Chapter V: Part 5

Beyond the bog an immense ridge of hardwood sweeps upward to the sky line. As we climb it, we cross a succession of delicate trails that seem to move onward at a stealthy fox trot. No wonder that Indians call the maker of such a trail Eleemos the sly one! A dozen foxes have crossed the ridge this morning, probably between dawn and sunrise. That seems too many for one locality until you consult the snow, which says that most of the “sly ones” are heading the same way, and that they are no longer hunting, but moving to a definite goal. In the ledges yonder, which front the sunshine, are probably two or three dens that have been used by generations of foxes; and the cubs, after hunting far afield, come back every morning to pass the day near the familiar place or, it may be, near familiar companions, as young foxes commonly do in regions where they are not disturbed by hunting.

Would you like to see one of these wilderness foxes? Then come, follow this dainty trail. It was made by a young dog fox (his habits betray him), and we shall not be long in finding his day bed.

For a half-mile or more Eleemos holds steadily on his course, stopping once to listen and spring aside when he heard a wood mouse squeak under a fallen pine. See, there is a pinkish tinge in the snow where he dropped a morsel of his small game, and lapped it to the last smell. That does not mean necessarily that Eleemos was very hungry. A fox will stop to catch a mouse when his stomach is so full that you wonder how it can hold any more. One October day, when hunting with a gun, I called a fox by a mouselike squeaking. His stomach was tight as a drum; when I opened it I found that Eleemos had already eaten three or four mice, two birds, some stuff I could not name, and part of a young muskrat.

The fox we are following turns from his straight course and heads diagonally upward toward the ledges. Never mind the trail at your feet now; it will soon begin to twist, because a fox never goes straight to his day bed, and you should see the turn before you come to it. So look far ahead, and go carefully; don’t click the snowshoes or let your clothing scrape on a frozen twig. See, the trail turns sharp to the left, and beyond that to the right. There he is! a flash of ruddy color, as Eleemos slips away from the log on which he was curled up in the sun. He saw us before we saw him, though he was more or less asleep. Had he not waited to learn who was coming, you would not have caught even a glimpse of him. Now he half circles to get our wind, for like most animals he trusts his nose above all other senses. There are fleeting glimpses of fur as he passes an opening or halts behind a windfall that hides all but his ears; then he heads away in swift jumps, his brush quivering nervously, and disappears in thick cover. No use to follow; you will not see that fox again.

The older foxes are mating now, and their trails are amazingly devious. Ordinarily Eleemos leaves a plain story in the snow; but if you attempt to read it at a time when he is cajoling a mate, or in a region where his enemies, the wolves, have just been hunting, you will be at your wits’ end to untangle the puzzle. Aside from his courting or hunting habits, every fox has times or moods when his actions are humanly incomprehensible. Last week, for example, I found the trail of a fox that had taken one of Bob’s wolf baits; but instead of eating it he carried it off in his mouth, taking a very erratic course, and setting the bait down here or there to have another look at it. Once he dropped it under a drooping fir tip, crept completely around the fir, and crouched to watch the thing from hiding, as a kitten plays with a paralyzed mouse. Then he carried it hither and yon over the crookedest trail I ever tried to follow, sometimes trotting quietly, again rushing away as if something were chasing him, now and then squatting to look at his prize as it lay immobile under his nose. Though I had a perfect tracking snow, which showed every footprint of the fox and every resting place of the bait, what with his crisscrosses and back-tracking I could not trace him a straight mile from the starting point, and I left him without the faintest notion of where he was heading or what he would do with his stolen morsel.

That bait, by the way, was an odd thing for any fox to uncover in his familiar woods. It was invented in an idle, lunatic moment after the wolves had refused to go near a variety of natural baits, and immediately it brought forth the fantastic fruits of lunacy by becoming excellent “medicine.” It was the size of a teacup; it was compounded of meat scraps held together by melted lard; just before it hardened, it was rolled in powdered fish skins; then the tail feather of a crow was stuck into it, as a marker on the snow. From beginning to end of the alchemy no human hand touched it to leave a suspicious odor. No doubt the queer but appetizing thing was enough to puzzle any fox, making him cut strange capers; but I was unable to generalize about its effect on a canny beast, because the next fox that took a similar bait not only ate it on the spot, but licked up every crumb and looked about for more.

As we resume our course after seeing Eleemos, we run into another trail, which confuses us by its odd appearance until we read that it was made by a pair of foxes, male and female, that were carefully stepping in each other’s tracks. They came over the ridge one behind the other, not heading for the den, but approaching the lake by endless roundabouts, stopping here or there to leave a tangle of tracks which record some little comedy. Instead of trying to read the puzzle, which is beyond all woodcraft, I sketch a portion of the trail just as the foxes left it,--so:

Sketch of the trail of a pair of foxes coming from _a_, at the right, and going at _b_. Arrow points indicate the direction of the trail; opposite points where a fox went off at a tangent, and returned, stepping carefully in his own tracks. Single lines show where the foxes followed one behind the other; double lines Where they ran side by side. From _a_ to _b_ is about two hundred yards in a straight line. Note that, when the foxes end their crisscross, they head away in the direction they were holding when they first appeared.]

