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Title: The wild heart
Author: Emma-Lindsay Squier
Contributor: Gene Stratton-Porter
Illustrator: Paul Bransom
Release date: January 24, 2026 [eBook #77766]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1922
Credits: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILD HEART ***
_The_
WILD HEART
_By
Emma-Lindsay Squier_
[Illustration]
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
GENE STRATTON-PORTER
_Illustrations and Decorations by_
PAUL BRANSOM
Cosmopolitan Book Corporation
NEW YORK MCMXXII
_Copyright, 1922, by Cosmopolitan Book
Corporation, New York. All rights
reserved, including that of translation
into foreign languages, including the
Scandinavian_
_First printing_ _March, 1922_
_Second printing_ _April, 1922_
_Printed in the United States of America_
DEDICATED TO
_BASIL KING_
WITH DEEPEST GRATITUDE FOR THE INSPIRATION
AND ENCOURAGEMENT THROUGH WHICH THE WILD
HEART STORIES FOUND WRITTEN EXPRESSION,
AND FOR THE TITLE OF THE SERIES WHICH THUS
CAME INTO BEING.
THE ILLUSTRATIONS _and_ CONTENTS
PAGE
Skygak discovered that catching mice was
Three-Spot’s chief vocation SKYGAK 12
He circled slowly above our heads 32
U-Chu-Ka never failed to answer our call U-CHU-KA 34
For the dogs had lost the lighter scent SANCTUARY 47
He questioningly sniffed the breeze THE FAERY NIGHT 66
Cannon came charging in a whirlwind of THE FRIENDSHIP THAT
feathers FAILED 82
His constant barking set the grown-ups
against him STOP THIEF 101
If Clarence had been a man, he would have
endowed orphanages O’HENRY 124
Timothy clung to the bottle habit TIMOTHY, THE DIRTY BEAR 145
Sometimes the bandit birds swooped down THE BANDIT BIRD 168
Her nostrils dilated at the hated human
scent MY FRIEND THE PRINCESS 189
A wild thing of the deep woods, ruled by
pain instead of kindliness ETHEL 208
AN INTRODUCTION
_Which might better be entitled_:
Some Youngsters Find the Wrong Parents
_By_
Gene Stratton-Porter
Since “The Wild Heart” is throbbing with the same blood that pulses in
the heart of every human being who goes to the fields and woods and
fraternizes with the creatures that home there, since the feet that
carry a wild heart on its journey are following the same path that a few
peculiar feet have made, what they have found and what the heart has
learned is the same thing that similar feet have been finding and hearts
have been learning since the beginning of time.
[Illustration]
The author of this book pronounces it “very simple, having no literary
style or value.” Perhaps this estimate indicates modesty on her part,
but it is not the truth concerning the book. Thoreau once wrote: “It
takes two to speak the truth—one to speak and the other to hear.” Those
of us who have made our own path through the wilds know the truth when
we hear it. The first law that can be laid down concerning any work
worthy to be put into the hands of the public is the old law that every
writer should write concerning matters of his own personal observation.
Whenever any writer follows this old rule, working with sincerity of
heart, with inborn insight concerning his chosen subject, following the
promptings of a simple human heart, and using a certain facility in the
choice of words, which is a gift of God primarily, that author must
evolve good work. Laying down these specifications as law which governs
every masterpiece that ever has been produced, it will be observed that
“The Wild Heart” follows them as naturally as water flows to the sea,
possibly as unconsciously.
[Illustration]
To anyone who knows the fields and woods the book carries the conviction
of truth. Those who do not know nature will not believe many of these
statements, because they have not learned that when one goes into the
haunts of the wild calmly, fearlessly, absolutely in tune with Nature,
one is perfectly safe. The people who go to fraternize with the free
creatures, to learn the secrets of Nature, to protect, to love, to
fellowship with the wild, wear an invincible armor.
Enos Mills will tell you that he tramps the Rocky Mountains for weeks at
a time absolutely without a weapon. Arthur Heming will tell you that he
travels Canada from side to side, north and south, passing all kinds of
wild creatures at all seasons and under any conditions, and nothing
touches him.
I can tell you that my face has been within two feet of a coiled
rattlesnake ready to strike, but it did not strike. Two minutes later a
man antagonistic to the wild passed the same location and immediately
the snake disclosed itself and was ready to fight.
Very recently some children playing at the edge of the desert found a
scorpion. They coaxed it onto a piece of bark and were carrying it
around playing with it. So long as they felt no fear of the creature, it
was quiescent in their hands. The instant they carried it among grown
people who recognized it and were afraid, the trouble began. When the
wild thing entered the atmosphere of fear and was surrounded by the
taint of that acid which is exhaled from the body of any human being
experiencing fear, that instant it was on guard and ready to strike.
Any human being carrying in his breast a wild heart knows instinctively
how to fraternize with the wild. Anyone carrying a heart of fear and
antagonism will have a troubled journey through forest or desert. The
writer of this book proves that she carries a wild heart in her breast.
Her records are unquestionably true. They are precisely the same things
that happen to anyone having a heart in tune with Nature.
[Illustration]
So the book passes, first, because it speaks the truth. It needs only
that these records should be read to gain an idea of the degree of
insight possessed by the writer. The nice comprehension of what the wild
is thinking and feeling, the keen perception of the “why” of things,
pass the book on the grounds of insight. The simple unassuming manner in
which the record is kept proves it the emanation of a human heart
without guile, effervescing love, not only for the beauties of field and
forest, but for the living creatures that home there.
[Illustration]
It is modest of the writer to say that her book has “no literary style
or value,” but the book proves the reverse. Throughout will be found the
value of truth, the exquisite style of utter simplicity, the best plain
common word chosen to tell the plain common story; and it is a very
difficult thing always to find the right words with which to tell any
story. There are only about twenty thousand words in the English
language. When you compare this number with the number of objects
existing in the world, the number of ideas that have sprung and will
spring in the human brain, it easily can be appreciated that it is
sometimes difficult to find the right word by which to express one’s
meaning clearly and simply; for there always is one word which, better
than any other, will portray a situation or describe an object.
Any author who is actuated by sincerity will always choose the plain
simple word which expresses his meaning plainly and simply. The one
thing that sets apart the work of any writer is the ability to express
himself in plain simple language that common people can understand and
appreciate. It was on this subject that Martin Luther once said:
“Hebrew, Latin, and Greek I spare until we learned ones come together,
and then we make it so curled and finical that God Himself wondereth at
us.”
That is precisely the reason why nine-tenths of the Nature books written
in this country have been failures. They are “so curled and finical”
that only the “learned ones” can understand what they are all about.
[Illustration]
To me it is an atrocity to tag a bird, a butterfly, or a flower with
several inches of Latin or Greek per each. Every living creature should
have a common, simple, descriptive name that a common human being who
wants to know what it is can learn and remember. I do truly believe
“that God Himself wondereth at us” if He takes the time to look at many
of the books to be found in our libraries concerning the most exquisite
and beautiful of His creatures.
[Illustration]
I believe that any normal man or woman would be intensely interested in
the organism of a moth, the delicate parts so beautifully evolved to
serve their purpose; but what common person could wade through a large
volume crammed from end to end with such terms as _patagia_, _jugum_,
_discocellulars_, _phagocytes_? It is such works on Nature that have
kept the Nature lovers of many generations out of the fields and woods.
They had not the education, the time, nor the inclination to be
sufficiently “curled and finical” to be specific. They could take no one
specimen and learn it, because they could not identify it. In a book
such as “The Wild Heart” there is no word that a ten-year-old child can
not comprehend; while there is a wonderful beauty and facility in the
choice of words, in the sincerity of expression, and the sympathetic
insight.
I certainly wish that a copy of this book may go into every home in the
world, for two reasons: the first, that men and women may learn how
anyone with a sympathetic heart devoid of fear may fraternize with the
wild; and for the other very excellent reason that it may do something
toward teaching parents that all children are not alike and can not
possibly be run through the same groove.
[Illustration]
Here and there in a family there is born a child with a wild heart. It
is nothing less than a tragedy when such a child is cursed with the
wrong parents. God gives to only a few of His children a wild heart, a
musical ear, facile fingers. The man or woman who keeps a child born
with the love of the woods in its heart from contact with Nature, who
destroys the trust that God placed in its heart, and instils fear bred
by man, does a dreadful thing, a thing that must end in disaster. Nature
does not reveal her secrets to everyone. Creatures of the wild will not
be brothers with any save a very few specially endowed human beings.
[Illustration]
Today my heart sickens at the thought of what would have happened to me
if, when I told my Mother I had been talking with the fairies and what
they said and did, she had whipped me for not speaking the truth; if,
when I came from the woods with my apron torn and soiled, full of dirty
specimens, my heart overflowing with the wonders of my discoveries, I
had been beaten and forbidden to go again. If we are to have truly great
art, literature, or science in the future, many, perhaps most, of those
who are to do the work will be born into this world in simple common
homes like the Indiana homes in which the author of “The Wild Heart” and
I were born. What we as a nation produce in wonder-work along any
creative line in the future is going to depend upon the ability of
parents of this generation to recognize and to foster unusual gifts in
their children when they first detect them. The mother who whips a child
because it happens to have been born with a wild heart does a thing so
wickedly cruel that there are no words in which to describe the
situation adequately. If this book will serve the one purpose of making
fathers and mothers of the coming generation sympathetic and kindly to
the little wild hearts that they bring into the world, it will perform a
very great work indeed.
[Illustration]
_Part One_
_The Story of_
SKYGAK
AN OLD-MAN SEA-GULL
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
_Skygak discovered that catching mice was Three-Spot’s chief vocation,
and he made her life a burden._
Skygak was an old-man sea-gull. He had circled and screamed over the
waters of Puget Sound for many a season, and it is doubtful if there is
anything in aërial lore that he did not know. He was an expert at
fishing, and could swoop down on an unsuspecting smelt from a dizzy
height and have the shiny fish down his gullet without so much as
touching his webbed feet to the water’s surface. He could snatch up a
sidling red crab before it could seek the shelter of a rock, and drop it
neatly and accurately on a stone, to dart down upon the mangled remains
before the juicy meal could be purloined by any of his kindred.
He knew when storms were coming, and sometimes, when the skies were
clearest and the sun warmest, he would spiral up to a great height and
scream in long, quavering cadences that grew louder as the rain and wind
approached. Then the Siwash clam-diggers on the beach would gather up
their bags and shovels and bid their women see to brushwood, for they
knew the cry of the sea-gull when the Storm-God rides. They respected
the gray gull’s warning.
[Illustration]
We were children on the shores of Puget Sound, Brother and I. From our
little log cabin, with its porch roof slanting low like an old-fashioned
pokebonnet, we would watch the sea-gulls circle in the sky or bob lazily
on the blue waters of the bay like so many feathered corks.
We knew Skygak among the other gulls, for one wing was white, the other
gray. So when we saw him, we named him by a queer, fanciful name that
seemed to fit a bird of air and water. And because the boat landing in
front of the cabin furnished a resting place for webbed feet on sunshiny
days, Skygak made it his headquarters, and we came to look for him and
to be fond of him.
When we sailed in the tiny twelve-foot boat with its home-made
leg-o’-mutton sail or paddled in the dugout canoe made for us by a
Siwash Indian chief, we looked for Skygak in every flock of sea-gulls
that passed us, and it was our superstition, made on the spur of the
moment, as children’s fancies are, that if he flew over us we would have
good luck, and that a wish made on the instant would come true.
[Illustration]
But we never dreamed that Skygak of the air lanes would one day be an
intimate friend of ours, for we had been told by sailor and Indian
alike—and who knows more of seafaring birds than they?—that sea-gulls
could not be tamed. The Siwash chief who had given us our dugout canoe
knew the habits of the winged scavengers and loved them. Perhaps the
primitive heart of him, held in leash by the white man’s civilization,
was tuned to the wild, untamed heart of the gulls, for they flocked
around his beach shanty unafraid, and ate the scraps of clams he flung
to them; but he had never touched one of the gray brethren.
[Illustration]
And so it happened, on a day of mists and clouds, that Skygak came into
our lives as something more than a gray-and-white winged bird whose
passage above our boat would make a wish come true.
[Illustration]
It was a day typical of autumn in the Sound country. Gray rain pattered
ceaselessly into gray waters that stretched away to meet a leaden
horizon, and low-hanging clouds swirled restlessly with every gust of
wind. But the smell of wet pines was in the air; the grass was green and
glistening with iridescent beads. It was a day when the out-of-doors
called the hardy one to don overshoes, raincoat, and sou’wester hat and
fare forth to breathe the wet fragrance of woods and field, to feel the
soft rain on uplifted face, and to listen for the storm cry of the gulls
circling against the sky.
[Illustration]
Brother and I, clad against the rain, stood in wonder at the shore end
of the float. For there on the far end was Skygak, a miserable, dripping
figure hunched dejectedly on the wet planking. His once sleek wings hung
limply at his sides, his feathers were draggled and unkempt, his head
was hanging miserably as if the light but steady drizzle were torment to
him.
[Illustration]
Above him soared and circled his kindred of the sky, wondering, no
doubt, what was wrong, for now and again one of them would turn in a
half-circle, spinning on the tip of one great wing, and scream sharply,
as if in invitation to Skygak to join the airy tribe. And the old-man
sea-gull would turn one eye up to the birds above him and give vent to a
plaintive, longing cry. His draggled wings would flap in the rain as if
sheer force of will must bear him upward, then relax hopelessly as if
the effort made him more miserable.
We watched and speculated, Brother and I, for never had we seen a gull
in such a plight. We saw that he was denied the water, too, for he would
stalk, with the wobbly, swinging motion of a web-foot tribe, to the edge
of the float, crane his neck as if about to launch himself upon the
rain-beaten waves, and then retreat to the middle of the wharf once
more. A gull who could neither fly nor swim! What had happened?
We took the problem to the Siwash chief a mile up the beach, mending a
fish-net in his warm and smoky shanty. He listened impassively, yet with
interest. And he returned with us to the float to diagnose the gull’s
ailment.
[Illustration]
When he saw Skygak, he grunted briefly but sympathetically. The bird had
been caught in the swell behind a large boat—a battle-ship,
probably—when it was discharging oil, he told us. It was not an uncommon
thing, he said. The gull’s feathers were soaked with the heavy oil, and
until it had evaporated, or until new feathers should grow, Skygak would
be helpless both in the air and in the sea, and since he could not
provide food for himself he would starve to death.
So spoke the Siwash chief, but his philosophy was not ours. We told each
other that Skygak should not die, and we called to the wet, miserable
gull that we would take care of him, but he did not even raise his head.
What should we feed him? We had neither clams nor fish, and we were
afraid to go too near him, lest he mistake our friendly intentions and
take to the water in self-defense, to be weighted down by his oil-soaked
feathers.
With the permission of our always sympathetic mother we salvaged cookies
from the jar behind the kitchen stove. We took cold griddle cakes, too,
and scraps of meat and bread. And with these dainties we set about the
task of winning the gray gull’s confidence and of saving him from the
misfortune which had overtaken him.
[Illustration]
Carefully and very quietly we went down the float, as near as we could
approach without Skygak’s taking alarm. When he showed signs of
restlessness, we advanced no further, but put a chunk of meat upon the
planks and withdrew to watch and wait.
The gull, at first indifferent to everything but his unexplainable
plight, gradually felt hunger’s urge, and his long neck craned toward
our offering of food. Slowly he waddled toward it, a grotesque gray
bundle of draggled feathers, and with one vigorous gulp the meat
disappeared.
Then we tossed him a chunk of bread softened with water, and this time
Skygak did not hesitate. The first morsel had aroused an appetite which
for the time being supplanted misery. He stalked forward and swallowed
the food, turning on us the broadside of one black eye, as if asking for
more.
[Illustration]
Nor did we refuse him. We tossed him, piece by piece, the food we had
brought with us, and returned to the pantry for more. Always we placed
the bread or meat a little nearer the shore and the cabin, and Skygak
followed the morsels anxiously, greedily, satisfying a hunger which must
have been of long and painful duration.
Early dusk was upon us when we finally succeeded in tolling the gray
gull through the front yard into the chicken run, and into an unused
brooder house which offered a shelter against the rainy night.
The lamps were lighted in the little log cabin when we completed our
self-appointed task of making Skygak comfortable, and our only regret
was that we could not give our friend a blanket. We feared he would not
understand.
[Illustration]
That was the beginning of a threesided friendship. The first few days of
Skygak’s convalescence were spent in huddled misery, and he moved only
when Brother or I came into the brooder house with food and water. Then
the rain ceased, Indian summer came smilingly upon the Sound country,
and when the sun shone warmly, Skygak decided that life was not all a
haze of gloom, and he set about vigorously to restore himself to a
normal condition. Hour after hour he pulled and massaged his feathers
until some of the heavy oil was loosened. The sunshine helped to dry his
draggled plumage, new feathers commenced to grow, and little by little
Skygak became his old cocky self.
[Illustration]
His affection for Brother and me was as apparent as was his dislike for
all other members of the human race. The grown-ups he would not trust,
and passers-by annoyed and alarmed him. But he would follow us about
wherever we went, stalking along behind us with grotesque dignity, and
when invited, would fly up on my shoulder or on Brother’s to receive
bits of food from our fingers and to snap playfully at us with his
great, powerful bill when we pretended to box with him.
The liberty of the ranch was his, but his favorite spot was a corner of
the front porch where he would sit for hours in solemn contemplation of
the bay in front. People who went by on the trail looked in wonder at
the gray gull apparently very much at home in a little log cabin.
