Chapter VI: Part 6

It is early autumn when a beaver family begins to think of the lodge as of a home; not an old home, but a new one, for Hamoosabik is strangely typical of America in that he is forever moving somewhere else or building a new house. All summer long the beavers lead a nomad life, wandering up or down the wilderness streams on endless exploration; but when nights have a warning chill, and days grow mellow as ripened fruit, then the heads of the family begin to look about for a place to spend the winter. There is nothing haphazard in the location; a beaver never settles on a place for winter quarters until by examination he is assured of three things: an ample food supply, a storehouse in which to keep it, and a dry lodge in which to live in comfort and security. Because he must have all these, with solitude or remoteness, you may search long in beaver land before you find where the animals have settled.

The first need of the family will be plenty of good food, and to secure that they explore the neighboring woods until they find a grove of poplars, of young poplars with tender bark. One might think that, having found their food, they would begin at once to cut and gather it; but such is not the beaver’s way. With him all things must be done not only decently, but in order. Before a beaver touches his selected trees, he examines the stream carefully to decide where he will put them; and when that matter is settled he will pick out a convenient spot for his house. As he intends to raise the water in the stream, which is too low for his purpose, and as rising water must overflow its banks, he commonly locates his house some distance back from the shore. Then, as he will be working here many days before his house is ready, or even begun, he proceeds quickly to dig three or four refuge burrows. And very cunning burrows they are, starting in hidden places near the bottom of the stream, slanting upward through the bank, and ending in a den under a tree’s roots above the flood level. He will sleep in these dens while preparing his permanent quarters; in winter he will use them as hiding places should he be driven out of his lodge.

The next important matter is a storehouse beyond reach of frost, and the only sure place for that is under water. The stream is shallow; it might easily be frozen to the bottom; but the beaver overcomes the difficulty by going downstream a little way and building a dam of logs, brush, stones and miscellaneous litter. The dam is intended to provide an artificial pond; the double object of the pond is to furnish a playground and a pool for storage, the one wide enough for winter exercise, the other deep enough to give assurance that ice can never form to the bottom of it and grip the food which is to be kept there. So we think, viewing the finished dam and seeing it serve its purpose; what the beaver thinks when he builds it, only a beaver might tell.

While the pond is filling slowly, Hamoosabik gathers his food-wood. First he fells a large number of trees by cutting around the butts with his teeth; then he trims the branches into convenient lengths, drags or rolls them to the nearest water, and floats them down to his storehouse, where he sinks them in a loose pile on the bottom. Green wood sinks easily, as a rule; if the beaver’s sticks have a tendency to bob up to the surface, where they would be frozen into the ice, he keeps them down by pressing one end into the mud. If he can use flowing water for transportation, he always does so; but he will not hesitate to tow his food-wood across a lake, if need be, or to dig a canal if his poplars stand some distance back from the water. He works by night for the most part, remaining hidden in one of his burrows by day. Any dull or rainy afternoon may bring him out; and should the weather turn severe, threatening to freeze his pond or canal before he is ready for winter, he will work day and night without rest. There will be time for sleeping when he has nothing else to do.

When the pile of food-wood grows to goodly size, and while younger members of the family are nightly adding to it, the old beavers prepare their winter lodge on the shore. Their first care, curiously enough, is for a cellarway or tunnel, which leads from the middle of the lodge ground down through the bank, and emerges at the bottom of the pond, convenient to the food pile.

Around the upper or land end of this tunnel they build their house, a solid structure from four to eight feet high, and six to twenty feet in diameter. The height depends on the expected rise of water in the spring, since one room at least must always be above high-water mark. The size varies with the number of occupants, a little lodge for a pair of beavers just starting housekeeping, and a big house for a large family. The latter usually consists of an old pair, with some “kit” beavers recently arrived in the wilderness, and half a dozen or more yearlings and two-year-olds. The materials of the lodge are brush, grass and mud, and the interior is arranged with a view to comfort and security. For safety against enemies the beavers depend on thick walls; for comfort two rooms are provided, a lower entrance hall and an upper living room, with an inclined passage or stairway between.[2]

Just over the tunnel, perhaps a foot above the level of the ground, is a small chamber which serves as the entrance hall and dining-room of the lodge. Here the beavers shake the water from their hairy outer coats when they emerge from the tunnel (the inner coat of fur is always dry), and here they eat their meals. The hard-packed floor of this hall invariably slants upward from the mouth of the tunnel, and the evident purpose is to allow the water to drain away more easily.

From one end of the hall a stairway, just big enough for a single beaver at a time, mounts through the middle of the lodge to the living room above. Sometimes this central passage is the guiding part of the building plan, the lodge being constructed around it; but quite as often the material is piled in a solid mass, and hall and stairway are then cut out from beneath, as a continuation of the tunnel from the pond. Around the top of the stairway, just under where the roof is to be, runs a circular bench or gallery, which is covered deep with dry grass or shredded wood. This bench forms the floor of the living room; on it each member of the family will have his separate nest, from which he can slip into the central opening and down the stairway without disturbing any other beaver.