On the farther side of the ridge, as we turn downward to a cedar swamp, we begin to cross other trails, each with a tale to tell if one follows it far enough. But the winter day is too short; we must hurry if we are to learn what the wolves were doing. Here is where a solitary Canada lynx passed, leaving round pugs like enormous cat tracks. His trail gives a curious impression of mingled cunning and stupidity; it is wavering, sneaky, suspicious, like all cat trails. Since it is heading our way, we follow it through the swamp, to see how Upweekis stalks a hare, before climbing the next ridge. Here in a wind-swept spot a few wood mice have ventured up from their tunnels under the snow; and red squirrels--_’sh!_ there’s one now.

Meeko was hidden in a spruce as we approached, and we would never have seen him had he kept still. Being packed full of curiosity, he cannot be quiet, but must run down his tree to see a man, no doubt the first biped of that kind he has ever met. He begins to scold when we stand motionless, telling him nothing, and I answer him by talking squirrel talk between lips and teeth. Meeko listens in amazed silence; his eyes seem to enlarge, to snap fire; then, as if he had discovered something of vast importance, he leaps jabbering from the tree and scurries away in breakneck fashion. At his summons a second squirrel tumbles out from under a log; whereupon I talk more gibberish, and two more come rushing down the hill. From a sugar maple comes a volley of questions, protests, expostulations. A squirrel is up there who thinks he is being neglected; when he can stand his isolation no longer he comes down to join the crowd. That makes five in this small spot, and we hear more voices in the distance, shrill, querulous voices, demanding the news or scolding about it, whatever it may be.

The five visible squirrels are running in erratic circles, drawing nearer to the strange creature that puzzles and irritates them, till one scurries up my leg almost to my waist, where he loses courage and leaps off, scared but chattering. At this they all scatter and climb different trees, stopping at the level of my eyes, where they jump up and down on the same spot, crying _kilch! kilch!_ as they jump. Then, for they are a rattle-headed folk, they forget curiosity and take to chasing or punishing one poor, squealing wretch who, they think, caused all this ado about nothing.

There is life here, you see, and in the snow at your feet is the record of it, more interesting by far than any book of natural history. So with senses all alert we move onward to the rhythmic swish and click of the snowshoes, mile after lonely mile, now over mighty hardwood ridges that probably never before were marked by a man’s footprints, again pushing through dense evergreen thickets to break out on the silent expanse of a caribou barren, a beaver pond, an unnamed lake; and hardly a rood of all this ground but offers a trail to follow and a story to read. Here is good hunting.

As we follow down a ridge in the late afternoon, we get one shock and meet with the only nerve-testing adventure which this big, lonely wilderness can furnish. There is no game in sight; the woods are still, the snow unmarked by any trail; but we are moving cautiously, lifting the snowshoes so as to avoid all noise. Somewhere on that densely wooded hillside across the valley is a deer yard; our eyes are searching far ahead, trying to pick up a moving shadow, when with startling suddenness comes a rumble, a roar, a violent upheaval of snow, and out from underfoot bursts a whirring, booming thing that scares us stiff. Through the flurry of snow the thing looks like a bomb and sounds like an explosion; but--we laugh at our fright--it is only a bird, a grouse, who is making all that commotion. Seksagadagee, Little Thunder-maker, the Indians call him, and now you know why: he has a thunderclap way of startling you at times, and in the spring his hollow drumming has a suggestion of distant thunder. This one, having eaten his fill of birch buds, had swooped into the snow for the night, as grouse often do before the big owls begin to hunt, and I had put one of the snowshoes fairly over him before seeing the hole he made when he went in.

That hole is scarcely noticeable even now, for no sooner was it made than the falling snow almost filled it again. Beneath it is a tunnel, cloven by the bird’s plunge, which slants downward and makes a sharp turn to the left. At the end is, or was, a little chamber where Seksagadagee intended to sleep warm, out of eyeshot of hunting owls, with a blanket of snow all around him.

There he is now, cuddled against the stem of a big spruce, where he is hard to find. He is motionless, like a knob of the tree, but he is looking back alertly to see what startled him. At sight of his plump breast the thought of food replaces natural history; my revolver comes up in line with his head. He will be a rare _bonne bouche_, and the wilderness must feed its wanderers--but wait! Grouse are scarce here, as they are at home this year, having gone through a wet breeding season which killed most of the chicks, after enduring a pest of goshawks that came down from the north and harried the old birds all winter. That is why we have crossed but one grouse track to-day, though we have traversed miles of good cover since sunrise.

