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Title: The King of the Mamozekel
Author: Charles G. D. Roberts
Illustrator: Charles Livingston Bull
Release Date: November 5, 2021 [eBook #66676]
Language: English
Produced by: deaurider, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KING OF THE MAMOZEKEL ***
THE KING OF THE MAMOZEKEL
The Works of
Charles G. D. Roberts
THE HAUNTERS OF THE SILENCES $2.00
RED FOX 2.00
THE WATCHERS OF THE TRAILS 2.00
THE KINDRED OF THE WILD 2.00
THE HOUSE IN THE WATER 1.50
EARTH’S ENIGMAS 1.50
THE HEART OF THE ANCIENT WOOD 1.50
THE HEART THAT KNOWS 1.50
THE PRISONER OF MADEMOISELLE 1.50
BARBARA LADD 1.50
THE FORGE IN THE FOREST 1.50
A SISTER TO EVANGELINE 1.50
BY THE MARSHES OF MINAS 1.50
CAMERON OF LOCHIEL (_translated_) 1.50
THE YOUNG ACADIAN .50
THE CRUISE OF THE YACHT “DIDO” .50
THE HAUNTER OF THE PINE GLOOM .50
THE LORD OF THE AIR .50
THE KING OF THE MAMOZEKEL .50
THE WATCHERS OF THE CAMP-FIRE .50
THE RETURN TO THE TRAILS .50
THE LITTLE PEOPLE OF THE SYCAMORE .50
L. C. Page & Company
53 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.
[Illustration: THE KING
OF THE
MAMOZEKEL]
Roberts’ Animal Stories
The King of the
Mamozekel
BY
CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
Author of “The Watchers of the Trails,” “The Kindred
of the Wild,” “The Heart of the Ancient Wood,”
“Barbara Ladd,” “Poems,” etc.
Illustrated by
CHARLES LIVINGSTON BULL
[Illustration]
BOSTON L. C. PAGE
& COMPANY _PUBLISHERS_
_Copyright, 1902_
BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
_Copyright, 1904_
BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
_All rights reserved_
The King of the Mamozekel
Third Impression, July, 1908
Fourth Impression, February, 1913
COLONIAL PRESS
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY C. H. SIMONDS & CO.
BOSTON, MASS., U. S. A.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
THE KING OF THE MAMOZEKEL _Frontispiece_
“THE CALF STOOD CLOSE BY, WATCHING WITH INTEREST” 17
“THE MOTHER MALLARD WOULD FLOAT AMID HER BROOD” 27
“BUT THEY FELL SHORT OF THEIR INTENDED MARK” 37
“THICK PILED THE SNOWS ABOUT THE LITTLE HERD” 49
“WAS OFF THROUGH THE UNDERBRUSH IN IGNOMINIOUS FLIGHT” 71
“IT WAS FEAR ITSELF THAT HE WAS WIPING OUT” 81
THE
KING OF THE MAMOZEKEL
I.
When the king of the Mamozekel barrens was born, he was one of the most
ungainly of all calves,--a moose-calf.
In the heart of a tamarack swamp, some leagues south from Nictau
Mountain, was a dry little knoll of hardwood and pine undiscovered by
the hunters, out of the track of the hunting beasts. Neither lynx,
bear, nor panther had tradition of it. There was little succulent
undergrowth to tempt the moose and the caribou. But there the wild plum
each summer fruited abundantly, and there a sturdy brotherhood of
beeches each autumn lavished their treasure of three-cornered nuts; and
therefore the knoll was populous with squirrels and grouse. Nature,
in one of those whims of hers by which she delights to confound the
studious naturalist, had chosen to keep this spot exempt from the law
of blood and fear which ruled the rest of her domains. To be sure, the
squirrels would now and then play havoc with a nest of grouse eggs,
or, in the absence of their chisel-beaked parents, do murder on a nest
of young golden-wings; but, barring the outbreaks of these bright-eyed
incorrigible marauders,--bad to their very toes, and attractive to
their plumy tail-tips,--the knoll in the tamarack swamp was a haven of
peace amid the fierce but furtive warfare of the wilderness.
On this knoll, when the arbutus breath of the northern spring was
scenting the winds of all the Tobique country, the king was born,--a
moose-calf more ungainly and of mightier girth and limb than any
other moose-calf of the Mamozekel. Never had his mother seen such a
one,--and she a mother of lordly bulls. He was uncouth, to be sure, in
any eyes but those of his kind,--with his high humped fore-shoulders,
his long, lugubrious, overhanging snout, his big ears set low on his
big head, his little eyes crowded back toward his ears, his long,
big-knuckled legs, and the spindling, lank diminutiveness of his
hindquarters. A grotesque figure, indeed, and lacking altogether in
that pathetic, infantile winsomeness which makes even little pigs
attractive. But any one who knew about moose would have said, watching
the huge baby struggle to his feet and stand with sturdy legs well
braced, “There, if bears and bullets miss him till his antlers get
full spread, is the king of the Mamozekel.” Now, when his mother had
licked him dry, his coat showed a dark, very sombre, cloudy, secretive
brown, of a hue to be quite lost in the shadows of the fir and hemlock
thickets, and to blend consummately with the colour of the tangled
alder trunks along the clogged banks of the Mamozekel.
The young king’s mother was perhaps the biggest and most morose cow
on all the moose ranges of northern New Brunswick. She assuredly had
no peer on the barrens of the upper Tobique country. She was also the
craftiest. That was the reason why, though she was dimly known and
had been blindly hunted all the way from Nictau Lake, over Mamozekel,
and down to Blue Mountain on the main Tobique, she had never felt a
bullet wound, and had come to be regarded by the backwoods hunters
with something of a superstitious awe. It was of her craft, too, that
she had found this knoll in the heart of the tamarack swamp, and had
guarded the secret of it from the herds. Hither, at calving time,
she would come by cunningly twisted trails. Here she would pass the
perilous hours in safety, unharassed by the need of watching against
her stealthy foes. And when once she had led her calf away from the
retreat, she never returned to it, save alone, and in another year.
For three days the great cow stayed upon the knoll, feeding upon the
overhanging branch tips of mountain-ash and poplar. This was good
fodder, for buds and twigs were swollen with sap, and succulent. In
those three days her sturdy young calf made such gains in strength and
stature that he would have passed in the herd for a calf of two weeks’
growth. In mid-afternoon of the third day she led the way down from the
knoll and out across the quaking glooms of the tamarack swamp. And the
squirrels in the budding branches chattered shrill derision about their
going.