[Illustration]
Soon he learned to eat with the chickens, and when the bran mash was
spread for them in a long, wooden trough, Skygak would be there before
the bucket was emptied. Then, as the hens came flocking around, the gull
would spread his magnificent wings, open his huge beak to its widest
extent, and scream shrilly and fiercely, laying about him with his
yellow beak like a warrior swinging a deadly sword. The startled
poultry, unused to this changeling of the sea and sky, would scurry away
with distressed and frightened cackles, and Skygak would eat his fill at
the trough, pausing occasionally to administer punishment to any daring
cockerel who ventured too near. Many a bunch of feathers have I seen
hanging from his bill, like a scalplock hung from the belt of an Indian
brave, mute witness to a battle of brief but bloody duration.
[Illustration]
Our animals soon learned that this wandering guest was to be respected.
Tinker, the rat terrier, learned to his cost that Skygak was not a hen
to be chased from the front porch, if he chose to stay there.
Between our cat, Three-Spot, and the gull, a bitter feud developed,
which had for its beginning such a small thing as a mouse. One had been
killed in a trap, and Brother tendered it to Skygak as an experiment.
The delicacy was new, but wholly acceptable, and with one ecstatic snap
of his beak Skygak swallowed it, and afterward, as Brother averred,
fairly licked his chops. Three-Spot sulked and gloomed because of the
slight, but her cup of woe was not full.
[Illustration]
For in some mysterious manner, Skygak discovered that catching mice was
Three-Spot’s chief vocation, and he made her life a burden. One morning
we heard an outraged yowl from the cat and an answering scream from
Skygak. On the back porch we found the two, Three-Spot crouched over a
dead mouse, eyes gleaming dangerously, tail switching from side to side,
and every hair erect. The bird was advancing cautiously, but
relentlessly, wings outspread, beak wide open, screaming and snapping at
every step. Three-Spot did not lack courage, but her experience had not
included juggernaut gulls, and when the terrifying yellow beak was hard
upon her, she fled, spitting venomously, and Skygak, like a disreputable
robber chief, swallowed her hard-earned prize in one mouthful.
From that time, when he was not following Brother and me, or dozing on
the front porch, or bullying the hens, he was trailing Three-Spot about,
a relentless gray shadow, and if the luckless cat succeeded in keeping
for herself one mouse that she caught, it was when Skygak was asleep in
the brooder house.
[Illustration]
Slowly but surely the old-man sea-gull recovered from his affliction.
Some of the oil-soaked feathers dropped out, and new ones took their
place, and he risked short flights from time to time, cautiously at
first, as if not sure of his powers, and then with increasing
confidence. He ventured out into the water with perfect ease, and we
knew it would be but a short time before he had completely regained his
health.
[Illustration]
When first he flew we were afraid we had lost him, but he returned at
night-time, hungry and eager to be taken up on my shoulder. After that,
when he flew, it was to come back to us as naturally as if we, and not
the sea-gulls, were his kindred.
But there came a day when a feeling of restlessness was in the air.
Brother and I, attuned to the moods of the woods and of out-of-door
things, felt it keenly, and we were not surprised when we saw overhead
the V formation of the wild geese flying southward.
Then the sea-gulls commenced to scream in short, sharp cadences, and a
flock of the gray-and-white birds flew overhead, rising higher and
higher as is the habit of the gray ones when the migrating call comes.
Skygak heard the call—that we could not doubt—for he was restless and
would stretch himself on tiptoe, flapping his wings, turning his head up
to the sky where a gray cloud of birds were flying. Then he would
scream—short, broken cries as if torn by indecision. He loved us, we
knew, but he was of the air lanes; the gray gulls were his kindred.
Sooner or later he must go with them.
[Illustration]
His flights grew longer, and once we did not see him for three days.
Even when he was with us, he was ill at ease. The wild heart of him was
longing for the untrammeled freedom of the winds and the sea, and gaunt
cliffs untouched by foot of man. He forgot to box with us; he no longer
bullied the poultry yard; he even neglected to watch for Three-Spot’s
trophies of the hunt.
[Illustration]
And then he went away. A week passed, and we mourned him bitterly. It
was not so much his going—we knew we must expect that—but we had wanted
to tell him good-by when he left, to wave our hands to him and wish him
Godspeed, to watch him until he was only a speck in the sky. The Siwash
chief said Skygak would never come back—but he did, once more.
It was on a day of crystal clearness, when the clouds were like tiny
white boats in the sky. We stood in the yard, hand in hand, watching the
wild geese pass overhead and the flocks of sea-gulls flying high above
them. From the west came a gray cloud of the seabirds, with one gull
flying far in the lead. And as we watched, the leader left the flock of
winging gulls and, like a falling star, swooped down upon us, spiraling
lower and lower. We held our breath as we watched, for somehow, we knew,
we knew—
A flash of one white wing showed clearly. I tried to speak, but no words
came. Closer and closer came the bird, Skygak, our old-man sea-gull, and
when he was no higher than the roof of the house, he circled slowly
above our heads. Then he screamed twice—long, plaintive cries that we
knew meant farewell.
[Illustration]
We were crying, but we waved our hands to him and called, “Good-by,
good-by!” And slowly he rose once more, the white of one white wing
melting into gray. Higher and higher he winged, to take his place at the
head of the flock.... He was just a speck against the sky, and still we
called our farewells to him in words choked with tears—the specks
vanished into cloudy distance—Skygak had gone forever.
[Illustration:
_He circled slowly above our heads_
]
But it was not without a thought of us. We shall always believe that he
halted the winged caravan to tell us good-by—and the Siwash chief
believes it, too.
_Introducing_
U-CHU-KA
THE JUMPER
_Part Two_
U-CHU-KA
Upon the Hill Trail, which Brother and I called ours because we loved it
so, you may yet see a little clearing made in the midst of red
huckleberry bushes, Oregon grape, and dark green salal shrubs. As long
as we lived in the little cabin by the bay, we never allowed underbrush
to creep into this spot on the Hill Trail, for it was sacred to the
memory of U-Chu-Ka, the only monument we could give him.
U-Chu-Ka was a tiny rabbit—a “jack-rabbit,” I suppose natural historians
would have called him. But we gave him the name that in the Chinook
language means “the jumper,” and we never called him anything else.
[Illustration]
_Part Two_
U-CHU-KA
THE JUMPER
[Illustration:
_He never failed to
answer our call_
]
I remember the day we first saw him—a wee baby rabbit he was, escaped
somehow from his mother’s vigilance, and so much interested in the big
world outside the burrow where he had spent his short life that he
hardly knew whether to be afraid of us or merely curious. In such a case
he no doubt remembered his mother’s warning, for he “froze.” By this I
mean that he remained rigid, the tan of his fur blending with the
mottled greenery and the brown tones of the forest undergrowth. But
Brother and I could “freeze” too, having learned the art from the woods
creatures whom we knew and loved. So we stood perfectly still, and then
it was a case of seeing who could hold out the longer.
It was U-Chu-Ka who finally capitulated in the battle of freezing. His
curiosity became greater than his fear, and he sat up on his haunches,
his tiny forefeet held primly over his stomach, his ears—much too long
for him—tilted questioningly in our direction, and his black dot of a
nose twitching ceaselessly.
We were, I am sure, the first human beings U-Chu-Ka had seen, and
although behind him were countless rabbit traditions as to what fearful
creatures humans were, U-Chu-Ka, being so young, was possessed of
optimism and confidence. Brother and I were so happy when the little
fellow with his soft brown eyes decided that we were friends to be
trusted! Oh, if we had only realized that there were other people not so
friendly to little brown rabbits, whom U-Chu-Ka might have the
misfortune to meet!
But we never thought of that. Our one realization was that here was a
new woods friend, and we set ourselves to the task of winning his heart.
[Illustration]
It was not hard. Indeed, when I think of it now, it seems so pitifully
easy. And I wonder, if every one knew just how easy it was, if men would
carry sticks that shoot flame and death into the domain of the woods
creatures—if they would not carry apples instead.
It was an apple that first won U-Chu-Ka’s heart. Brother had one, of
course, and we nibbled bites off and placed the juicy morsels on the
trail in front of us. Then, walking quietly backward, we waited at a
safe distance for the wind to carry the delectable apple fragrance to
U-Chu-Ka’s wiggling nose.
[Illustration]
Nor was it long before one satiny ear—so fragile that it was almost
transparent—drooped and then rose again. The twitching nose worked
harder; U-Chu-Ka sat up straighter than ever; and then, with funny
little hops, he came toward us, hesitating occasionally, once pausing to
sit up on his haunches as if asking himself if he were doing the right
thing in approaching thus boldly.
[Illustration]
Finally he came to the bits of apple and promptly forgot his fear in his
delight at the unknown dainty. By the time he had eaten the few morsels
we had spread out for him, we had others ready, this time only at arm’s
length.
Later we proffered bits of the fruit in our hands, held very steadily so
that no jerking should alarm the little brown rabbit. At first he was
undecided whether to accept the morsels so close to the big human
creatures, but something, I am sure, told him that there was no harm in
us. In the end he hopped over to my outstretched hand and nibbled
daintily at the apple, while I held my arm so still it ached.
What Mother Rabbit would have said of the way we stuffed U-Chu-Ka, that
day, I do not know, but I am sure she would not have approved. We fed
him until his small stomach was round as a ball. When the apple diet
seemed to pall, we gathered tender blades of grass, and very soon the
little brown one would not take alarm at our movements, but would watch
us with solemn baby dignity, sitting up on his haunches or squatting in
a round ball, his tiny ears laid over his back—a sure sign that he was
no longer nervous.
How we hated to leave him that day! We didn’t take him down the hill and
make him a home by the log cabin, for we had no wish to frighten him,
and as for foraging for himself in the woods, we were sure U-Chu-Ka knew
how to go about it. So we left him at the bend of the trail where we had
first seen him. We called it U-Chu-Ka’s corner, and we left the core of
the apple for him to nibble on after we had gone.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The next afternoon about the same time—for the woods creatures are apt
to do certain things at certain hours—we came up the Hill Trail,
whistling, and were almost at U-Chu-Ka’s corner before it occurred to us
that the sound might frighten him away if he were still in that
neighborhood. But curiosity is a rabbit’s strongest trait, and suddenly
there he was, hopping out of the underbrush into the little clearing as
if in response to our call—indeed as if he had been waiting.
We had brought offerings of lettuce and cabbage leaves, and this time it
was not half so long before U-Chu-Ka would eat from our hands and permit
us to fondle his velvet softness.
We came every day after that, always whistling, with choicest tidbits
for our little friend. He would come into his “corner” hopping out from
the greenery like a tiny puffball, sit up very primly, ears tilted, his
nose wiggling, until he was sure it was his friends. Then down the trail
toward us he would bound, with such long hops that his hind feet seemed
to go above his head. Oh, U-Chu-Ka, little brown one, if we only had not
taught you to have confidence in humans—to come unafraid when we
whistled!
[Illustration]
As the summer went by, U-Chu-Ka grew and grew. From a baby rabbit he
became a half-grown rabbit, and we realized that before long he would be
a very large rabbit indeed. But he never failed to answer our call, and
through the long summer afternoons we would play upon the hill, the
three of us. We played house, U-Chu-Ka submitting without protest to
being dressed in a doll’s frock, with a tiny hat tying back his ears. He
was our child, and we rocked him to sleep, sent him to school,
disciplined him at times, and pretended that he talked to us. If I could
only give you a picture of U-Chu-Ka, half-grown now, in a blue gingham
doll dress, his brown paws stuck through the short sleeves, his white
knob of a tail flashing impudently from behind when he hopped about, and
his soft brown eyes grotesquely large under the white hat tied under his
chin!
And then, one day—it is a day I do not like to think of—we decided that
U-Chu-Ka should have a birthday party. So we took cookies, apples, and
lettuce sandwiches up the hill. It was hot, with scarcely a breeze, and
sounds carried distinctly. From far away we heard a whistled tune, and
we knew that some infrequent passer-by was on the Hill Trail. The sound
grew louder as we climbed, and then—a single shot that sent echoes
vibrating against the startled hills.
[Illustration]
A gunshot! It was not such an infrequent sound through the woods that
skirted the Bay, but our hearts suddenly contracted as if a hand had
clutched them.
We said not a word to each other, but broke into a jogging trot that
brought us hot and panting to the top of the hill. From there it was but
a hundred yards or so to U-Chu-Ka’s corner, and we ran doggedly, with a
great fear tearing at our hearts.
Oh, that moment! U-Chu-Ka’s corner was empty—but perhaps he would come
if we whistled! We tried to form our dry lips for the sound, but none
came. For we saw simultaneously, in the little clearing, a bright red
patch on the low-hanging ferns—a little tuft of brown fur and a bit of
white down.
[Illustration]
The hunter had come and gone. U-Chu-Ka could not have known that the
long stick pointed at him was filled with flame and death. We could
picture the scene so well—the man, swinging carelessly down along the
trail whistling, the gun over his shoulder—a sudden halt as a little
brown rabbit hopped out from the underbrush into the small clearing and
raised himself inquisitively on his haunches—a flash—a bundle of limp
fur, blood-stained—a little brown pelt dangling pathetically down from a
leather belt. Perhaps the man whistled again as he went down the trail.
He could not know that two children, back by the little clearing, were
sobbing their hearts out with their faces buried in the cool, green
moss, because of a playmate who would come no more.
[Illustration]
We tamed no more rabbits, Brother and I. We felt that we had been the
cause of our friend’s death, and the least we could do was to refrain
from putting confidence into other woods creatures, to be shattered by
humans who did not know or care about the wild heart.
And so we planted twin-flower vines in the little clearing, and edged it
with yellow Johnny-jump-up plants. It was our futile way of saying to
U-Chu-Ka how sorry we were—how we loved him and how we missed him.
And today on the Hill Trail you may see U-Chu-Ka’s corner, grown over a
bit now, because no one chops away the underbrush. But still the
twin-flowers and the Johnny-jump-up’s bloom there in memory of U-Chu-Ka,
the little brown friend who lives on in our hearts and our loving
memory.
[Illustration:
_For the dogs had lost the lighter scent_
]
_Part Three_
SANCTUARY
No doubt it was a silly name to give a deer—“Leonard”—but Brother and I
named him on the spur of the moment, and, probably because we did not
know the Indian word for “fawn,” we resorted to the prosaic title to
which our woods friend learned to respond.
Our acquaintance with Leonard began in such a dramatic way and with such
suddenness that we had no time to think about a suitable name—although
we did remember to name him even in the first chaotic moment of meeting.
It was a habit that came to us as naturally as breathing.
[Illustration]
It was during those days of licensed killing known as “the deer season.”
All day long, from across the bay, a mile in width, came the
long-drawn-out baying of hounds and an occasional shot. On our side of
the bay, too, high up in the wooded hills, we could hear the hounds at
chase, and our hearts were heavy, being weighted with fear for the
hunted things of the woods. We wondered if the hunters would find the
salt-lick which we had stumbled upon in our wanderings and where we had
spent many breathless hours watching for the slim-limbed does and the
antlered bucks to come and take refreshment.
We stood outside the little log cabin, our faces raised to the hills,
our hands clasped tightly together, listening shiveringly to the hunting
cry of the dogs. They were in full chase, we knew, after some luckless
deer. We felt so helpless, yet so eager to help protect our friends of
the wilds. I wonder if our unexpressed prayer did not have something to
do with what happened.
The baying of the hounds alternated with the crash of the underbrush
where they were running, men coming close behind. The dogs were skirting
the top of a hill. All at once their baying became a series of
whimpering barks. They were for the moment off the scent.
[Illustration]
And then, down the hill, with such flying leaps that he scarcely touched
the earth, came a little deer, a fawn, heading straight for the cabin.
Was he mad with fear that he sought the home of humans? Or did he know
by that unexplainable power which animals have that we were friends,
that we would protect his life with ours—did he, I wonder? For he
cleared the four-foot fence with a bound and trotted up to us, then
stood trembling, his soft eyes glazed with fright, white foam at the
corners of his mouth.
This is not a fiction story; I am telling it as it happened.
The little fawn thrust his hot, dry nose against my hand, and when
Brother and I, recovering from our petrified amazement, put our arms
around his velvety neck, he did not shrink away, but pressed against us
as if mutely begging protection.
[Illustration]
If you have never had a wild creature throw itself upon your mercy, if
you have never known the feeling of a soft, brown deer body pressed
against yours in pleading and in confidence, you can not realize the
wild thrill of ecstasy that went through us.
“His name is Leonard!” I found breath to say, my face against the
velvety neck of the little deer.
But Brother, being a man in embryo, was thinking of sterner things. The
hounds, he reminded me, would shortly find the scent of the deer. If
they came baying down the hill, the fawn would take fright and dart away
before we could stop him.
[Illustration]
It was not a pleasant picture, but what were we to do? The short,
whining barks of the dogs had already changed to the long, triumphant
cadence of the hound in full cry. They would come down the hill, the
hunters would claim Leonard as their game, they would—
[Illustration]
“Meat!” whispered Brother tensely, and cryptic as it may sound to the
reader I understood perfectly. I wondered that I had not thought of it
myself. Brother outlined a plan of action in a few brief words while the
baby deer, with knees wobbling sadly, turned terror-haunted eyes up the
hill, his delicate nostrils quivering, yet made no move to leave us.
It took my best efforts to lead the little fawn into the shelter of the
brooder house. The scent was foreign to anything he had known before,
and the darkness terrified him anew. He could not have known that safety
lay within that strange place, but he did know—of that I am sure—that he
could trust himself with me, for he came, hesitatingly, urged always by
my voice and my hands gently caressing him. He went with me, even
through the door, into the semi-darkness of the frame brooder house, and
though when I swung the door shut he nervously leaped away from my side,
it was to return an instant later, as if begging my pardon for his
involuntary action.
Brother, in the meantime, had dashed into the kitchen and emerged as
quickly with a juicy steak—it was to have been cooked for dinner that
night—which he hacked into chunks with his jackknife as he raced up the
hill.
With my eyes against a crack I could see him panting upward to the point
where Leonard had emerged from the underbrush of the woods.
