Entered at Stationers' Hall

Copyright, 1903
By WILLIAM J. LONG
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

THEobject of this little book, so far as it has an object beyondthat of sharing a simple pleasure of mine with others, will be foundin the first chapter, entitled "The Point of View"; and the title willbe explained in the chapter on "A Little Brother to the Bear" thatfollows.

All the sketches here are reproduced from my own note-books largely,or from my own memory, and the observations cover a period[xiv] of somethirty years,—from the time when I first began to prowl about thehome woods with a child's wonder and delight to my last hard wintertrip into the Canadian wilderness. Some of the chapters, like those ofthe Woodcock and the Coon, represent the characteristics of scores ofanimals and birds of the same species; others, like those of the Bearand Eider-Duck in "Animal Surgery," represent the acute intelligenceof certain individual animals that nature seems to have liftedenormously above the level of their fellows; and in a singlecase—that of the Toad—I have, for the story's sake, gathered intoone creature the habits of four or five of these humble little helpersof ours that I have watched at different times and in differentplaces.

The queer names herein used for beasts and birds are those given bythe Milicete Indians, and represent usually some sound or suggestionof the creatures themselves. Except where it is plainly statedotherwise, all the incidents and observations have passed under my owneyes and have been confirmed[xv] later by other observers. In therecords, while holding closely to the facts, I have simply tried tomake all these animals as interesting to the reader as they were to mewhen I discovered them.

WM. J. LONG.

Stamford, September, 1903.

AN old Indian, whom I know well, told me that he once caught a bear inhis deadfall. That same day the bear's mate came and tried to liftaway the heavily weighted log that had fallen on her back and crushedher. Failing in this he broke his way into the inclosure; and when theIndian came, drawn in on silent, inquisitive feet by a curious lowsound in the air, the bear was sitting beside his dead mate, holdingher head in his arms, rocking it to and fro, moaning.[4]—

Two things must be done by the modern nature writer who would firstunderstand the animal world and then share his discovery with others.He must collect his facts, at first hand if possible, and then he mustinterpret the facts as they appeal to his own head and heart in thelight of all the circumstances that surround them. The child will becontent with his animal story, but the man will surely ask the why andthe how of every fact of animal life that particularly appeals to him.For every fact is also a revelation, and is chiefly interesting, notfor itself, but for the law or the life which lies behind it and whichit in some way expresses. An apple falling to the ground was a commonenough fact,—so common that it had no interest until some one thoughtabout it and found the great law that grips alike the falling appleand the falling star.

It is so in the animal world. The common facts of color, size, andhabit were seen for centuries, but had little meaning or interestuntil some one thought about them and[5] gave us the law of species. Formost birds and animals these common facts and their meaning are nowwell known, and it is a wearisome and thankless task to go over themagain. The origin of species and the law of gravitation are now put inthe same comfortable category with the steam engine and the telegraphwire and other things that we think we understand. Meanwhile the airhas unseen currents that are ready to bear our messages, and the sunwastes enough energy on our unresponsive planet daily to make all ourfires unnecessary, if we but understood. Meanwhile, in[6] the animalworld, an immense array of new facts are hidden away, or are slowlycoming to light as nature students follow the wild things in theirnative haunts and find how widely they differ one from another of thesame kind, and how far they transcend the printed lists of habits thatare supposed to belong to them.

We were too long content with the ugly telegraph pole and wire as thelimit of perfection in communication; and we have been too wellsatisfied with the assumption that animals are governed by some queer,unknown thing called instinct, and that all are alike that belong tothe same class. That is true only outwardly. It is enough to give theanimal a specific name, but no more; and an animal's name or speciesis not the chief thing about him. You are not through with Indianswhen you have determined their[7] race. That is sufficient forethnology; to write in a book: possibly also the Calvinistictheologian was one time satisfied therewith; but the Indian's lifestill remains, more important than his race, and only after twocenturies of neglect, or persecution, or injustice, are we awaking tothe fact that his life is one of extraordinary human interest. Hismedicine lore and his thoughts of God lie deeper than the curve of hiscranium; his legends and his rude music must be interpreted, as wellas the color of his skin, and we are but just beginning to see themeaning of these larger things.

All this is only an analogy and proves nothing. However, it maysuggest, if one thinks about it, that possibly we have made a slightlysimilar mistake about the animals; that we are not quite through withthem when we have cried instinct and named their species, noraltogether justified in killing them industriously off the face of theearth—as we once did with the poor Beothuk Indians for the skins thatthey wore. Beneath their fur and feathers is their life; and[8] a fewobservers are learning that their life also, with its faint suggestionof our own primeval childhood, is one of intense human interest. Someof them plan and calculate; and mathematics, however elementary, ishardly a matter of instinct. Some of them build dams and canals; somehave definite social regulations; some rescue comrades; some bindtheir own wounds, and even set a broken leg, as will be seen in one ofthe following chapters. All higher orders communicate more or lesswith each other, and train their young, and modify their habits tomeet changing conditions. These things, and many more quite aswonderful, are also facts. We are still waiting for the naturalist whowill tell us truly what they mean.

[9]

I have had these two things—the new facts and the interpretationthereof—in mind in putting together the following sketches from mynote-books and wilderness records. The facts have been carefullyselected from many years' observations, with a view of emphasizingsome of the unusual or unknown things of the animal world. Indeed, inall my work, or rather play, out of doors I have tried to discover theunusual things,—the things that mark an animal'sindividuality,—leaving the work of general habits and specificclassification to other naturalists who know more and can do itbetter. Therefore have I passed over a hundred animals or birds towatch one, and have recorded only the rare observations, such as areseldom seen, and then only by men who spend long days and seasons inthe woods in silent watchfulness.

Whether these rare habits are common property among the species, andseem strange to us only because we know so very little of the hiddenlife of wild animals, or whether they are the discovery of[10] a few rareindividuals better endowed by nature than their fellows, I must leaveto the reader to determine; for I do not know. This determination,however, must come, not by theory or prejudice ora priorireasoning, but simply by watching the animals more closely when theyare unconscious of man's presence and so express themselves naturally.As a possible index in the matter I might suggest that I have rarelymade an observation, however incredible it seemed to me at the time,without sooner or later finding some Indian or trapper or naturalistwho had seen a similar thing among the wild creatures. The woodcockgenius, whose story is recorded here, is a case in point. So is theporcupine that rolled down a long hill for the fun of the thingapparently—an observation that has been twice confirmed, once by aNew Brunswick poacher and again by a Harvard instructor. So also arethe wildcat that stole my net,[11] and the heron that chummed little fishby a bait, and the fox that played possum when caught in a coop, andthe kingfishers that stocked a pool with minnows for their little onesto catch, and the toad that learned to sit on a cow's hoof and waitfor the flies at milking time. All these and a score more ofincredible things, seen by different observers in different places,would seem to indicate that intelligence is more widely spread amongthe Wood Folk than we had supposed; and that, when we have opened oureyes wider and cast aside our prejudices, we shall learn that Natureis generous, even to the little folk, with her gifts and graces.

As for the interpretation of the facts, upon which I have occasionallyventured,—that is wholly my own and is of small consequence besidethe other. Its value is a purely personal one, and I record it ratherto set the reader thinking for himself than to answer his questions.In the heart of every man will be found the measure of his world,whether it be small or great. He will judge heat, not by mathematicalcomputation of[12] the sun's energy, but by the twitch of his burnedfinger, as every other child does; and comprehend the law of reaction,not from Ganot's treatise, but by pulling on his own boot-straps. So,with all the new facts of animal life before him, he will still livein a blind world and understand nothing until he have the courage tolook in his own heart and read.

FEW knew the way to the little house in the rocks where the LittleBrother to the Bear lived. It was miles away from every other housebut one, in the heart of the big still woods. You had to leave thehighway where it dipped into a cool dark hollow among the pines, andfollow a lonely old road that the wood-choppers sometimes used inwinter, and that led you, if you followed it far enough, to atumble-down old mill on another cross-road, where the brook chatteredand laughed all day long at the rusty wheel, and the phœbe builtunmolested[16] under the sagging beams, and you could sometimes hear atrout jumping among the foam bubbles in the twilight. But you did notgo so far if you wanted to find where the Little Brother to the Bearlived.

As you followed the wood road you came suddenly to a little clearing,with a brook and a wild meadow and a ledge all covered with ferns. Theroad twisted about here, as a road always does in going by a prettyplace, as if it were turning back for another look. There was a littleold house under the ledge wherein some shy, silent children lived; andthis was the only dwelling of man on the three-mile road. Just beyond,at a point where the underbrush was thickest, an unnoticed cart pathstole away from the wood road and brought you to a little pond in thebig woods, at the spot where, centuries ago, the beavers had made adam and a deep place for stowing their winter's wood. If you took along pole and prodded deep in the mud here, you would sometimes find acut stick of the beaver's food wood, its conical ends showing thestrong tooth[17] marks plainly, its bark still fresh and waiting to beeaten when the little owner should come back again; for that is whathe cut it and put it there for, untold years ago. Very few everthought of this, however; those who came to the spot had all theirthoughts for the bullpouts that swarmed in the beaver's old storehouseand that would bite well on dark days. There were ledges all about theancient dam and on both sides of the woodsy valley below; and amongthe mossy, fern-covered rocks of these ledges one of the shy children,with whom I had made friends, pointed out an arched doorway made bytwo great stones leaning against each other.

"Thome animal livth in there. I theen him. I peeked, one day, an' Itheen hith eyeth wink; an', an', an' then I ran away," he said, hisown eyes all round with the wonder of the woods.

We made no noise, but lay down under a bush together and watched thewonderful old doorway until it was time for the shy child to go home;but nothing came out, nor even showed a shining inquisitive eye[18] inthe doorway behind the screen of hanging ferns. Still we knewsomething was in there, for I showed my little woodsman, to his greatwonder and delight, a short gray hair tipped with black clinging tothe rocks. Then we went away more cautiously than we came.

"Maybe it's a coon," I told the shy child, "for they are sleepyheadsand snooze all day. Foxy, too; they don't come out till dark and go inagain before daylight, so that boys can't find out where they live."

When the time of full moon came I went back to the little house amongthe ledges, one afternoon, and hid under the same bush to watch untilsomething should come out. But first I looked all about and found nearby a huge hollow chestnut tree that the wood-choppers had passed byfor years as not worth the cutting. There were scratches and claw pitseverywhere in the rough bark, and just under the lower limbs was a bigdark knot hole that might be a doorway to a den. So I lay down inhiding where I could see[19] both the tree and the fern-screened archwayamong the rocks by simply turning my head.

One impatient little fellow clawed his way upon his mother's back andthrust his face[20] out between her ears, and then I had a chance to seeit better—a wonderful face, full of whims and drollery, with a whitering about its pointed muzzle, and a dark line running from the top ofits nose and spreading into ebony rings around each eye, as if he werewearing queer smoked goggles, behind which the eyes twinkled andshone, or grew sober with much gravity as he heard the duck quacking.A keen face, yet very innocent, in which dog intelligence and foxcunning and bear drollery mingled perfectly; a face full of surprises,that set you smiling and thinking at once; a fascinating, inquisitiveface, the most lovable and contradictious among the Wood Folk,—theface of Mooweesuk the coon, the Little Brother to the Bear, as Indianand naturalist unite in calling him.

The mother came out first and sagged away backwards down the tree,swinging her head from side to side to look down and see how far yet,in true bear fashion. The four little ones followed her, clawing andwhining their way to the bottom—all but one, who when half-way downturned and jumped,[21][23]landing on his mother's soft back to savehimself trouble. Then she led the way to the doorway among the rocks,and the young followed in single file, winding about on her trail,stopping and sniffing when she did, and imitating her every action,just as young bear cubs do when roaming about the woods.

At the mouth of the den she stepped aside, and the young filed in outof sight one after another. The mother looked and listened for amoment, then scuttled away through the woods as a clear tremulouswhinny came floating in through the twilight. A moment later I saw heron the shore of the pond with a larger coon, her mate probably, whohad been asleep in another hollow tree by himself; and the two wentoff along the shore frogging and fishing together.

The mother had scarcely disappeared when the little ones came out oftheir den and began playing together, rolling and tumbling about likea litter of fox cubs, doing it for fun purely, yet exercising everyclaw and muscle for the hard work that a coon must do when he iscalled upon to take care[24] of himself. After a time one of the cubsleft his brothers playing and went back to the chestnut tree by thesame way that he had come, following every turn and winding of theback trail as if there were a path there—as there probably was, tohis eyes and nose, though mine could not find any. He climbed the treeas if he were after something, and disappeared into the knot hole,where I could hear the little fellow whining and scratching his waydown inside the tree. In a moment he reappeared with something in hismouth. In the dusk I could not make out what it was, but as he cameback and passed within ten feet of where I was hiding I had myfield-glasses upon him and saw it plainly—a little knot of wood witha crook in it, the solitary plaything which you will find, all smoothfrom much handling, in almost every house where the Little Brother tothe Bear has lived.

Could we have followed the family on this first night of theirwanderings, before the raids began and the dogs had scattered them,[27]we would have understood why Mooweesuk is called a brother to thebear. Running he steps on his toes like a dog; and anatomically,especially in the development of the skull and ear bones, he suggeststhe prehistoric ancestor of both dog and wolf; but otherwise he is apocket-edition of Mooween in all his habits. The mother always leads,like a bear, and the little ones follow in single file, notingeverything that the mother calls attention to. They sit on theirhaunches and walk flat-footed, like a bear, leaving a track from theirhind feet like that of a dwarf baby. Everything eatable in the woodsministers to their hunger, as it does to that of the greedy prowler inthe black coat. Now they stir up an ant's nest; now they grub into arotten log for worms and beetles. If they can find sweet sap, or a bitof molasses in an old camp, they dip their paws in it and then lickthem clean, as Mooween does. They hunt now for wintergreen berries,and now for a woodmouse. They find a shallow place in the brook whenthe suckers are running and wait there till the big fish go by, whenthey[28] flip them out with their paws and scramble after them. From thisfishing they turn to lush water-grass, or to digging frogs and turtlesout of the mud; and the turtle's shell is cracked by dropping a stoneupon it. Now they steal into the coop and scuttle away with a chicken;and after eating it they come back to the garden to crack a pumpkinopen and make a dessert of the seeds. Now they see a muskrat swimmingby in the pond with a mussel in his mouth, and they follow after himalong the bank; for Musquash has a curious habit of eating in regularplaces—a flat rock, a stranded log, a certain tussock from which hehas cut away the grass—and will often gather half a dozen or moreclams and mussels before he sits down to dine. Mooweesuk watches tillhe finds the place; then, while Musquash is gone away after moreclams, he will run off with all that he finds on the dining table. Ascore of times, on the ponds and streams, I have read the record ofthis little comedy. You can always[29] tell the place where Musquash eatsby the pile of mussel shells in the water below it; and sometimes youwill find Mooweesuk's track stealing down to the place, and if youfollow it you will find where he cracked the clams that Musquash hadgathered.

There is another way in which Mooweesuk is curiously like a bear: hewanders very widely, but he has regular beats, like Mooween, and ifnot disturbed always comes back with more or less regularity to anyplace where you have once seen him, and comes by the same unseen path.Like Mooween, his knowledge of the woods is wide and accurate. Heknows—partly by searching them out, and partly from his mother, whotakes him and shows him where they are—every den and hollow tree thatwill shelter a coon in times of trouble. He has always one den near acorn-field, where he can sleep when too full or too lazy to travel; hehas one dry tree for stormy weather, and one cool mossy shell in deepshadow for the hot summer days. He has at least one sunny nook in thetop of a hollow stub, where he loves to lie and soak[30] in the fallsunshine; and one favorite giant tree with the deepest and warmesthollow, which he invariably uses for his long winter sleep. Andbesides all these he has at least one tower of refuge near every pathof his, to which he can betake himself when sudden danger threatensfrom dogs or men.

Though he walks and hunts and fights and feeds like a bear, Mooweesukhas many habits of his own that Mooween has never approached. One ofthese is his habit of nest robbing. Mooween does that, to be sure, forhe is fond of eggs; but he must confine himself largely toground-birds and to nests that he can reach by standing on his hindlegs. Therefore are the woodpeckers all safe from him. Mooweesuk, onhis part, can never see a hole in a tree without putting his nose intoit to find out whether it contains any eggs or young woodpeckers. Ifit does contain them, he will reach a paw down, clinging close to thetree and stretching and pushing his arm into the hole clear to hisshoulder, to see if perchance the nest be not a foolishly shallow oneand the eggs lie within reach of[31] his paw—which suggests a monkey's,by the way, in its handlike flexibility.

Once, on the edge of a wild orchard, I saw him rob a golden-wingedwoodpecker's nest in this way. The mother bird flew out as Mooweesukcame scratching up the tree, which assured him that he would findsomething worth while within. He stretched in a paw, caught an egg,and appeared to be rolling it up, holding it against the side of thetunnel. When the egg was almost up to the entrance he put in his noseto see the treasure. Then it slipped and fell back, and probablybroke. He tried another, got it up safely, and ate it whole where hewas. He tried a third, which slipped and broke like the first. Atthis, with the taste of fresh egg in his mouth, he seemed to growimpatient, or perhaps he got an idea from the yellow streaks on hisclaws. He jabbed his paw down hard to break all the eggs, and drew itup dripping. He licked it clean with his tongue and put it back againinto the yellow mess at the bottom. This was easy, and he kept it upuntil his moist paw brought up only shells and rotten wood,[32] when hebacked away down the tree and shuffled off into the woods, leaving asad mess for a mother woodpecker to face behind him.

