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Title: Wild Animals I Have Known

Author: Ernest Thompson Seton

Release date: January 1, 2002 [eBook #3031]
                Most recently updated: March 3, 2017

Language: English

Credits: Produced by David Reed, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILD ANIMALS I HAVE KNOWN ***




Produced by David Reed





WILD ANIMALS I HAVE KNOWN

By Ernest Thompson Seton


Books by Ernest Thompson Seton

     Biography of a Grizzly
     Lives of the Hunted
     Wild Animals at Home
     Wild Animal Ways


Stories in This Book

     Lobo, the King of Currumpaw
     Silverspot, the Story of a Crow
     Raggylug, the Story of a Cottontail Rabbit
     Bingo, the Story of My Dog
     The Springfield Fox
     The Pacing Mustang
     Wully, the Story of a Yaller Dog
     Redruff, the Story of the Don Valley Partridge



THESE STORIES are true. Although I have left the strict line of
historical truth in many places, the animals in this book were all real
characters. They lived the lives I have depicted, and showed the stamp
of heroism and personality more strongly by far than it has been in the
power of my pen to tell.

I believe that natural history has lost much by the vague general
treatment that is so common. What satisfaction would be derived from
a ten-page sketch of the habits and customs of Man? How much more
profitable it would be to devote that space to the life of some one
great man. This is the principle I have endeavored to apply to my
animals. The real personality of the individual, and his view of life
are my theme, rather than the ways of the race in general, as viewed by
a casual and hostile human eye.

This may sound inconsistent in view of my having pieced together some of
the characters, but that was made necessary by the fragmentary nature
of the records. There is, however, almost no deviation from the truth in
Lobo, Bingo, and the Mustang.

Lobo lived his wild romantic life from 1889 to 1894 in the Currumpaw
region, as the ranchmen know too well, and died, precisely as related,
on January 31, 1894.

Bingo was my dog from 1882 to 1888, in spite of interruptions, caused by
lengthy visits to New York, as my Manitoban friends will remember. And
my old friend, the owner of Tan, will learn from these pages how his dog
really died.

The Mustang lived not far from Lobo in the early nineties. The story is
given strictly as it occurred, excepting that there is a dispute as to
the manner of his death. According to some testimony he broke his neck
in the corral that he was first taken to. Old Turkeytrack is where he
cannot be consulted to settle it.

Wully is, in a sense, a compound of two dogs; both were mongrels, of
some collie blood, and were raised as sheep-dogs. The first part of
Wully is given as it happened, after that it was known only that he
became a savage, treacherous sheep-killer. The details of the second
part belong really to another, a similar yaller dog, who long lived
the double-life---a faithful sheep-dog by day, and a bloodthirsty,
treacherous monster by night. Such things are less rare than is
supposed, and since writing these stories I have heard of another
double-lived sheep-dog that added to its night amusements the crowning
barbarity of murdering the smaller dogs of the neighborhood. He had
killed twenty, and hidden them in a sandpit, when discovered by his
master. He died just as Wully did.

All told, I now have information of six of these Jekyll-Hyde dogs. In
each case it happened to be a collie.

Redruff really lived in the Don Valley north of Toronto, and many of my
companions will remember him. He was killed in 1889, between the Sugar
Loaf and Castle Frank, by a creature whose name I have withheld, as it
is the species, rather than the individual, that I wish to expose.

Silverspot, Raggylug, and Vixen are founded on real characters. Though
I have ascribed to them the adventures of more than one of their kind,
every incident in their biographies is from life.

The fact that these stories are true is the reason why all are tragic.
The life of a wild animal always has a tragic end.

Such a collection of histories naturally suggests a common thought--a
moral it would have been called in the last century. No doubt each
different mind will find a moral to its taste, but I hope some will
herein find emphasized a moral as old as Scripture--we and the beasts
are kin. Man has nothing that the animals have not at least a vestige
of, the animals have nothing that man does not in some degree share.

Since, then, the animals are creatures with wants and feelings differing
in degree only from our own, they surely have their rights. This
fact, now beginning to be recognized by the Caucasian world, was first
proclaimed by Moses and was emphasized by the Buddhist over 2,000 years
ago.

ERNEST THOMPSON SETON




LOBO, The King of Currumpaw


I

CURRUMPAW is a vast cattle range in northern New Mexico. It is a land of
rich pastures and teeming flocks and herds, a land of rolling mesas and
precious running waters that at length unite in the Currumpaw River,
from which the whole region is named. And the king whose despotic power
was felt over its entire extent was an old gray wolf.

Old Lobo, or the king, as the Mexicans called him, was the gigantic
leader of a remarkable pack of gray wolves, that had ravaged the
Currumpaw Valley for a number of years. All the shepherds and ranchmen
knew him well, and, wherever he appeared with his trusty band, terror
reigned supreme among the cattle, and wrath and despair among their
owners. Old Lobo was a giant among wolves, and was cunning and strong
in proportion to his size. His voice at night was well-known and easily
distinguished from that of any of his fellows. An ordinary wolf might
howl half the night about the herdsman's bivouac without attracting
more than a passing notice, but when the deep roar of the old king came
booming down the canon, the watcher bestirred himself and prepared to
learn in the morning that fresh and serious inroads had been made among
the herds.

Old Lobo's band was but a small one. This I never quite understood, for
usually, when a wolf rises to the position and power that he had, he
attracts a numerous following. It may be that he had as many as he
desired, or perhaps his ferocious temper prevented the increase of his
pack. Certain is it that Lobo had only five followers during the latter
part of his reign. Each of these, however, was a wolf of renown, most
of them were above the ordinary size, one in particular, the second in
command, was a veritable giant, but even he was far below the leader
in size and prowess. Several of the band, besides the two leaders, were
especially noted. One of those was a beautiful white wolf, that the
Mexicans called Blanca; this was supposed to be a female, possibly
Lobo's mate. Another was a yellow wolf of remarkable swiftness, which,
according to current stories had, on several occasions, captured an
antelope for the pack.

It will be seen, then, that these wolves were thoroughly well-known to
the cowboys and shepherds. They were frequently seen and oftener heard,
and their lives were intimately associated with those of the cattlemen,
who would so gladly have destroyed them. There was not a stockman on the
Currumpaw who would not readily have given the value of many steers for
the scalp of any one of Lobo's band, but they seemed to possess charmed
lives, and defied all manner of devices to kill them. They scorned all
hunters, derided all poisons, and continued, for at least five years,
to exact their tribute from the Currumpaw ranchers to the extent, many
said, of a cow each day. According to this estimate, therefore, the band
had killed more than two thousand of the finest stock, for, as was only
too well-known, they selected the best in every instance.

The old idea that a wolf was constantly in a starving state, and
therefore ready to eat anything, was as far as possible from the
truth in this case, for these freebooters were always sleek and
well-conditioned, and were in fact most fastidious about what they ate.
Any animal that had died from natural causes, or that was diseased or
tainted, they would not touch, and they even rejected anything that
had been killed by the stockmen. Their choice and daily food was the
tenderer part of a freshly killed yearling heifer. An old bull or cow
they disdained, and though they occasionally took a young calf or colt,
it was quite clear that veal or horseflesh was not their favorite diet.
It was also known that they were not fond of mutton, although they often
amused themselves by killing sheep. One night in November, 1893, Blanca
and the yellow wolf killed two hundred and fifty sheep, apparently for
the fun of it, and did not eat an ounce of their flesh.

These are examples of many stories which I might repeat, to show the
ravages of this destructive band. Many new devices for their extinction
were tried each year, but still they lived and throve in spite of all
the efforts of their foes. A great price was set on Lobo's head, and in
consequence poison in a score of subtle forms was put out for him, but
he never failed to detect and avoid it. One thing only he feared--that
was firearms, and knowing full well that all men in this region carried
them, he never was known to attack or face a human being. Indeed, the
set policy of his band was to take refuge in flight whenever, in the
daytime, a man was descried, no matter at what distance. Lobo's habit of
permitting the pack to eat only that which they themselves had killed,
was in numerous cases their salvation, and the keenness of his scent to
detect the taint of human hands or the poison itself, completed their
immunity.

On one occasion, one of the cowboys heard the too familiar rallying-cry
of Old Lobo, and, stealthily approaching, he found the Currumpaw pack in
a hollow, where they had 'rounded' up a small herd of cattle. Lobo sat
apart on a knoll, while Blanca with the rest was endeavoring to 'cut
out' a young cow, which they had selected; but the cattle were standing
in a compact mass with their heads outward, and presented to the foe a
line of horns, unbroken save when some cow, frightened by a fresh onset
of the wolves, tried to retreat into the middle of the herd. It was only
by taking advantage of these breaks that the wolves had succeeded at all
in wounding the selected cow, but she was far from being disabled, and
it seemed that Lobo at length lost patience with his followers, for he
left his position on the hill, and, uttering a deep roar, dashed toward
the herd. The terrified rank broke at his charge, and he sprang in among
them. Then the cattle scattered like the pieces of a bursting bomb. Away
went the chosen victim, but ere she had gone twenty-five yards Lobo was
upon her. Seizing her by the neck, he suddenly held back with all his
force and so threw her heavily to the ground. The shock must have been
tremendous, for the heifer was thrown heels over head. Lobo also turned
a somersault, but immediately recovered himself, and his followers
falling on the poor cow, killed her in a few seconds. Lobo took no part
in the killing--after having thrown the victim, he seemed to say, "Now,
why could not some of you have done that at once without wasting so much
time?"

The man now rode up shouting, the wolves as usual retired, and he,
having a bottle of strychnine, quickly poisoned the carcass in three
places, then went away, knowing they would return to feed, as they had
killed the animal themselves. But next morning, on going to look for
his expected victims, he found that, although the wolves had eaten the
heifer, they had carefully cut out and thrown aside all those parts that
had been poisoned.

The dread of this great wolf spread yearly among the ranchmen, and
each year a larger price was set on his head, until at last it reached
$1,000, an unparalleled wolf-bounty, surely; many a good man has been
hunted down for less, Tempted by the promised reward, a Texan ranger
named Tannerey came one day galloping up the canyon of the Currumpaw. He
had a superb outfit for wolf-hunting--the best of guns and horses, and a
pack of enormous wolf-hounds. Far out on the plains of the Panhandle,
he and his dogs had killed many a wolf, and now he never doubted that,
within a few days, Old Lobo's scalp would dangle at his saddlebow.

Away they went bravely on their hunt in the gray dawn of a summer
morning, and soon the great dogs gave joyous tongue to say that they
were already on the track of their quarry. Within two miles, the grizzly
band of Currumpaw leaped into view, and the chase grew fast and furious.
The part of the wolf-hounds was merely to hold the wolves at bay till
the hunter could ride up and shoot them, and this usually was easy on
the open plains of Texas; but here a new feature of the country came
into play, and showed how well Lobo had chosen his range; for the rocky
canyons of the Currumpaw and its tributaries intersect the prairies in
every direction. The old wolf at once made for the nearest of these
and by crossing it got rid of the horseman. His band then scattered and
thereby scattered the dogs, and when they reunited at a distant point
of course all of the dogs did not turn up, and the wolves, no longer
outnumbered, turned on their pursuers and killed or desperately wounded
them all. That night when Tannerey mustered his dogs, only six of them
returned, and of these, two were terribly lacerated. This hunter made
two other attempts to capture the royal scalp, but neither of them was
more successful than the first, and on the last occasion his best horse
met its death by a fall; so he gave up the chase in disgust and went
back to Texas, leaving Lobo more than ever the despot of the region.

Next year, two other hunters appeared, determined to win the promised
bounty. Each believed he could destroy this noted wolf, the first by
means of a newly devised poison, which was to be laid out in an entirely
new manner; the other a French Canadian, by poison assisted with certain
spells and charms, for he firmly believed that Lobo was a veritable
"loup-garou," and could not be killed by ordinary means. But cunningly
compounded poisons, charms, and incantations were all of no avail
against this grizzly devastator. He made his weekly rounds and daily
banquets as aforetime, and before many weeks had passed, Calone and
Laloche gave up in despair and went elsewhere to hunt.

In the spring of 1893, after his unsuccessful attempt to capture Lobo,
Joe Calone had a humiliating experience, which seems to show that the
big wolf simply scorned his enemies, and had absolute confidence in
himself. Calone's farm was on a small tributary of the Currumpaw, in a
picturesque canyon, and among the rocks of this very canyon, within a
thousand yards of the house, Old Lobo and his mate selected their den
and raised their family that season. There they lived all summer and
killed Joe's cattle, sheep, and dogs, but laughed at all his poisons and
traps and rested securely among the recesses of the cavernous cliffs,
while Joe vainly racked his brain for some method of smoking them out,
or of reaching them with dynamite. But they escaped entirely unscathed,
and continued their ravages as before. "There's where he lived all last
summer," said Joe, pointing to the face of the cliff, "and I couldn't do
a thing with him. I was like a fool to him."

II

This history, gathered so far from the cowboys, I found hard to
believe until, in the fall of 1893, I made the acquaintance of the wily
marauder, and at length came to know him more thoroughly than anyone
else. Some years before, in the Bingo days, I had been a wolf-hunter,
but my occupations since then had been of another sort, chaining me to
stool and desk. I was much in need of a change, and when a friend, who
was also a ranch-owner on the Currumpaw, asked me to come to New Mexico
and try if I could do anything with this predatory pack, I accepted the
invitation and, eager to make the acquaintance of its king, was as soon
as possible among the mesas of that region. I spent some time riding
about to learn the country, and at intervals my guide would point to the
skeleton of a cow to which the hide still adhered, and remark, "That's
some of his work."

It became quite clear to me that, in this rough country, it was useless
to think of pursuing Lobo with hounds and horses, so that poison or
traps were the only available expedients. At present we had no traps
large enough, so I set to work with poison.

I need not enter into the details of a hundred devices that I employed
to circumvent this 'loup-garou'; there was no combination of strychnine,
arsenic, cyanide, or prussic acid, that I did not essay; there was no
manner of flesh that I did not try as bait; but morning after morning,
as I rode forth to learn the result, I found that all my efforts had
been useless. The old king was too cunning for me. A single instance
will show his wonderful sagacity. Acting on the hint of an old trapper,
I melted some cheese together with the kidney fat of a freshly killed
heifer, stewing it in a china dish, and cutting it with a bone knife to
avoid the taint of metal.

When the mixture was cool, I cut it into lumps, and making a hole in one
side of each lump, I inserted a large dose of strychnine and cyanide,
contained, in a capsule that was impermeable by any odor; finally I
sealed the holes up with pieces of the cheese itself. During the whole
process, I wore a pair of gloves steeped in the hot blood of the heifer,
and even avoided breathing on the baits. When all was ready, I put them
in a raw-hide bag rubbed all over with blood, and rode forth dragging
the liver and kidneys of the beef at the end of a rope. With this I
made a ten-mile circuit, dropping a bait at each quarter of a mile, and
taking the utmost care, always, not to touch any with my hands.

Lobo, generally, came into this part of the range in the early part of
each week, and passed the latter part, it was supposed, around the base
of Sierra Grande. This was Monday, and that same evening, as we were
about to retire, I heard the deep bass howl of his majesty. On hearing
it one of the boys briefly remarked, "There he is, we'll see."

The next morning I went forth, eager to know the result. I soon came
on the fresh trail of the robbers, with Lobo in the lead--his track was
always easily distinguished. An ordinary wolf's forefoot is 4 1/2 inches
long, that of a large wolf 4 3/4 inches, but Lobo's, as measured a
number of times, was 5 1/2 inches from claw to heel; I afterward found
that his other proportions were commensurate, for he stood three feet
high at the shoulder, and weighed 150 pounds. His trail, therefore,
though obscured by those of his followers, was never difficult to trace.
The pack had soon found the track of my drag, and as usual followed it.
I could see that Lobo had come to the first bait, sniffed about it, and
finally had picked it up.

Then I could not conceal my delight. "I've got him at last," I
exclaimed; "I shall find him stark within a mile," and I galloped on
with eager eyes fixed on the great broad track in the dust. It led me to
the second bait and that also was gone. How I exulted--I surely have
him now and perhaps several of his band. But there was the broad pawmark
still on the drag; and though I stood in the stirrup and scanned the
plain I saw nothing that looked like a dead wolf. Again I followed--to
find now that the third bait was gone--and the king-wolf's track led
on to the fourth, there to learn that he had not really taken a bait
at all, but had merely carried them in his mouth, Then having piled the
three on the fourth, he scattered filth over them to express his utter
contempt for my devices. After this he left my drag and went about his
business with the pack he guarded so effectively.

This is only one of many similar experiences which convinced me that
poison would never avail to destroy this robber, and though I continued
to use it while awaiting the arrival of the traps, it was only because
it was meanwhile a sure means of killing many prairie wolves and other
destructive vermin.

About this time there came under my observation an incident that will
illustrate Lobo's diabolic cunning. These wolves had at least one
pursuit which was merely an amusement; it was stampeding and killing
sheep, though they rarely ate them. The sheep are usually kept in flocks
of from one thousand to three thousand under one or more shepherds. At
night they are gathered in the most sheltered place available, and a
herdsman sleeps on each side of the flock to give additional protection.
Sheep are such senseless creatures that they are liable to be stampeded
by the veriest trifle, but they have deeply ingrained in their nature
one, and perhaps only one, strong weakness, namely, to follow their
leader. And this the shepherds turn to good account by putting half a
dozen goats in the flock of sheep. The latter recognize the superior
intelligence of their bearded cousins, and when a night alarm occurs
they crowd around them, and usually are thus saved from a stampede and
are easily protected. But it was not always so. One night late in last
November, two Perico shepherds were aroused by an onset of wolves. Their
flocks huddled around the goats, which, being neither fools nor cowards,
stood their ground and were bravely defiant; but alas for them, no
common wolf was heading this attack. Old Lobo, the werewolf, knew as
well as the shepherds that the goats were the moral force of the flock,
so, hastily running over the backs of the densely packed sheep, he
fell on these leaders, slew them all in a few minutes, and soon had the
luckless sheep stampeding in a thousand different directions. For weeks
afterward I was almost daily accosted by some anxious shepherd, who
asked, "Have you seen any stray OTO sheep lately?" and usually I was
obliged to say I had; one day it was, "Yes, I came on some five or six
carcasses by Diamond Springs;" or another, it was to the effect that I
had seen a small "bunch" running on the Malpai Mesa; or again, "No, but
Juan Meira saw about twenty, freshly killed, on the Cedra Monte two days
ago."

At length the wolf traps arrived, and with two men I worked a whole week
to get them properly set out. We spared no labor or pains, I adopted
every device I could think of that might help to insure success. The
second day after the traps arrived, I rode around to inspect, and soon
came upon Lobo's trail running from trap to trap. In the dust I could
read the whole story of his doings that night. He had trotted along in
the darkness, and although the traps were so carefully concealed, he had
instantly detected the first one. Stopping the onward march of the pack,
he had cautiously scratched around it until he had disclosed the trap,
the chain, and the log, then left them wholly exposed to view with the
trap still unsprung, and passing on he treated over a dozen traps in the
same fashion. Very soon I noticed that he stopped and turned aside as
soon as he detected suspicious signs on the trail, and a new plan to
outwit him at once suggested itself. I set the traps in the form of an
H; that is, with a row of traps on each side of the trail, and one on
the trail for the cross-bar of the H. Before long, I had an opportunity
to count another failure. Lobo came trotting along the trail, and was
fairly between the parallel lines before he detected the single trap
in the trail, but he stopped in time, and why or how he knew enough I
cannot tell, the Angel of the wild things must have been with him, but
without turning an inch to the right or left, he slowly and cautiously
backed on his own tracks, putting each paw exactly in its old track
until he was off the dangerous ground. Then returning at one side he
scratched clods and stones with his hind feet till he had sprung every
trap. This he did on many other occasions, and although I varied
my methods and redoubled my precautions, he was never deceived, his
sagacity seemed never at fault, and he might have been pursuing his
career of rapine to-day, but for an unfortunate alliance that proved
his ruin and added his name to the long list of heroes who, unassailable
when alone, have fallen through the indiscretion of a trusted ally.

III

Once or twice, I had found indications that everything was not
quite right in the Currumpaw pack. There were signs of irregularity,
I thought; for instance there was clearly the trail of a smaller wolf
running ahead of the leader, at times, and this I could not understand
until a cowboy made a remark which explained the matter.

"I saw them to-day," he said, "and the wild one that breaks away is
Blanca." Then the truth dawned upon me, and I added, "Now, I know that
Blanca is a she-wolf, because were a he-wolf to act thus, Lobo would
kill him at once."

This suggested a new plan. I killed a heifer, and set one or two rather
obvious traps about the carcass. Then cutting off the head, which is
considered useless offal, and quite beneath the notice of a wolf, I set
it a little apart and around it placed six powerful steel traps properly
deodorized and concealed with the utmost care. During my operations
I kept my hands, boots, and implements smeared with fresh blood, and
afterward sprinkled the ground with the same, as though it had flowed
from the head; and when the traps were buried in the dust I brushed the
place over with the skin of a coyote, and with a foot of the same animal
made a number of tracks over the traps. The head was so placed that
there was a narrow passage between it and some tussocks, and in this
passage I buried two of my best traps, fastening them to the head
itself.

Wolves have a habit of approaching every carcass they get the wind of,
in order to examine it, even when they have no intention of eating it,
and I hoped that this habit would bring the Currumpaw pack within
reach of my latest stratagem. I did not doubt that Lobo would detect my
handiwork about the meat, and prevent the pack approaching it, but I did
build some hopes on the head, for it looked as though it had been thrown
aside as useless.

Next morning, I sallied forth to inspect the traps, and there, oh, joy!
were the tracks of the pack, and the place where the beef-head and its
traps had been was empty. A hasty study of the trail showed that Lobo
had kept the pack from approaching the meat, but one, a small wolf, had
evidently gone on to examine the head as it lay apart and had walked
right into one of the traps.

We set out on the trail, and within a mile discovered that the hapless
wolf was Blanca. Away she went, however, at a gallop, and although
encumbered by the beef-head, which weighed over fifty pounds, she
speedily distanced my companion, who was on foot. But we overtook her
when she reached the rocks, for the horns of the cow's head became
caught and held her fast. She was the handsomest wolf I had ever seen.
Her coat was in perfect condition and nearly white.

She turned to fight, and, raising her voice in the rallying cry of her
race, sent a long howl rolling over the canyon. From far away upon the
mesa came a deep response, the cry of Old Lobo. That was her last call,
for now we had closed in on her, and all her energy and breath were
devoted to combat.

Then followed the inevitable tragedy, the idea of which I shrank from
afterward more than at the time. We each threw a lasso over the neck of
the doomed wolf, and strained our horses in opposite directions until
the blood burst from her mouth, her eyes glazed, her limbs stiffened
and then fell limp. Homeward then we rode, carrying the dead wolf, and
exulting over this, the first death-blow we had been able to inflict on
the Currumpaw pack.

At intervals during the tragedy, and afterward as we rode homeward, we
heard the roar of Lobo as he wandered about on the distant mesas, where
he seemed to be searching for Blanca. He had never really deserted
her, but, knowing that he could not save her, his deep-rooted dread of
firearms had been too much for him when he saw us approaching. All that
day we heard him wailing as he roamed in his quest, and I remarked at
length to one of the boys, "Now, indeed, I truly know that Blanca was
his mate."

As evening fell he seemed to be coming toward the home canyon, for his
voice sounded continually nearer.

There was an unmistakable note of sorrow in it now. It was no longer
the loud, defiant howl, but a long, plaintive wail; "Blanca! Blanca!"
he seemed to call. And as night came down, I noticed that he was not far
from the place where we had overtaken her. At length he seemed to find
the trail, and when he came to the spot where we had killed her, his
heartbroken wailing was piteous to hear. It was sadder than I could
possibly have believed. Even the stolid cowboys noticed it, and said
they had "never heard a wolf carry on like that before." He seemed to
know exactly what had taken place, for her blood had stained the place
of her death.

Then he took up the trail of the horses and followed it to the
ranch-house. Whether in hopes of finding her there, or in quest of
revenge, I know not, but the latter was what he found, for he surprised
our unfortunate watchdog outside and tore him to little bits within
fifty yards of the door. He evidently came alone this time, for I found
but one trail next morning, and he had galloped about in a reckless
manner that was very unusual with him. I had half expected this, and had
set a number of additional traps about the pasture. Afterward I found
that he had indeed fallen into one of these, but, such was his strength,
he had torn himself loose and cast it aside.

I believed that he would continue in the neighborhood until he found her
body at least, so I concentrated all my energies on this one enterprise
of catching him before he left the region, and while yet in this
reckless mood. Then I realized what a mistake I had made in killing
Blanca, for by using her as a decoy I might have secured him the next
night.

I gathered in all the traps I could command, one hundred and thirty
strong steel wolf-traps, and set them in fours in every trail that led
into the canyon; each trap was separately fastened to a log, and each
log was separately buried. In burying them, I carefully removed the sod
and every particle of earth that was lifted we put in blankets, so that
after the sod was replaced and all was finished the eye could detect no
trace of human handiwork. When the traps were concealed I trailed the
body of poor Blanca over each place, and made of it a drag that circled
all about the ranch, and finally I took off one of her paws and made
with it a line of tracks over each trap. Every precaution and device
known to me I used, and retired at a late hour to await the result.

Once during the night I thought I heard Old Lobo, but was not sure of
it. Next day I rode around, but darkness came on before I completed the
circuit of the north canon, and I had nothing to report. At supper one
of the cowboys said, "There was a great row among the cattle in the
north canyon this morning, maybe there is something in the traps there."
It was afternoon of the next day before I got to the place referred to,
and as I drew near a great grizzly form arose from the ground, vainly
endeavoring to escape, and there revealed before me stood Lobo, King
of the Currumpaw, firmly held in the traps. Poor old hero, he had never
ceased to search for his darling, and when he found the trail her body
had made he followed it recklessly, and so fell into the snare prepared
for him. There he lay in the iron grasp of all four traps, perfectly
helpless, and all around him were numerous tracks showing how the cattle
had gathered about him to insult the fallen despot, without daring
to approach within his reach. For two days and two nights he had lain
there, and now was worn out with struggling. Yet, when I went near him,
he rose up with bristling mane and raised his voice, and for the last
time made the canyon reverberate with his deep bass roar, a call for
help, the muster call of his band. But there was none to answer him,
and, left alone in his extremity, he whirled about with all his strength
and made a desperate effort to get at me. All in vain, each trap was a
dead drag of over three hundred pounds, and in their relentless fourfold
grasp, with great steel jaws on every foot, and the heavy logs and
chains all entangled together, he was absolutely powerless. How his
huge ivory tusks did grind on those cruel chains, and when I ventured to
touch him with my rifle-barrel he left grooves on it which are there to
this day. His eyes glared green with hate and fury, and his jaws
snapped with a hollow 'chop,' as he vainly endeavored to reach me and my
trembling horse. But he was worn out with hunger and struggling and loss
of blood, and he soon sank exhausted to the ground.

Something like compunction came over me, as I prepared to deal out to
him that which so many had suffered at his hands.

"Grand old outlaw, hero of a thousand lawless raids, in a few minutes
you will be but a great load of carrion. It cannot be otherwise." Then I
swung my lasso and sent it whistling over his head. But not so fast; he
was yet far from being subdued, and before the supple coils had fallen
on his neck he seized the noose and, with one fierce chop, cut through
its hard thick strands, and dropped it in two pieces at his feet.

Of course I had my rifle as a last resource, but I did not wish to spoil
his royal hide, so I galloped back to the camp and returned with a cowboy
and a fresh lasso. We threw to our victim a stick of wood which he
seized in his teeth, and before he could relinquish it our lassoes
whistled through the air and tightened on his neck.

Yet before the light had died from his fierce eyes, I cried, "Stay,
we will not kill him; let us take him alive to the camp." He was so
completely powerless now that it was easy to put a stout stick through
his mouth, behind his tusks, and then lash his jaws with a heavy cord
which was also fastened to the stick. The stick kept the cord in, and
the cord kept the stick in so he was harmless. As soon as he felt his
jaws were tied he made no further resistance, and uttered no sound, but
looked calmly at us and seemed to say, "Well, you have got me at last,
do as you please with me." And from that time he took no more notice of
us.

We tied his feet securely, but he never groaned, nor growled, nor turned
his head. Then with our united strength we were just able to put him on
my horse. His breath came evenly as though sleeping, and his eyes
were bright and clear again, but did not rest on us. Afar on the great
rolling mesas they were fixed, his passing kingdom, where his famous
band was now scattered. And he gazed till the pony descended the pathway
into the canyon, and the rocks cut off the view.