[Illustration]
And scarcely had he arrived when a lean hound, with lolling tongue and
nose to the ground, burst from the shrubbery, uttering a long-drawn-out
bay. The little deer beside me shook in every limb, and I was trembling,
too, as if it were I, not Leonard, whom the dogs were trailing. We
crouched there in the darkness, the wild thing of the woods and the
child who loved the wild things of the woods, and in those tense moments
I felt the heart of the baby deer pounding against my body. Can you
wonder why now, when I see the body of a deer killed in the hunt, I can
not congratulate the hunter on his prowess? I know how the deer at bay
stood still and trembled! I know how his soft, brown eyes grew wide with
helpless terror. I know how his heart pounded suffocatingly. And I can
not be glad for the hunter; I am only sorry that he does not understand.
[Illustration]
And up on the hill Brother was acting his part in the drama. When the
first lean hound swung into sight, he deftly tossed a chunk of red,
juicy meat in his pathway. The dog ignored the first piece, so intent
was he on the fresh scent of the deer. But another chunk aimed just
ahead of him was a temptation not to be withstood, and he gobbled it up,
pausing a second in his chase. Another dog followed him out of the
underbrush, finding the first piece of meat Brother had thrown.
It did not take long for the two hounds to finish off the entire steak
so obligingly tossed to them by the small boy almost hidden in a clump
of tall ferns. And when it was gone, Leonard was safe, for the dogs,
with the smell of fresh meat in their nostrils, had lost the lighter
scent of the little deer’s flying hoofs, and they sniffed shamefacedly
and with befuddled yappings, until the hunters came cursing down the
hill and crashing into the open, to berate the dogs soundly for having
lost the game—as they supposed—in the woods.
[Illustration]
They could not know that the little boy in the clump of ferns, looking
on so innocently, was responsible for the hounds’ failure, nor that
their game was at that instant held tightly in the arms of a little girl
who was shaking with excitement as well as with fear, lest something
happen to betray the refugee’s hiding-place.
But nothing did. The men stamped back into the woods, taking the hounds
with them, and that day at least we heard no more baying on the hill.
[Illustration]
And Leonard—we were afraid to let him go back to the woods until the
deer season had passed or until he was of a size better able to care for
himself. The grown-ups helped us, and we contrived a pen with wire
netting over the top and sides as well, with the brooder house as
shelter for nights. And here we kept Leonard a willing prisoner, while
the hounds bayed on the hills and shots echoed across the water. How we
wished, when we heard them, that we could make a place of refuge for
every hunted thing in the world to come to and be cared for. But Leonard
at least was safe, and he seemed to know it, too. Though he trembled
whenever he heard the long hunting cry of the dogs, he did not take
refuge even in the brooder house. He knew, I think, that he was in
sanctuary.
[Illustration]
As the days went on, we released our little deer from his pen, first
with a collar and a rope, and then with nothing to hold him. He followed
us like a dog, trotting beside us with dainty, mincing steps, sometimes
leaping ahead of us, turning to look back at us, his large ears at an
angle, his slim young body silhouetted against the green of the woods.
He soon learned his name and would come bounding out to us when we
called. We fed him things his ancestors probably never tasted—cookies,
apples, lettuce leaves, and candy, in addition to the grass and tender
leaves we brought him before we allowed him to accompany us. But best of
all the dainties we gave him was the chewing gum that Brother in a
playful moment tendered him. Leonard accepted it daintily, as was his
wont, and chewed it, as Brother and I remarked, with an actual
expression of surprise coming into his brown eyes. He chewed and chewed.
Perhaps he thought it a new variety of cud. At any rate, he gave it his
hearty indorsement, and after that he would nose in Brother’s pockets to
find the stick of gum that was always there for him.
[Illustration]
So Leonard became one of our happy family, and though we knew that
sometime in the distant future we should have on our hands the problem
of what to do with an antlered buck who had forgotten the ways of the
woods and accepted those of civilization, we did not feel sorry about
it, being content to dwell in the happy present, while Leonard seemed
content as well.
But one night I woke to find Brother’s hand tugging at mine. He was
whispering to me that something was outside Leonard’s pen—perhaps it was
a bear or a wildcat trying to get at him.
[Illustration]
Foolish children we may have been, but we were not cowardly. It never
occurred to us to rouse the grown-ups. Leonard was our friend and our
responsibility. From my window the two of us crept out on the roof,
white nightgowned figures, shaking with cold and excitement. From the
roof we dropped easily to the railing of the picket fence at the back of
the cabin and from there to the ground.
Like two little white wraiths we crept along in the shadow of the fence
until we could see the outlines of the brooder house and the pen which
enclosed it. There was a moon, but it was thickly hidden by clouds. All
we could distinguish was a dark form against the wire netting, a shape
that moved restlessly, now away from the pen, now back to it.
As our eyes became accustomed to the darkness, we saw that Leonard was
in the pen outside the brooder house, and we questioned each other
silently. Surely no deer would come thus to meet an enemy animal that
wanted to destroy.
[Illustration]
And then, as if in answer to our question, the clouds parted and a pale
moon turned the darkness into half-shadowed light. With the sudden
effulgence came the weird gleam of four eyes turned in our direction—for
our scent had carried to sensitive nostrils. Brother and I, for an
instant, caught each other’s hands and gasped.
[Illustration]
Then two of the luminous lights vanished, as the slim animal outside the
pen sprang away in great bounds that carried her into the shadows beyond
our ken—but not before we had recognized the slim, fleeing form for a
doe. We knew it was Leonard’s mother, who had found her baby.
We climbed back into our window as silently as we had left it. Brother
in his cot, and I in mine, stared up into the darkness, trying to tell
ourselves that ours was the right to keep the fawn we had befriended,
yet knowing that the mother heart was calling for the little brown deer
whom we loved so well. And we knew that in the end we must relinquish
our claim—Leonard, after all, belonged to the woods, and the mother
heart of the woods was calling.
Because we loved him so, we tried to pretend, the next day, that the
deer we had seen was not Leonard’s mother—that it was merely a friend
from the woods who had come down by moonlight to pay a nocturnal call.
In our hearts, though, we knew better. Leonard all the day was restless;
he pricked his ears continually as if waiting for a voice from the
forest. We could scarcely coax him out of his distrait mood, even with a
double ration of the chewing gum he loved so well.
[Illustration]
The next night sleep was impossible. Though we heard nothing, we knew,
somehow, that outside Leonard’s pen was a slim brown body pressed close
against the wire netting. We rose, at last, and crept out over the roof
and down to the ground. The doe was there, as we had foreseen. At our
approach she bounded away with only the faintest rustle of leaves and
snapping of twigs to mark her progress. But knowing that she would not
go far—that she would come back to her baby—Brother and I went quickly
forward and opened the door of the pen.
Leonard came to us and thrust his nose against my hand. We knelt on the
ground, putting our arms around him, pressing our faces against his
soft, brown neck, telling him with tears behind our whispered words that
he must go with his mother, that the danger season was passed, and that
he was free to go back to his kindred.
[Illustration]
We stole away, but Leonard followed us, as if asking where we went and
why he was not to go with us. For the first time we pushed him away from
us, though you can not know what it meant to us to do it. He stood still
then, as if wondering, perhaps a little hurt, and we, not daring to look
back, ran for the fence, clambered upon it, and gained the roof.
Once there, we could not resist watching a bit, and it was not long
before the two luminous eyes gleamed from the underbrush. Then we saw a
shapely, dark body come slowly into the open, and Leonard, with light,
springing bounds, had rushed to meet his mother. For an instant we saw
again the glowing orbs of two pairs of eyes. Then the lights vanished;
two dark bodies moved side by side into the blackness of the woods; we
heard the light crackle of underbrush; and then silence.
Silently we crept into our beds, and long afterward I heard Brother’s
choking whisper coming through the darkness—my own face was buried in
the pillow:
“I know—Leonard’s going to miss—his—gum—”
We cried ourselves to sleep that night, thinking of an empty pen and of
a little brown friend gone from us forever.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
_He questioningly sniffed the breeze._
]
_Part Four_
THE FAERY NIGHT
There came a night in June when the moon rose a great, yellow ball of
light over the fir trees that crowned the hill. It was a night for
adventure, for magic and mystery. And I, wide awake on the camp cot in
the front yard of the cabin, listened to the faint lapping of the water
upon the beach not a single stone’s-throw away, and to the wordless song
of the pine trees as the night wind swept drowsy fingers across their
branches—harps that woke to melody only when the daylight had gone and
the stars stole out to listen to their song. The puffy maple tree which
guarded the little log cabin was murmuring softly to itself, its leaves
nodding to each other as if confiding some wonderful secret, and the
giant fir tree on the other side of the porch stood erect and motionless
as if it were a sentinel and thus disdained to gossip.
From far out in the bay came faint splashes which told of salmon
leaping, and now and then the distant cry of a night bird, so faint as
to be only the shadow of a sound. In the air was the smell of grass
freshly wet with dew, of pine trees drenched and glistening, of wild
syringa on the hillside, and, more pronounced, the scent of the tiny
Mother of God roses that clambered over the cabin in a white and
fragrant wreath.
The stars were bright as the tears of angels, from which the Chinook
Indians say they were made, and the moon in their midst flooded hill and
bay with a silvery light made more intense by the blackness of the
forest.
[Illustration]
Somehow there was a hint of expectancy in the air, as if the summer had
looked forward to this one night and was a-thrill with the joy of its
coming. I could not sleep, for I was attuned to the things of the
out-of-doors, and I, too, was a-thrill with the expectation of
something—I knew not what.
I watched Altair rise over the “Happy Family” pines with his two
attendant stars that are like the outspread wings of an eagle, and I
kissed my hand to him in greeting.
A star fell, leaving a trailing line of light in its wake, and suddenly
I felt a little sad, for a Siwash Indian chief had told us that when a
star fell, it was a flower tossed by the hand of a good spirit from
Paradise to ease the pain of a soul passing out into the Great Darkness.
[Illustration]
Then Amarillo, the big yellow cat, padded across the grass with little
throaty mewings of greeting, and I felt the light thud of his body as he
leaped on the bed and settled himself at my feet. He, too, was restless,
for he would raise and lower his tawny head and would sometimes turn his
golden eyes upon me as if seeking an explanation for the thrill that was
in the night.
[Illustration]
So I was not surprised when I heard a faint, familiar scraping which
told me that Brother had climbed from his bedroom window and was sliding
down the roof to the fence.
Since we had only one camp cot, Brother and I must needs take turns
sleeping out of doors. And although this night was mine, I knew that he,
too, had felt its magic and could not abide the stuffy darkness of the
cabin when the world outside was bathed in moonlight. He came tiptoeing
around the corner of the house very quietly so as not to waken the
grown-ups, and Amarillo purred loudly as he saw him come, and dug his
claws into the bedclothes with contented, prickling sounds.
Brother was fully dressed, and he put his lips close to my ear as he
whispered: “Do you know what kind of a night this is?”
“No,” I answered breathlessly.
“A fairy night!” he breathed with awe. “The old fisherman told me that
on moonlight nights the fairies dance in the moss ring on the Hill
Trail. Come quick, let’s go!”
I needed no second bidding. Even as he spoke, I was drawing over my head
the knee-length dress I had worn during the day, and was feeling for my
moccasins tucked away from the dew under the rubber covering of the bed.
[Illustration]
Hand in hand we slipped out of the yard and up the trail, moving as
silently as wraiths. Amarillo followed to the edge of the woods and then
slipped away on business of his own.
Up the hill we hurried, up the narrow trail patched with moonlight and
shadows. The wet branches of the pines brushed across our faces; our
bare legs were swished by fern fronds as we passed. Sometimes a twig
crackled underfoot, and now and then we heard a slight rustling in the
underbrush where a little animal was moving.
We passed by the spring which gurgled dreamily into the pool shadowed by
ferns and alders. A mother deer and her baby were drinking there, and
although they turned their great eyes upon us, luminous in the moonlight
that sifted through the branches, they did not start or run as we stole
by.
[Illustration]
The top of the hill was gained at last, and the Hill Trail which we
called ours. Well we knew the fairy ring, a circle of moss in a
clearing, ringed around with pink twin-flowers and wild strawberry
vines, a fitting place for elfin feet to dance on a moonlight night. And
as we neared the clearing flooded by the bright moonlight, we trembled
with ecstasy and anticipation. That the fairies did dance there we never
doubted, but would they reveal themselves to the eyes of mortals, even
such friendly mortals as ourselves?
Crouched behind a cedar log and screened by salal bushes, we watched and
waited, our eyes glued to the moss ring in the patch of moon silver—but
no fairies came.
[Illustration]
Just the same it _was_ a fairy night, as you shall see. For presently a
little brown bear came out into the clearing, making considerably more
noise than his size warranted, sat up on his haunches, and sniffed the
breeze questioningly. He nibbled daintily at the leaves of a red
huckleberry bush, and having finished his nocturnal repast, walked
pigeon-toed over to a cedar tree, scratched his back against it, making
rumbling noises of content, and finally raised himself to his full
height—which was not so high after all—and marked how tall he was on the
shaggy bark of the tree by scratching it deeply with his claws. Then he
waddled away in his bow-legged fashion, and we heard the faint crashing
of the underbrush as he passed through.
[Illustration]
There came a wakeful brown rabbit, who hopped into the very center of
the fairy ring, wiggled his ears and nose, and then began to make an
elaborate toilet—in honor, we thought, of the elfin ball. He washed his
paws with care and gave each tapering ear a thorough massage. Last, he
twisted like a contortionist to assure himself that his white knob of a
tail was in perfect order, and finally being satisfied with his
inspection, he loped leisurely away without so much as the crackle of a
twig.
[Illustration]
The next two visitors to the moonlit clearing were two baby skunks
striped with brown and white and with graceful tufts of white for tails.
Strangely enough, Brother and I were not afraid of what might happen
should they suddenly be aware of our presence and become frightened, for
it seemed to us that we too belonged to the fairy night and that nothing
could happen to mar the perfect beauty of it. The little animals played
like kittens, dashing out at each other from the shadows and rolling
about in mock ferocity, but presently they, too, stole away, silently,
as wood creatures move, and we were left alone with the moonlit night
and the empty fairy ring.
Then from the direction of the trail came a cry of pain—like a human
cry. The spell of the night was shattered, and we gripped each other’s
hands and thought of flight. But again came the sound, a whimpering cry
like a child in distress, and the fear which had clutched at our hearts
vanished as suddenly, for we knew it must be an animal—some woods friend
sorely hurt. So without further pause we left the shelter of the log and
hurried across the clearing to the trail. The sound came from beyond the
“Happy Family” pines, and we hastened toward it.
[Illustration]
In the lumber clearing just off the trail we found what we had half
expected—a young fox caught in a steel trap by his front paws, and he
was whimpering with the pain of it. The dark eyes which he turned toward
us showed a frenzied, greenish light, and as we came nearer, he yelped
sharply, tugging frantically at the sharp teeth which never relaxed
their grip.
The pity in our hearts made us forgetful of his fear, but as we started
toward him, he wrenched backward, dragging the heavy trap to the full
length of the chain, his small, gray-brown body a-quiver with terror and
pain. So then we waited, approaching very quietly and slowly. Finally
his struggles ceased from sheer fatigue, and the eyes which he turned
upon us were dull and lifeless. Brother tried to hold me back, but I
would not have it so, and coming very close to the little fox, I put my
hand on his soft, furry head. He did not bite or even cringe. Perhaps
his pain was so great that he could suffer no more and so could not be
afraid, or perhaps it was because he sensed that my touch was a friendly
one and that help was near at hand.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Together Brother and I pried the steel jaws apart, and the little fox,
set free, limped away for a few feet and then fell exhausted. So I
picked him up, and walking quietly so as not to hurt or alarm him, we
sought again the forest pool, mottled now with deep shadows and pale
lights. The mother deer and her baby had gone, and in the cool, gurgling
water of the little stream we bathed the wounded feet of our friend and
named him “Reginald.” We made sure that the paws were not broken, only
lacerated by the sharp teeth of the trap, and when he began to stir and
move his head in quick jerks from side to side, we set him down on the
cool moss. After a little while he commenced to lick the hurt paws, very
gently at first and then with increasing confidence, and he did not go
away at once. He feared us no more than he would have feared a brother
and sister fox. So for an hour, until the moonlight gleams became
fainter and the shadows deeper, the three of us lingered by the forest
pool. Brother and I pretended that Reginald talked to us and that he
could understand what we said to him. And when finally he finished
licking his paws and slipped away into the darkness, we regained once
more the moonlit Hill Trail and started for home.
But there was one thing we must do, and we turned back to “Reginald’s
clearing,” as we called it. In the waning light we found the trap which
had so cruelly hurt our little friend, and we unwound the chain from the
tree. Into the blackness of the underbrush we flung it and laughed
defiantly as we heard it crash in the thicket. Then, as if some avenging
power were hard on our heels, we fled down the trail out of the wood and
stole into the yard without even the creaking of a gate to betray us.
[Illustration]
Thrilled to the very core of my being, I huddled into bed. And Amarillo,
who had long since returned, arched his back and yawned widely as if to
imply that such a nocturnal excursion was not respectable.
Brother started to tiptoe around to the fence and thus gain the roof and
his bedroom, but I stopped him with a sharp hiss, and he tiptoed back to
me.
“What shall we say if some hunter asks us about the trap?” I breathed
into his ear, and he doubled up and laughed noiselessly.
[Illustration]
“We will tell him that anything can happen on a fairy night,” he
whispered back and stole away to the fence, while I watched the moon
settle behind the distant blue hills, and with the ensuing darkness came
the breath of the morning breeze. The fairy night was over.
_Part Five_| THE FRIENDSHIP THAT FAILED
[Illustration]
_Part Five_
THE FRIENDSHIP THAT FAILED
On the shores of Puget Sound, where the woods come down to the shore to
fraternize with the little white-capped waves of the bay, lived Henry,
the heron. How old he was before Brother and I came to know him, we
could not tell. But an old-man bird he must have been surely, for his
was a knowledge of fishing that comes from long experience.