The bench is then roofed over, making a circular room from four to eight feet in diameter, with an arched ceiling just high enough to enable a beaver to move around without bumping his head. A small ventilator is left among the poles that project through the roof, and the structure is covered to a thickness of two feet with grass, sods, and rushes, all mixed with mud from the pond bottom. This last is the beaver’s mortar, and the frost hardens it to his purpose.

Like most other buildings, whether of bird or beast or man, the completed house receives a final “touch,” and a very suggestive one; but whether Hamoosabik adds it consciously, with purpose of concealment, who can say? When the lodge is finished so far as comfort and safety are involved, the beaver throws over it a litter of weatherbeaten sticks, making it appear like a pile of drift stuff cast up by winds or high waters. With nights of sharp frost the lodge walls harden, becoming finally so granite-like that no enemy can break in, and the beaver himself cannot gnaw a way out. The only door left him is the opening in the middle of his living room, which leads down the stairway through hall and tunnel, and emerges under five or six feet of water at the bottom of the pond.

While all this building is going on, the ice forms thicker and thicker, and presently the beaver is locked in until waters are open once more, and returning birds are filling the silent woods with melody. Meanwhile he will spend the greater part of the time in his upper living room, and for exercise will pass a few pleasant hours every day in swimming about his pond with its roof of ice. Farther he cannot go, and even here his journeys must be short; since there is no air under the ice, he must return to his lodge or enter one of his refuge burrows every time he wants to breathe. When hungry he slips down through the tunnel to the food pile, takes a stick up to his hall, and there eats the bark to the last scrap. Then he carries the peeled stick back to the pond, where it is thrown aside with a growing multitude that have no more interest for the beaver family; unless, perchance, they use the pond another season. In that event the peeled sticks, no longer glistening white, but sodden brown, may be used to repair the dam or disguise the new lodge.

That the beaver wearies of his diet of water-soaked bark is evident from the fact that he explores every inch of his pond for roots of the yellow lily; from this also, that if you cut a hole in the ice and push in a pole of fresh willow or “popple” or moosewood, he will find it within the hour and carry it away. Should you hold the pole, keeping very still and throwing a blanket over the air hole to exclude the light, he will attempt to pull it out of your hand. And if you stick one end deep in the mud, leaving the upper end frozen fast in the ice, he will promptly cut it in two places, one just above the bottom, the other just below the ice, and so carry the pole away to his dining-room.

The only variation of this winter-existence comes when there is an open spring-hole in the pond or a bit of swift water at the inlet. The imprisoned beavers make glad use of such an opening, which they may have to reach by a long swim under the ice. They come every day to play in the free water or to sit erect beside it, sunning themselves by the hour on pleasant days, combing their fine fur meanwhile, or coaxing a snarl out of it, using for the latter purpose the peculiar split claw which every beaver carries on one of his hind toes.

Such hermits are happy fellows, lucky above the majority of beavers, who have no sunlit playground in winter; but they enjoy themselves circumspectly, knowing the danger of being caught in the open. At the slightest alarm, the faint click of snowshoes or a breath of your scent drifting downwind, every beaver disappears under the ice, giving the danger signal by slapping his broad tail on the water as he goes down; and when you hear them again they will be creeping into the living room of the lodge. Rap the roof sharply, after approaching on silent feet, and you hear _plop! plop! plop!_ as the beavers drop into their tunnel one after another. Go out on the ice now, and hammer it with your ax. If your ears are keen, you may hear a faint rumble or gurgling of water as some of the family return to their lodge, while others enter refuge burrows in the bank. So they are driven back and forth; but spare them any prolonged fright, for they are the most inoffensive little prisoners in the wilderness.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Keeonekh the otter is a foot-loose creature, a rambler, an _erdstappa_ or earth-hitter, as our forbears called one with a gift for roaming. He has the whole wilderness for a hermitage; yet his world is only as big as he makes it. Like most wild creatures, he has definite limits beyond which he rarely passes, and then only when food fails in his familiar district. The waters are sealed, to be sure; but every large lake has an air hole or two, and swift streams offer plenty of open places. When fishing for his dinner Keeonekh holds close to one opening, coming out where he went in; but when on a journey he may enter one air hole and emerge at another so far away that you cannot see him. And this because he has learned the curious trick of breathing under the ice, where another animal must quickly drown.

That trick is simple enough, but few besides Keeonekh have mastered it. When he is far from an opening and must have fresh air, he presses up against the under surface of the ice and slowly expels his breath, which forms a great bubble around his nose. He leaves it there a moment, till it is purified by contact with water on one side and ice on the other; then he takes it back into his lungs and goes on refreshed. He may reach an opening on the next tack, where you hear him blow out his breath with a long _wheeeef_ of satisfaction; if not, he rises against the ice once more and repeats his extraordinary performance.