By travelling slowly we reached the ranch in safety, and after securing
him with a collar and a strong chain, we staked him out in the pasture
and removed the cords.

Then for the first time I could examine him closely, and proved how
unreliable is vulgar report when a living hero or tyrant is concerned.
He had not a collar of gold about his neck, nor was there on his
shoulders an inverted cross to denote that he had leagued himself with
Satan. But I did find on one haunch a great broad scar, that tradition
says was the fang-mark of Juno, the leader of Tannerey's wolf-hounds--a
mark which she gave him the moment before he stretched her lifeless on
the sand of the canyon.

I set meat and water beside him, but he paid no heed. He lay calmly on
his breast, and gazed with those steadfast yellow eyes away past me down
through the gateway of the canyon, over the open plains--his plains--nor
moved a muscle when I touched him. When the sun went down he was still
gazing fixedly across the prairie. I expected he would call up his band
when night came, and prepared for them, but he had called once in his
extremity, and none had come; he would never call again.

A lion shorn of his strength, an eagle robbed of his freedom, or a dove
bereft of his mate, all die, it is said, of a broken heart; and who will
aver that this grim bandit could bear the three-fold brunt, heart-whole?
This only I know, that when the morning dawned, he was lying there still
in his position of calm repose, his body unwounded, but his spirit was
gone--the old kingwolf was dead.

I took the chain from his neck, a cowboy helped me to carry him to the
shed where lay the remains of Blanca, and as we laid him beside her,
the cattle-man exclaimed: "There, you would come to her, now you are
together again."




SILVERSPOT, The Story of a Crow


I

HOW MANY of us have ever got to know a wild animal? I do not mean merely
to meet with one once or twice, or to have one in a cage, but to really
know it for a long time while it is wild, and to get an insight into its
life and history. The trouble usually is to know one creature from his
fellow. One fox or crow is so much like another that we cannot be sure
that it really is the same next time we meet. But once in awhile there
arises an animal who is stronger or wiser than his fellow, who becomes a
great leader, who is, as we would say, a genius, and if he is bigger, or
has some mark by which men can know him, he soon becomes famous in his
country, and shows us that the life of a wild animal may be far more
interesting and exciting than that of many human beings.

Of this class were Courtant, the bob-tailed wolf that terrorized
the whole city of Paris for about ten years in the beginning of the
fourteenth century; Clubfoot, the lame grizzly bear that left such
a terrific record in the San Joaquin Valley of California; Lobo, the
king-wolf of New Mexico, that killed a cow every day for five years,
and the Seonee panther that in less than two years killed nearly three
hundred human beings--and such also was Silverspot, whose history, so
far as I could learn it, I shall now briefly tell.

Silverspot was simply a wise old crow; his name was given because of
the silvery white spot that was like a nickel, stuck on his right side,
between the eye and the bill, and it was owing to this spot that I was
able to know him from the other crows, and put together the parts of his
history that came to my knowledge.

Crows are, as you must know, our most intelligent birds.--'Wise as an
old crow' did not become a saying without good reason. Crows know the
value of organization, and are as well drilled as soldiers--very much
better than some soldiers, in fact, for crows are always on duty, always
at war, and always dependent on each other for life and safety. Their
leaders not only are the oldest and wisest of the band, but also the
strongest and bravest, for they must be ready at any time with sheer
force to put down an upstart or a rebel. The rank and file are the
youngsters and the crows without special gifts.

Old Silverspot was the leader of a large band of crows that made
their headquarters near Toronto, Canada, in Castle Frank, which is a
pine-clad hill on the northeast edge of the city. This band numbered
about two hundred, and for reasons that I never understood did not
increase. In mild winters they stayed along the Niagara River; in cold
winters they went much farther south. But each year in the last week of
February, Old Silverspot would muster his followers and boldly cross the
forty miles of open water that lies between Toronto and Niagara; not,
however, in a straight line would he go, but always in a curve to
the west, whereby he kept in sight of the familiar landmark of Dundas
Mountain, until the pine-clad hill itself came in view. Each year he
came with his troop, and for about six weeks took up his abode on
the hill. Each morning thereafter the crows set out in three bands to
forage. One band went southeast to Ashbridge's Bay. One went north up
the Don, and one, the largest, went northwestward up the ravine. The
last, Silverspot led in person. Who led the others I never found out.

On calm mornings they flew high and straight away. But when it was
windy the band flew low, and followed the ravine for shelter. My windows
overlooked the ravine, and it was thus that in 1885 I first noticed this
old crow. I was a newcomer in the neighborhood, but an old resident
said to me then "that there old crow has been a-flying up and down this
ravine for more than twenty years." My chances to watch were in the
ravine, and Silverspot doggedly clinging to the old route, though now
it was edged with houses and spanned by bridges, became a very familiar
acquaintance. Twice each day in March and part of April, then again
in the late summer and the fall, he passed and repassed, and gave me
chances to see his movements, and hear his orders to his bands, and so,
little by little, opened my eyes to the fact that the crows, though a
little people, are of great wit, a race of birds with a language and a
social system that is wonderfully human in many of its chief points, and
in some is better carried out than our own.

One windy day I stood on the high bridge across the ravine, as the old
crow, heading his long, straggling troop, came flying down homeward.
Half a mile away I could hear the contented 'All's well, come right
along!' as we should say, or as he put it, and as also his lieutenant
echoed it at the rear of the band. They were flying very low to be out
of the wind, and would have to rise a little to clear the bridge on
which I was. Silverspot saw me standing there, and as I was closely
watching him he didn't like it. He checked his flight and called out,
'Be on your guard,' and rose much higher in the air. Then seeing that I
was not armed he flew over my head about twenty feet, and his followers
in turn did the same, dipping again to the old level when past the
bridge.

Next day I was at the same place, and as the crows came near I raised my
walking stick and pointed it at them. The old fellow at once cried out
'Danger,' and rose fifty feet higher than before. Seeing that it was not
a gun, he ventured to fly over. But on the third day I took with me a
gun, and at once he cried out, 'Great danger--a gun.' His lieutenant
repeated the cry, and every crow in the troop began to tower and scatter
from the rest, till they were far above gun shot, and so passed safely
over, coming down again to the shelter of the valley when well beyond
reach. Another time, as the long, straggling troop came down the valley,
a red-tailed hawk alighted on a tree close by their intended route. The
leader cried out, 'Hawk, hawk,' and stayed his flight, as did each crow
on nearing him, until all were massed in a solid body. Then, no longer
fearing the hawk, they passed on. But a quarter of a mile farther on
a man with a gun appeared below, and the cry, 'Great danger--a gun,
a--gun; scatter fur your lives,' at once caused them to scatter widely
and tower till far beyond range. Many others of his words of command I
learned in the course of my long acquaintance, and found that sometimes
a very little difference in the sound makes a very great difference in
meaning. Thus while No. 5 means hawk, or any large, dangerous bird, this
means 'wheel around,' evidently a combination of No. 5, whose root idea
is danger, and of No. 4, whose root idea is retreat, and this again is a
mere 'good day,' to a far away comrade. This is usually addressed to the
ranks and means 'attention.'

Early in April there began to be great doings among the crows. Some new
cause of excitement seemed to have come on them. They spent half the
day among the pines, instead of foraging from dawn till dark. Pairs
and trios might be seen chasing each other, and from time to time they
showed off in various feats of flight. A favorite sport was to dart down
suddenly from a great height toward some perching crow, and just before
touching it to turn at a hairbreadth and rebound in the air so fast
that the wings of the swooper whirred with a sound like distant thunder.
Sometimes one crow would lower his head, raise every feather, and coming
close to another would gurgle out a long note like. What did it all
mean? I soon learned. They were making love and pairing off. The males
were showing off their wing powers and their voices to the lady crows.
And they must have been highly appreciated, for by the middle of April
all had mated and had scattered over the country for their honeymoon,
leaving the sombre old pines of Castle Frank deserted and silent.

II

The Sugar Loaf hill stands alone in the Don Valley. It is still covered
with woods that join with those of Castle Frank, a quarter of a mile
off in the woods, between the two hills, is a pine-tree in whose top
is a deserted hawk's nest. Every Toronto school-boy knows the nest, and,
excepting that I had once shot a black squirrel on its edge, no one had
ever seen a sign of life about it. There it was year after year, ragged
and old, and falling to pieces. Yet, strange to tell, in all that time
it never did drop to pieces, like other old nests.

One morning in May I was out at gray dawn, and stealing gently through
the woods, whose dead leaves were so wet that no rustle was made. I
chanced to pass under the old nest, and was surprised to see a black
tail sticking over the edge. I struck the tree a smart blow, off flew a
crow, and the secret was out. I had long suspected that a pair of
crows nested each year about the pines, but now I realized that it was
Silverspot and his wife. The old nest was theirs, and they were too wise
to give it an air of spring-cleaning and housekeeping each year. Here
they had nested for long, though guns in the hands of men and boys
hungry to shoot crows were carried under their home every day. I never
surprised the old fellow again, though I several times saw him through
my telescope.

One day while watching I saw a crow crossing the Don Valley with
something white in his beak. He flew to the mouth of the Rosedale Brook,
then took a short flight to the Beaver Elm. There he dropped the white
object, and looking about gave me a chance to recognize my old friend
Silverspot. After a minute he picked up the white thing--a shell--and
walked over past the spring, and here, among the docks and the
skunk-cabbages, he unearthed a pile of shells and other white, shiny
things. He spread them out in the sun, turned them over, turned them one
by one in his beak, dropped them, nestled on them as though they were
eggs, toyed with them and gloated over them like a miser. This was his
hobby, his weakness. He could not have explained why he enjoyed them,
any more than a boy can explain why he collects postage-stamps, or a
girl why she prefers pearls to rubies; but his pleasure in them was very
real, and after half an hour he covered them all, including the new
one, with earth and leaves, and flew off. I went at once to the spot
and examined the hoard; there was about a hatfull in all, chiefly white
pebbles, clam-shells, and some bits of tin, but there was also the
handle of a china cup, which must have been the gem of the collection.
That was the last time I saw them. Silverspot knew that I had found his
treasures, and he removed them at once; where, I never knew.

During the space that I watched him so closely he had many little
adventures and escapes. He was once severely handled by a sparrowhawk,
and often he was chased and worried by kingbirds. Not that these did him
much harm, but they were such noisy pests that he avoided their company
as quickly as possible, just as a grown man avoids a conflict with a
noisy and impudent small boy. He had some cruel tricks, too. He had a
way of going the round of the small birds' nests each morning to eat the
new laid eggs, as regularly as a doctor visiting his patients. But we
must not judge him for that, as it is just what we ourselves do to the
hens in the barnyard.

His quickness of wit was often shown. One day I saw him flying down the
ravine with a large piece of bread in his bill. The stream below him was
at this time being bricked over as a sewer. There was one part of two
hundred yards quite finished, and, as he flew over the open water just
above this, the bread fell from his bill, and was swept by the current
out of sight into the tunnel. He flew down and peered vainly into
the dark cavern, then, acting upon a happy thought, he flew to the
downstream end of the tunnel, and awaiting the reappearance of the
floating bread, as it was swept onward by the current, he seized and
bore it off in triumph.

Silverspot was a crow of the world. He was truly a successful crow. He
lived in a region that, though full of dangers, abounded with food. In
the old, unrepaired nest he raised a brood each year with his wife,
whom, by the way, I never could distinguish, and when the crows again
gathered together he was their acknowledged chief.

The reassembling takes place about the end of June--the young crows with
their bob-tails, soft wings, and falsetto voices are brought by their
parents, whom they nearly equal in size, and introduced to society at
the old pine woods, a woods that is at once their fortress and college.
Here they find security in numbers and in lofty yet sheltered perches,
and here they begin their schooling and are taught all the secrets of
success in crow life, and in crow life the least failure does not simply
mean begin again. It means death.

The first week or two after their arrival is spent by the young ones in
getting acquainted, for each crow must know personally all the others in
the band. Their parents meanwhile have time to rest a little after the
work of raising them, for now the youngsters are able to feed themselves
and roost on a branch in a row, just like big folks.

In a week or two the moulting season comes. At this time the old crows
are usually irritable and nervous, but it does not stop them from
beginning to drill the youngsters, who, of course, do not much enjoy the
punishment and nagging they get so soon after they have been mamma's own
darlings. But it is all for their good, as the old lady said when she
skinned the eels, and old Silverspot is an excellent teacher. Sometimes
he seems to make a speech to them. What he says I cannot guess, but
judging by the way they receive it, it must be extremely witty. Each
morning there is a company drill, for the young ones naturally drop into
two or three squads according to their age and strength. The rest of the
day they forage with their parents.

When at length September comes we find a great change. The rabble of
silly little crows have begun to learn sense. The delicate blue iris of
their eyes, the sign of a fool-crow, has given place to the dark brown
eye of the old stager. They know their drill now and have learned sentry
duty. They have been taught guns and traps and taken a special course in
wireworms and green-corn. They know that a fat old farmer's wife is much
less dangerous, though so much larger, than her fifteen-year-old son,
and they can tell the boy from his sister. They know that an umbrella is
not a gun, and they can count up to six, which is fair for young crows,
though Silverspot can go up nearly to thirty. They know the smell of
gunpowder and the south side of a hemlock-tree, and begin to plume
themselves upon being crows of the world. They always fold their wings
three times after alighting, to be sure that it is neatly done. They
know how to worry a fox into giving up half his dinner, and also that
when the kingbird or the purple martin assails them they must dash into
a bush, for it is as impossible to fight the little pests as it is for
the fat apple-woman to catch the small boys who have raided her basket.
All these things do the young crows know; but they have taken no lessons
in egg-hunting yet, for it is not the season. They are unacquainted with
clams, and have never tasted horses' eyes, or seen sprouted corn, and
they don't know a thing about travel, the greatest educator of all. They
did not think of that two months ago, and since then they have thought
of it, but have learned to wait till their betters are ready.

September sees a great change in the old crows, too, Their moulting is
over. They are now in full feather again and proud of their handsome
coats. Their health is again good, and with it their tempers are
improved. Even old Silverspot, the strict teacher, becomes quite jolly,
and the youngsters, who have long ago learned to respect him, begin
really to love him.

He has hammered away at drill, teaching them all the signals and words
of command in use, and now it is a pleasure to see them in the early
morning.

'Company I!' the old chieftain would cry in crow, and Company I would
answer with a great clamor.

'Fly!' and himself leading them, they would all fly straight forward.

'Mount!' and straight upward they turned in a moment.

'Bunch!' and they all massed into a dense black flock.

'Scatter!' and they spread out like leaves before the wind.

'Form line!' and they strung out into the long line of ordinary flight.

'Descend!' and they all dropped nearly to the ground.

'Forage!' and they alighted and scattered about to feed, while two of
the permanent sentries mounted duty--one on a tree to the right, the
other on a mound to the far left. A minute or two later Silverspot
would cry out, 'A man with a gun!' The sentries repeated the cry and
the company flew at once in open order as quickly as possible toward the
trees. Once behind these, they formed line again in safety and returned
to the home pines.

Sentry duty is not taken in turn by all the crows, but a certain number
whose watchfulness has been often proved are the perpetual sentries, and
are expected to watch and forage at the same time. Rather hard on them
it seems to us, but it works well and the crow organization is admitted
by all birds to be the very best in existence.

Finally, each November sees the troop sail away southward to learn new
modes of life, new landmarks and new kinds of food, under the guidance
of the everwise Silverspot.

III

There is only one time when a crow is a fool, and that is at night.
There is only one bird that terrifies the crow, and that is the owl.
When, therefore, these come together it is a woeful thing for the sable
birds. The distant hoot of an owl after dark is enough to make them
withdraw their heads from under their wings, and sit trembling and
miserable till morning. In very cold weather the exposure of their faces
thus has often resulted in a crow having one or both of his eyes frozen,
so that blindness followed and therefore death. There are no hospitals
for sick crows.

But with the morning their courage comes again, and arousing themselves
they ransack the woods for a mile around till they find that owl, and if
they do not kill him they at least worry him half to death and drive him
twenty miles away.

In 1893 the crows had come as usual to Castle Frank. I was walking in
these woods a few days afterward when I chanced upon the track of a
rabbit that had been running at full speed over the snow and dodging
about among the trees as though pursued. Strange to tell, I could see no
track of the pursuer. I followed the trail and presently saw a drop of
blood on the snow, and a little farther on found the partly devoured
remains of a little brown bunny. What had killed him was a mystery until
a careful search showed in the snow a great double-toed track and a
beautifully pencilled brown feather. Then all was clear--a horned owl.
Half an hour later, in passing again by the place, there, in a tree,
within ten feet of the bones of his victim, was the fierce-eyed owl
himself. The murderer still hung about the scene of his crime. For once
circumstantial evidence had not lied. At my approach he gave a guttural
'grrr-oo' and flew off with low flagging flight to haunt the distant
sombre woods.

Two days afterward, at dawn, there was a great uproar among the crows.
I went out early to see, and found some black feathers drifting over the
snow. I followed up the wind in the direction from which they came and
soon saw the bloody remains of a crow and the great double-toed track
which again told me that the murderer was the owl. All around were signs
of the struggle, but the fell destroyer was too strong. The poor crow
had been dragged from his perch at night, when the darkness bad put him
at a hopeless disadvantage.

I turned over the remains, and by chance unburied the head--then started
with an exclamation of sorrow. Alas! It was the head of old Silverspot.
His long life of usefulness to his tribe was over--slain at last by the
owl that he had taught so many hundreds of young crows to beware of.

The old nest on the Sugar Loaf is abandoned now. The crows still come
in spring-time to Castle Frank, but without their famous leader their
numbers are dwindling, and soon they will be seen no more about the old
pine-grove in which they and their forefathers had lived and learned for
ages.




RAGGYLUG, The Story of a Cottontail Rabbit

RAGGYLUG, or Rag, was the name of a young cottontail rabbit. It was
given him from his torn and ragged ear, a life-mark that he got in his
first adventure. He lived with his mother in Olifant's Swamp, where I
made their acquaintance and gathered, in a hundred different ways, the
little bits of proof and scraps of truth that at length enabled me to
write this history.

Those who do not know the animals well may think I have humanized them,
but those who have lived so near them as to know somewhat of their ways
and their minds will not think so.

Truly rabbits have no speech as we understand it, but they have a way of
conveying ideas by a system of sounds, signs, scents, whisker-touches,
movements, and example that answers the purpose of speech; and it must
be remembered that though in telling this story I freely translate from
rabbit into English, I repeat nothing that they did not say.

I

The rank swamp grass bent over and concealed the snug nest where
Raggylug's mother had hidden him. She had partly covered him with some
of the bedding, and, as always, her last warning was to lie low and say
nothing, whatever happens. Though tucked in bed, he was wide awake and
his bright eyes were taking in that part of his little green world that
was straight above. A bluejay and a red-squirrel, two notorious thieves,
were loudly berating each other for stealing, and at one time Rag's
home bush was the centre of their fight; a yellow warbler caught a blue
butterfly but six inches from his nose, and a scarlet and black ladybug,
serenely waving her knobbed feelers, took a long walk up one grass-blade,
down another, and across the nest and over Rag's face--and yet he never
moved nor even winked.

After a while he heard a strange rustling of the leaves in the near
thicket. It was an odd, continuous sound, and though it went this way
and that way and came ever nearer, there was no patter of feet with it.
Rag had lived his whole life in the Swamp (he was three weeks old) and
yet had never heard anything like this. Of course his curiosity was
greatly aroused. His mother had cautioned him to lie low, but that
was understood to be in case of danger, and this strange sound without
footfalls could not be anything to fear.

The low rasping went past close at hand, then to the right, then back,
and seemed going away. Rag felt he knew what he was about; he wasn't
a baby; it was his duty to learn what it was. He slowly raised his
rolypoly body on his short fluffy legs, lifted his little round head
above the covering of his nest and peeped out into the woods. The sound
had ceased as soon as he moved. He saw nothing, so took one step forward
to a clear view, and instantly found himself face to face with an
enormous Black Serpent.

"Mammy," he screamed in mortal terror as the monster darted at him. With
all the strength of his tiny limbs he tried to run. But in a flash the
Snake had him by one ear and whipped around him with his coils to gloat
over the helpless little baby bunny he had secured for dinner.

"Mam-my--Mam-my," gasped poor little Raggylug as the cruel monster began
slowly choking him to death. Very soon the little one's cry would have
ceased, but bounding through the woods straight as an arrow came Mammy.
No longer a shy, helpless little Molly Cottontail, ready to fly from
a shadow: the mother's love was strong in her. The cry of her baby had
filled her with the courage of a hero, and--hop, she went over that
horrible reptile. Whack, she struck down at him with her sharp hind
claws as she passed, giving him such a stinging blow that he squirmed
with pain and hissed with anger.

"M-a-m-my," came feebly from the little one. And Mammy came leaping
again and again and struck harder and fiercer until the loathsome
reptile let go the little one's ear and tried to bite the old one as
she leaped over. But all he got was a mouthful of wool each time, and
Molly's fierce blows began to tell, as long bloody rips were torn in the
Black Snake's scaly armor.

Things were now looking bad for the Snake; and bracing himself for the
next charge, he lost his tight hold on Baby Bunny, who at once wriggled
out of the coils and away into the underbrush, breathless and terribly
frightened, but unhurt save that his left ear was much torn by the teeth
of that dreadful Serpent.

Molly now had gained all she wanted. She had no notion of fighting
for glory or revenge. Away she went into the woods and the little one
followed the shining beacon of her snow-white tail until she led him to
a safe corner of the Swamp.

II

Old Olifant's Swamp was a rough, brambly tract of second-growth woods,
with a marshy pond and a stream through the middle. A few ragged
remnants of the old forest still stood in it and a few of the still
older trunks were lying about as dead logs in the brushwood. The land
about the pond was of that willow-grown sedgy kind that cats and horses
avoid, but that cattle do not fear. The drier zones were overgrown with
briars and young trees. The outermost belt of all, that next the fields,
was of thrifty, gummy-trunked young pines whose living needles in air
and dead ones on earth offer so delicious an odor to the nostrils of the
passer-by, and so deadly a breath to those seedlings that would compete
with them for the worthless waste they grow on.

All around for a long way were smooth fields, and the only wild tracks
that ever crossed these fields were those of a thoroughly bad and
unscrupulous fox that lived only too near.

The chief indwellers of the swamp were Molly and Rag. Their nearest
neighbors were far away, and their nearest kin were dead. This was their
home, and here they lived together, and here Rag received the training
that made his success in life.

Molly was a good little mother and gave him a careful bringing up. The
first thing he learned was to lie low and say nothing. His adventure
with the snake taught him the wisdom of this. Rag never forgot that
lesson; afterward he did as he was told, and it made the other things
come more easily.

The second lesson he learned was 'freeze.' It grows out of the first,
and Rag was taught it as soon as he could run.

'Freezing' is simply doing nothing, turning into a statue. As soon as he
finds a foe near, no matter what he is doing, a well-trained Cottontail
keeps just as he is and stops all movement, for the creatures of the
woods are of the same color as the things in the woods and catch the eye
only while moving. So when enemies chance together, the one who first
sees the other can keep himself unseen by 'freezing' and thus have all
the advantage of choosing the time for attack or escape. Only those who
live in the woods know the importance of this; every wild creature and
every hunter must learn it; all learn to do it well, but not one of them
can beat Molly Cottontail in the doing. Rag's mother taught him this
trick by example. When the white cotton cushion that she always carried
to sit on went bobbing away through the woods, of course Rag ran his
hardest to keep up. But when Molly stopped and 'froze,' the natural wish
to copy made him do the same.

But the best lesson of all that Rag learned from his mother was the
secret of the Brierbrush. It is a very old secret now, and to make it
plain you must first hear why the Brierbrush quarrelled with the beasts.

Long ago the Roses used to grow on bushes that had no thorns. But the
Squirrels and Mice used to climb after them, the Cattle used to knock
them off with their horns, the Possum would twitch them off with his
long tail, and the Deer, with his sharp hoofs, would break them down.
So the Brierbrush armed itself with spikes to protect its roses and
declared eternal war on all creatures that climbed trees, or had horns,
or hoofs, or long tails. This left the Brierbrush at peace with none but
Molly Cottontail, who could not climb, was hornless, hoofless, and had
scarcely any tail at all.

In truth the Cottontail had never harmed a Brierrose, and having now so
many enemies the Rose took the Rabbit into especial friendship, and when
dangers are threatening poor Bunny he flies to the nearest Brierbrush,
certain that it is ready with a million keen and poisoned daggers to
defend him.

So the secret that Rag learned from his mother was, "The Brierbrush is
your best friend."

Much of the time that season was spent in learning the lay of the land,
and the bramble and brier mazes. And Rag learned them so well that he
could go all around the swamp by two different ways and never leave the
friendly briers at any place for more than five hops.

It is not long since the foes of the Cottontails were disgusted to find
that man had brought a new kind of bramble and planted it in long lines
throughout the country. It was so strong that no creatures could break
it down, and so sharp that the toughest skin was torn by it. Each year
there was more of it and each year it became a more serious matter to
the wild creatures. But Molly Cottontail had no fear of it. She was not
brought up in the briers for nothing. Dogs and foxes, cattle and sheep,
and even man himself might be torn by those fearful spikes: but Molly
understands it and lives and thrives under it. And the further it
spreads the more safe country there is for the Cottontail. And the name
of this new and dreaded bramble is--the barbed-wire fence.

 III

Molly had no other children to look after now, so Rag had all her
care. He was unusually quick and bright as well as strong, and he had
uncommonly good chances; so he got on remarkably well.

All the season she kept him busy learning the tricks of the trail, and
what to eat and drink and what not to touch. Day by day she worked
to train him; little by little she taught him, putting into his mind
hundreds of ideas that her own life or early training had stored in
hers, and so equipped him with the knowledge that makes life possible to
their kind.

Close by her side in the clover-field or the thicket he would sit and
copy her when she wobbled her nose 'to keep her smeller clear,' and pull
the bite from her mouth or taste her lips to make sure he was getting
the same kind of fodder. Still copying her, he learned to comb his ears
with his claws and to dress his coat and to bite the burrs out of his
vest and socks. He learned, too, that nothing but clear dewdrops from
the briers were fit for a rabbit to drink, as water which has once
touched the earth must surely bear some taint. Thus he began the study
of woodcraft, the oldest of all sciences.

As soon as Rag was big enough to go out alone, his mother taught him the
signal code. Rabbits telegraph each other by thumping on the ground with
their hind feet. Along the ground sound carries far; a thump that at six
feet from the earth is not heard at twenty yards will, near the ground,
be heard at least one hundred yards. Rabbits have very keen hearing, and
so might hear this same thump at two hundred yards, and that would reach
from end to end of Olifant's Swamp. A single thump means 'look out'
or 'freeze.' A slow thump thump means 'come.' A fast thump thump means
'danger'; and a very fast thump thump thump means 'run for dear life.'

At another time, when the weather was fine and the bluejays were
quarrelling among themselves, a sure sign that no dangerous foe was
about, Rag began a new study. Molly, by flattening her ears, gave
the sign to squat. Then she ran far away in the thicket and gave the
thumping signal for 'come.' Rag set out at a run to the place but could
not find Molly. He thumped, but got no reply. Setting carefully about
his search he found her foot-scent and, following this strange guide,
that the beasts all know so well and man does not know at all, he worked
out the trail and found her where she was hidden. Thus he got his first
lesson in trailing, and thus it was that the games of hide and seek they
played became the schooling for the serious chase of which there was so
much in his after life.

Before that first season of schooling was over he had learnt all the
principal tricks by which a rabbit lives and in not a few problems
showed himself a veritable genius.

He was an adept at 'tree,' 'dodge,' and 'squat,' he could play
'log-lump,' with 'wind' and 'baulk' with 'back-track' so well that he
scarcely needed any other tricks. He had not yet tried it, but he knew
just how to play 'barb-wire,' which is a new trick of the brilliant
order; he had made a special study of 'sand,' which burns up all scent,
and was deeply versed in 'change-off,' 'fence,' and 'double' as well as
'hole-up,' which is a trick requiring longer notice, and yet he never
forgot that 'lie-low' is the beginning of all wisdom and 'brierbrush'
the only trick that is always safe.

He was taught the signs by which to know all his foes and then the way
to baffle them. For hawks, owls, foxes, hounds, curs, minks, weasels,
cats, skunks, coons, and--men, each have a different plan of pursuit,
and for each and all of these evils he was taught a remedy.