Every day we would watch him from our little log cabin—watch him sail
majestically toward the float, pause directly above, and flap down upon
it, using his lanky legs as balancing weights. He would stand there for
many moments, turning his head slightly from side to side as if
revolving in his mind whether he had done the wise thing in coming, and
what his next move ought to be.
[Illustration:
_Cannon came charging in a whirlwind of feathers._
]
Such a deliberate bird Henry seemed, but this apparent deliberation was
only one of the tricks of his trade. I am sure that had I been a fish, I
would have believed there was nothing to fear from the immobile bunch of
gray feathers balanced on two skinny stilt legs, and I would have swum
merrily under the very tip of his beak. But Henry’s sharp, black eyes
missed nothing, as the hapless fish found to their cost when they
ventured too near the surface. With one lightning swoop the great bill
cleaved the water, and the next instant a shiny fish was wriggling in
his beak.
[Illustration]
Sometimes he did his fishing while standing in the water up to his
knees—or where his knees would be if herons had such things. With his
head drawn in between his feathered shoulders and his long beak sticking
out at right angles like a lance at rest, he seemed to be taking a
siesta, and only the occasional plunge of his long bill into the water,
and the accompanying twinkle of a small silver fish as it flapped in
amazement before it slid down into his gullet, proved that he was
awake—and hungry.
We gave Henry his name when he was but an acquaintance of ours. We never
really hoped to have him for a friend, but we liked him, and we felt
that he liked us, too. So when he did his fishing on our float or
knee-deep in the water of the little cove before the cabin, we threw
scraps of bread to him, which he accepted gravely and always dipped in
the salt water before swallowing.
We used to hear his strange, mournful cry late at night as he flew
northward past the cove on his way to the pine tree where he lived, and
we always pretended he was giving us a greeting before he turned in for
the night.
[Illustration]
We found out, too, where he made his home. We had often seen him land on
a bony, fallen tree half a mile up the beach, which jutted straight out
into the water and which we called “the Pointing Finger.” Once, in our
explorations along the beach trail, we saw Henry standing on the gray
shaft of the dead tree, and as we watched, he stooped slightly, then
flapped upward and flew into a tall pine tree almost in front of us.
When we stood under it, we could distinguish the outlines of a nest high
up in the branches. Perhaps at that time there was a Mrs. Henry and
maybe some young Henrys—I do not know. But certain it was that when he
became a friend of ours by reason of a happening which might have ended
in tragedy for him, he seemed to be without family cares or
responsibilities.
[Illustration]
During the season when the salmon were running, the Old Fisherman, who
was at once our mentor and playfellow, spread his nets from the
shore-line straight out into the bay for a hundred yards, leaving them
there the night through to catch the large silver salmon on their way to
the creeks to spawn. One of these nights he had laid his net near the
Pointing Finger, and Brother and I, going with him in his creaky,
flat-bottomed boat to see the result of the haul, heard ahead of us a
great splashing, and saw dimly outlined in the midst of the cork floats
a dark body that flapped and struggled.
We whispered excitedly that perhaps a seal had become entangled in the
net, but the Old Fisherman thought it only a salmon, or perhaps a
dogfish whose pointed snout had been caught in the meshes of the cords.
[Illustration]
But it was neither seal nor salmon, for on rowing close to the net we
saw by the light of the Old Fisherman’s lantern a huge, gray bird with
flapping wings and slashing beak. It was Henry, the heron, who had
alighted on one of the cork floaters, perhaps thinking it safe footing,
and had thus become hopelessly snared in the net.
[Illustration]
What was even worse, he had hurt himself cruelly in his struggles, for
one long leg was dangling helplessly, and one of his wide gray wings
hung limp at his side. When the Old Fisherman, with gruff words but
tender hands, released him from the cords which bound him, he could not
fly, but flapped helplessly upon the water. And so it was that we lifted
him into the boat and tied a gunnysack around him so that he should not
injure himself further, for he did not understand that our intentions
were kindly and snapped at us fiercely with his huge beak.
The Old Fisherman, who had lived with the Indians and who had acquired
their curative gifts, took Henry, the heron, in charge when we reached
the little cabin in the cove, first muzzling him by tying a stout cord
about his beak. Then he set the broken wing and put the leg in splints.
The grown-ups suggested putting Henry in the hen-house for the night,
but Brother and I would not have it so, and with their help we
constructed a pen behind the kitchen stove where he could be warm and
comfortable. We left him moving his head jerkily from side to side,
blinking his beady eyes now and then and snapping his bill as if in
troubled retrospect.
But during the next week Henry, the heron, came to know that we were his
friends and that he had nothing to fear from us. He allowed us to stroke
him and would accept morsels of food from our fingers, even taking care
not to nip us with his powerful beak.
[Illustration]
When he had finally ceased to fear us, we gave him the liberty of the
back-yard, and he would stalk about stiffly like a peg-legged veteran of
the wars. But most of the time he would stand with his head drawn in
between his shoulders, the picture of dejection, and Brother and I knew
he was longing for the freedom of the air and the water which had been
his. He was longing for the cool lapping of little waves against his
legs, for the silver gleam of fish in the blue depths; and he wanted to
fly once more—to circle over the bay, to flap down upon the Pointing
Finger. Perhaps he was even lonesome for the nest in the pine tree. At
any rate we were sorry for his sadness and set about to remedy it as
best we could. We fished indefatigably from the float, and the Old
Fisherman brought us smelts and silver perch from his nets.
[Illustration]
Then, to make our guest feel more at home, we would put our catch in a
washtub filled with water, and Henry would fish for them choosing his
prey with calculating eye and gobbling it up with one great peck. It was
the best we could do for him, and we felt that he appreciated that, too,
for he obligingly hunted down every fish in the tub, and then would turn
his grave head toward us, giving us the broadside effect of one shiny
eye, whether in thanks or in petition for more we could not determine.
[Illustration]
But it was really due to Cannon, our bantam rooster, that Henry’s
convalescence was not entirely unendurable. Cannon was the eldest son of
Liberty, a small bantam hen who had brought forth her brood on the
fourth of July—hence her name and his. He was the undisputed king of the
poultry yard, for a strain of game cock in his blood had made him
fearless of everything and an unspeakable bully. There was no hen or
cock of twice his size who dared come near his end of the feed trough,
and even Prince, the mammoth White Rock rooster, stood in awe of him.
Perhaps he was merely amused at the airs Cannon gave himself, and so let
the tiny cock have his way, but at any rate his record of combat was
unsullied by a single defeat.
[Illustration]
I have seen many a strange friendship between animals and between birds,
too, but never one so curious as that of Henry, the heron, and Cannon,
the bantam rooster. For friends they were, and real friends, too. They
became acquainted when Cannon, flying into the back-yard one day, spied
the stiff-legged Henry and immediately decided to do battle with him. He
ruffled up his neck feathers, whirled round and round with one wing
dusting the ground, and advancing on Henry, dared him to come on and
fight. At first Brother and I thought to rescue Cannon from what we
believed would be his sure death. But we were wrong; for Henry regarded
the little brown cock contemplatively, snapped his bill in warning, then
blinked and turned away as if overcome with boredom. But Cannon was not
used to being ignored. If his enemies would not fight, they must at
least give way before him. So his neck ruff distended more and more, his
tiny comb glowed an angry red, and in his best game-cock fashion he
hopped up and down stiffly, trying to strike at the heron’s broad,
feathered breast above him.
[Illustration]
Henry eyed him curiously, almost saturninely, and at last with a sort of
wearied annoyance gave one sweep of his broad bill, and Cannon was sent
tumbling in a scurry of brown feathers and outraged squawks. But he was
a warrior; back he came in a series of frenzied leaps, and once more
Henry’s massive bill swept him lightly but conclusively aside.
[Illustration]
Time after time, to the number of twelve, Cannon came charging in a
whirlwind of feathers, trying to slash the feathered breast of his
passive enemy, always to be met by the calm but decisive buffet of
Henry’s beak. At last it was a wearied little bantam cock who stopped
pantingly and turned his back upon the gray heron, owning himself
defeated.
Perhaps it was respect for Henry’s superior prowess which actuated
Cannon, and perhaps the merry little bantam’s pluck appealed to the
grave fisher bird, for they became almost at once inseparable friends.
Cannon deserted his feathered acquaintances and spent his time in the
back-yard with Henry. When finally the invalid was well enough to hobble
down on the float, Cannon went with him and would stand beside him while
Henry, the heron, swooped joyfully upon minnows and silver smelt and
gobbled them down with a zest he had never displayed when fishing in the
washtub. Such became the intimacy of the tall Henry and the diminutive
Cannon that Henry would even share his catch with Cannon, dropping down
upon the float a small, wriggling fish for Cannon’s delectation.
We noticed that at first the bantam rooster eyed askance the flapping
tidbits offered by his friend. He was not accustomed to such lively
food, but little by little he learned to peck and devour the fish with
the same relish that Henry showed for them. He became a feathered
parasite, depending almost entirely upon the heron for his meals.
[Illustration]
It was such a pleasant friendship—comradeship between man and man always
is—and it was broken up, I am sorry to say, in the usual way—by a woman.
As Henry grew stronger, his leg and wing knit rapidly. And on the day
when the Old Fisherman removed the bandages and pronounced the patient
out of danger, we feared our heron friend would leave us. But he did
not. He had become accustomed to the float, to the cabin, to the yard,
and to Brother and me. Above all, there was Cannon, the bantam rooster.
So he stayed with us, flapping up into the firtree in the front yard at
night to roost, and fishing from the float or the beach in the daytime.
It was an idyllic state of affairs which might have lasted indefinitely
had it not been for Sironda, the Black Minorca hen.
[Illustration]
“Si” we sometimes called her for short, and we had known her from the
day of her birth. Even before that; for Brother and I had set the very
egg in the incubator from which she was hatched. She was a trim little
hen with shiny black feathers, a red comb that fell coquettishly over
one eye, and a “singing voice” that made her the prima donna among the
poultry. She was in every respect fitted to make an impressionable
cockerel forget the ties of friendship, and Brother and I have always
believed that she mapped out a campaign to that end after seeing how
well Cannon fared by trailing at Henry’s heels.
She took to wandering down upon the float, singing softly to herself and
ostensibly on the lookout for bugs, but, as we noticed, keeping an eye
upon Cannon and his fisher friend and always drawing nearer and nearer
to the pair.
[Illustration]
Finally she grew so bold as to come up to Cannon’s side, and when Henry,
the heron, next dropped a shining smelt upon the float, the bantam,
innately chivalrous, voiced a high-pitched invitation to Sironda to
partake of the dainty.
Cannon, watching her, was content to have her devour the juicy morsel,
but not so was Henry. He would fish willingly for Cannon, but not for
his lady friends, and with one hair-raising scream he opened his huge
bill, spread his wings and lunged for Sironda, who dropped the remnants
of the fish and fled down the float, half running, half flying, and
uttering hysterical cackles.
[Illustration]
Cannon watched her precipitous retreat with a surprised and worried
countenance; then he turned upon Henry. And though Brother and I could
not hear what was said, I am sure that there were fierce words between
them, for Henry had to knock Cannon down three times in rapid succession
before the irate bantam turned heel and followed Sironda up the float
and into the yard.
The rift in the lute had come, and it grew wider. For Sironda became
bolder in her advances, and Cannon, flattered by her feminine wiles,
laid his fish—of Henry’s catching—at her feet. It was a triangle
situation which could end only in one way. For at the end of each
one-sided fight Cannon would stalk away with outraged dignity in every
ruffled feather, and Henry would gaze after him sadly and would
thereafter peck at the swarms of silver smelt solemnly and without zest.
[Illustration]
And so he left us. One day he tried his massive wings and sailed upward
and outward into the blue sky, circled in midair as if trying his
strength, and then flapped quietly away toward the Pointing Finger, and
as he flew, he uttered a mournful cry that trailed behind him like a
wisp of smoke.
And Cannon, the thankless one, did not even know that he had gone. He
was scratching worms for Sironda. But I really think it broke Henry’s
heart, for he never came to our float again. And I am positive that he
became a woman-hater and remained a bachelor the rest of his life.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
_His constant barking set the grown-ups against him._
]
_Part Six_
STOP THIEF
In the days when the roving fisher boats chugged into the little cove to
set their nets for salmon or silver smelt, we spent most of our time on
the bay. We knew every broad-beamed gray launch that rounded Green
Point, a mile away, and we knew most of the fishermen who owned them. We
would wait until the coughing engine was silent and the anchor was cast;
then we would hoist the sail of our tiny, round-bottomed skiff and,
using an oar for a rudder, skim out across the ruffled surface of the
bay to pay a visit to the swarthy-visaged men with heavy, grizzled
beards and rough, red hands. They always made us welcome in their
strange and guttural tongues, for we took them apples from the orchard,
and sometimes a glass of jelly or a loaf of home-made bread. And in
exchange they gave us curious souvenirs of their travels—dried starfish
of monstrous size, lovely, iridescent shells, and reed baskets bartered
from the Siwash Indians.
[Illustration]
The boat we knew best was called _Rosenzweig_, which, the Austrian
owners said, meant “Rose-branch.” These two fishermen, dark, powerful
men, anchored just beyond our float in the smelt and salmon seasons, and
we were fond of them. They let us help them haul in the nets, and more
than once Brother and I have stood in huge hip boots many sizes too
large, tugging at wet ropes heavy with seaweed, excitedly pulling at the
drag net and watching for the first glint of splashing silver in the
brown meshes which would tell us that the net was nearly to the beach
and filled with fish.
[Illustration]
We were always sorry to see the _Rosenzweig_ leave us, and it was always
a day of rejoicing when we sighted the little gray boat chugging around
the Point, its bow and stern piled high with seine and drag nets. The
two fishermen brought us a gift each time—we expected it. Sometimes it
would be a bunch of letters with Austrian stamps attached—Brother and I
were confirmed philatelists; sometimes it was a sugar-cured salmon, and
once they brought us a carved canoe paddle which they had purchased of a
Nittenat chief, far up the straits toward Alaska.
But the day of days was when, coming alongside their gray boat just as
the anchor splashed, we were greeted by Andrin, the elder brother, who
grinned delightedly and signified in his broken English that he had
something wonderful for us.
We clambered over the gunwale of the _Rosenzweig_, with its littered
deck and its heavy, perpetual smell of fish, seaweed, and tar calking,
and Karl, the younger fisherman, made us shut our eyes while he carried
something up from the hold and put it on the deck, something that
thrashed about wetly and barked in a high-pitched baby voice much like a
puppy’s.
[Illustration]
We opened our eyes and stared in amazement. For there, before us on the
deck, was a baby seal! He was wet and shiny brown, with great, bright
eyes that peered at us curiously, but without fear, and delicate
nostrils with neat, gentlemanly whiskers protruding from each side. With
his tiny fore-flappers he propelled himself along the deck, barking
constantly. Andrin threw him a piece of dried fish, which he caught in
the air and devoured instantly.
“We bring you nice present,” said Karl, showing his white teeth in a
smile, and he indicated the baby seal, who reared himself up as high as
he could on his front flappers and barked vociferously.
That we were delighted goes without saying. We had seen many seals from
a distance, but never had we thought to have one for a friend.
[Illustration]
Often one would pop out of the water in the wake of our boat as we rowed
to town, his wet, sleek head blackly silhouetted against the blue water.
And if we whistled or called, he would follow us indefinitely, for seals
have more than their share of curiosity. They are interested in strange
sounds and in bright colors. Once, when Brother was wearing a red
sweater, a seal followed our boat for nearly a mile.
[Illustration]
We had often known when they were near us in the Bay even without seeing
them. For when we saw a salmon jumping many times, in a series of
frenzied leaps, we knew it was not through sport, but because he was
pursued by a seal who would surely seize him the minute his strength
gave out. We had seen salmon nets spread in the water with only a row of
fish heads remaining in the meshes. Robber seals had neatly bitten off
the rest of the body. Once, while Brother and I were swimming far out
from the float, a smooth, heavy body brushed against mine, and I
screamed with fear. But an instant later a brown, wet head arose not
twenty yards away, and two bright eyes were turned on me inquiringly as
if to ask why I had been frightened.
You see, we were well acquainted with the seal family at long distance,
but never before had we been so close to one of the brown brethren.
I took a piece of fish from Karl’s hand and stooped toward the baby
seal, who turned his head from side to side, sniffed once or twice, and
then dragged himself along the deck to me, taking the friendship
offering gingerly from my outstretched fingers. A little later he found
a warm, sunny place on a pile of nets and turned over on his back,
scratching himself negligently with one of his fore-flappers.
[Illustration]
Karl said he would not take it amiss if we scratched him under the chin,
and indeed he did not. He stretched his head back and closed his eyes,
while we gently stroked the glossy fur, which, as it dried, became gray
rather than brown in color.
[Illustration]
The fishermen told us that the baby seal had attended a net-robbing
expedition with his mother. Both the lady seal and her baby had become
entangled in the nets. The mother had fought and had finally escaped.
But the baby they had loosed from the heavy meshes, and had taken him,
barking and protesting, on board the _Rosenzweig_, where they had kept
him in the hold, first as a prisoner and then as a pet, to bring to
Brother and me.
I know they were sorry to part with Alfred, as we christened the little
seal, but they needed the hold of their small boat for their catches of
fish. They could not afford to turn it permanently into a bath-tub for a
water-baby who could not live long away from the element to which he was
accustomed. So when the _Rosenzweig_ chugged away a few days later,
Alfred was left to our care, with a hundred instructions as to how to
regulate his diet and behavior.
The grown-ups were none too pleased at our latest pet, and it was a
tribute to Alfred’s winning ways that he finally established himself as
firmly in their affection as in ours. For there was no doubting his
intelligence, handicapped as it was by his unwieldy body that seemed
half fish and half animal.