It seems a pity to take this lonesome fellow. When you kill a bird he is dead, and makes no more trails. “Well, Little Thunder-maker, you and your poults have had a hard enough rub with hawks and foxes, and these big woods seem to need you. Good-by and good luck!” I call, and we break even. But I was more scared than he was. The bomb paralyzed me for a moment, exploding so suddenly; while his booming flight said that he was master of his own motions.

In the valley beyond, just before entering the deer yard, we cross the trail of the wolves we are seeking,--six powerful brutes that keep together at this point, traveling in single file till they reach the hillside with its tangle of deer paths, when they spread out to sweep the cover from end to end. The air was northerly last night; they are hunting upwind after their usual fashion. We must hurry now; it is growing late, and we have one more story to read from the trails, a story which I wish had not been written. Ah, see that!

Yonder are holes in the snow where two deer (probably a doe and her fawn of last spring) rested near one of the paths of their winter yard; and up the path comes a wolf, stealing along like a cat. That fellow is hunting keenly; but though near enough to smell his game under ordinary conditions, the trail shows that he has no inkling of the two animals only a few yards away. They are hidden by the snow a little to one side of his course, which will take him past them if he keeps on as he is going. Fortunately for the deer, they give out very little scent when resting; and since a wolf does not follow foot scent, he must run almost over them before he knows where they are. See, he has passed without smelling them; they will be safe in another minute if they hold still. There! too bad! too bad! The deer have caught the rank wolf smell, and a single whiff stampedes them. As they jump, the wolf catches the body scent and whirls toward them. Two great bounds bring him into their trail; he is after them in a terrific rush.

Poor deer! it is all up with them now; they have no chance with that grim brute at their heels. Luckily he will kill only one, leaving the other, for deer are not like crowding sheep; they scatter when a wolf attacks the herd. But what is this?

A short run, and the wolf leaves the hot trail and speeds to a distant part of the yard, hurling himself forward by extraordinary bounds, as if life depended on getting somewhere else on the instant.

That is just like a wolf. He has room for only one notion or impulse at a time; when a new notion or a stronger impulse comes into his head, it drives out the other. Chasing his game and gaining on it at every jump, this wolf received some new, imperative summons and rushed to answer it. Following him, we find where another wolf joins his headlong rush; others come sweeping in from either side; the whole pack goes leaping alongside a fresh trail left by a running buck and a single big wolf.

We understand now the uproar that shattered last night’s stillness. It was the trail-cry of a wolf, followed by the pack’s terrifying answer. As a rule, wolves hunt in silence; when they run a deer there is seldom a yelp from beginning to end of the chase. Occasionally, however, when a solitary wolf starts big game and wants help, he utters a peculiar cry; and that cry, coming from the mother wolf who leads the pack or from the old dog wolf who hunts by himself, rouses up a wild impulse, electric, irresistible. At the tingling summons every wolf in the pack leaves his own affairs, even the food he has just caught, and darts away to join the hunt. As the scattered brutes draw together, there is confused, uproarious howling. The running game, thinking only of the wolf behind him, hears a threatening clamor on all sides; he wavers, halts, turns, and the chase is over. Such is the psychology of a wolf’s hunting, as one hears it in the night or reads it from the snowy trail next morning.

The buck is heading for the nearest lake, where running is easier and he has the advantage, since his sharp hoofs cling to the ice where the wolves’ feet slip and slither; but the lake is half a mile away, and he will never reach it. I have followed a score of just such trails as this, and whether in woods or on open ice I have not yet found one which said that a buck could keep ahead of these fleet brutes more than a few minutes.

That is an odd thing, too, since wolves trust to stealth rather than to speed. Though they have tremendous power of running and leaping, they refuse (in their hunting, at least) to keep up a fast clip for any length of time; and in witnessing one of their hunts I had the impression that any buck should be able to get away from them. In deep snow he seems to have quite as much speed as they have; on the ice he has more, and he might win in any kind of footing if he would only put his mind into his running. Unhappily, that is precisely what a white-tailed deer will not or cannot do when a wolf is after him. When a caribou sniffs a wolf he racks away at a slashing pace, keeping it up until he is out of danger, and no wolf on earth can catch him in a fair run; but a deer, after a magnificent burst of speed which shows his power, always stops to look around, to stamp, to threaten, to fidget. At times he gives the impression that, in a dazed sort of way, he is puzzling his head to know what the brutes behind him are doing or why they do not go about their own affairs. It is not the wolf’s extra speed, I think, but the deer’s mental paralysis which makes the chase so short. But enough of psychology! Here is a plain trail to follow.