Another habit in which he has improved upon Mooween is his fishing. Heknows how to flip fish out of water with his paw, as all bears do; buthe has also learned how to attract them when they are not to be foundon the shallows. Many times in the twilight I have found Mooweesuksitting very still on a rock or gray log beside the pond or river, hissoft colors and his stillness making him seem like part of the shore.Other naturalists and hunters have mentioned the same thing, and theirtestimony generally agrees in this: that Mooweesuk's eyes are halfshut at such times, and his sensitive feelers, or whiskers, areplaying on the surface of the water. The fish below, seeing thisslight motion but not seeing the animal above, attracted either bycuriosity or, more likely, by the thought of insects playing, rise tothe surface and are snapped out by a sweep of Mooweesuk's paw.

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There is another curious habit of the coon which distinguishes himfrom the bear and from all other animals. That is, his habit ofwashing, or rather of sousing, everything he catches in water. Nomatter what he finds to eat,—mice, chickens, roots, grubs,fruit—everything, in fact, but fish,—he will take it to water, if hebe anywhere near a pond or brook, and souse it thoroughly beforeeating.[34] Why he does this is largely a matter of guesswork. It is notto clean it, for much of it is already clean; not to soften it, forclams are soft enough as they are, and his jaws are powerful enough tocrush the hardest shells, yet he souses them just the same beforeeating. Possibly it is to give things the watery taste of fish, ofwhich he is very fond; more probably it is a relic, like the dog'sturning around before he lies down, or like the unnecessary migrationof most birds, the inheritance from some forgotten ancestor that had areason for the habit, and that lived on the earth long, long yearsbefore there was any man to watch him or to wonder why he did it.

Near towns where he is much hunted Mooweesuk has grown wilder, likethe fox, and learned a hundred tricks that formerly[36] he knew nothingabout. Yet even here, if found young, he shows a strange fearlessnessand even a rare confidence in man. Once, in the early summer, I founda young coon at the foot of a ledge, looking up at a shelf a few feetabove his head and whimpering because he could not get up. It was asurprise to him, evidently, that his claws could not make the sameimpression on the hard rock that they did on the home tree in which hewas born. He made no objection—indeed, he seemed to take it as themost natural thing in the world—when I picked him up and put him onthe shelf that he was whimpering about; but in a moment, like a baby,he wanted to get down again, and again I ministered to hisnecessities. When I went away he followed after me whimpering,forgetting his own den and his fellows in the ledge hard by, and wasnot satisfied till I took him up, when he curled down in the hollow ofmy arm and went to sleep perfectly contented.

Presently he waked up, cocking his ears and twisting his head dogfashion at some[37] sound that was too faint for my ears, and poked hisinquisitive nose all over me, even putting it down inside my collar,where it felt like a bit of ice creeping about my neck. Not till hehad clawed his way inside my coat and put his nose in my vest pocketdid he find the cause of the mysterious sounds which he heard. It wasmy watch ticking, and in a moment he had taken it out and was playingwith the bright thing, as pleased as a child with a new plaything. Hemade a famous pet, full of tricks and drollery, catching chickens bypretending to be asleep when they came stretching their necks for thecrumbs in his dish, playing possum when he was caught in mischief,drinking out of a bottle, full of joy when he could follow the boys tothe woods, where he ran wild with delight but followed them home attwilight, and at last going off by himself to his home tree to sleepaway the winter—but I must tell about all that elsewhere.

Like the bear, Mooweesuk is a peaceable fellow and tends strictly tohis own affairs as he wanders wide through the woods.

[38]

This is not from fear, for no animal, except perhaps thewolverine—who is a terrible beast—is more careless of danger orfaces it with such coolness and courage when it appears. Of a dog ortwo he takes little heed. If he hear them on his trail, he generallyclimbs a tree to get out of the way; for your dog, unlike his wildbrother, the wolf, is a meddlesome fellow and must needs be worryingeverything; and Mooweesuk, like most other wild creatures, lovespeace, hunts only when hungry, and would always prefer to avoid a rowif possible. When caught on the ground, or cornered, or roused toaction by a sudden attack, he backs up against the nearest tree orstone to keep his enemies from getting at him from behind, and thenfights till he is dead or till none of his enemies are left to botherhim, when he goes quietly on his way again. No matter how great theodds or how terribly he is punished, I have never seen a coon lose hisnerve or turn his back to run away. If the dogs be many and he is neara pond or river, he will lead them into deep water, where he is at[39]home, and then swimming rapidly in circles will close with them one byone and put them out of the fight most effectively. His method hereseldom varies. He will whirl in suddenly on the dog that he hassingled out, grip him about the neck with one arm, saw away at hishead with his powerful teeth, at the same time slashing him across theeyes with his free claws, and then pile his weight on the dog's headto sink him under and drown all the rest of the fight out of him. Thatis generally enough for one dog; and Mooweesuk, without a scratch andwith his temper cool as ice, will whirl like a flash upon his nextvictim.

Fortunately such troublous times are rare in Mooweesuk's life, and thewilderness coon knows little about them. His life from beginning toend is generally a peaceable one, full of good things to eat, and ofsleep and play and a growing knowledge of the woods. He is born in thespring, a wee, blind, hairless little fellow, like a mole or a bearcub. As he grows he climbs to the entrance to his den, and will sitthere as at a window for[40] hours at a time, just his nose and eyevisible, looking out on the new, bright, rustling world of woods, andblinking sleepily in the flickering sunshine. Then come the longexcursions with his mother, at first by day when savage beasts arequiet, then at twilight, and then at last the long night rambles, inwhich, following his leader, he learns a hundred things that a coonmust know: to follow the same paths till he comprehends the woods; topoke his inquisitive nose into every crack and cranny, for the bestmorsels on his bill of fare hide themselves in such places; to sleepfor a little nap when he is tired, resting on his forehead so as tohide his brightly marked face and make himself inconspicuous, like arock or a lichen-covered stump; to leap down from the tallest treewithout hurting himself; and when he uses a den in the earth or rocks,to have an exit some distance away from the entrance, and never underany circumstances to enter his den save by his front door. There isgreat wisdom in this last teaching. When a dog finds a hole with atrail that always leads out[41] of it he goes away, knowing it is of nouse to bark there; but when he finds an opening into which a trail isleading, he thinks of course that his game is inside, and proceeds tohowl and to dig without ever a thought in his foolish head that theremay be another way out. Meanwhile, as he digs and raises anunpardonable row in the quiet woods, Mooweesuk will either wait justinside the entrance till she gets a chance to nip the dog's nose orcrush his paw, or else will slip quietly out of the back door with herlittle ones and take them off to a hollow tree where they can sleep inpeace and have no fear till the dog goes away.

By the time the first snows blow the little coons are well grown andstrong enough to take good care of themselves; and then, like the bearagain, they escape the cold and the hunger of winter by going to sleepfor four or five months in a warm den that they have selectedcarefully during their summer wanderings. They are fat as butter whenthey curl themselves up for their long sleep; their ringed tails covertheir sensitive[42] noses, and if they waken for a time they suck theirpaws drowsily till they sleep again, so that, like the bear, they areoften tender-footed when they come out in the spring.

Often the young coons of the same family sleep all together in thesame den. The old males prefer to den by themselves, and are easilyfound; but the mother coon, like the mother bear, takes infinite painsto hide herself away where she can bring forth her young in peace, andwhere no one will ever find them.

There is one curious habit suggested by these winter dens that I havenever seen explained, and for which I cannot account satisfactorily.On certain soft days in winter Mooweesuk wakes from his long sleep andwanders off into the world. At times you may follow his track formiles through the woods without finding that he goes anywhere or doesanything in particular, for I have never found that he has eatenanything on these wanderings. Sometimes, miles away from his den, histrack turns aside and goes straight to a hollow tree where othercoons[43] are spending the winter. It may possibly be that they are hisown family, who generally have a den of their own, and whom he visitsto see if all is well. Sometimes from this den another coon goes outwith him, and their tracks wander for miles together; more often hecomes out alone, and you follow to where he has visited other coons,or gone to sleep in another tree of his own, or swung round in a vastcircle to the tree from which he started, where he goes to sleep againtill called out for another season by the spring sun and thechickadee's love notes.

That was far away from the place where my first Little Brother to theBear lived, and many years had passed since I had visited the ledge bythe old beaver dam. One day I came back, and turned swiftly into theold wood road that had a happy memory for me by every turn and rockand moldering stump. Here was[50] where the grouse used to drum; andthere, at the end of the log, were signs to tell me that it stillsometimes rolled off the muffled thunder of the wings above. Here wasthe break in the wall that the fox used as a runway; and there was acrinkly yellow hair caught on a rough rock telling its story mutely.Here was where the pines stood thickest; but they were all cut awaynow, and the hardwood seeds that had waited so many years under thepines for their chance at the sunlight were shooting up into vigorouslife at last. And here was the place where the road twisted about tolook back on the pretty spot where the shy children lived, with whom Ihad once made friends.

They were all gone, and the little house under the ledge was deserted.In one of the tumble-down rooms I found a rag doll beside the coldhearth, and some poor toys on a shelf under a broken window. In thewhole lonely forgotten house these were the only things that broughtthe light to one's face and the moisture to his eyes as he beheldthem. All else spoke of ruin and decay; but these poor[51] playthingsthat little hands had touched went straight to the heart with aneternal suggesting of life and innocence and a childhood that nevergrows old in the world. I dusted them tenderly with my handkerchiefand put them back in their places, and went away softly down the paththat led to the other house where the Little Brother to the Bear usedto live.

Everything was changed here, too. The dam that the beavers had built,and that the years had covered over, still stood as strong as ever;but the woods had been cut away, and the pond had dwindled till thewild duck no longer found a refuge there. The ledges were no longergreen, for the sun that came in when the big trees fell had killedmost of the mosses and ferns that decked them; and the brook's song,though cheery still, was scarcely heard as it trickled and seepedwhere once it had rushed and tumbled down the woodsy valley, whichremained woodsy still, because happily the soil there was too poor toraise anything but brush and cowslips, and so the woodsmen had sparedit from desolation.

[52]

The old tree that had once been the coon's house was blown down. Whenit missed the support and the wind-break of its fellows, it could notstand alone, and toppled over in the first storm. The old claw marksof Mooweesuk were hidden deep under lichens. From this ruined home Iwent to the den among the rocks by the path that the coons used tofollow. The hunters had been here long ago; the den was pried open,the sheltering rocks were thrust aside, and the interior was full oflast year's leaves. As I brushed them away sadly to see what the housewas like, my hand struck something hard in a dark corner, and Ibrought it out into the light again. It was a little knot with a crookin it, all worn smooth by much handling—the plaything that I hadfirst seen, and that was now the last memory of a home where theLittle Brothers to the Bear had once lived and played togetherhappily.

WHITOOWEEK, the woodcock, the strangest hermit in all the woods, is abird of mystery. Only the hunters know anything about him, and theyknow him chiefly as a glorious bird that flashes up to the alder topswith a surprised twitter before their dogs, and poises there a momenton whirring wings to get his bearings, and then from his vantage-pointat the moment of his exultation he either falls down dead at the bangof their guns and the rip of shot through the screen of leaves, orelse happily he slants[56] swiftly down to another hiding-place among thealders. To the hunters, who are practically his only humanacquaintances, he is a game bird pure and simple, and their interestis chiefly in his death. The details of his daily life he hides fromthem, and from all others, in the dark woods, where he spends all thesunny hours, and in the soft twilight when he stirs abroad, like anowl, after his long day's rest. Of a hundred farmers on whose lands Ihave found Whitooweek or the signs of his recent feeding, scarcelyfive knew from observation that such a bird existed, so well does heplay the hermit under our very noses.

The reasons for this are many. By day he rests on the ground in somedark bit of cover, by a brown stump that exactly matches his feathers,or in a tangle of dead leaves and brakes where it is almost impossibleto see him. At such times his strange fearlessness of man helps tohide him, for he will let you pass within a few feet of him withoutstirring. That is partly because he sees poorly by day and perhapsdoes not realize[57] how near you are, and partly because he knows thathis soft colors hide him so well amidst his surroundings that youcannot see him, however near you come. This confidence of his is wellplaced, for once I saw a man step over a brooding woodcock on her nestin the roots of an old stump without seeing her, and she never movedso much as the tip of her long bill as he passed. In the late twilightwhen woodcock first stir abroad you see only a shadow passing swiftlyacross a bit of clear sky as Whitooweek goes off to the meadow brookto feed, or hear a rustle in the alders as he turns the dead leavesover, and a faintpeeunk, like the voice of a distant night-hawk,and then you catch a glimpse of a shadow that flits along the ground,or a weaving, batlike flutter of wings as you draw near toinvestigate. No wonder, under such circumstances, that Whitooweekpasses all his summers and raises brood upon brood of downy invisiblechicks in a farmer's wood lot without ever being found out orrecognized.

I went away quietly that day and left her undisturbed; and I rememberperfectly that I took with me something of the wonder, and somethingtoo of the fear, with which a child naturally meets the wild thingsfor the first time. That she should be so still and fearless before mewas a perfect argument to a child that she had some hidden means ofdefense—the long bill, perhaps, or a hidden sting—with which it wasnot well to trifle. All that seems very strange and far away to[60] menow; but it was real enough then to a very small boy, alone in thedark woods, who met for the first time a large bird with an enormouslylong bill and eyes 'way up on the back of her head where they plainlydid not belong, a bird moreover that had no fear and seemed perfectlywell able to take care of herself. So I went away softly and wonderedabout it.

Next day I came back again. The strange bird was there on her nest asbefore, her long bill resting over the edge of the hollow and lookinglike a twig at the first glance. She showed no fear whatever, andencouraged at her quietness and assurance I crept nearer and nearertill I touched her bill with my finger and turned it gently aside. Atthis she wiggled it impatiently, and my first child's observation wasone that has only recently been noticed by naturalists, namely, thatthe tip of the upper bill is flexible and can be moved about almostlike the tip of a finger in order to find the food that lies deep inthe mud, and seize it and drag it out of its hiding. At the[61] same timeshe uttered a curious hissing sound that frightened me again and mademe think of snakes and hidden stings; so I drew back and watched herfrom a safe distance. She sat for the most part perfectly motionless,the only movement being an occasional turning of the long bill; andonce when she had been still a very long time, I turned her head asideagain, and to my astonishment and delight she made no objection, butleft her head as I had turned it, and presently she let me twist itback again. After her first warning she seemed to understand thesituation perfectly, and had no concern for the wondering child thatwatched her and that had no intention whatever of harming her or hernest.

Others had laughed at my description of a brown bird with a long billand eyes at the back of her head that let you touch her on her nest,so I said no more to them; but at the first opportunity I hunted upNatty Dingle and told him all about it. Natty was a gentle, harmless,improvident little man, who[62] would never do any hard work for pay,—itgave him cricks in his back, he said,—but would cheerfully half killhimself to go fishing through the ice, or to oblige a neighbor. So faras he earned a living he did it by shooting and fishing and trappingand picking berries in their several seasons, and by gatheringdandelions and cowslips (kew-slops he called them) in the spring andpeddling them good-naturedly from door to door. Most of his time inpleasant weather he spent in roaming about the woods, or lying on hisback by the pond shore where the woods were thickest, fishing lazilyand catching fish where no one else could ever get them, or watchingan otter's den on a stream where no one else had seen an otter forforty years. He knew all about the woods, knew every bird and beastand plant, and one boy at least, to my knowledge, would rather go withhim for a day's fishing than see the president's train or go to acircus.

Unlike the others, Natty did not laugh at my description, but listenedpatiently and told me I[63] had found a woodcock's nest,—a rare thing,he said, for though he had roamed the woods so much, and shot hundredsof the birds in season, he had never yet chanced upon a nest. Next dayhe went with me, to see the eggs, he said; but, as I think of it now,it was probably with a view of locating the brood accurately for theAugust shooting. As we rounded the end of the fallen stub thewoodcock's confidence deserted her at sight of the stranger, and sheslipped away noiselessly into the leafy shadows. Then we saw her foureggs, very big at one end, very little at the other, and beautifullycolored and spotted.

Natty, who was wise in his way, merely glanced at the nest and thendrew me aside into hiding, and before we knew it, or had even seen herapproach, Mother Woodcock was brooding her eggs again. Then Natty, whohad doubted one part of my story, whispered to me to go out; and thebird never stirred as I crept near on hands and knees and touched heras before.

A few minutes later we crept away softly, and Natty took me to theswamp to show[64] me the borings, telling me on the way of the woodcock'shabits as he had seen them in the fall hunting. The borings we foundin plenty wherever the earth was soft,—numerous holes, as if madewith a pencil, where the woodcock had probed the earth with her longbill. She was hunting for earthworms, Natty told me,—a queer mistakeof his, and of all the bird books as well, for in the primitive alderwoods and swamps where the borings are so often seen, there are noearthworms, but only slugs and soft beetles and delicate white grubs.Woodcock hunt by scent and feeling, and also by listening for theslight sounds made by the worms underground, he told me, and that is[65]why the eyes are far back on the head, to be out of the way, and alsoto watch for danger above and behind while the bird's bill is deep inthe mud. And that also explains why the tip of the bill is flexible,so that when the bird bores in the earth and has failed to locate thegame accurately by hearing, the sensitive tip of the bill feelsaround, like a finger, until it finds and seizes the morsel. All thisand many things more he told me as we searched through the swamp forthe signs of Mother Woodcock's hunting and made our way home togetherin the twilight. Some things were true, some erroneous; and some werea curious blending of accurate traditions and imaginative folk-lorefrom some unknown source, such as is still held as knowledge of birdsand beasts in all country places; and these were the most interestingof all to a child. And the boy listened, as a devotee listens to agreat sacred concert, and remembered all these things and afterwardssifted them and found out for himself what things were true.