The way led through the deepest and most perilous part of the swamp;
but the mother knew the safe trail in all its windings. She knew where
the yielding surface of moss with black pools on either side was not
afloat on fathomless ooze, but supported by solid earth or a framework
of ancient tree roots. She shambled onward at a very rapid walk, which
forced the gaunt calf at her heels to break now and then into the
long-striding, tireless trot which is the heritage of his race.
For perhaps an hour they travelled. Then, in a little, partly open
glade where the good sound earth rose up sweet from the morass, and
the mountain-ash, the viburnum, and the moose-wood grew thinly, and
the ground was starred with spring blooms,--painted trillium and
wake-robin, claytonia and yellow dog-tooth and wind-flower,--they
stopped. The calf, tired from his first journeying, nursed fiercely,
twitching his absurd stub of a tail, butting at his mother’s udder with
such discomforting eagerness that she had to rebuke him by stepping
aside and interrupting his meal. After several experiences of this
kind he took the hint, and put curb upon his too robust impatience.
The masterful spirit of a king is liable to inconvenience its owner if
exercised prematurely.
By this time the pink light of sunset was beginning to stain the
western curves of branch and stem and bud, changing the spring
coolness of the place into a delicate riot of fairy colour and light,
intervolving form. Some shadows deepened, while others disappeared.
Certain leaves and blossoms and pale limbs stood out with a clearness
almost startling, suddenly emphasised by the level rays, while others
faded from view. Though there was no wind, the changed light gave an
effect of noiseless movement in the glade. And in the midst of this
gathering enchantment the mother moose set herself to forage for her
own meal.
Selecting a slim young birch-tree, whose top was thick with twigs and
greening buds, she pushed against it with her massive chest till it
bent nearly to the ground. Then straddling herself along it, she held
it down securely between her legs, moved forward till the succulent
top was within easy reach, and began to browse with leisurely jaws and
selective reachings out of her long, discriminating upper lip. The
calf stood close by, watching with interest, his legs sympathetically
spread apart, his head swung low from his big shoulders, his great
ears swaying slowly backward and forward, not together, but one at a
time. When the mother had finished feeding, there were no buds, twigs
or small branches left on the birch sapling; and the sunset colours
had faded out of the glade. With dusk a chilly air breathed softly
through the trees, and the mother led the way into a clump of thick
balsam firs near the edge of the good ground. In the heart of the
thicket she lay down for the night, facing away from the wind; and the
calf, quick in perception as in growth, lay down close beside her in
the same position. He did not know at the time the significance of the
position, but he had a vague sense of its importance. He was afterward
to learn that enemies were liable to approach his lair in the night,
and that as long as he slept with his back to the wind, he could not be
taken unawares. The wind might be trusted to bring to his marvellous
nostrils timely notice of danger from the rear; while he could depend
upon his eyes and his spacious, sensitive, unsleeping ears to warn him
of anything ascending against the wind to attack him in front.
[Illustration: “THE CALF STOOD CLOSE BY, WATCHING WITH INTEREST.”]
At the very first suggestion of morning the two light sleepers arose.
In the dusk of the fir thicket the hungry calf made his meal. Then they
came forth into the grayness of the spectral spring dawn, and the great
cow proceeded as before to breast down a birch sapling for fodder.
Before the sun was fairly up, they left the glade and resumed their
journey across the swamp.
It was mid-morning of a sweet-aired, radiant day when they emerged from
the swamp. Now, through a diversified country of thick forests and
open levels, the mother moose swung forward on an undeviating trail,
perceptible only to herself. Presently the land began to dip. Then a
little river appeared, winding through innumerable alders, with here
and there a pond-like expansion full of young lily-leaves; and the
future king of the Mamozekel looked upon his kingdom. But he did not
recognise it. He cared nothing for the little river of alders. He was
tired, and very hungry, and the moment his mother halted he ran up and
nursed vehemently.
II.
Delicately filming with the first green, and spicy-fragrant, were
the young birch-trees on the slopes about the Mamozekel water. From
tree-top to tree-top, across the open spaces, the rain-birds called to
each other with long falls of melody and sweetly insistent iteration.
In their intervals of stillness, which came from time to time as if by
some secret and preconcerted signal, the hush was beaded, as it were,
with the tender and leisurely staccatos of the chickadees. The wild
kindreds of the Tobique country were all happily busy with affairs of
spring.
While the great cow was pasturing on birch-twigs, the calf rested,
with long legs tucked under him, on the dry, softly carpeted earth
beneath the branches of a hemlock. At this pleasant pasturage the
mother moose was presently joined by her calf of the previous season, a
sturdy bull-yearling, which ran up to her with a pathetic little bleat
of delight, as if he had been very desolate and bewildered during the
days of her strange absence. The mother received him with good-natured
indifference, and went on pulling birch-tips. Then the yearling came
over and eyed with curiosity the resting calf,--the first moose-calf
he had ever seen. The king, unperturbed and not troubling himself
to rise, thrust forward his spacious ears, and reached out a long,
inquiring nose to investigate the newcomer. But the yearling was in
doubt. He drew back, planted his fore hoofs firmly, and lowered and
shook his head, challenging the stranger to a butting bout. The old
moose, which had kept wary eye upon the meeting, now came up and stood
over her young, touching him once or twice lightly with her upper lip.
Then, swinging her great head to one side, she glanced at the yearling,
and made a soft sound in her throat. Whether this were warning or
mere pertinent information, the yearling understood that his smaller
kinsman was to be let alone, and not troubled with challenges. With
easy philosophy, he accepted the situation, doubtless not concerned
to understand it, and turned his thoughts to the ever fresh theme of
forage.
Through the spring and summer the little family of three fed never far
from the Mamozekel stream; and the king grew with astonishing speed.
Of other moose families they saw little, for the mother, jealous and
overbearing in her strength, would tolerate no other cows on her
favourite range. Sometimes they saw a tall bull, with naked forehead,
come down to drink or to pull lily-stems in the still pools at sunset.
But the bull, feeling himself discrowned and unlordly in the absence of
his antlers, paid no attention to either cows or calves. While waiting
for autumn to restore to his forehead its superb palmated adornments,
he was haughty and seclusive.
By the time summer was well established in the land, the moose-calf had
begun to occupy himself diligently with the primer-lessons of life.
Keeping much at his mother’s head, he soon learned to pluck the tops of
tall seeding grasses; though such low-growing tender herbage as cattle
and horses love, he never learned to crop. His mother, like all his
tribe, was too long in the legs and short in the neck to pasture close
to the ground. He was early taught, however, what succulent pasturage
of root and stem and leaf the pools of Mamozekel could supply; and
early his sensitive upper lip acquired the wisdom to discriminate
between the wholesome water-plants and such acrid, unfriendly growths
as the water-parsnip and the spotted cow-bane. Most pleasant the little
family found it, in the hot, drowsy afternoons, to wade out into the
leafy shallows and feed at leisure belly-deep in the cool, with no
sound save their own comfortable splashings, or the shrill clatter of a
kingfisher winging past up-stream. Their usual feeding hours were just
before sunrise, a little before noon, and again in the late afternoon,
till dark. The rest of the time they would lie hidden in the deepest
thickets, safe, but ever watchful, their great ears taking in and
interpreting all the myriad fluctuating noises of the wilderness.