[Illustration]
He learned to respond to his name sooner than most dogs, and he
displayed his love for us in a manner which was unmistakable. At first
we were afraid to let him go into the bay for fear he would swim away
and leave us. We did not know how large seals had to be before they
could earn their living in the water, but we chose to think—selfishly
perhaps—that Alfred was too small to make his way in a submarine contest
of wits against older and more experienced of his kindred.
[Illustration]
We need not have worried, however, for the baby seal adopted us in the
same spirit that we had adopted him. He evidently had no thought of
leaving us. The float in front of the cabin was his headquarters, and
from it he would slide off into the water, rolling and splashing like a
young dolphin, to return when he was tired or when we called him.
I can see him now, his small, sleek head, with its great brown eyes,
sticking up out of the water, at our call pointing for the float like a
periscope; lifting himself by his wet fore-flappers with their short,
clicking nails and dragging himself toward us, leaving in his wake a
trail of salt water.
It was his constant barking which at first had set the grown-ups against
him, so we made him refrain from it. He learned that when we said, with
finger upraised reprovingly, “Alfred, less noise!” he must be quiet, or
there would be no piece of dried fish for him, no bottle of milk, and no
gum-drops.
[Illustration]
It might not have been necessary to bring Alfred up on the bottle,
especially as the fishermen of the _Rosenzweig_ had been feeding him
dried fish ever since they had caught him, but our experience with other
baby animals had convinced us that milk was a pleasant if not absolutely
essential form of food. So we trained Alfred to drink from a bottle with
a rubber nipple, and he loved it. He broke the first two, banging them
down on the float, so Brother and I devised a padded bag for it. From
this Alfred daily took his milk, blinking his great, shining eyes at us
and pausing occasionally to bark. We came to know it for his sign of
approval.
[Illustration]
The gum-drops were given to him experimentally. Brother maintained that
the Esquimaux lived on them, and that Alfred, being a relative of
northern fur-bearing seals, would doubtless thrive on the same diet. His
reasoning may have been faulty in theory, but in practise it was
amazingly successful. Many a time did Brother and I row the three miles
to town for the special purpose of purchasing gum-drops for Alfred. He
seemed to know instinctively when we had the candy with us, for when, in
returning, we reached the Pointing Finger, half-way between Green Point
and the cove, we could make out a black speck on the float ahead of us,
a speck that wriggled and flopped and finally slid down into the water.
Then we would see a round dot against the blue little waves of the bay,
a dot that resolved itself into a sleek, brown head, and there would be
Alfred, swimming toward the boat, lifting himself as high out of the
water as he could, his eyes fixed upon us beamingly. We always made him
wait until we reached the float and moored the boat, then we would toss
him the candy a piece at a time, making him catch it in midair.
[Illustration]
As Alfred grew older and larger, we trained him to do some of the things
we had seen his kindred do in the circuses. And how eager he was to
learn! He put Brother and me to shame, for we hated lessons. He loved
them. We taught him to balance an indoor baseball on the tip of his
brown nose, and when he saw us coming down the float with his ball in
our hands, he would set up a hilarious barking and wriggle over to us,
his head moving up and down in an ecstasy of anticipation. There was no
barking, though, when he went through his tricks. If Alfred had been a
man, his power of concentration would have made him a millionaire. He
would sit, moment after moment, posing the ball on his nose, flexing his
body from side to side to keep the balance, his bright, intelligent eyes
fixed steadily on the leathern sphere.
[Illustration]
We taught him to “play dead,” to dive from a high springboard, and to
fetch us a stick that we threw into the water.
Some people say there is nothing in heredity. I am sure there is. I do
not pretend to be an expert on the question, but I can account in no
other way for Alfred’s deflection from the path of respectability. It
was certainly not because of lack of nourishment that he took to robbing
seine nets of salmon. I am rather inclined to think it was his mother’s
waywardness which was cropping out in him. At any rate, he took to
making nocturnal excursions, and in the morning we would find him on the
float, stretched out listlessly, his stomach actually distended by too
much food, and he would eye with disdain the padded bottle of milk and
the pieces of griddle cake we had brought for his breakfast.
[Illustration]
Still we did not suspect that our friend had become a net robber until
the Old Fisherman descended on us one morning with wrath in his eye. He
told us of having made the rounds of his salmon nets the night before to
find the bodies neatly snipped from half a dozen king salmon. He had
even caught the fish burglar in the act of amputating a Chinook salmon’s
silver body from its head, and the seal had stared at him in the lantern
light and had barked at him.
That it was Alfred, he was sure. Brother and I demurred that one seal
was much like another. But no, said the Old Fisherman; this was a small
seal, a seal unafraid of people, an impudent, half-grown seal—Alfred!
“And he chose the best fish o’ the lot,” he fumed. “If he’d taken a
dog-salmon, now—but no, he has to pick out the kings, the steel-heads
and the Chinooks!”
We faced Alfred and charged him with suspicion of robbery. It seemed to
us that he avoided our questioning eyes. He flapped over to his ball at
the side of the float and occupied himself in trying to hoist it on his
nose. It was perfectly clear to us that his conscience was clouded with
guilt.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
What to do? We loved Alfred dearly, but we loved the Old Fisherman, too,
and his living depended upon the hauls of fish he made. A scanty living
it was at best, and we could not bear the thought of being even
indirectly the cause of poverty descending upon him.
We built a wire cage in which we confined Alfred the next night, much
against his will. And the Old Fisherman reported in the morning that no
salmon had been stolen. But the following night heredity and appetite
proved stronger than the wire netting we had devised, and Alfred robbed
the seine net, near the Pointing Finger, of three large steel-heads.
The question of turning Alfred loose was a difficult one. We had never
restrained him in any way, and our float and the beach beside it were
the only homes he knew. The Old Fisherman spoke of killing, but that was
against the law, since the seals of Puget Sound are considered in the
same class with sea-gulls and other scavengers. Besides, Brother and I
would never have permitted such a thing. Alfred was our friend. Somewhat
of a reprobate, it is true, but after all, he had as much right to the
salmon in the Bay as had the Old Fisherman. It was not his fault that he
could not understand the man-made ethics by which human beings assumed
control over the water and its inhabitants.
[Illustration]
Then the next morning, as if in response to prayer, the _Rosenzweig_
came chugging around Green Point. Hardly had its anchor splashed when
Brother and I were easing our boat alongside and clambering up to the
smelly deck.
We told Karl and Andrin, all in a breath, how Alfred, the seal baby, had
grown up to be a salmon thief, just like his mother. We told how sorry
we were for the Old Fisherman, and how we could not seem to explain to
Alfred about controlling his appetite.
[Illustration]
Karl and Andrin took counsel with each other. We hung hopefully upon the
strange foreign sentences that we could not understand. Then Karl
grinned broadly. They were going to buy a new boat, he said, a bigger
boat. They could fix a sort of a tank for Alfred, wherein he could
submerge himself in water. There would be no question of fish; he would
have his fill of them. They had missed him, Karl said. He had been “such
a smart babee!”
So Alfred left us as he had come to us—on board the _Rosenzweig_. He
nuzzled against my hand like a dog as I gave him a gum-drop, and his
shining eyes were fixed on me with so much affection in them that I had
to blink hard to keep from crying. He had forgotten Karl and Andrin. His
heart was plainly in our keeping.
But the parting had to be. It was with sorrowful faces that we watched
the _Rosenzweig_ weigh anchor and commence to chug out into the current.
Brother and I stood on the float, trying to pretend to each other that
we weren’t down-hearted, when suddenly I spied between the boards
Alfred’s ball.
“Oh,” I cried, “he must have that to remember us by.”
We piled into the little white boat and, pulling on the oars with all
our might, set out in pursuit of the gray fishing launch. Our cries
finally reached Karl and Andrin, for the engine stopped, and in a few
minutes we came alongside.
[Illustration]
“Alfred’s ball!” we explained breathlessly. “He’d be lonesome without
it.”
[Illustration]
And at the sound of our voices, we heard a high-pitched barking from the
hold. It was Alfred, who was calling to us as best he knew how, begging
us not to leave him, asking us to please take him home with us—
We did not wait for the fishermen’s thanks. We were on the verge of
tears. So the engine started again its steady drumming, the propeller
churned the water into green and white whirlpools, and the _Rosenzweig_
made out towards the Straits, while our little boat rocked gently in her
wake.
[Illustration]
And then, as we sat there, a sleek brown head appeared out of the water
not a dozen yards from the stern—a shiny seal head with brilliant,
intelligent eyes. It was not Alfred, of course, but for an instant we
thought it might be. For the space of a few breaths the eyes watched us
intently, then the head disappeared from sight.
“I’ll bet it was Alfred’s mother,” said Brother solemnly, “wanting to
know what we’d done with her child.”
“Well,” said I, “what has happened is her own fault. If only she hadn’t
made a robber of him!”
[Illustration]
_Part Seven_
O’HENRY, THE QUAIL BABY
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
_If Clarence had been a man, he would have endowed orphanages._
]
_Part Seven_
O’HENRY
_The_
QUAIL BABY
It was upon the Hill Trail that Brother and I came to know O’Henry, the
Quail Baby. You would have liked our Hill Trail. It ran from the old
logging chute, just at the top of the hill above the cabin, straight
through woods of pine and fir until it ended at Bright Creek, two miles
distant, a turbulent little stream full of rapids and miniature
waterfalls, where the lady salmon fought their way up through the fresh
water to deposit their eggs. The Hill Trail was bordered by ferns and
salal bushes, with delicate, overhanging red huckleberry bushes and rows
of young alders who whispered to each other all day like children in
church. On either side of the brown ribbon that was the trail a carpet
of grass and green moss stretched back into the deep woods, and
tapestries of twin-flower vines and wild blackberry bushes hung from
stump and fallen tree. The sunlight slanted down through the tall pines
and touched the trail with tapering fingers of light as if it loved it.
Even in the hottest summer there was always a little breeze that stirred
the alders into sleepy gossip and set the pine trees humming gently to
themselves. There was the scent of pine-needles, of fallen leaves, of
wet moss.
[Illustration]
We loved the Hill Trail best on the drowsy days of summer, when the
shadows of the trees were long and cool, and the gentle splash of the
tiny waterfall deep in the woods came like distant music. It was on such
a day that we lay in the cool, deep moss near the Fairy Ring and stared
through interlacing branches at the blue patchwork sky. We heard the
tap-tap of a woodpecker not far away, the drowsy hum of a bee, and the
shrill twittering of a flock of juncoes who were flying overhead. Then
from afar came a call that we knew and loved, the deep woods call of the
quail, with its three clear notes which said, as we imagined, “Oh,
_Hen_-ry! Oh, _Hen_-ry!”
The Chinook Indians say that long ago a lady quail was unfaithful to her
mate, but afterward repented. Her husband never forgave her, however,
and would not come back to her, so now she goes through the forest
calling plaintively to him, “Oh, _Hen_-ry!”
[Illustration]
As we listened, the quail call came nearer, then a faint, almost
imperceptible scurry of leaves that told us that a bevy of the little
brown birds was close at hand. Indeed, closer at hand than we thought,
for at that instant a mother quail tripped out from the underbrush and
at sight of us stopped short with an imperative danger note, sounded, as
we suspected, in warning to the children who were following her. We had
not moved, but the mother heart was filled with terror. There was a whir
of wings, and she rose in the air for a short distance, then fell,
crashing heavily into a clump of fern.
“She’s hurt,” said Brother in a low tone, and quietly yet quickly we
rose to our feet, our one thought to aid the little brown lady in her
distress. But as we came near her—so near that my outstretched hand
almost touched her—she fluttered away out through the clearing and down
the trail, one wing dragging piteously.
[Illustration]
Of course you must know it was only a trick. Brother and I should have
known it, for we had heard of it many times. But such was the excellent
acting of the brown mother bird, with her trailing wing, her helpless
fluttering, and pitiful little cries, that we never questioned her
sincerity. Half a dozen times we almost touched her, and each time she
eluded us and fluttered a few feet ahead. Then suddenly with triumphant
whir of strong wings she rose in a graceful arc and disappeared in the
thickness of the forest shadows.
We stood and laughed—a little ruefully, for we prided ourselves upon our
woodcraft. Then I touched Brother’s arm as a thought came to me.
“Her children are back by the Fairy Ring,” I told him. “Let us hide
there and see if she will return to them.”
[Illustration]
So down the trail we sped, across the little clearing, and stooped
behind a thick screen of salal bushes. Nor had we long to wait, for
presently there was a soft flutter of wings, a scuttle of leaves, and
out from the underbrush, at almost the very spot where we had first seen
her, came the mother quail uttering a soft, piping call which meant
“Danger is past; all’s well!”
[Illustration]
As if by magic, a dozen tiny brown bodies scurried out from under
leaves, baby birds the size of bantam chicks. They eddied around and
behind her like little leaves in the wind, and she spoke to them in
soft, maternal notes, telling them perhaps of the two fierce humans from
whom she had saved them by exposing herself to capture.
[Illustration]
But quails can not count, it seems. For when the little brown mother
tripped daintily away into the deep greenery of the fern brake with her
brood at her heels, we heard a tiny, piping cry so small as to be only a
dot of sound. Following it, we came upon the place where Mrs. Quail’s
children had hidden themselves, and there we found a baby quail whose
tiny legs had been caught in a twin-flower vine, and who was trying to
wrench himself free with all his little might. It was but the work of an
instant to release the little dark brown puffball, and as I held him in
my hands he peeped shrilly and mournfully.
[Illustration]
We could not bear the thought of leaving him there in the woods on the
chance that his mother would hear him and come to him. Perhaps our doubt
of her was unjust, but at any rate I carried him down the Hill Trail,
through the orchard, and to the little log cabin. Cupped warmly in my
hands, he went to sleep, and when he woke up, he forgot that he had been
frightened, for he was a very tiny quail, and his life had been so brief
that he had not had time to learn the great fear which all too soon
becomes a part of every woods creature’s life.
[Illustration]
That night we put him in a little box with warm flannel covers over him,
which we hoped would take the place of his mother’s feathers, and the
next morning we thought to give him into the keeping of some
philanthropic hen to rear with her own children.
[Illustration]
O’Henry, the Quail Baby, did not know that he was not a chicken; but the
hens knew the difference, and there was not one lady among them, I am
sorry to say, who would stretch her maternal spirit to include him in
her family. We tried him on Sironda, the black Minorca hen, who had
obligingly hatched out and mothered everything, from Barred Plymouth
Rock chicks to white Pekin ducklings, and who had even reared a family
of lanky young turkeys. But although Sironda was fussily attentive to
her own brood of three-day-old chicks, she clucked sharply when we
shoved O’Henry in under her spreading wings, and tried to scalp him with
a vigorous peck.
Nor would Liberty, the bantam hen, accept him as a foster child. She
squawked as if he were some vicious animal, and only prompt attention on
our part saved him from a terrible death.
So we brought up O’Henry by hand and built for him a wire pen where he
could spend his days. We dared not let him loose in the poultry yard,
for it seemed that every hen, matron and maiden lady alike, resented the
presence of the little woods stranger and would have rejoiced in
scalping him.
[Illustration]
Brother and I lightened O’Henry’s captivity as much as we could. We
taught him to come to us when we whistled his family call, and we would
carry him about on our shoulders, balancing there like a tight-rope
performer. We took him with us when we rowed in our little boat on the
bay, and he would perch on the bow, keeping himself upright with
fluttering wings and tail, cocking his tiny head on one side when the
sea-gulls flew over, and uttering at times a faint and thoughtful note.
However, it was really due to Clarence, the gray gander, that O’Henry’s
life became a happy one at the cove. Clarence was full of years and
dignity, and a born philanthropist. If he had been a man, he would have
endowed orphanages and given newsboy dinners. As it was, he had a
passion for fathering the young things of the poultry yard, much to the
dismay of the various mothers.
[Illustration]
There was never a queerer sight than Clarence, the huge gander, going
the rounds of the hen-coops of a morning, making coaxing noises to lure
the young chicks out from under their mothers’ wings. The mother hens
were imprisoned to prevent their scratching in the garden, and Clarence
would shovel at the ground with his broad flat bill and pretend to drop
a worm or bug in front of the coop, with the result that half of the
lady hen’s brood would be at his heels ready to follow where he led. His
charges were always well fed, for Clarence was an excellent provider,
but the wear and tear on the feelings of the mothers must have been
terrific.
[Illustration]
It was inevitable that sooner or later the gray gander should discover
O’Henry and make him one of his family. We found Clarence in the yard
one morning, a dozen odd-sized chickens at his webbed heels. There were
two Minorca chicks that belonged to Sironda, half a dozen white Leghorn
children, a tiny cockerel with budding wings and tail who was Liberty’s
son, and a lanky young Plymouth Rock rooster, all run to legs.
We were minded to see what Clarence would think of our pet, and we let
O’Henry out of his pen. The gray gander waddled over toward the tiny
brown bird, his feathered tail wiggling from side to side, and made some
hospitable noises in his throat. Then he pulled up a tuft of grass and
dropped it before the Quail Baby by way of getting acquainted. The
chicks set upon it noisily, while O’Henry watched them, his little head
upraised, his tiny black eyes fixed on Clarence’s friendly bulk.
[Illustration]
We had no idea of letting him go gipsying with Clarence, for he had
become a well-loved playmate, and we could not be sure of his safety
when away from us. Brother stooped to pick him up, but with a long-drawn
hiss Clarence was upon him in a fury of flapping wings and snapping
bill. He did not suffer his charges to be molested while in his care;
that was clear.
So we allowed O’Henry to go jaunting with Clarence and his feathered
crew. Daily the gray gander would come into the yard with his motley
family in tow, and having gathered up O’Henry, they would be off through
the meadow, up into the orchard, not to return until the setting of the
sun. They would come straggling back in sleepy Indian file, the gray
gander at the head of the line, the chicks cheeping fretfully and glad
to nestle under the feathers of their distracted mothers. We would watch
for O’Henry and whistle the call he knew. He would come to us with his
quick, darting run and we would take him into the house for the night.