When I went back to the spot, a few days later, the nest was deserted.A few bits of[66] shell scattered about told me the story, and that Imust now hunt for the little woodcocks, which are almost impossible tofind unless the mother herself show you where they are. A week later,as I prowled along the edge of the swamp, a sudden little brownwhirlwind seemed to roll up the leaves at my feet. In the midst of itI made out the woodcock fluttering away, clucking, and trailing now awing and now a leg, as if desperately hurt. Of course I followed herto see what was the matter, forgetting the partridge that had onceplayed me the same pretty trick to decoy me away from her chicks. Whenshe had led me to a safe distance all her injuries vanished as at thetouch of magic. She sprang up on strong wings, whirled across theswamp and circled swiftly back to where I had first[67]started her. ButI did not find one of the little woodcocks, though I hunted for themhalf an hour, and there were four of them, probably, hiding among theleaves and grass stems under my very eyes.

One day the boy found a strange bird under the door-step, a beautifulbrown creature, as large as a pigeon, with a long, straight bill, andeyes at the top of its head. He took it to his father, a dogmatic man,who gave him a queer mixture of truth and nonsense as his portion ofnatural history. It was a blind snipe, he said; and there was sometruth in that. It couldn't see because its eyes were out of place; itwas a very[69] scarce bird that appeared occasionally in the fall, andthat burrowed in the mud for the winter instead of migrating,—and allthis was chiefly nonsense.

When the boy took me to see his queer find I called it a woodcock andbegan to tell about it eagerly, but was stopped short and called aliar for my pains. A wordy war followed, in which Natty Dingle'sauthority was invoked in vain; and the boy, being bigger than I and inhis own yard, drove me away at last for daring to tell him about abird that his own cat had caught and that his own father had called ablind snipe. He pegged one extra stone after me for saying that therewere plenty of them about, only they fed by night like owls, andanother stone for shouting back that they did not burrow in the mudlike turtles in dry weather, as his oracle had declared. And thisuntempered zeal is very much like what one generally encounters whenhe runs up against the prejudices of naturalists anywhere. Hear allthey say,—that the earth is flat, that swallows spend the winter inthe mud, that[70] animals are governed wholly by instinct,—but don'tquote any facts you may have seen until the world is ready for them.For it is better to call a thing a blind snipe, and know better, thanto raise a family row and be hit on the head with a stone for callingit a woodcock.

When the feeding-grounds are far away from the nest, as is often thecase, Whitooweek has two habits that are not found, I think, in anyother game birds—except perhaps the plover; and I have never beenable to watch the young of these birds, though every new observationof the old ones serves to convince me that they are the mostremarkable birds that visit us, and the least understood. When foodmust be hunted for at a long distance, the mother will leave her broodin hiding and go herself to fetch it. When she returns she feeds thechicks, like a mother dove, by putting her bill in their throats andgiving each his portion, going and coming[72] until they are satisfied,when she leaves them in hiding again and feeds for herself during therest of the night. Like most other young birds and animals when leftthus by their mothers, they never leave the spot where they have beentold to stay, and can hardly be driven away from it until the motherreturns. And generally, when you find a brood of young woodcockwithout the mother, they will let you pick them up and will lie as ifdead in your hand, playing possum, until you put them down again.

When there is a good feeding-ground near at hand, yet too far for thelittle chicks to travel, the mother will take them there, one by one,and hide them in a secret spot until she has brought the whole family.Two or three times I have seen woodcock fly away with their young; andonce I saw a mother return to the spot from which, a few momentsbefore, she had flown away with a chick and take another from under aleaf where I had not seen him. This curious method is used by themothers not only to take the young to favorable feeding-grounds, butalso to get[73] them quickly out of the way when sudden danger threatens,like fire or flood, from which it is impossible to hide.

There is another possible way in which Whitooweek may carry her young,though I have never seen it. An old hunter and keen[74] observer of wildlife, with whom I sometimes roam the woods, once stumbled upon amother woodcock and her brood by a little brook at the foot of a wildhillside. One of the chicks was resting upon the mother's back, justas one often sees a domestic chicken. At my friend's sudden approachthe mother rose, taking the chick with her on her back, and vanishedamong the thick leaves. The rest of the brood, three of them,disappeared instantly; and the man, after finding one of them, went onhis way without waiting to see whether the mother returned for therest. I give the incident for what it is worth as a possiblesuggestion as to the way in which young woodcock are carried to andfro; but I am quite sure that those that have come under my ownobservation were carried by an entirely different method.

The young woodcock begin to use their tiny wings within a few days ofleaving the eggs, earlier even than young quail, and fly in aremarkably short time. They grow with astonishing rapidity, thanks totheir good feeding, so that often by early summer the[77]familyscatters, each one to take care of himself, leaving the mother free toraise another brood. At such times they travel widely in search offavorite food and come often into the farm-yards, spending half thenight about the drains and stables while the house is still, andvanishing quickly at the first alarm; so that Whitooweek is frequentlya regular visitor in places where he is never seen or suspected.

When I asked the unlearned hunter—who was yet wise in the ways of thewoods—the reason for Whitooweek's strutting at this season, after thefamilies have scattered, he had no theory or explanation. "Just aqueer streak, same's most birds have, on'y queerer," he said, and letit go at that. I have seen the habit but once, and then imperfectly,for I blundered upon two or three birds and flushed them before Icould watch the performance. It is certainly not to win his mate, forthe season for that is long past; and unless it be a suggestion of thegrouse habit of gathering in small bands for a kind of rude dance, Iam at a loss to account for it. Possibly play may appeal even toWhitooweek, as it certainly appeals to all other birds; and it is playalone that can make him forget he is a hermit.

With the beginning of the molt the birds desert the woods and swampswhere they were reared and disappear absolutely.[81] Whither they go atthis time is a profound mystery. In places where there were a dozenbirds yesterday there are none to-day; and when you do stumble uponone it is generally in a spot where you never found one before, andwhere you will probably not find another, though you haunt the spotfor years. This is the more remarkable in view of the fact that thewoodcock, like most other birds, has certain favored spots to which hereturns, to nest or feed or sleep, year after year.

Occasionally at this season you may find a solitary bird on a drysouthern hillside, or on the sunny edge of the big woods. He ispitiful now to behold, having scarcely any feathers left to cover him,and can only flutter or run away at your approach. If you have therare fortune to surprise him now when he does not see you, you willnote a curious thing. He stands beside a stump or brake where the suncan strike his bare back fairly, as if he were warming himself atnature's fireplace. His[82] long bill rests its tip on the ground, as ifit were a prop supporting his head. He is asleep; but if you crawlnear and bring your glasses to bear, you will find that he sleeps withhalf an eye open. The lower lid seems to be raised till it covers halfthe eye; but the upper half is clear, so that as he sleeps he canwatch above and behind for his enemies. He gives out very little scentat such times, and your keen-nosed dog, that would wind him at astone's throw in the autumn, will now pass close by without noticinghim, and must almost run over the bird before he draws to a point orshows any signs that game is near.

[83]

Hunters say that these scattered birds are those that have lost themost feathers, and that they keep to the sunny open spots for the sakeof getting warm. Perhaps they are right; but one must still ask thequestion, what do these same birds do at night when the air is colderthan by day? And, as if to contradict the theory, when you have foundone bird on a sunny open hillside, you will find the next one a mileaway asleep in the heart of a big corn-field, where the sun barelytouches him the whole day long.

Whatever the reason for their action, these birds that you discover inJuly are rare, incomprehensible individuals. The bulk of the birdsdisappear, and you cannot find them. Whether they scatter widely todense hiding-places and by sitting close escape discovery, or whether,like some of the snipe, they make a short northern migration in themolting season in search of solitude and a change of food, is yet tobe discovered. For it is astonishing how very little we know of a birdthat nests in our cow pasture and that often visits our yards andlawns nightly, but[84] whose acquaintance we make only when he is deadand served as a delicious morsel, hot on toast, on our dining-tables.

In the spring, while winning his mate, Whitooweek has one habit which,when seen at the edge of the alder patch, reminds you instantly of thegrass-plovers of the open moors and uplands, and of their wildernamesakes of the Labrador barrens. Indeed, in his fondness for burnedplains, where he can hide in plain sight and catch no end ofgrasshoppers and crickets without trouble to vary his diet, and in aswift changeableness and fearlessness of man, Whitooweek has manypoints in common with the almost unknown plovers. In the dusk of theevening, as you steal along the edge of the woods, you will hear afaintpeenk,[85] peenk close beside you, and as you turn to listen andlocate the sound a woodcock slants swiftly up over your head andbegins to whirl in a spiral towards the heavens, clucking andtwittering ecstatically. It is a poor kind of song, not to be comparedwith that of the oven-bird or grass-plover, who do the same thing attwilight, and Whitooweek must help his voice by the clicking of hiswings and by the humming of air through them, like the sharp voice ofa reed in windy weather; but it sounds sweet enough, no doubt, to thelittle brown mate who is standing perfectly still near you, watchingand listening to the performance. At an enormous height, for him,Whitooweek whirls about madly for a few moments and then retraces hisspiral downwards, clucking and twittering the while, until he reachesthe tree-tops, where he folds his wings directly over his mate anddrops like a plummet at her head. Still she does not move, knowingwell what is coming, and when within a few feet of the groundWhitooweek spreads his wings wide to break his fall and drops quietlyclose beside her. There[86] he remains quite still for a moment, as ifexhausted; but the next moment he is strutting about her, spreadingwings and tail like a wild turkey-gobbler, showing all his good pointsto the best advantage, and vain of all his performances as a peacockin the spring sunshine. Again he is quiet; a faintpeent, peentsounds, as if it were a mile away; and again Whitooweek slants up onswift wings to repeat his ecstatic evolutions.

Both birds are strangely fearless of men at such times; and if youkeep still, or move very softly if you move at all, they pay no moreattention to you than if you were one of the cattle cropping the firstbits of grass close at hand. Like the golden plover, whose life isspent mostly in the vast solitudes of Labrador and Patagonia, andwhose nature is a curious mixture of extreme wildness and densestupidity, they seem to have no instinctive fear of any large animal;and whatever fear Whitooweek has learned is the result of persistenthunting. Even in this he is slower learn than any other game bird, andwhen let alone[87] for a little season promptly returns to his nativeconfidence.

When the autumn comes you will notice another suggestion of theunknown plover in Whitooweek. Just as you look confidently for theplover's arrival in the first heavy northeaster after August 20, sothe first autumn moon that is obscured by heavy fog will surely bringthe woodcock back to his accustomed haunts again. But why he shouldwait for a full moon, and then for a chill mist to cover it, beforebeginning his southern flight is one of the mysteries. Unlike theplovers that come by hundreds, and whose eerie cry, shrilling abovethe roar of the storm and the rush of rain, brings you out of your bedat midnight to thrill and listen and thrill again, Whitooweek slips insilent and solitary; and you go out in the morning, as to anappointment, and find him sleeping quietly just where you expected himto be.

When he finds good feeding grounds on his southern migrationsWhitooweek will stay with us, if undisturbed, until a sharp frost seals uphis storehouse by making the ground too hard for his[97] sensitive billto penetrate. Then he slips away southward to the next open spring oralder run. Not far away, on Shippan Point, is a little spring thatrarely freezes and whose waters overflow and make a green spot even inmidwinter. The point is well covered with houses now, but formerly itwas good woodcock ground, and the little spring always welcomed a fewof the birds with the welcome that only a spring can give. Last year,at Christmas time, I found a woodcock there quite at home, within astone's throw of two or three houses and with snow lying deep allaround him. He had lingered there weeks after all other birds hadgone, either held by old associations and memories of a time when onlythe woodcock knew the place; or else, wounded and unable to fly, hehad sought out the one spot in all the region where he might live andbe fed until his wing should heal. Nature, whom men call cruel, hadcared for him tenderly, healing his wounds that man had given, andgiving him food and a safe refuge at a time when all otherfeeding-grounds were held[98] fast in the grip of winter; but men, whocan be kind and reasonable, saw no deep meaning in it all. The dayafter I found him a hunter passed that way, and was proud of havingkilled the very last woodcock of the season.

THERE is one astonishing thing about Whitooweek which can scarcely becalled a habit, but which is probably the discovery of one or two rareindividuals here and there more original than their fellows. Like theeider-ducks and the bear and the beaver, Whitooweek sometimes uses arude kind of surgery for binding up his[102] wounds. Twenty years ago,while sitting quietly by a brook at the edge of the woods inBridgewater, a woodcock suddenly fluttered out into the open and madehis way to a spot on the bank where a light streak of sticky mud andclay showed clearly from where I was watching. It was the earlyhunting season and gunners were abroad in the land, and my firstimpression was that this was a wounded bird that had made a longflight after being shot, and that had now come out to the stream todrink or to bathe his wound. Whether this were so or not is a matterof guesswork; but the bird was acting strangely in broad daylight, andI crept nearer till I could see him plainly on the other side of thelittle stream, though he was still[103] too far away for me to beabsolutely sure of what all his motions meant.

At first he took soft clay in his bill from the edge of the water andseemed to be smearing it on one leg near the knee. Then he flutteredaway on one foot for a short distance and seemed to be pulling tinyroots and fibers of grass, which he worked into the clay that he hadalready smeared on his leg. Again he took more clay and plastered itover the fibers, putting on more and more till I could plainly see theenlargement, working away with strange, silent intentness for fullyfifteen minutes, while I watched and wondered, scarce believing myeyes. Then he stood perfectly still for a full hour under anoverhanging sod, where the eye could with difficulty find him, hisonly motion meanwhile being an occasional rubbing and smoothing of theclay bandage with his bill, until it hardened enough to suit him,whereupon he fluttered away from the brook and disappeared in thethick woods.

I had my own explanation of the incredible action, namely, that thewoodcock had a[104] broken leg, and had deliberately put it into a claycast to hold the broken bones in place until they should knit togetheragain; but naturally I kept my own counsel, knowing that no one wouldbelieve in the theory. For years I questioned gunners closely, andfound two who said that they had killed woodcock whose legs had at onetime been broken and had healed again. As far as they could remember,the leg had in each case healed perfectly straight instead of twistingout to one side, as a chicken's leg does when broken and allowed toknit of itself. I examined hundreds of woodcock in the markets indifferent localities, and found one whose leg had at one time beenbroken by a shot and then had healed perfectly. There were plain signsof dried mud at the break; but that was also true of the other legnear the foot, which only indicated that the bird had been feeding insoft places. All this proved nothing to an outsider, and I keptsilence as to what I had seen until last winter, twenty yearsafterwards, when the confirmation came unexpectedly. I had been[105]speaking of animals before the Contemporary Club of Bridgeport when agentleman, a lawyer well known all over the state, came to me and toldme eagerly of a curious find he had made the previous autumn. He wasgunning one day with a friend, when they shot a woodcock, which onbeing brought in by the dog was found to have a lump of hard clay onone of its legs. Curious to know what it meant he chipped the clay offwith his penknife and found a broken bone, which was then almosthealed and as straight as ever. A few weeks later the bird, had helived, would undoubtedly have taken off the cast himself and therewould have been nothing to indicate anything unusual about him.

So I give the observation now, at last, since proof is at hand, not toindicate a new or old habit of Whitooweek,—for how far the strangeknowledge is spread among the woodcock and the wading birds no man cansay,—but simply to indicate how little we know of[106] the inner life ofthe hermit, and indeed of all wild birds, and how much there is yet tobe discovered when we shall lay aside the gun for the field-glass andlearn to interpret the wonderful life which goes on unseen all aboutus.

LATE one winter afternoon, when the sun was gilding the pines on thewestern mountains and the shadows stretched long and chill through thesnow-laden woods, a huge bull moose broke out of the gloom of thespruces and went swinging up the long, sunlit barren at a stride whoselength and power would have discouraged even a wolf from following.Five minutes later I came out of the same tunnel under the sprucesjust as the fringe of green across the barren swished back to coverthe flanks of the plunging bull, and then nodded and nodded in twentydirections—This way! that way![110] here! yonder!—to mislead any thatmight follow on his track. For at times even the hemlocks and thealders and the waters and the leaves and the creaking boughs and thedancing shadows all seem to conspire to shield the innocent Wood Folkfrom the hostile eyes and hands of those that pursue them. And that isone reason why it is so hard to see game in the woods.

The big moose had fooled me that time. When he knew that I wasfollowing him he ran far ahead, and then circled swiftly back to standmotionless in a hillside thicket within twenty yards of the trail thathe had made scarcely an hour agone. There he could see perfectly,without being seen, what it was that was following him. When I cameby, following swiftly and silently the deep tracks in the snow, he letme pass below him while he took a good look and a sniff at me; then heglided away like a shadow in the opposite direction.[111] Unfortunately adead branch under the snow broke with a dull snap beneath his cautioushoof, and I turned aside to see—and so saved myself the long tramp upand down the cunning trails. When he saw that his trick was discoveredhe broke away for the open barren, with all his wonderful powers ofeye and ear and tireless legs alert to save himself from the man whomhe mistook for his deadly enemy.

It was of small use to follow him further, so I sat down on aprostrate yellow birch to rest and listen awhile in the vast silence,and to watch anything that might be passing through the cold whitewoods.