An otter travels widely in winter, following a definite circuit and returning at fairly regular intervals. The circuit may be a dozen miles in diameter, much wider than a deer’s, but not so wide as a wolf’s, and he covers it by his own trails from lake to lake. These commonly follow direct lines, reaching their objective by the easiest route; but if there is a bit of open water on the way, Keeonekh must turn aside for a splash in it; or if there is a steep hill or bank anywhere near, he will climb up one side for the sake of sliding down the other. Even on level ground he proceeds in merry fashion, taking two or three swift jumps and throwing himself forward for a slide on his belly. Part of his traveling seems to be done in mere enjoyment of change, of motion, of seeing the country; another part is intended to keep him acquainted with places where the best fish are wintering. With that difficult matter he is enviably familiar; if ever you find where an otter fishes regularly, you may confidently drop your minnow there.

Keeonekh is a dainty feeder, and uncommonly notional for a beast. He will pass by a score of watery chub if he knows where to expect a fat trout; he will ignore suckers for a white perch, or a coarse-fleshed bass for a sweet eel. He will not touch any fish a second time, though he may have left the greater part of it; and he will not look at a dead fish or at bait or carrion of any kind. Only a fresh fish, a living fish, appeals to him, and he may catch this by stealth or in whirlwind fashion, according to circumstance or his mood of the moment.

Sometimes his approach is so shadowy, so arrow-like, that a somnolent trout is gripped before he is aware that danger is near. Again, a fish darts away in alarm, and Keeonekh follows with silent, powerful thrusts of his webbed forefeet, swinging his body left or right by aid of his muscular tail as a rudder. So he follows every turn of his prey, and catches it at last by sheer skill and endurance. He is a wonderful fisherman, only Hukweem the loon comparing with him in this respect; and the loon is inferior in that he chases little fish, while Keeonekh always picks a big one. When you find the remnant of his feeding, one of your surprises may be this: you have fished the same lake or stream, using your best skill and most delicate tackle; but the head and tail which Keeonekh leaves behind him bespeak a better fish than ever you saw caught here.

All that is simple enough in summer, when waters are open and flooded with light; but when a blanket of ice covers the lake an otter must be more alert, keener of eye and quicker of snap, if he is to keep in good condition by what he catches. The fish are now in hidden places, deep and inconvenient; they eat little or nothing, and they lie so quiet in the underwater gloom that one must be very near to distinguish them from other shadows. Then, when Keeonekh catches a fish under the ice, he cannot breathe from an air bubble, as he does when he is free, because the slippery thing in his mouth interferes with the delicate performance. Neither can he dispose of his fish where he is, but must get it quickly to the nearest air hole. Even there he cannot or will not eat in the water, but invariably takes his catch out on the ice, where he leaves record of his feeding in the shape of bones or scales or, it may be, a pound or two of excellent fish, since he often catches a bigger one than he can eat. When you find such signs, be sure there is good angling nearby. An otter never carries a fish beyond the spot where he lands it.

Keeonekh does most of his winter fishing in half-open streams, where it is easy to bring his catch out on the bank, and where he has hidden dining rooms under shelves of ice left by falling water. For lake fishing he uses a spring-hole or the open mouth of a brook; and should you see him enter such a place, you may confidently look for him to come out again, unless he happened to see you first. If not alarmed, he makes a swift circuit of the fishing grounds, and presently you see his glistening head shoot up in the opening. The next instant he is out on the ice, humping his back over his catch, and sometimes mewing to himself in a pleased kind of way. If he finds nothing in his rapid search, you may know it by his _wheeeef!_ as his head appears; for he cannot whistle like that while his mouth is full. Then he will either wait awhile by the opening and try again, or else hurry away to another fishing ground.

If the lake be small and frozen solidly from shore to shore, Keeonekh passes over it indifferently; it may hold many good fish, but there is no way for him to enter and catch them. Should the ice have a single opening, such as one often finds at the inlet of a lake, you may have a puzzling question to answer when you see an otter go into it, and wait hour after hour without seeing him come out again.

Once, when I first began to follow the winter trails, I saw an animal swim rapidly across a pool of open water and disappear under the ice. He was too far away to name him with certainty; but the electric motion, the broad head without visible ears, the following bits of fur with a handbreadth of water showing between back and tail,--all these proclaimed an otter, because no other creature swims in just that way. He had not seen me; I was luckily quiet when he passed, and the breeze was in my favor. Very confidently I watched for him to reappear, thinking I would take his fine skin back to camp. I knew the pond well; it had no other opening, and the inlet was frozen for a mile or more above the spring-hole. Of a surety, therefore, my game must show itself again, since no animal can live for any length of time under the ice.