His crop was always crammed disgracefully, and his eyes were heavy with
sleep.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Sometimes O’Henry heard the call of the wild, and we wondered when he
would obey it. He had grown from a baby bird to a beautiful brown
gentleman quail, with white stripes running from his throat down over
his breast like a vest. He had a tiny topknot that lifted in moments of
excitement, and a clear “Bobwhite” whistle that Brother and I imitated,
much to his annoyance.
We would hide from him behind the rose-bush and whistle. He would come
running, his head stretched out in front of him, and on seeing us would
hunch his head in between his shoulders and blink at us reproachfully.
[Illustration]
When summer passed and autumn came to the cove, O’Henry was the only one
of Clarence’s family who still remained with the gray gander. The chicks
and ducklings had gradually grown to adulthood and forgotten the kindly
gander who had fathered them. But O’Henry still joined Clarence in his
daily excursions to the orchard or the meadow.
Then one day, late in the fall, O’Henry went back to the woods. We
grieved for him, because we loved him and because he had chosen the
hardest time of the year in which to return to wild life he knew only by
instinct. We went along the Hill Trail whistling “Oh, _Hen-ry_!” But if
he heard the call he disregarded it. He never came to us.
[Illustration]
Clarence was inconsolable. Day after day he would waddle into the
back-yard where O’Henry’s empty pen still stood, walk around it, peer
through the wire mesh, and make seductive noises of invitation. Brother
and I tried to explain to him that our baby quail had grown up and had
gone back to his kindred of the woods, but Clarence only hissed at us
and regarded us balefully. I think he suspected us of having made away
with his little comrade.
One day the snow came, early for the Sound country, and Brother and I,
climbing the trail to the top of the hill, saw the familiar three-line
imprints of the quail track. We thought of O’Henry, our lost friend; we
hoped he was warm and that his crop was full of food.
Then one morning we heard the familiar “quit quit” of the quail very
near at hand. The sound came from an empty hen-house, and when we
approached it silently and peered through a crack, what should we see
there but a bevy of twenty quail—and O’Henry in their midst! He had not
forgotten us after all! He had brought his friends and relatives back to
the place of his childhood, where he was sure of a welcome for them.
[Illustration]
Our hands filled with cracked wheat and mixed grain, we came to the door
of the shed, softly whistling, “Oh, _Hen_-ry!” He came, as in former
days, running to us with his head stuck out in front of him, and with a
soft whir of wings was upon my shoulder, pecking contentedly at the
wheat I offered him, and wiping his bill on my cheek.
[Illustration]
All through the weeks of snow and cold we fed O’Henry’s clan, and they
learned that we were not to be feared. They surrounded us like chickens
whenever we came into the shed, for O’Henry’s trust in us had inspired
their confidence. Not only did they become accustomed to us, but to
Clarence as well. For the lonely gray gander caught sight of O’Henry one
morning, and waddled over to him, wiggling his excuse of a tail,
shoveling the ground with his flat, yellow bill, and expressing his
delight in husky quacks. The other quail at first took alarm, and there
was much whirring of wings and scurrying of tiny feet. But the gray
gander soon proved to them that his intentions were of the best. He
merely wished to provide for them. So all those weeks when we fed our
“boarders,” as we called them, Clarence stayed in the shed with the
quail family, grubbing busily at the bare ground, finding little, but
making up for the scarcity of food in kindly endeavor.
[Illustration]
When the snow melted, O’Henry’s tribe went back to the woods—and with
them went Clarence. One day we saw O’Henry and his brown cousins
scurrying up the hill, darting under ferns and bushes, calling to each
other happily—and in their wake was Clarence, the fatherly gander,
flattered into thinking that he was leading the way.
[Illustration]
It was a quaint sight, and we did not try to bring him back because we
thought he would return at sunset. But he did not. He disappeared into
the woods with the quail family, and we never saw him again. Long
afterward, hunters told us of seeing a gray gander with a flock of
quail—and they had forborne to shoot.
So we lost two friends at once, but we tried to believe that they were
happy together. How Clarence accustomed himself to the ways of the wild,
I do not know. But I do believe that somewhere the gray gander still
lives with O’Henry, and I can think of no better protector for the quail
baby and his family.
[Illustration]
_Part Eight_
THE TALE OF TIMOTHY
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
_Timothy clung to the bottle habit._
]
_Part Eight_
TIMOTHY, THE DIRTY BEAR
Perhaps it is unjust to the memory of our friend Timothy that we should
think of him as “the Dirty Bear.” I wouldn’t prejudice you against him
for the world. “Dirty” has such a reprehensible sound. But Timothy was
dirty in a perfectly legitimate way. He had a primitive soul that found
delight in grubbing in rotten stumps for maggots and in burrowing into
the soft earth for Indian potato roots. You can see that under such
circumstances he could not keep his face and paws scrupulously clean,
any more than a child can who makes mud pies. He hated water—but then,
so did we, unless we could take our baths in the Bay—and he had an
almost fanatical fear of soap. Brother, who was then reading “A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” thought Timothy might have
been a reincarnation of some eccentric hermit who had vowed never to
wash himself for the rest of his life.
[Illustration]
We knew Timothy long before he knew us. We did not know him by name, but
we knew where he lived, and we had what you might call a speaking
acquaintance with his mother. It happened thus:
One day, in our explorations along the creek bed at the end of the Hill
Trail, we came suddenly upon a hole in the bank. It was almost covered
by long, overhanging ferns, and had not a puff of wind stirred the
fronds just as we were passing, we should never have known about the
hole at all. It was on the opposite side of the creek, but we found a
place where a fallen log bridged the little stream, and the next moment
we were standing on the opposite side at the foot of the embankment,
pushing the ferns aside and peering into the depths of a black and
wonderfully inviting hole.
[Illustration]
Had we thought to look, we might have seen in the sandy slope that led
up to the hidden entrance the imprints of a foot almost human in shape,
although not nearly so large. Footprints that turned in toward each
other—and we should have known. But our minds were filled with the
fascinating possibilities of the miniature cave we had discovered.
Perhaps it was a pirate den; perhaps gnomes lived there; or perhaps we
were on the track of buried treasure.
[Illustration]
On hands and knees I led the way into the inky blackness with Brother
close behind me. The daylight behind was blotted out. For several yards
the passageway went straight ahead, then it turned suddenly to the
right; and I, turning with it, stopped so abruptly that Brother coming
behind bumped into me. A curious, powerful odor enveloped us, as of
darkness made odorous by furry bodies and warm by living things. Then
from ahead of me not more than two yards away flashed the savage gleam
of two blue-green eyes.
There was a menacing growl which set our spines to tingling, and at the
same instant came the sound of whines and a movement as of baby things
disturbed in their sleep. I was conscious of a sickish, fainting
feeling, for I realized suddenly that we were in the house of a mother
bear.
Brother needed no urging to make his exit. He was backing out on hands
and knees far more quickly than he had come in, and I was prodding him
along, followed by those menacing, hair-raising growls.
[Illustration]
Why the lady bear did not attack us is more than I can tell. The brown
bears of the northwestern woods are harmless and even friendly little
persons, but the mother when protecting her young is more ferocious than
a wildcat or a mountain lion. Perhaps Mrs. Timothy knew that our visit
was unintentional and that we meditated no harm toward her or her
children. At any rate we gained the entrance of the cave untouched and
unharmed, but we were breathing heavily and our knees were wobbling
sadly.
[Illustration]
Perhaps you think we should have stayed away from the house of the lady
bear; but we did not. We were interested, you see, in knowing how much
of a family she had, and we never went along the creek bed without
leaving some offering in the shape of food at the mouth of the hole.
Sometimes it was an apple or a leaf of lettuce, and if nothing else
availed, we broke off licorice root or fern and placed it there for her.
It was our method of apologizing for our intrusion and of expressing our
interest in the family.
One day we saw the mother bear with her children, and that is how we
came to name Timothy. She was at the mouth of the cave, half asleep in
the warm sunshine, and four cubs were rolling over each other like
gridiron heroes in a football scrimmage. They were squealing like young
pigs, and from time to time she remonstrated against their noise by a
sleepy grunt. Then, as we watched, the bear cub at the bottom of the
furry pile squeezed out and stood on his hind legs. His face was covered
with brown, sandy loam, and his squinty black eyes peered out as through
a mask. I knew a boy who lived at the head of the Bay whose face always
looked so. His name was Timothy, and that was why on the spot we so
christened the bear baby.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Our next meeting with Timothy was in the nature of a near-tragedy. We
were hunting for trilliums in Trillium Gulch, a hidden valley to which
we ourselves had cut a path from the Hill Trail. The white, lily-like
flowers starred the hillside there in the spring, and it was our fond
belief that no one came there but ourselves. Hunters and trappers go
everywhere, however, violating even such a woodland paradise as ours. As
we went down the narrow trail, pushing aside the light branches of the
alders and the firtrees, we heard a plaintive, whining cry almost human
in its poignancy. We stopped for an instant, listening, wondering. Then
we slipped softly down the path, thrust aside the interlacing ferns, and
found ourselves beside the little stream which ran like a silver ribbon
through Trillium Gulch. The sounds came from the left, and following
their lead we rounded a boulder in the trail and came upon a sight which
filled us with gasping indignation. A little brown bear with a fleck of
white on his furry throat was tugging frantically and futilely at the
jaws of a steel trap which held his two front paws in a cruel, biting
grip. There was blood upon the jagged clamps, and the face which the
little fellow turned to us was piteous in its baby misery, a little
brown face covered with loam. It was Timothy, the Dirty Bear.
[Illustration]
I do not like even now to think of the half-hour which followed. So
strong was the steel trap that the combined efforts of Brother and
myself could only pry the cruel jaws apart the fraction of an inch. We
were hampered, too, in our work of mercy by poor little Timothy, who,
not realizing that we were trying to help him, shrieked and bit at us
and scratched with his hind feet. Our hands were soon covered with
blood, and there was a long, jagged line of red on Brother’s face where
the baby bear had clawed him. But we did not pause in our efforts.
Finally, by the aid of a stout stick, we managed to open the jaws of the
vicious trap, and the poor little fellow, his front paws cruelly torn
and bleeding, whimpering like a baby, sat down on his haunches and began
to lick his wounded paws, stopping at intervals to hold them out in
front of him like a child whose finger is hurt and wants it made well by
a kiss.
Strangely enough, he was not afraid of us now, and when I took him in my
arms his plaintive whimpering gradually ceased, and he licked at his
paws solicitously.
[Illustration]
No doubt we should have taken Timothy back to his mother and trusted to
nature to heal his grievous hurts. But nature would take too long, and
in the meantime he would suffer cruelly. He was such a little bear, you
know, and had not yet achieved the stoicism which makes the older woods
creatures almost indifferent to pain. So even at the cost of causing his
mother a great deal of worry at his prolonged absence, we took him down
the hill with us to the log cabin to receive first aid treatment for his
wounds.
That is how Timothy, the Dirty Bear, became a friend of ours. Fate in
the form of a hunter prevented us from taking him back to his home in
the creek bank. The poor lady bear was shot the next day. One of her
cubs was captured and the other two children escaped to the woods to
live as best they could. So Timothy belonged to us, and he was the
merriest of playmates.
[Illustration]
When we rescued him from the trap he was a very tiny bear, being no
larger than Tinker, our black and tan rat terrier. He slept in a
clothes-basket on the back porch, sometimes having for a bedfellow
Three-Spot, the mottled black and white cat. Three-Spot at first had
been greatly alarmed by Timothy’s rough and sportive overtures of
friendship. But when she found that by boxing his ears she could correct
his manners and set him to yelping with fright, she took to imposing
upon his good nature by making him serve at night for a mattress. In the
morning we would find the two of them curled up together, Timothy
snoring gently and Three-Spot digging her paws into his soft, thick fur
with a purr that was a monotone of content.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Brother and I did not know whether Timothy’s mother had weaned him from
a milk diet, but we felt that we would be safeguarding his digestion if
we brought him up on liquid food for a time at least, so we rowed into
town especially to purchase a bottle with a strong rubber nipple
attached. The druggist asked if there was a baby at our house, and we
told him yes—what kind of baby, we did not state.
[Illustration]
Whether or not we were following the same system of dietetics that Mrs.
Bear would have employed in bringing up her child, Timothy really did
thrive on his liquid menu. Even after he outgrew the necessity for milk,
he clung to the bottle habit and would sample the contents of any bottle
he found. We used to bring him ginger ale from town and soda pop of all
flavors. If nothing else was handy, we filled a battered old canteen
with sweetened water, and he would tilt back on his hind legs, hold the
canteen perpendicularly aloft, close his eyes, and drink it slowly,
making funny little rumbling noises deep in his throat which, Brother
maintained, were imitations of Three-Spot’s purring. Once he got hold of
a bottle of kerosene and had closed his eyes in anticipatory ecstasy
before the taste of the first terrible mouthful reached his throat. I
shall never forget the look of pained disillusion on Timothy’s face. He
threw the bottle from him, coughed and sputtered, gagged once or twice
as if deathly sick, and then waddled off to the spring, walking
pigeon-toed, and with uncomprehending anguish in the very tilt of his
furry hind quarters. That should have cured him of his liking for
promiscuous bottles, but it did not—as you shall see.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
We worried a little at first as to what else we should give him besides
milk, but we need not have concerned ourselves. Timothy’s appetite was
without limits, and he could eat anything—bread, meat scraps, griddle
cakes, or cold potatoes. On top of the civilized food we fed him he
hunted on his own account for certain roots he liked, clawed the bark
from fallen logs to get the white grubs underneath, and buried his head
at the foot of hollow stumps where the red ants had made their hills.
After an hour or two of such foraging, he would return to us, his face
and paws besmeared with loam and covered with cobwebs, his furry coat
rusty with sand and tagged by twigs and strands of blackberry vine. He
would blink at us questioningly, a trifle shamefacedly, running his
small red tongue along the sides of his mouth, and we would shake our
heads and say mournfully, “Oh, Timothy, you dirty, dirty bear!”
After such excursions we always gave him a bath in the big washtub, and
though he knew there was no escaping it, he always squealed and
struggled while we lathered him and only ceased his whining when we had
rinsed him and put him in the sun to dry, giving him the canteen filled
with sugared water to keep him quiet.
[Illustration]
He was the merriest playfellow we ever had. He went with us
everywhere—up the Hill Trail, into the orchard, and out on the bay when
we sailed our little boat and played that we were pirates. Timothy never
objected to anything except a bath. We dressed him in outlandish
costumes, sometimes with a red bandanna tied around his head, a shawl
looped about his fat and furry body, and a wooden knife stuck in his
belt. He was always ready to wrestle with us, to climb hills with us, or
to be a pillow for our heads as Brother and I lay through the long,
drowsy, summer afternoons and read fairy-tales aloud to each other, or
described the shapes we saw in the clouds.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
When the late fall came, Timothy remembered he was a bear long enough to
have a desire to go to bed for the winter, but what chance had a tired
bear for a seasonal sleep when living in the same house with Tinker,
Three-Spot, Brother, and myself? We would drag him from his
clothes-basket while he whimpered with half-closed eyes, and Tinker
would badger him into wakefulness and a game of tag. Then the four of us
would go through the orchard up to the Hill Trail, pushing each other
into the drifts of dead leaves and playing hide and seek around the
stumps and logs.
[Illustration]
Of course Timothy could not stay with us always; that was too much to
expect. He belonged to the woods, and sooner or later he must obey their
call. He had belonged to us for almost a year, and it was only right
that the out-of-doors should at last claim her child. But when the call
of the wild did come, we were sorry in spite of ourselves, and when
Timothy’s absences came more and more frequently and the intervals of
time he spent with us lessened, we missed him sorely. We knew that soon
our playmate would be with us no more, that he would go back to the
forest whence he came, and take up the serious business of finding a
wife and of locating a tree or a hole in which to spend the next winter.
[Illustration]
The manner of his departure was dramatic, even as was his advent into
our lives. We were up on the Hill Trail, Brother and I, and we had, as
we supposed, left Timothy on the back porch sleeping in his
clothes-basket, for which he was now much too big, but to which he had
become attached through habit. On the open trail with its
sound-deadening mat of hard, brown earth we did not hear the soft,
padding feet that followed us and were not aware that our friend was
near at hand until we met a hunter, brown-faced and with a gun in hand,
near the bend in the path that we called “U-Chu-Ka’s Corner,” in memory
of our little rabbit friend.
[Illustration]
The man had a red band around his hat, I remember, and a canteen was
slung at his side. He had put it to his lips to drink when he caught
sight of us, and suddenly his eyes widened, and the hand that held the
canteen became rigid.
“Run, you kids!” he gasped out, “there’s a bear behind you!”
We turned to confront Timothy, who was standing pigeon-toed in the
middle of the trail, his face covered with loam from a rotten stump
where he had been digging for ants, his eyes blinking at us sleepily and
a trifle reproachfully for having gone off without him. But before we
could explain to the hunter that the bear behind us was a friend of
ours, the man had raised his gun and leveled it at our playfellow. I
screamed aloud and Brother, heedless of the danger flung himself in
front of the rifle.
[Illustration]
Now Timothy knew nothing of guns, but he had long and satisfactory
acquaintance with bottles and canteens. He had seen the man drink. There
was something contained therein that he, Timothy, would like. The man
would not mind sharing it—I’m sure he reasoned thus to himself—and in
that instant when the gun was pointed straight at him, he rose on his
hind feet, his furry arms outstretched, and started toward the hunter.
[Illustration]
The man with the gun forgot to pull the trigger; he forgot everything
except that a dark brown body with gleaming black eyes was advancing
upon him. He gave a little squeal of terror, and the rifle dropped from
his hands. He turned and fled down the trail with Timothy galloping on
all fours close at his heels. In spite of our breathless calls he would
not return to us, and though we ran and called and laughed at the same
time, he soon outdistanced us. When last we saw the hunter he was
disappearing over the crest of a little hillock in the trail with the
canteen bobbing behind him, and the hat with the red band made a dot of
scarlet against the underbrush where it had fallen.
