple that first won U-Chu-Ka’s heart. Brother had one, of course, and we nibbled bites off and placed the juicy morsels on the trail in front of us. Then, walking quietly backward, we waited at a safe distance for the wind to carry the delectable apple fragrance to U-Chu-Ka’s wiggling nose.

Nor was it long before one satiny ear—so fragile that it was almost transparent—drooped and then rose again. The twitching nose worked harder; U-Chu-Ka sat up straighter than ever; and then, with funny little hops, he came toward us, hesitating occasionally, once pausing to sit up on his haunches as if asking himself if he were doing the right thing in approaching thus boldly.

Finally he came to the bits of apple and promptly forgot his fear in his delight at the unknown dainty. By the time he had eaten the few morsels we had spread out for him, we had others ready, this time only at arm’s length.

Later we proffered bits of the fruit in our hands, held very steadily so that no jerking should alarm the little brown rabbit. At first he was undecided whether to accept the morsels so close to the big human creatures, but something, I am sure, told him that there was no harm in us. In the end he hopped over to my outstretched hand and nibbled daintily at the apple, while I held my arm so still it ached.

What Mother Rabbit would have said of the way we stuffed U-Chu-Ka, that day, I do not know, but I am sure she would not have approved. We fed him until his small stomach was round as a ball. When the apple diet seemed to pall, we gathered tender blades of grass, and very soon the little brown one would not take alarm at our movements, but would watch us with solemn baby dignity, sitting up on his haunches or squatting in a round ball, his tiny ears laid over his back—a sure sign that he was no longer nervous.

How we hated to leave him that day! We didn’t take him down the hill and make him a home by the log cabin, for we had no wish to frighten him, and as for foraging for himself in the woods, we were sure U-Chu-Ka knew how to go about it. So we left him at the bend of the trail where we had first seen him. We called it U-Chu-Ka’s corner, and we left the core of the apple for him to nibble on after we had gone.

The next afternoon about the same time—for the woods creatures are apt to do certain things at certain hours—we came up the Hill Trail, whistling, and were almost at U-Chu-Ka’s corner before it occurred to us that the sound might frighten him away if he were still in that neighborhood. But curiosity is a rabbit’s strongest trait, and suddenly there he was, hopping out of the underbrush into the little clearing as if in response to our call—indeed as if he had been waiting.

We had brought offerings of lettuce and cabbage leaves, and this time it was not half so long before U-Chu-Ka would eat from our hands and permit us to fondle his velvet softness.

We came every day after that, always whistling, with choicest tidbits for our little friend. He would come into his “corner” hopping out from the greenery like a tiny puffball, sit up very primly, ears tilted, his nose wiggling, until he was sure it was his friends. Then down the trail toward us he would bound, with such long hops that his hind feet seemed to go above his head. Oh, U-Chu-Ka, little brown one, if we only had not taught you to have confidence in humans—to come unafraid when we whistled!

As the summer went by, U-Chu-Ka grew and grew. From a baby rabbit he became a half-grown rabbit, and we realized that before long he would be a very large rabbit indeed. But he never failed to answer our call, and through the long summer afternoons we would play upon the hill, the three of us. We played house, U-Chu-Ka submitting without protest to being dressed in a doll’s frock, with a tiny hat tying back his ears. He was our child, and we rocked him to sleep, sent him to school, disciplined him at times, and pretended that he talked to us. If I could only give you a picture of U-Chu-Ka, half-grown now, in a blue gingham doll dress, his brown paws stuck through the short sleeves, his white knob of a tail flashing impudently from behind when he hopped about, and his soft brown eyes grotesquely large under the white hat tied under his chin!

And then, one day—it is a day I do not like to think of—we decided that U-Chu-Ka should have a birthday party. So we took cookies, apples, and lettuce sandwiches up the hill. It was hot, with scarcely a breeze, and sounds carried distinctly. From far away we heard a whistled tune, and we knew that some infrequent passer-by was on the Hill Trail. The sound grew louder as we climbed, and then—a single shot that sent echoes vibrating against the startled hills.

A gunshot! It was not such an infrequent sound through the woods that skirted the Bay, but our hearts suddenly contracted as if a hand had clutched them.