Under the fringe of evergreen the soft purple shadows jumped suddenly,and a hare as white as the snow bounded out. In long nervous jumps,like a bundle of wire springs, he went leaping before my face across anarrow arm of the barren to the shelter of a point below. The softarms of the ground spruces and the softer shadows beneath them seemedto open of their own accord to let him in. All nodding of branches anddropping[112] of snow pads and jumping of shadows ceased instantly, andall along the fringe of evergreen silent voices were saying, There isnothing here; we have not seen him; there is nothing here.

Now why did he run that way, I thought; for Moktaques is a crazy,erratic fellow, and never does things in a businesslike way unless hehas to. As I wondered, there was a gleam of yellow fire under thepurple shadows whence Moktaques had come, and the fierce round head ofa Canada lynx was thrust out of the tunnel that the hare had made onlya moment before. His big gray body had scarcely pushed itself intosight when the shadows stirred farther down the fringe of evergreen;another and another lynx glided out; and I caught my breath as five ofthe savage creatures swept across the narrow arm of the barren, eachwith his head thrust out, his fierce eyes piercing the gloom aheadlike golden lances, and holding his place in the stately, appallingline of fierceness and power as silent as the shadow of death. Mynerves tingled at the thought of[113] what would happen to Moktaques whenone of the line should discover and jump him. Indeed, having no rifle,I was glad enough myself to sit very still and let the savagecreatures go by without finding me.

The middle lynx, a fierce old female, was following the hare's trail;and in a moment it flashed across me who she was and what they wereall doing. Here, at last, was the secret of the lynx bands that onesometimes finds in the winter woods, and that occasionally threaten orappall one with a ferocity that the individual animals never manifest.For Upweekis, though big and fierce, is at heart a slinking, cowardly,treacherous creature—like all cats—and so loves best to be alone.Knowing that the rest of his tribe are like himself, he suspects themall and is fearful that in any division of common spoils somebody elsewould get the lion's share. And so I have never found among the catsany trace of the well-defined regulations that seem to prevail amongnearly all other animals.

Years later, and miles away on the Renous barrens, I saw another andmore wonderful bit of the same keen hunting. From[119] a ridge above asmall barren I saw a herd of caribou acting strangely and went down toinvestigate. As I reached the fringe of thick bushes that lined theopen I saw the caribou cluster excitedly about the base of a big rockacross the barren, not more than two hundred yards away. Something wasthere, evidently, which excited their curiosity,—and caribou are themost inquisitive creatures, at times, in all the woods,—but I had tostudy the rock sharply through my field-glasses before I made out theround fierce head of a big lynx pressed flat against the gray stone.One side of the rock was almost perpendicular, rising sheer somefifteen or twenty feet above the plain; the other side slanted offless abruptly toward the woods; and the big lynx, which had probablyscrambled up from the woods to spy on the caribou, was now hanginghalf over the edge of rock, swaying his savage head from side to sideand stretching one wide paw after another at the animals beneath.

The caribou were getting more excited and curious every moment.Caribou are like[120] turkeys; when they see some new thing they must dieor find out about it. Now they were spreading and closing their ranks,wavering back and forth, stretching ears and noses at the queer thingon the rock, but drawing nearer and nearer with every change.

Suddenly the lynx jumped, not at the caribou, for they were still toofar away, but high in the air with paws outspread. He came down in aflurry of snow, whirled round and round as if bewitched, then vanishedsilently in two great jumps into the shelter of the nearestevergreens.

K'DUNK the Fat One, as Simmo calls him, came out of his winter den themorning after the Reverend James had stirred the sod of his firstflower bed. It was early April, and the first smell of spring was inthe air—that subtle call of Mother Earth to her drowsy children toawake and come out and do things. The Reverend James felt the call inhis nose and, remembering his boyhood, as we all do at the smell ofspring, resolved to go fishing after he had finished his morningpaper. His wife felt it, went to the door, took a long breath andcried, "Isn't this just glorious!" Then[130] she grabbed a trowel—forwhen a man must off to the brook for his first trout a woman, by thesame inner compulsion, must dig in the earth—and started for theflower bed. A moment later her excited call came floating in throughthe open window.

"Ja-a-a-a-mes? James!"—the first call with a long up slide, thesecond more peremptory—"what in the world did you plant in thisflower bed?"

"Why," said the Reverend James, peering quizzically over the rim ofhis spectacles at the open window, "why, I thought I planted portulacaseed."

A sly, whimsical twinkle was under the old minister's spectacles as heregarded the queer crop that had come up overnight.[131] "Whatsoever a mansoweth, whatsoever a man soweth," he quoted softly to himself, eyingthe three toads askance, and poking the big turtle inquisitively, butsnapping his hand back at sight and sound of the hooked beak and thefierce hissing. Then, because his library contained no book ofexegesis equal to the occasion, he caught a small boy who was passingon his way to school and sent him off post-haste to my rooms to findout what it was all about.

Now the three fat toads had also smelled the spring down in a softspot under the lawn, whither, in the previous autumn, they hadburrowed for their winter sleep. When the Reverend James stirred thesod, the warm sun thawed them out and brought them the spring'smessage, and they scrambled up to the surface promptly, as full of newlife as if they had not been frozen into insensible clods for the pastsix months. As for the big turtle, the smell of the fresh earth hadprobably brought her up from the neighboring pond to search out a nestfor herself where she might lay her eggs. Finding the[132] soft warm earthof the portulaca bed, she had squirmed and twisted her way down intoit, the loose earth tumbling in on her and hiding her as she wentdown.

When the sharp feminine eyes swept over the flower bed they detectedat once the hollow in the middle, showing careless workmanship on thepart of somebody. "That hole must be filled up," promptly declaredMrs. James; but first, woman-like, she thrust her trowel deep into it."Aha! a rock—careless man," she gave judgment, and took another jaband a two-handed heave at the hard object. Whereupon out came the bigmud-turtle, scrambling, hissing, protesting with beak and claw againstbeing driven out of the best nest she had ever found so early in theseason. That night there were curious sounds in the grass and deadleaves—rustlings and croakings and low husky trills, as the toadscame hopping briskly by twos and threes[133] down to the pond. From everydirection, from garden and lawn and wood and old stone wall, they camecroaking and trilling through the quiet twilight, and hopping highwith delight at the first smell of water. Down the banks they came,sliding, rolling, tumbling end over end,—any way to get downquickly,—landing at last with glad splashings and croakings in thewarm shallows, where they promptly took to biting and clawing andabsurd little wrestling bouts; which is the toad's way of settling hisdisputes and taking his own mate away from the other fellows.

Two or three days they stayed in the pond, filling the air withgurgling croaks and filling the water with endless strings ofgelatine-coated eggs—enough to fill the whole pond banks-full ofpollywogs, did not Mother Nature step in and mercifully dispose ofninety-nine per cent of them within a few days of hatching, and setthe rest of them to eating each other industriously as they grew, tillevery pollywog that was left might truthfully sing with thecannibalistic mariner:

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Though K'dunk had many interesting traits, which we discovered withamazement as the summer progressed and we grew better[137] acquainted, Ithink that his feeding ways and tricks were the source of our mostconstant delight and wonder. Just to see him stalk a fly filled onewith something of the tense excitement of a deer hunt. As he sat by astump or clod in the fading light, some belated fly or early night-bugwould light on the ground in front of him. Instantly the jewel eye inK'dunk's head would begin to flash and sparkle. He would crouch downand creep nearer, toeing in like a duck, slower and slower, one funnylittle paw brushing cautiously by the other, with all the stealth andcaution of a cat stalking a chipmunk on the wall. Then, as he nearedhis game, there would be a bright flash of the jewel; a red streakshot through the air, so quick that your eye could not follow it, andthe fly would disappear. Whereupon K'dunk would gulp something down,closing his eyes solemnly as he did so, as if he were saying grace, oras if, somehow, closing his eyes to all outward things made the morseltaste better.

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The red streak, of course, was K'dunk's tongue, wherein lies thesecret of his hunting. It is attached at the outer rim of his mouth,and folds back in his throat. The inner end is broad and soft andsticky, and he snaps it out and back quick as a wink or a lizard.Whatever luckless insect the tongue touches is done with all botheringof our humanity. The sticky tongue snaps him up and back into K'dunk'swide mouth before he has time to spread a wing or even to think whatis the matter with him.

Again and again his tongue shot out, and each shot was followed by ablink and a gulp. All the while that he kept up this rapid shooting hethought he was getting fresh caterpillars; and all the while the hairyfellow was shrinking closer and closer together and sticking hisspines out like a porcupine. But he was getting more mucilage on himat every shot. "That caterpillar is getting too stuck-up to live,"presently said little Johnnie, who was watching the game with me; andat the word a hairy[143]ball shot into the wide mouth that was yawningfor him, and K'dunk went back to his fly-catching.

It is probably this lack of taste on K'dunk's part that accounts forthe astonishing variety in his food. Nothing in the shape of an insectseemed to come amiss to him. Flies, wasps, crickets, caterpillars,doodle-bugs, and beetles of every description were all treated aliketo the same red flash of his tongue and the blinking gulp. Ahalf-dozen boys and girls, who were watching the queer pet with me,were put to their wits' end to find something that he would not eat.One boy, who picked huckleberries, brought in three or four of thedisagreeable little bugs, known without a name by every country boy,that have the skunk habit of emitting overpowering odors whendisturbed, thinking that he had found a poser for our pet; but K'dunkgobbled them up as if they had been set before him as a relish totickle his appetite. Another brought potato bugs; but these too werefish for K'dunk's net. Then a third boy, who had charge of a kitchengarden,[144] went away wagging his head and saying that he had just pickedsomething that no living thing would eat. When he came back he had ahorse-radish bottle that swarmed with squash-bugs, twenty or thirty ofthe vile-smelling things, which he dumped out on the ground andstirred up with a stick.

We gave up trying to beat him on variety after that, and settled downto the apparently simple task of trying to find out how many insectshe could eat before calling halt. But even here K'dunk was too muchfor us; we never, singly or all together, reached the limit of hisappetite. Once we fed him[145] ninety rose-bugs without stopping. Anotherafternoon, when three boys appeared at the same hour, we put our catchtogether, a varied assortment of flies, bugs, and creeping things, ahundred and sixty-four head all told. Before dark K'dunk had eatenthem all, and went hopping off to the garden on his night'shunting—as if he had not already done enough to prove himself ourfriend for the entire summer.

Later we adopted a different plan and made the game come to K'dunk onits own wings, instead of running all over creation ourselves to catchit for him. Near the barn was a neglected drain where the flies werenumerous enough to warn us to look after our sanitation morezealously. Here I built a little cage of wire netting, in which Iplaced a dead rat and some scraps from the table. When the midday sunfound them and made them odorous, big flies began to pour in, with theloud buzzing which seems to be a signal to their fellows; for inordinary flight the same flies are almost noiseless. Once,[146] however,they find a bit of carrion fit for their eggs, they buzz about loudlyevery few minutes, and other flies hear them; whereupon their quietflight changes to a loud buzzing. So the news spreads—at least thisseems to help the matter—and flies pour in from every direction.

At three o'clock I brought K'dunk from his meditations under thedoor-step and set him down in the cage, screening him with a bigrhubarb leaf so that the sun would not dazzle his eyes too much. ThenI took out my watch and sat down on a rock to count.

In the first ten minutes K'dunk got barely a dozen flies. They werewary of him in the bright light, and he was not yet waked up to theoccasion. Then he crouched down between the rat and the scraps, workeda hollow for himself where he could turn without being noticed, andthe red tongue-play began in earnest. In the next half hour he gotsixty-six flies, an average of over two a minute. In an hour hisrecord was a hundred and ten; and before I left him he had added twodozen more to the score of our enemies.[147] Then the flies ceased coming,as the air grew cool, and I carried him back to the door-step. Butthat night, later than usual, he was off to the garden again to keepup his splendid work.

When the summer glow-worms came (lightning-bugs the boys called them)we saw another curious and pretty bit of hunting. One night, as we saton the porch in the soft twilight, I saw the first lightning-bugglowing in the grass, and went to catch it as a jewel for a lady'shair. As I reached down my hand under a bush, the glow suddenlydisappeared, and I put my fingers on K'dunk instead. He, too, had seenthe glow and had instantly adopted jacking as his mode of hunting.

Later I caught a lightning-bug and put it in a tiny bottle, anddropped it in front of K'dunk as he started across the lawn in thelate twilight. He saw the glow through the glass and took a shot at itpromptly. As with the hairy caterpillar, he shut his eyes as he gulpeddown the imaginative morsel, and when he[148] opened them again there wasanother lightning-bug glowing in the grass just where the first hadbeen. So he kept the tiny bottle jumping about the lawn at therepeated laps of his tongue, blinking and swallowing betweenwhilesuntil the glow-worm, made dizzy perhaps by the topsy-turvy play of hisstrange cage, folded his wings and hid his little light. WhereuponK'dunk hopped away, thinking, no doubt, in his own way, that whilelightning-bugs were unusually thick that night and furnished theprettiest kind of hunting, they were very poor satisfaction to ahungry stomach,—not to be compared with what he could get by jumpingup at the insects that hid on the under side of the leaves on everyplant in the garden.

It needed no words of mine by this time to convince the good Mrs.James that K'dunk was her friend. Indeed she paid a small boy tencents apiece for a half dozen toads to turn loose about the premisesto help K'dunk in his excellent work.[149] And the garden flourished asnever before, thanks to the humble little helpers. But K'dunk'svirtues were more than utilitarian; he was full of unexpected thingsthat kept us all constantly watching with delight to see what wouldhappen next. As I said, he soon learned to come to the call; but morethan that, he was fond of music. If you whistled a little tune softly,he would stay perfectly still until you finished before going off onhis night's hunting. Then, if you changed the tune, or whistleddiscordantly, he would hop away as if he had no further use for you.

Sometimes, at night, a few young people would gather on the porch andsing together,—a proceeding which often tolled K'dunk out from underthe door-step, and which, on one occasion, brought him hoppinghurriedly back from the garden, whither he had gone an hour before tohunt his supper. Quiet hymns he seemed to like, for he always keptstill as a worshiper,—which pleased the Reverend Jamesimmensely,—but "rag-time" music he detested, if one could judge byhis[150] actions and by the unmistakable way he had of turning his backupon what did not appeal to him or touch his queer fancy.

One evening a young girl with a very sweet natural voice was singingby an open window on the porch. She was singing for the old folks'pleasure, that night, some old simple melodies that they liked best.Just within the window the piano was playing a soft accompaniment. Astir in the grass attracted my attention, and there was K'dunk tryingin vain to climb up the step. I called Mrs. James' attention quietlyto the queer guest, and then lifted K'dunk gently to the piazza. Therehe followed along the rail until he was close beside the singer, wherehe sat perfectly still, listening intently as long as she sang. Norwas she conscious that night of this least one among her hearers.

Two or three times this happened in the course of the summer. Thegirl's voice seemed to have a fascination for our homely little pet,for at the first sweet notes he would scramble out from his hiding andtry to climb the steps. When I lifted him[151] to the porch he would hopalong till close beside the singer, where he would sit, all quietnessand appreciation, as long as she sang. Then, one night when he had sathumble and attentive at her feet through two songs, a tenor whostudied in New York, and who sometimes gave concerts, was invited tosing. He responded promptly and atrociously with "O Hully Gee,"—whichwas not the name of the thing, but only the academy boys' version of aonce popular love-song. Had K'dunk been a German choir-leader he couldnot have so promptly and perfectly expressed his opinion of thewretched twaddle. It was not the fool words, which he could notfortunately understand, nor yet the wretched tingle-tangle music,which was past praying for, but rather the voice itself with itsforced unnatural quality so often affected by tenors. At the firststrident notes K'dunk grew uneasy. Then he scrambled to the edge ofthe porch and fell off headlong in his haste to get down and away fromthe soul-disturbing performance.

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The sudden flight almost caused a panic and an awful breach ofhospitality among the few who were quietly watching things. To coveran irrepressible chuckle I slipped away after K'dunk, who scrambledclear to the pie-plant patch before he stopped hopping. As I went Iheard the gentle Mrs. James, soul of goodness and hospitality,coughing violently into her handkerchief, as if a rude draught hadstruck her sensitive throat; but it sounded to me more like a squirrelthat I once heard snickering inside of a hollow pumpkin. However, thetenor sang on, and all was well. K'dunk meanwhile was engaged in thebetter task of ridding the garden of noxious bugs, sitting up attimes, in a funny way he had, and scratching the place where his earshould be.

It was soon after this, when we all loved K'dunk better than ever,that the most astonishing bit of his queer life came to the surface.Unlike the higher orders of animals, K'dunk receives no trainingwhatever from his elders. The lower orders live so simple a life thatinstinct is enough for[153] them; and so Nature, who can be provident attimes, as well as wasteful, omits the superfluous bother of teachingthem. But many things he did before our eyes for which instinct couldnever account, and many difficulties arose for which innate knowledgewas not sufficient; and then we saw his poor dull wits at work againstthe unexpected problems of the universe.

As the summer grew hotter and hotter K'dunk left the door-step andmade for himself a better den. All toads do this in the scorchingdays—hollow out a retreat under a sod or root or rotten stump, anddrowse there in its cool damp shade while the sun blisters overhead.Just in front of the door-step some broad flagstones extended acrossthe lawn to the sidewalk. The frosts of many winters had forced themapart, some more and some less, and a ribbon of green grass now showedbetween many pairs of the stones. Where the ribbon was widest K'dunkfound out, in some way, that the thin sod covered a hollow underneath,and he worked at this until the sod gave way[154] and he tumbled into aroomy cavern under one of the flagstones. Here it was always cool, andhe abandoned the door-step forthwith, sleeping through the drowsyAugust days in the better place that his wits had discovered.