Ten minutes ran away, while I marveled at an otter’s power of holding his breath. An hour passed, a time of increasing bewilderment, and no life stirred in the black water, which glimmered like a pool of ink in its setting of ice and snow. The afternoon went to join all other wasted afternoons; I began to doubt what I had seen, until I crossed the inlet and found Keeonekh’s trail under the shore, which made me hide and watch once more. Evening came; owls hooted in the woods; a storm wind began to moan, and still no otter. When it grew too dark to see anything clearly I went home.

Two or three inches of snow fell that night. At daybreak I was back at the inlet, and there were the fresh tracks of my otter,--leisurely, exasperating tracks, which emerged from the spring-hole as if there were no call to hurry, and headed down the pond on a journey of which I never found the end. He had come out, just as I expected; but where had he been?

Could you follow an otter in such a place, you might see him rout out a fish, catch it after a breathless chase, and speed away to the nearest place for eating it. That place may be a den of his own in the bank, or a beaver’s tunnel under the lodge, or a cave under a hummock where the expanding ice crowds up over a half-submerged rock, making a roomy air-chamber in which otter, mink or muskrat may eat or rest in perfect security. The rock offers them a floor, and the roof of ice hides them from all prying eyes. It is in such places, I think, that Keeonekh sometimes meets the beaver and makes an enemy of him.

* * * * *

The winter comedy, as one follows it in imagination, may be something like this. Keeonekh enters a lake that the beavers are using for winter quarters, and glides like a shadow over the fishing grounds. In deep water beyond the inlet he jumps his game, and follows it hither and yon through the gloom under the ice. The chase may take him far from the opening; but for that he has no concern, feeling sure of himself and of his locality. It is his business to know every den and air hole in the lake, as it is a wolf’s business to know every rabbit swamp and deer yard within forty miles, since his life may at any moment depend on knowing just such things. Almost out of breath, he grips his fish and heads swiftly for the nearest breathing place, coming out above water in the beavers’ tunnel, and climbing instantly into the lower room.

The beavers, hearing something in their tunnel, something that comes with a rush, naturally scramble into their upper room to get away from it. They are not looking for trouble; like all other wood folk, they are keen to avoid it. After listening a moment, one big beaver comes cautiously down the passage; but before he can get into his hall Keeonekh has blocked the way.

Now an otter always eats where he lands his catch. He never carries a burden on land; and should you surprise him with a fish, he drops it and escapes, knowing that he can catch another. But he has no fear of the beaver, and so humps his back to eat in Hamoosabik’s hall, unmindful of angry muttering in the passageway above, or of beady eyes that glare down on this mannerless barbarian who brings smelly fish into a house that is very clean.

The smell is the worst feature of the outrage, I think, since it drowns the odor of musk, in which beavers delight. They are curious creatures in this respect; though they carry musk with them, and their lodge is at all times filled with its aroma, they will yet go out of their way for a fresh sniff of the delicacy. For most other odors they have strong aversion. You can drive them from their lodge, for example, or away from any dam they are building (a thing which must be done sometimes, when they flood a trail you are using), by scattering the contents of a carbide lamp or other strong-smelling stuff where they must pass over it or get it on their feet.

Here then is a lively situation, Keeonekh eating fish not only in the house, but under the very noses of beavers that cannot abide a fishy smell. Nor can they stop the nuisance, however angry they may be. A grown otter is a match for any single beaver; a downward rush of the whole family is impossible, because there is room in the passage for only one beaver at a time, and the passage is blocked by Keeonekh with a chip on his shoulder. Like other beasts, he is in fighting mood when his dinner is threatened. So he eats his fish where he lands it, leaving slime, scales, fragments of skin or flesh, an abominable mess, in the beavers’ hallway; and their first concern when he departs is to be rid of what he leaves behind him. Throw it out they cannot, there being no door or window to the lodge; their only way is to take the offensive stuff in their teeth and carry it through the underwater tunnel. One can imagine their emotions as they clean up the litter, and what they would like to do to the wretch who left it.

Keeonekh is far away by the time the lodge is again shipshape, and the beavers can never overtake him. He is faster at swimming than they are. Should they follow as far as the opening by which he entered the lake, there they must halt and turn back. They dare not venture afield in winter, while otters travel boldly in the open at any season.

* * * * *

We have followed the little comedy imaginatively thus far, but not without certain signs or hints that give our fancy the right direction. One day, full twenty years after witnessing the beaver-otter fight, Simmo and I stood beside a beaver lodge that the owners had abandoned for their summer roving. The lake was a natural one, not an artificial pond made by a beaver dam, and in the deeper water fish were still fairly plentiful. The beavers had not yet driven them away. Peering curiously into the still water under the bank on which the lodge stood, I noticed some bones, gill covers and other fishy litter, which Simmo thought was the refuse left by an otter. At first that seemed very queer, since an otter always eats on land, and the refuse was scattered on the bottom of the lake near an outlet of the beavers’ tunnel. When we laid the lodge open to examine its interior arrangement, the Indian pointed to some dried fish scales in crevices of the beavers’ hallway.