And for knowledge of the enemy's approach he learnt to depend first
on himself and his mother, and then on the bluejay. "Never neglect the
bluejay's warning," said Molly; "he is a mischief-maker, a marplot, and
a thief all the time, but nothing escapes him. He wouldn't mind harming
us, but he cannot, thanks to the briers, and his enemies are ours, so
it is well to heed him. If the woodpecker cries a warning you can trust
him, he is honest; but he is a fool beside the bluejay, and though the
bluejay often tells lies for mischief you are safe to believe him when
he brings ill news."

The barb-wire trick takes a deal of nerve and the best of legs. It was
long before Rag ventured to play it, but as he came to his full powers
it became one of his favorites.

"It's fine play for those who can do it," said Molly. "First you lead
off your dog on a straightaway and warm him up a bit by nearly letting
him catch you. Then keeping just one hop ahead, you lead him at a long
slant full tilt into a breast-high barb-wire. I've seen many a dog and
fox crippled, and one big hound killed outright this way. But I've also
seen more than one rabbit lose his life in trying it."

Rag early learnt what some rabbits never learn at all, that 'hole-up' is
not such a fine ruse as it seems; it may be the certain safety of a wise
rabbit, but soon or late is a sure death-trap to a fool. A young rabbit
always thinks of it first, an old rabbit never tries it till all others
fail. It means escape from a man or dog, a fox or a bird of prey, but it
means sudden death if the foe is a ferret, mink, skunk, or weasel.

There were but two ground-holes in the Swamp. One on the Sunning Bank,
which was a dry sheltered knoll in the South-end. It was open and
sloping to the sun, and here on fine days the Cottontails took their
sun-baths. They stretched out among the fragrant pine needles and
winter-green in odd cat-like positions, and turned slowly over as though
roasting and wishing all sides well done. And they blinked and panted,
and squirmed as if in dreadful pain; yet this was one of the keenest
enjoyments they knew.

Just over the brow of the knoll was a large pine stump. Its grotesque
roots wriggled out above the yellow sand-bank like dragons, and under
their protecting claws a sulky old woodchuck had digged a den long ago.

He became more sour and ill-tempered as weeks went by, and one day
waited to quarrel with Olifant's dog instead of going in so that Molly
Cottontail was able to take possession of the den an hour later.

This, the pine-root hole, was afterward very coolly taken by a
self-sufficient young skunk who with less valor might have enjoyed
greater longevity, for he imagined--that even man with a gun would fly
from him. Instead of keeping Molly from the den for good, therefore, his
reign, like that of a certain Hebrew king, was over in seven days.

The other, the fern-hole, was in a fern thicket next the clover field.
It was small and damp, and useless except as a last retreat. It also
was the work of a woodchuck, a well-meaning friendly neighbor, but
a harebrained youngster whose skin in the form of a whiplash was now
developing higher horse-power in the Olifant working team.

"Simple justice," said the old man, "for that hide was raised on stolen
feed that the team would a' turned into horse-power anyway."

The Cottontails were now sole owners of the holes, and did not go near
them when they could help it, lest anything like a path should be made
that might betray these last retreats to an enemy. There was also the
hollow hickory, which, though nearly fallen, was still green, and had
the great advantage of being open at both ends. This had long been the
residence of one Lotor, a solitary old coon whose ostensible calling was
frog-hunting, and who, like the monks of old, was supposed to abstain
from all flesh food. But it was shrewdly suspected that he needed but
a chance to indulge in a diet of rabbit. When at last one dark night he
was killed while raiding Olifant's henhouse, Molly, so far from feeling
a pang of regret, took possession of his cosy nest with a sense of
unbounded relief.

IV

Bright August sunlight was flooding the Swamp in the morning. Everything
seemed soaking in the warm radiance. A little brown swamp-sparrow was
teetering on a long rush in the pond. Beneath him there were open spaces
of dirty water that brought down a few scraps of the blue sky, and
worked it and the yellow duck-weed into an exquisite mosaic, with a
little wrong-side picture of the bird in the middle. On the bank behind
was a great vigorous growth of golden green skunk-cabbage, that cast
dense shadow over the brown swamp tussocks.

The eyes of the swamp-sparrow were not trained to take in the color
glories, but he saw what we might have missed; that two of the
numberless leafy brown bumps under the broad cabbage-leaves were
furry living things, with noses that never ceased to move up and down,
whatever else was still.

It was Molly and Rag. They were stretched under the skunk-cabbage, not
because they liked its rank smell, but because the winged ticks could
not stand it at all and so left them in peace.

Rabbits have no set time for lessons, they are always learning; but what
the lesson is depends on the present stress, and that must arrive before
it is known. They went to this place for a quiet rest, but had not been
long there when suddenly a warning note from the ever-watchful bluejay
caused Molly's nose and ears to go up and her tail to tighten to her
back. Away across the Swamp was Olifant's big black and white dog,
coming straight toward them.

"Now," said Molly, "squat while I go and keep that fool out of
mischief." Away she went to meet him and she fearlessly dashed across
the dog's path.

"Bow-ow-ow," he fairly yelled as he bounded after Molly, but she kept
just beyond his reach and led him where the million daggers struck fast
and deep, till his tender ears were scratched raw, and guided him at
last plump into a hidden barbed-wire fence, where he got such a gashing
that he went homeward howling with pain. After making a short double,
a loop and a baulk in case the dog should come back, Molly returned to
find that Rag in his eagerness was standing bolt upright and craning his
neck to see the sport.

This disobedience made her so angry that she struck him with her hind
foot and knocked him over in the mud.

One day as they fed on the near clover field a red-tailed hawk came
swooping after them. Molly kicked up her hind legs to make fun of him
and skipped into the briers along one of their old pathways, where
of course the hawk could not follow. It was the main path from the
Creekside Thicket to the Stove-pipe brushpile. Several creepers had
grown across it, and Molly, keeping one eye on the hawk, set to work and
cut the creepers off. Rag watched her, then ran on ahead, and cut some
more that were across the path. "That's right," said Molly, "always keep
the runways clear, you will need them often enough. Not wide, but clear.
Cut everything like a creeper across them and some day you will find you
have cut a snare." "A what?" asked Rag, as he scratched his right ear
with his left hind foot.

"A snare is something that looks like a creeper, but it doesn't grow and
it's worse than all the hawks in the world," said Molly, glancing at the
now far-away red-tail, "for there it hides night and day in the runway
till the chance to catch you comes."

"I don't believe it could catch me," said Rag, with the pride of youth
as he rose on his heels to rub his chin and whiskers high up on a smooth
sapling. Rag did not know he was doing this, but his mother saw and knew
it was a sign, like the changing of a boy's voice, that her little one
was no longer a baby but would soon be a grown-up Cottontail.

V

There is magic in running water. Who does not know it and feel it? The
railroad builder fearlessly throws his bank across the wide bog or lake,
or the sea itself, but the tiniest ril of running water he treats with
great respect, studies its wish and its way and gives it all it seems to
ask. The thirst-parched traveller in the poisonous alkali deserts holds
back in deadly fear from the sedgy ponds till he finds one down whose
centre is a thin, clear line, and a faint flow, the sign of running,
living water, and joyfully he drinks.

There is magic in running water, no evil spell can cross it. Tam
O'Shanter proved its potency in time of sorest need. The wild-wood
creature with its deadly foe following tireless on the trail scent,
realizes its nearing doom and feels an awful spell. Its strength is
spent, its every trick is tried in vain till the good Angel leads it
to the water, the running, living water, and dashing in it follows the
cooling stream, and then with force renewed--takes to the woods again.

There is magic in running water. The hounds come to the very spot and
halt and cast about; and halt and cast in vain. Their spell is broken by
the merry stream, and the wild thing lives its life.

And this was one of the great secrets that Raggylug learned from his
mother--"after the Brierrose, the Water is your friend."

One hot, muggy night in August, Molly led Rag through the woods. The
cotton-white cushion she wore under her tail twinkled ahead and was his
guiding lantern, though it went out as soon as she stopped and sat on
it. After a few runs and stops to listen, they came to the edge of the
pond. The hylas in the trees above them were singing 'sleep, sleep,'
and away out on a sunken log in the deep water, up to his chin in the
cooling bath, a bloated bullfrog was singing the praises of a 'jug o'
rum.'

"Follow me still," said Molly, in rabbit, and 'flop' she went into the
pond and struck out for the sunken log in the middle. Rag flinched but
plunged with a little 'ouch,' gasping and wobbling his nose very fast
but still copying his mother. The same movements as on land sent him
through the water, and thus he found he could swim, On he went till he
reached the sunken log and scrambled up by his dripping mother on the
high dry end, with a rushy screen around them and the Water that
tells no tales. After this on warm black nights when that old fox from
Springfield came prowling through the Swamp, Rag would note the place of
the bullfrog's voice, for in case of direst need it might be a guide
to safety. And thenceforth the words of the song that the bullfrog sang
were 'Come, come, in danger come.'

This was the latest study that Rag took up with his mother--it was
really a post-graduate course, for many little rabbits never learn it at
all.

VI

No wild animal dies of old age. Its life has soon or late a tragic end.
It is only a question of how long it can hold out against its foes. But
Rag's life was proof that once a rabbit passes out of his youth he is
likely to outlive his prime and be killed only in the last third of
life, the downhill third we call old age.

The Cottontails had enemies on every side. Their daily life was a
series of escapes. For dogs, foxes, cats, skunks, coons, weasels, minks,
snakes, hawks, owls, and men, and even insects were all plotting to kill
them. They had hundreds of adventures, and at least once a day they had
to fly for their lives and save themselves by their legs and wits.

More than once that hateful fox from Springfield drove them to taking
refuge under the wreck of a barbedwire hog-pen by the spring. But once
there they could look calmly at him while he spiked his legs in vain
attempts to reach them.

Once or twice Rag when hunted had played off the hound against a skunk
that had seemed likely to be quite as dangerous as the dog.

Once he was caught alive by a hunter who had a hound and a ferret to
help him. But Rag had the luck to escape next day, with a yet deeper
distrust of ground holes. He was several times run into the water by the
cat, and many times was chased by hawks and owls, but for each kind
of danger there was a safeguard. His mother taught him the principal
dodges, and he improved on them and made many new ones as he grew older.
And the older and wiser he grew the less he trusted to his legs, and the
more to his wits for safety.

Ranger was the name of a young hound in the neighborhood. To train him
his master used to put him on the trail of one of the Cottontails. It
was nearly always Rag that they ran, for the young buck enjoyed the runs
as much as they did, the spice of danger in them being just enough for
zest. He would say:

"Oh, mother! here comes the dog again, I must have a run to-day."

"You are too bold, Raggy, my son!" she might reply. "I fear you will
run once too often."

"But, mother, it is such glorious fun to tease that fool dog, and it's
all good training. I'll thump if I am too hard pressed, then you can
come and change off while I get my second wind."

On he would come, and Ranger would take the trail and follow till Rag
got tired of it. Then he either sent a thumping telegram for help, which
brought Molly to take charge of the dog, or he got rid of the dog by
some clever trick. A description of one of these shows how well Rag had
learned the arts of the woods.

He knew that his scent lay best near the ground, and was strongest when
he was warm. So if he could get off the ground, and be left in peace for
half an hour to cool off, and for the trail to stale, he knew he
would be safe. When, therefore, he tired of the chase, he made for the
Creekside brier-patch, where he 'wound'--that is, zig-zagged--till he
left a course so crooked that the dog was sure to be greatly delayed in
working it out. He then went straight to D in the woods, passing one hop
to windward of the high log E. Stopping at D, he followed his back trail
to F; here he leaped aside and ran toward G. Then, returning on his
trail to J, he waited till the hound passed on his trail at I. Rag then
got back on his old trail at H, and followed it to E, where, with a
scentbaulk or great leap aside, he reached the high log, and running to
its higher end, he sat like a bump.

Ranger lost much time in the bramble maze, and the scent was very poor
when he got it straightened out, and came to D. Here he began to circle
to pick it up, and after losing much time, struck the trail which ended
suddenly at G. Again he was at fault, and had to circle to find the
trail. Wider and wider circles, until at last, he passed right under the
log Rag was on. But a cold scent, on a cold day, does not go downward
much. Rag never budged nor winked, and the hound passed.

Again the dog came round. This time he crossed the low part of the log,
and stopped to smell it. 'Yes, clearly it was rabbity,' but it was a
stale scent now; still he mounted the log.

It was a trying moment for Rag, as the great hound came sniff-sniffing
along the log. But his nerve did not forsake him; the wind was right; he
had his mind made up to bolt as soon as Ranger came half way up. But he
didn't come. A yellow cur would have seen the rabbit sitting there, but
the hound did not, and the scent seemed stale, so he leaped off the log,
and Rag had won.

VII

Rag had never seen any other rabbit than his mother. Indeed he had
scarcely thought about there being any other. He was more and more away
from her now, and yet he never felt lonely, for rabbits do not hanker
for company. But one day in December, while he was among the red dogwood
brush, cutting a new path to the great Creekside thicket, he saw all
at once against the sky over the Sunning Bank the head and ears of a
strange rabbit. The newcomer had the air of a well-pleased discoverer
and soon came hopping Rag's way along one of his paths into his Swamp.
A new feeling rushed over him, that boiling mixture of anger and hatred
called jealousy.

The stranger stopped at one of Rag's rubbing-trees--that is, a tree
against which he used to stand on his heels and rub his chin as far up
as he could reach. He thought he did this simply because he liked it;
but all buckrabbits do so, and several ends are served. It makes the
tree rabbity, so that other rabbits know that this swamp already belongs
to a rabbit family and is not open for settlement. It also lets the next
one know by the scent if the last caller was an acquaintance, and the
height from the ground of the rubbing-places shows how tall the rabbit
is.

Now to his disgust Rag noticed that the new-comer was a head taller
than himself, and a big, stout buck at that. This was a wholly new
experience and filled Rag with a wholly new feeling. The spirit of
murder entered his heart; he chewed very hard at nothing in his mouth,
and hopping forward onto a smooth piece of hard ground he struck slowly:

'Thump--thump--thump,' which is a rabbit telegram for 'Get out of my
swamp, or fight.'

The new-comer made a big V with his ears, sat upright for a few
seconds, then, dropping on his fore-feet, sent along the ground a
louder, stronger, 'Thump--thump--thump.'

And so war was declared.

They came together by short runs side-wise, each one trying to get the
wind of the other and watching for a chance advantage. The stranger was
a big, heavy buck with plenty of muscle, but one or two trifles such as
treading on a turnover and failing to close when Rag was on low ground
showed that he had not much cunning and counted on winning his battles
by his weight. On he came at last and Rag met him like a little fury. As
they came together they leaped up and struck out with their hind feet.
Thud, thud they came, and down went poor little Rag. In a moment the
stranger was on him with his teeth and Rag was bitten, and lost several
tufts of hair before he could get up. But he was swift of foot and got
out of reach. Again he charged and again he was knocked down and bitten
severely. He was no match for his foe, and it soon became a question of
saving his own life.

Hurt as he was, he sprang away, with the stranger in full chase, and
bound to kill him as well as to oust him from the Swamp where he was
born. Rag's legs were good and so was his wind. The stranger was big and
so heavy that he soon gave up the chase, and it was well for poor Rag
that he did, for he was getting stiff from his wounds as well as tired.
From that day began a reign of terror for Rag. His training had been
against owls, dogs, weasels, men, and so on, but what to do when chased
by another rabbit, he did not know. All he knew was to lie low till he
was found, then run.

Poor little Molly was completely terrorized; she could not help Rag and
sought only to hide. But the big buck soon found her out. She tried to
run from him, but she was not now so swift as Rag. The stranger made no
attempt to kill her, but he made love to her, and because she hated
him and tried to get away, he treated her shamefully. Day after day he
worried her by following her about, and often, furious at her lasting
hatred, he would knock her down and tear out mouthfuls of her soft fur
till his rage cooled somewhat, when he would let her go for a while. But
his fixed purpose was to kill Rag, whose escape seemed hopeless. There
was no other swamp he could go to, and whenever he took a nap now he had
to be ready at any moment to dash for his life. A dozen times a day
the big stranger came creeping up to where he slept, but each time the
watchful Rag awoke in time to escape. To escape yet not to escape. He
saved his life indeed, but oh! what a miserable life it had become. How
maddening to be thus helpless, to see his little mother daily beaten
and torn, as well as to see all his favorite feeding-grounds, the cosy
nooks, and the pathways he had made with so much labor, forced from him
by this hateful brute. Unhappy Rag realized that to the victor belong
the spoils, and he hated him more than ever he did fox or ferret.

How was it to end? He was wearing out with running and watching and bad
food, and little Molly's strength and spirit were breaking down under
the long persecution. The stranger was ready to go to all lengths to
destroy poor Rag, and at last stooped to the worst crime known among
rabbits. However much they may hate each other, all good rabbits forget
their feuds when their common enemy appears. Yet one day when a great
goshawk came swooping over the Swamp, the stranger, keeping well under
cover himself, tried again and again to drive Rag into the open.

Once or twice the hawk nearly had him, but still the briers saved him,
and it was only when the big buck himself came near being caught that he
gave it up. And again Rag escaped, but-was no better off. He made up his
mind to leave, with his mother, if possible, next night and go into the
world in quest of some new home when he heard old Thunder, the hound,
sniffing and searching about the outskirts of the swamp, and he resolved
on playing a desperate game. He deliberately crossed the hound's view,
and the chase that then began was fast and furious. Thrice around the
Swamp they went till Rag had made sure that his mother was hidden safely
and that his hated foe was in his usual nest. Then right into that nest
and plump over him he jumped, giving him a rap with one hind foot as he
passed over his head.

"You miserable fool, I'll kill you yet," cried the stranger, and up he
jumped only to find himself between Rag and the dog and heir to all the
peril of the chase.

On came the hound baying hotly on the straight-away scent. The buck's
weight and size were great advantages in a rabbit fight, but now they
were fatal. He did not know many tricks. Just the simple ones like
'double,' 'wind,' and 'hole-up,' that every baby Bunny knows. But the
chase was too close for doubling and winding, and he didn't know where
the holes were.

It was a straight race. The brierrose, kind to all rabbits alike,
did its best, but it was no use. The baying of the hound was fast and
steady. The crashing of the brush and the yelping of the hound each time
the briers tore his tender ears were borne to the two rabbits where
they crouched in hiding. But suddenly these sounds stopped, there was a
scuffle, then loud and terrible screaming. Rag knew what it meant and it
sent a shiver through him, but he soon forgot that when all was over and
rejoiced to be once more the master of the dear old Swamp.

VIII

Old Olifant had doubtless a right to burn all those brush-piles in
the east and south of the Swamp and to clear up the wreck of the old
barbed-wire hog-pen just below the spring. But it was none the less
hard on Rag and his mother. The first were their various residences and
outposts, and the second their grand fastness and safe retreat.

They had so long held the Swamp and felt it to be their very own in
every part and suburb--including Olifant's grounds and buildings--that
they would have resented the appearance of another rabbit even about the
adjoining barnyard.

Their claim, that of long, successful occupancy, was exactly the same as
that by which most nations hold their land, and it would be hard to find
a better right.

During the time of the January thaw the Olifants had cut the rest of the
large wood about the pond and curtailed the Cottontails' domain on all
sides. But they still clung to the dwindling Swamp, for it was their
home and they were loath to move to foreign parts. Their life of daily
perils went on, but they were still fleet of foot, long of wind, and
bright of wit. Of late they had been somewhat troubled by a mink that
had wandered upstream to their quiet nook. A little judicious guidance
had transferred the uncomfortable visitor to Olifant's hen-house. But
they were not yet quite sure that he had been properly looked after.
So for the present they gave up using the ground-holes, which were, of
course, dangerous blind-alleys, and stuck closer than ever to the briers
and the brush-piles that were left.

That first snow had quite gone and the weather was bright and warm until
now. Molly, feeling a touch of rheumatism, was somewhere in the lower
thicket seeking a teaberry tonic. Rag was sitting in the weak sunlight
on a bank in the east side. The smoke from the familiar gable chimney
of Olifant's house came fitfully drifting a pale blue haze through the
underwoods and showing as a dull brown against the brightness of the
sky. The sun-gilt gable was cut off midway by the banks of brier brush,
that, purple in shadow, shone like rods of blazing crimson and gold in
the light. Beyond the house the barn with its gable and roof, new gift
at the house, stood up like a Noah's ark.

The sounds that came from it, and yet more the delicious smell that
mingled with the smoke, told Rag that the animals were being fed cabbage
in the yard. Rag's mouth watered at the idea of the feast. He blinked and
blinked as he snuffed its odorous promises, for he loved cabbage dearly.
But then he had been to the barnyard the night before after a few paltry
clover-tops, and no wise rabbit would go two nights running to the same
place.

Therefore he did the wise thing. He moved across where he could not
smell the cabbage and made his supper of a bundle of hay that had been
blown from the stack. Later, when about to settle for the night, he was
joined by Molly, who had taken her teaberry and then eaten her frugal
meal of sweet birch near the Sunning Bank.

Meanwhile the sun had gone about his business elsewhere, taking all
his gold and glory with him. Off in the east a big black shutter came
pushing up and rising higher and higher; it spread over the whole sky,
shut out all light and left the world a very gloomy place indeed. Then
another mischief-maker, the wind, taking advantage of the sun's absence,
came on the scene and set about brewing trouble. The weather turned
colder and colder; it seemed worse than when the ground had been
covered with snow.

"Isn't this terribly cold? How I wish we had our stove-pipe brush-pile,"
said Rag.

"A good night for the pine-root hole," replied Molly, "but we have not
yet seen the pelt of that mink on the end of the barn, and it is not
safe till we do."

The hollow hickory was gone--in fact at this very moment its trunk,
lying in the wood-yard, was harboring the mink they feared. So the
Cottontails hopped to the south side of the pond and, choosing a
brush-pile, they crept under and snuggled down for the night, facing
the wind but with their noses in different directions so as to go out
different ways in case of alarm. The wind blew harder and colder as the
hours went by, and about midnight a fine icy snow came ticking down on
the dead leaves and hissing through the brush-heap. It might seem a poor
night for hunting, but that old fox from Springfield was out. He came
pointing up the wind in the shelter of the Swamp and chanced in the lee
of the brush-pile, where he scented the sleeping Cotton-tails. He halted
for a moment, then came stealthily sneaking up toward the brush under
which his nose told him the rabbits were crouching. The noise of the
wind and the sleet enabled him to come quite close before Molly
heard the faint crunch of a dry leaf under his paw. She touched Rag's
whiskers, and both were fully awake just as the fox sprang on them; but
they always slept with their legs ready for a jump. Molly darted out
into the blinding storm. The fox missed his spring but followed like a
racer, while Rag dashed off to one side.

There was only one road for Molly; that was straight up the wind, and
bounding for her life she gained a little over the unfrozen mud that
would not carry the fox, till she reached the margin of the pond. No
chance to turn now, on she must go.

Splash! splash! through the weeds she went, then plunge into the deep
water.

And plunge went the fox close behind. But it was too much for Reynard
on such a night. He turned back, and Molly, seeing only one course,
struggled through the reeds into the deep water and struck out for the
other shore. But there was a strong headwind. The little waves, icy
cold, broke over her head as she swam, and the water was full of snow
that blocked her way like soft ice, or floating mud. The dark line of
the other shore seemed far, far away, with perhaps the fox waiting for
her there.

But she laid her ears flat to be out of the gale, and bravely put forth
all her strength with wind and tide against her. After a long, weary
swim in the cold water, she had nearly reached the farther reeds when a
great mass of floating snow barred her road; then the wind on the bank
made strange, fox-like sounds that robbed her of all force, and she was
drifted far backward before she could get free from the floating bar.

Again she struck out, but slowly--oh so slowly now. And when at last she
reached the lee of the tall reeds, her limbs were numbed, her strength
spent, her brave little heart was sinking, and she cared no more whether
the fox were there or not. Through the reeds she did indeed pass, but
once in the weeds her course wavered and slowed, her feeble strokes
no longer sent her landward, the ice forming around her stopped her
altogether. In a little while the cold, weak limbs ceased to move, the
furry nose-tip of the little mother Cottontail wobbled no more, and the
soft brown eyes were closed in death.

But there was no fox waiting to tear her with ravenous jaws. Rag had
escaped the first onset of the foe, and as soon as he regained his wits
he came running back to change-off and so help his mother. He met the
old fox going round the pond to meet Molly and led him far and away,
then dismissed him with a barbed-wire gash on his head, and came to the
bank and sought about and trailed and thumped, but all his searching was
in vain; he could not find his little mother. He never saw her again,
and he never knew whither she went, for she slept her never-waking sleep
in the ice-arms of her friend the Water that tells no tales.

Poor little Molly Cottontail! She was a true heroine, yet only one of
unnumbered millions that without a thought of heroism have lived and
done their best in their little world, and died. She fought a good fight
in the battle of life. She was good stuff; the stuff that never dies.
For flesh of her flesh and brain of her brain was Rag. She lives in him,
and through him transmits a finer fibre to her race.

And Rag still lives in the Swamp. Old Olifant died that winter, and the
unthrifty sons ceased to clear the Swamp or mend the wire fences. Within
a single year it was a wilder place than ever; fresh trees and brambles
grew, and falling wires made many Cottontail castles and last retreats
that dogs and foxes dared not storm. And there to this day lives Rag. He
is a big strong buck now and fears no rivals. He has a large family of
his own, and a pretty brown wife that he got I know not where. There,
no doubt, he and his children's children will flourish for many years
to come, and there you may see them any sunny evening if you have learnt
their signal 5 code, and, choosing a good spot on the ground, know just
how and when to thump it.




                    BINGO

     "Ye Franckelyn's dogge leaped over a style,
     And yey yclept him lyttel Bingo,
      B-I-N-G-O,

     And yey yclept him lyttel Bingo.
     Ye Franchelyn's wyfe brewed nutte-brown ayle,

     And he yclept ytte rare-goode Stingo,
      S-T-I-N-G-O,

     And he yclept ytte rare goode Stingo.
     Now ys not this a prettye rhyme,
     I thynke ytte ys bye Jingo,
      J-I-N-G-O,

     I thynke ytte ys bye Jingo."




BINGO, The Story of My Dog

I

IT WAS EARLY in November, 1882, and the Manitoba winter had just set in.
I was tilting back in my chair for a few lazy moments after breakfast,
idly alternating my gaze from the one window-pane of our shanty, through
which was framed a bit of the prairie and the end of our cowshed, to the
old rhyme of the 'Franckelyn's dogge' pinned on the logs near by. But
the dreamy mixture of rhyme and view was quickly dispelled by the sight
of a large gray animal dashing across the prairie into the cowshed, with
a smaller black and white animal in hot pursuit.

"A wolf," I exclaimed, and seizing a rifle dashed out to help the dog.
But before I could get there they had left the stable, and after a
short run over the snow the wolf again turned at bay, and the dog, our
neighbor's collie, circled about watching his chance to snap.

I fired a couple of long shots, which had the effect only of setting
them off again over the prairie. After another run this matchless dog
closed and seized the wolf by the haunch, but again retreated to avoid
the fierce return chop. Then there was another stand at bay, and again a
race over the snow. Every few hundred yards this scene was repeated, the
dog managing so that each fresh rush should be toward the settlement,
while the wolf vainly tried to break back toward the dark belt of
trees in the east. At last after a mile of this fighting and running I
overtook them, and the dog, seeing that he now had good backing, closed
in for the finish.

After a few seconds the whirl of struggling animals resolved itself into
a wolf, on his back, with a bleeding collie gripping his throat, and
it was now easy for me to step up and end the fight by putting a ball
through the wolf's head.

Then, when this dog of marvellous wind saw that his foe was dead, he
gave him no second glance, but set out at a lope for a farm four miles
across the snow where he had left his master when first the wolf
was started. He was a wonderful dog, and even if I had not come he
undoubtedly would have killed the wolf alone, as I learned he had
already done with others of the kind, in spite of the fact that the
wolf, though of the smaller or prairie race, was much larger than
himself. I was filled with admiration for the dog's prowess and at once
sought to buy him at any price. The scornful reply of his owner was,
"Why don't you try to buy one of the children?"

Since Frank was not in the market I was obliged to content myself with
the next best thing, one of his alleged progeny. That is, a son of his
wife. This probable offspring of an illustrious sire was a roly-poly
ball of black fur that looked more like a long-tailed bearcub than a
puppy. But he had some tan markings like those on Frank's coat,
that were, I hoped, guarantees of future greatness, and also a very
characteristic ring of white that he always wore on his muzzle.

Having got possession of his person, the next thing was to find him
a name. Surely this puzzle was already solved. The rhyme of the
'Franckelyn's dogge' was in-built with the foundation of our
acquaintance, so with adequate pomp 'we yclept him little Bingo.'