Now K'dunk, with good hunting in the garden and with much artificialfeeding at our hands, grew fatter and fatter. At times when he camehopping home in the morning, swelled out enormously with the uncountedinsects that he had eaten, he found the space between the flagstonesuncomfortably narrow. Other toads have the same difficulty and, toavoid it, simply scratch the entrance to their dens a little wider;but dig and push as he would, K'dunk could not budge the flagstones.

First he put his head and shoulders through, and by pulling at theunder side of the flagstones tried to hitch and coax his way in. Allin vain! His fat body caught between the obstinate flags and onlywedged tighter and tighter. The bulging part without was so muchbigger than the part within that he must have given it up at a glance,could he only have seen[156] himself. But he worked away with wonderfulpatience till he knew it was of no use, when he pushed himself outagain and sat looking into his inhospitable doorway, blinking andtousled and all covered with dust and grass roots. As he sat he keptscratching the place where his ear should be, as if he were thinking.

In a moment or two, as if he had solved the problem, he turned aroundand hitched his hind legs into the hole. He was going in backwards,but carefully, awkwardly, as if he were not used to it. This, however,was worse than the other, for his obstinate belly only wedged thetighter and, with a paw down on either side of him, every push liftedhim up instead of pulling him down. He gave up quicker than before,because his head was out now and he could see better how he wasprogressing. At last he lay down, as if he had solved the problem, andtried to squirm through his long doorway lengthwise. This was better.He could get either his hind legs or his head and shoulders through;[157]but, like the buckets in the well, when one end was down the other endwas up, and still his fat, obstinate body refused to go through withthe rest. Still he seemed to be making progress, for every teeter ofhead and legs worked his uncomfortable dinner into better shape. Atthe end he wedged himself too tight, and there was a harder scrambleto get out than there had been to get in. By a desperate push and kickhe freed himself at last and sat, all tousled again, blinking into hisdoorway, meditating.

Suddenly he turned and lowered his hind legs into the hole. He wasmore careful this time, afraid of being caught. When he had droppedthrough as far as he could go, he sat very still for some moments,supporting himself with a paw on either side. His jaws openedslowly—and full of wonder at a curious twitching motion he wasmaking, I crept near on hands and knees and looked down into hiswide-open mouth. There was his dinner, all sorts of flies andnight-bugs, coming up little by little and being held in his greatmouth as in a basket,[158] while his stomach worked below and sent upsupplies to relieve the pressure.

Slowly he slipped down as the stones began to lose their hard grip. Asquirm, a twist, a comfortable roll of his stomach, a suddenjounce—and the thing was done. K'dunk was resting with a paw oneither flagstone, his body safe below and his mouth, still wide openabove, holding its precious contents, like an old-fashioned valisethat had burst open. Then he swallowed his disturbed dinner down againin big gulps, and with a last scramble disappeared into his cool den.

That night he did not come out, but the second night he was busy inthe garden as usual. To our deep regret he deserted both the door-stepand the den with its narrow opening under the flagstones. It may bethat in his own way he had pondered the problem of what might havebecome of him had the owl been after him when he came home thatmorning; for when I found him again he was safe under the hollow rootsof an old apple-tree, where the entrance was[159] wide enough to tumble inquickly, however much he had eaten. And there he stayed by day as longas I kept tabs on him.

There was but one more interesting trait that I discovered in the lastdays of the summer, and that was his keenness in finding the besthunting-grounds. Just behind his den in the old apple-tree was a stonewall, under which insects of all kinds were plenty. K'dunk's den wason the east side, so that the sun as it set threw the cool shade ofthe wall over the place and brought our pet out earlier than was hiswont. In some way he found out that the west side of the wall caughtand held the sun's last rays, and that flies and all sorts of insectswould light or crawl on the hot stones to get warm in the lateafternoon. He made a tunnel for himself under the wall, just behindhis den, and would lie close beside a certain gray stone on the westside, his gray color hiding him perfectly, picking off the flies asthey lit with the quickness and certainty of a lizard. When bugs andinsects crawled out of their[160] holes to sun themselves awhile on a warmstone, K'dunk, whose eye ranged up and down over his hunting-ground,would lie settled comfortably, and would then creep cautiously withinrange and snap them up with a flash of his tongue that the eye couldscarcely follow. In a dozen afternoons, watching him there, I neversaw him miss a single shot, while the number of flies and insects hedestroyed must have reached up into the hundreds.

In the same field four or five cows were pastured, and on pleasantdays they were milked out of doors instead of being driven into thebarn. Now those who have watched cows at milking time have probablynoted how the flies swarm on their legs, clustering thickly above thehoofs, where the switching of a nervous tail cannot disturb them.K'dunk had noted it too, and often during the milking, when the cowswere quiet, he would approach a certain animal out of the herd, creepup on one hoof after another and snap off every fly within reach. Thenhe would jump for the highest ones, hitting[161] them almost invariably,and tumble off on his back after a successful shot. But in a moment hehad scrambled back on a hoof again and was waiting for the next fly tolight within range. The most curious part of it all was that heattached himself to one cow, and would seek her out of the herdwherever she was being milked. He never, so far as I observed, wentnear any of the others; and the cow after a time seemed to recognizethe toad as a friend, and would often stand still after being milkedas long as K'dunk remained perched on one of her hoofs.

As the summer waned and green things disappeared from the garden hedeserted that also, going wider and wider afield in his night'shunting. He grew wilder, too, as all things do in the autumn days,till at last no whistle, however loud, would bring him back. Whetherthe owl caught him, or whether he still looks forward to the long lifethat Nature gives to the toads, I do not know; but under the edge ofthe portulaca bed, as I write, is a suspicious[162] hollow that the frostsand snows have not quite concealed. I shall watch that in the springwith more than common interest to know whether K'dunk the Fat Oneremembers his old friends.

ONE day, in a long tramp through the heavy forest that borders theLittle Southwest River, I came upon a dim old road that had beenbushed the previous winter and, having nothing better to do, followedit to see whither it would lead me. Other feet than mine had recentlygone on the same errand, for every soft spot in the earth, everymoldering log and patch of swamp moss and muddy place beside thebrook, had deep footprints and claw marks to tell me that Mooween thebear had gone back and forth many times[166] over the same trail. Then Iknew what I would find at the other end of it, and was not at allsurprised when it led me to the open yard of a big lumber camp besidethe river.

There is always a fascination in such places, where men have livedtheir simple lives in the heart of the woods, shut out from all therest of the world during the long winter; so I began to prowl quietlyabout the shanties to see what I could find. The door of the lowstable swung invitingly open, but it was a dark, musty, ill-smellingplace now, though cozy enough in winter, and only the porcupines hadinvaded it. I left it after a glance and came round to the men'sshanty.

The door of this was firmly locked; but a big hole had been torn inthe roof by bears, and I crawled in by that entrance. Mooween had beenhere many times ahead of me. Every corner of the big room, the bunksand the cupboards and even the stove, had been ransacked from one endto the other; and the strong, doggy smell of a bear was everywhere,showing how recently[169]he had searched the place. Here in a corner alarge tin box had been wrenched open, and flour was scattered over thefloor and deacon-seat, as if a whirlwind had struck the place. Mooweenwas playful evidently; or perhaps he was mad that the stuff for whichhe had taken so much trouble was too dry to eat. The white print ofone paw was drawn everywhere on the floor and walls. This was the pawof a little bear, who had undoubtedly come late, and had to be contentwith what the others had left.

Other bears had followed him into the camp and found poor pickings.One had thumped open a half barrel of pork and sampled the saltycontents, and then had nosed a pile of old moccasins inquisitively. Adozen axes and peaveys had been pulled out of a barrel and thrown onthe floor, to see if perchance they had hidden anything good to eat.Every pot and pan in the big cupboard had been taken out and given alap or two to find out what they had cooked last; and one bear hadstood up on his hind legs and swept off the contents of a high shelfwith a sweep of his paw. Altogether the camp had been sackedthoroughly, and it was of little use for any other bear to search theplace. The camp seemed to be waiting silently for the lumbermen tocome back in the fall and set things to rights.

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I crawled back through the hole in the roof and began to search thebig yard carefully. If Mooween had carried anything outside, it wouldbe found not far away; and there is a keen interest, for me at least,in finding anything that the Wood Folk have touched or handled. Thealder stick that the beaver cut yesterday, or the little mud pie thathis paws have patted smooth; the knot that the young coons have usedas a plaything in their den to beguile the hours when their mother wasaway; the tree against which two or three bears have measured andscratched their height; the log where the grouse drums; the discardedhorn of a moose; the track of an unknown beast; the old den of alucivee,—in all these things, and a thousand more, there is I knownot what fascination that draws me a mile out of my course just tostand for a moment where wild little feet have surely passed and toread the silent records they have left behind them.

In front of the camp door was a huge pile of chips where the lumbermenhad chopped[172] their wood during the long winter. I walked up on this,wondering at its huge size and making a great clatter as the chipsslipped from under me. Suddenly there was a terrifying rumble at myfeet. A bear burst out of the chip pile, as if he had been blown up byan explosion, and plunged away headlong into the silent woods.

On the north side of the mound a tunnel a couple of feet long had beendug by the bear, and the heart of the chip pile had been thrown out tomake a little cave, just big enough for Mooween to lie down in. Ipoked my head into it, and to my astonishment[173] found it to be aregular ice house, with snow and ice packed in solidly among thechips. I tried the pile in other places and found the same conditionseverywhere. A foot or two beneath the surface the ice remained asperfectly preserved as if it were January instead of midsummer. Herewere shade and coolness such as no sun could disturb, and in a momentit came to me how the queer thing had come about.

All winter long the lumbermen had chopped their fire-wood on the samespot, using axes only, and making an enormous amount of chips andrubbish. When heavy snows fell, instead of clearing it away, theysimply cut more wood on top of it, tramping the snow beneath into asolid mass and covering it over with fresh chips. So the pilegrew,—first a layer of chips, then a thick blanket of snow, then morechips and snow again,—growing bigger and bigger until in April thelumbermen locked their shanty and went out on the spring drive oflogs.

When the spring sun melted the snow in the woods the big pileremained, settling[174] slowly as the days warmed. At midday the top layerof snow would melt and trickle down through the chips; by night itwould freeze hard, gradually changing the snow within to soft ice.When all the snow in the woods was gone, that in the chip pileremained, kept from melting by the thick wooden blankets that coveredit; and the longest summer would hardly be sufficient to melt it downto the bottom layer, which represented the first fall of snow in theprevious autumn.

At the inner end of the den something glimmered as my eyes grewaccustomed to the gloom, and I reached in my hand and pulled the thingout. It was a stone jug, and I knew instantly what had held themolasses that had been spilled on the camp[175] floor. Mooween hadprobably pulled the cork and rolled the jug about, lapping up thecontents as they came out. When he could get no more he had taken thejug under his arm as he climbed through the hole in the roof, and keptit now in his cool den to lick it all over again for any stray dropsof molasses that he might have overlooked. Perhaps also he foundcomfort in putting his tongue or his nose into the nozzle-mouth tosmell the sweetness that he could no longer reach.

I have found one or two strange winter dens of Mooween, and havefollowed his trail uncounted miles through the snow when he had beendriven out of onehibernaculum and was seeking another in the remotefastnesses, making an unending trail with the evident intention oftiring out any hunter who should attempt to follow him. I have foundhis bathing pools repeatedly, and watched him in midsummer when hesought out cool retreats—a muddy eddy in a trout brook under thealders, a mossy hollow under the north side of a great sheer[176]ledge—to escape the flies and heat. But none of them compare withthis lumberman's ice house which his wits had appropriated, and which,from many signs about the place, he was accustomed to use daily forhis nap when the sun was hottest; and none of his many queer traitsever appealed to me quite so strongly as the humorous cunning whichprompted him to take the jug with him into his den. It was safe there,whether Mooween were at home or not, for no bear will ever enteranother's den unless the owner first show him in; and while otherbears were in the hot camp, trying to find a satisfactory bite of saltpork and dry flour, Mooween was lying snug in his ice house lickingthe molasses jug that represented his own particular share of theplunder.

KOSKOMENOS the kingfisher still burrows in the earth like his reptileancestors; therefore the other birds call him outcast and will havenothing to do with him. But he cares little for that, being aclattering, rattle-headed, self-satisfied fellow, who seems to donothing all day long but fish and eat. As you follow him, however, younote with amazement that he does some things marvelously well—betterindeed than any other of the Wood Folk. To locate a fish accurately instill water is difficult enough when one thinks of light refraction;but when the fish is moving, and the sun glares down into the pool andthe wind wrinkles its face into a thousand[180] flashing, changing furrowsand ridges,—then the bird that can point a bill straight to his fishand hit him fair just behind the gills must have more in his head thanthe usual chattering gossip that one hears from him on the troutstreams.

This was the lesson that impressed itself upon me when I first beganto study Koskomenos; and the object of this little sketch, whichrecords those first strong impressions, is not to give ourkingfisher's color or markings or breeding habits—you can get allthat from the bird books—but to suggest a possible answer to thequestion of how he learns so much, and how he teaches his wisdom tothe little kingfishers.

Just below my camp, one summer, was a trout pool. Below the trout poolwas a shaded minnow basin, a kind of storehouse for the pool above,where the trout foraged in the early and late twilight, and where, ifyou hooked a red-fin delicately on a fine leader and dropped it infrom the crotch of an overhanging tree, you might sometimes catch abig one.

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Early one morning, while I was sitting in the tree, a kingfisher sweptup the river and disappeared under the opposite bank. He had a nest inthere, so cunningly hidden under an overhanging root that till then Ihad not discovered it, though I had fished the pool and seen thekingfishers clattering about many times. They were unusually noisywhen I was near, and flew up-stream over the trout pool with a long,rattling call again and again—a ruse, no doubt, to make me think thattheir nest was somewhere far above.

On the way back she passed over a frog, a big, sober, sleepy fellow,waiting on a lily-pad for his sun-bath. Chigwooltz[185] might catch youngtrout, and even little birds as they came to drink, but he wouldsurely never molest a brood of kingfishers; yet the mother, like anirate housekeeper flourishing her broom at every corner of an unsweptroom, sounded her rattle loudly and dropped on the sleepy frog's head,sending him sputtering and scrambling away into the mud, as if Hawahakthe hawk were after him. Then with another look all round to see thatthe stream was clear, and with a warning rattle to any Wood Folk thatshe might have overlooked, she darted into her nest, wiggling her taillike a satisfied duck as she disappeared.

After a moment a wild-eyed young kingfisher put his head out of thehole for his first look at the big world. A push from behind cut shorthis contemplation, and without any fuss whatever he sailed down to adead branch on the other side of the stream. Another and anotherfollowed in the same way, as if each one had been told just what to doand where to go, till the whole family were sitting a-row, with therippling[186] stream below them and the deep blue heavens and the rustlingworld of woods above.

That was their first lesson, and their reward was near. The male birdhad been fishing since daylight; now he began to bring minnows from aneddy where he had stored them, and to feed the hungry family andassure them, in his own way, that this big world, so different fromthe hole in the bank, was a good place to live in, and furnished noend of good things to eat.

The next lesson was more interesting, the lesson of catching fish. Theschool was a quiet, shallow pool with a muddy bottom against which thefish showed clearly, and with a convenient stub leaning over it fromwhich to swoop. The old birds had caught a score of minnows, killedthem, and dropped them here and there under the stub. Then theybrought the young birds, showed them their game, and told them byrepeated examples to dive and get it. The little fellows were hungryand took to the sport keenly; but one was timid, and only after themother had twice dived and brought up a fish[187]—which she showed to thetimid one and then dropped back in a most tantalizing way—did hemuster up resolution to take the plunge.

A few mornings later, as I prowled along the shore, I came upon alittle pool quite shut off from the main stream, in which a dozen ormore frightened minnows were darting about, as if in strange quarters.As I stood watching them and wondering how they got over the dry barthat separated the pool from the river, a kingfisher came sweepingup-stream with a fish in his bill. Seeing me, he whirled silently anddisappeared round the point below.

The thought of the curious little wild kindergarten occurred to mesuddenly as I turned to the minnows again, and I waded across theriver and hid in the bushes. After an hour's wait Koskomenos camestealing back, looked carefully over the pool and the river, and sweptdown-stream with a rattling call. Presently he came back again withhis mate and the whole family; and the little ones, after seeing theirparents swoop, and[188] tasting the fish they caught, began to swoop forthemselves.

The first plunges were usually in vain, and when a minnow was caughtit was undoubtedly one of the wounded fish that Koskomenos had placedthere in the lively swarm to encourage his little ones. After a try ortwo, however, they seemed to get the knack of the thing and would droplike a plummet, bill first, or shoot down on a sharp incline and hittheir fish squarely as it darted away into deeper water. The river waswild and difficult, suitable only for expert fishermen. The quietestpools had no fish, and where minnows were found the water or the bankswere against the little kingfishers, who had not yet learned to hoverand take their fish from the wing. So Koskomenos had found a suitablepool and stocked it himself to make his task of teaching more easy forhis mate and more profitable for his little ones. The most interestingpoint in his method was that, in this case, he had brought the minnowsalive to his kindergarten, instead of killing or wounding them, as inthe first[189] lesson. He knew that the fish could not get out of thepool, and that his little ones could take their own time in catchingthem.