“Look,” he said. “Oh, by cosh, look! Dat cheeky hotter come in here las’ winter, an’ eat-um fish in beaver’s house, right under hees nose.”

And that, if one were guessing at animal motives, may suggest a reason why one beaver, at least, will have a grudge to settle when he meets a certain otter in the open. As Simmo says, “By cosh, now, no wonder he mad w’en he meet-um!”

A NIGHT BEWITCHED

Silence is the rule of the woods at night, of all woods and all proper nights, I think; but like other rules it has startling exceptions. Hidden in the voluminous records of Alexander von Humboldt is a picture of night in a tropical forest which stays in the memory like a bad dream. As I recall the matter, after many years, the scientist was awakened by a horrible uproar,--squeals, grunts of terror, a rumbling snarl which broke into the roar of a charging beast. Then came a violent crashing, as tapirs dashed away with a jaguar at their heels, and instantly the forest became pandemonium. Parrots screeched, monkeys gibbered and barked, a multitude of unnamed birds or beasts added each his scream or howl to the jungle chorus of fear.

To read of such nocturnal alarm was, for a certain small boy, at least, to dream and shiver over it afterward, as one dreamed in a cold sweat of Hugo’s man, in _Toilers of the Sea_, who went down to a gloomy wreck in which lurked a devilfish, and “just then he felt himself seized by one foot.” I did not know, and no truthful person thought to tell me, that the alleged savage jungle is in reality quite peaceful; that its killing is more strictly limited by the need of food than that of a modern packing house, or that women and children go nightly to sleep amid its fancied horrors with a greater sense of security than we enjoy behind bolted doors.

Humboldt’s description is undoubtedly true of some one night, or part of a night; but it gives a wrong impression that such a night is typical of the South American or any other forest. It errs also, and grievously, in the assumption that nocturnal cries are indicative of terror; for terror is an emotion which we carry with us into strange woods at night, and which we are apt to read into any sound we hear, even when the sound voices only anger or warning or animal excitement. Of the tropics I have no personal experience; but I have questioned men who have spent time enough in the jungle to become familiar with it, and they agree that in the early part of the night the forest often resounds to a thrilling outcry; and that this outcry, if one be not himself frightened by it, has a defiant or exultant ring, as when dogs voice challenge or applause at another dog’s barking. Then, as birds settle to sleep and beasts take up their roaming, the jungle becomes profoundly still, and remains so till the dawn, when full-fed brutes begin to grunt or bark as they seek their coverts, and birds call jubilantly from tree to tree as they welcome a new day.

That is certainly true of our northern forests, where a few wild creatures lift their voices, joyously, it seems to me, in the evening twilight, but where “the dead vast and middle of the night” passes in a silence that is almost painful to human ears. Yet even the silent North will sometimes be disturbed, and echoes that have long slept will rouse up to answer a wild calling from lake or ridge or lonely beaver meadow. Once in a while comes a night (in early autumn, as a rule, and at a time of full moon) when birds and beasts are strangely restless, when you meet them in unexpected places or hear them calling everywhere. No explanation of the phenomenon occurs to me, though I have observed it repeatedly, and have noticed that owls cry warning of it before sundown.

Owls have several distinct calls, by the way, and of all forest sounds their voices are perhaps the hardest to interpret. A week or a month may pass over your camp while the owls hold a league of silence, not a sound being heard from them by night or day. Then comes a subtle change in the air, a weather change it may be, and suddenly there are hootings, groanings, maniacal yellings in every direction. The uncanny creatures have their rumpus to themselves, one answering another, while other wood folk go their quiet ways through the dusk without a sign that they are touched by the disturbance. But at last comes an evening when something creeps into the owl’s voice that was not there before; no sooner does he begin to hoot than every bird or beast that hears must lift his head to cry answer. At such times even the taciturn bears will break their long silence, and go whooping through the woods in obedience to some weird impulse which the owl was first to feel.