At this point the buck and the big wolf that jumped him are running evenly, one behind the other, with no great exertion on either side. Farther on the buck slows down, his jumps shorten; then the wolf closes in, the buck turns to fight. See, as he turns, how the pack rolls in behind him, cutting off his escape, while the big wolf holds him in front. Though they have the buck at their mercy, the powerful brutes do not spring upon the game at bay, for that is not a wolf’s way; he watches his chance to kill by stealth, as he hunts by stealth. Here are depressions which show where two wolves crouched within easy-springing distance; behind them is a hole where the buck came down from a jump. He must have leaped clean over the crouching wolves as he broke away for the lake.

The trail is marvelously interesting now; it tells of things that happen in the night, things that few human eyes have ever seen. Some of the pack are racing on either side of the buck, while a single big wolf follows jump for jump at his heels. Here the buck is thrown fairly when the following wolf catches a flying foot; but he is up and away with the same motion that rolls him completely over. There is the story in the snow, as plain as English when you know how to read it. Though a few red drops mark the trail, the buck is hardly scratched; the big wolf has not yet had the chance for which he is watching. Again the buck is thrown, and this time he stays down. There he lies, just as he fell! He was not quick enough on his feet the second time, and the big wolf closed his jaws on the small of the back. That is one way of killing, but not the common way when the approach is from behind. The wolf was looking for a different chance, I think, but took this like a flash when he saw it.

We examine the wound carefully, cutting away the skin so as to see more clearly. Only the deep fang-marks show; the flesh is not eaten here, or even torn; yet under the muscles the bones grate like a broken hinge. The wolves eat a little from the hind quarters, and two of them lap a bit at the throat without tearing it. There is only a slight puncture, under which a few red drops are frozen in a hollow lapped by a wolf’s tongue. So far as we can discover, the only serious wound on the body is that broken back, with its mute testimony to the power of a timber wolf’s snap. The trail shows no sign of quarreling when the wolves feed or when they go off, their hunger satisfied, to roam the woods like lazy dogs.

There is a different kind of hunting ahead now, a hunt to save the deer by shooting their enemies; but the short winter day is almost done, and we must wait for the morrow. You will be told that it is vain to follow a wolf in this densely wooded region; that his senses are so much keener than yours that you will never find him by trailing; that your only chance of killing him is to go abroad at all hours and trust to a chance meeting. One can understand such counsel, born of repeated failure, without quite agreeing with it. Only yesterday I found the fresh kill of a wolf pack in the early morning, and before noon I had trailed the brutes to where they were resting for the day under a ledge. The fascinating thing was that they had no notion I was anywhere near them when the first massive gray head rose above the bushes to sniff suspiciously. Such a chase is out of the question to-day; the light fades, and camp is calling.

The snowshoe trail stretches far behind, giving a sense of comfort in these strange woods, because one cannot well be lost with his own snowshoe slots to guide him. But the back trail is weary miles long, and, judging by our course since morning (which was first southerly, you remember, then northeast), the home lake can hardly be more than an hour or so to westward. No need to look at your compass; there’s the sunset. So into the sunset we go, and after the sunset is the twilight, with one great star like a lamp hung over it.

It is dusk, and numberless stars are glittering in the frosty air, when we break out of the gloomy woods near the foot of the lake. As we move campward, more swiftly now over level going, a long howl rolls down from the hills over which our trail has just been drawn. There is a moment of quiet on nature’s part, of tense listening on ours; then the rally cry of the wolves goes shivering through the night.

That pack, or another one, must have been nearer than we thought. Perhaps they saw us as we hurried down the last slope through deepening shadows. No doubt they will soon be sniffing our trail. In the early evening a young wolf is apt to raise a great howl when he runs across the fresh trail of a man; not because he knows what it is, but for precisely the opposite reason. “Will they follow or chase us?” you ask; which shows that you have been reading wolf stories. “No, these big timber wolves never hunt a man,” I answer, and that answer is true. Nevertheless, your stride lengthens; there is a feeling of lightness in your heels; you are a little nervous, and your scalp is tight; wait a bit.

A fallen pine stub offers an inviting seat under the shore, where we sit down to “rest a pipe,” listening alertly to the wolves, trying to gauge their course for the next hunting,--their hunting and mine, for I shall surely follow them at daybreak. Aha! hear that.

An awful row, wailing, ululating, breaks out from the hill above us, where young wolves of the pack are clamoring over our trail. They have found it, all right. One can easily fancy now that they are coming on the jump; but they are not even headed this way, never fear. They are merely puzzled or excited over a new thing. Later, when they grow quiet, some of them may steal down to have a look at us; but they will take good care that we do not have a look at them. Their howling, especially when heard by a solitary man at night, has a strangely disturbing quality, rasping our civilized nerves like sandpaper. If you are not accustomed to the cry, panic and imaginary terrors are bred of it, and all the foolish stories of wolf ferocity you ever heard come crowding back to demand, “Now will you listen to us? Now will you believe?” No, not a bit. Every ferocious wolf story I ever heard (every American story, at least) is an invention absurdly at variance with the wolf’s character. So we finish the pipe, slowly for discipline, and move campward through the witchery of the wilderness night. The wolves have ceased their howling; the world is intensely still.