II

The rest of that winter Bingo spent in our shanty, living the life of a
blubbery, fat, well-meaning, ill-doing puppy; gorging himself with food
and growing bigger and clumsier each day. Even sad experience failed
to teach him that he must keep his nose out of the rat trap. His most
friendly overtures to the cat were wholly misunderstood and resulted
only in an armed neutrality that varied by occasional reigns of terror,
continued to the end; which came when Bingo, who early showed a mind of
his own, got a notion for sleeping at the barn and avoiding the shanty
altogether.

When the spring came I set about his serious education. After much pains
on my behalf and many pains on his, he learned to go at the word in
quest of our old yellow cow, that pastured at will on the unfenced
prairie.

Once he had learned his business, he became very fond of it and nothing
pleased him more than an order to go and fetch the cow. Away he would
dash, barking with pleasure and leaping high in the air that he might
better scan the plain for his victim. In a short time he would return
driving her at full gallop before him, and gave her no peace until,
puffing and blowing, she was safely driven into the farthest corner of
her stable.

Less energy on his part would have been more satisfactory, but we bore
with him until he grew so fond of this semi-daily hunt that he began to
bring 'old Dunne' without being told. And at length not once or twice
but a dozen times a day this energetic cowherd would sally forth on his
own responsibility and drive the cow home to the stable.

At last things came to such a pass that whenever he felt like taking a
little exercise, or had a few minutes of spare time, or even happened to
think of it, Bingo would sally forth at racing speed over the plain
and a few minutes later return, driving the unhappy yellow cow at full
gallop before him.

At first this did not seem very bad, as it kept the cow from straying
too far; but soon it was seen that it hindered her feeding. She became
thin and gave less milk; it seemed to weigh on her mind too, as she
was always watching nervously for that hateful dog, and in the mornings
would hang around the stable as though afraid to venture off and subject
herself at once to an onset.

This was going too far. All attempts to make Bingo more moderate in his
pleasure were failures, so he was compelled to give it up altogether.
After this, though he dared not bring her home, he continued to show his
interest by lying at her stable door while she was being milked.

As the summer came on the mosquitoes became a dreadful plague, and the
consequent vicious switching of Dunne's tail at milking-time was even
more annoying than the mosquitoes.

Fred, the brother who did the milking, was of an inventive as well as
an impatient turn of mind, and he devised a simple plan to stop the
switching. He fastened a brick to the cow's tail, then set blithely
about his work assured of unusual comfort while the rest of us looked on
in doubt.

Suddenly through the mist of mosquitoes came a dull whack and an
outburst of 'language.' The cow went on placidly chewing till Fred got
on his feet and furiously attacked her with the milking-stool. It was
bad enough to be whacked on the ear with a brick by a stupid old cow,
but the uproarious enjoyment and ridicule of the bystanders made it
unendurable.

Bingo, hearing the uproar, and divining that he was needed, rushed in
and attacked Dunne on the other side. Before the affair quieted down the
milk was spilt, the pail and stool were broken, and the cow and the dog
severely beaten.

Poor Bingo could not understand it at all. He had long ago learned to
despise that cow, and now in utter disgust he decided to forsake even
her stable door, and from that time be attached himself exclusively to
the horses and their stable.

The cattle were mine, the horses were my brother's, and in transferring
his allegiance from the cow-stable to the horse-stable Bingo seemed to
give me up too, and anything like daily companionship ceased, and yet,
whenever any emergency arose Bingo turned to me and I to him, and both
seemed to feel that the bond between man and dog is one that lasts as
long as life.

The only other occasion on which Bingo acted as cowherd was in the
autumn of the same year at the annual Carberry Fair. Among the dazzling
inducements to enter one's stock there was, in addition to a prospect of
glory, a cash prize of 'two dollars' for the 'best collie in training'.

Misled by a false friend, I entered Bingo, and early on the day fixed,
the cow was driven to the prairie just outside of the village. When the
time came she was pointed out to Bingo and the word given--'Go fetch the
cow.' It was the intention, of course, that he should bring her to me at
the judge's stand.

But the animals knew better. They hadn't rehearsed all summer for
nothing. When Dunne saw Bingo's careering form she knew that her only
hope for safety was to get into her stable, and Bingo was equally sure
that his sole mission in life was to quicken her pace in that direction.
So off they raced over the prairie, like a wolf after a deer, and
heading straight toward their home two miles way, they disappeared from
view.

That was the last that judge or jury ever saw of dog or cow. The prize
was awarded to the only other entry.

III

Bingo's loyalty to the horses was quite remarkable; by day he trotted
beside them, and by night he slept at the stable door. Where the team
went Bingo went, and nothing kept him away from them. This interesting
assumption of ownership lent the greater significance to the following
circumstance.

I was not superstitious, and up to this time had had no faith in omens,
but was now deeply impressed by a strange occurrence in which Bingo took
a leading part. There were but two of us now living on the De Winton
Farm. One morning my brother set out for Boggy Creek for a load of hay.
It was a long day's journey there and back, and he made an early start.
Strange to tell, Bingo for once in his life did not follow the team. My
brother called to him, but still he stood at a safe distance, and eyeing
the team askance, refused to stir. Suddenly he raised his nose in the
air and gave vent to a long, melancholy howl. He watched the wagon out
of sight, and even followed for a hundred yards or so, raising his voice
from time to time in the most doleful howlings.

All that day he stayed about the barn, the only time that he was
willingly separated from the horses, and at intervals howled a very
death dirge. I was alone, and the dog's behavior inspired me with an
awful foreboding of calamity, that weighed upon us more and more as the
hours passed away.

About six o'clock Bingo's howlings became unbearable, so that for lack
of a better thought I threw something at him, and ordered him away. But
oh, the feeling of horror that filled me! Why did I let my brother go
away alone? Should I ever again see him alive? I might have known from
the dog's actions that something dreadful was about to happen.

At length the hour for his return arrived, and there was John on his
load. I took charge of the horses, vastly relieved, and with an air of
assumed unconcern, asked, "All right?"

"Right," was the laconic answer.

Who now can say that there is nothing in omens?

And yet when, long afterward, I told this to one skilled in the occult,
he looked grave, and said, "Bingo always turned to you in a crisis?"

"Yes."

"Then do not smile. It was you that were in danger that day; he stayed
and saved your life, though you never knew from what."

IV

Early in the spring I had begun Bingo's education. Very shortly
afterward he began mine.

Midway on the two-mile stretch of prairie that lay between our shanty
and the village of Carberry, was the corner-stake of the farm; it was a
stout post in a low mound of earth, and was visible from afar.

I soon noticed that Bingo never passed without minutely examining this
mysterious post. Next I learned that it was also visited by the prairie
wolves as well as by all the dogs in the neighborhood, and at length,
with the aid of a telescope, I made a number of observations that helped
me to an understanding of the matter and enabled me to enter more fully
into Bingo's private life.

The post was by common agreement a registry of the canine tribes. Their
exquisite sense of smell enabled each individual to tell at once by the
track and trace what other had recently been at the post. When the snow
came much more was revealed. I then discovered that this post was but
one of a system that covered the country; that, in short, the entire
region was laid out in signal stations at convenient intervals. These
were marked by any conspicuous post, stone, buffalo skull, or other
object that chanced to be in the desired locality, and extensive
observation showed that it was a very complete system for getting and
giving the news.

Each dog or wolf makes a point of calling at those stations that are
near his line of travel to learn who has recently been there, just as a
man calls at his club on returning to town and looks up the register.

I have seen Bingo approach the post, sniff, examine the ground about,
then growl, and with bristling mane and glowing eyes, scratch fiercely
and contemptuously with his hind feet, finally walking off very stiffly,
glancing back from time to time. All of which, being interpreted, said:

"Grrrh! woof! there's that dirty cur of McCarthy's. Woof! I'll 'tend to
him tonight. Woof! woof!" On another occasion, after the preliminaries,
he became keenly interested and studied a coyote's track that came and
went, saying to himself, as I afterward learned:

"A coyote track coming from the north, smelling of dead cow. Indeed?
Pollworth's old Brindle must be dead at last. This is worth looking
into."

At other times he would wag his tail, trot about the vicinity and come
again and again to make his own visit more evident, perhaps for the
benefit of his brother Bill just back from Brandon! So that it was not
by chance that one night Bill turned up at Bingo's home and was taken
to the hills, where a delicious dead horse afforded a chance to suitably
celebrate the reunion.

At other times he would be suddenly aroused by the news, take up the
trail, and race to the next station for later information.

Sometimes his inspection produced only an air of grave attention, as
though he said to himself, "Dear me, who the deuce is this?" or "It
seems to me I met that fellow at the Portage last summer."

One morning on approaching the post Bingo's every hair stood on end, his
tail dropped and quivered, and he gave proof that he was suddenly sick
at the stomach, sure signs of terror. He showed no desire to follow up
or know more of the matter, but returned to the house, and half an hour
afterward his mane was still bristling and his expression one of hate or
fear.

I studied the dreaded track and learned that in Bingo's language the
half-terrified, deep-gurgled 'grr-wff' means 'timber wolf.'

These were among the things that Bingo taught me. And in the after time
when I might chance to see him arouse from his frosty nest by the stable
door, and after stretching himself and shaking the snow from his shaggy
coat, disappear into the gloom at a steady trot, trot, trot, I used to
think:

"Ahh! old dog, I know where you are off to, and why you eschew the
shelter of the shanty. Now I know why your nightly trips over the
country are so well timed, and how you know just where to go for what
you want, and when and how to seek it."

V

In the autumn of 1884, the shanty at De Winton farm was closed and Bingo
changed his home to the establishment--that is, to the stable, not the
house--of Gordon Wright, our most intimate neighbor.

Since the winter of his puppyhood he had declined to enter a house at
any time excepting during a thunderstorm. Of thunder and guns he had a
deep dread--no doubt the fear of the first originated in the second, and
that arose from some unpleasant shot-gun experiences, the cause of which
will be seen. His nightly couch was outside the stable, even during
the coldest weather, and it was easy to see he enjoyed to the full
the complete nocturnal liberty entailed. Bingo's midnight wanderings
extended across the plains for miles. There was plenty of proof of this.
Some farmers at very remote points sent word to old Gordon that if
he did not keep his dog home nights, they would use the shot-gun, and
Bingo's terror of firearms would indicate that the threats were not
idle. A man living as far away as Petrel said he saw a large black wolf
kill a coyote on the snow one winter evening, but afterward he changed
his opinion and 'reckoned it must 'a' been Wright's dog.' Whenever
the body of a winter-killed ox or horse was exposed, Bingo was sure
to repair to it nightly, and driving away the prairie wolves, feast to
repletion.

Sometimes the object of a night foray was merely to maul some distant
neighbor's dog, and notwithstanding vengeful threats, there seemed no
reason to fear that the Bingo breed would die out. One man even avowed
that he had seen a prairie wolf accompanied by three young ones which
resembled the mother, excepting that they were very large and black and
had a ring of white around the muzzle.

True or not as that may be, I know that late in March, while we were
out in the sleigh with Bingo trotting behind, a prairie wolf was started
from a hollow. Away it went with Bingo in full chase, but the wolf did
not greatly exert itself to escape, and within a short distance Bingo
was close up, yet strange to tell, there was no grappling, no fight!

Bingo trotted amiably alongside and licked the wolf's nose.

We were astounded, and shouted to urge Bingo on. Our shouting and
approach several times started the wolf off at speed and Bingo again
pursued until he had overtaken it, but his gentleness was too obvious.

"It is a she-wolf, he won't harm her," I exclaimed as the truth dawned
on me. And Gordon said: "Well, I be darned."

So we called our unwilling dog and drove on.

For weeks after this we were annoyed by the depredations of a prairie
wolf who killed our chickens, stole pieces of pork from the end of the
house, and several times terrified the children by looking into the
window of the shanty while the men were away.

Against this animal Bingo seemed to be no safeguard. At length the wolf,
a female, was killed, and then Bingo plainly showed his hand by his
lasting enmity toward Oliver, the man who did the deed.

VI

It is wonderful and beautiful how a man and his dog will stick to one
another, through thick and thin. Butler tells of an undivided Indian
tribe, in the Far North which was all but exterminated by an internecine
feud over a dog that belonged to one man and was killed by his neighbor;
and among ourselves we have lawsuits, fights, and deadly feuds, all
pointing the same old moral, 'Love me, love my dog.'

One of our neighbors had a very fine hound that he thought the best and
dearest dog in the world. I loved him, so I loved his dog, and when
one day poor Tan crawled home terribly mangled and died by the door, I
joined my threats of vengeance with those of his master and thenceforth
lost no opportunity of tracing the miscreant, both by offering rewards
and by collecting scraps of evidence. At length it was clear that one of
three men to the southward had had a hand in the cruel affair. The scent
was warming up, and soon we should have been in a position to exact
rigorous justice, at least, from the wretch who had murdered poor old
Tan.

Then something took place which at once changed my mind and led me
to believe that the mangling of the old hound was not by any means an
unpardonable crime, but indeed on second thoughts was rather commendable
than otherwise.

Gordon Wright's farm lay to the south of us, and while there one day,
Gordon Jr., knowing that I was tracking the murderer, took me aside and
looking about furtively, he whispered, in tragic tones:

"It was Bing done it."

And the matter dropped right there. For I confess that from that moment
I did all in my power to baffle the justice I had previously striven so
hard to further. I had given Bingo away long before, but the feeling of
ownership did not die; and of this indissoluble fellowship of dog and
man he was soon to take part in another important illustration.

Old Gordon and Oliver were close neighbors and friends; they joined in
a contract to cut wood, and worked together harmoniously till late on in
winter. Then Oliver's old horse died, and he, determining to profit as
far as possible, dragged it out on the plain and laid poison baits for
wolves around it. Alas for poor Bingo! He would lead a wolfish life,
though again and again it brought him into wolfish misfortunes.

He was as fond of dead horse as any of his wild kindred. That very
night, with Wright's own dog Curley, he visited the carcass. It seemed
as though Bing had busied himself chiefly keeping off the wolves, but
Curley feasted immoderately. The tracks in the snow told the story of
the banquet; the interruption as the poison began to work, and of
the dreadful spasms of pain during the erratic course back home where
Curley, falling in convulsions at Gordon's feet, died in the greatest
agony.

'Love me, love my dog,' No explanations or apology were acceptable;
it was useless to urge that it was accidental; the long-standing feud
between Bingo and Oliver was now remembered as an important sidelight.
The wood-contract was thrown up, all friendly relations ceased, and to
this day there is no county big enough to hold the rival factions which
were called at once into existence and to arms by Curley's dying yell.

It was months before Bingo really recovered from the poison. We believed
indeed that he never again would be the sturdy old-time Bingo. But when
the spring came he began to gain strength, and bettering as the grass
grew, he was within a few weeks once more in full health and vigor to be
a pride to his friends and a nuisance to his neighbors.

VII

Changes took me far away from Manitoba, and on my return in 1886 Bingo
was still a member of Wright's household. I thought he would have
forgotten me after two years' absence, but not so. One day early in the
winter, after having been lost for forty-eight hours, he crawled home to
Wright's with a wolf-trap and a heavy log fast to one foot, and the foot
frozen to stony hardness. No one had been able to approach to help him,
he was so savage, when I, the stranger now, stooped down and laid hold
of the trap with one hand and his leg with the other. Instantly he
seized my wrist in his teeth.

Without stirring I said, "Bing, don't you know me?"

He had not broken the skin and at once released his hold and offered no
further resistance, although he whined a good deal during the removal of
the trap. He still acknowledged me his master in spite of his change
of residence and my long absence, and notwithstanding my surrender of
ownership I still felt that he was my dog.

Bing was carried into the house much against his will and his frozen
foot thawed out. During the rest of the winter he went lame and two of
his toes eventually dropped off. But before the return of warm weather
his health and strength were fully restored, and to a casual glance he
bore no mark of his dreadful experience in the steel trap.

VIII

During that same winter I caught many wolves and foxes who did not have
Bingo's good luck in escaping the traps, which I kept out right into the
spring, for bounties are good even when fur is not.

Kennedy's Plain was always a good trapping ground because it was
unfrequented by man and yet lay between the heavy woods and the
settlement. I had been fortunate with the fur here, and late in April
rode in on one of my regular rounds.

The wolf-traps are made of heavy steel and have two springs, each of one
hundred pounds power. They are set in fours around a buried bait, and
after being strongly fastened to concealed logs are carefully covered in
cotton and in fine sand so as to be quite invisible. A prairie wolf was
caught in one of these. I killed him with a club and throwing him aside
proceeded to reset the trap as I had done so many hundred times before.
All was quickly done. I threw the trap-wrench over toward the pony, and
seeing some fine sand nearby, I reached out for a handful of it to add a
good finish to the setting.

Oh, unlucky thought! Oh, mad heedlessness born of long immunity! That
fine sand was on the next wolftrap and in an instant I was a prisoner.
Although not wounded, for the traps have no teeth, and my thick trapping
gloves deadened the snap, I was firmly caught across the hand above the
knuckles. Not greatly alarmed at this, I tried to reach the trap-wrench
with my right foot. Stretching out at full length, face downward, I
worked myself toward it, making my imprisoned arm as long and straight
as possible. I could not see and reach at the same time, but counted on
my toe telling me when I touched the little iron key to my fetters. My
first effort was a failure; strain as I might at the chain my toe struck
no metal. I swung slowly around my anchor, but still failed. Then a
painfully taken observation showed I was much too far to the west. I set
about working around, tapping blindly with my toe to discover the key.
Thus wildly groping with my right foot I forgot about the other till
there was a sharp 'clank' and the iron jaws of trap No. 5 closed tight
on my left foot.

The terrors of the situation did not, at first, impress me, but I soon
found that all my struggles were in vain. I could not get free from
either trap or move the traps together, and there I lay stretched out
and firmly staked to the ground.

What would become of me now? There was not much danger of freezing for
the cold weather was over, but Kennedy's Plain was never visited by the
winter wood-cutters. No one knew where I had gone, and unless I could
manage to free myself there was no prospect ahead but to be devoured by
wolves, or else die of cold and starvation.

As I lay there the red sun went down over the spruce swamp west of the
plain, and a shorelark on a gopher mound a few yards off twittered his
evening song, just as one had done the night before at our shanty door,
and though the numb pains were creeping up my arm, and a deadly chill
possessed me, I noticed how long his little ear-tufts were. Then my
thoughts went to the comfortable supper-table at Wright's shanty, and I
thought, now they are frying the pork for supper, or just sitting
down. My pony still stood as I left him with his bridle on the ground
patiently waiting to take me home. He did not understand the long delay,
and when I called, he ceased nibbling the grass and looked at me in
dumb, helpless inquiry. If he would only go home the empty saddle might
tell the tale and bring help. But his very faithfulness kept him waiting
hour after hour while I was perishing of cold and hunger.

Then I remembered how old Girou the trapper had been lost, and in the
following spring his comrades found his skeleton held by the leg in a
bear-trap. I wondered which part of my clothing would show my identity.
Then a new thought came to me. This is how a wolf feels when he is
trapped. Oh! what misery have I been responsible for! Now I'm to pay for
it.

Night came slowly on. A prairie wolf howled, the pony pricked up his
ears and, walking nearer to me, stood with his head down. Then another
prairie wolf howled and another, and I could make out that they were
gathering in the neighborhood. There I lay prone and helpless, wondering
if it would not be strictly just that they should come and tear me to
pieces. I heard them calling for a long time before I realized that
dim, shadowy forms were sneaking near. The horse saw them first, and his
terrified snort drove them back at first, but they came nearer next
time and sat around me on the prairie. Soon one bolder than the others
crawled up and tugged at the body of his dead relative. I shouted and he
retreated growling. The pony ran to a distance in terror. Presently
the wolf returned, and after after two or three of these retreats and
returns, the body was dragged off and devoured by the rest in a few
minutes.

After this they gathered nearer and sat on their haunches to look at
me, and the boldest one smelt the rifle and scratched dirt on it.
He retreated when I kicked at him with my free foot and shouted, but
growing bolder as I grew weaker he came and snarled right in my face.
At this several others snarled and came up closer, and I realized that I
was to be devoured by the foe that I most despised; when suddenly out
of the gloom with a guttural roar sprang a great black wolf. The prairie
wolves scattered like chaff except the bold one, which, seized by the
black new-comer, was in a few moments a draggled corpse, and then, oh
horrors! this mighty brute bounded at me and--Bingo--noble Bingo, rubbed
his shaggy, panting sides against me and licked my cold face.

"Bingo--Bing--old--boy--Fetch me the trap wrench!" Away he went and
returned dragging the rifle, for he knew only that I wanted something.

"No--Bing--the trap-wrench." This time it was my sash, but at last
he brought the wrench and wagged his tail in joy that it was right.
Reaching out with my free hand, after much difficulty I unscrewed the
pillar-nut. The trap fell apart and my hand was released, and a minute
later I was free. Bing brought the pony up, and after slowly walking to
restore the circulation I was able to mount. Then slowly at first but
soon at a gallop, with Bingo as herald careering and barking ahead, we
set out for home, there to learn that the night before, though never
taken on the trapping rounds, the brave dog had acted strangely,
whimpering and watching the timber-trail; and at last when night came
on, in spite of attempts to detain him he had set out in the gloom and
guided by a knowledge that is beyond us had reached the spot in time to
avenge me as well as set me free.

Staunch old Bing--he was a strange dog. Though his heart was with me,
he passed me next day with scarcely a look, but responded with alacrity
when little Gordon called him to a gopher-hunt. And it was so to the
end; and to the end also he lived the wolfish life that he loved, and
never failed to seek the winter-killed horses and found one again with
a poisoned bait, and wolfishly bolted that; then feeling the pang, set
out, not for Wright's but to find me, and reached the door of my shanty
where I should have been. Next day on returning I found him dead in the
snow with his head on the sill of the door--the door of his puppyhood's
days; my dog to the last in his heart of hearts--it was my help he
sought, and vainly sought, in the hour of his bitter extremity.




THE SPRINGFIELD FOX

I

THE HENS had been mysteriously disappearing for over a month; and when I
came home to Springfield for the summer holidays it was my duty to find
the cause. This was soon done. The fowls were carried away bodily one
at a time, before going to roost or else after leaving, which put tramps
and neighbors out of court; they were not taken from the high perches,
which cleared all coons and owls; or left partly eaten, so that weasels,
skunks, or minks were not the guilty ones, and the blame, therefore, was
surely left at Reynard's door.

The great pine wood of Erindale was on the other bank of the river, and
on looking carefully about the lower ford I saw a few fox-tracks and a
barred feather from one of our Plymouth Rock chickens. On climbing the
farther bank in search of more clews, I heard a great outcry of crows
behind me, and turning, saw a number of these birds darting down at
something in the ford. A better view showed that it was the old story,
thief catch thief, for there in the middle of the ford was a fox with
something in his jaws--he was returning from our barnyard with another
hen. The crows, though shameless robbers themselves, are ever first to
cry 'Stop thief,' and yet more than ready to take 'hush-money' in the
form of a share in the plunder.

And this was their game now. The fox to get back home must cross the
river, where he was exposed to the full brunt of the crow mob. He made a
dash for it, and would doubtless have gotten across with his booty had I
not joined in the attack, whereupon he dropped the hen, scarce dead, and
disappeared in the woods.

This large and regular levy of provisions wholly carried off could mean
but one thing, a family of little foxes at home; and to find them I now
was bound.

That evening I went with Ranger, my hound, across the river into the
Erindale woods. As soon as the hound began to circle, we heard the
short, sharp bark of a fox from a thickly wooded ravine close by.
Ranger dashed in at once, struck a hot scent and went off on a lively
straight-away till his voice was lost in the distance away over the
upland.

After nearly an hour he came back, panting and warm, for it was baking
August weather, and lay down at my feet.

But almost immediately the same foxy 'Yap yurrr' was heard close at hand
and off dashed the dog on another chase.

Away he went in the darkness, baying like a foghorn, straight away to
the north. And the loud 'Boo, boo,' became a low 'oo, oo,' and that a
feeble 'o-o' and then was lost. They must have gone some miles away, for
even with ear to the ground I heard nothing of them though a mile was
easy distance for Ranger's brazen voice.

As I waited in the black woods I heard a sweet sound of dripping water:
'Tink tank tenk tink, Ta tink tank tenk tonk.'

I did not know of any spring so near, and in the hot night it was a glad
find. But the sound led me to the bough of a oak-tree, where I found its
source. Such a soft sweet song; full of delightful suggestion on such a
night:

     Tonk tank tenk tink
     Ta tink a tonk a tank a tink a
     Ta ta tink tank ta ta tonk tink
     Drink a tank a drink a drunk.

It was the 'water-dripping' song of the saw-whet owl.

But suddenly a deep raucous breathing and a rustle of leaves showed that
Ranger was back. He was completely fagged out. His tongue hung almost
to the ground and was dripping with foam, his flanks were heaving and
spume-flecks dribbled from his breast and sides. He stopped panting a
moment to give my hand a dutiful lick, then flung himself flop on the
leaves to drown all other sounds with his noisy panting.

But again that tantilizing 'Yap yurrr' was heard a few feet away, and
the meaning of it all dawned on me. We were close to the den where the
little foxes were, and the old ones were taking turns in trying to lead
us away.

It was late night now, so we went home feeling sure that the problem was
nearly solved.

II

It was well known that there was an old fox with his family living in
the neighborhood, but no one supposed them so near.

This fox had been called 'Scarface,' because of a scar reaching from his
eye through and back of his ear; this was supposed to have been given
him by a barbed-wire fence during a rabbit hunt, and as the hair came in
white after it healed it was always a strong mark.

The winter before I had met with him and had had a sample of his
craftiness. I was out shooting, after a fall of snow, and had crossed
the open fields to the edge of the brushy hollow back of the old mill.
As my head rose to a view of the hollow I caught sight of a fox trotting
at long range down the other side, in line to cross my course. Instantly
I held motionless, and did not even lower or turn my head lest I should
catch his eye by moving, until he went on out of sight in the thick
cover at the bottom. As soon as he was hidden I bobbed down and ran to
head him off where he should leave the cover on the other side, and
was there in good time awaiting, but no fox came forth. A careful look
showed the fresh track of a fox that had bounded from the cover, and
following it with my eye I saw old Scarface himself far out of range
behind me, sitting on his haunches and grinning as though much amused.

A study of the trail made all clear. He had seen me at the moment I saw
him, but he, also like a true hunter, had concealed the fact, putting
on an air of unconcern till out of sight, when he had run for his life
around behind me and amused himself by watching my still-born trick.

In the springtime I had yet another instance of Scarface's cunning.
I was walking with a friend along the road over the high pasture. We
passed within thirty feet of a ridge on which were several gray and
brown boulders. When at the nearest point my friend said:

"Stone number three looks to me very much like a fox curled up."

But I could not see it, and we passed. We had not gone many yards
farther when the wind blew on this boulder as on fur.

My friend said, "I am sure that is a fox, lying asleep."

"We'll soon settle that," I replied, and turned back, but as soon as I
had taken one step from the road, up jumped Scarface, for it was he, and
ran. A fire had swept the middle of the pasture, leaving a broad belt
of black; over this he scurried till he came to the unburnt yellow grass
again, where he squatted down and was lost to view. He had been watching
us all the time, and would not have moved had we kept to the road. The
wonderful part of this is, not that he resembled the round stones and
dry grass, but that he knew he did, and was ready to profit by it.

We soon found that it was Scarface and his wife Vixen that had made our
woods their home and our barnyard their base of supplies.

Next morning a search in the pines showed a great bank of earth that had
been scratched up within a few months. It must have come from a hole,
and yet there was none to be seen. It is well known that a really cute
fox, on digging a new den, brings all the earth out at the first hole
made, but carries on a tunnel into some distant thicket. Then closing up
for good the first made and too well-marked door, uses only the entrance
hidden in the thicket.

So after a little search at the other side of a knoll, I found the real
entry and good proof that there was a nest of little foxes inside.

Rising above the brush on the hillside was a great hollow basswood. It
leaned a good deal and had a large hole at the bottom, and a smaller one
at top.

We boys had often used this tree in playing Swiss Family Robinson, and
by cutting steps in its soft punky walls had made it easy to go up and
down in the hollow. Now it came in handy, for next day when the sun was
warm I went there to watch, and from this perch on the roof, I soon saw
the interesting family that lived in the cellar near by. There were four
little foxes; they looked curiously like little lambs, with their woolly
coats, their long thick legs and innocent expressions, and yet a second
glance at their broad, sharp-nosed, sharp-eyed visages showed that each
of these innocents was the makings of a crafty old fox.