The hours of foraging were also--for the young king, in particular,
whose food was mostly provided by his mother--the hours of lesson and
the hours of play. In the pride of his growing strength he quickly
developed a tendency to butt at everything and test his prowess. His
yearling brother was always ready to meet his desires in this fashion,
and the two would push against each other with much grunting, till at
last the elder, growing impatient, would thrust the king hard back
upon his haunches, and turn aside indifferently to his browsing.
Little by little it became more difficult for the yearling to close
the bout in this easy way; but he never guessed that in no distant day
the contests would end in a very different manner. He did not know
that, for a calf of that same spring, his lightly tolerated playfellow
was big and strong and audacious beyond all wont of the wide-antlered
kindred.
The young king was always athrill with curiosity, full of interest in
all the wilderness folk that chanced to come in his view. The shyest of
the furtive creatures were careless about letting him see them, both
his childishness and his race being guarantee of good will. Very soon,
therefore, he became acquainted, in a distant, uncomprehending fashion,
with the hare and the mink, the wood-mouse and the muskrat; while the
mother mallard would float amid her brood within a yard or two of the
spot where he was pulling at the water-lilies.
[Illustration: “THE MOTHER MALLARD WOULD FLOAT AMID HER BROOD.”]
One day, however, he came suddenly upon a porcupine which was crossing
a bit of open ground,--came upon it so suddenly that the surly little
beast was startled and rolled himself up into a round, bristling ball.
This was a strange phenomenon indeed! He blew upon the ball, two or
three hard noisy breaths from wide nostrils. Then he was so rash as
to thrust at it tentatively rather than roughly with his inquisitive
nose,--for he was most anxious to know what it meant. There was a
quiver in the ball; and he jumped back, shaking his head, with two of
the sharp spines sticking in his sensitive upper lip.
In pain and fright, yet with growing anger, he ran to his mother where
she was placidly cropping a willow-top. But she was not helpful. She
knew nothing of the properties of porcupine quills. Seeing what was
the matter, she set the example of rubbing her nose smartly against a
stump. The king did likewise.
Now, for burrs, this would have been all very well; but porcupine
quills--the malignant little intruders throve under such treatment,
and worked their way more deeply into the tender tissues. Smarting and
furious, the young monarch rushed back with the purpose of stamping
that treacherous ball of spines to fragments under his sharp hoofs.
But the porcupine, meanwhile, had discreetly climbed a tree, whence
it looked down with scornful red eyes, bristling its barbed armory,
and daring the angry calf to come up and fight. For days thereafter
the young king suffered from a nose so hot and swollen that it was
hard for him to browse, and almost impossible for him to nurse. Then
came relief, as the quills worked their way through, one dropping out,
and the other getting chewed up with a lily-root. But the young moose
never forgot his grudge against the porcupine family; and catching one,
years after, in a poplar sapling, he bore the sapling down and trod his
enemy to bits. In his wrath, however, he did not forget the powers and
properties of the quills. He took good care that none should pierce the
tender places of his feet.
Some weeks after his meeting with the porcupine, when his nose and his
spirits together had quite recovered, he made a new acquaintance. The
moose family had by this time worked much farther up the Mamozekel,
into a region of broken ground, and steep up-thrusts of rock. One day,
while investigating the world at a little distance from his mother and
brother, he saw a large, curious-looking animal at the top of a rocky
slope. It was a light brown-gray in colour, with a big, round face,
high-tufted ears, round, light, cold eyes, long whiskers brushed back
from under its chin, very long, sharp teeth displayed in its snarlingly
open jaws, and big round pads of feet. The lynx glared at the young
king, scornfully unacquainted with his kingship. And the young king
stared at the lynx with lively, unhostile interest. Then the lynx cast
a wary glance all about, saw no sign of the mother moose (who was
feeding on the other side of the rock), concluded that this was such
an opportunity as he had long been looking for, and began creeping
swiftly, stealthily, noiselessly, down the slope of rocks.
Any other moose-calf, though of thrice the young king’s months, would
have run away. But not so he. The stranger seemed unfriendly. He would
try a bout of butting with him. He stamped his feet, shook his lowered
head, snorted, and advanced a stride or two. At the same time, he
uttered a harsh, very abrupt, bleating cry of defiance, the infantile
precursor of what his mighty, forest-daunting bellow was to be in later
years. The lynx, though he well knew that this ungainly youngster could
not withstand his onslaught for a moment, was nevertheless astonished
by such a display of spirit; and he paused for a moment to consider it.
Was it possible that unguessed resources lay behind this daring? He
would see.
It was a critical moment. A very few words more would have sufficed
for the conclusion of this chronicle, but for the fact that the young
king’s bleat of challenge had reached other ears than those of the
great lynx. The old moose, at her pasturing behind the rock, heard it
too. Startled and anxious, she came with a rush to find out what it
meant; and the yearling, full of curiosity, came at her heels. When she
saw the lynx, the long hair on her neck stood up with fury, and with
a roar she launched her huge, dark bulk against him. But for such an
encounter the big cat had no stomach. He knew that he would be pounded
into paste in half a minute. With a snarl he sprang backward, as if
his muscles had been steel springs suddenly loosed; and before his
assailant was half-way up the slope, he was glaring down upon her from
the safe height of a hemlock limb.
This, to the young king, seemed a personal victory. The mother’s
efforts to make him understand that lynxes were dangerous had small
effect upon him; and the experience advanced him not at all in his
hitherto unlearned lesson of fear.
Even he, however, for all his kingly heart, was destined to learn that
lesson,--was destined to have it so seared into his spirit that the
remembrance should, from time to time, unnerve, humiliate, defeat him,
through half the years of his sovereignty.
It came about in this way, one blazing August afternoon.
The old moose and the yearling were at rest, comfortably chewing the
cud in a spruce covert close to the water. But the king was in one of
those restless fits which, all through his calfhood, kept driving him
forward in quest of experience. The wind was almost still; but such as
there was blew up-stream. Up against it he wandered for a little way,
and saw nothing but a woodchuck, which was a familiar sight to him.
Then he turned and drifted carelessly down the wind. Having passed the
spruce thicket, his nostrils received messages from his mother and
brother in their quiet concealment. The scent was companion to him, and
he wandered on. Presently it faded away from the faintly pulsing air.