We heard afterward that the man had not stopped running until he reached
the little town. Timothy by that time was nowhere in sight, having given
up the pursuit of the canteen in disgust.
But we never saw him again. Perhaps returning home he met a comely lady
bear and they decided to set up housekeeping together. Perhaps she even
won his heart by telling him that she knew where there was a nice bottle
full of sweetened water.
[Illustration]
Long afterward we found one day by the creek bed a ginger ale bottle
dropped there by some picknickers. It was empty, and on the gravel near
by we saw footprints almost human in shape, only smaller and toeing in
toward each other.
[Illustration]
We knew somehow that Timothy had been there. It was almost as if he had
known we would pass that way, and had left the bottle and his footprints
where we would see them to tell us that we were not forgotten, nor were
the things we had taught him.
_Part Nine_
THE BANDIT BIRD
_Part Nine_
_The_
BANDIT BIRD
[Illustration]
I hope the fact that Hector was a chicken hawk will not prejudice you
against him unduly. There are brigands, you know, who have gentlemanly
instincts, and I am sure that if Hector had been a bandit chief, he
would have spared women and children and given part of his plunderings
to charity. After all, he was not to blame for being a hawk or for
having a natural liking for live poultry. There was at times a mournful
dignity about him, as if he resented the unfair workings of a fate which
had made him a robber bird, a trespasser on the lives of other
creatures, and at enmity with every living thing.
[Illustration:
_Sometimes the bandit birds swooped down_
]
He was a beautiful hawk with gray-brown plumage, wing tips that turned
slightly upward when he flew, and a fierce and royal beak curved like a
scimitar. His eyes were very black, very bright, and very knowing. Most
of the time they were superbly disdainful. But Brother and I have seen
them when they actually seemed to smile.
It was Brother who named him, for the alliterative privilege, I suspect,
of calling him “Hector, the Horrible Hawk.” But that was only in fun.
For he was not horrible at all when we got to know him. Lazarus thinks
otherwise, very probably. But then his experience with Hector was a
trying one, and to this day—if he still lives—he carries the marks of
his eventful meeting with our friend, the robber chief.
[Illustration]
Lazarus was a pet chicken, son of Sironda, the black minorca hen. We
gave him his curious name because he had a talent for venturing very
near death’s door, and the fact that we always saved him lent
appropriateness to his name. Once when very young, no more than five
days out of his shell, he was all but scalped by a rival mother hen, and
when we answered his frantic baby peeps for help his head was bleeding
profusely, and his eyes were closed as if in death. We sprinkled water
on his tiny bill and salved his lacerated head. And he, having a strong
constitution, came back from the tomb, as it were, and lived a long and
eventful life. In order to care for him better, we kept him in the
back-yard, tucking him at night into a small box under flannel
coverings. He thrived and grew from chickhood very sturdily, and the
only ill effect that remained from his early mishap was that he was
quite bald. No feathers ever came on the spot where the lady hen had
scalped him, and we could have distinguished him from every cockerel of
his size and color in the world by that little bare place on the top of
his head.
[Illustration]
Now, when Lazarus lost his first baby down and was in that shorn and
untidy condition which always precedes the growth of real feathers, he
suddenly became lonesome for the other members of the poultry yard. He
would run the length of the wire fence, poking his head through the
small meshes, and more than once he nearly strangled to death by getting
it caught. We always rescued him just in time to save his life. So
finally we allowed him to go into the barnyard with the rest of his
kindred. It was then that Lazarus had the big adventure of his already
crowded career. His meeting with Hector lifted him to dizzy heights—and
I am not speaking figuratively. It really did. At that, it wasn’t so
much a meeting as an abduction. At least Hector intended it to be such.
[Illustration]
We were constantly on guard to keep hawks away from the ranch. They
waged merciless warfare on our chickens, pigeons, and guinea-pigs, and
there was always a loaded, double-barreled shotgun behind the kitchen
door ready for action in case of an air raid. When we heard the
frightened flapping of the pigeons as they flew in aimless circles
around the cabin and barn, we knew a hawk was somewhere overhead,
hovering with curved-up wings and cruel, bright eyes, seeking his prey,
choosing it calmly, waiting patiently the proper moment to swoop down
upon it.
[Illustration]
The chickens, too, always told us when such danger was near. Prince, the
great white Plymouth Rock rooster, would set up a long-drawn cry of
warning, and the hens would burst into frenzied cackling. The whole
poultry yard would cock its head on one side to get a better view of the
air robber, then would scoot to cover of the barn or hen-houses, every
neck ruff distended. Sometimes it was a false alarm. A crow would be
flying peaceably on his business, or a sea-gull would have swerved
inland a bit. Prince took no chances. It was his duty to guard the
poultry yard, and he believed firmly in the policy of safety first.
But many times the warning was one of real danger. A hawk would indeed
be circling slowly above the barnyard, his bright eyes fixed
calculatingly on the scurrying fowls below. Then one of the grown-ups
would snatch the double-barreled shotgun from behind the kitchen door
and fire at the winged plunderer. The shot, though it did not usually
kill, always frightened the air robber away, and we would watch him fly
lazily, almost contemptuously, off toward the hill and the thick woods,
his powerful wings moving steadily and easily.
[Illustration]
Sometimes, though, the bandit birds came and swooped down on their
prey—a small chick or a baby guinea-pig—before we could prevent it. And
often a bloody bunch of feathers near the rookery would testify to the
murderous skill of a hawk and the sad fate of a hapless pigeon.
[Illustration]
It was on a day when the grown-ups had gone to town. The Old Fisherman
was mending his nets down on the float in front of the cabin. It was a
lazy summer day, and Brother and I were sitting on the porch steps
reading—the steps that were made of roughly-hewn logs.
All at once we heard the familiar danger signal of Prince, the white
rooster, and then the hens began to cackle in a very panic of fear. We
dropped our books, but before we could even start for the back-yard, we
heard another sound which seemed so impossible and so out of place that
we listened paralyzed with astonishment. It was the shrill and frenzied
peeping of a half-grown chicken in terrible distress—_and the sound came
from above us_!
[Illustration]
The next instant, as we stood staring, hardly crediting what our eyes
told us, we saw a large chicken hawk fly slowly past the cabin, no
higher than the roof of the porch. He flew so slowly and at such a short
distance from the earth because he was weighted down with a live and
struggling young cockerel, which he held grimly in his sharp talons!
There was a shout that came from our throats simultaneously,
“_Lazarus!_”
[Illustration]
For the struggling, shrilly-peeping victim was no other than our
bald-headed friend whom we had saved from death half a dozen times
before. His bare, gangling legs hung limply beneath him; his neck jerked
spasmodically with his frantic appeals for help. His wings, with their
absurd tufts of feathers, stuck out at right angles from his body, for
the hawk’s talons were buried in the flesh beneath them.
[Illustration]
At the time, you may be sure, we did not wait to make any remarks on all
these observations. With one thought Brother and I plunged through the
front door, back into the kitchen, and bumped into each other in our
eagerness to get the gun. It was Brother who seized it first, and
through the two rooms we dashed again and out into the front yard. The
hawk was flying slowly and with evident difficulty—for Lazarus was a
healthy, heavy youngster—across the open space that lay between the yard
of the cabin and the old brickyard shed which adjoined it.
Brother, bent back almost double by the weight of the heavy weapon,
pressed it against his shoulder, took careful aim, and fired. I
screamed, for there were three falls. Brother tumbled backward from the
kick of the shotgun. Lazarus hurtled to earth in a sprawl of legs and
wings and lay there, uttering feeble, choking sounds. The hawk rocketed
down, a flutter of gray-brown feathers; there was blood upon the grass
where he dropped.
[Illustration]
The Old Fisherman, hearing the commotion, came running up the float, the
wooden shuttle with which he mended nets still grasped tightly in his
hand.
Brother scrambled to his feet, blinking dazedly at the result of his
marksmanship. Our first thought was that Lazarus was killed at last. But
he was apparently only severely shaken by his fall, for presently he
walked off a little dizzily, his tender skin bleeding where the hawk’s
talons had sunk in.
[Illustration]
The hawk was our next consideration. Now that we had wounded him—I say
“we,” because I felt that the responsibility was half mine—we were sorry
for his plight. He was thrashing about helplessly on the grass, one wing
dragging at his side. He was trying desperately to fly, but could not so
much as lift himself above the ground. His fierce, dark eyes blazed at
us, and his powerful, curved beak snapped menacingly when we approached
him. But at last his strength failed him, the bleeding wing spread
itself out in a fan, and he sank over on one side, his talons jerking
spasmodically. As we came nearer he regarded us with eyes that were
unafraid. They even seemed dull with apathy, as if he knew that the end
had come and that he, like the robber aristocrat that he was, must
accept it philosophically.
The Old Fisherman was for ending his life then and there. But Brother
and I could not bear to have him killed, for he was at our mercy, hurt
and helpless. For the first time in our lives we had deliberately
wounded something that lived and had feelings even as we. The knowledge
that we had fired upon him to save our friend’s life was not sufficient
excuse for us to allow the Old Fisherman to kill him.
[Illustration]
So together we caught him, tied his fierce beak so he could not snap at
us, bound his powerful legs so that his talons should not tear our
hands, then the Old Fisherman, grumblingly, but gently, bathed and
salved the injured wing. In time it would be as good as new, he told us,
but he didn’t know what our folks would say to our saving the life of a
“pesterin’, low-lived hawk.”
As he anticipated, the grown-ups were not at all pleased when they
returned from town and found Hector—he had been named by that time—tied
by one leg to a stake in the back-yard, his right wing sadly out of
focus and smeared with a clot of blood. But it was not in their kindly
hearts to kill in cold blood, so they let the hawk live.
[Illustration]
For the first few days that Hector was in our midst he did little except
to tug at the chain which bound him to the stake, slowly and
automatically, like a man taking morning exercises with rubber ropes. He
hated us and repulsed our attentions fiercely and scornfully. He refused
to eat the tempting bits of raw meat that we spread before him; he
sulked all day with his curved beak hidden in the ruffled feathers of
his breast. He was indeed like a robber chieftain in captivity. We were
patient, however, for we knew that according to Hector’s viewpoint we
had injured him without reason. He had been in search of his dinner—a
perfectly legitimate occupation for any one—and as he was carrying it
off we had not only robbed him of it, but wounded him grievously. You
can see that he had a great deal of logic on his side.
[Illustration]
But little by little his haughty antagonism melted before our daily
overtures. He no longer snapped at us when we came near, and began to
take an active interest in the food we brought him. There came a day
when he allowed me to put my hand on the soft, smooth feathers of his
head and back, and when I gently massaged his wounded wing with vaseline
he opened his beak as if to bite my hand but closed it without doing me
harm.
[Illustration]
Then, wonder of wonders, Hector began to like us. When he saw us coming
into the back-yard he would set up a sort of dancing, jumping up and
down stiff-legged, spreading out his dark wings, and straining at the
chain. His beak would snap open and shut, and his bright, black eyes
seemed actually to have a smile in them. He would allow me to salve his
injury with only the faintest suggestion of nervousness in his half-open
beak, and on the day when we unchained his leg from the stake he sat on
my hand with all the dignity of an emperor receiving his court after a
long illness.
[Illustration]
From that time on we gave Hector his liberty for a few hours each day.
And always, before releasing him, we would take the precaution to feed
him well. We did not intend to have any fatalities among the poultry if
we could help it. But even with a full stomach, he worried the barnyard
into a daily spasm of fear. For as he regained the use of his wing, he
would fly slowly, majestically, over the poultry pens, turning his head
from side to side as hawks do when they are picking their prey and
calculating the time for the swoop to earth. Brother and I believed
firmly that Hector had no intention of snatching up a chick or a pigeon,
that his daily flight was merely by way of exercise and for the dramatic
satisfaction it gave him to see the feathered crew below him so
disturbed.
[Illustration]
At any rate, he never once attempted to harm any of our live stock.
Perhaps it was because we fed him so well, but Brother and I preferred
to think it was because he was a gentleman, and that he would not betray
our confidence when we trusted him to do the right thing.
[Illustration]
This daily flight of Hector’s was most annoying to the grown-ups,
however. In the first place, the hens were not laying so well as they
had. They were frightened out of all nesting desire by Hector’s calm
aërial promenades, and were in a continual state of nervous excitement.
Then, too, when Prince gave the danger signal and all the hens ran for
cover with their chicks, the grown-ups would dash out of the house each
time ready to fire upon a strange marauder, only to be confronted with
Hector making peaceable spirals above the hen-houses. He would come to
us when we whistled shrilly, and would sit quietly on my wrist to nibble
at a piece of cooky as if he had never had a carnivorous thought in his
life.
[Illustration]
I should like to tell you that he and Lazarus became friends after the
hawk had become partially domesticated, but such was never the case.
Lazarus used to come stalking into the back-yard, his legs much too long
for the rest of him, and a tiny, serrated, red comb sticking up from the
bald spot on his head. His body was still almost bare, though a generous
tuft of feathers on his tail showed where he might in time expect some
real plumage. He still carried the scars of his aërial adventure under
his wings. He would approach Hector cautiously, craning his neck in and
out with a curious rubberized effect, and would stop at a safe distance,
turning his head on one side, giving Hector a timorous inspection from
the broadside of one amber eye. And Hector would return the look
scornfully, his curved beak giving him a morose, sneering expression.
His whole attitude seemed to say, “Never mind, I’ll get you next time!”
As Hector grew stronger and could fly better, the grown-ups gave the
ultimatum that we must dispose of him in some way. It was too dangerous,
they said, to have a chicken hawk around the ranch. In vain we argued
that Hector was a gentleman, that he would not bother any of our
poultry. But to our sorrow, they said that he should be taken to the
city and presented to the zoölogical gardens there.
[Illustration]
Brother and I told Hector what was going to happen to him, and that it
was not in our power to prevent his going, and it seemed to us that he
was very thoughtful afterward. We shall always believe that what
happened was the direct result of the grown-ups’ decision to send him
into captivity, although, you understand, we could not blame them. They
had been more than kind to our somewhat dangerous guest.
The next day when we released our robber chieftain from his stake, he
flew up over the cabin roof, circled once around it, then flew northward
along the beach and was soon out of sight. When night came Hector did
not return. And though Brother and I stood in the yard whistling until
we were breathless, there was no sudden swoop of a gray-brown bird from
the air, no Hector to curve sharp talons gently around my wrist.
[Illustration]
The next morning, when we went for milk at the neighboring ranch, we
knew why our friend had not come back to us. On the fence outside the
barn, hung limply over the pickets just as he had fallen, was a draggled
bunch of gray-brown feathers that had once been our beautiful Hector,
the Robber Chief. The wide wings were powerless now, the body was
riddled with fine shot, the once proud head with its curved beak drooped
pitifully. The fierce dark eyes were closed. Never again would Hector
perform his dance of joy at our coming, never again would he stare
appraisingly at Lazarus, or frighten the hens and pigeons with his lazy
circles above their heads.
The rancher told us he had shot the hawk the day before. And he could
not understand why we wept over the blood-stained bunch of feathers. He
did not know that Hector was a friend of ours—and a gentleman.
Brother and I always thought that Hector deliberately courted death
rather than spend his life in yearning captivity. And I, for one, am
glad he did. For no one else would have understood him and loved him as
we did.
[Illustration:
_Her nostrils dilated at the hated human scent._
]
_Part Ten_
MY FRIEND THE PRINCESS
This is not my story, except incidentally. It is the story of a Bengal
tigress named Princess, with a coat of dull gold striped with ebony. A
restless, sullen tigress, padding the length of her narrow cage, with
amber eyes staring out at some vision beyond the iron bars, with tawny
lips half drawn back from white, pointed fangs. A tigress with something
high and noble in her steady pacing, her air of absolute detachment from
everything around her. When I met her I was no longer a child living
near Puget Sound, but had quite grown up and moved to California, and to
city life far from my woodland friends of earlier and sweeter years.
[Illustration]
Princess lives in a motion-picture studio’s menagerie now, but there was
a time when she knew the hot, marshy smell of the Bengal jungles, when
she crouched, tense in every muscle, to spring upon a fat bullock, when
she padded through narrow jungle trails to drink at the hidden pool
which only the forest creatures knew.
[Illustration]
She was caught in a tiger pit, they told me, when little more than a
cub. She had been purchased first by a circus, and then by the
motion-picture company which owns her now. They told me she was fierce
and utterly without affection. And indeed she looked so, pacing back and
forth in her iron-barred cage, her breath coming in a hissing snarl as
she noted our presence, her amber eyes widening ever so little as she
caught our scent.
Still I could not think Princess was so terrible. I could not find it in
my heart to be afraid of her. I pitied her. There was something
unbearably pathetic in her constant pacing. It seemed to me that I could
actually feel the longing of her caged heart to be out in the open
again, to lope down jungle trails, to lie stretched out on rocks warm
with Indian sunshine. There was no enmity in the look she turned on us,
only indifference, and—was it pleading?
[Illustration]
It was my first visit to the studio. And I carried away with me that
picture of Princess in her cramped cage, pacing, pausing, sniffing at
the air heavy with human scent, her amber eyes seeing something afar
off, something we could not understand—
[Illustration]
Then I discovered that the keeper of the menagerie was an old friend of
mine. “Pudgy” he was nicknamed. He was short and rotund, and trained
animals with kindness instead of whips. I had known him in the Puget
Sound country when Brother and I were children. A woodsman he had been
then, and with a tiny little cabin near Green Point. We had visited him
often, for he shared our love for the things of the open. He had had a
tame deer whose name was Nellie, and he had nursed back to health a
bobcat that he had rescued from a trap in the High Sierras. It was not
strange that with his love of animals Pudgy should finally come into a
position as keeper of a motion-picture menagerie. Many years had passed
since we had seen each other, but when we met by chance—I was of the
press—we renewed old acquaintance, and found pleasure in talking of
Puget Sound and of the woods creatures we had loved.