We said not a word to each other, but broke into a jogging trot that brought us hot and panting to the top of the hill. From there it was but a hundred yards or so to U-Chu-Ka’s corner, and we ran doggedly, with a great fear tearing at our hearts.

Oh, that moment! U-Chu-Ka’s corner was empty—but perhaps he would come if we whistled! We tried to form our dry lips for the sound, but none came. For we saw simultaneously, in the little clearing, a bright red patch on the low-hanging ferns—a little tuft of brown fur and a bit of white down.

The hunter had come and gone. U-Chu-Ka could not have known that the long stick pointed at him was filled with flame and death. We could picture the scene so well—the man, swinging carelessly down along the trail whistling, the gun over his shoulder—a sudden halt as a little brown rabbit hopped out from the underbrush into the small clearing and raised himself inquisitively on his haunches—a flash—a bundle of limp fur, blood-stained—a little brown pelt dangling pathetically down from a leather belt. Perhaps the man whistled again as he went down the trail. He could not know that two children, back by the little clearing, were sobbing their hearts out with their faces buried in the cool, green moss, because of a playmate who would come no more.

We tamed no more rabbits, Brother and I. We felt that we had been the cause of our friend’s death, and the least we could do was to refrain from putting confidence into other woods creatures, to be shattered by humans who did not know or care about the wild heart.

And so we planted twin-flower vines in the little clearing, and edged it with yellow Johnny-jump-up plants. It was our futile way of saying to U-Chu-Ka how sorry we were—how we loved him and how we missed him.

And today on the Hill Trail you may see U-Chu-Ka’s corner, grown over a bit now, because no one chops away the underbrush. But still the twin-flowers and the Johnny-jump-up’s bloom there in memory of U-Chu-Ka, the little brown friend who lives on in our hearts and our loving memory.

_For the dogs had lost the lighter scent_
]

_Part Three_
SANCTUARY

No doubt it was a silly name to give a deer—“Leonard”—but Brother and I named him on the spur of the moment, and, probably because we did not know the Indian word for “fawn,” we resorted to the prosaic title to which our woods friend learned to respond.

Our acquaintance with Leonard began in such a dramatic way and with such suddenness that we had no time to think about a suitable name—although we did remember to name him even in the first chaotic moment of meeting. It was a habit that came to us as naturally as breathing.

It was during those days of licensed killing known as “the deer season.” All day long, from across the bay, a mile in width, came the long-drawn-out baying of hounds and an occasional shot. On our side of the bay, too, high up in the wooded hills, we could hear the hounds at chase, and our hearts were heavy, being weighted with fear for the hunted things of the woods. We wondered if the hunters would find the salt-lick which we had stumbled upon in our wanderings and where we had spent many breathless hours watching for the slim-limbed does and the antlered bucks to come and take refreshment.

We stood outside the little log cabin, our faces raised to the hills, our hands clasped tightly together, listening shiveringly to the hunting cry of the dogs. They were in full chase, we knew, after some luckless deer. We felt so helpless, yet so eager to help protect our friends of the wilds. I wonder if our unexpressed prayer did not have something to do with what happened.

The baying of the hounds alternated with the crash of the underbrush where they were running, men coming close behind. The dogs were skirting the top of a hill. All at once their baying became a series of whimpering barks. They were for the moment off the scent.

And then, down the hill, with such flying leaps that he scarcely touched the earth, came a little deer, a fawn, heading straight for the cabin. Was he mad with fear that he sought the home of humans? Or did he know by that unexplainable power which animals have that we were friends, that we would protect his life with ours—did he, I wonder? For he cleared the four-foot fence with a bound and trotted up to us, then stood trembling, his soft eyes glazed with fright, white foam at the corners of his mouth.

This is not a fiction story; I am telling it as it happened.

The little fawn thrust his hot, dry nose against my hand, and when Brother and I, recovering from our petrified amazement, put our arms around his velvety neck, he did not shrink away, but pressed against us as if mutely begging protection.

If you have never had a wild creature throw itself upon your mercy, if you have never known the feeling of a soft, brown deer body pressed against yours in pleading and in confidence, you can not realize the wild thrill of ecstasy that went through us.