Still he went on.
Presently he passed a huge, half-decayed windfall, thickly draped in
shrubbery and vines. No sooner had he passed than the wind brought
him from this dense hiding-place a pungent, unfamiliar scent. There
was something ominous in the smell, something at which his heart beat
faster; but he was not afraid. He stopped at once, and moved back
slowly toward the windfall, sniffing with curiosity, his ears alert,
his eyes striving to pierce the mysteries of the thicket.
He moved close by the decaying trunk without solving the enigma. Then,
as the wind puffed a thought more strongly, he passed by and lost the
scent. At once he swung about to pursue the investigation; and at the
same instant an intuitive apprehension of peril made him shudder, and
shrink away from windfall.
He turned not an instant too soon. What he saw was a huge, black,
furry head and shoulders leaning over the windfall, a huge black paw,
with knife-like claws, lifting for a blow that would break his back
like a bulrush. He was already moving, already turning, and with his
muscles gathered. That saved him. Quick as a flash of light he sprang,
wildly. Just as quickly, indeed, came down the stroke of those terrific
claws. But they fell short of their intended mark. As the young moose
sprang into the air, the claws caught him slantingly on the haunch.
They went deep, ripping hide and flesh almost to the bone,--a long,
hideous wound. Before the blow could be repeated, the calf was far out
of reach, bleating with pain and terror. The bear, much disappointed,
peered after him with little red, malicious eyes, and greedily licked
the sweet blood from his claws.
[Illustration: “BUT THEY FELL SHORT OF THEIR INTENDED MARK.”]
The next instant the mother moose burst from her thicket, the long hair
of her neck and shoulders stiffly erect with rage. She had understood
well enough that agonised cry of the young king. She paused but a
second, to give him a hasty lick of reassurance, then charged down upon
the covert around the windfall. She knew that only a bear could have
done that injury; and she knew, without any help from ears, eyes, or
nose, that the windfall was just the place for a bear’s lying-in-wait.
With an intrepidity beyond the boldest dreams of any other moose-cow on
the Mamozekel, she launched herself crashing into the covert.
But her avenging fury found no bear to meet it. The bear knew well this
mighty moose-cow, having watched her from many a hiding-place, and
shrewdly estimated her prowess. He had effaced himself, melting away
through the underwood as noiselessly and swiftly as a weasel. Plenty of
the strong bear scent the old moose found in the covert, and it stung
her to frenzy. She stamped and tore down the vines, and sent the rotten
wood of the windfall flying in fragments. Then she emerged, powdered
with debris, and roared and glared about for the enemy. But the wily
bear was already far away, well burdened with discretion.
III.
In a few weeks the king’s healthy flesh, assiduously licked by his
mother, healed perfectly, leaving long, hairless scars upon his hide,
which turned, in course of time, from livid to a leaden whitish hue.
But while his flesh healed perfectly, his spirit was in a different
case. Thenceforward, one great fear lurked in his heart, ready to
leap forth at any instant--the fear of the bear. It was the only fear
he knew, but it was a terrible one; and when, two months later, he
again caught that pungent scent in passing a thicket, he ran madly for
an hour before he recovered his wits and stole back, humiliated and
exhausted, to his mother’s pasture-grounds.
In the main, however, he was soon his old, bold, investigating self,
his bulk and his sagacity growing vastly together. Ere the first
frosts had crimsoned the maples and touched the birches to a shimmer
of pale gold, he could almost hold his own by sheer strength against
his yearling brother’s weight, and sometimes, for a minute or two,
worst him by feint and strategy. When he came, by chance, in the crisp,
free-roving weather of the fall, upon other moose-calves of that year’s
birth, they seemed pygmies beside him, and gave way to him respectfully
as to a yearling.
About this time he experienced certain qualms of loneliness, which
bewildered him and took much of the interest out of life. His mother
began to betray an unexpected indifference, and his childish heart
missed her caresses. He was not driven away, but he was left to
himself; while she would stride up and down the open, gravelly meadows
by the water, sniffing the air, and at times uttering a short, harsh
roar which made him eye her uneasily. One crisp night, when the round
October moon wrought magic in the wilderness, he heard his mother’s
call answered by a terrific, roaring bellow, which made his heart
leap. Then there was a crashing through the underbrush; and a tall bull
strode forth into the light, his antlers spreading like oak branches
from either side of his forehead. Prudence, or deference, or a mixture
of the two, led the young king to lay aside his wonted inquisitiveness
and withdraw into the thickets without attracting the notice of this
splendid and formidable visitor. During the next few days he saw the
big bull very frequently, and found himself calmly ignored. Prudence
and deference continued their good offices, however, and he was careful
not to trespass on the big stranger’s tolerance during those wild, mad,
magical autumn days.
One night, about the middle of October, the king saw from his thicket
a scene which filled him with excitement and awe, swelled his veins
almost to bursting, and made his brows ache, as if the antlers were
already pushing to birth beneath the skin. It all came about in this
fashion. His mother, standing out in the moonlight by the water, had
twice with outstretched muzzle uttered her call, when it was answered
not only by her mate, the tall bull, approaching along the shore, but
by another great voice from up the hillside. Instantly the tall bull
was in a rage. He rushed up to the cow, touched her with his nose, and
then, after a succession of roars which were answered promptly from the
hillside, he moved over to the edge of the open and began thrashing
the bushes with his antlers. A great crashing of underbrush arose some
distance away, and drew near swiftly; and in a few minutes another
bull burst forth violently into the open. He was young and impetuous,
or he would have halted a moment before leaving cover, and stealthily
surveyed the situation. But not yet had years and overthrows taught him
the ripe moose wisdom; and with a reckless heart he committed himself
to the combat.
The newcomer had barely the chance to see where he was, before the
tall bull was upon him. He wheeled in time, however, and got his guard
down; but was borne back upon his haunches by the terrific shock of
the charge. In a moment or two he recovered the lost ground, for youth
had given him strength, if not wisdom; and the tall bull, his eyes
flame-red with wrath, found himself fairly matched by this shorter,
stockier antagonist.
The night forthwith became tempestuous with gruntings, bellowings,
the hard clashing of antlers, the stamping of swift and heavy feet.
The thin turf was torn up. The earthy gravel was sent flying from the
furious hoofs. From his covert the young king strained eager eyes upon
the fight, his sympathies all with the tall bull whom he had regarded
reverently from the first moment he saw him. But as for the cow, she
moved up from the waterside and looked on with a fine impartiality.
What concerned her was chiefly that none but the bravest and strongest
should be her mate,--a question which only fighting could determine.