They played about, basking in the sun, or wrestling with each other
till a slight sound made them scurry under ground. But their alarm was
needless, for the cause of it was their mother; she stepped from the
bushes bringing another hen--number seventeen as I remember. A low call
from her and the little fellows came tumbling out. Then began a scene
that I thought charming, but which my uncle would not have enjoyed at
all.

They rushed on the hen, and tussled and fought with it, and each other,
while the mother, keeping a sharp eye for enemies, looked on with fond
delight. The expression on her face was remarkable. It was first a
grinning of delight, but her usual look of wildness and cunning was
there, nor were cruelty and nervousness lacking, but over all was the
unmistakable look of the mother's pride and love.

The base of my tree was hidden in bushes and much lower than the knoll
where the den was, so I could come and go at will without scaring the
foxes.

For many days I went there and saw much of the training of the young
ones. They early learned to turn to statuettes sound, and then
on hearing it again or finding other cause for fear, to run for shelter.

Some animals have so much mother-love that it overflows and benefits
outsiders. Not so old Vixen it would seem. Her pleasure in the cubs led
to most refined cruelty. For she often brought home to them mice and
birds alive, and with diabolic gentleness would avoid doing them serious
hurt so that the cubs might have larger scope to torment them.

There was a woodchuck that lived over in the hill orchard. He was
neither handsome nor interesting, but he knew how to take care of
himself. He had dug a den between the roots of an old pine stump, so
that the foxes could not follow him by digging. But hard work was not
their way of life; wits they believed worth more then elbowgrease. This
woodchuck usually sunned himself on the stump each morning. If he saw a
fox near he went down in the door of his den, or if the enemy was very
near he went inside and stayed long enough for the danger to pass.

One morning Vixen and her mate seemed to decide that it was time the
children knew something about the broad subject of Woodchucks,
and further that this orchard woodchuck would serve nicely for an
object-lesson. So they went together to the orchard-fence unseen by old
Chuckie on his stump. Scarface then showed himself in the orchard and
quietly walked in a line so as to pass by the stump at a distance, but
never once turned his head or allowed the ever-watchful woodchuck to
think himself seen. When the fox entered the field the woodchuck quietly
dropped down to the mouth of his den: here he waited as the fox passed,
but concluding that after all wisdom is the better part, went into his
hole.

This was what the foxes wanted. Vixen had kept out of sight, but now ran
swiftly to the stump and hid behind it. Scarface had kept straight on,
going very slowly. The woodchuck had not been frightened, so before long
his head popped up between the roots and he looked around. There was
that fox still going on, farther and farther away. The woodchuck grew
bold as the fox went, and came out farther, and then seeing the coast
clear, he scrambled onto the stump, and with one spring Vixen had him
and shook him till he lay senseless. Scarface had watched out of the
corner of his eye and now came running back. But Vixen took the chuck in
her jaws and made for the den, so he saw he wasn't needed.

Back to the den came Vix, and carried the chuck so carefully that he was
able to struggle a little when she got there. A low 'woof' at the den
brought the little fellows out like schoolboys to play. She threw the
wounded animal to them and they set on him like four little furies,
uttering little growls and biting little bites with all the strength of
their baby jaws, but the woodchuck fought for his life and beating them
off slowly hobbled to the shelter of a thicket. The little ones pursued
like a pack of hounds and dragged at his tail and flanks, but could not
hold him back. So Vixen overtook him with a couple of bounds and dragged
him again into the open for the children to worry. Again and again this
rough sport went on till one of the little ones was badly bitten, and
his squeal of pain roused Vix to end the woodchuck's misery and serve
him up at once.

Not far from the den was a hollow overgrown with coarse grass, the
playground of a colony of field-mice. The earliest lesson in woodcraft
that the little ones took, away from the den, was in this hollow.
Here they had their first course of mice, the easiest of all game. In
teaching, the main thing was example, aided by a deep-set instinct.
The old fox, also, had one or two signs meaning "lie still and watch,"
"come, do as I do," and so on, that were much used.

So the merry lot went to this hollow one calm evening and Mother Fox
made them lie still in the grass. Presently a faint squeak showed that
the game was astir. Vix rose up and went on tiptoe into the grass--not
crouching but as high as she could stand, sometimes on her hind legs so
as to get a better view. The runs that the mice follow are hidden under
the grass tangle, and the only way to know the whereabouts of a mouse is
by seeing the slight shaking of the grass, which is the reason why mice
are hunted only on calm days.

And the trick is to locate the mouse and seize him first and see him
afterward. Vix soon made a spring, and in the middle of the bunch of
dead grass that she grabbed was a field-mouse squeaking his last squeak.

He was soon gobbled, and the four awkward little foxes tried to do the
same as their mother, and when at length the eldest for the first time
in his life caught game, he quivered with excitement and ground his
pearly little milk-teeth into the mouse with a rush of inborn savageness
that must have surprised even himself.

Another home lesson was on the red-squirrel. One of these noisy, vulgar
creatures, lived close by and used to waste part of each day scolding
the foxes from some safe perch. The cubs made many vain attempts to
catch him as he ran across their glade from one tree to an other, or
spluttered and scolded at them a foot or so out of reach. But old Vixen
was up in natural history--she knew squirrel nature and took the case in
hand when the proper time came. She hid the children and lay down flat
in the middle of the open glade. The saucy low-minded squirrel came
and scolded as usual. But she moved no hair. He came nearer and at last
right over head to chatter:

"You brute you, you brute you."

But Vix lay as dead. This was very perplexing, so the squirrel came down
the trunk and peeping about made a nervous dash across the grass, to
another tree, again to scold from a safe perch.

"You brute you, you useless brute, scarrr-scarrrr."

But flat and lifeless on the grass lay Vix. This was most tantilizing to
the squirrel. He was naturally curious and disposed to be venturesome,
so again he came to the ground and scurried across the glade nearer than
before. Still as death lay Vix, "surely she was dead." And the little
foxes began to wonder if their mother wasn't asleep.

But the squirrel was working himself into a little craze of foolhardy
curiosity. He had dropped a piece of bark on Vix's head, he had used up
his list of bad words and he had done it all over again, without getting
a sign of life. So after a couple more dashes across the glade he
ventured within a few feet of the really watchful Vix, who sprang to her
feet and pinned him in a twinkling.

"And the little ones picked the bones e-oh."

Thus the rudiments of their education were laid, and afterward as
they grew stronger they were taken farther afield to begin the higher
branches of trailing and scenting.

For each kind of prey they were taught a way to hunt, for every animal
has some great strength or it could not live, and some great weakness
or the others could not live. The squirrel's weakness was foolish
curiosity; the fox's that he can't climb a tree. And the training of
the little foxes was all shaped to take advantage of the weakness of the
other creatures and to make up for their own by defter play where they
are strong.

From their parents they learned the chief axioms of the fox world. How,
is not easy to say. But that they learned this in company with their
parents was clear.

Here are some that foxes taught me, without saying a word:--

Never sleep on your straight track.

Your nose is before your eyes, then trust it first.

A fool runs down the wind.

Running rills cure many ills.

Never take the open if you can keep the cover.

Never leave a straight trail if a crooked one will do.

If it's strange, it's hostile.

Dust and water burn the scent.

Never hunt mice in a rabbit-woods, or rabbits in a henyard.

Keep off the grass.

Inklings of the meanings of these were already entering the little ones'
minds--thus, 'Never follow what you can't smell,' was wise, they could
see, because if you can't smell it, then the wind is so that it must
smell you.

One by one they learned the birds and beasts of their home woods, and
then as they were able to go abroad with their parents they learned new
animals. They were beginning to think they knew the scent of everything
that moved. But one night the mother took them to a field where there
was a strange black flat thing on the ground. She brought them on
purpose to smell it, but at the first whiff their every hair stood on
end, they trembled, they knew not why--it seemed to tingle through their
blood and fill them with instinctive hate and fear.

And when she saw its full effect she told them--

"That is man-scent."

III

Meanwhile the hens continued to disappear. I had not betrayed the den
of cubs. Indeed, I thought a good deal more of the little rascals than
I did of the hens; but uncle was dreadfully wrought up and made most
disparaging remarks about my woodcraft. To please him I one day took
the hound across to the woods and seating myself on a stump on the open
hillside, I bade the dog go on. Within three minutes he sang out in the
tongue all hunters know so well, "Fox! fox! fox! straight away down the
valley."

After awhile I heard them coming back. There I saw the
fox--Scarface--loping lightly across the river-bottom to the stream. In
he went and trotted along in the shallow water near the margin for two
hundred yards, then came out straight toward me. Though in full view,
he saw me not but came up the hill watching over his shoulder for the
hound. Within ten feet of me he turned and sat with his back to me
while he craned his neck and showed an eager interest in the doings
of the hound. Ranger came bawling along the trail till he came to the
running water, the killer of scent, and here he was puzzled; but there
was only one thing to do; that was by going up and down both banks find
where the fox had left the river.

The fox before me shifted his position a little to get a better view and
watched with a most human interest all the circling of the hound. He was
so close that I saw the hair of his shoulder bristle a little when the
dog came in sight. I could see the jumping of his heart on his ribs,
and the gleam of his yellow eye. When the dog was wholly baulked by the
water trick, it was comical to see:--he could not sit still, but rocked
up and down in glee, and reared on his hind feet to get a better view
of the slow-plodding hound. With mouth opened nearly to his ears, though
not at all winded, he panted noisily for a moment, or rather he laughed
gleefully, just as a dog laughs by grinning and panting.

Old Scarface wriggled in huge enjoyment as the hound puzzled over the
trail so long that when he did find it, it was so stale he could barely
follow it, and did not feel justified in tonguing on it at all.

As soon as the hound was working up the hill, the fox quietly went into
the woods. I had been sitting in plain view only ten feet away, but I
had the wind and kept still and the fox never knew that his life had for
twenty minutes been in the power of the foe he most feared.

Ranger also would have passed me as near as the fox, but I spoke to him,
and with a little nervous start he quit the trail and looking sheepish
lay down by my feet.

This little comedy was played with variations for several days, but
it was all in plain view from the house across the river. My uncle,
impatient at the daily loss of hens, went out himself, sat on the open
knoll, and when old Scarface trotted to his lookout to watch the dull
hound on the river flat below, my uncle remorselessly shot him in the
back, at the very moment when he was grinning over a new triumph.

IV

But still the hens were disappearing. My uncle was wrathy. He determined
to conduct the war himself, and sowed the woods with poison baits,
trusting to luck that our own dogs would not get them. He indulged in
contemptuous remarks on my by-gone woodcraft, and went out evenings with
a gun and the two dogs, to see what he could destroy.

Vix knew right well what a poisoned bait was; she passed them by or else
treated them with active contempt, but one she dropped down the hole
of an old enemy, a skunk, who was never afterward seen. Formerly old
Scarface was always ready to take charge of the dogs, and keep them out
of mischief. But now that Vix had the whole burden of the brood, she
could no longer spend time in breaking every track to the den, and was
not always at hand to meet and mislead the foes that might be coming too
near.

The end is easily foreseen. Ranger followed a hot trail to the den, and
Spot, the fox-terrier, announced that the family was at home, and then
did his best to go in after them.

The whole secret was now out, and the whole family doomed. The hired man
came around with pick and shovel to dig them out, while we and the dogs
stood by. Old Vix soon showed herself in the near woods, and led the
dogs away off down the river, where she shook them off when she thought
proper, by the simple device of springing on a sheep's back. The
frightened animal ran for several hundred yards, then Vix got off,
knowing that there was now a hopeless gap in the scent, and returned to
the den. But the dogs, baffled by the break in the trail, soon did the
same, to find Vix hanging about in despair, vainly trying to decoy us
away from her treasures.

Meanwhile Paddy plied both pick and shovel with vigor and effect. The
yellow, gravelly sand was heaping on both sides, and the shoulders of
the sturdy digger were sinking below the level. After an hour's digging,
enlivened by frantic rushes of the dogs after the old fox, who hovered
near in the woods, Pat called:

"Here they are, sot!"

It was the den at the end of the burrow, and cowering as far back as
they could, were the four little woolly cubs.

Before I could interfere, a murderous blow from the shovel, and a sudden
rush for the fierce little terrier, ended the lives of three. The fourth
and smallest was barely saved by holding him by his tail high out of
reach of the excited dogs.

He gave one short squeal, and his poor mother came at the cry, and
circled so near that she would have been shot but for the accidental
protection of the dogs, who somehow always seemed to get between, and
whom she once more led away on a fruitless chase.

The little one saved alive was dropped into a bag, where he lay quite
still. His unfortunate brothers were thrown back into their nursery bed,
and buried under a few shovelfuls of earth.

We guilty ones then went back into the house, and the little fox was
soon chained in the yard. No one knew just why he was kept alive, but
in all a change of feeling had set in, and the idea of killing him was
without a supporter.

He was a pretty little fellow, like a cross between a fox and a lamb.
His woolly visage and form were strangely lamb-like and innocent, but
one could find in his yellow eyes a gleam of cunning and savageness as
unlamb-like as it possibly could be.

As long as anyone was near he crouched sullen and cowed in his
shelter-box, and it was a full hour after being left alone before he
ventured to look out.

My window now took the place of the hollow bass wood. A number of hens
of the breed he knew so well were about the cub in the yard. Late that
afternoon as they strayed near the captive there was a sudden rattle of
the chain, and the youngster dashed at the nearest one and would have
caught him but for the chain which brought him up with a jerk. He got on
his feet and slunk back to his box, and though he afterward made several
rushes he so gauged his leap as to win or fail within the length of the
chain and never again was brought up by its cruel jerk.

As night came down the little fellow became very uneasy, sneaking out of
his box, but going back at each slight alarm, tugging at his chain, or
at times biting it in fury while he held it down with his fore paws.
Suddenly he paused as though listening, then raising his little black
nose he poured out a short quavering cry. Once or twice this was
repeated, the time between being occupied in worrying the chain and
running about. Then an answer came. The far-away Yap-yurrr of the old
fox. A few minutes later a shadowy form appeared on the wood-pile. The
little one slunk into his box, but at once returned and ran to meet his
mother with all the gladness that a fox could show. Quick as a flash
she seized him and turned to bear him away by the road she came. But the
moment the end of the chain was reached the cub was rudely jerked from
the old one's mouth, and she, scared by the opening of a window, fled
over the wood-pile.

An hour afterward the cub had ceased to run about or cry. I peeped out,
and by the light of the moon saw the form of the mother at full length
on the ground by the little one, gnawing at something--the clank of iron
told what, it was that cruel chain. And Tip, the little one, meanwhile
was helping himself to a warm drink.

On my going out she fled into the dark woods, but there by the
shelter-box were two little mice, bloody and still warm, food for the
cub brought by the devoted mother. And in the morning I found the chain
was very bright for a foot or two next the little one's collar.

On walking across the woods to the ruined den, I again found signs of
Vixen. The poor heart-broken mother had come and dug out the bedraggled
bodies of her little ones.

There lay the three little baby foxes all licked smooth now, and by them
were two of our hens fresh killed. The newly heaved earth was printed
all over with telltale signs--signs that told me that here by the side
of her dead she had watched like Rizpah. Here she had brought their
usual meal, the spoil of her nightly hunt. Here she had stretched
herself beside them and vainly offered them their natural drink and
yearned to feed and warm them as of old, but only stiff little bodies
under their soft wool she found, and little cold noses still and
unresponsive.

A deep impress of elbows, breasts, and hocks showed where she had laid
in silent grief and watched them for long and mourned as a wild mother
can mourn for its young. But from that time she came no more to the
ruined den, for now she surely knew that her little ones were dead.
Tip the captive, the weakling of the brood, was now the heir to all her
love. The dogs were loosed to guard the hens. The hired man had orders
to shoot the old fox on sight--so had I but was resolved never to see
her. Chicken-heads, that a fox loves and a dog will not touch, had been
poisoned and scattered through the woods; and the only way to the yard
where Tip was tied, was by climbing the wood-pile after braving all
other dangers.

And yet each night old Vix was there to nurse her baby and bring it
fresh-killed hens and game. Again and again I saw her, although she came
now without awaiting the querulous cry of the captive.

The second night of the captivity I heard the rattle of the chain, and
then made out that the old fox was there, hard at work digging a hole by
the little one's kennel. When it was deep enough to half bury her, she
gathered into it all the slack of the chain, and filled it again with
earth. Then in triumph thinking she had gotten rid of the chain, she
seized little Tip by the neck and turned to dash off up the wood-pile,
but alas! only to have him jerked roughly from her grasp.

Poor little fellow, he whimpered sadly as he crawled into his box. After
half an hour there was a great out cry among the dogs, and by their
straight-away tonguing through the far wood I knew they were chasing
Vix. Away up north they went in the direction of the railway and their
noise faded from hearing. Next morning the hound had not come back.
We soon knew why. Foxes long ago learned what a railroad is; they soon
devised several ways of turning it to account. One way is when hunted to
walk the rails for a long distance just before a train comes. The scent,
always poor on iron, is destroyed by the train and there is always a
chance of hounds being killed by the engine. But another way more sure,
but harder to play, is to lead the hounds straight to a high trestle
just ahead of the train, so that the engine overtakes them on it and
they are surely dashed to destruction.

This trick was skilfully played, and down below we found the mangled
remains of old Ranger and learned that Vix was already wreaking her
revenge.

That same night she returned to the yard before Spot's weary limbs
could bring him back and killed another hen and brought it to Tip, and
stretched her panting length beside him that he might quench his thirst.
For she seemed to think he had no food but what she brought.

It was that hen that betrayed to my uncle the nightly visits.

My own sympathies were all turning to Vix, and I would have no hand in
planning further murders. Next night my uncle himself watched, gun in
hand, for an hour. Then when it became cold and the moon clouded over
he remembered other important business elsewhere, and left Paddy in his
place.

But Paddy was "onaisy" as the stillness and anxiety of watching worked
on his nerves. And the loud bang! bang! an hour later left us sure only
that powder had been burned.

In the morning we found Vix had not failed her young one. Again next
night found my uncle on guard for another hen had been taken. Soon
after dark a single shot was heard, but Vix dropped the game she was
bringing and escaped. Another attempt made that night called forth
another gunshot. Yet next day it was seen by the brightness of the chain
that she had come again and vainly tried for hours to cut that hateful
bond.

Such courage and stanch fidelity were bound to win respect, if not
toleration. At any rate, there was no gunner in wait next night, when
all was still. Could it be of any use? Driven off thrice with gunshots,
would she make another try to feed or free her captive young one? Would
she? Hers was a mother's love. There was but one to watch them this
time, the fourth night, when the quavering whine of the little one was
followed by that shadowy form above the wood pile.

But carrying no fowl or food that could be seen. Had the keen huntress
failed at last? Had she no head of game for this her only charge, or had
she learned to trust his captors for his food?

No, far from all this. The wild-wood mother's heart and hate were true.
Her only thought had been to set him free. All means she knew she tried,
and every danger braved to tend him well and help him to be free. But
all had failed.

Like a shadow she came and in a moment was gone, and Tip seized on
something dropped, and crunched and chewed with relish what she brought.
But even as he ate, a knife-like pang shot through and a scream of pain
escaped him. Then there was a momentary struggle and the little fox was
dead.

The mother's love was strong in Vix, but a higher thought was stronger.
She knew right well the poison's power; she knew the poison bait, and
would have taught him had he lived to know and shun it too. But now at
last when she must choose for him a wretched prisoner's life or sudden
death, she quenched the mother in her breast and freed him by the one
remaining door.

It is when the snow is on the ground that we take the census of the
woods, and when the winter came it told me that Vix no longer roamed the
woods of Erindale. Where she went it never told, but only this, that she
was gone.

Gone, perhaps, to some other far-off haunt to leave behind the sad
remembrance of her murdered little ones and mate. Or gone, may be,
deliberately, from the scene of a sorrowful life, as many a wild-wood
mother has gone, by the means that she herself had used to free her
young one, the last of all her brood.




THE PACING MUSTANG

I

JO CALONE threw down his saddle on the dusty ground, turned his horses
loose, and went clanking into the ranchhouse.

"Nigh about chuck time?" he asked.

"Seventeen minutes," said the cook glancing at the Waterbury, with the
air of a train starter, though this show of precision had never yet been
justified by events.

"How's things on the Perico?" said Jo's pard.

"Hotter'n hinges," said Jo. "Cattle seem O.K.; lots of calves."

"I seen that bunch o' mustangs that waters at Antelope Springs; couple
o' colts along; one little dark one, a fair dandy; a born pacer. I run
them a mile or two, and he led the bunch, an' never broke his pace.
Cut loose, an' pushed them jest for fun, an' darned if I could make him
break."

"You didn't have no reefreshments along?" said Scarth, incredulously.

"That's all right, Scarth. You had to crawl on our last bet, an' you'll
get another chance soon as you're man enough."

"Chuck," shouted the cook, and the subject was dropped. Next day the
scene of the roundup was changed, and the mustangs were forgotten.

A year later the same corner of New Mexico was worked over by the
roundup, and again the mustang bunch was seen. The dark colt was now a
black yearling, with thin, clean legs and glossy flanks; and more than
one of the boys saw with his own eyes this oddity--the mustang was a
born pacer. Jo was along, and the idea now struck him that that colt
was worth having. To an Easterner this thought may not seem startling
or original, but in the West, where an unbroken horse is worth $5, and
where an ordinary saddlehorse is worth $15 or $20, the idea of a wild
mustang being desirable property does not occur to the average cowboy,
for mustangs are hard to catch, and when caught are merely wild animal
prisoners, perfectly useless and untamable to the last. Not a few of the
cattle-owners make a point of shooting all mustangs at sight, they are
not only useless cumberers of the feeding-grounds, but commonly lead
away domestic horses, which soon take to wild life and are thenceforth
lost.

Wild Jo Calone knew a 'bronk right down to subsoil.' "I never seen a
white that wasn't soft, nor a chestnut that wasn't nervous, nor a bay
that wasn't good if broke right, nor a black that wasn't hard as nails,
an' full of the old Harry. All a black bronk wants is claws to be wus'n
Daniel's hull outfit of lions."

Since, then, a mustang is worthless vermin, and a black mustang ten
times worse than worthless, Jo's pard "didn't see no sense in Jo's
wantin' to corral the yearling," as he now seemed intent on doing. But
Jo got no chance to try that year.

He was only a cow-puncher on $25 a month, and tied to hours. Like most
of the boys, he always looked forward to having a ranch and an outfit
of his own. His brand, the hogpen, of sinister suggestion, was already
registered at Santa Fe, but of horned stock it was borne by a single old
cow, so as to give him a legal right to put his brand on any maverick
(or unbranded animal) he might chance to find.

Yet each fall, when paid off, Jo could not resist the temptation to go
to town with the boys and have a good time 'while the stuff held out.'
So that his property consisted of little more than his saddle, his bed,
and his old cow. He kept on hoping to make a strike that would leave him
well fixed with a fair start, and when the thought came that the Black
Mustang was his mascot, he only needed a chance to 'make the try.'

The roundup circled down to the Canadian River, and back in the fall by
the Don Carlos Hills, and Jo saw no more of the Pacer, though he heard
of him from many quarters, for the colt, now a vigorous, young horse,
rising three, was beginning to be talked of.

Antelope Springs is in the middle of a great level plain. When the water
is high it spreads into a small lake with a belt of sedge around it;
when it is low there is a wide flat of black mud, glistening white with
alkali in places, and the spring a water-hole in the middle. It has no
flow or outlet and is fairly good water, the only drinking-place for
many miles.

This flat, or prairie as it would be called farther north, was the
favorite feeding-ground of the Black Stallion, but it was also the
pasture of many herds of range horses and cattle. Chiefly interested was
the 'L cross F' outfit. Foster, the manager and part owner, was a man of
enterprise. He believed it would pay to handle a better class of cattle
and horses on the range, and one of his ventures was ten half-blooded
mares, tall, clean-limbed, deer-eyed creatures that made the scrub
cow-ponies look like pitiful starvelings of some degenerate and quite
different species.

One of these was kept stabled for use, but the nine, after the weaning
of their colts, managed to get away and wandered off on the range.

A horse has a fine instinct for the road to the best feed, and the nine
mares drifted, of course, to the prairie of Antelope Springs, twenty
miles to the southward. And when, later that summer Foster went to round
them up, he found the nine indeed, but with them and guarding them with
an air of more than mere comradeship was a coal-black stallion, prancing
around and rounding up the bunch like an expert, his jet-black coat a
vivid contrast to the golden hides of his harem.

The mares were gentle, and would have been easily driven homeward
but for a new and unexpected thing. The Black Stallion became greatly
aroused. He seemed to inspire them too with his wildness, and flying
this way and that way drove the whole band at full gallop where he
would. Away they went, and the little cow-ponies that carried the men
were easily left behind.

This was maddening, and both men at last drew their guns and sought a
chance to drop that 'blasted stallion.' But no chance came that was not
9 to 1 of dropping one of the mares. A long day of manoeuvring made
no change. The Pacer, for it was he, kept his family together and
disappeared among the southern sand-hills. The cattlemen on their jaded
ponies set out for home with the poor satisfaction of vowing vengeance
for their failure on the superb cause of it.

One of the most aggravating parts of it was that one or two experiences
like this would surely make the mares as wild as the Mustang, and there
seemed to be no way of saving them from it.

Scientists differ on the power of beauty and prowess to attract female
admiration among the lower animals, but whether it is admiration or the
prowess itself, it is certain that a wild animal of uncommon gifts soon
wins a large following from the harems of his rivals. And the great
Black Horse, with his inky mane and tail and his green-lighted eyes,
ranged through all that region and added to his following from many
bands till not less than a score of mares were in his 'bunch.' Most were
merely humble cow-ponies turned out to range, but the nine great mares
were there, a striking group by themselves. According to all reports,
this bunch was always kept rounded up and guarded with such energy and
jealously that a mare, once in it, was a lost animal so far as man was
concerned, and the ranchmen realized soon that they had gotten on the
range a mustang that was doing them more harm than all other sources of
loss put together.

II

It was December, 1893. I was new in the country, and was setting out
from the ranch-house on the Pinavetitos, to go with a wagon to the
Canadian River. As I was leaving, Foster finished his remark by: "And if
you get a chance to draw a bead on that accursed mustang, don't fail to
drop him in his tracks."

This was the first I had heard of him, and as I rode along I gathered
from Burns, my guide, the history that has been given. I was full
of curiosity to see the famous three-year-old, and was not a little
disappointed on the second day when we came to the prairie on Antelope
Springs and saw no sign of the Pacer or his band.

But on the next day, as we crossed the Alamosa Arroyo, and were rising
to the rolling prairie again, Jack Burns, who was riding on ahead,
suddenly dropped flat on the neck of his horse, and swung back to me in
the wagon, saying:

"Get out your rifle, here's that--stallion."

I seized my rifle, and hurried forward to a view over the prairie ridge.
In the hollow below was a band of horses, and there at one end was the
Great Black Mustang. He had heard some sound of our approach, and was
not unsuspicious of danger. There he stood with head and tail erect,
and nostrils wide, an image of horse perfection and beauty, as noble an
animal as ever ranged the plains, and the mere notion of turning that
magnificent creature into a mass of carrion was horrible. In spite
of Jack's exhortation to 'shoot quick,' I delayed, and threw open
the breach, whereupon he, always hot and hasty, swore at my slowness,
growled, 'Gi' me that gun,' and as he seized it I turned the muzzle up,
and accidentally the gun went off.

Instantly the herd below was all alarm, the great black leader snorted
and neighed and dashed about. And the mares bunched, and away all went
in a rumble of hoofs, and a cloud of dust.

The Stallion careered now on this side, now on that, and kept his eye on
all and led and drove them far away. As long as I could see I watched,
and never once did he break his pace.

Jack made Western remarks about me and my gun, as well as that mustang,
but I rejoiced in the Pacer's strength and beauty, and not for all the
mares in the bunch would I have harmed his glossy hide.

III

There are several ways of capturing wild horses. One is by
creasing--that is, grazing the animal's nape with a rifle-ball so that
he is stunned long enough for hobbling.

"Yes! I seen about a hundred necks broke trying it, but I never seen a
mustang creased yet," was Wild Jo's critical remark.

Sometimes, if the shape of the country abets it, the herd can be driven
into a corral; sometimes with extra fine mounts they can be run down,
but by far the commonest way, paradoxical as it may seem, is to walk
them down.

The fame of the Stallion that never was known to gallop was spreading.
Extraordinary stories were told of his gait, his speed, and his wind,
and when old Montgomery of the 'triangle-bar' outfit came out plump at
Well's Hotel in Clayton, and in presence of witnesses said he'd give one
thousand dollars cash for him safe in a box-car, providing the stories
were true, a dozen young cow-punchers were eager to cut loose and win
the purse, as soon as present engagements were up. But Wild Jo had had
his eye on this very deal for quite a while; there was no time to
lose, so ignoring present contracts he rustled all night to raise the
necessary equipment for the game.