A ruddy gleam breaks suddenly from the dark bulk of trees; and Bob, hearing the click of snowshoes, comes out from the fire where he has been keeping supper warm for the greater pleasure of sharing it. “Welcome home, b’y! What luck?” he calls; and something in his voice tells me that he, too, has good news, which waits only an occasion for telling. The occasion comes as we eat leisurely, thankfully, before the glowing birch logs; while night gathers close about our little “Commoosie,” and our fire makes the wilderness home.

TWO ENDS OF A BEAR STORY

In my “Benacadie,” or home camp, one summer was a cow, very much out of focus, that had been led far through the woods, and then, in a lunatic moment, had been rolled into a bateau and rowed across the big lake. That last was a brave adventure, especially when the cow, not knowing why she should be bundled up like a sack, kicked free of the straps, heaved up on wobbly legs, and tried to climb out of the boat; but that is not the comedy.

Not far from “Benacadie,” on the other side of a wooded ridge, was a beaver meadow sparsely overgrown with ash and alder, where the cow was tied out every morning in blue-joint grass up to her eyes. It was fine pasturage, and the cow, being a sensible creature when she was not in a boat, proceeded to make cream of it. Before the season was over she became a pet and, like most pets, something also of a nuisance. She had a genius for freedom and diet; no sooner had she slipped her halter than she would come begging for cake at the kitchen. She would poke her head into open doors at unseemly hours of the night, or _moo_ into open windows at cockcrow in the morning. When she had eaten all she wanted of grass or browse, then her thoughts turned to pastures new, and she would follow any foot-loose man wherever he might be going.

In camp that summer was a cookee and handy man, who had been hired to do whatever anybody else or the cook shied at. It was a loose kind of contract, but Cookee kept his part of it admirably, stopping his whistle to answer our lumberman’s hail of “Cookee here!” and tackling any job with unfailing good humor. Though he got the burnt end of every stick, he believed he was born lucky until the bear chased him; after that he was sure of it. One of his jobs was to mog over to the beaver meadow before sundown, and lead the cow home to her shack for the night. She was a precious old beast, the only one of her kind in the whole region, and because there were bear signs in the woods we were taking no chances. Her owner said she would be worth a hundred dollars if we did not bring her back; and that is a lot of money to put into a bear bait.

Now Cookee, though he had spent a good part of his days in the lumber woods, had never met a bear, and said he never wanted to. After hearing plenty of bear stories, he was mortally afraid of the brutes. One afternoon, just as he approached the tethered cow, he ran head-on to a bear, and had the shock of his life. His first bulgy-eyed glance told him that it was a big bear, a black bear, a ferocious bear with red eyes; his next, that the fearsome beast was creeping over a windfall in his direction. With a yell he turned and streaked for camp. At his first jump he lost his hat, and he maintains that it was no bush but his own rising hair that lifted it off. A few more jumps and he had ripped off most of his buttons, with some of his clothes, as he tore his way through fir or moosewood thickets.

The lucky man had compelling reason for his haste. Even as he turned he heard a loud, unearthly bawling; which sent him up in the air in a convulsive way, as if thrown by a spring. Then came a terrifying _woof-woof!_ a cry with teeth and claws in it. On the heels of that sounded a furious crashing of brush, coming nearer and nearer.

Cookee never turned to look; he had no time. He had started to run, being light shod with moccasins; but now he flew. Great pine logs lay across his trail, with rows of little spruces growing out of their mossy tops; he sailed over them without touching a thing. Till that moment he had not dreamed how he could jump. Where the trail corkscrewed to avoid a thicket, he drove straight through with the directness of a startled grouse, leaving here a bit of skin or there a shred of raiment to mark his course. Every time he broke into open traveling he loosed another yell.

At first he felt himself going like the wind, and no deer ever took the jumps as he took them; but presently, though he was moving faster than ever, his heart sank, his spirit groaned, his legs became leaden legs, and his pace a snail’s pace. With all his striving, which was supermannish, he was not gaining an inch. However he jumped or however he ran, he could not shake off that ferocious thing at his heels. It stuck to him like a leech. No sooner did he hit the ground after one of his kangaroo springs than he heard behind him a thump and a grunt as the creature cleared the same log. Hardly was he out of a thicket with a despairing, “Save me, O Lord, from this bear!” on his lips, than there would follow a nerve-shattering crash as the pursuing beast plunged through the same bushes.