[Illustration]
Through him I came to know personally the animals in the menagerie. I
was introduced to the Russian wolves, to the lions, to the bears, and to
Princess the tigress. I think he liked her best of all the wild things
there, and I am sure I did. There was something about her cheated
strength, her restrained power, that made my heart go out to her. I
never failed to visit her when I went to the studio, and I liked to
think that she knew me and recognized me as a friend.
It was several weeks after Pudgy and I renewed our old friendship that
they told me at the studio that Princess, the glorious Bengal tigress,
was to be killed. She had grown unmanageable for picture work, they
said, too sullen and too treacherous. The picture in hand called for a
tiger hunt. She was to be sacrificed for the sake of reality and shot
down. Her pelt, they added, would be worth a great deal of money.
But I could not think of Princess in terms of a pelt that was worth
money. I felt as if a human being had been sentenced to death. Because
she could not find it in her royal heart to cringe beneath the trainer’s
lash, she was to die; because she was queenly, and unafraid, she no
longer had the right to live.
[Illustration]
I have seen the tortures wild animals go through in making pictures. How
they are prodded with pointed sticks, made to jump into water from great
heights, and forced to run through blazing brush. I have seen lions and
tigers struck cruelly on their sensitive noses to make them register
rage. All these things had Princess suffered from trainers and
directors. I did not blame her for rebelling.
I came upon Pudgy as he sat on a bench near Princess’s cage, his chin in
his hand, and he was staring at her while she paced restlessly back and
forth with hissing intakes of breath.
“They are going to kill her,” he said slowly, “just because they can’t
break her spirit.”
[Illustration]
I sat beside him, and together we watched Princess. Pudgy told me how he
had tried to ease the fear and hatred of humans in the heart of the
jungle tigress by being especially nice to her. How, when she had hurt
herself jumping from a springboard into a lake with sharp rocks in it,
he had gone into the cage and bathed the swollen paw, and how she had
licked his hand with her huge, grating tongue. Once she had had a
swelling on her throat; he was the only one whom she suffered to
minister to it. And again, when she had sickened with fever, he had
stayed in her cage a night and a day, moistening her tongue with water
and watching until her eyes lost their glazed stare and became normal
once more.
“And they’re going to kill her,” he repeated slowly, “just because she
can’t understand the treatment they’ve given her—because she’s not
afraid of their whips any more.”
[Illustration]
His voice almost broke. And my heart went out to him and to the tawny
wild thing in the barred cage. If he could only make the Powers
understand, I told him. If only he could make them realize that Princess
was not wantonly ferocious, only tortured into savagery by unkind
treatment. He shook his head. The Powers, he said, understood nothing
that did not have a dollar mark attached.
So the day was set when Princess was to die. It was to be in the
out-of-door arena, an oval piece of ground enclosed in upright bars and
strong steel wire. At the back was a miniature thicket of bamboo, ferns,
and marsh grass. At the front was the camera cage, strongly barred to
prevent danger from the wild animals being photographed in action.
[Illustration]
My visit to the menagerie that day was accidental. I did not know that
the tigress was to be killed. I had only been told that an interesting
picture was being made in the arena. So I pushed my way through the
double line of carpenters, actors, and onlookers, to the very bars of
the huge out-of-door cage. The camera man was already in his barred
enclosure, and inside the arena the director, a slim-waisted man with a
black mustache, was outlining the action of the scene to the hero of the
picture, who, attired in a hunting costume, dabbed at his face with a
yellow powder-puff.
[Illustration]
“The tiger comes bounding out of the jungle,” the director was saying,
“and you shoot from behind that log. Never mind if you don’t get her the
first shot. I’ll have my gun on her, and I’ll finish her off. There’s no
danger.”
My heart stopped and then thumped painfully. I had stumbled unknowingly
on the scene of Princess’s execution. I felt sickened. I could not bear
to stay and see her shot at—wounded first by an ill-aimed rifle, then
fired upon until she dropped, an inert mass of tawny gold and black—
[Illustration]
I turned away, tried to press through the crowd. But there were too many
people. Every one from the studio had ceased work to come and see the
spectacular death of Princess, the Bengal tigress.
I was dimly aware that men were rolling a cage on wheels up to the side
entrance of the arena. From between the bars I caught a glint of
sunlight on a body of savage beauty. I saw, too, the white, drawn face
of Pudgy, standing by the side of the cage.
Some one opened the side gate of the arena. The director and the actor
were still talking. The director was showing graphically how the other
should come out of the jungle, should listen for the tigress’s coming,
should drop behind the log and fire—
[Illustration]
What happened then I can scarcely remember. It was all so sudden, so
breath-taking. A confusion of signals had been the cause, they told me
afterward. The man at the cage thought the opening of the arena gate was
the signal to release Princess—and he had opened the door of her cage!
There was a shout that died away in a gasp of many breaths, a silence
that was like a great commotion—for Princess, the royal Bengal tigress,
crashed through the flimsy greenery of the mimic jungle and like a tawny
statue stopped short, her head raised, her amber eyes wide.
It was a nightmare, that terrible instant. No one moved. The director’s
face went pasty white, the actor’s red-lined mouth had fallen open.
There in that oval cage the two puny men faced the magnificent creature
of the wilds, faced the animal they had planned to kill—and they were
helpless.
[Illustration]
Only the briefest moment did the tableau last. For Princess’s nostrils
dilated with the hated human scent, her eyes narrowed to slits, her nose
wrinkled back, and she snarled. The director was speaking jerkily
without moving—saying that no one must scream—telling some one to bring
the gun—
[Illustration]
At the sound of his voice the tigress dropped to a crouch. Her tail
lashed her sides. I could not take my eyes from the arena. My throat was
dry. I was vaguely conscious that a man had pushed past me. It was
Pudgy, the menagerie keeper.
For a scant second a lower crouch—a long-drawn snarl—then a voice spoke,
quietly, sharply.
“_Princess!_”
At the sound of the keeper’s voice, the tigress lifted her head ever so
little, and her amber, black-rimmed eyes turned toward him.
“Princess!” he said again. “Keep back—steady, old girl!”
He had unfastened the front gate of the arena and opened it. He was
unarmed; he carried not so much as a whip. Yet he went toward her
quietly, talking in a gentle monotone, and she snarled at him as he
came. But he walked quickly, confidently. He placed himself between the
two men and the crouching tigress. Then he planted his feet far apart
and smiled down at her.
“Maybe you’re mad at these folks, but you wouldn’t be mad at me—your old
pal,” he said softly.
There was a moment of sickening suspense. Then the snarl died on
Princess’s lips, her tail ceased its frenzied lashing, and she rose from
her crouching position.
“The danger is over,” Pudgy said quietly to the men behind him. “Just
move out toward the door. Take your time. Don’t run.”
[Illustration]
Then he spoke to the tigress again:
“Into your cage, old girl, right out through the same door you came
in—Out you go—It’s all right, lady—Don’t be frightened—You know your old
pal wouldn’t do anything to hurt you—”
He was stepping forward toward her, urging her gently but firmly back
through the side gate of the enclosure. She snarled as she went, and
stopped once to roar full-throated defiance. But the mild little man
talked to her always, caressing her with his voice, comforting her with
the assurance that she was not to be hurt. The tawny body slipped
through the door into the wagon cage—the door clanged after her—it was
over.
Pudgy came out of the arena at the gate where he had entered. His face
was calm, his hands untrembling. I pushed past the people in front of me
and in a moment was beside him.
[Illustration]
“Tell them, oh, tell them now!” I whispered. And Pudgy, because he, too,
loved the things of the wild, understood me.
“Do you think it would do any good?” he questioned under his breath, and
I nodded, being almost past speech.
Together we sought the director of the picture. He was one of the
Powers. His word would mean much.
He was still white-lipped and breathless, but he attempted a wan smile
as he shook Pudgy’s hand.
“Well, she almost got us,” he spoke with forced cheerfulness. “If it
hadn’t been for you—” He shuddered in spite of himself. “If there’s
anything I can do, old-man, to show my gratitude—”
Pudgy’s eyes turned toward the wagon cage where Princess had commenced
her endless pacing. She was still snarling softly, as if dreaming of the
vengeance on man which had almost been hers.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
“Maybe you don’t know it,” he said slowly, “but the real reason Princess
obeyed me was because she knows me and likes me. She knows I like her,
too, and she wouldn’t do anything to make me feel bad. And if you really
mean what you say—about doing something—why, let Princess live.
She—she’s a friend of mine.”
There was a short silence. The director was staring at him curiously.
“That tiger—that bloodthirsty beast—a _friend_ of yours?” he said
incredulously.
“Yes,” answered Pudgy simply. “She’s just that, and I don’t want her
killed.”
The director turned away, walked a few short steps, and halted. “All
right,” he said briefly, “if that’s the way of it—I’ll see what I can
do.”
As I said before, this is not my story. I wish it were. I should love to
have the friendship of that wonderful tigress as Pudgy has it. But at
least I always make it a point, when at the studio, to pay a brief visit
to Princess, the Royal Bengal. She paces unceasingly and stares at
something beyond the bars which humans may not see. But because Pudgy
has let me come inside the railing, and has told Princess that I helped,
a very little bit, in obtaining her reprieve from the death sentence, I
like to think that her amber eyes as they rest on me are not fierce, but
kindly, and that she knows that I love her and wish her well.
[Illustration]
_Part Eleven_
ETHEL OF THE WILD HEART
[Illustration:
_For I saw her, not a savage, bloodthirsty beast, but a wild thing of
the deep woods, ruled by pain instead of kindliness._
]
_Part Eleven_
ETHEL
_of the_
WILD HEART
This is the story of a lioness in a cage at a great moving-picture
studio—a lean, tawny lioness with slanting, amber eyes and flexible
muscles that undulated under the loose skin like ripples of water under
a blanket of kelp.
They said, the people of the studio, that Ethel was savage, that she had
clawed a trainer and injured an actor for life, that she hated women and
would not tolerate the touch of a human hand. And they thought me a
little mad when I wanted to go into the cage where she and four other
lions were taking their exercise.
But I was of the press, so I was permitted to enter the cage with the
trainer, to go through the doubled-barred iron doors, and to stand very
quietly while the keeper of the lions, with a long whip, lashed the
snarling animals to their pedestals.
Of them all, Ethel was the most savage. Her eyes blazed with a wicked
light that burned green behind the amber; her tail lashed furiously when
the trainer flicked her with his whip; and afraid as she undoubtedly
was, the courage of her spirit showed itself in her stubborn crouch and
the vicious striking of her powerful paws whenever the lash came near
her.
[Illustration]
She fascinated me. The other lions were cowed, it seemed, by long
experience with the stinging whip. They took their places protesting and
snarling, but with alacrity none the less. Ethel would not obey. In
defiance of the stern commands of the trainer and the leather thong
which flicked remorselessly about her eyes and nose, she would leap from
one side of the cage to the other, crouch for an instant, then spring
again, shaking the bars in her frenzied attempts to escape the
persecuting lash, while the other lions watched her from their pedestals
uneasily, with guttural intakes of breath and occasional snarls.
Do you wonder what I felt when Ethel careened about the cage, stubborn,
disobedient, mad with rage as well as with a terror born of pain? At
first I felt fear, a fear as unreasoning as that of the lioness. For in
one of her crazed leaps she brushed against me, so that I was pushed
sharply against the iron bars of the cage.
“Do you want to go out?” the trainer was asking me, and I shook my head,
for I could not speak.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Then suddenly the fear left me. The thread of ice which had seemed to
run from the top of my head to the very soles of my feet melted away as
though in a warm sunshine. For Ethel, crouching in snarling defiance,
had suddenly raised her head. For an instant we measured each other, eye
to eye. And in that moment I remembered another wild thing—this one
uncaged—and I remembered myself a little girl alone on the Hill Trail,
facing the amber eyes of one of Ethel’s distant kin. I want to tell you
what I remembered, so that you will know why the ice thread was melted
and why things happened in that barred cage that the trainer said had
never happened before.
[Illustration]
It was while we still lived in the little cabin on the Bay, and I was
yet a child. Brother had gone away to school, and I was lonely, so more
than ever I sought the woods and the companionship of the woods
creatures there.
It was a sultry day in August when the juncoes were flying in panicky
flocks, and when a haze of smoke was in the air that told of forest
fires not so far away. All the night before the sky in the west had been
reddened with a dull glow that gradually grew brighter, and though we
had no fear for ourselves since a cleared space lay between the wooded
hills and the cabin we were sorry for the wild things of the woods who
would be forced to flee from the red monster that devoured their homes
so relentlessly.
The air that day was oppressive, for the smoke hung low, and if we
listened carefully, we could hear the distant crackling of tall pines
with gum-smeared trunks on fire, and the occasional crash of a giant
fir, tortured too long by licking flames.
[Illustration]
I sought the Hill Trail, listening, as I climbed, to the ominous crackle
of burning trees, much nearer than I would have wished. And perhaps it
was because of that intentness that I came, without realizing it, face
to face with a wildcat, the largest I have ever seen, stretched across
the trail, only a few feet in front of me.
[Illustration]
For the first time in my life I knew the fear of which men and books
tell you. Many had been the stories told by hunters who passed the
cabin, of the ferocity of mountain lions and wildcats, although none of
them had ever been seen in the woods around us, because civilization was
too near. These beasts, said the hunters, kept to the higher hills and
the deeper wooded forests, where game abounded and men seldom came. So
when I saw the tawny animal so close that one light spring would have
carried the powerful body upon me, my first impulse was to run—blindly,
madly—to run until I could run no more, or until the fierce claws of the
great cat should bear me to the ground—
The wildcat had not moved except to lift its head ever so slightly and
to draw back its jowls in a hissing snarl that displayed cruel, white
fangs. The amber eyes watched me without flickering, yet in them I saw
distrust, startled anger, and ever so little of a desire to spring—to
kill—
[Illustration]
In that one instant I had many thoughts—dizzy, rambling thoughts, that
chased themselves across my mind like dried leaves blown by a wind. I
noticed the straight, white whiskers on either side of the wildcat’s
nostrils; I heard the distant fall of a tree; I saw a grasshopper leap
from a blade of grass that was bending under his weight; I heard the
scuttle of leaves somewhere in the woods and knew that a bevy of quail
was there. But I could not move. I stood still in the grip of that numb
terror.
[Illustration]
What would have happened I can not say. Suddenly the fear left me—for I
_knew_! I knew that the tawny animal before me was a wild thing of the
woods even as were the other wild things I loved. I knew that fear of
fire had driven him from his familiar haunts far up in the mountains,
that he sought these woods for protection, not for killing, and I knew
that I, having been in those woods longer than he, was hostess there,
and that it was my place to make him welcome, to extend to him the
friendly greetings that I would have tendered to any of my woods
friends. The fear was gone, utterly. I wanted to put my hand on his
sleek head, to stroke his glossy back, to put my cheek against the
russet satin of his thick coat.
[Illustration]
But I made no move. I spoke to him, as I would have spoken to any other
of my woods friends, telling him that he was welcome, that the woods
were his as well as mine, and that I hoped the fire would spare his
relatives who were dear to him.
As I spoke, the amber eyes opened wider, the snarl died away, and
suddenly he yawned, voluminously, with a snap of his jaws and a careless
licking motion of his red tongue. Then his eyes closed indifferently,
and I knew he had understood me. I knew that between us was no thought
of fear or hate. I walked past him up the trail, so close that I might
have touched him, and he did not move. Only the amber eyes met mine
squarely, and it was as if the wild thing from the deeper woods had said
with words,
“We are friends—go in peace.”
[Illustration]
When I had gone up the trail a way, I stopped at the bend in the path
and looked back. The wildcat was in the same position, but he was
watching me still with eyes unblinking and unafraid.
So that is why, some years later, when Ethel raised her head and met my
eyes, the icy fear slipped away. For I saw her, not a savage,
bloodthirsty beast, but a wild thing of the deep woods, girded round
with iron bars and stinging whips, a wild thing ruled by pain instead of
kindliness, and there surged into my heart a great love and pity for
her. I wanted to take the whip from the man, to break it into bits, to
tell her that she was free to go back to her mountain fastnesses.
[Illustration]
So, disregarding the cry of warning from the trainer and the gasps from
those who stood outside the cage, I walked slowly toward the crouching
lioness, saying to her the things I would have said had I met her in the
woods, telling her that I, too, belonged to the out-of-doors, that I,
too, was a captive, that between us there was a bond. Slowly the
snarling lips relaxed, the glint of green went out of her slanting eyes,
and she no longer crouched. I knelt beside her on the floor of the cage,
while the lions above on their pedestals watched with curious, sullen
eyes, and the trainer’s voice died away in a series of gulps. Gently I
put out my hand and touched her rough, tawny head. She flinched and
snarled, but I did not draw my hand away, and the next instant I felt
her tense muscles relax, and she was quiet under the steady stroking of
my hand.
[Illustration]
The trainer spoke to me in an agonized whisper, telling me to come away
quickly, and as I rose from my kneeling position, Ethel rose, too.
Padding over to the pedestal which was hers, she mounted to it with a
spring and sat there quietly, her eyes never leaving me or missing a
motion I made.
When we left the cage, Ethel padded close to my side, and the trainer
said in jest that I might take her for a pet.
If I only could have! My heart was aching for her as I left, for I, too,
am sometimes rebellious at the ways of civilization and of a world that
does not know or care about the things of life that have nothing to do
with money. I, too, am lonely for the freshness of leaves wet with dew,
the feeling of moss underfoot, the glint of sunlight through laced
branches. I think I know a little of the longing that is hers as she
paces back and forth in her narrow cage, for hers is not a savage
heart—only a wild heart; and I know that love can speak to it and soothe
its hurt.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
● HTML alt text was used for images that didn’t have captions.
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