Her favour would go with victory.
As it appeared, the rivals were fairly matched in vigour and valour.
But among moose, as among men, brains count in the end. When the tall
bull saw that, in a matter of sheer brawn, the sturdy stranger might
hold him, he grew disgusted at the idea of settling such a vital
question by mere butting and shoving. The red rage faded in his eyes,
and a colder light took its place. On a sudden, when his foe had given
a mighty thrust, he yielded, slipped his horns from the lock, and
jumped nimbly aside. The stranger lunged forward, almost stumbling to
his knees.
This was the tall bull’s opportunity. In a whirlwind of fury he thrust
upon the enemy’s flank, goring him, and bearing him down. The latter,
being short and quick-moving, recovered his feet in a second, and
wheeled to present his guard. But the tall bull was quick to maintain
the advantage. He, too, had shifted ground; and now he caught his
antagonist in the rear. There was no resisting such an attack. With
hind legs weakly doubling under him, with the weight of doom descending
upon his defenceless rump, the rash stranger was thrust forward,
bellowing madly, and striving in vain to brace himself. His humiliation
was complete. With staring eyes and distended nostrils he was hustled
across the meadow and over the edge of the bank. With a huge splash,
and carrying with him a shower of turf and gravel, he fell into the
stream. Once in the water, and his courage well cooled, he did not
wait for a glance at his snorting and stamping conqueror on the bank
above, but waded desperately across, dripping, bleeding, crushed in
spirit,--and vanished into the woods. In the thicket, the king’s heart
swelled as if the victory had been his own.
By and by, when the last of the leaves had fluttered down with crisp
whisperings from the birch and ash, maple and poplar, and the first
enduring snows were beginning to change the face of the world, the
tall bull seemed to lay aside his haughtiness. He grew carelessly
good-natured toward the young king and the yearling, and frankly took
command of the little herd. As the snow deepened, he led the way
northward toward the Nictau Lake and chose winter quarters on the
wooded southward slopes of Bald Mountain, where there were hemlock
groves for shelter and an abundance of young hardwood growth for
browsing.
This leisurely migration was in the main uneventful, and left but one
sharp impression on the young king’s memory. On a wintry morning, when
the sunrise was reaching long pink-saffron fingers across the thin
snow, a puff of wind brought with it from a tangle of stumps and rocks
a breath of that pungent scent so hateful to a moose’s nostrils. The
whole herd stopped; and the young king, his knees quaking under him and
his eyes staring with panic, crowded close against his mother’s flank.
The tall bull stamped and bellowed his defiance to the enemy,--but the
enemy, being discreet, made no reply whatever. It is probable, indeed,
that he was preparing his winter quarters, and getting too drowsy to
hear or heed the angry challenge; but if he did hear it no doubt he
noiselessly withdrew himself till the dangerous travellers had gone by.
In a few minutes the herd resumed its march,--the king keeping close to
his mother’s side, instead of in his proper place in the line.
[Illustration: “THICK PILED THE SNOWS ABOUT THE LITTLE HERD.”]
The big-antlered bull now chose his site for the “yard,” with “verge
and room enough” for all contingencies. The “yard” was an ample
acreage of innumerable winding paths, trodden ever deeper as the
snows accumulated. These paths led to every spot of browse, every
nook of shelter, at the same time twisting and crossing in a maze of
intricacies. Thick piled the snows about the little herd, and the
northern gales roared over the hemlocks, and the frost sealed the white
world down into silence. But it was such a winter as the moose kin
loved. No wolves or hunters came to trouble them, and the months
passed pleasantly. When the days were lengthening and the hearts of all
the wild folks beginning to dream of the yet unsignalled spring, the
young king was astonished to see the great antlers of his leader fall
off. Seeing that their owner left them lying unregarded on the snow, he
went up and sniffed at them wonderingly, and pondered the incident long
and vainly in his heart.
When the snows shrank away, departing with a sound of many waters, and
spring returned to the Tobique country, the herd broke up. First the
dis-antlered bull drifted off on his own affairs. Then the two-year-old
went, with no word of reason or excuse. Though a well-grown young bull,
he was now little larger or heavier than the king; and the king was
now a yearling, with the stature and presence of a two-year-old. In a
playful butting contest, excited by the joy of life which April put
into their veins, he worsted his elder brother; and this, perhaps,
though taken in good part, hastened the latter’s going.
A few days later the old cow grew restless. She and the king turned
their steps backward toward the Mamozekel, feeding as they went. Soon
they found themselves in their old haunts, which the king remembered
very well. Then one day, while the king slept without suspicion of
evil, the old cow slipped away stealthily, and sought her secret refuge
in the heart of the cedar swamp. When the king awoke, he found himself
alone in the thicket.
All that day he was most unhappy. For some hours he could not eat, but
strayed hither and thither, questing and wondering. Then, when hunger
drove him to browse on the tender birch-twigs, he would stop every
minute or two to call in his big, gruff, pathetic bleat, and look
around eagerly for an answer. No answer came from the deserting mother,
by this time far away in the swamp.
But there were ears in the wilderness that heard and heeded the call of
the desolate yearling. A pair of hunting lynxes paused at the sound,
licked their chops, and crept forward with a green light in their wide,
round eyes.
Their approach was noiseless as thought,--but the king, on a sudden,
felt a monition of their coming. Whirling sharply about, he saw them
lurking in the underbrush. He recognised the breed. This was the
same kind of creature which he had been ready to challenge in his
first calfhood. No doubt, it would have been more prudent for him to
withdraw; but he was in no mood for concession. His sore heart made him
ill-tempered. His lonely bleat became a bellow of wrath. He stamped the
earth, shook his head as if thrashing the underbrush with imaginary
antlers, and then charged madly upon the astonished cats. This was no
ordinary moose-calf, they promptly decided; and in a second they were
speeding away with great bounds, gray shadows down the gray vistas of
the wood. The king glared after them for a moment, and then went back
to his feeding, greatly comforted.
It was four days before his mother came back, bringing a lank calf
at her heels. He was glad to see her, and contentedly renewed
the companionship; but in those four days he had learned full
self-reliance, and his attitude was no longer that of the yearling
calf. It had become that of the equal. As for the lank little newcomer,
he viewed it with careless complaisance, and no more dreamed of playing
with it than if it had been a frog or a chipmunk.
The summer passed with little more event for the king than his swift
increase in stature. One lesson then learned, however, though but
vaguely comprehended at the time, was to prove of incalculable value
in after years. He learned to shun man,--not with fear, indeed, for he
never learned to fear anything except bears,--but with aversion, and a
certain half-disdainful prudence. It was as if he came to recognise in
man the presence of powers which he was not anxious to put to trial,
lest he should be forced to doubt his own supremacy.