By straining his already overstrained credit, and taxing the already
overtaxed generosity of his friends, he got together an expedition
consisting of twenty good saddle-horses, a mess-wagon, and a fortnight's
stuff for three men--himself, his 'pard,' Charley, and the cook.

Then they set out from Clayton, with the avowed intention of walking
down the wonderfully swift wild horse. The third day they arrived at
Antelope Springs, and as it was about noon they were not surprised to
see the black Pacer marching down to drink with all his band behind him.
Jo kept out of sight until the wild horses each and all had drunk their
fill, for a thirsty animal always travels better than one laden with
water.

Jo then rode quietly forward. The Pacer took alarm at half a mile, and
led his band away out of sight on the soapweed mesa to the southeast. Jo
followed at a gallop till he once more sighted them, then came back and
instructed the cook, who was also teamster, to make for Alamosa Arroyo
in the south. Then away to the southeast he went after the mustangs.
After a mile or two he once more sighted them, and walked his horse
quietly till so near that they again took alarm and circled away to the
south. An hour's trot, not on the trail, but cutting across to where
they ought to go, brought Jo again in close sight. Again he walked
quietly toward the herd, and again there was the alarm and fright. And
so they passed the afternoon, but circled ever more and more to the
south, so that when the sun was low they were, as Jo had expected, not
far from Alamosa Arroyo. The band was again close at hand, and Jo,
after starting them off, rode to the wagon, while his pard, who had been
taking it easy, took up the slow chase on a fresh horse.

After supper the wagon moved on to the upper ford of the Alamosa, as
arranged, and there camped for the night.

Meanwhile, Charley followed the herd. They had not run so far as at
first, for their pursuer made no sign of attack, and they were getting
used to his company. They were more easily found, as the shadows fell,
on account of a snow-white mare that was in the bunch. A young moon in
the sky now gave some help, and relying on his horse to choose the path,
Charley kept him quietly walking after the herd, represented by that
ghost-white mare, till they were lost in the night. He then got off,
unsaddled and picketed his horse, and in his blanket quickly went to
sleep.

At the first streak of dawn he was up, and within a short half-mile,
thanks to the snowy mare, he found the band. At his approach, the shrill
neigh of the Pacer bugled his troop into a flying squad. But on the
first mesa they stopped, and faced about to see what this persistent
follower was, and what he wanted. For a moment or so they stood against
the sky to gaze, and then deciding that he knew him as well as he wished
to, that black meteor flung his mane on the wind, and led off at his
tireless, even swing, while the mares came streaming after.

Away they went, circling now to the west, and after several repetitions
of this same play, flying, following, and overtaking, and flying again,
they passed, near noon, the old Apache look-out, Buffalo Bluff. And
here, on watch, was Jo. A long thin column of smoke told Charley to come
to camp, and with a flashing pocket-mirror he made response. Jo, freshly
mounted, rode across, and again took up the chase, and back came Charley
to camp to eat and rest, and then move on up stream.

All that day Jo followed, and managed, when it was needed, that the herd
should keep the great circle, of which the wagon cut a small chord. At
sundown he came to Verde Crossing, and there was Charley with a fresh
horse and food, and Jo went on in the same calm, dogged way. All the
evening he followed, and far into the night, for the wild herd was now
getting somewhat used to the presence of the harmless strangers, and
were more easily followed; moreover, they were tiring out with perpetual
traveling. They were no longer in the good grass country, they were not
grain-fed like the horses on their track, and above all, the slight
but continuous nervous tension was surely telling. It spoiled their
appetites, but made them very thirsty. They were allowed, and as far
as possible encouraged, to drink deeply at every chance. The effect of
large quantities of water on a running animal is well known; it tends to
stiffen the limbs and spoil the wind. Jo carefully guarded his own horse
against such excess, and both he and his horse were fresh when they
camped that night on the trail of the jaded mustangs.

At dawn he found them easily close at hand, and though they ran at first
they did not go far before they dropped into a walk. The battle seemed
nearly won now, for the chief difficulty in the 'walk-down' is to keep
track of the herd the first two or three days when they are fresh.

All that morning Jo kept in sight, generally in close sight, of the
band. About ten o'clock, Charley relieved him near Jos. Peak and that
day the mustangs walked only a quarter of a mile ahead with much less
spirit than the day before and circled now more north again. At night
Charley was supplied with a fresh horse and followed as before.

Next day the mustangs walked with heads held low, and in spite of the
efforts of the Black Pacer at times they were less than a hundred yards
ahead of their pursuer.

The fourth and fifth days passed the same way, and now the herd was
nearly back to Antelope Springs. So far all had come out as expected.
The chase had been in a great circle with the wagon following a lesser
circle. The wild herd was back to its starting-point, worn out; and the
hunters were back, fresh and on fresh horses. The herd was kept from
drinking till late in the afternoon and then driven to the Springs to
swell themselves with a perfect water gorge. Now was the chance for the
skilful ropers on the grain-fed horses to close in, for the sudden heavy
drink was ruination, almost paralysis, of wind and limb, and it would be
easy to rope and hobble them one by one.

There was only one weak spot in the programme, the Black Stallion, the
cause of the hunt, seemed made of iron, that ceaseless swinging pace
seemed as swift and vigorous now as on the morning when the chase began.
Up and down he went rounding up the herd and urging them on by voice and
example to escape. But they were played out. The old white mare that
had been such help in sighting them at night, had dropped out hours ago,
dead beat. The half-bloods seemed to be losing all fear of the horsemen,
the band was clearly in Jo's power. But the one who was the prize of all
the hunt seemed just as far as ever out of reach.

Here was a puzzle. Jo's comrades knew him well and would not have been
surprised to see him in a sudden rage attempt to shoot the Stallion
down. But Jo had no such mind. During that long week of following he
had watched the horse all day at speed and never once had he seen him
gallop.

The horseman's adoration of a noble horse had grown and grown, till now
he would as soon have thought of shooting his best mount as firing on
that splendid beast.

Jo even asked himself whether he would take the handsome sum that was
offered for the prize. Such an animal would be a fortune in himself to
sire a race of pacers for the track.

But the prize was still at large--the time had come to finish up the
hunt. Jo's finest mount was caught. She was a mare of Eastern blood, but
raised on the plains. She never would have come into Jo's possession but
for a curious weakness. The loco is a poisonous weed that grows in these
regions. Most stock will not touch it; but sometimes an animal tries it
and becomes addicted to it.

It acts somewhat like morphine, but the animal, though sane for long
intervals, has always a passion for the herb and finally dies mad. A
beast with the craze is said to be locoed. And Jo's best mount had a
wild gleam in her eye that to an expert told the tale.

But she was swift and strong and Jo chose her for the grand finish of
the chase. It would have been an easy matter now to rope the mares, but
was no longer necessary. They could be separated from their black leader
and driven home to the corral. But that leader still had the look of
untamed strength. Jo, rejoicing in a worthy foe, went bounding forth to
try the odds. The lasso was flung on the ground and trailed to take out
every kink, and gathered as he rode into neatest coils across his left
palm. Then putting on the spur the first time in that chase he rode
straight for the Stallion a quarter of a mile beyond. Away he went, and
away went Jo, each at his best, while the fagged-out mares scattered
right and left and let them pass. Straight across the open plain the
fresh horse went at its hardest gallop, and the Stallion, leading off,
still kept his start and kept his famous swing.

It was incredible, and Jo put on more spur and shouted to his horse,
which fairly flew, but shortened up the space between by not a single
inch. For the Black One whirled across the flat and up and passed a
soap-weed mesa and down across a sandy treacherous plain, then over a
grassy stretch where prairie dogs barked, then hid below, and on came
Jo, but there to see, could he believe his eyes, the Stallion's start
grown longer still, and Jo began to curse his luck, and urge and spur
his horse until the poor uncertain brute got into such a state of
nervous fright, her eyes began to roll, she wildly shook her head from
side to side, no longer picked her ground--a badger-hole received her
foot and down she went, and Jo went flying to the earth. Though badly
bruised, he gained his feet and tried to mount his crazy beast. But she,
poor brute, was done for--her off fore-leg hung loose.

There was but one thing to do. Jo loosed the cinch, put Lightfoot out of
pain, and carried back the saddle to the camp. While the Pacer steamed
away till lost to view.

This was not quite defeat, for all the mares were manageable now, and Jo
and Charley drove them carefully to the 'L cross F' corral and claimed a
good reward. But Jo was more than ever bound to own the Stallion. He had
seen what stuff he was made of, he prized him more and more, and only
sought to strike some better plan to catch him.

IV

The cook on that trip was Bates--Mr. Thomas Bates, he called himself at
the post-office where he regularly went for the letters and remittance
which never came. Old Tom Turkeytrack, the boys called him, from
his cattle-brand, which he said was on record at Denver, and which,
according to his story, was also borne by countless beef and saddle
stock on the plains of the unknown North.

When asked to join the trip as a partner, Bates made some sarcastic
remarks about horses not fetching $12 a dozen, which had been literally
true within the year, and he preferred to go on a very meagre salary.
But no one who once saw the Pacer going had failed to catch the craze.
Turkeytrack experienced the usual change of heart. He now wanted to own
that mustang. How this was to be brought about he did not clearly see
till one day there called at the ranch that had 'secured his services,'
as he put it, one, Bill Smith, more usually known as Horseshoe Billy,
from his cattle-brand. While the excellent fresh beef and bread and the
vile coffee, dried peaches and molasses were being consumed, he of the
horseshoe remarked, in tones which percolated through a huge stop-gap of
bread:

"Wall, I seen that thar Pacer to-day, nigh enough to put a plait in his
tail."

"What, you didn't shoot?"

"No, but I come mighty near it."

"Don't you be led into no sich foolishness," said a 'double-bar H'
cow-puncher at the other end of the table. "I calc'late that maverick
'ill carry my brand before the moon changes."

"You'll have to be pretty spry or you'll find a 'triangle dot' on his
weather side when you get there."

"Where did you run across him?"

"Wail, it was like this; I was riding the flat by Antelope Springs and
I sees a lump on the dry mud inside the rush belt. I knowed I never seen
that before, so I rides up, thinking it might be some of our stock, an'
seen it was a horse lying plumb flat. The wind was blowing like--from
him to me, so I rides up close and seen it was the Pacer, dead as a
mackerel. Still, he didn't look swelled or cut, and there wa'n't no
smell, an' I didn't know what to think till I seen his ear twitch off a
fly and then I knowed he was sleeping. I gits down me rope and coils it,
and seen it was old and pretty shaky in spots, and me saddle a single
cinch, an' me pony about 700 again a 1,200 lbs. stallion, an' I sez to
meself, sez I: 'Tain't no use, I'll only break me cinch and git throwed
an' lose me saddle.' So I hits the saddle-horn a crack with the hondu,
and I wish't you'd a seen that mustang. He lept six foot in the air an'
snorted like he was shunting cars. His eyes fairly bugged out an' he
lighted out lickety split for California, and he orter be there about
now if he kep' on like he started--and I swear he never made a break the
hull trip."

The story was not quite so consecutive as given here. It was much
punctuated by present engrossments, and from first to last was more or
less infiltrated through the necessaries of life, for Bill was a healthy
young man without a trace of false shame. But the account was complete
and everyone believed it, for Billy was known to be reliable. Of all
those who heard, old Turkeytrack talked the least and probably thought
the most, for it gave him a new idea.

During his after-dinner pipe he studied it out and deciding that he
could not go it alone, he took Horseshoe Billy into his council and the
result was a partnership in a new venture to capture the Pacer; that is,
the $5,000 that was now said to be the offer for him safe in a box-car.

Antelope Springs was still the usual watering-place of the Pacer. The
water being low left a broad belt of dry black mud between the sedge and
the spring. At two places this belt was broken by a well-marked trail
made by the animals coming to drink. Horses and wild animals usually
kept to these trails, though the horned cattle had no hesitation in
taking a short cut through the sedge.

In the most used of these trails the two men set to work with shovels
and dug a pit 15 feet long, 6 feet wide and 7 feet deep. It was a
hard twenty hours work for them as it had to be completed between
the Mustang's drinks, and it began to be very damp work before it was
finished. With poles, brush, and earth it was then cleverly covered over
and concealed. And the men went to a distance and hid in pits made for
the purpose.

About noon the Pacer came, alone now since the capture of his band.
The trail on the opposite side of the mud belt was little used, and old
Tom, by throwing some fresh rushes across it, expected to make sure
that the Stallion would enter by the other, if indeed he should by any
caprice try to come by the unusual path.

What sleepless angel is it watches over and cares for the wild animals?
In spite of all reasons to take the usual path, the Pacer came along the
other. The suspicious-looking rushes did not stop him; he walked calmly
to the water and drank. There was only one way now to prevent utter
failure; when he lowered his head for the second draft which horses
always take, Bates and Smith quit their holes and ran swiftly toward
the trail behind him, and when he raised his proud head Smith sent a
revolver shot into the ground behind him.

Away went the Pacer at his famous gait straight to the trap. Another
second and he would be into it. Already he is on the trail, and already
they feel they have him, but the Angel of the wild things is with him,
that incomprehensible warning comes, and with one mighty bound he clears
the fifteen feet of treacherous ground and spurns the earth as he fades
away unharmed, never again to visit Antelope Springs by either of the
beaten paths.

V

Wild Jo never lacked energy. He meant to catch that Mustang, and when he
learned that others were bestirring themselves for the same purpose
he at once set about trying the best untried plan he knew--the plan by
which the coyote catches the fleeter jackrabbit, and the mounted Indian
the far swifter antelope--the old plan of the relay chase.

The Canadian River on the south, its affluent, the Pinavetitos Arroyo,
on the northeast, and the Don Carlos Hills with the Ute Creek Canyon on
the west, formed a sixty-mile triangle that was the range of the Pacer.
It was believed that he never went outside this, and at all times
Antelope Springs was his headquarters.

Jo knew this country well, all the water-holes and canon crossings as
well as the ways of the Pacer.

If he could have gotten fifty good horses he could have posted them to
advantage so as to cover all points, but twenty mounts and five good
riders were all that proved available.

The horses, grain-fed for two weeks before, were sent on ahead; each man
was instructed how to play his part and sent to his post the day before
the race. On the day of the start Jo with his wagon drove to the plain
of Antelope Springs and, camping far off in a little draw, waited.

At last he came, that coal-black Horse, out from the sand-hills at the
south, alone as always now, and walked calmly down to the Springs and
circled quite around it to sniff for any hidden foe. Then he approached
where there was no trail at all and drank.

Jo watched and wished that he would drink a hogs-head. But the moment
that he turned and sought the grass Jo spurred his steed. The Pacer
heard the hoofs, then saw the running horse, and did not want a nearer
view but led away. Across the flat he went down to the south, and kept
the famous swinging gait that made his start grow longer. Now through
the sandy dunes he went, and steadying to an even pace he gained
considerably and Jo's too-laden horse plunged through the sand and
sinking fetlock deep, he lost at every bound. Then came a level stretch
where the runner seemed to gain, and then a long decline where Jo's
horse dared not run his best, so lost again at every step.

But on they went, and Jo spared neither spur nor quirt. A mile--a
mile--and another mile, and the far-off rock at Arriba loomed up ahead.

And there Jo knew fresh mounts were held, and on they dashed. But the
night-black mane out level on the breeze ahead was gaining more and
more.

Arriba Canon reached at last, the watcher stood aside, for it was not
wished to turn the race, and the Stallion passed--dashed down, across
and up the slope, with that unbroken pace, the only one he knew.

And Jo came bounding on his foaming steed, and on the waiting mount,
then urged him down the slope and up upon the track, and on the upland
once more drove in the spurs, and raced and raced, and raced, but not a
single inch he gained.

Ga-lump, ga-lump, ga-lump, with measured beat he went--an hour--an hour,
and another hour--Arroyo Alamosa just ahead with fresh relays, and Jo
yelled at his horse and pushed him on and on. Straight for the place the
Black One made, but on the last two miles some strange foreboding turned
him to the left, and Jo foresaw escape in this, and pushed his jaded
mount at any cost to head him off, and hard as they had raced this was
the hardest race of all, with gasps for breath and leather squeaks at
every straining bound. Then cutting right across, Jo seemed to gain, and
drawing his gun he fired shot after shot to toss the dust, and so turned
the Stallion's head and forced him back to take the crossing to the
right.

Down they went. The Stallion crossed and Jo sprang to the ground. His
horse was done, for thirty miles had passed in the last stretch, and Jo
himself was worn out. His eyes were burnt with flying alkali dust. He
was half blind so he motioned to his 'pard' to "go ahead and keep him
straight for Alamosa ford."

Out shot the rider on a strong, fresh steed, and away they went--up and
down on the rolling plain--the Black Horse flecked with snowy foam.
His heaving ribs and noisy breath showed what he felt--but on and on he
Went.

And Tom on Ginger seemed to gain, then lose and lose, when in an hour
the long decline of Alamosa came.

And there a freshly mounted lad took up the chase and turned it west,
and on they went past towns of prairie dogs, through soapweed tracts and
cactus brakes by scores, and pricked and wrenched rode on. With dust and
sweat the Black was now a dappled brown, but still he stepped the same.
Young Carrington, who followed, bad hurt his steed by pushing at the
very start, and spurred and urged him now to cut across a gulch at which
the Pacer shied. Just one misstep and down they went.

The boy escaped, but the pony lies there yet, and the wild Black Horse
kept on.

This was close to old Gallego's ranch where Jo himself had cut across
refreshed to push the chase. Within thirty minutes he was again
scorching the Pacer's trail.

Far in the west the Carlos Hills were seen, and there Jo knew fresh men
and mounts were waiting, and that way the indomitable rider tried
to turn, the race, but by a sudden whim, of the inner warning born
perhaps--the Pacer turned. Sharp to the north he went, and Jo, the
skilful wrangler, rode and rode and yelled and tossed the dust with
shots, but down on a gulch the wild black meteor streamed and Jo
could only follow. Then came the hardest race of all; Jo, cruel to the
Mustang, was crueller to his mount and to himself. The sun was hot, the
scorching plain was dim in shimmering heat, his eyes and lips were burnt
with sand and salt, and yet the chase sped on. The only chance to win
would be if he could drive the Mustang back to the Big Arroyo Crossing.
Now almost for the first time he saw signs of weakening in the Black.
His mane and tail were not just quite so high, and his short half mile
of start was down by more than half, but still he stayed ahead and paced
and paced and paced.

An hour and another hour, and still they went the same. But they turned
again, and night was near when Big Arroyo ford was reached--fully twenty
miles. But Jo was game, he seized the waiting horse. The one he left
went gasping to the stream and gorged himself with water till he died.

Then Jo held back in hopes the foaming Black would drink. But he was
wise; he gulped a single gulp, splashed through the stream and then
passed on with Jo at speed behind him. And when they last were seen the
Black was on ahead just out of reach and Jo's horse bounding on.

It was morning when Jo came to camp on foot. His tale was briefly
told:--eight horses dead--five men worn out--the matchless Pacer safe
and free.

"Tain't possible; it can't be done. Sorry I didn't bore his hellish
carcass through when I had the chance," said Jo, and gave it up.

VI

Old Turkeytrack was cook on this trip. He had watched the chase with as
much interest as anyone, and when it failed he grinned into the pot and
said: "That mustang's mine unless I'm a darned fool." Then falling back
on Scripture for a precedent, as was his habit, he still addressed the
pot:

"Reckon the Philistines tried to run Samson down and they got done up,
an' would a stayed don ony for a nat'ral weakness on his part. An' Adam
would a loafed in Eden yit it ony for a leetle failing, which we all
onder stand. An' it aint $5,000 I'll take for him nuther."

Much persecution had made the Pacer wilder than ever. But it did not
drive him away from Antelope Springs. That was the only drinking-place
with absolutely no shelter for a mile on every side to hide an enemy.
Here he came almost every day about noon, and after thoroughly spying
the land approached to drink.

His had been a lonely life all winter since the capture of his harem,
and of this old Turkeytrack was fully aware. The old cook's chum had a
nice little brown mare which he judged would serve his ends, and taking
a pair of the strongest hobbles, a spade, a spare lasso, and a stout
post he mounted the mare and rode away to the famous Springs.

A few antelope skimmed over the plain before him in the early freshness
of the day. Cattle were lying about in groups, and the loud, sweet song
of the prairie lark was' heard on every side. For the bright snowless
winter of the mesas was gone and the springtime was at hand. The grass
was greening and all nature seemed turning to thoughts of love.

It was in the air, and when the little brown mare was picketed out to
graze she raised her nose from time to time to pour forth a long shrill
whinny that surely was her song, if song she had, of love.

Old Turkeytrack studied the wind and the lay of the land. There was the
pit he had labored at, now opened and filled with water that was rank
with drowned prairie dogs and mice. Here was the new trail the animals
were forced to make by the pit. He selected a sedgy clump near some
smooth, grassy ground, and first firmly sunk the post, then dug a hole
large enough to hide in, and spread his blanket in it. He shortened
up the little mare's tether, till she could scarcely move; then on the
ground between he spread his open lasso, tying the long end to the
post, then covered the rope with dust and grass, and went into his
hiding-place.

About noon, after long waiting, the amorous whinny of the mare was
answered from the high ground, away to the west, and there, black
against the sky, was the famous Mustang.

Down he came at that long swinging gait, but grown crafty with much
pursuit, he often stopped to gaze and whinny, and got answer that surely
touched his heart.

Nearer he came again to call, then took alarm, and paced all around in
a great circle to try the wind for his foes, and seemed in doubt. The
Angel whispered "Don't go." But the brown mare called again. He circled
nearer still, and neighed once more, and got reply that seemed to quell
all fears, and set his heart aglow.

Nearer still he pranced, till he touched Solly's nose with his own,
and finding her as responsive as he well could wish, thrust aside all
thoughts of danger, and abandoned himself to the delight of conquest,
until, as he pranced around, his hind legs for a moment stood within the
evil circle of the rope. One deft sharp twitch, the noose flew tight,
and he was caught.

A snort of terror and a bound in the air gave Tom the chance to add the
double hitch. The loop flashed up the line, and snake-like bound those
mighty hoofs.

Terror lent speed and double strength for a moment, but the end of the
rope was reached, and down he went a captive, a hopeless prisoner
at last. Old Tom's ugly, little crooked form sprang from the pit to
complete the mastering of the great glorious creature whose mighty
strength had proved as nothing when matched with the wits of a little
old man. With snorts and desperate bounds of awful force the great beast
dashed and struggled to be free; but all in vain. The rope was strong.

The second lasso was deftly swung, and the forefeet caught, and then
with a skilful move the feet were drawn together, and down went the
raging Pacer to lie a moment later 'hog-tied' and helpless on the
ground. There he struggled till worn out, sobbing great convulsive sobs
while tears ran down his cheeks.

Tom stood by and watched, but a strange revulsion of feeling came over
the old cow-puncher. He trembled nervously from head to foot, as he
had not done since he roped his first steer, and for a while could do
nothing but gaze on his tremendous prisoner. But the feeling soon passed
away. He saddled Delilah, and taking the second lasso, roped the great
horse about the neck, and left the mare to hold the Stallion's head,
while he put on the hobbles. This was soon done, and sure of him now old
Bates was about to loose the ropes, but on a sudden thought he stopped.
He had quite forgotten, and had come unprepared for something of
importance. In Western law the Mustang was the property of the first
man to mark him with his brand; how was this to be done with the nearest
branding-iron twenty miles away?

Old Tom went to his mare, took up her hoofs one at a time, and examined
each shoe. Yes! one was a little loose; he pushed and pried it with the
spade, and got it off. Buffalo chips and kindred fuel were plentiful
about the plain, so a fire was quickly made, and he soon had one arm of
the horse-shoe red hot, then holding the other wrapped in his sock
he rudely sketched on the left shoulder of the helpless mustang a
turkeytrack, his brand, the first time really that it had ever been
used. The Pacer shuddered as the hot iron seared his flesh, but it was
quickly done, and the famous Mustang Stallion was a maverick no more.

Now all there was to do was to take him home. The ropes were loosed, the
Mustang felt himself freed, thought he was free, and sprang to his feet
only to fall as soon as he tried to take a stride. His forefeet were
strongly tied together, his only possible gait a shuffling walk, or else
a desperate labored bounding with feet so unnaturally held that within a
few yards he was inevitably thrown each time he tired to break away.
Tom on the light pony headed him off again and again, and by dint of
driving, threatening, and maneuvering, contrived to force his foaming,
crazy captive northward toward the Pinavetitos Canyon. But the wild horse
would not drive, would not give in. With snorts of terror or of rage and
maddest bounds, he tried and tried to get away. It was one long cruel
fight; his glossy sides were thick with dark foam, and the foam was
stained with blood. Countless hard falls and exhaustion that a long
day's chase was powerless to produce were telling on him; his straining
bounds first this way and then that, were not now quite so strong, and
the spray he snorted as he gasped was half a spray of blood. But his
captor, relentless, masterful and cool, still forced him on. Down the
slope toward the canyon they had come, every yard a fight, and now
they were at the head of the draw that took the trail down to the only
crossing of the canon, the northmost limit of the Pacer's ancient range.

From this the first corral and ranch-house were in sight. The man
rejoiced, but the Mustang gathered his remaining strength for one more
desperate dash. Up, up the grassy slope from the trail he went, defied
the swinging, slashing rope and the gunshot fired in air, in vain
attempt to turn his frenzied course. Up, up and on, above the sheerest
cliff he dashed then sprang away into the vacant air, down--down--two
hundred downward feet to fall, and land upon the rocks below, a lifeless
wreck--but free.




WULLY, The Story of a Yaller Dog

WULLY WAS a little yaller dog. A yaller dog, be it understood, is not
necessarily the same as a yellow dog. He is not simply a canine whose
capillary covering is highly charged with yellow pigment. He is the
mongrelest mixture of all mongrels, the least common multiple of all
dogs, the breedless union of all breeds, and though of no breed at all,
he is yet of older, better breed than any of his aristocratic relations,
for he is nature's attempt to restore the ancestral jackal, the parent
stock of all dogs.

Indeed, the scientific name of the jackal (Canis aureus) means simply
'yellow dog,' and not a few of that animal's characteristics are seen in
his domesticated representative. For the plebeian cur is shrewd, active,
and hardy, and far better equipped for the real struggle of life than
any of his 'thoroughbred' kinsmen.

If we were to abandon a yaller dog, a greyhound, and a bulldog on a
desert island, which of them after six months would be alive and well?
Unquestionably it would be the despised yellow cur. He has not the speed
of the greyhound, but neither does he bear the seeds of lung and skin
diseases. He has not the strength or reckless courage of the bulldog,
but he has something a thousand times better, he has common sense.
Health and wit are no mean equipment for the life struggle, and when the
dog-world is not 'managed' by man, they have never yet failed to bring
out the yellow mongrel as the sole and triumphant survivor.

Once in a while the reversion to the jackal type is more complete, and
the yaller dog has pricked and pointed ears. Beware of him then. He is
cunning and plucky and can bite like a wolf. There is a strange, wild
streak in his nature too, that under cruelty or long adversity may
develop into deadliest treachery in spite of the better traits that are
the foundation of man's love for the dog.

I

Away up in the Cheviots little Wully was born. He and one other of the
litter were kept; his brother because he resembled the best dog in the
vicinity, and himself because he was a little yellow beauty.

His early life was that of a sheep-dog, in company with an experienced
collie who trained him, and an old shepherd who was scarcely inferior
to them in intelligence. By the time he was two years old Wully was
full grown and had taken a thorough course in sheep. He knew them from
ram-horn to lamb-hoof, and old Robin, his master, at length had such
confidence in his sagacity that he would frequently stay at the tavern
all night while Wully guarded the woolly idiots in the hills. His
education had been wisely bestowed and in most ways he was a very bright
little dog with a future before him, Yet he never learned to despise
that addle-pated Robin. The old shepherd, with all his faults, his
continual striving after his ideal state--intoxication--and his
mind-shrivelling life in general was rarely brutal to Wully, and Wully
repaid him with an exaggerated worship that the greatest and wisest in
the land would have aspired to in vain.

Wully could not have imagined any greater being than Robin, and yet for
the sum of five shillings a week all Robin's vital energy and mental
force were pledged to the service of a not very great cattle and sheep
dealer, the real proprietor of Wully's charge, and when this man, really
less great than the neighboring laird, ordered Robin to drive his flock
by stages to the Yorkshire moors and markets, of all the 376 mentalities
concerned, Wully's was the most interested and interesting.