Thus it befell on one occasion, when the owls of a countryside were calling, that a black bear suddenly began to whoop in the woods over against my tenting place; and the curious thing was that he was immediately answered by others, their wild cries sounding with clocklike regularity at about three-minute intervals. Till then I had not seen or heard a bear, though I had searched for them in places where their signs were plentiful; but that is precisely what one should expect, since Mooween is careful to keep out of your way, and is one of the least talkative creatures in the wilderness. When you stumble upon him at an unguarded moment he is apt to loose an explosive _ough-woof!_ as he jumps for cover; or when you frighten a mother bear away from her cubs you may hear her circling at a distance, uttering a sharp _wheeee-oo!_ again and again; but with these natural exceptions Mooween speaks so seldom that many woodsmen have never heard him. Others confuse his rare call with that of the barred owl, a bird that has half a dozen different cries besides his familiar _Who-cooks-for-you? Who-cooks-for-you?_

On this night, however, my taciturn bears became almost vociferous; in the space of an hour I heard more bear talk than one ordinarily hears in an entire season. They were bold, too, surprisingly bold, when I met three of them in a little opening not far from my tent. I had heard these bears coming and, as I hurried to head them off, had made more noise than I liked, not being able to see my footing. Far from being frightened by the disturbance, they seemed to be waiting in the opening to see what I was. The moment I appeared they rose on their hind legs, which stopped me in my tracks. Not quite satisfied, they shambled uneasily to and fro, occasionally sitting up for another look; and one of them, a little fellow, had a funny way of wagging his forepaws rapidly up and down in front of his chest. When they had enough of me, instead of rushing off headlong with crash of brush and bumping of logs, as bears commonly go when they meet a man, they melted into the woods like so many shadows.

The caribou is another silent beast that finds his voice only on rare occasions, in response to some urge that I do not yet understand. I had met scores of the animals in winter, a few also in summer; but, with the exception of one low call from a doe to her fawn, I had never heard a word of caribou talk till one early-autumn night, when a herd broke silence all together. On that night I lay broad awake in my tent, unable to sleep or to find a reason for my sleeplessness. Some subtle excitement was afoot; loons were crying it to the woods, owls crying it back to the lake; so presently I made my way to an old lumber road, thinking I would have a look at a chain of barrens under the moonlight. These barrens (flat, treeless bogs surrounded by dense forest) are lonely places at any time. By night, especially when the moon floods them with pale light, and mists wave over them, and little shrouded larches that stand on their edges seem to creep and quiver, they are the epitome of all solitude.

As I crossed the first barren, making no sound on the thick carpet of moss, a band of caribou filed out of the woods as if on a journey. The strange thing to me was, not the excitement of the band or the complete absence of fear, but that these silent brutes were now all talking, as wild geese talk to one another continually in flight. Though they must have seen me plainly, for I was very near, they passed without paying me the slightest attention; all but the big bull, who came at the end of the procession, and who evidently thought it was his business to challenge that motionless figure standing out on the empty bog. He stopped short, came a step toward me, stopped again, and I looked for a rare bit of bluffing. When you stand motionless near a band of caribou in a snowstorm, and they cannot tell what you are because they do not trust their eyes and you are to leeward of their keen noses, the bulls will sometimes rear up on their hind legs, looking enormously threatening as they paw the air with their broad forefeet. In this startling demonstration the woodland caribou differs, I think, from all other members of the deer family. But here the big bull was content to present his antlers, shaking them fiercely in my direction. Getting no answer to his challenge, not even a motion, he followed grunting after his band; and I had the impression that he was glad to go, having saved his face by doing what was expected of him.

I was on my way to the next barren when, from a point of woods on my left, a spikehorn bull came out on the trot, making me freeze in my tracks once more. Whether he mistook me for one of his tribe or was a bit moonstruck, as every other creature seemed to be that night, I could not tell. He ran up as if he had been expecting me, and thrust his nose within a yard of my face, so near that I saw his eyes glow like foxfire in the moonlight; then without a word he brushed past and ran away down the caribou trail.

I had taken only a few steps after the spikehorn left me, and was about to enter the woods to cross to the next barren, when a vixen squalled out loudly, as a cat squalls when you step on her tail. Instantly three or four young foxes, her cubs, undoubtedly, rushed out and scurried all over the trail at my feet. From the woods came a lively outcry, a petulant, bagpipey droning; but it was some time before the cubs paid enough attention to it to dive headlong for cover. And then I heard squalls of a different tenor, one angry, another protesting, as if some youngster were getting nipped for his heedlessness.

Such nights come very rarely, perhaps once in a long season of watching wild animals; and always they affect a man queerly, as if some lunacy were abroad, and he must share it with other natural creatures. I remember vividly one night, many years ago, so different from all others that it seemed to do violence to my experience of the quiet wilderness. The time was September, and the place a wild lake which is still, I am told, the best big-game region in New Brunswick. It was then an unhunted solitude.

During the day I had been ranging the woods, and had noticed that flocking birds were acting strangely, as chickens grow erratic when the barometer is rapidly falling. Yet no storm threatened; the weather, as I remember it, had been for some days unusually brilliant. Late in the afternoon, as I was catching a supper of trout at the inlet of the lake, Kook’skoos the horned owl suddenly started a racket; not his deep hunting call, but an uncanny _hoo-hooing_ up and down the scale, as if he were possessed by some crazy notion. He was answered by others of his kind here or there; and when I stalked the nearest, to find out what was afoot, he upset all my notions of the solemn birds without giving me even a hint of answer to my question. Instead of perching on the top of a stub so as to look like a part of it, as horned owls habitually do, he was hopping up and down a horizontal branch, as if dancing a _pas seul_. Instead of holding perfectly still save for a vibration of the throat when he sent forth his call, as I had often seen him, he would swoop almost to the ground and whirl about in fantastic circles, at the same time uttering a rapid, guttural note, which ended in a wild yell as he sailed back to his perch.