When I saw the family again, weeks afterwards, their lessons were welllearned; they needed no wounded or captive fish to satisfy theirhunger. They were full of the joy of living, and showed me, one day, acurious game,—the only play that I have ever seen among thekingfishers.

There were three of them, when I first found them, perched onprojecting stubs over the dancing riffles, which swarmed with chub and"minnies" and samlets and lively young red-fins. Suddenly, as if atthe command go! they all dropped, bill first, into the river. In amoment they were out again and rushed back to their respective stubs,where they threw their heads back and wriggled their minnows downtheir throats with a haste to choke them all. That done, they began todance about on their stubs, clattering and chuckling immoderately.

It was all blind to me at first, till the game was repeated two orthree times, always[190] starting at the same instant with a plunge intothe riffles and a rush back to goal. Then their object was as clear asthe stream below them. With plenty to eat and never a worry in theworld, they were playing a game to see which could first get back tohis perch and swallow his fish. Sometimes one or two of them failed toget a fish and glided back dejectedly; sometimes all three were soclose together that it took a deal of jabber to straighten the matterout; and they always ended in the same way, by beginning all overagain.

Koskomenos is a solitary fellow, with few pleasures, and fewercompanions to share them with him. This is undoubtedly the result ofhis peculiar fishing regulations, which give to each kingfisher acertain piece of lake or stream for his own. Only the young of thesame family go fishing together; and so I have no doubt that thesewere the same birds whose early training I had watched, and who werenow enjoying themselves in their own way, as all the other Wood Folkdo, in the fat, careless, happy autumn days.

PEKOMPF the wildcat is one of the savage beasts that have not yetvanished from the haunts of men. Sometimes, as you clamber up thewooded hillside above the farm, you will come suddenly upon afierce-looking, catlike creature stretched out on a rock sunninghimself. At sight of you he leaps up with a snarl, and you have aswift instant in which to take his measure. He is twice as big as ahouse-cat, with round head and big expressionless eyes that glarestraight into yours with a hard, greenish glitter. His reddish-brownsides are spotted[194] here and there, and the white fur of his belly isblotched with black—the better to hide himself amid the lights andshadows. A cat, sure enough, but unlike anything of the kind you haveever seen before.

As you look and wonder there is a faint sound that you will do well toheed. The muscles of his long thick legs are working nervously, andunder the motion is a warning purr, not the soft rumble in a contentedtabby's throat, but the cut and rip of ugly big claws as they areunsheathed viciously upon the dry leaves. His stub tail istwitching—you had not noticed it before, but now it whips back andforth angrily, as if to call attention to the fact that Nature had notaltogether forgotten that end of Pekompf. Whip, whip,—it is atail—k'yaaaah! And you jump as the fierce creature screeches in yourface.

If it is your first wildcat, you will hardly know what to do,—tostand perfectly quiet is always best, unless you have a stick or gunin[195] your hand,—and if you have met Pekompf many times before, you arequite as uncertain what he will do this time. Most wild creatures,however fierce, prefer to mind their own business and will respect thesame sentiment in you. But when you stumble upon a wildcat you arenever sure of his next move. That is because he is a slinking,treacherous creature, like all cats, and never quite knows how best tomeet you. He suspects you unreasonably because he knows you suspecthim with reason. Generally he slinks away, or leaps suddenly forcover, according to the method of your approach. But though smaller heis naturally more savage than either the Canada lynx or the panther,and sometimes he crouches and snarls in your face, or even jumps foryour chest at the first movement.

Once, to my knowledge, he fell like a fury upon the shoulders of a manwho was hurrying homeward through the twilight, and who happened tostop unawares under the tree where Pekompf was watching the runways.The man had no idea that a wildcat was near,[196] and he probably neverwould have known had he gone steadily on his way. As he told meafterwards, he felt a sudden alarm and stopped to listen. The momenthe did so the savage creature above him thought himself discovered,and leaped to carry the war into Africa. There was a pounce, ascreech, a ripping of cloth, a wild yell for help; then the answeringshout and rush of two woodsmen with their axes. And that nightPekompf's skin was nailed to the barn-door to dry in the sun beforebeing tanned and made up into a muff for the woodsman's little girl towarm her fingers withal in the bitter winter weather.

Where civilization has driven most of his fellows away, Pekompf is ashy, silent creature; but where the farms are scattered and thehillsides wild and wooded, he is bolder and more noisy than in theunpeopled wilderness. From the door of the charcoal-burner's hut inthe Connecticut hills you may still hear him screeching and fightingwith his fellows as the twilight falls, and the yowling uproar causesa colder chill in your back than anything you will ever hear in thewilderness.[197] As you follow the trout stream, from which the charcoalman daily fills his kettle, you may find Pekompf stretched on a fallenlog under the alders, glaring intently into the trout pool, waiting,waiting—for what?

It will take many seasons of watching to answer this natural question,which every one who is a follower of the wild things has asked himselfa score of times. All the cats have but one form of patience, thepatience of quiet waiting. Except when hunger-driven, their way ofhunting is to watch beside the game paths or crouch upon a big limbabove the place where their game comes down to drink. Sometimes theyvary their programme by prowling blindly through the woods, singly orin pairs, trusting to luck to blunder upon their game; for they arewretched hunters. They rarely follow a trail, not simply because[198]their noses are not keen—for in the snow, with a trail as plain as adeer path, they break away from it with reckless impatience, only toscare the game into a headlong dash for safety. Then they will crouchunder a dwarf spruce and stare at the trail with round unblinkingeyes, waiting for the frightened creatures to come back, or for othercreatures to come by in the same footprints. Even in teaching heryoung a mother wildcat is full of snarling whims and tempers; but nowlet a turkey gobble far away in the woods, let Musquash dive into hisden where she can see it, let but a woodmouse whisk out of sight intohis hidden doorway,—and instantly patience returns to Pekompf. Allthe snarling ill-temper vanishes. She crouches and waits, and forgetsall else. She may have just fed full on what she likes best, and sohave no desire for food and no expectation of catching more; but shemust still watch, as if to[199]reassure herself that her eyes are notdeceived and that Tookhees is really there under the mossy stone whereshe saw the scurry of his little legs and heard his frightened squeakas he disappeared.

But why should a cat watch at a trout pool, out of which nothing evercomes to reward his patience? That was a puzzling question for manyyears. I had seen Pekompf many times stretched on a log, or lyingclose to a great rock over the water, so intent on his watching thathe heard not my cautious approach. Twice from my canoe I had seenUpweekis the lynx on the shore of a wilderness lake, crouched amongthe weather-worn roots of a stranded pine, his great paws almosttouching the water, his eyes fixed with unblinking stare on the deeppool below. And once, when trout fishing on a wild river just oppositea great jam of logs and driftwood, I had stopped casting suddenly withan uncanny feeling of being watched by unseen eyes at my solitarysport.

It is always well to heed such a warning in the woods. I looked up anddown quickly;[200] but the river held no life above its hurrying flood. Isearched the banks carefully and peered suspiciously into the woodsbehind me; but save for the dodging of a winter wren, who seems alwaysto be looking for something that he has lost and that he does not wantyou to know about, the shores were wild and still as if just created.I whipped out my flies again. What was that, just beyond the littlewavelet where my Silver Doctor had fallen? Something moved, curled,flipped and twisted nervously. It was a tail, the tip end that cannotbe quiet. And there—an irrepressible chill trickled over me as I madeout the outlines of a great gray beast stretched on a fallen log, andcaught the gleam of[201]his wild eyes fixed steadily upon me. Even as Isaw the thing it vanished like a shadow of the woods. But what was thepanther watching there before he watched me?

The answer came unexpectedly. It was in the Pemigewasset valley inmidsummer. At daybreak I had come softly down the wood road to thetrout pool and stopped to watch a mink dodging in and out along theshore. When he passed out of sight under some logs I waited quietlyfor other Wood Folk to show themselves. A slight movement on the endof a log—and there was Pekompf, so still that the eye could hardlyfind him, stretching a paw down cautiously and flipping it back with apeculiar inward sweep. Again he did it, and I saw the long curvedclaws, keen as fish-hooks, stretched wide out of their sheaths. He wasfishing, spearing his prey with the patience of an Indian; and even asI made the discovery there was a flash of silver following the quickjerk of his paw, and Pekompf leaped to the shore and crouched over thefish that he had thrown out of the water.

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So Pekompf watches the pools as he watches a squirrel's hole becausehe has seen game there and because he likes fish above everything elsethat the woods can furnish. But how often must he watch the big troutbefore he catches one? Sometimes, in the late twilight, the largestfish will move out of the pools and nose along the shore for food,their back fins showing out of the shallow water as they glide along.It may be that Pekompf sometimes catches them at this time, and sowhen he sees the gleam of a fish in the depths he crouches where he isfor a while, following the irresistible impulse of all cats at thesight of game. Herein they differ from all other savage beasts, which,when not hungry, pay no attention whatever to smaller animals.

But deeper than his cunning is Pekompf's inborn suspicion and hisinsane fury at being opposed or cornered. The trappers catch him, asthey catch his big cousin the lucivee, by setting a snare in therabbit paths that he nightly follows. Opposite the noose and attachedto the other end of the cord is a pole, which jumps after the cat ashe[207] starts forward with the loop about his neck. Were it a fox, now,he would back away out of the snare, or lie still and cut the cordwith his teeth and so escape. But, like all cats when trapped, Pekompfflies into a blind fury. He screeches at the unoffending stick, clawsit, battles with it, and literally chokes himself in his rage. Or, ifhe be an old cat and his cunning a bit deeper, he will go offcautiously and climb the biggest tree he can find, with theuncomfortable thing that he is tied to dangling and clattering behindhim. When near the top he will leave the stick hanging on one side ofa limb while he cunningly climbs down the other, thinking thus to foolhis dumb enemy and leave him behind. One of two things always happens.Either the stick catches in the crotch and Pekompf hangs himself onhis own gibbet, or else it comes over with a sudden jerk and falls tothe ground, pulling Pekompf with it and generally killing him in thefall.

It is a cruel, brutal kind of device at best, and fortunately for thecat tribe has almost vanished from the northern woods, except in[208] thefar Northwest, where the half-breeds still use it for lynxsuccessfully. But as a study of the way in which trappers seize uponsome peculiarity of an animal and use it for his destruction, it hasno equal.

That Pekompf's cunning is of the cat kind, suspicious without beingcrafty or intelligent like that of the fox or wolf, is curiously shownby a habit which both lynx and wildcat have in common, namely, that ofcarrying anything they steal to the top of some lofty evergreen todevour it. When they catch a rabbit or fish fairly themselves, theygenerally eat it on the spot; but when they steal the same animal fromsnare or cache, or from some smaller hunter, the cat suspicionreturns—together with some dim sense of wrongdoing, which all animalsfeel more or less—and they make off with the booty and eat itgreedily where they think no one will ever find them.

Once, when watching for days under a fish-hawk's nest to see theanimals that came[209] in shyly to eat the scraps that the littlefish-hawks cast out when their hunger was satisfied, this cat habitwas strikingly manifest. Other animals would come in and quietly eatwhat they found and slip away again; but the cats would seize on amorsel with flashing eyes, as if defying all law and order, and wouldeither growl horribly as they ate or else would slink away guiltilyand, as I found out by following, would climb the biggest tree at handand eat the morsel in the highest crotch that gave a foothold. Andonce, on the Maine coast in November, I saw a fierce battle in thetree-tops where a wildcat crouched, snarling like twenty fiends, whilea big eagle whirled and swooped over him, trying to take away the gamethat Pekompf had stolen.

By far the most curious bit of Pekompf's cunning came under my eyes,one summer, a few years ago. Until recently I had supposed it to be aunique discovery; but last summer a friend, who goes to Newfoundlandevery year for the salmon fishing, had a similar experience with aCanada lynx, which[210] emphasizes the tendency of all cats to seek thetree-tops with anything that they have stolen; though curiously enoughI have never found any trace of it with game that they had caughthonestly themselves. It was in Nova Scotia, where I was trout fishingfor a little season, and where I had no idea of meeting Pekompf, forthe winters are severe there and the wildcat is supposed to leave suchplaces to his more powerful and longer-legged cousin, the lynx, whosefeet are bigger than his and better padded for walking on the snow.Even in the southern Berkshires you may follow Pekompf's trail and seewhere he makes heavy weather of it, floundering belly-deep like adomestic tabby through the soft drifts in his hungry search for grouseand rabbits, and lying down in despair at last to wait till the snowsettles. But to my surprise Pekompf was there, bigger, fiercer, andmore cunning than I had ever seen him; though I did not discover thistill after a long search.

I had fished from dawn till almost six[211] o'clock, one morning, and hadtaken two good trout, which were all that the stream promised to yieldfor the day. Then I thought of a little pond in the woods over themountain, which looked trouty when I had discovered it and which, sofar as I knew, had never been fished with a fly. Led more by the funof exploring than by the expectation of fish, I started to try the newwaters.

The climb through the woods promised to be a hard one, so I lefteverything behind except rod, reel, and fly-book. My coat was hung onthe nearest bush; the landing-net lay in the shade across a rock, theend of the handle wedged under a root, and I dropped my two trout intothat and covered them from the sun with ferns and moss. Then I startedoff through the woods for the little pond.

When I came back empty-handed, a few hours later, trout andlanding-net were gone. The first thought naturally was that some onehad stolen them, and I looked for the thief's tracks; but, save myown, there was not a footprint anywhere beside the stream up or down.Then I looked beside the rock[212] more carefully and found bits of mossand fish-scales, and the pugs of some animal, too faint in the gravelto make out what the beast was that made them. I followed the fainttraces for a hundred yards or more into the woods till they led me toa great spruce tree, under which every sign disappeared utterly, as ifthe creature had suddenly flown away net and all, and I gave up thetrail without any idea of what had made it.

For two weeks that theft bothered me. It was not so much the loss ofmy two trout and net, but rather the loss of my woodcraft on the trailthat had no end, which kept me restless. The net was a large one,altogether too large and heavy for trout fishing. At the last momentbefore starting on my trip I found that my trout net was rotten anduseless, and so had taken the only thing at hand, a specially madeforty-inch net which I had last used on a scientific expedition forcollecting specimens from the lakes of northern New Brunswick. Thehandle was long, and the bow, as I had more than once tested, waspowerful enough to use instead of a gaff for[213] taking a twenty-fivepound salmon out of his pool after he had been played to a standstill;and how any creature could drag it off through the woods withoutleaving a plain trail for my eyes to follow puzzled me, and excited amost lively curiosity to know who he was and why he had not eaten thefish where he found them. Was it lynx or stray wolf, or had theterrible Injun Devil that is still spoken of with awe at the winterfiresides returned to his native woods? For a week I puzzled over thequestion; then I went back to the spot and tried in vain to follow thefaint marks in the moss. After that whenever I wandered near the spotI tried the trail again, or circled wider and wider through the woods,hoping to find the net or some positive sign of the beast that hadstolen it.

One day in the woods it occurred to me suddenly that, while I hadfollowed the trail three or four times, I had never thought to examinethe tree beneath which it ended. At the thought[214] I went to the bigspruce and there, sure enough, were flecks of bright brown here andthere where the rough outer shell had been chipped off. And therealso, glimmering white, was a bit of dried slime where a fish hadrested for an instant against the bark. The beast, whatever he was,had climbed the tree with his booty; and the discovery was no soonermade than I was shinning up eagerly after him.

Near the scraggy top I found my net, its long handle wedged firmly inbetween two branches, its bow caught on a projecting stub, its baghanging down over empty space. In the net was a big wildcat, his roundhead driven through a hole which he had bitten in the bottom, thetough meshes drawn taut as fiddle-strings about his throat. All fourlegs had clawed or pushed their way through the mesh, till every kickand struggle served only to bind and choke him more effectually.

From marks I made out at last the outline of the story. Pekompf hadfound the fish and tried to steal them, but his suspicions were rousedby the queer net and the[215] clattering handle. With true lynx cunning,which is always more than half stupidity, he had carried it off andstarted to climb the biggest tree he could find. Near the top thehandle had wedged among the branches, and while he tried to dislodgeit net and fish had swung clear of the trunk. In the bark below thehandle I found where he had clung to the tree boll and tried to reachthe swinging trout with his paw; and on a branch above the bow weremarks which showed where he had looked down longingly at the fish atthe bottom of the net, just below his hungry nose. From this branch hehad either fallen or, more likely, in a fit of blind rage had leapedinto the net, which closed around him and held him more effectuallythan bars of iron. When I came under for the first time, following histrail probably crouched on a limb over my head watching me steadily;and when I came back the second time he was dead.

That was all that one could be sure about. But here and there, in atorn[216] mesh, or a tuft of fur, or the rip of a claw against a swayingtwig, were the marks of a struggle whose savage intensity one couldonly imagine.

MOST people have seen a sick cat eat grass, or an uneasy dog seek outsome weed and devour it greedily to make his complaining stomach feelbetter. Some few may have read John Wesley's directions on the art ofkeeping well—which have not, however, found their way into his bookof discipline for the soul—and have noted with surprised interest hisclaim that many medicines in use among the common people and thephysicians of his time were discovered by watching the animals thatsought out these things to heal their diseases. "If[220] they heal animalsthey will also heal men," is his invincible argument. Others may havedipped deep into Indian history and folk-lore and learned that many ofthe herbs used by the American tribes, and especially the cures forrheumatism, dysentery, fever, and snake bites, were learned directfrom the animals, by noting the rheumatic old bear grub for fern rootsor bathe in the hot mud of a sulphur spring, and by watching witheager eyes what plants the wild creatures ate when bitten by rattlersor wasted by the fever. Still others have been fascinated with thefirst crude medical knowledge of the Greeks, which came to them fromthe East undoubtedly, and have read that the guarded mysteries of theAsclepiades, the healing cult that followed Æsculapius, had among themmany simple remedies that had first proved their efficacy amonganimals in a natural state; and that Hippocrates, the greatestphysician of antiquity, whose fame under the name of Bokrat the Wisewent down through Arabia and into the farthest deserts, owes many ofhis medical aphorisms[223]to what he himself, or his forebears, musthave seen out of doors among the wild creatures. And all these seersand readers have perhaps wondered how much the animals knew, andespecially how they came to know it.