The journey through Northumberland was uneventful. At the River Tyne
the sheep were driven on to the ferry and landed safely in smoky South
Shields. The great factory chimneys were just starting up for the day
and belching out fogbanks and thunder-rollers of opaque leaden smoke
that darkened the air and hung low like a storm-cloud over the streets.
The sheep thought that they recognized the fuming dun of an unusually
heavy Cheviot storm. They became alarmed, and in spite of their keepers
stampeded through the town in 374 different directions.

Robin was vexed to the inmost recesses of his tiny soul. He stared
stupidly after the sheep for half a minute, then gave the order, "Wully,
fetch them in." After this mental effort he sat down, lit his pipe, and
taking out his knitting began work on a half-finished sock.

To Wully the voice of Robin was the voice of God. Away he ran in 374
different directions, and headed off and rounded up the 374 different
wanderers, and brought them back to the ferry-house before Robin, who
was stolidly watching the process, had toed off his sock.

Finally Wully--not Robin--gave the sign that all were in. The old
shepherd proceeded to count them--370, 371, 372, 373.

"Wully," he said reproachfully, "thar no' a' here. Thur's anither." And
Wully, stung with shame, bounded off to scour the whole city for the
missing one. He was not long gone when a small boy pointed out to
Robin that the sheep were all there, the whole 374. Now Robin was in a
quandary. His order was to hasten on to Yorkshire, and yet he knew that
Wully's pride would prevent his coming back without another sheep, even
if he had to steal it. Such things had happened before, and resulted in
embarrassing complications. What should he do?

There was five shillings a week at stake. Wully was a good dog, it was
a pity to lose him, but then, his orders from the master; and again,
if Wully stole an extra sheep to make up the number, then what--in a
foreign land too? He decided to abandon Wully, and push on alone with
the sheep. And how he fared no one knows or cares.

Meanwhile, Wully careered through miles of streets hunting in vain for
his lost sheep. All day he searched, and at night, famished and worn
out, he sneaked shamefacedly back to the ferry, only to find that
master and sheep had gone. His sorrow was pitiful to see. He ran about
whimpering, then took the ferryboat across to the other side, and
searched everywhere for Robin. He returned to South Shields and searched
there, and spent the rest of the night seeking for his wretched idol.
The next day he continued his search, he crossed and recrossed the
river many times. He watched and smelt everyone that came over, and with
significant shrewdness he sought unceasingly in the neighboring taverns
for his master. The next day he set to work systematically to smell
everyone that might cross the ferry.

The ferry makes fifty trips a day, with an average of one hundred
persons a trip, yet never once did Wully fail to be on the gang-plank
and smell every pair of legs that crossed--5,000 pairs, 10,000 legs that
day did Wully examine after his own fashion. And the next day, and
the next, and all the week he kept his post, and seemed indifferent to
feeding himself. Soon starvation and worry began to tell on him. He
grew thin and ill-tempered. No one could touch him, and any attempt
to interfere with his daily occupation of leg-smelling roused him to
desperation.

Day after day, week after week Wully watched and waited for his master,
who never came. The ferry men learned to respect Wully's fidelity. At
first he scorned their proffered food and shelter, and lived no one knew
how, but starved to it at last, he accepted the gifts and learned to
tolerate the givers. Although embittered against the world, his heart
was true to his worthless master.

Fourteen months afterward I made his acquaintance. He was still on rigid
duty at his post. He had regained his good looks. His bright, keen face
set off by his white ruff and pricked ears made a dog to catch the eye
anywhere. But he gave me no second glance, once he found my legs were
not those he sought, and in spite of my friendly overtures during the
ten months following that he continued his watch. I got no farther into
his confidence than any other stranger.

For two whole years did this devoted creature attend that ferry. There
was only one thing to prevent him going home to the hills, not the
distance nor the chance of getting lost, but the conviction that Robin,
the godlike Robin, wished him to stay by the ferry; and he stayed.

But he crossed the water as often as he felt it would serve his purpose.
The fare for a dog was one penny, and it was calculated that Wully owed
the company hundreds of pounds before he gave up his quest. He
never failed to sense every pair of nethers that crossed the
gangplank--6,000,000 legs by computation had been pronounced upon by
this expert. But all to no purpose.

His unswerving fidelity never faltered, though his temper was obviously
souring under the long strain.

We had never heard what became of Robin, but one day a sturdy drover
strode down the ferry-slip and Wully mechanically assaying the new
personality, suddenly started, his mane bristled, he trembled, a low
growl escaped him, and he fixed his every sense on the drover.

One of the ferry hands not understanding, called to the stranger, "Hoot
mon, ye maunna hort oor dawg."

"Whaes hortin 'im, ye fule; he is mair like to hort me." But further
explanation was not necessary. Wully's manner had wholly changed. He
fawned on the drover, and his tail was wagging violently for the first
time in years. A few words made it all clear. Dorley, the drover, had
known Robin very well, and the mittens and comforter he wore were
of Robin's own make and had once been part of his wardrobe. Wully
recognized the traces of his master, and despairing of any nearer
approach to his lost idol, he abandoned his post at the ferry and
plainly announced his intention of sticking to the owner of the mittens,
and Dorley was well pleased to take Wully along to his home among the
hills of Derbyshire, where he became once more a sheep-dog in charge of
a flock.

II

Monsaldale is one of the best-known valleys in Derbyshire. The Pig
and Whistle is its single but celebrated inn, and Jo Greatorex, the
landlord, is a shrewd and sturdy Yorkshireman. Nature meant him for a
frontiersman, but circumstances made him an innkeeper and his inborn
tastes made him a--well, never mind; there was a great deal of poaching
done in that country.

Wully's new home was on the upland east of the valley above Jo's inn,
and that fact was not without weight in bringing me to Monsaldale. His
master, Dorley, farmed in a small way on the lowland, and on the moors
had a large number of sheep. These Wully guarded with his old-time
sagacity, watching them while they fed and bringing them to the fold at
night. He was reserved and preoccupied for a dog, and rather too
ready to show his teeth to strangers, but he was so unremitting in
his attention to his flock that Dorley did not lose a lamb that year,
although the neighboring farmers paid the usual tribute to eagles and to
foxes.

The dales are poor fox-hunting country at best. The rocky ridges, high
stone walls, and precipices are too numerous to please the riders, and
the final retreats in the rocks are so plentiful that it was a marvel
the foxes did not overrun Monsaldale. But they didn't. There had been
but little reason for complaint until the year 1881, when a sly old fox
quartered himself on the fat parish, like a mouse inside a cheese, and
laughed equally at the hounds of the huntsmen and the lurchers of the
farmers. He was several times run by the Peak hounds, and escaped by
making for the Devil's Hole. Once in this gorge, where the cracks in the
rocks extend unknown distances, he was safe. The country folk began to
see something more than chance in the fact that he always escaped at the
Devil's Hole, and when one of the hounds who nearly caught this Devil's
Fox soon after went mad, it removed all doubt as to the spiritual
paternity of said fox.

He continued his career of rapine, making audacious raids and
hair-breadth escapes, and finally began, as do many old foxes, to kill
from a mania for slaughter. Thus it was that Digby lost ten lambs in one
night. Carroll lost seven the next night. Later, the vicarage duck-pond
was wholly devastated, and scarcely a night passed but someone in the
region had to report a carnage of poultry, lambs or sheep, and, finally
even calves.

Of course all the slaughter was attributed to this one fox of the
Devil's Hole. It was known only that he was a very large fox, at least
one that made a very large track. He never was clearly seen, even by the
huntsmen. And it was noticed that Thunder and Bell, the stanchest hounds
in the pack, had refused to tongue or even to follow the trail when he
was hunted.

His reputation for madness sufficed to make the master of the Peak
hounds avoid the neighborhood. The farmers in Monsaldale, led by Jo,
agreed among themselves that if it would only come on a snow, they would
assemble and beat the whole country, and in defiance of all rules of the
hunt, get rid of the 'daft' fox in any way they could. But the snow did
not come, and the red-haired gentleman lived his life. Notwithstanding
his madness, he did not lack method. He never came two successive nights
to the same farm. He never ate where he killed, and he never left a
track that betrayed his re-treat. He usually finished up his night's
trail on the turf, or on a public highway.

Once I saw him. I was walking to Monsaldale from Bakewell late one night
during a heavy storm, and as I turned the corner of Stead's sheep-fold
there was a vivid flash of lightning. By its light, there was fixed on
my retina a picture that made me start. Sitting on his haunches by the
roadside, twenty yards away, was a very large fox gazing at me with
malignant eyes, and licking his muzzle in a suggestive manner. All
this I saw, but no more, and might have forgotten it, or thought myself
mistaken, but the next morning, in that very fold, were found the bodies
of twenty-three lambs and sheep, and the unmistakable signs that brought
home the crime to the well-known marauder.

There was only one man who escaped, and that was Dorley. This was the
more remarkable because he lived in the centre of the region raided, and
within one mile of the Devil's Hole. Faithful Wully proved himself worth
all the dogs in the neighborhood. Night after night he brought in the
sheep, and never one was missing. The Mad Fox might prowl about the
Dorley homestead if he wished, but Wully, shrewd, brave, active Wully
was more than a match for him, and not only saved his master's flock,
but himself escaped with a whole skin. Everyone entertained a profound
respect for him, and he might have been a popular pet but for his temper
which, never genial, became more and more crabbed. He seemed to like
Dorley, and Huldah, Dorley's eldest daughter, a shrewd, handsome, young
woman, who, in the capacity of general manager of the house, was Wully's
special guardian. The other members of Dorley's family Wully learned to
tolerate, but the rest of the world, men and dogs, he seemed to hate.

His uncanny disposition was well shown in the last meeting I had with
him. I was walking on a pathway across the moor behind Dorley's house.
Wully was lying on the doorstep. As I drew near he arose, and without
appearing to see me trotted toward my pathway and placed himself across
it about ten yards ahead of me. There he stood silently and intently
regarding the distant moor, his slightly bristling mane the only sign
that he had not been suddenly turned to stone. He did not stir as I
came up, and not wishing to quarrel, I stepped around past his nose and
walked on. Wully at once left his position and in the same eerie silence
trotted on some twenty feet and again stood across the pathway. Once
more I came up and, stepping into the grass, brushed past his nose.
Instantly, but without a sound, he seized my left heel. I kicked out
with the other foot, but he escaped. Not having a stick, I flung a large
stone at him. He leaped forward and the stone struck him in the ham,
bowling him over into a ditch. He gasped out a savage growl as he fell,
but scrambled out of the ditch and limped away in silence.

Yet sullen and ferocious as Wully was to the world, he was always gentle
with Dorley's sheep. Many were the tales of rescues told of him. Many
a poor lamb that had fallen into a pond or hole would have perished but
for his timely and sagacious aid, many a far-weltered ewe did he turn
right side up; while his keen eye discerned and his fierce courage
baffled every eagle that had appeared on the moor in his time.

III

The Monsaldale farmers were still paying their nightly tribute to the
Mad Fox, when the snow came, late in December. Poor Widow Cot lost her
entire flock of twenty sheep, and the fiery cross went forth early in
the morning. With guns unconcealed the burly farmers set out to follow
to the finish the tell-tale tracks in the snow, those of a very large
fox, undoubtedly the multo-murderous villain. For a while the trail was
clear enough, then it came to the river and the habitual cunning of the
animal was shown. He reached the water at a long angle pointing down
stream and jumped into the shallow, unfrozen current. But at the
other side there was no track leading out, and it was only after long
searching that, a quarter of a mile higher up the stream, they found
where he had come out. The track then ran to the top of Henley's high
stone wall, where there was no snow left to tell tales. But the patient
hunters persevered. When it crossed the smooth snow from the wall to the
high road there was a difference of opinion. Some claimed that the track
went up, others down the road. But Jo settled it, and after another long
search they found where apparently the same trail, though some said a
larger one, had left the road to enter a sheep-fold, and leaving this
without harming the occupants, the track-maker had stepped in the
footmarks of a countryman, thereby getting to the moor road, along which
he had trotted straight to Dorley's farm.

That day the sheep were kept in on account of the snow and Wully,
without his usual occupation, was lying on some planks in the sun. As
the hunters drew near the house, he growled savagely and sneaked around
to where the sheep were. Jo Greatorex walked up to where Wully had
crossed the fresh snow, gave a glance, looked dumbfounded, then pointing
to the retreating sheep-dog, he said, with emphasis:

"Lads, we're off the track of the Fox. But there's the killer of the
Widder's yowes."

Some agreed with Jo, others recalled the doubt in the trail and were for
going back to make a fresh follow. At this juncture, Dorley himself came
out of the house.

"Tom," said Jo, "that dog o' thine 'as killed twenty of Widder Gelt's
sheep, last night. An' ah fur one don't believe as its 'is first
killin'."

"Why, mon, thou art crazy," said Tom. "Ah never 'ad a better
sheep-dog--'e fair loves the sheep."

"Aye! We's seen summat o' that in las' night's work," replied Jo.

In vain the company related the history of the morning. Tom swore that
it was nothing but a jealous conspiracy to rob him of Wully.

"Wully sleeps i' the kitchen every night. Never is oot till he's let
to bide wi' the yowes. Why, mon, he's wi' oor sheep the year round, and
never a hoof have ah lost."

Tom became much excited over this abominable attempt against Wully's
reputation and life. Jo and his partisans got equally angry, and it was
a wise suggestion of Huldah's that quieted them.

"Feyther," said she, "ah'll sleep i' the kitchen the night. If Wully
'as ae way of gettin' oot ah'll see it, an' if he's no oot an' sheep's
killed on the country-side, we'll ha' proof it's na Wully."

That night Huldah stretched herself on the settee and Wully slept as
usual underneath the table. As night wore on the dog became restless. He
turned on his bed and once or twice got up, stretched, looked at Huldah
and lay down again. About two o'clock he seemed no longer able to resist
some strange impulse. He arose quietly, looked toward the low window,
then at the motionless girl. Huldah lay still and breathed as though
sleeping. Wully slowly came near and sniffed and breathed his doggy
breath in her face. She made no move. He nudged her gently with his
nose. Then, with his sharp ears forward and his head on one side he
studied her calm face. Still no sign. He walked quietly to the window,
mounted the table without noise, placed his nose under the sash-bar
and raised the light frame until he could put one paw underneath. Then
changing, he put his nose under the sash and raised it high enough to
slip out, easing down the frame finally on his rump and tail with an
adroitness that told of long practice. Then he disappeared into the
darkness.

From her couch Huldah watched in amazement. After waiting for some time
to make sure that he was gone, she arose, intending to call her father
at once, but on second thought she decided to await more conclusive
proof. She peered into the darkness, but no sign of Wully was to be
seen. She put more wood on the fire, and lay down again. For over an
hour she lay wide awake listening to the kitchen clock, and starting at
each trifling sound, and wondering what the dog was doing. Could it
be possible that he had really killed the widow's sheep? Then the
recollection of his gentleness to their own sheep came, and completed
her perplexity.

Another hour slowly tick-tocked. She heard a slight sound at the window
that made her heart jump. The scratching sound was soon followed by the
lifting of the sash, and in a short time Wully was back in the kitchen
with the window closed behind him.

By the flickering fire-light Huldah could see a strange, wild gleam in
his eye, and his jaws and snowy breast were dashed with fresh blood. The
dog ceased his slight panting as he scrutinized the girl. Then, as
she did not move, he lay down, and began to lick his paws and muzzle,
growling lowly once or twice as though at the remembrance of some recent
occurrence.

Huldah had seen enough. There could no longer be any doubt that Jo was
right and more--a new thought flashed into her quick brain, she realized
that the weird fox of Monsal was before her. Raising herself, she looked
straight at Wully, and exclaimed:

"Wully! Wully! so it's a' true--oh, Wully, ye terrible brute."

Her voice was fiercely reproachful, it rang in the quiet kitchen, and
Wully recoiled as though shot. He gave a desperate glance toward the
closed window. His eye gleamed, and his mane bristled. But he cowered
under her gaze, and grovelled on the floor as though begging for mercy.
Slowly he crawled nearer and nearer, as if to lick her feet, until quite
close, then, with the fury of a tiger, but without a sound, he sprang
for her throat.

The girl was taken unawares, but she threw up her arm in time, and
Wully's long, gleaming tusks sank into her flesh, and grated on the
bone.

"Help! help! feyther! feyther!" she shrieked.

Wully was a light weight, and for a moment she flung him off. But there
could be no mistaking his purpose. The game was up, it was his life or
hers now.

"Feyther! feyther!" she screamed, as the yellow fury, striving to kill
her, bit and tore the unprotected hands that had so often fed him.

In vain she fought to hold him off, he would soon have had her by the
throat, when in rushed Dorley.

Straight at him, now in the same horrid silence sprang Wully, and
savagely tore him again and again before a deadly blow from the
fagot-hook disabled him, dashing him, gasping and writhing, on the
stone floor, desperate, and done for, but game and defiant to the last.
Another quick blow scattered his brains on the hearthstone, where so
long he had been a faithful and honored retainer--and Wully, bright,
fierce, trusty, treacherous Wully, quivered a moment, then straightened
out, and lay forever still.




REDRUFF, The Story of the Don Valley Partridge

I

DOWN THE wooded slope of Taylor's Hill the Mother Partridge led her
brood; down toward the crystal brook that by some strange whim was
called Mud Creek. Her little ones were one day old but already quick on
foot, and she was taking them for the first time to drink.

She walked slowly, crouching low as she went, for the woods were full of
enemies. She was uttering a soft little cluck in her throat, a call
to the little balls of mottled down that on their tiny pink legs came
toddling after, and peeping softly and plaintively if left even a few
inches behind, and seeming so fragile they made the very chickadees look
big and coarse. There were twelve of them, but Mother Grouse watched
them all, and she watched every bush and tree and thicket, and the whole
woods and the sky itself. Always for enemies she seemed seeking--friends
were too scarce to be looked for--and an enemy she found. Away across
the level beaver meadow was a great brute of a fox. He was coming their
way, and in a few moments would surely wind them or strike their trail.
There was no time to lose.

'Krrr! Krrr!' (Hide!! Hide!) cried the mother in a low firm voice, and
the little bits of things, scarcely bigger than acorns and but a day
old, scattered far (a few inches) apart to hide. One dived under a leaf,
another between two roots, a third crawled into a curl of birchbark, a
fourth into a hole, and so on, till all were hidden but one who could
find no cover, so squatted on a broad yellow chip and lay very flat, and
closed his eyes very tight, sure that now he was safe from being seen.
They ceased their frightened peeping and all was still.

Mother Partridge flew straight toward the dreaded beast, alighted
fearlessly a few yards to one side of him, and then flung herself on the
ground, flopping as though winged and lame--oh, so dreadfully lame--and
whining like a distressed puppy. Was she begging for mercy--mercy from
a bloodthirsty, cruel fox? Oh, dear no! She was no fool. One often hears
of the cunning of the fox. Wait and see what a fool he is compared with
a mother-partridge. Elated at the prize so suddenly within his reach,
the fox turned with a dash and caught--at least, no, he didn't quite
catch the bird; she flopped by chance just a foot out of reach. He
followed with another jump and would have seized her this time surely,
but somehow a sapling came just between, and the partridge dragged
herself awkwardly away and under a log, but the great brute snapped his
jaws and hounded over the log, while she, seeming a trifle less lame,
made another clumsy forward spring and tumbled down a bank, and Reynard,
keenly following, almost caught her tail, but, oddly enough, fast as
he went and leaped, she still seemed just a trifle faster. It was most
extraordinary. A winged partridge and he, Reynard, the Swift-foot, had
not caught her in five minutes' racing. It was really shameful. But the
partridge seemed to gain strength as the fox put forth his, and after a
quarter of a mile race, racing that was somehow all away from Taylor's
Hill, the bird got unaccountably quite well, and, rising with a derisive
whirr, flew off through the woods leaving the fox utterly dumfounded
to realize that he had been made a fool of, and, worst of all, he now
remembered that this was not the first time he had been served this very
trick, though he never knew the reason for it.

Meanwhile Mother Partridge skimmed in a great circle and came by a
roundabout way back to the little fuzz-balls she had left hidden in the
woods.

With a wild bird's keen memory for places, she went to the very
grass-blade she last trod on, and stood for a moment fondly to admire
the perfect stillness of her children. Even at her step not one had
stirred, and the little fellow on the chip, not so very badly concealed
after all, had not budged, nor did he now; he only closed his eyes a
tiny little bit harder, till the mother said:

'K-reet!' (Come, children) and instantly like a fairy story, every hole
gave up its little baby-partridge, and the wee fellow on the chip, the
biggest of them all really, opened his big-little eyes and ran to the
shelter of her broad tail, with a sweet little 'peep peep' which an
enemy could not have heard three feet away, but which his mother could
not have missed thrice as far, and all the other thimblefuls of down
joined in, and no doubt thought themselves dreadfully noisy, and were
proportionately happy.

The sun was hot now. There was an open space to cross on the road to the
water, and, after a careful lookout for enemies, the mother gathered the
little things under the shadow of her spread fantail and kept off all
danger of sunstroke until they reached the brier thicket by the stream.

Here a cottontail rabbit leaped out and gave them a great scare. But the
flag of truce he carried behind was enough. He was an old friend; and
among other things the little ones learned that day that Bunny always
sails under a flag of truce, and lives up to it too.

And then came the drink, the purest of living water, though silly men
had called it Mud Creek.

At first the little fellows didn't know how to drink, but they copied
their mother, and soon learned to drink like her and give thanks after
every sip. There they stood in a row along the edge, twelve little brown
and golden balls on twenty-four little pink-toed, in-turned feet, with
twelve sweet little golden heads gravely bowing, drinking and giving
thanks like their mother.

Then she led them by short stages, keeping the cover, to the far side of
the beaver-meadow, where was a great grassy dome. The mother had made a
note of this dome some time before. It takes a number of such domes to
raise a brood of partridges. For this was an ant's nest. The old one
stepped on top, looked about a moment, then gave half a dozen vigorous
rakes with her claws, The friable ant-hill was broken open, and the
earthen galleries scattered in ruins down the slope. The ants swarmed
out and quarreled with each other for lack of a better plan. Some ran
around the hill with vast energy and little purpose, while a few of the
more sensible began to carry away fat white eggs. But the old partridge,
coming to the little ones, picked up one of these juicy-looking bags and
clucked and dropped it, and picked it up again and again and clucked,
then swallowed it. The young ones stood around, then one little yellow
fellow, the one that sat on the chip, picked up an ant-egg, dropped it
a few times, then yielding to a sudden impulse, swallowed it, and so had
learned to eat. Within twenty minutes even the runt had learned, and a
merry time they had scrambling after the delicious eggs as their mother
broke open more ant-galleries, and sent them and their contents rolling
down the bank, till every little partridge had so crammed his little
crop that he was positively misshapen and could eat no more.

Then all went cautiously up the stream, and on a sandy bank, well
screened by brambles, they lay for all that afternoon, and learned how
pleasant it was to feel the cool powdery dust running between their hot
little toes. With their strong bent for copying, they lay on their sides
like their mother and scratched with their tiny feet and flopped with
their wings, though they had no wings to flop with, only a little tag
among the down on each side, to show where the wings would come. That
night she took them to a dry thicket near by, and there among the crisp,
dead leaves that would prevent an enemy's silent approach on foot, and
under the interlacing briers that kept off all foes of the air, she
cradled them in their feather-shingled nursery and rejoiced in the
fulness of a mother's joy over the wee cuddling things that peeped in
their sleep and snuggled so trustfully against her warm body.

II

The third day the chicks were much stronger on their feet. They
no longer had to go around an acorn; they could even scramble over
pine-cones, and on the little tags that marked the places for their
wings, were now to be seen blue rows of fat blood-quills.

Their start in life was a good mother, good legs, a few reliable
instincts, and a germ of reason. It was instinct, that is, inherited
habit, which taught them to hide at the word from their mother; it was
instinct that taught them to follow her, but it was reason which made
them keep under the shadow of her tail when the sun was smiting down,
and from that day reason entered more and more into their expanding
lives.

Next day the blood-quills had sprouted the tips of feathers. On the
next, the feathers were well out, and a week later the whole family of
down-clad babies were strong on the wing.

And yet not all--poor little Runtie had been sickly from the first. He
bore his half-shell on his back for hours after he came out; he ran less
and cheeped more than his brothers, and when one evening at the onset
of a skunk the mother gave the word 'Kwit, kwit' (Fly, fly), Runtie was
left behind, and when she gathered her brood on the piney hill he was
missing, and they saw him no more.

Meanwhile, their training had gone on. They knew that the finest
grasshoppers abounded in the long grass by the brook; they knew that the
currant-bushes dropped fatness in the form of smooth, green worms; they
knew that the dome of an ant-hill rising against the distant woods stood
for a garner of plenty; they knew that strawberries, though not really
insects, were almost as delicious; they knew that the huge danaid
butterflies were good, safe game, if they could only catch them, and
that a slab of bark dropping from the side of a rotten log was sure to
abound in good things of many different kinds; and they had learned,
also, that yellow-jackets, mud-wasps, woolly worms, and hundred-leggers
were better let alone.

It was now July, the Moon of Berries. The chicks had grown and
flourished amazingly during this last month, and were now so large that
in her efforts to cover them the mother was kept standing all night.

They took their daily dust-bath, but of late had changed to another
higher on the hill. It was one in use by many different birds, and at
first the mother disliked the idea of such a second-hand bath. But the
dust was of such a fine, agreeable quality, and the children led the way
with such enthusiasm, that she forgot her mistrust.

After a fortnight the little ones began to droop and she herself did not
feel very well. They were always hungry, and though they ate enormously,
they one and all grew thinner and thinner. The mother was the last to be
affected. But when it came, it came as hard on her--a ravenous hunger, a
feverish headache, and a wasting weakness. She never knew the cause. She
could not know that the dust of the much-used dust-bath, that her true
instinct taught her to mistrust at first, and now again to shun, was
sown with parasitic worms, and that all of the family were infested.

No natural impulse is without a purpose. The mother-bird's knowledge of
healing was only to follow natural impulse. The eager, feverish craving
for something, she knew not what, led her to eat, or try, everything
that looked eatable and to seek the coolest woods. And there she found a
deadly sumac laden with its poison fruit.

A month ago she would have passed it by, but now she tried the
unattractive berries. The acrid burning juice seemed to answer some
strange demand of her body; she ate and ate, and all her family joined
in the strange feast of physic. No human doctor could have hit it
better; it proved a biting, drastic purge, the dreadful secret foe was
downed, the danger passed. But not for all--Nature, the old nurse, had
come too late for two of them. The weakest, by inexorable law, dropped
out. Enfeebled by the disease, the remedy was too severe for them. They
drank and drank by the stream, and next morning did not move when the
others followed the mother. Strange vengeance was theirs now, for
a skunk, the same that could have told where Runtie went, found and
devoured their bodies and died of the poison they had eaten.

Seven little partridges now obeyed the mother's call. Their individual
characters were early shown and now developed fast. The weaklings were
gone, but there were still a fool and a lazy one. The mother could not
help caring for some more than for others, and her favorite was the
biggest, he who once sat on the yellow chip for concealment. He was not
only the biggest, strongest, and handsomest of the brood, but best of
all, the most obedient. His mother's warning 'rrrrr' (danger) did
not always keep the others from a risky path or a doubtful food, but
obedience seemed natural to him, and he never failed to respond to her
soft 'K-reet' (Come), and of this obedience he reaped the reward, for
his days were longest in the land.

August, the Molting Moon, went by; the young ones were now three parts
grown. They knew just enough to think themselves wonderfully wise. When
they were small it was necessary to sleep on the ground so their mother
could shelter them, but now they were too big to need that, and the
mother began to introduce grownup ways of life. It was time to roost in
the trees. The young weasels, foxes, skunks, and minks were beginning
to run. The ground grew more dangerous each night, so at sundown Mother
Partridge called 'K-reet,' and flew into a thick, low tree.

The little ones followed, except one, an obstinate little fool who
persisted in sleeping on the ground as heretofore. It was all right that
time, but the next night his brothers were awakened by his cries. There
was a slight scuffle, then stillness, broken only by a horrid sound
of crunching bones and a smacking of lips. They peered down into the
terrible darkness below, where the glint of two close-set eyes and a
peculiar musty smell told them that a mink was the killer of their fool
brother.

Six little partridges now sat in a row at night, with their mother in
the middle, though it was not unusual for some little one with cold feet
to perch on her back.

Their education went on, and about this time they were taught
'whirring.' A partridge can rise on the wing silently if it wishes, but
whirring is so important at times that all are taught how and when to
rise on thundering wings. Many ends are gained by the whirr. It warns
all other partridges near that danger is at hand, it unnerves the
gunner, or it fixes the foe's attention on the whirrer, while the others
sneak off in silence, or by squatting, escape notice.