It was but a slight incident that gave him the beginning of this
valuable wisdom. As he lay ruminating one day beside his mother and
the gaunt calf, in a spruce covert near the water, a strange scent
was wafted in to his nostrils. It carried with it a subtle warning.
His mother touched him with her nose, conveying a silent yet eloquent
monition, and got upon her feet with no more sound than if she had
been compact of thistle-down. From their thicket shelter the three
stared forth, moveless and unwinking, ears forward, nostrils wide.
Then a canoe with two men came into view, paddling lazily, and turning
to land. To the king, they looked not dangerous; but every detail
of them--their shape, motion, colour, and, above all, their ominous
scent--stamped itself in his memory. Then, to his great surprise, his
mother silently signalled the gravest and most instant menace, and
forthwith faded back through the thicket with inconceivably stealthy
motion. The king and the calf followed with like care,--the king,
though perplexed, having faith in his mother’s wise woodcraft. Not
until they had put good miles between themselves and strange-smelling
newcomers did the old moose call a halt; and from all this precaution
the king realised that the mysterious strangers were something to be
avoided by moose.
That summer the king saw nothing more of the man-creatures,--and he
crossed the scent of no more bears. His great heart, therefore, found
no check to its growing arrogance and courage. When the month of the
falling leaves and the whirring partridge-coveys again came round, he
felt a new pugnacity swelling in his veins, and found himself uttering
challenges, he knew not why, with his yet half infantile bellow. When,
at length, his mother began to pace the open meadow by the Mamozekel,
and startle the moonlit silences with her mating call, he was filled
with strange anger. But this was nothing to his rage when the calls
were answered by a wide-antlered bull. This time the king refused to
slink obsequiously to cover. He waited in the open; and he eyed the new
wooer in a fashion so truculent that at length he attracted notice.
For his dignity, if not for his experience, this was most unfortunate.
The antlered stranger noted his size, his attitude of insolence,
and promptly charged upon him. He met the charge, in his insane
audacity, but was instantly borne down. As he staggered to his feet
he realised his folly, and turned to withdraw,--not in terror, but in
acknowledgment of superior strength. Such a dignified retreat, however,
was not to be allowed him. The big bull fell upon him again, prodding
him cruelly. He was hustled ignominiously across the meadow, and into
the bushes. Thence he fled, bleating with impotent wrath and shame.
In his humiliation he fled far down along the river, through alder
swamps which he had never traversed, by pools in which he had never
pulled the lilies. Onward he pressed, intent on placing irrevocably
behind him the scene of his chagrin.
At length he came out upon the fair river basin where the Mamozekel,
the Serpentine, and the Nictau, tameless streams, unite to form the
main Tobique. Here he heard the call of a young cow,--a voice thinner
and higher than his mother’s deep-chested notes. With an impulse that
he did not understand, he pushed forward to answer the summons, no
longer furtive, but noisily trampling the brush. Just then, however, a
pungent smell stung his nostrils. There, not ten paces distant, was a
massive black shape standing out in the moonlight. Panic laid grip upon
his heart, chilling every vein. He wheeled, splashed across the shallow
waters of the Nictau, and fled away northward on tireless feet.
That winter the king yarded alone, like a morose old bull, far from
his domain of the Mamozekel. In the spring he came back, but restricted
his range to the neighbourhood of the Forks. And he saw his mother no
more.
That summer he grew his first antlers. As antlers, indeed, they were
no great thing; but they started out bravely, a massive cylindrical
bar thrusting forth laterally, unlike the pointing horns of deer
and caribou, from either side of his forehead. For all this sturdy
start, their spiking and palmation did not amount to much; but he was
inordinately proud of them, rubbing off the velvet with care when it
began to itch, and polishing assiduously at the hardened horn. By the
time the October moon had come round again to the Tobique country, he
counted these first antlers a weapon for any encounter; and, indeed,
with his bulk and craft behind them, they were formidable.
It was not long before they were put to the test. One night, as he
stood roaring and thrashing the bushes on the bluff overlooking the
Forks, he heard the call of a young cow a little way down the shore.
Gladly he answered. Gladly he sped to the tryst. Strange ecstasies,
the madness of the night spell, and the white light’s sorcery made his
heart beat and his veins run sweet fire. But suddenly all this changed;
for another roar, a taunting challenge, answered him; and another bull
broke from covert on the other side of the sandy level where stood the
young cow coquettishly eyeing both wooers.
The new arrival was much older than the king and nobly antlered; but
in matter of inches the young king was already his peer. In craft,
arrogance, and self-confident courage the king had an advantage that
outweighed the deficiency in antlers. The fury of his charge spelled
victory from the first; and though the battle was prolonged, the issue
was decided at the outset, as the interested young cow soon perceived.
In about a half-hour it was all over. The wise white moon of the
wilderness looked down understandingly upon the furrowed sandspit,
the pleased young cow, and the king making diffident progress with his
first wooing. Some distance down the river-bank, she caught glimpses
of the other bull, whose antlers had not saved him, fleeing in shame,
with bleeding flanks and neck, through the light-patched shadows of the
forest.
IV.
During the next four years the king learned to grow such antlers as had
never before been seen in all the Tobique country. So tall, impetuous,
and masterful he grew, that the boldest bulls, recognising the vast
reverberations of his challenge, would smother their wrath and slip
noiselessly away from his neighbourhood. Rumours of his size and his
great antlers in some way got abroad among the settlements; but so
crafty was he in shunning men,--whom he did not really fear, and whom
he was wont to study intently from safe coverts,--that there was never
a hunter who could boast of having got a shot at him.
Once, and once only, did he come into actual, face to face conflict
with the strange man-creature. It was one autumn evening, at the first
of the season. By the edge of a little lake, he heard the call of a
cow. Having already found a mate, he was somewhat inattentive, and did
not answer; but something strange in the call made him suspicious, and
he stole forward, under cover, to make an observation. The call was
repeated, seeming to come from a little, rushy island, a stone’s throw
from shore. This time there came an answer,--not from the king, but
from an eager bull rushing up from the outlet of the lake. The king
listened, with some lazy interest, to the crashing and slashing of
the impetuous approach, thinking that if the visitor were big enough
to be worth while he would presently go out and thrash him. When the
visitor did appear, however, bursting from the underbrush and striding
boldly down to the water’s edge, a strange thing happened. From the
rushy island came a spurt of flame, a sharp detonating report. The
bull jumped and wheeled in his tracks. Another report, and he dropped
without a kick. As he lay in the pale light, close to the water, a
canoe shot out from the rushy island and landed some distance from
the body. Two men sprang out. They pulled up the canoe, leaving their
rifles in it, and ran up to skin the prize.