To illustrate the matter simply and in our own day and generation: Adeer that has been chased all day long by dogs, and that has escapedat last by swimming an icy river and fallen exhausted on the farthershore, will lie down to sleep in the snow. That would mean swift deathfor any human being. Half the night the deer will move about at shortintervals, instead of sleeping heavily, and in the morning he is asgood as ever and ready for another run. The same deer shut up in awarm barn to sleep overnight, as has been more than once tested withpark animals, will be found dead in the morning.

That the animals do practice at times a rude kind of medicine andsurgery upon themselves is undeniable. The only question about it is,How do they know? To say it is a matter of instinct is but begging thequestion. It is also three-fourths foolishness, for many of the thingsthat animals do are beyond the farthest scope of instinct. The case ofthe deer that moved about and so saved his life, instead of sleepingon heavily to his death, may be partly a case of instinct. Personallyit seems to me more a matter of experience; for a fawn under the samecircumstances, unless his mother were[225] near to keep him moving, wouldundoubtedly lie down and die. More than that, it seems to be largely amatter of obedience to the strongest impulse of the moment, to whichall animals are accustomed or trained from their birthday. And that isnot quite the same thing as instinct, unless one is disposed to go tothe extreme of Berkeley's philosophy and make instinct a kind ofspirit-personality that watches over animals all the time. Often theknowledge of healing or of primitive surgery seems to be the discoveryor possession of a few rare individual animals, instead of beingspread widecast among the species, as instincts are. This knowledge,or what-you-may-call-it, is sometimes shared, and so hints at a kindof communication among animals, of whose method we catch only fleetingglimpses and suggestions—but that will be the subject of anotherarticle. The object of this is, not to answer the questions of how orwhence, but simply to suggest one or two things I have seen in thewoods as the basis for further and more detailed observations.

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The most elemental kind of surgery is that which amputates a leg whenit is broken, not always or often, but only when the wound festersfrom decay or fly-bite and so endangers the whole body. Probably thebest illustration of this is found in the coon, who has a score oftraits that place him very high among intelligent animals. When acoon's foot is shattered by a bullet he will cut it off promptly andwash the stump in running water, partly to reduce the inflammation andpartly, no doubt, to make it perfectly clean. As it heals he uses histongue on the wound freely, as a dog does, to cleanse it perhaps, andby the soft massage of his tongue to reduce the swelling and allay thepain.

All this is digression; and I have almost forgotten my surgery and theparticular muskrat I was talking about. He, too, had been caught insome other fellow's trap and had bitten his leg off only a few daysbefore. The wound was not yet healed,[230] and the amazing thing about itwas that he had covered it with some kind of sticky vegetable gum,probably from some pine-tree that had been split or barked close tothe ground where Musquash could reach it easily. He had smeared itthickly all over the wound and well up the leg above it, so that alldirt and even all air and water were excluded perfectly.

An old Indian who lives and hunts on Vancouver Island told me recentlythat he has several times caught beaver that had previously cut theirlegs off to escape from traps, and that two of them had covered thewounds thickly with gum, as the muskrat had done. Last spring the sameIndian caught a bear in a deadfall. On the animal's side was a longrip from some other bear's claw, and the wound had been smearedthickly with soft spruce resin. This last experience correspondsclosely with one of my own. I shot a big bear, years ago, in northernNew Brunswick, that had received a gunshot wound, which had raked himbadly and then penetrated the leg. He had plugged the wound carefullywith clay,[231] evidently to stop the bleeding, and then had covered thebroken skin with sticky mud from the river's brink, to keep the fliesaway from the wound and give it a chance to heal undisturbed. It isnoteworthy here that the bear uses either gum or clay indifferently,while the beaver and muskrat seem to know enough to avoid the clay,which would be quickly washed off in the water.

Here are a few incidents, out of a score or more that I have seen, orheard from reliable hunters, that indicate something more than nativeinstinct among animals. When I turn to the birds the incidents arefewer but more remarkable; for the birds, being lower in the scale oflife, are more subject to instinct than are the animals, and so areless easily taught by their mothers, and are slower to change theirnatural habits to meet changing conditions.

This is, of course, a very general statement and is subject to endlessexceptions. The finches that, when transported to Australia fromEngland, changed the style of their nests radically and now build ina[232] fashion entirely different from that of their parents; the littlegoldfinch of New England that will build a false bottom to her nest tocover up the egg of a cow-bird that has been left to hatch among herown; the grouse that near the dwellings of men are so much wilder andkeener than their brethren of the wilderness; the swallows that adoptthe chimneys and barns of civilization instead of the hollow trees andclay banks of their native woods,—all these and a score of othersshow how readily instinct is modified among the birds, and how theyoung are taught a wisdom that their forefathers never knew.Nevertheless it is true, I think, that instincts are generally sharperwith them than with animals, and the following cases suggest all themore strongly that we must look beyond instinct to training andindividual discovery to account for many things among the featheredfolk.

The most wonderful bit of bird surgery that has ever come to myattention is that of the woodcock that set his broken leg in a claycast, as related in a previous chapter;[233] but there is one other almostas remarkable that opens up a question that is even harder to answer.One day in the early spring I saw two eider-ducks swimming about theHummock Pond on the island of Nantucket. The keen-eyed critic willinterfere here and say I was mistaken; for eiders are salt-water ducksthat haunt only the open sea and are supposed never to enter freshwater, not even to breed. That is what I also supposed until I sawthese two; so I sat down to watch a while and find out, if possible,what had caused them to change their habits. At this time of year thebirds are almost invariably found in pairs, and sometimes a flock ahundred yards long will pass you, flying close to the water andsweeping around the point where you are watching, first a pretty brownfemale and then a gorgeous black-and-white drake just behind her,alternating with perfect regularity, female and male, throughout thewhole length of the long line. The two birds before me, however, wereboth females; and that was another reason[234] for watching them insteadof the hundreds of other ducks, coots and sheldrakes and broadbillsthat were scattered all over the big pond.

A few weeks later there was another eider, a big drake, in the samepond, behaving in the same queer way. Thinking perhaps that this was awounded bird that had gone crazy from a shot in the head, I pushed outafter him in an old tub of a boat; but he took wing at my approach,like any other duck, and after a vigorous flight lit farther down thepond and plunged his head under water[235] again. Thoroughly curious now,I went on a still hunt after the stranger, and after much difficultysucceeded in shooting him from the end of a bushy point. The onlyunusual thing about him was that a large mussel, such as grow on therocks in salt water, had closed his shells firmly on the bird's tonguein such a way that he could neither be crushed by the bird's bill norscratched off by the bird's foot. I pulled the mussel off, put it inmy pocket, and went home more mystified than before.

That night I hunted up an old fisherman, who had a big store ofinformation in his head about all kinds of wild things, and asked himif he had ever seen a shoal-duck in fresh water. "Once or twice," hesaid; "they kept dipping their heads under water, kinder crazy like."But he had no explanation to offer until I showed him the mussel thatI had found on the duck's tongue. Then his face lightened. "Mussels ofthat kind won't live in fresh water," he declared at a glance; andthen the explanation of the birds' queer actions flashed into both ourheads[236] at once: the eiders were simply drowning the mussels in orderto make them loosen their grip and release the captive tongues.

This is undoubtedly the true explanation, as I made sure by testingthe mussels in fresh water and by watching the birds more closely attheir feeding. All winter they may be found along our coasts, wherethey feed on the small shellfish that cover the ledges. As the tidegoes down they swim in from the shoals, where they rest in scatteredflocks, and chip the mussels from the ledges, swallowing them shellsand all. A score of times I have hidden among the rocks of the jettywith a few wooden decoys in front of me, and watched the eiders comein to feed. They would approach the decoys rapidly, lifting theirwings repeatedly as a kind of salutation; then, angered apparentlythat they were not welcomed by the same signal of uplifted wings, theywould swim up to the wooden frauds and peck them savagely here andthere, and then leave them in disgust and scatter among the rocks atmy feet, paying[237] little attention to me as long as I kept perfectlystill. For they are much tamer than other wild ducks, and are,unfortunately, slow to believe that man is their enemy.

I noticed another curious thing while watching them and hoping that bysome chance I might see one caught by a mussel. When a flock waspassing high overhead, any sudden noise—a shout, or the near reportof a gun—would make the whole flock swoop down like a flash close tothe water. Plover have the same habit when they first arrive fromLabrador, but I have hunted in vain for any satisfactory explanationof the thing.

THE man who hunts with gun or camera has his reward. He has also hislabors, vexations, and failures; and these are the price he pays forhis success. The man who hunts without either gun or camera has, itseems to me, a much greater reward, and has it without price. Of himmore than any other Nimrod may be said what a returned missionary fromAfrica said of his first congregation, "They are a contented folk,clothed[242] with the sunlight and fed by gravitation." Hunting without agun is, therefore, the sport of a peaceful man, a man who goes to thewoods for rest and for letting his soul grow, and who after a year ofworry and work is glad to get along without either for a littleseason. As he glides over the waterways in his canoe, or loafsleisurely along the trail, he carries no weight of gun or tripod orextra plates. Glad to be alive himself, he has no pleasure in thedeath of the wild things. Content just to see and hear and understand,he has no fret or sweat to get the sun just right and calculate hisexact thirty-foot distance and then to fume and swear, as I have heardgood men do, because the game fidgets, or the clouds obscure the sun,or the plates are not quick enough, or—beginning of sorrows!—becausehe finds after the game has fled that the film he has just used on abull moose had all its good qualities already preëmpted by a landscapeand a passing canoe.

I have no desire to decry any kind of legitimate hunting, for I havetried them all and[245]the rewards are good. I simply like huntingwithout a gun or camera better than all other forms of hunting forthree good reasons: first, because it is lazy and satisfying, perfectfor summer weather; second, because it has no troubles, no vexations,no disappointments, and so is good for a man who has wrestled longenough with these things; and third, because it lets you into the lifeand individuality of the wild animals as no other hunting can possiblydo, since you approach them with a mind at ease and, having noexcitement about you, they dare to show themselves natural andunconcerned, or even a bit curious about you to know who you are andwhat you are doing. It has its thrills and excitements too, as much oras little as you like. To creep up through the brûlée to where thebear and her cubs are gathering blueberries in their greedy, funnyway; to paddle silently upon a big moose while his head is under waterand only his broad antlers show; to lie at ease beside the trailflecked with sunlight and shadow and have the squirrels scamper acrossyour legs, or the[246] wild bird perch inquisitively upon your toe,or—rarest sight in the woods in the early morning—to have a fishertwist by you in intense, weasel-like excitement, puzzling out thetrail of the hare or grouse that passed you an hour ago; to stealalong the waterways alone on a still dark night and open your jacksilently upon ducks or moose or mother deer and her fawns,—there isjoy and tingle enough in all these things to satisfy any lover of thewoods. There is also wisdom to be found, especially when you rememberthat these are individual animals that no human eyes have ever beforelooked upon, that they are different every one, and that at any momentthey may reveal some queer trick or trait of animal life that nonaturalist has ever before seen.

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Last summer, just below my camp on Matagammon, was a little beachbetween two points surrounded by dense woods that the deer seemed tolove better than any other spot on the whole lake. When we firstarrived the deer were close about our camp. From the door we couldsometimes see them on the lake shore, and every evening at twilightthey would steal up shyly to eat the potato and apple parings.Gradually the noises of camp drove them far back on the ridges, thoughon stormy nights they would come back when the camp was still and alllights out. From my tent I would hear cautious rustlings or the crackof a twig above the drip and pour of raindrops on my tent-fly, andstealing out in the darkness would find two or three deer, generally adoe and her fawns, standing under the split roof of our woodshed toescape the pelting rain.

The little beach was farther away, across an arm of the lake and outof sight and sound of our camp, so the deer never deserted it, thoughwe watched them there every day. Just why they liked it I could neverdiscover.[248] A score of beaches on the lake were larger and smoother,and a dozen at least offered better feeding; but the deer came here ingreater numbers than anywhere else. Near-by was a great wild meadow,with dense hiding-places on the slopes beyond, where deer werenumerous. Before the evening feeding began in the wild meadow theywould come out to this little beach and play for an hour or so; and Ihave no doubt the place was a regular playground, such as rabbits andfoxes and crows, and indeed most wild animals, choose for their hoursof fun.

Once, at early twilight, I lay in hiding among some old roots at theend of this little beach, watching a curious game. Eight or ten deer,does and fawns and young spike bucks, had come out into the open andwere now running rapidly in three circles arranged in a line, so,.In the middle was a big circle some fifteen feet in diameter, and atopposite sides were two smaller circles less than half the diameter ofthe first, as I found afterwards by measuring from the tracks. Aroundone of these small circles the deer[249] ran from right to leftinvariably; around the other they ran from left to right; and aroundthe big middle circle they ran either way, though when two or threewere running this circle together, while the others bounded about theends, they all ran the same way. As they played, all the rings were inuse at once, the two small end rings being much more used than the bigone. The individual deer passed rapidly from one ring to the others,but—and here is the queerest part of it all—I did not see a singledeer, not even one of the fawns, cut across the big circle from oneend ring to the other. After they were gone the rings showed clearlyin the sand, but not a single track led across any of the circles.

The object of the play was simple enough. Aside from the fun, theyoung deer were[250] being taught to twist and double quickly; but whatthe rules of the game were, and whether they ran in opposite circlesto avoid getting dizzy, was more than I could discover, though thedeer were never more than thirty yards away from me and I could watchevery move clearly without my field-glasses. That the game and somedefinite way of playing it were well understood by the deer no onecould doubt who watched this wonderful play for five minutes. Thoughthey ran swiftly, with astonishing lightness and grace, there was noconfusion. Every now and then one of the does would leap forward andhead off one of her fawns as he headed into the big ring, when like aflash he would whirl in his tracks and away with abl-r-r-t! oftriumph or dissatisfaction. Once a spike buck, and again a doe withtwo well-grown fawns, trotted out of the woods and, after watching thedizzy play for a moment, leaped into it as if they understoodperfectly what was expected. They played this game only for a fewminutes at a time; then they would scatter and move up[251] and down theshore leisurely and nose the water. Soon one or two would come back,and in a moment the game would be in full swing again, the othersjoining it swiftly as the little creatures whirled about the rings,exercising every muscle and learning how to control their gracefulbodies perfectly, though they had no idea that older heads had plannedthe game for them with a purpose.

Watching them thus at their play, the meaning of a curious bit of deeranatomy became clear. A deer's shoulder is not attached to theskeleton at all; it lies loosely inside the skin, with only a bit ofdelicate elastic tissue joining it to the muscles of the body. When adeer was headed suddenly and braced himself in his tracks, the bodywould lunge forward till the fore legs seemed hung almost in themiddle of his belly. Again, when he kicked up his heels, they wouldseem to be supporting his neck, far forward of where they properlybelonged. This free action of the shoulder is what gives the wonderfulflexibility and grace to a deer's movements, just as it takes andsoftens all[252] the shock of falling in his high-jumping run among therocks and over the endless windfalls of the wilderness.

In the midst of the play, and after I had watched it for a fullhalf-hour, there was a swift rustle in the woods on my right, and Icaught my breath sharply at sight of a magnificent buck standing halfhid in the underbrush. There were two or three big bucks with splendidantlers that lived lazily on the slopes above this part of the lake,and that I had been watching and following for several weeks. Unlikethe does and fawns and young bucks, they were wild as hawks andselfish as cats. They rarely showed themselves in the open, and ifsurprised there with other deer they bounded away at the first sightor sniff of danger. Does and little fawns, when they saw you, wouldinstantly stamp and whistle to warn the other deer before they hadtaken the first step to save themselves or investigate the danger; butthe big bucks would bound or glide away, according to the method ofyour approach, and in saving their own skins, as they thought, wouldhave[253] absolutely no concern for the safety of the herd feeding nearby.—And that is one reason why, in a natural state, deer rarely allowthe bucks and bulls to lead them.

The summer laziness was still upon these big bucks; the wild fallrunning had not seized them. Once I saw a curious and canny bit oftheir laziness. I had gone off with a guide to try the trout at adistant lake. While I watched a porcupine and tried to win hisconfidence with sweet chocolate—a bad shot, by the way—the guidewent on far ahead. As he climbed a ridge, busy with thoughts of thedim blazed trail he was following, I noticed a faint stir in somebushes on one side, and through my glass I made out the head of a bigbuck that was watching the guide keenly from his hiding. It was in thelate forenoon, when deer are mostly resting, and the lazy buck wasdebating, probably, whether it were necessary for him to run or not.The guide passed[254] rapidly; then to my astonishment the headdisappeared as the buck lay down where he was.