When I reached camp after sundown, the excitement seemed to have spread widely to others. Kupkawis the barred owl was then going about demanding, _Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?_ and breaking out in wild clack-clacking before anybody could answer him.

By that time there was a tingle in the air, such as one feels before an electrical storm. Simmo, my smoky companion, was uneasy. I noticed that his eyes had no rest, that they were searching lake or sky or somber forest continually; but I did not question him, having learned to hold my tongue with an Indian; nor did I know enough about the woods to expect anything unusual. Besides, my thoughts were mostly on moose just then. I had found a pond hidden away among low hills and caribou bogs, its shores pitted with moose tracks, among which the slots of a monster bull appealed to my imagination. I intended to call him that night, and had carefully spotted the trail I must follow. When I told Simmo, who did not like my nocturnal rambles, he broke silence to advise me soberly.

“Now I goin’ tell you one t’ing: bes’ don’t go,” he said. “An’ if you do go, bes’ look out; be careful. Moose not hunted here, like down settlement way. I hear-um bull two, t’ree time, an’ he _mitcheego_, very cross. He come quick to-night if you call-um, an’ he don’t ’fraid of not’ing.”

No sooner was twilight come than a wild calling began, and the woods were as near to noisy as I shall ever hear them. Loons were yelling, owls hooting, ducks quacking, and foxes yapping in all directions. At frequent intervals came the plaint of a black bear, a rare cry, and the loneliest you will ever hear in the night. When the moon rose in a marvelously clear sky I crossed the lake and entered the dim trail that led to my moose pond.

I was following the trail cautiously, feeling my way between a cedar swamp and a burnt hillside, when just ahead of me rang out a screech that seemed to split the air. It was an appalling sound in that lonely place; my skin wrinkled under it, like a dog’s skin under the lash. Again it sounded, making me cringe, though I was waiting for it. It was answered from the hill, and I began to suspect the creature that made it when a caterwauling began which made night hideous. The beasts were approaching each other slowly, screeching as they went, when up through the cedar swamp came a snarling, yowling, unseen thing that sped along the ground with the rush of an arrow. The three lynxes flew together in a rowdydow that spoke of tearing one another to ribbons; yet they were not fighting at all, I think, for when I crept near I could hear no sound of struggle, but only a fiendish yelling. When the rumpus seemed almost under my nose it ceased abruptly; there was no lynx in sight, nor any moving shadow to say what had become of them.

At any ordinary time such an outcry seems to stun the wilderness into deeper silence; but now it had an opposite effect, as if it were an alarm for which wild ears had been waiting. In the dark swamp, on the hillside flooded with pale light, even in the air overhead, alert creatures were moving or crying in nameless excitement. As I went on, following the dim trail, the woods on either side seemed alive with rustlings, some of which were surely not imaginary. Wood mice were abroad, scores of them, it seemed, for the moonlight caught the white edges of their scurrying tails; and within a short space I passed four or five porcupines. Every one of the prickly fellows had climbed to the top of a slender tree, and was perched there, swaying and whining. Birds that sleep by night were peeping or stirring in the shadows. Herons and bitterns, which are always restless when the moon shines, were circling by threes or fours over every lake and bog; while questing individuals winged their way from one group to another, as if seeking or bearing strange news.

Pausing under one of these groups, I would hear the hoarse _kruk-kruk_ of a blue heron drawing nearer, nearer. Suddenly from the air above would come a sharp question, a challenge flung at my head, as the great birds discovered me. Whether by night or day, nothing can remain hidden from their bright yellow eyes. I would see a vague motion, as of wings, emerging from the silver radiance or melting away into it, like gleams and shadows in the eddy of a river under the moonlight. The wings would vanish going I knew not whither; but far and wide forest and lake and caribou barren would all be ringing to the heron’s challenge, _Quoskh? Quoskh-quoskh?_ And I understood then why Indians call this bird the night’s question.

I had left the lake behind and was traveling through a stratum of silence, a restful silence which I devoutly hoped might endure, when an uproar of moose--grunts, splashings, the ring of smitten antler blades--sounded not far away in the direction I was heading. As I emerged from the woods upon the barren that bordered my moose pond, two bulls were having an argument in the shallow water near shore. At first they seemed to be fighting, mud and water flying over them as they surged about with locked antlers; but I soon judged them to be youngsters that were trying their strength while waiting for something else to happen. At intervals they would listen intently to a message I could not hear; then they would drop heads, lock antlers once more, and strive mightily to push each other over.