The king in his hiding-place understood. This was what men could
do,--make a strange, menacing sound, and kill moose with it. He boiled
with rage at this exhibition of their power, and suddenly took up
the quarrel of the slain bull. But by no means did he lay aside his
craft. Noiselessly he moved, a vast and furtive shadow, down through
the thickets to a point where the underbrush nearly touched the water.
This brought him within a few yards of the canoe, wherein the hunters
had left their rifles. Here he paused a few moments, pondering. But as
he pondered, redder and redder grew his eyes; and suddenly, with a mad
roar, he burst from cover and charged.
Had the two men not been expert woodsmen, one or the other would have
been caught and smashed to pulp. But their senses were on the watch.
Cut off as they were from the canoe and from their weapons, their only
hope was a tree. Before the king was fairly out into view, they had
understood the whole situation, sprung to their feet, and sped off like
hares. Just within the nearest fringe of bushes grew a low-hanging
beech-tree; and into this they swung themselves, just as the king
came raging beneath. As it was, one of them was nearly caught when he
imagined himself quite safe. The king reared his mighty bulk against
the trunk and with his keen-spiked antlers reached upward fiercely
after the fugitives, the nearest of whom was saved only by a friendly
branch which intervened.
For nearly an hour the king stamped and stormed beneath the branches,
while the trapped hunters alternately cursed his temper and wondered
at his stature. Then, with a swift change of purpose, he wheeled and
charged on the canoe. In two minutes the graceful craft was reduced to
raw material, while the hunters in the tree-top, sputtering furiously,
vowed vengeance. All the kit, the tins, the blankets, the boxes, were
battered shapeless, and the rifles thumped well down into the wet
sand. In the midst of the cataclysm, one of the rifles somehow went
off. The noise and the flash astonished the king, but only added to
his rage and made him more thorough in his work of destruction. When
there was nothing left that seemed worth trampling upon, he returned
to the tree,--on which he had kept eye all the time,--and there nursed
his wrath all night. At the first of dawn, however, he came to the
conclusion that the shivering things in the tree were not worth waiting
for. He swung off, and sought his favourite pasturage, a mile or two
away; and the men, after making sure of his departure, climbed down.
They nervously cut some steaks from the bull which they had killed, and
hurried away, crestfallen, on the long tramp back to the settlements.
This incident, however, did not have the effect which it might have
been expected to have. It did not make the king despise men. On the
contrary, he now knew them to be dangerous, and he also knew that their
chief power lay in the long dark tubes which spit fire and made fierce
sounds. It was enough for him that he had once worsted them. Ever
afterward he gave them wide berth. And the tradition of him would have
come at last to be doubted in the settlements, but for the vast, shed
antlers occasionally found lying on the diminished snows of March.
But all the time, while the king waxed huge and wise, and overthrew
his enemies, and begot great offspring that, for many years after
he was dead, were to make the Mamozekel famous, there was one grave
incompleteness in his sovereignty. His old panic fear of bears still
shamed and harassed him. The whiff of a harmless half-grown cub,
engrossed in stuffing its greedy red mouth with blueberries, was enough
to turn his blood to water and send him off to other feeding-grounds.
He chose his ranges, indeed, first of all for their freedom from the
dreaded taint, and only second for the excellence of their pasturage.
This one unreasoning fear was the drop of gall which went far toward
embittering all the days of his singularly favoured life. It was as
if the wood-gods, after endowing him so far beyond his fellows, had
repented of their lavishness, and capriciously poisoned their gifts.
One autumn night, just at the beginning of the calling season, this
weakness of his betrayed the king to the deepest humiliation which had
ever befallen him. He was then nearly seven years old; and because his
voice was known to every bull in the Tobique country, there was never
answer made when his great challenge went stridently resounding over
the moonlit wastes. But on this particular night, when he had roared
perhaps for his own amusement, or for the edification of his mate, who
browsed near by, rather than with any expectation of response, to
his astonishment there came an answering defiance from the other side
of the open. A big, wandering bull, who had strayed up from the Grand
River region, had never heard of the king, and was more than ready to
put his valour to test. The king rushed to meet him. Now it chanced
that between the approaching giants was an old ash-tree growing out of
a thicket. In this thicket a bear had been grubbing for roots. When he
heard the king’s first roar, he started to steal away from the perilous
proximity; but the second bull’s answer, from the direction in which
he had hoped to retreat, stopped him. In much perturbation he climbed
the ash-tree to a safe distance, and curled himself into a black, furry
ball, in a fork of the branches.
The night was still, and no scents wafting to sensitive nostrils. With
short roars, and much thrashing of the underbrush, the two bulls drew
near. When the king was just about abreast of the bear’s hiding-place,
his arrogance broke into fury, and he charged upon the audacious
stranger. Just as he did so, and just as his foe sprang to meet him,
a wilful night-wind puffed lightly through the branches. It was a
very small, irresponsible wind; but it carried sharply to the king’s
nostrils the strong, fresh taint of bear.
[Illustration: “WAS OFF THROUGH THE UNDERBRUSH IN IGNOMINIOUS FLIGHT.”]
The smell was so strong, it seemed to the king as if the bear must be
fairly on his haunches. It was like an icy cataract flung upon him. He
shrank, trembled,--and the old wounds twinged and cringed. The next
moment, to the triumphant amazement of his antagonist, he had wheeled
aside to avoid the charge, and was off through the underbrush in
ignominious flight. The newcomer, who, for all his stout-heartedness,
had viewed with concern the giant bulk of his foe, stopped short in his
tracks and stared in bewilderment. So easy a victory as this was beyond
his dreams,--even beyond his desires. However, a bull moose can be a
philosopher on occasion, and this one was not going to quarrel with
good luck. In high elation he strode on up the meadow, and set himself,
not unsuccessfully, to wooing the deserted and disgusted cow.
His triumph, however, was short-lived. About moonrise of the following
night the king came back. He was no longer thinking of bears, and his
heart was full of wrath. His vast challenge came down from the near-by
hills, making the night resound with its short, explosive thunders.
His approach was accompanied by the thrashing of giant antlers on the
trees, and by a crashing as if the under-growths were being trodden
by a locomotive. There was grim omen in the sounds; and the cow,
waving her great ears back and forward thoughtfully, eyed the Grand
River bull with shrewd interest. The stranger showed himself game,
no whit daunted by threatenings and thunder. He answered with brave
roarings, and manifested every resolution to maintain his conquest.
But sturdy and valorous though he was, all his prowess went for little
when the king fell upon him, thrice terrible from the memory of his
humiliation. There was no such thing as withstanding that awful charge.