“His name is Leonard!” I found breath to say, my face against the velvety neck of the little deer.

But Brother, being a man in embryo, was thinking of sterner things. The hounds, he reminded me, would shortly find the scent of the deer. If they came baying down the hill, the fawn would take fright and dart away before we could stop him.

It was not a pleasant picture, but what were we to do? The short, whining barks of the dogs had already changed to the long, triumphant cadence of the hound in full cry. They would come down the hill, the hunters would claim Leonard as their game, they would—

“Meat!” whispered Brother tensely, and cryptic as it may sound to the reader I understood perfectly. I wondered that I had not thought of it myself. Brother outlined a plan of action in a few brief words while the baby deer, with knees wobbling sadly, turned terror-haunted eyes up the hill, his delicate nostrils quivering, yet made no move to leave us.

It took my best efforts to lead the little fawn into the shelter of the brooder house. The scent was foreign to anything he had known before, and the darkness terrified him anew. He could not have known that safety lay within that strange place, but he did know—of that I am sure—that he could trust himself with me, for he came, hesitatingly, urged always by my voice and my hands gently caressing him. He went with me, even through the door, into the semi-darkness of the frame brooder house, and though when I swung the door shut he nervously leaped away from my side, it was to return an instant later, as if begging my pardon for his involuntary action.

Brother, in the meantime, had dashed into the kitchen and emerged as quickly with a juicy steak—it was to have been cooked for dinner that night—which he hacked into chunks with his jackknife as he raced up the hill.

With my eyes against a crack I could see him panting upward to the point where Leonard had emerged from the underbrush of the woods.

And scarcely had he arrived when a lean hound, with lolling tongue and nose to the ground, burst from the shrubbery, uttering a long-drawn-out bay. The little deer beside me shook in every limb, and I was trembling, too, as if it were I, not Leonard, whom the dogs were trailing. We crouched there in the darkness, the wild thing of the woods and the child who loved the wild things of the woods, and in those tense moments I felt the heart of the baby deer pounding against my body. Can you wonder why now, when I see the body of a deer killed in the hunt, I can not congratulate the hunter on his prowess? I know how the deer at bay stood still and trembled! I know how his soft, brown eyes grew wide with helpless terror. I know how his heart pounded suffocatingly. And I can not be glad for the hunter; I am only sorry that he does not understand.

And up on the hill Brother was acting his part in the drama. When the first lean hound swung into sight, he deftly tossed a chunk of red, juicy meat in his pathway. The dog ignored the first piece, so intent was he on the fresh scent of the deer. But another chunk aimed just ahead of him was a temptation not to be withstood, and he gobbled it up, pausing a second in his chase. Another dog followed him out of the underbrush, finding the first piece of meat Brother had thrown.

It did not take long for the two hounds to finish off the entire steak so obligingly tossed to them by the small boy almost hidden in a clump of tall ferns. And when it was gone, Leonard was safe, for the dogs, with the smell of fresh meat in their nostrils, had lost the lighter scent of the little deer’s flying hoofs, and they sniffed shamefacedly and with befuddled yappings, until the hunters came cursing down the hill and crashing into the open, to berate the dogs soundly for having lost the game—as they supposed—in the woods.

They could not know that the little boy in the clump of ferns, looking on so innocently, was responsible for the hounds’ failure, nor that their game was at that instant held tightly in the arms of a little girl who was shaking with excitement as well as with fear, lest something happen to betray the refugee’s hiding-place.

But nothing did. The men stamped back into the woods, taking the hounds with them, and that day at least we heard no more baying on the hill.

And Leonard—we were afraid to let him go back to the woods until the deer season had passed or until he was of a size better able to care for himself. The grown-ups helped us, and we contrived a pen with wire netting over the top and sides as well, with the brooder house as shelter for nights. And here we kept Leonard a willing prisoner, while the hounds bayed on the hills and shots echoed across the water. How we wished, when we heard them, that we could make a place of refuge for every hunted thing in the world to come to and be cared for. But Leonard at least was safe, and he seemed to know it, too. Though he trembled whenever he heard the long hunting cry of the dogs, he did not take refuge even in the brooder house. He knew, I think, that he was in sanctuary.