So, wild-eyed and hatless, but thrilling with a new hope, Cookee burst out of the woods, and just below him lay the camp, smoke curling out of its chimney most peacefully. Down the rough trail he came, hurdling stumps like a grasshopper, and almost scared the life out of the cook as he dove with a final yell of “Bear! Bear!” into the kitchen. Clear across the floor he slid, upsetting everything but the stove, and bringing a big dishpan down on the wreck with a mighty clatter. The scared cook had mind enough left to slam the door on the instant. Grabbing one the poker, the other a butcher knife, they rushed to the window to meet the enemy like men. And there, wheezing, stood the old cow with her nose against the door, trying to follow Cookee the rest of the way to safety. He had made that heart-bursting run with the notion that it was the bear making all the noise behind him.

So much of the story we heard from Cookee when we tumbled hastily out of tent or cabin at his wild yelling. The remainder I read from the trail or pieced together from my imagination.

That bear was a young bear, as the trail showed, and he had probably never seen a cow nor a man in his life before. Roaming with him were two others, a yearling and big she-bear; but they were luckily on the farther side of the beaver meadow, where Cookee could not see them. Had he met three bears, no one knows what miracle of jumping might have followed. He says that he would not have run any faster had he met a whole flock of bears, because no man could.

As Mooween came shuffling along, nosing about for grubs and other kickshaws that bears like, a new odor poured suddenly into his nostrils, a startling odor, rich and strong, which made him halt and sniff for possible trouble. Rising on his hind legs to peek over a windfall, he saw a strange beast, big and red and very smelly. Though its head was out of sight in the grass, two pointed horns were thrust about in alarming fashion; though its legs and most of its body were hidden, there was still bulk enough in sight to shame any bear, and it flirted a tail such as no bear ever dreamed of. A most astonishing beast, surely; but was it dangerous? Very cautiously, like any other suspicious bear, Mooween crept over the windfall for a better look and sniff at the monster.

It was at this psychological moment that Cookee appeared and fled. Startled by his yell, the cow threw up her head; and before her was a strange black beast, such as _she_ had never encountered. It was a day of surprises for everybody. The cow was staring in heavy, bovine wonder when a wisp of wind eddied round the meadow; it brought to her nose the rank bear smell, which electrified her like a yelping dog and a swarm of hornets all at once. Though that powerful, wet-doggy odor had never before entered her nostrils, there were ages of memory behind it, dead but not lost ages, during which countless of her ancestors had always curled their tails and fled from unseen bears. Her nerves first and then her heels flew off in a panic. With a bawl that shocked even herself she surged away on her rope, heading straight for camp, giving no heed to obstacles. Suddenly she had the legs of deer, the strength of giants.

The rope was tied to an overturned stump, to which clung a tangle of weathered roots; and it proved light anchorage for heavy weather. For a dozen yards the crazy thing whirled through grass or bushes, waving all its crooked arms like a devilfish. Then it caught fast; the rope snapped, and the cow went tearing up the trail on the heels of Cookee, following her protector jump for jump, as close as she could get without stepping on him.

Meanwhile the bear was running for his life, going twice as fast as any cow or cookee ever went, in the opposite direction. The first human yell had scared him stiff; but the bovine bawl galvanized him into action. Then came the bounding root, whirling mad arms, tearing up the grass, and that petrified him once more. With a _woof-woof!_ which sounded like an explosion, but which only said, “I’m a goner if I don’t light out of here!” he plunged headlong into the windfall over which he had just crept like a shadow, cracking a deal of dead branches as he went through. No more cat-footing for him; the world was too full of strange monsters. Across the meadow and into the big woods he rushed with great smashing of brush, making so much racket himself that he scarcely heard the sound of another flight. Behind him lay an amazing trail: here a hole in a wet spot with mud spattered all about; there a bunch of moss or a sliver of bark ripped from the top of a log; yonder, where the bear struck rising ground, a volley of dirt or chips flung out as he dug his toes into the hillside in frantic haste to get over the horizon.

WHEN BEAVER MEETS OTTER

One rainy day, while crossing a northern lake, I saw a commotion in the water and drove my canoe up to it, so quietly that I was alongside a pair of fighting beasts before they noticed me. And then, to my astonishment, they went on with their fighting.

They were a beaver and an otter, both uncommonly large, and therefore uncommonly shy by all familiar standards. Not by carelessness does any creature come to unwonted size or years in the wilderness. Ordinarily these alert beasts would have vanished before I had even a glimpse of them. Now they were intent on the business in hand, at times locked jowl to throat, again circling for an opening and watching each other so warily that they had eyes for nothing else.

The otter did most of the sparring; at times he made the water boil as he whirled with nervous strokes about his enemy or dove like a flash to get beneath him. The beaver, larger but more clumsy, seemed content with defensive tactics, turning within his own length so as to face the attack. His beady eyes showed a gleam of red; his great cutting teeth were bared in a ferocious grin. Every time the otter flashed under like a dipper duck, the beaver would go down with the oily roll of a porpoise to meet him under water. A violent swirling, a stream of bubbles gurgling and plopping; then the two animals would wabble up to the surface, their teeth fastened in each other’s neck. Down or up, they paid no attention to the huge object floating near them; if they were aware of the canoe, it was but vaguely, their senses being blunted by their battle fury.