As they backed away from one of these encounters the nearer bull turned and threw his nose into the wind. The other, instead of driving brow prongs into his rival’s flank (as he surely would have done had they been fighting), took a step toward shore, and both stood at tense attention. Their attitude made me feel queer, for they were in touch with a matter of which I had no warning. Something was passing yonder on the hill, something too fine or distant for me to sense, and the moose were following every rumor of it minutely. Suddenly they leaped from the water, laid their antlers back, thrust their great muzzles out ahead of them, and raced away side by side. They passed close by my hiding place, heading for the thing to which they had been listening.

A little later I began calling from a point of evergreen that thrust itself into the barren from the southern side. Before me and on either hand stretched the level bog, misty and unreal, ringed about by dark woods. Beyond the bog to the right, whither the bulls had gone, rose low hills with pointed spruces standing over them like sentinels. On my left at a little distance was the pond, its placid face glimmering like silver in the moonlight.

Such was the stage, ideal in the perfection of its setting, on which I expected a shy and solitary actor to appear at my summons. Of the moose-caller’s art I knew very little, having at odd times tried to imitate Simmo, who was an excellent caller, but, like all his secretive tribe, an unwilling teacher. Without any preliminary whining, therefore, such as a careful caller employs on the chance that a bull may be near, I sent the bellow of a cow-moose rolling out of my birch-bark trumpet.

The response was immediate, and more than a little startling. Before the echoes of my call were quiet, there came from beyond the pond on my left a gruff _quoh!_ It was a bull barking his answer. A rattling of antlers on alder stems, then a _sqush, sqush_ of mud to say that he was coming. Hardly had he started when, from a hill on the opposite side, a second bull hurled himself down with a hoarse challenge, followed by a terrific smashing of brush. No doubt about it, he was coming, too! When near me he swerved away for the pond or for the other bull, and passed along the farther edge of the bog, where I could hardly see him for the shadows. After him came another, then in a straggling rout three or four more, I think; but they made such commotion in the woods, threshing bushes, grunting, squealing at times, as an old bull will, that it was impossible to keep track of individuals. No sooner did I begin to locate one brute than a nearer or more nerve-shaking rumpus demanded my attention.

Apparently I had blundered into a rare band of traveling moose, and this on the one unlucky night of the year when all wild creatures were strangely excited. For the next half-hour, it seemed (it may have been only a few minutes; I had lost all notion of time), the uneasy brutes went questing over the bog, both bulls and cows. The latter were silent appearing mysteriously here or there; but the bulls seemed to be looking for trouble. At times two or three would go smashing along the fringes of the wood, where they appeared as grotesque shadows; again, a solitary bull would break into the open at a slashing trot, hackles up, bell swinging, and in his throat a _chock! chock! chock!_ which sounded in that place and hour rather ferocious. Once a truculent pair dashed out from opposite sides, only to range challenging down the length of the bog to the pond, where they locked antlers for another bullish kind of argument.

Meanwhile I was making myself as small as possible under an upturned root, where I could see a little of what went on, but where a bull might almost step over me before noticing anything to arouse his fear or anger. Not a moose circled to get my wind, as a solitary bull would surely have done; and I think that they had no inkling of a hidden enemy. They appeared freely here or disappeared there; while I lay close to the ground, where no air stirs, and made no lunatic attempt to call them nearer. They were near enough. Three times out of four you can tell what a wild beast will do, especially if he sees you or suspects where you are, and nine times out of ten you can safely count on his timidity; but a big beast that stumbles upon you is always uncertain, and sometimes dangerous. Once a questing brute chanced within a dozen yards of my point; and when a monster bull with antlers like a pair of rocking-chairs ramped past, gritting his teeth and grunting, one glimpse of him was enough to put the fear of God in any man. I had no rifle, no wish to kill any of these huge beasts; neither did I care to spend the remainder of the chill night reciting _mea culpa_ in a tree.

The moose left the bog when their excitement cooled, trailing off in a procession eastward, whence they had come. They traveled noisily, contrary to all my observation; I could trace their course through the woods long after they had vanished from sight. Their gruff calling ceased; their crashing died away in a surge, a rustle, a shiver as of leaves, and they were gone.

And then the blessed silence returned to brood again over the wilderness. The owls, first to begin the tumult, were last to end; but presently they too were quiet, save for an occasional hunting call. On the way back to camp not a cry, not a rustle disturbed the perfect stillness. The moon shone wondrously clear, making magic of the familiar woods; the lake began whispering to its banks; the air trembled at times to that rushing sound of music which is heard only on still nights in dense forest, and which always fills one with wonder, as if hearing at last the old harmony of the spheres. All around the trail or the gliding canoe the great wilderness stood silent, alert, listening.