A partridge adage might well be 'foes and food for every moon.'
September came, with seeds and grain in place of berries and ant-eggs,
and gunners in place of skunks and minks.

The partridges knew well what a fox was, but had scarcely seen a dog. A
fox they knew they could easily baffle by taking to a tree, but when
in the Gunner Moon old Cuddy came prowling through the ravine with his
bob-tailed yellow cur, the mother spied the dog and cried out, 'Kwit!
kwit!' (Fly, fly). Two of the brood thought it a pity their mother
should lose her wits so easily over a fox, and were pleased to show
their superior nerve by springing into a tree in spite of her earnestly
repeated 'Kwit! kwit!' and her example of speeding away on silent wings.

Meanwhile, the strange bob-tailed fox came under the tree and yapped
and yapped at them. They were much amused at him and at their mother and
brothers, so much that they never noticed a rustling in the bushes
till there was a loud Bang! bang! and down fell two bloody, flopping
partridges, to be seized and mangled by the yellow cur until the gunner
ran from the bushes and rescued the remains.

III

Cuddy lived in a wretched shanty near the Don, north of Toronto. His was
what Greek philosophy would have demonstrated to be an ideal existence.
He had no wealth, no taxes, no social pretensions, and no property to
speak of. His life was made up of a very little work and a great deal
of play, with as much outdoor life as he chose. He considered himself
a true sportsman because he was 'fond o' huntin',' and 'took a sight o'
comfort out of seein' the critters hit the mud, when his gun was fired.
The neighbors called him a squatter, and looked on him merely as an
anchored tramp. He shot and trapped the year round, and varied his game
somewhat with the season perforce, but had been heard to remark he could
tell the month by the 'taste o' the partridges,' if he didn't happen to
know by the almanac. This, no doubt, showed keen observation, but was
also unfortunate proof of something not so creditable. The lawful season
for murdering partridges began September 15th, but there was nothing
surprising in Cuddy's being out a fortnight ahead of time. Yet he
managed to escape punishment year after year, and even contrived to pose
in a newspaper interview as an interesting character.

He rarely shot on the wing, preferring to pot his birds, which was not
easy to do when the leaves were on, and accounted for the brood in the
third ravine going so long unharmed; but the near prospect of other
gunners finding them now, had stirred him to go after 'a mess o' birds.'
He had heard no roar of wings when the mother-bird led off her four
survivors, so pocketed the two he had killed and returned to the shanty.

The little grouse thus learned that a dog is not a fox, and must
be differently played; and an old lesson was yet more deeply
graven--'Obedience is long life.'

The rest of September was passed in keeping quietly out of the way of
gunners as well as some old enemies. They still roosted on the long
thin branches of the hardwood trees among the thickest leaves, which
protected them from foes in the air; the height saved them from foes on
the ground, and left them nothing to fear but coons, whose slow, heavy
tread on the timber boughs never failed to give them timely warning. But
the leaves were falling now--every month its foes and its food. This
was nut time, and it was owl time, too. Barred owls coming down from
the north doubled or trebled the owl population. The nights were getting
frosty and the coons less dangerous, so the mother changed the place of
roosting to the thickest foliage of a hemlock-tree.

Only one of the brood disregarded the warning 'Kreet, kreet.' He stuck
to his swinging elm-bough, now nearly naked, and a great yellow-eyed owl
bore him off before morning.

Mother and three young ones now were left, but they were as big as she
was; indeed one, the eldest, he of the chip, was bigger. Their ruffs
had begun to show. Just the tips, to tell what they would be like when
grown, and not a little proud they were of them.

The ruff is to the partridge what the train is to the peacock--his chief
beauty and his pride. A hen's ruff is black with a slight green gloss.
A cock's is much larger and blacker and is glossed with more vivid
bottle-green. Once in a while a partridge is born of unusual size
and vigor, whose ruff is not only larger, but by a peculiar kind of
intensification is of a deep coppery red, iridescent with violet, green,
and gold. Such a bird is sure to be a wonder to all who know him, and
the little one who had squatted on the chip, and had always done what
he was told, developed before the Acorn Moon had changed, into all
the glory of a gold and copper ruff--for this was Redruff, the famous
partridge of the Don Valley.

IV

One day late in the Acorn Moon, that is, about mid-October, as the
grouse family were basking with full crops near a great pine log on the
sunlit edge of the beaver-meadow, they heard the far-away bang of a
gun, and Redruff, acting on some impulse from within, leaped on the log,
strutted up and down a couple of times, then, yielding to the elation of
the bright, clear, bracing air, he whirred his wings in loud defiance.
Then, giving fuller vent to this expression of vigor, just as a colt
frisks to show how well he feels, he whirred yet more loudly, until,
unwittingly, he found himself drumming, and tickled with the discovery
of his new power, thumped the air again and again till he filled the
near woods with the loud tattoo of the fully grown cock-partridge. His
brother and sister heard and looked on with admiration and surprise, so
did his mother, but from that time she began to be a little afraid of
him.

In early November comes the moon of a weird foe. By a strange law of
nature, not wholly without parallel among mankind, all partridges go
crazy in the November moon of their first year. They become possessed of
a mad hankering to get away somewhere, it does not matter much where.
And the wisest of them do all sorts of foolish things at this period.
They go drifting, perhaps, at speed over the country by night and are
cut in two by wires, or dash into lighthouses, or locomotive headlights.
Daylight finds them in all sorts of absurd places, in buildings, in open
marshes, perched on telephone wires in a great city, or even on board
of coasting vessels. The craze seems to be a relic of a bygone habit
of migration, and it has at least one good effect, it breaks up the
families and prevents the constant intermarrying, which would surely be
fatal to their race. It always takes the young badly their first year,
and they may have it again the second fall, for it is very catching; but
in the third season it is practically unknown.

Redruff's mother knew it was coming as soon as she saw the frost grapes
blackening, and the maples shedding their crimson and gold. There was
nothing to do but care for their health and keep them in the quietest
part of the woods.

The first sign of it came when a flock of wild geese went honking
southward overhead. The young ones had never before seen such
long-necked hawks, and were afraid of them. But seeing that their mother
had no fear, they took courage, and watched them with intense interest.
Was it the wild, clanging cry that moved them, or was it solely the
inner prompting then come to the surface? A strange longing to follow
took possession of each of the young ones. They watched those arrowy
trumpeters fading away to the south, and sought out higher perches to
watch them farther yet, and from that time things were no more the same.
The November Moon was waxing, and when it was full, the November madness
came.

The least vigorous of the flock were most affected. The little family
was scattered. Redruff himself flew on several long erratic night
journeys. The impulse took him southward, but there lay the boundless
stretch of Lake Ontario, so he turned again, and the waning of the Mad
Moon found him once more in the Mud Creek Glen, but absolutely alone.

V

Food grew scarce as winter wore on. Redruff clung to the old ravine and
the piney sides of Taylor's Hill, but every month brought its food and
its foes. The Mad Moon brought madness, solitude, and grapes; the Snow
Moon came with rosehips; and the Stormy Moon brought browse of birch and
silver storms that sheathed the woods in ice, and made it hard to keep
one's perch while pulling off the frozen buds. Redruff's beak grew
terribly worn with the work, so that even when closed there was still
an opening through behind the hook. But nature had prepared him for the
slippery footing; his toes, so slim and trim in September, had sprouted
rows of sharp, horny points, and these grew with the growing cold,
till the first snow had found him fully equipped with snow-shoes and
icecreepers. The cold weather had driven away most of the hawks and
owls, and made it impossible for his four-footed enemies to approach
unseen, so that things were nearly balanced.

His flight in search of food had daily led him farther on, till he
had discovered and explored the Rosedale Creek, with its banks of
silver-birch, and Castle Frank, with its grapes and rowan berries, as
well as Chester woods, where amelanchier and Virginia-creeper swung
their fruit-bunches, and checkerberries glowed beneath the snow.

He soon found out that for some strange reason men with guns did not go
within the high fence of Castle Frank. So among these scenes he lived
his life, learning new places, new foods, and grew wiser and more
beautiful every day.

He was quite alone so far as kindred were concerned, but that scarcely
seemed a hardship. Wherever he went he could see the jolly chickadees
scrambling merrily about, and he remembered the time when they had
seemed such big, important creatures. They were the most absurdly
cheerful things in the woods. Before the autumn was fairly over they had
begun to sing their famous refrain, 'Spring Soon,' and kept it up with
good heart more or less all through the winter's direst storms, till
at length the waning of the Hunger Moon, our February, seemed really
to lend some point to the ditty, and they redoubled their optimistic
announcement to the world in an 'I-told-you-so' mood. Soon good support
was found, for the sun gained strength and melted the snow from the
southern slope of Castle Frank Hill, and exposed great banks of fragrant
wintergreen, whose berries were a bounteous feast for Redruff, and,
ending the hard work of pulling frozen browse, gave his bill the needed
chance to grow into its proper shape again. Very soon the first bluebird
came flying over and warbled as he flew 'The spring is coming.' The
sun kept gaining, and early one day in the dark of the Wakening Moon of
March there was a loud 'Caw, caw,' and old Silver-spot, the king-crow,
came swinging along from the south at the head of his troops and
officially announced,

'THE SPRING HAS COME'

All nature seemed to respond to this, the opening of the birds' New
Year, and yet it was something within that chiefly seemed to move them.
The chickadees went simply wild; they sang their 'Spring now, spring now
now--Spring now now,' so persistently that one wondered how they found
time to get a living.

And Redruff felt it thrill him through and through. He sprang with
joyous vigor on a stump and sent rolling down the little valley, again
and again, a thundering 'Thump, thump, thump, thunderrrrrrrrr,' that
wakened dull echoes as it rolled, and voiced his gladness in the coming
of the spring.

Away down the valley was Cuddy's shanty. He heard the drum-call on the
still morning air and 'reckoned there was a cock patridge to git,' and
came sneaking up the ravine with his gun. But Redruff skimmed away
in silence, nor rested till once more in Mud Creek Glen. And there he
mounted the very log where first he had drummed and rolled his loud
tattoo again and again, till a small boy who had taken a short cut to
the mill through the woods, ran home, badly scared, to tell his mother
he was sure the Indians were on the war-path, for he heard their
war-drums beating in the glen.

Why does a happy boy holla? Why does a lonesome youth sigh? They don't
know any more than Redruff knew why every day now he mounted some dead
log and thumped and thundered to the woods; then strutted and admired
his gorgeous blazing ruffs as they flashed their jewels in the sunlight,
and then thundered out again. Whence now came the strange wish for
someone else to admire the plumes? And why had such a notion never come
till the Pussywillow Moon?

'Thump, thump, thunder-r-r-r-r-r-rrrr'

'Thump, thump, thunder-r-r-r-r-r-rrrr'

he rumbled again and again.

Day after day he sought the favorite log, and a new beauty, a rose-red
comb, grew out above each clear, keen eye, and the clumsy snowshoes were
wholly shed from his feet. His ruff grew finer, his eye brighter, and
his whole appearance splendid to behold, as he strutted and flashed in
the sun. But--oh! he was so lonesome now.

Yet what could he do but blindly vent his hankering in this daily
drum-parade, till on a day early in loveliest May, when the trilliums
had fringed his log with silver stars, and he had drummed and longed,
then drummed again, his keen ear caught a sound, a gentle footfall
in the brush. He turned to a statue and watched; he knew he had been
watched. Could it be possible? Yes! there it was--a form--another--a shy
little lady grouse, now bashfully seeking to hide. In a moment he was
by her side. His whole nature swamped by a new feeling--burnt up with
thirst--a cooling spring in sight. And how he spread and flashed his
proud array! How came he to know that that would please? He puffed
his plumes and contrived to stand just right to catch the sun, and he
strutted and uttered a low, soft chuckle that must have been as good as
the 'sweet nothings' of another race, for clearly now her heart was won.
Won, really, days ago, if only he had known. For full three days she
had come at the loud tattoo and coyly admired him from afar, and felt a
little piqued that he had not yet found out her, so close at hand. So it
was not quite all mischance, perhaps, that little stamp that caught his
ear. But now she meekly bowed her head with sweet, submissive grace--the
desert passed, the parch-burnt wanderer found the spring at last.

Oh, those were bright, glad days in the lovely glen of the unlovely
name. The sun was never so bright, and the piney air was balmier sweet
than dreams. And that great noble bird came daily on his log, sometimes
with her and sometimes quite alone, and drummed for very joy of being
alive. But why sometimes alone? Why not forever with his Brownie bride?
Why should she stay to feast and play with him for hours, then take some
stealthy chance to slip away and see him no more for hours or till next
day, when his martial music from the log announced him restless for her
quick return? There was a woodland mystery here he could not clear. Why
should her stay with him grow daily less till it was down to minutes,
and one day at last she never came at all. Nor the next, nor the next,
and Redruff, wild, careered on lightning wing and drummed on the old
log, then away up-stream on another log, and skimmed the hill to another
ravine to drum and drum. But on the fourth day, when he came and loudly
called her, as of old, at their earliest tryst, he heard a sound in the
bushes, as at first, and there was his missing Brownie bride with ten
little peeping partridges following after.

Redruff skimmed to her side, terribly frightening the bright-eyed
downlings, and was just a little dashed to find the brood with claims
far stronger than his own. But he soon accepted the change, and
thenceforth joined himself to the brood, caring for them as his father
never had for him.

VI

Good fathers are rare in the grouse world. The mother-grouse builds her
nest and hatches out her young without help. She even hides the place
of the nest from the father and meets him only at the drum-log and the
feeding-ground, or perhaps the dusting-place, which is the club-house of
the grouse kind.

When Brownie's little ones came out they had filled her every thought,
even to the forgetting of their splendid father. But on the third
day, when they were strong enough, she had taken them with her at the
father's call.

Some fathers take no interest in their little ones, but Redruff joined
at once to help Brownie in the task of rearing the brood. They had
learned to eat and drink just as their father had learned long ago, and
could toddle along, with their mother leading the way, while the father
ranged near by or followed far behind.

The very next day, as they went from the hill-side down toward the creek
in a somewhat drawn-out string, like beads with a big one at each end,
a red squirrel, peeping around a pine-trunk, watched the procession of
downlings with the Runtie straggling far in the rear. Redruff, yards
behind, preening his feathers on a high log, had escaped the eye of the
squirrel, whose strange perverted thirst for birdling blood was roused
at what seemed so fair a chance. With murderous intent to cut off the
hindmost straggler, he made a dash. Brownie could not have seen him
until too late, but Redruff did. He flew for that red-haired cutthroat;
his weapons were his fists, that is, the knob-joints of the wings, and
what a blow he could strike! At the first onset he struck the squirrel
square on the end of the nose, his weakest spot, and sent him reeling;
he staggered and wriggled into a brush-pile, where he had expected to
carry the little grouse, and there lay gasping with red drops trickling
down his wicked snout. The partridges left him lying there, and what
became of him they never knew, but he troubled them no more.

The family went on toward the water, but a cow had left deep tracks in
the sandy loam, and into one of these fell one of the chicks and peeped
in dire distress when he found he could not get out.

This was a fix. Neither old one seemed to know what to do, but as they
trampled vainly round the edge, the sandy bank caved in, and, running
down, formed a long slope, up which the young one ran and rejoined his
brothers under the broad veranda of their mother's tail.

Brownie was a bright little mother, of small stature, but keen of wit
and sense, and was, night and day, alert to care for her darling chicks.
How proudly she stepped and clucked through the arching woods with her
dainty brood behind her; how she strained her little brown tail almost
to a half-circle to give them a broader shade, and never flinched at
sight of any foe, but held ready to fight or fly, whichever seemed the
best for her little ones.

Before the chicks could fly they had a meeting with old Cuddy; though
it was June, he was out with his gun. Up the third ravine he went, and
Tike, his dog, ranging ahead, came so dangerously near the Brownie brood
that Redruff ran to meet him, and by the old but never failing trick led
him on a foolish chase away back down the valley of the Don.

But Cuddy, as it chanced, came right along, straight for the brood, and
Brownie, giving the signal to the children, 'Krrr, krrr' (Hide, hide),
ran to lead the man away just as her mate had led the dog. Full of a
mother's devoted love, and skilled in the learning of the woods, she ran
in silence till quite near, then sprang with a roar of wings right in
his face, and tumbling on the leaves she shammed a lameness that for a
moment deceived the poacher. But when she dragged one wing and
whined about his feet, then slowly crawled away, he knew just what it
meant--that it was all a trick to lead him from her brood, and he struck
at her a savage blow; but little Brownie was quick, she avoided the blow
and limped behind a sapling, there to beat herself upon the leaves again
in sore distress, and seem so lame that Cuddy made another try to strike
her down with a stick. But she moved in time to balk him, and bravely,
steadfast still to lead him from her helpless little ones, she flung
herself before him and beat her gentle breast upon the ground, and
moaned as though begging for mercy. And Cuddy, failing again to strike
her, raised his gun and firing charge enough to kill a bear, he blew
poor brave, devoted Brownie into quivering, bloody rags.

This gunner brute knew the young must be hiding near, so looked about to
find them. But no one moved or peeped. He saw not one, but as he tramped
about with heedless, hateful feet, he crossed and crossed again their
hiding-ground, and more than one of the silent little sufferers he
trampled to death, and neither knew nor cared.

Redruff had taken the yellow brute away off downstream, and now returned
to where he left his mate. The murderer had gone, taking her remains,
to be thrown to the dog. Redruff sought about and found the bloody spot
with feathers, Brownie's feathers, scattered around, and now he knew the
meaning of that shot.

Who can tell what his horror and his mourning were? The outward signs
were few, some minutes dumbly gazing at the place with downcast,
draggled look, and then a change at the thought of their helpless brood.
Back to the hiding-place he went, and called the well-known 'kreet,
kreet.' Did every grave give up its little inmate at the magic word? No,
barely more than half; six little balls of down unveiled their lustrous
eyes, and, rising, ran to meet him, but four feathered little bodies had
found their graves indeed. Redruff called again and again, till he
was sure that all who could respond had come, and led them from that
dreadful place, far, far away up-stream, where barb-wire fences and
bramble thickets were found to offer a less grateful, but more reliable,
shelter.

Here the brood grew and were trained by their father just as his mother
had trained him; though wider knowledge and experience gave him
many advantages. He knew so well the country round and all the
feeding-grounds, and how to meet the ills that harass partridge-life,
that the summer passed and not a chick was lost. They grew and
flourished, and when the Gunner Moon arrived they were a fine family
of six grown-up grouse with Redruff, splendid in his gleaming copper
feathers, at their head. He had ceased to drum during the summer after
the loss of Brownie, but drumming is to the partridge what singing is
to the lark; while it is his lovesong, it is also an expression of
exuberance born of health, and when the molt was over and September food
and weather had renewed his splendid plumes and braced himself up again,
his spirits revived, and finding himself one day near the old log he
mounted impulsively, and drummed again and again.

From that time he often drummed, while his children sat around, or one
who showed his father's blood would mount some nearby stump or stone,
and beat the air in the loud tattoo.

The black grapes and the Mad Moon now came on. But Redruff's brood were
of a vigorous stock; their robust health meant robust wits, and though
they got the craze, it passed within a week, and only three had flown
away for good.

Redruff, with his remaining three, was living in the glen when the snow
came. It was light, flaky snow, and as the weather was not very cold,
the family squatted for the night under the low, flat boughs of a
cedar-tree. But next day the storm continued, it grew colder, and the
drifts piled up all day. At night, the snow-fall ceased, but the frost
grew harder still, so Redruff, leading the family to a birch-tree above
a deep drift, dived into the snow, and the others did the same.
Then into the holes the wind blew the loose snow--their pure white
bed-clothes, and thus tucked in they slept in comfort, for the snow is
a warm wrap, and the air passes through it easily enough for breathing.
Next morning each partridge found a solid wall of ice before him from
his frozen breath, but easily turned to one side and rose on the wing at
Redruff's morning 'Kreet, kreet, kwit,' (Come children, come children,
fly.)

This was the first night for them in a snow-drift, though it was an old
story to Redruff, and next night they merrily dived again into bed, and
the north wind tucked them in as before. But a change of weather was
brewing. The night wind veered to the east. A fall of heavy flakes gave
place to sleet, and that to silver rain.

The whole wide world was sheathed in ice, and when the grouse awoke to
quit their beds, they found themselves sealed in with a great cruel
sheet of edgeless ice. The deeper snow was still quite soft, and Redruff
bored his way to the top, but there the hard, white sheet defied his
strength. Hammer and struggle as he might he could make no impression,
and only bruised his wings and head. His life had been made up of keen
joys and dull hardships, with frequent sudden desperate straits, but
this seemed the hardest brunt of all, as the slow hours wore on and
found him weakening with his struggles, but no nearer to freedom. He
could hear the struggling of his family, too, or sometimes heard
them calling to him for help with their long-drawn plaintive
'p-e-e-e-e-e-t-e, p-e-e-e-e-e-t-e.'

They were hidden from many of their enemies, but not from the pangs of
hunger, and when the night came down the weary prisoners, worn out with
hunger and useless toil, grew quiet in despair. At first they had been
afraid the fox would come and find them imprisoned there at his mercy,
but as the second night went slowly by they no longer cared, and even
wished he would come and break the crusted snow, and so give them at
least a fighting chance for life.

But when the fox really did come padding over the frozen drift, the
deep-laid love of life revived, and they crouched in utter stillness
till he passed. The second day was one of driving storm. The north
wind sent his snow-horses, hissing and careering over the white earth,
tossing and curling their white manes and kicking up more snow as they
dashed on. The long, hard grinding of the granular snow seemed to be
thinning the snow-crust, for though far from dark below, it kept on
growing lighter. Redruff had pecked and pecked at the under side all
day, till his head ached and his bill was wearing blunt, but when the
sun went down he seemed as far as ever from escape. The night passed
like the others, except no fox went trotting overhead. In the morning he
renewed his pecking, though now with scarcely any force, and the voices
or struggles of the others were no more heard. As the daylight grew
stronger he could see that his long efforts had made a brighter spot
above him in the snow, and he continued feebly pecking. Outside, the
storm-horses kept on trampling all day, the crust was really growing
thin under their heels, and late that afternoon his bill went through
into the open air. New life came with this gain, and he pecked away,
till just before the sun went down he had made a hole that his head, his
neck, and his ever-beautiful ruffs could pass. His great broad shoulders
were too large, but he could now strike downward, which gave him
fourfold force; the snow-crust crumbled quickly, and in a little while
he sprang from his icy prison once more free.

But the young ones! Redruff flew to the nearest bank, hastily gathered
a few red hips to stay his gnawing hunger, then returned to the
prison-drift and clucked and stamped. He got only one reply, a feeble
'peete, peete,' and scratching with his sharp claws on the thinned
granular sheet he soon broke through, and Graytail feebly crawled out
of the hole. But that was all; the others, scattered he could not tell
where in the drift, made no reply, gave no sign of life, and he was
forced to leave them. When the snow melted in the spring their bodies
came to view, skin, bones, and feathers--nothing more.

VII

It was long before Redruff and Graytail fully recovered, but food and
rest in plenty are sure cure-alls, and a bright clear day in midwinter
had the usual effect of setting the vigorous Redruff to drumming on the
log. Was it the drumming, or the tell-tale tracks of their snow-shoes
on the omnipresent snow, that betrayed them to Cuddy? He came prowling
again and again up the ravine, with dog and gun, intent to hunt the
partridges down. They knew him of old, and he was coming now to know
them well. That great copper-ruffed cock was becoming famous up and
down the valley. During the Gunner Moon many a one had tried to end his
splendid life, just as a worthless wretch of old sought fame by burning
the Ephesian wonder of the world. But Redruff was deep in woodcraft. He
knew just where to hide, and when to rise on silent wing, and when
to squat till overstepped, then rise on thunder wing within a yard to
shield himself at once behind some mighty tree-trunk and speed away.

But Cuddy never ceased to follow with his gun that red-ruffed cock; many
a long snapshot he tried, but somehow always found a tree, a bank, or
some safe shield between, and Redruff lived and throve and drummed.

When the Snow Moon came he moved with Graytail to the Castle Frank
woods, where food was plenty as well as grand old trees. There was in
particular, on the east slope among the creeping hemlocks, a splendid
pine. It was six feet through, and its first branches began at the tops
of the other trees. Its top in summer-time was a famous resort for
the bluejay and his bride. Here, far beyond the reach of shot, in warm
spring days the jay would sing and dance before his mate, spread his
bright blue plumes and warble the sweetest fairyland music, so sweet and
soft that few hear it but the one for whom it is meant, and books know
nothing at all about it.

This great pine had an especial interest for Redruff, now living near
with his remaining young one, but its base, not its far-away crown,
concerned him. All around were low, creeping hemlocks, and among them
the partridge-vine and the wintergreen grew, and the sweet black
acorns could be scratched from under the snow. There was no better
feeding-ground, for when that insatiable gunner came on them there it
was easy to run low among the hemlocks to the great pine, then rise with
a derisive whirr behind its bulk, and keeping the huge trunk in line
with the deadly gun, skim off in safety. A dozen times at least the pine
had saved them during the lawful murder season, and here it was that
Cuddy, knowing their feeding habits, laid a new trap. Under the bank he
sneaked and watched in ambush while an accomplice went around the Sugar
Loaf to drive the birds. He came trampling through the low thicket
where Redruff and Graytail were feeding, and long before the gunner was
dangerously near Redruff gave a low warning 'rrrrr' (danger) and walked
quickly toward the great pine in case they had to rise.

Graytail was some distance up the hill, and suddenly caught sight of a
new foe close at hand, the yellow cur, coming right on. Redruff, much
farther off, could not see him for the bushes, and Graytail became
greatly alarmed.

'Kwit, kwit' (Fly, fly), she cried, running down the hill for a start.
'Kreet, k-r-r-r' (This way, hide), cried the cooler Redruff, for he saw
that now the man with the gun was getting in range. He gained the
great trunk, and behind it, as he paused a moment to call earnestly to
Graytail, 'This way, this way,' he heard a slight noise under the bank
before him that betrayed the ambush, then there was a terrified cry from
Graytail as the dog sprang at her, she rose in air and skimmed behind
the shielding trunk, away from the gunner in the open, right into the
power of the miserable wretch under the bank.

Whirr, and up she went, a beautiful, sentient, noble being.

Bang, and down she fell--battered and bleeding, to gasp her life out and
to lie, mere carrion in the snow.

It was a perilous place for Redruff. There was no chance for a safe
rise, so he squatted low. The dog came within ten feet of him, and the
stranger, coming across to Cuddy, passed at five feet, but he never
moved till a chance came to slip behind the great trunk away from both.
Then he safely rose and flew to the lonely glen by Taylor's Hill.

One by one the deadly cruel gun had stricken his near ones down, till
now, once more, he was alone. The Snow Moon slowly passed with many a
narrow escape, and Redruff, now known to be the only survivor of his
kind, was relentlessly pursued, and grew wilder every day.

It seemed, at length, a waste of time to follow him with a gun, so when
the snow was deepest, and food scarcest, Cuddy hatched a new plot. Right
across the feeding-ground, almost the only good one now in the Stormy
Moon, he set a row of snares. A cottontail rabbit, an old friend, cut
several of these with his sharp teeth, but some remained, and Redruff,
watching a far-off speck that might turn out a hawk, trod right in one
of them, and in an instant was jerked into the air to dangle by one
foot.

Have the wild things no moral or legal rights? What right has man to
inflict such long and fearful agony on a fellow-creature, simply because
that creature does not speak his language? All that day, with growing,
racking pains, poor Redruff hung and beat his great, strong wings in
helpless struggles to be free. All day, all night, with growing torture,
until he only longed for death. But no one came. The morning broke, the
day wore on, and still he hung there, slowly dying; his very strength a
curse. The second night crawled slowly down, and when, in the dawdling
hours of darkness, a great Horned Owl, drawn by the feeble flutter of a
dying wing, cut short the pain, the deed was wholly kind.

The wind blew down the valley from the north. The snow-horses went
racing over the wrinkled ice, over the Don Flats, and over the marsh
toward the lake, white, for they were driven snow, but on them,
scattered dark, were riding plumy fragments of partridge ruffs--the
famous rainbow ruffs. And they rode on the winter wind that night, away
and away to the south, over the dark and boisterous lake, as they rode
in the gloom of his Mad Moon flight, riding and riding on till they were
engulfed, the last trace of the last of the Don Valley race.

For now no partridge comes to Castle Frank. Its wood-birds miss the
martial spring salute, and in Mud Creek Ravine the old pine drumlog,
since unused, has rotted in silence away.








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