As they went down for the third or fourth time I noticed the water reddening around them, showing that it was time for some blessed peacemaker to interfere. Not knowing who started the fight, I pushed the canoe over them impartially. When they came up I splashed them with the paddle, and they seemed to realize for the first time that a stranger, an enemy, was watching them. In a wink they were themselves once more; their native alertness returned; their lunacy was shed like a garment. The beaver sounded on the instant, giving the alarm signal of his tribe as he went down. He is a sociable creature, living by choice with a colony of his fellows, and in him the thought of his own safety is always associated with the safety of others. But the otter, accustomed to roaming alone, whirled without a sound and forged away on the surface, heading for the nearest shore. There I watched him twisting about uneasily, mewing over his wounds, dressing his rumpled fur like a sick cat.

That was the first time I ever learned of the grudge which seems to stand unsettled between beaver and otter. Had it been the last, I would have thought no more of it than of any other odd incident; but several times in later years I found signs of the same incomprehensible feud. Once the evidence took the form of two dead bodies, beaver and otter, floating together in a cove at the mouth of a brook, where the water circled aimlessly round and round. They had killed each other, I judged, since both were badly bitten about the neck. In a grip that neither had the will to break they sank to the bottom and died. There they rested awhile, till with lightened bodies they rose to the surface and went bumping each other around the eddy, as if their quarrel were still on.

Whether the feud were general among all otters and beavers of that region, or whether it was a private animosity kindled by a personal grievance, I had no means of knowing. Occasionally I would hear of a similar quarrel in other places, and every new indication of it puzzled me afresh. Fights being rarely exceptional between animals of different species, I could imagine no reason why a beaver, most inoffensive of the wood folk, should go out of his way to force a quarrel on an animal with whom he has no dealing from one year’s end to another. The two are not what we call natural enemies, meaning by the thoughtless expression that one does not eat the other as food. They belong to different tribes that have nothing in common, not even a cause of enmity. They cannot interfere with each other in the matter of food, since the otter lives on fish, the beaver on bark or water plants, according to season. Moreover, every wild animal avoids meddling with creatures that do not appeal to him momentarily when he is looking for something to eat, and the beaver is exemplary in minding his own business. He lives a secluded kind of life, wandering up or down the wilderness streams with his family all summer, shutting himself up in a narrow prison all winter; and, aside from wolves or lynxes, which gladly eat beaver meat when they have a rare chance, he has not an enemy in his quiet world so long as man keeps out of it.

The otter, also, unlike most of his weasel tribe, is a peaceable and highly interesting beast. He is a fisherman, a very expert fisherman, and finds plenty to eat without interfering with any other. So he is always in good condition, and as full of capers as a kitten. Most animals are fat and playful when they are young, growing lean and sober as they grow old; but an otter is just the opposite, having leanness and sobriety as his portion in infancy. As a kit he spends an uncommonly long time in his dark den; when he comes out he passes many an hour asleep in the water, where he lies comfortably on his back with nose in the air and paws folded on his chest. As he grows older he plays more, thickens up till he is in perfect condition, and ends by becoming the most sportive of all wild creatures. He makes one of the most affectionate of pets; and what with his constant good fare and good humor he has no more reason to quarrel with a beaver than with the man in the moon. Remember that there are no “savage” beasts except in our yards and our imagination; that the wild or natural animal does not fight unless he has a compelling motive, and not even then if he can avoid it. Why then, one must ask, do these two peaceable beasts fall upon each other whenever their trails cross?

We know so little of an animal (the real animal which you meet in the woods, not the labeled skin-and-bones which you find in a book or a museum) that any answer must be guesswork, and the guess varies with the woodsman who makes it. When I put the question to a trapper I know, a silent, observant man who follows his solitary trap line every winter, he answered confidently that the otter carries a grudge around with him, and always begins the quarrel. An otter likes to have his fishing waters to himself; he is intolerant of trespassers, and in this he is like the loon, the kingfisher, the sheldrake, and other natural fishermen, all of whom seem to have definite portions of lake or river which they regard as their own.

Now the beaver is not a fisherman; but at times he interferes sadly with those who must follow that craft for a living. When he builds his dam on a trout stream, for example, it means an end of fishing in that neighborhood. The trout cannot stand his commotions, his towing of logs and alder brush, his perpetual digging of mud or roiling of water. So when an otter, coming to dine where he has caught many a good dinner, finds his favorite pool occupied or spoiled, he is in a mood to pick a bone with the offender. In a word, the otter fights because he has a grudge to settle, and the beaver fights to defend himself. Such is the trapper’s explanation.