Before it the usurper was borne back, borne down, overwhelmed, as if
he had been no more than a yearling calf. He had no chance to recover.
He was trampled and ripped and thrust onward, a helpless sprawl of
unstrung legs and outstretched, piteous neck. It was luck alone,--or
some unwonted kindness of the wood-spirits,--that saved his life from
being trodden and beaten out in that hour of terror. It was close to
the river-bank that he had made his stand; and presently, to his great
good fortune, he was thrust over the brink. He fell into the water
with a huge splash. When he struggled to his feet, and moved off,
staggering, down the shallow edges of the stream, the king looked over
and disdained to follow up the vengeance.
Fully as he had vindicated himself, the king was never secure against
such a humiliation so long as he rested thrall to his one fear. The
threat of the bear hung over him, a mystery of terror which he could
not bring himself to face. But at last, and in the season of his
weakness, when he had shed his antlers, there came a day when he was
forced to face it. Then his kingliness was put to the supreme trial.
He was now at the age of nine years, in the splendour of his prime.
He stood over seven feet high at the shoulders, and weighed perhaps
thirteen hundred pounds. His last antlers, those which he had shed two
months before, had shown a gigantic spread of nearly six feet.
It was late April. Much honeycombed snow and ice still lingered in
the deeper hollows. After a high fashion of his own, seldom followed
among the moose of the Tobique region, the king had rejoined his mate
when she emerged from her spring retreat with a calf at her flank.
He was too lordly in spirit to feel cast down or discrowned when his
head was shorn of its great ornament; and he never felt the spring
moroseness which drives most bull moose into seclusion. He always
liked to keep his little herd together, was tolerant to the yearlings,
and even refrained from driving off the two-year-olds until their own
aggressiveness made it necessary.
On this particular April day, the king was bestriding a tall poplar
sapling, which he had borne down that he might browse upon its tender,
sap-swollen tips. By the water’s edge the cow and the yearling
were foraging on the young willow shoots. The calf, a big-framed,
enterprising youngster two weeks old, almost as fine a specimen of
young moosehood as the king had been at his age, was poking about
curiously to gather knowledge of the wilderness world. He approached a
big gray-white boulder, whose base was shrouded in spruce scrub, and
sniffed apprehensively at a curious, pungent taint that came stealing
out upon the air.
He knew by intuition that there was peril in that strange scent; but
his interest overweighed his caution, and he drew close to the spruce
scrub. Close, and yet closer; and his movement was so unusual that it
attracted the attention of the king, who stopped browsing to watch him
intently. A vague, only half-realised memory of that far-off day when
he himself, a lank calf of the season, went sniffing curiously at a
thicket, stirred in his brain; and the stiff hair along his neck and
shoulder began to bristle. He released the poplar sapling, and turned
all his attention to the behaviour of the calf.
The calf was very close to the green edges of the spruce scrub, when he
caught sight of a great dark form within, which had revealed itself by
a faint movement. More curious than ever, but now distinctly alarmed,
he shrank back, turning at the same time, as if to investigate from
another and more open side of the scrub.
The next instant a black bulk lunged forth with incredible swiftness
from the green, and a great paw swung itself with a circular, sweeping
motion, upon the retreating calf. In the wilderness world, as in the
world of men, history has a trick of repeating itself; and this time,
as on that day nine years before, the bear was just too late. The blow
did not reach its object till most of its force was spent. It drew
blood, and knocked the calf sprawling, but did no serious damage. With
a bleat of pain and terror, the little animal jumped to its feet and
ran away.
The bear would have easily caught him before he could recover himself;
but another and very different voice had answered the bleat of the
calf. At the king’s roar of fury the bear changed his plans and slunk
back into hiding. In a moment the king came thundering up to the edge
of the spruces. There, planting his fore-feet suddenly till they
ploughed the ground, he stopped himself with a mighty effort. The smell
of the bear had smitten him in the face.
The moment was a crucial one. The pause was full of fate. Turning his
head in indecision, he caught a cry of pain from the calf as it ran to
its mother; and he saw the blood streaming down its flank. Then the
kingliness of his heart arose victorious. With a roar, he breasted
trampling into the spruce scrub, heedless at last of the dreaded scent.
The bear, meanwhile, had been seeking escape. He had just emerged
on the other side of the spruces, and was slipping off to find a
secure tree. As the king thundered down upon him, he wheeled with a
savage growl, half squatted back, and struck out sturdily with that
redoubtable paw. But at the same instant the king’s edged hoofs came
down upon him with the impact of a battering-ram. They smashed in his
ribs. They tore open his side. They hurled him over so that his belly
was exposed. He was at a hopeless disadvantage. He had not an instant
for recovery. Those avenging hoofs, with the power of a pile-driver
behind them, smote like lightning. The bear struck savagely, twice,
thrice; and his claws tore their way through hide and muscle till the
king’s blood gushed scarlet over his prostrate foe’s dark fur. Then
the growls and the claw-strokes ceased; and the furry shape lay still,
outstretched, unresisting.
For a moment or two the king drew off, and eyed the carcass. Then the
remembrance of all his past terror and shame surged hotly through him.
He pounced again upon the body, and pounded it, and trampled it, and
ground it down, till the hideous mass bore no longer a resemblance to
anything that ever carried the breath of life. It was not his enemy
only, not only the assailant of the helpless calf, that he was thus
completely blotting from existence, but it was fear itself that he was
wiping out.
[Illustration: “IT WAS FEAR ITSELF THAT HE WAS WIPING OUT.”]
At last, grown suddenly tired of rage, and somewhat faint from the red
draining of his veins, the king turned away and sought his frightened
herd. They gathered about him, trembling with excitement,--the
light-coated cow, the dark yearling, the lank, terrified calf. They
stretched thin noses toward him, questioning, wondering, troubled at
his hot, streaming wounds. But the king held his head high, heeding
neither the wounds nor the herd. He cast one long, proud look up the
valley of the Mamozekel, his immediate, peculiar domain. Then he looked
southward over the lonely Serpentine, northward across the dark-wooded
Nictau, and westward down the flood of the full, united stream. He felt
himself supreme now beyond challenge over all the wild lands of Tobique.
For a long time the group stood so, breathing at last quietly, still
with that stillness which the furtive kindreds know. There was no
sound save the soft, ear-filling roar of the three rivers, swollen
with freshet, rushing gladly to their confluence. The sound was as a
background to the cool, damp silence of the April wilderness. Some
belated snow in a shaded hollow close at hand shrank and settled with
a hushed, evasive whisper. Then the earliest white-throat, from the
top of a fir-tree, fluted across the pregnant spring solitudes the six
clear notes of his musical and melancholy call.
THE END.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
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