As the days went on, we released our little deer from his pen, first with a collar and a rope, and then with nothing to hold him. He followed us like a dog, trotting beside us with dainty, mincing steps, sometimes leaping ahead of us, turning to look back at us, his large ears at an angle, his slim young body silhouetted against the green of the woods.

He soon learned his name and would come bounding out to us when we called. We fed him things his ancestors probably never tasted—cookies, apples, lettuce leaves, and candy, in addition to the grass and tender leaves we brought him before we allowed him to accompany us. But best of all the dainties we gave him was the chewing gum that Brother in a playful moment tendered him. Leonard accepted it daintily, as was his wont, and chewed it, as Brother and I remarked, with an actual expression of surprise coming into his brown eyes. He chewed and chewed. Perhaps he thought it a new variety of cud. At any rate, he gave it his hearty indorsement, and after that he would nose in Brother’s pockets to find the stick of gum that was always there for him.

So Leonard became one of our happy family, and though we knew that sometime in the distant future we should have on our hands the problem of what to do with an antlered buck who had forgotten the ways of the woods and accepted those of civilization, we did not feel sorry about it, being content to dwell in the happy present, while Leonard seemed content as well.

But one night I woke to find Brother’s hand tugging at mine. He was whispering to me that something was outside Leonard’s pen—perhaps it was a bear or a wildcat trying to get at him.

Foolish children we may have been, but we were not cowardly. It never occurred to us to rouse the grown-ups. Leonard was our friend and our responsibility. From my window the two of us crept out on the roof, white nightgowned figures, shaking with cold and excitement. From the roof we dropped easily to the railing of the picket fence at the back of the cabin and from there to the ground.

Like two little white wraiths we crept along in the shadow of the fence until we could see the outlines of the brooder house and the pen which enclosed it. There was a moon, but it was thickly hidden by clouds. All we could distinguish was a dark form against the wire netting, a shape that moved restlessly, now away from the pen, now back to it.

As our eyes became accustomed to the darkness, we saw that Leonard was in the pen outside the brooder house, and we questioned each other silently. Surely no deer would come thus to meet an enemy animal that wanted to destroy.

And then, as if in answer to our question, the clouds parted and a pale moon turned the darkness into half-shadowed light. With the sudden effulgence came the weird gleam of four eyes turned in our direction—for our scent had carried to sensitive nostrils. Brother and I, for an instant, caught each other’s hands and gasped.

Then two of the luminous lights vanished, as the slim animal outside the pen sprang away in great bounds that carried her into the shadows beyond our ken—but not before we had recognized the slim, fleeing form for a doe. We knew it was Leonard’s mother, who had found her baby.

We climbed back into our window as silently as we had left it. Brother in his cot, and I in mine, stared up into the darkness, trying to tell ourselves that ours was the right to keep the fawn we had befriended, yet knowing that the mother heart was calling for the little brown deer whom we loved so well. And we knew that in the end we must relinquish our claim—Leonard, after all, belonged to the woods, and the mother heart of the woods was calling.

Because we loved him so, we tried to pretend, the next day, that the deer we had seen was not Leonard’s mother—that it was merely a friend from the woods who had come down by moonlight to pay a nocturnal call. In our hearts, though, we knew better. Leonard all the day was restless; he pricked his ears continually as if waiting for a voice from the forest. We could scarcely coax him out of his distrait mood, even with a double ration of the chewing gum he loved so well.

The next night sleep was impossible. Though we heard nothing, we knew, somehow, that outside Leonard’s pen was a slim brown body pressed close against the wire netting. We rose, at last, and crept out over the roof and down to the ground. The doe was there, as we had foreseen. At our approach she bounded away with only the faintest rustle of leaves and snapping of twigs to mark her progress. But knowing that she would not go far—that she would come back to her baby—Brother and I went quickly forward and opened the door of the pen.

Leonard came to us and thrust his nose against my hand. We knelt on the ground, putting our arms around him, pressing our faces against his soft, brown neck, telling him with tears behind our whispered words that he must go with his mother, that the danger season was passed, and that he was free to go back to his kindred.