When I asked Simmo the Indian about the matter, he said that beaver and otter both have grievances, and that when they meet unexpectedly (they avoid each other for the most part) one is quite as likely to begin hostilities as the other. An otter does not like a beaver because the latter may steal an otter kit and bring it up in his lodge as a drudge or slave. “Otter he _mitcheego_, very cross, ’cause beaver steal-um baby an’ make-um work,” was the way Simmo put it. The beaver is more _mitcheego_, because he often finds an otter monkeying with his dam or spillway. The dam is the danger-point in a beaver’s winter quarters. Any disturbance of it threatens calamity, and a break may be the herald of death; yet a roving otter can never pass a dam without raising a commotion, splashing about in a way to bring the whole beaver family rushing out of their lodge in wild alarm at the fancied danger.

Simmo is right in his facts, his observation of game or fur animals being microscopic in its accuracy; but whether he has the right explanation of the beaver-otter feud is another matter. It is true that occasionally you may find a young otter sharing the summer wanderings of a family of beaver, apparently content with the life and knowing no other. That he was brought up with the beaver kits is evident from his continued association with them; but whether the beavers stole him, as Simmo thinks; or whether he was left motherless and followed them, which is quite natural; or whether some mother beaver sought him out and suckled him, as many mother animals adopt a stranger when deprived of their young,--these are questions which no man can answer. One can observe with his eyes an otter in a beaver lodge; but only imagination can follow the trail by which he came there.

It is true also, on the other side of the feud, that the otter raises a terrible pother at a beaver dam in winter; but he does it unconsciously, I think, and for a natural reason. He is a lover of open water, and in summer he lives largely in the lakes and streams. In winter, the waters being sealed, he must wander over the vast, inhospitable expanse of ice, unable to enter his favorite pools save by some fortunate air hole. At such times he has the habit (which trappers know too well for his safety) of using every little runlet for his amusement. He may be hungry or on a journey or heading for a distant stream with a man on his trail; but he can never pass near a bit of open water without having a plunge in it. In trailing an otter I have repeatedly found where he went out of his way for no other purpose, apparently, than to play a moment in a spring or little brook that was clear of ice, after which he headed diagonally back to his former course and resumed his journey.

So it happens in winter, when an otter passes a beaver dam that has a run of water beneath it or through the spillway, that he always raises a whillilew there, splashing merrily about in the enjoyment of his own sensations. To the beaver, living in his lodge nearby, any sudden splashing of that kind means just one thing, and a fearful thing,--a break in the dam. In the autumn, or while waters are open, a broken dam is easily mended; but in midwinter even a small break may be hopeless, since the beavers cannot get through the ice of their pond to repair the damage. It means that the little opening will soon become a big opening with a flood pouring through it; that the precious store of food-wood will be frozen into a solid mass. Then the beaver family must die of starvation in their lodge, their tunnel and food pile being blocked by ice; or else, if perchance they can find or dig a way through the frozen pond, that they will probably be caught by wolves or lynxes when they forage in the snow-filled woods, where their short legs and heavy bodies make weary traveling.

One can understand, therefore, the beaver’s alarm at any disturbance of water in his spillway. Day after day he listens to its musical flow as to a quiet tune; when he falls asleep his ears drink in the melody as a sweet lullaby, telling him that all is well. Suddenly comes a pause, a break in the tune, and then a violent splashing. Down under the ice he comes, his family following at his heels, to go rushing up and down the length of the dam, peering about in the underwater gloom, trying to locate the danger. Remember that the beaver is on the upper or pond-side of the dam, while the splashing comes from the lower side, whither he cannot come because of the roof of ice over his head. And when, after much searching and tribulation, he learns that the alarm is needless, that the disturbance is caused by a careless otter amusing himself or monkeying with matters that may become dangerous--well, then he is as mad as anybody else would be; and he will remember his grievance when next he meets the cause of it.

Such is Simmo’s explanation of one little comedy of errors among the wood folk. A dog or an Indian never forgets an injury, and why should not a beaver be like a dog at least? So he reasons, and I cannot answer him. He knows more about wild animals than I shall ever learn.

I have a notion, however, that there may be a better reason for the standing quarrel, a reason suggested by one lucky find in a beaver lodge after I had searched for it many years. Briefly, the notion is (and it looks odd when one puts it in cold ink) that the otter sometimes makes mockery of the beaver’s housekeeping by leaving a smelly mess of fish in a lodge that is wonderfully clean, under the noses of animals that abominate all evil smells. To appreciate the humor of such an explanation we must know how the two animals live during the long northern winter.

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For five or six months every year, from November to April, the beaver is virtually a prisoner in his winter lodge. It is a small domicile, and as six or eight beavers may occupy the one, low living room, it is fortunate that they instinctively keep it very clean, and that the aroma of musk or castor fills it at all times with penetrating, antiseptic odors.