Keeping my eyes on the spot, I followed on the guide's trail. Therewas no sign of life in the thicket as I passed, though beyond a doubtthe wary old buck was watching my every motion keenly. When I had gonewell past and still the thicket remained all quiet, I turned graduallyand walked towards it. There was a slight rustle as the buck rose tohis feet again. He had evidently planned for me to follow the steps ofthe other man, and had not thought it worth while to stand up. Anotherslow step or two on my part, then another rustle and a faint motion ofunderbrush—so faint that, had there been a wind blowing, my eye wouldscarcely have noticed it—told me where the buck had glided awaysilently to another covert, where he turned and stood to find outwhether I had discovered him, or whether my change of direction hadany other motive than the natural wandering of a man lost in thewoods.

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That was far back on the ridges, where most of the big bucks loaf andhide, each one by himself, during the summer. Down at the lake,however, there were two or three that for some reason occasionallyshowed themselves with the other deer, but were so shy and wild thathunting them without a gun was almost impossible. It was one of thesebig fellows that now stood half hid in the underbrush within twentyyards of me, watching the deer's game impatiently.

A stamp of his foot and a low snort stopped the play instantly, andthe big buck moved out on the shore in full view. He looked out overthe lake, where he had so often seen the canoes of men moving; hisnose tried the wind up shore; eyes and ears searched below, where Iwas lying; then he scanned the lake again keenly. Perhaps he had seenmy canoe upturned among the water-grasses far away; more probably itwas the unknown sense orfeel of an enemy, which they who hunt withor without a gun find so often[256] among the larger wild animals, thatmade him restless and suspicious. While he watched and searched thelake and the shores not a deer stirred from his tracks. Some commandwas in the air which I myself seemed to feel in my hiding. Suddenlythe big buck turned and glided away into the woods, and every deer onthe shore followed instantly without question or hesitation. Even thelittle fawns, never so heedless as to miss a signal, felt something inthe buck's attitude deeper than their play, something perhaps in theair that was not noticed before, and trotted after their mothers,fading away at last like shadows into the darkening woods.

On another lake, years before, when hunting in the same way without agun, I saw another curious bit of deer wisdom. It must be rememberedthat deer are born apparently without any fear of man. The fawns whenfound very young in the woods are generally full of playfulness andcuriosity; and a fawn that has lost its mother will turn to a manquicker than to any other animal. When deer see you for the firsttime, no matter how[257] old or young they are, they approach cautiously,if you do not terrify them by sudden motions, and in twenty prettyways try to find out what you are. Like most wild animals that have akeen sense of smell, and especially like the bear and caribou, theytrust only their noses at first. When they scent man for the firsttime they generally run away, not because they know what it means butfor precisely the opposite reason, namely, because there is in the aira strong scent that they do not know, and that they have not beentaught by their mothers how to meet. When in doubt run away—that isthe rule of nose which seems to be impressed by their mothers upon alltimid wild things, though they act in almost the opposite way whensight or hearing is in question.

All this is well known to hunters; but now comes the curiousexception. After I had been watching the deer for some weeks at one oftheir playgrounds, a guide came into camp with his wife and littlechild. They were on their way in to their own camp for the huntingseason. To please[258] the little one, who was fond of all animals, I tookher with me to show her the deer playing. As they were running abouton the shore I sent her out of our hiding, in a sudden spirit ofcuriosity, to see what the deer and fawns would do. True to herinstructions, the little one walked out very slowly into the midst ofthem. They started at first; two of the old deer circled downinstantly to wind her; but even after getting her scent, thesuspicious man-scent that most of them had been taught to fear, theyapproached fearlessly, their ears set forward, and their expressivetails down without any of the nervous wiggling that is so manifestwhenever their owners catch the first suspicious smell in the air. Thechild, meanwhile, sat on the shore, watching the pretty creatures withwide-eyed curiosity, but obeying my first whispered instructions likea little hero and keeping still as a hunted rabbit. Two little spottedfawns were already circling about her playfully, but the third wentstraight up to her, stretching his nose and ears forward to show hisfriendliness, and then drawing back to[259] stamp his little fore footprettily to make the silent child move or speak, and perhaps also toshow her in deer fashion that, though friendly, he was not at allafraid.

There was one buck in the group, a three-year-old with promisingantlers. At first he was the only deer that showed any fear of thelittle visitor; and his fear seemed to me to be largely a matter ofsuspicion, or of irritation that anything should take away the herd'sattention from himself. The fall wildness was coming upon him, and heshowed it by restless fidgeting, by frequent proddings of the doeswith his antlers, and by driving them about roughly and unreasonably.Now he approached the child with a shake of his antlers, not tothreaten her, it seemed to me, but rather to show the other deer thathe was still master, the Great Mogul who must be consulted upon alloccasions. For the first time the little girl started nervously atthreatening motion, I called softly to her to[260] keep still and not beafraid, at the same time rising up quietly from my hiding-place.Instantly the little comedy changed as the deer whirled in mydirection. They had seen men before and knew what it meant. The whiteflags flew up over the startled backs, and the air fairly bristledwith whistlingh-e-e-e-yeu,he-u's as deer and fawns rose over thenearest windfalls like a flock of frightened partridges and plungedaway into the shelter of the friendly woods.

There are those who claim that the life of an animal is a mere matterof blind instinct and habit. Here on the shore before my eyes was ascene that requires a somewhat different explanation.

Though deer are the most numerous and the most interesting animals tobe hunted without a gun, they are by no means the only game to fillthe hunter's heart full and make him glad that his game bag is empty.Moose are to be found on the same waters, and in the summer season, ifapproached very[261] slowly and quietly, especially in a canoe, they showlittle fear of man. Last summer, as I stole down the thoroughfare intoMatagammon, a cow moose and her calf loomed up before me in the narrowstream. I watched her awhile silently, noting her curious way offeeding,—now pulling up a bite of lush water-grass, now stretchingher neck and her great muffle to sweep off a mouthful of water-mapleleaves, first one then the other, like a boy with two apples; whilethe calf nosed along the shore and paid no attention to the canoe,which he saw perfectly but which his mother did not see. Afterwatching them a few minutes I edged across to the opposite bank anddrifted down to see if it were possible to pass without disturbingthem. The calf was busy with something on the bank, the mother deep inthe water-grass as I drifted by, sitting low in the canoe. She saw mewhen abreast of her, and after watching me a moment in astonishmentturned again to her feeding. Then I turned the canoe slowly and lay toleeward of them, within ten yards, watching every significant motion.The calf[262] was nearer to me now, and the mother by a silent commandbrought him back and put him on the side away from me; but the littlefellow's curiosity was aroused by the prohibition, and he kept peekingunder his mother's belly, or twisting his head around over her hocks,to see who I was and what I was doing. But there was no fear manifest,and I backed away slowly at last and left them feeding just where Ihad found them.

In curious contrast was the next meeting. It was on the little beaverstream below Hay Lake, a spot as wild as any dream of Doré, and afamous feeding-ground for moose and deer. I was fishing for trout whena mother moose came up-stream among the bilberry and alder bushes. Ihad stopped casting and sat low in my canoe, and she did not see meuntil abreast of me, within twenty feet. Then she swung her huge headcarelessly in my direction, and went on as if I were of no moreaccount than one of the beaver houses on the shore. Ten steps behindher came a calf. The leaves had scarcely closed on her flanks when heput his head out of the bushes[263] and came plump upon me. With a squealand a jump like a startled deer he plunged away through the bushes,and I heard the mother swing round in a crashing circle to find himand to know what had frightened him. Ten minutes later, as I sat verystill in the same spot, a huge head was thrust out of the bushes wherethe calf had disappeared. Below it, pressing close against hismother's side, was the head of the little one, looking out again atthe thing that had frightened him. He had brought her back to see, andwas now plainly askingWhat is it, mother? what is it? though therewas never a sound uttered. And there they stayed for a full minute,while none of us moved a muscle, before they drew back silently anddisappeared, leaving only a double line of waving, quivering bushtops, like the trail of a[264] huge snake, to tell me where they had gone.On the same stream I got the famous bull of the expedition. I waspaddling along silently when I turned a bend, and a huge dark bulkloomed suddenly out of the water dead ahead of the canoe. In front ofthe dark bulk two great antlers, the biggest I ever saw in Maine,reached up and out. The rest of his head was under water groping forlily roots, and my first exultant thought was that one might drive thecanoe between the tips of those great antlers without touching them,so big and wide were they. Instead I sent the canoe swiftly forwardtill his head began to come up, when I crouched low and watched him,so near that every changing expression of his huge face and keenlittle eyes was seen perfectly without my glasses. He saw me instantlyand dropped the root he had pulled up, and his lower jaw remainedhanging in his intense wonder. Not so much who I was, but how on earthI got there so silently seemed to be the cause of his wonder. He tooka slow step or two in my direction, his ears set[267]forward stifflyand his eyes shining as he watched me keenly for the slightest motion.Then he waded out leisurely, climbed the bank, which was here steep,and disappeared in the woods. As he vanished I followed him, closebehind, and watched his way of carrying his huge antlers and liftinghis legs with a high step, like a Shanghai rooster, over thewindfalls. Of all the moose that I have ever followed, this was theonly one whose head seemed too heavy for comfort. He carried it low,and nursed his wide antlers tenderly among the tree trunks and alderstems. They were still in the velvet, and no doubt the rude scrapingof the rough branches made him wince unless he went softly. At last,finding that I was close at his heels, he turned for another look atme; but I slipped behind a friendly tree until I heard him move on,when I followed him again. Some suspicion of the thing that was on histrail, or it may be some faint eddy of air with the danger smell init, reached him then; he laid his great antlers back on his shoulders,moose fashion, and lunged away at a terrific pace[268] through the woods.I could fancy his teeth gritting and his eyes at squint as somesnapping branch whacked his sensitive antlers and made him grunt withthe pain of it. But the fear behind was all-compelling, and in amoment I had lost him in the shadow and silence of the big woods.

It was that same night, I think,—for my notes make no change of timeor place,—that I had another bit of this hunting which fills one'ssoul with peace and gives him a curious sense of understanding thethoughts and motives of the Wood Folk. I was gliding along in my canoein the late twilight over still water, in the shadow of the wild highmeadow-grass, when a low quacking and talking of wild ducks came to myears. I pushed the canoe silently into the first open bogan in thedirection of the sounds till I was so near that I dared not go anotherfoot, when I rose up cautiously and peered over the grass tops. Therewere perhaps thirty or forty of the splendid birds—four or fivebroods at least, and each brood led by its careful mother—that hadgathered[269] here for the first time from the surrounding ponds wherethey had been hatched. For two or three days past I had noticed theyoung broods flying about, exercising their wings in preparation forthe long autumn flights. Now they were all gathered on a dry mud-flatsurrounded by tall grass, playing together and evidently gettingacquainted. In the middle of the flat were two or three tussocks onwhich the grass had been trampled and torn down. There was always aduck on each of these tussocks, and below him were four or five morethat were plainly trying to get up; but the top was small and had roomfor but one, and there was a deal of quacking and good-naturedscrambling for the place of vantage. It was a game, plainly enough,for while the birds below were trying to get up the little fellow ontop was doing his best to keep them down. Other birds scampered inpairs from one side of the flat to the other; and there was onecurious procession,[270] or race,—five or six birds that started abreastand very slowly, and ended with a rush and a headlong dive into thegrasses of the opposite shore. Here and there about the edges of theplayground an old mother bird sat on a tussock and looked down on thewild unconscious play, wiggling her tail in satisfaction and anonstretching her neck to look and listen watchfully. The voices of theplaying birds were curiously low and subdued, reminding me strongly ofsome Indian children that I had once seen playing. At times thequacking had a faint ventriloquous effect, seeming to come from faraway, and again it ceased absolutely at a sign from some watchfulmother, though the play went steadily on, as if even in their playthey must be mindful of the enemies that were watching and listeningeverywhere to catch them.

Formerly caribou might be found on these same waterways, and they arethe most curious and interesting game that can be hunted without agun; but years ago a grub destroyed all the larches on which thewandering woodland caribou depend largely for food. The deer, whichare already as many as the country can support in winter, take care ofthe rest of the good browse, so that there was nothing left for thecaribou but to cross over the line into New Brunswick, where larchesare plenty and where there is an abundance of the barren moss that canbe dug up out of the snow. Better still, if one is after caribou, isthe great wilderness of northern Newfoundland, where the caribou spendthe summer and where from a mountain top one may count[273] hundreds ofthe splendid animals scattered over the country below in everydirection. And hunting them so, with the object of finding out thesecrets of their curious lives,—why, for instance, each herd oftenchooses its own burying-ground, or why a bull caribou loves to pound ahollow stump for hours at a time,—this is, to my mind, infinitelybetter sport than the hunt for a head where one waylays them on theirpaths of migration, the paths that have been sacred for untoldgenerations, and shoots them down as they pass like tame cattle.

To the hunter without a gun there is no close season on any game, anda doe and her fawns are better hunting than a ten-point buck. By landor water he is always ready; there are no labors for effects, exceptwhat he chooses to impose upon himself; no disappointments arepossible, for whether his game be still or on the jump, shy as awilderness raven or full of curiosity as a blue jay, he always findssomething to stow away in his heart in the place where he keeps thingsthat he loves to remember. All is fish that[274] comes into his net, andeverything is game that catches the glance of his eye in earth or airor water. Now it is the water-spiders—skaters the boys callthem—that play a curious game among the grass stems, and that havemore wonderful habits than the common balloon spiders which sometimesturned Jonathan Edwards' thoughts from the stern, unlovable God of histheology to the patient, care-taking Servant of the universe that somecall Force, and others Law, and that one who knew Him called TheFather, alike among the lilies of the field and in the cities of men.Now it is an otter and her cubs playing on the surface, that sink whenthey see you and suddenly come up near your canoe, like a log shot upon end, and with half their bodies out of water to see better sayw-h-e-e-e-yew! like a baby seal to express their wonder at such aqueer thing in the water. Now it is a mother loon taking her young onher back as they leave the eggs, and carrying them around the lakeawhile to dry them thoroughly in the sun before she dives from underthem and wets them for[275] the first time; and you must follow a longwhile before you find out why. Now it is a bear and her cubs—Iwatched three of them for an hour or more, one afternoon, as theygathered blueberries. At first they champed them from the bushes,stems, leaves and all, just as they grew. Again, when they found agood bush, a little one with lots of berries, they would bite it offclose to the ground, or tear it up by the roots, and then taking it bythe stem with both paws would pull it through their mouths from oneside to the other, stripping off every berry and throwing the uselessbush away. Again they would strike the bushes with their paws,knocking off a shower of the ripest berries, and then scrape them alltogether very carefully into a pile and gobble them down at a singlemouthful. And whenever, in wandering about after a good bush, one ofthe cubs spied the other busy at an unusually good find, it gave one acurious remembrance of his own boyhood to see the little fellow rushup whimpering to get his share before all the bushes should bestripped clean.

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That was good hunting. It made one glad to let even this rare prowlerof the woods go in peace. And that suggests the very best thing thatcan be said for the hunter without a gun:—"The wilderness and thesolitary place shall be glad for him," for something of the gentlespirit of Saint Francis comes with him, and when he goes he leaves nopain nor death nor fear of man behind him.

Cheokhes,chē-ok-hĕs', the mink.

Cheplahgan,chep-lâh'gan, the bald eagle.

Ch'geegee-lokh-sis,ch'gee-gee'lock-sis, the chickadee.

Chigwooltz,chig-wooltz', the bullfrog.

Clóte Scarpe, a legendary hero, like Hiawatha, of the NorthernIndians. Pronounced variously, Clote Scarpe, Groscap, Gluscap, etc.

Commoosie,com-moo-sie', a little shelter, or hut, of boughs andbark.

Deedeeaskh,dee-dee'ask, the blue jay.

Eleemos,el-ee'mos, the fox.

Hawahak,hâ-wâ-hăk', the hawk.

Hukweem,huk-weem', the great northern diver, or loon.

Ismaques,iss-mâ-ques', the fish-hawk.

Kagax,kăg'ăx, the weasel.

Kakagos,kâ-kâ-gŏs', the raven.

K'dunk,k'dunk', the toad.

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Keeokuskh,kee-o-kusk', the muskrat.

Keeonekh,kee'o-nek, the otter.

Killooleet,kil'loo-leet, the white-throated sparrow.

Kookooskoos,koo-koo-skoos', the great horned owl.

Koskomenos,kŏs'kŏm-e-nŏs', the kingfisher.

Kupkawis,cup-kå'wis, the barred owl.

Kwaseekho,kwâ-seek'ho, the sheldrake.

Lhoks,locks, the panther.

Malsun,măl'sun, the wolf.

Meeko,meek'ō, the red squirrel.

Megaleep,meg'â-leep, the caribou.

Milicete,mil'ĭ-cete, the name of an Indian tribe; written alsoMalicete.

Mitches,mit'chĕs, the birch partridge, or ruffed grouse.

Moktaques,mok-tâ'ques, the hare.

Mooween,moo-ween', the black bear.

Mooweesuk,moo-wee'suk, the coon.

Musquash,mus'quâsh, the muskrat.

Nemox,nĕm'ox, the fisher.

Pekompf,pē-kompf', the wildcat.

Pekquam,pek-wăm', the fisher.

Quoskh,quoskh, the blue heron.

Seksagadagee,sek'sâ-gā-dâ'gee, the Canada grouse, or sprucepartridge.

Skooktum,skook'tum, the trout.

Tookhees,tôk'hees, the woodmouse.

Umquenawis,um-que-nâ'wis, the moose.

Unk Wunk,unk' wunk, the porcupine.

Upweekis,up-week'iss, the Canada lynx.

Whitooweek,whit-oo-week', the woodcock.