Secret of the Woods

W >> William J. Long >> Secret of the Woods

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So the days went by, one after another; the big buck, aided by
his friends the birds, held his own against my craft and
patience. He grew more wild and alert with every hunt, and kept
so far ahead of me that only once, before the snow blew, did I
have even the chance of stalking him, and then the cunning old
fellow foiled me again masterfully.

Old Wally was afield too; but, so far as I could read from the
woods' record, he fared no better than I on the trail of the
buck. Once, when I knew my game was miles ahead, I heard the
longdrawn whang of Wally's old gun across a little valley.
Presently the brush began to crackle, and a small doe came
jumping among the trees straight towards me. Within thirty feet
she saw me, caught herself at the top of her jump, came straight
down, and stood an instant as if turned to stone, with a spruce
branch bending over to hide her from my eyes. Then, when I moved
not, having no desire to kill a doe but only to watch the
beautiful creature, she turned, glided a few steps, and went
bounding away along the ridge.

Old Wally came in a little while, not following the trail,--he
had no skill nor patience for that,--but with a woodsman's
instinct following up the general direction of his game. Not far
from where the doe had first appeared he stopped, looked all
around keenly, then rested his hands on the end of his long gun
barrel, and put his chin on his hands.

"Drat it all! Never tetched 'im again. That paowder o' mine
hain't wuth a cent. You wait till snow blows,"--addressing the
silent woods at large,--"then I'll get me some paowder as is
paowder, and foller the critter, and I'll show ye"--

Old Wally said never a word, but all this was in his face and
attitude as he leaned moodily on his long gun. And I watched him,
chuckling, from my hiding among the rocks, till with curious
instinct he vanished down the ridge behind the very thicket where
I had seen the doe flash out of sight a moment before.

When I saw him again he was deep in less creditable business. It
was a perfect autumn day,--the air full of light and color, the
fragrant woods resting under the soft haze like a great bouquet
of Nature's own culling, birds, bees and squirrels frolicking all
day long amidst the trees, yet doing an astonishing amount of
work in gathering each one his harvest for the cold dark days
that were coming.

At daylight, from the top of a hill, I looked down on a little
clearing and saw the first signs of the game I was seeking. There
had been what old people call a duck-frost. In the meadows and
along the fringes of the woods the white rime lay thick and
powdery on grass and dead leaves; every foot that touched it
left a black mark, as if seared with a hot iron, when the sun
came up and shone upon it. Across the field three black trails
meandered away from the brook; but alas! under the fringe of
evergreen was another trail, that of a man, which crept and
halted and hid, yet drew nearer and nearer the point where the
three deer trails vanished into the wood. Then I found powder
marks, and some brush that was torn by buck shot, and three
trails that bounded away, and a tiny splash of deeper red on a
crimson maple leaf. So I left the deer to the early hunter and
wandered away up the hill for a long, lazy, satisfying day in the
woods alone.

Presently I came to a low brush fence running zigzag through
the woods, with snares set every few yards in the partridge and
rabbit runs. At the third opening a fine cock partridge swung
limp and lifeless from a twitch-up. The cruel wire had torn his
neck under his beautiful ruff; the broken wing quills showed
how terrible had been his struggle. Hung by the neck till dead!--
an atrocious fate to mete out to a noble bird. I followed the
hedge of snares for a couple of hundred yards, finding three
more strangled grouse and a brown rabbit. Then I sat down in
a beautiful spot to watch the life about me, and to catch the
snarer at his abominable work.

The sun climbed higher and blotted out the four trails in the
field below. Red squirrels came down close to my head to chatter
and scold and drive me out of the solitude. A beautiful gray
squirrel went tearing by among the branches, pursued by one of
the savage little reds that nipped and snarled at his heels. The
two cannot live together, and the gray must always go. Jays
stopped spying on the squirrels--to see and remember where their
winter stores were hidden--and lingered near me, whistling their
curiosity at the silent man below. None but jays gave any heed to
the five grim corpses swinging by their necks over the deadly
hedge, and to them it was only a new sensation.

Then a cruel thing happened,--one of the many tragedies that pass
unnoticed in the woods. There was a scurry in the underbrush, and
strange cries like those of an agonized child, only tiny and
distant, as if heard in a phonograph. Over the sounds a crow
hovered and rose and fell, in his intense absorption seeing
nothing but the creature below. Suddenly he swooped like a hawk
into a thicket, and out of the cover sprang a leveret (young
hare), only to crouch shivering in the open space under a
hemlock's drooping branches. There the crow headed him, struck
once, twice, three times, straight hard blows with his powerful
beak; and when I ran to the spot the leveret lay quite dead with
his skull split, while the crow went flapping wildly to the tree
tops, giving the danger cry to the flock that was gossiping in
the sunshine on the ridge across the valley.

The woods were all still after that; jays and squirrels seemed
appalled at the tragedy, and avoided me as if I were responsible
for the still little body under the hemlock tips. An hour passed;
then, a quarter-mile away, in the direction that the deer had
taken in the early morning, a single jay set up his cry, the cry
of something new passing in the woods. Two or three others joined
him; the cry came nearer. A flock of crossbills went whistling
overhead, coming from the same direction. Then, as I slipped away
into an evergreen thicket, a partridge came whirring up, and
darted by me like a brown arrow driven by the bending branches
behind him, flicking the twigs sharply with his wings as he drove
along. And then, on the path of his last forerunner, Old Wally
appeared, his keen eyes searching his murderous gibbetline
expectantly.

Now Old Wally was held in great reputation by the Nimrods of the
village, because he hunted partridges, not with "scatter-gun" and
dog,--such amateurish bungling he disdained and swore
against,--but in the good old-fashioned way of stalking with a
rifle. And when he brought his bunch of birds to market, his
admirers pointed with pride to the marks of his wondrous skill.
Here was a bird with the head hanging by a thread of skin; there
one with its neck broken; there a furrow along the top of the
head; and here--perfect work!--a partridge with both eyes gone,
showing the course of his unerring bullet.

Not ten yards from my hiding place he took down a partridge from
its gallows, fumbled a pointed stick out of his pocket, ran it
through the bird's neck, and stowed the creature that had died
miserably, without a chance for its life, away in one of his big
pockets, a self-satisfied grin on his face as he glanced down the
hedge and saw another bird swinging. So he followed his hangman's
hedge, treating each bird to his pointed stick, carefully
resetting the snares after him and clearing away the fallen
leaves from the fatal pathways. When he came to the rabbit he
harled him dexterously, slipped him over his long gun barrel,
took his bearings in a quick look, and struck over the ridge for
another southern hillside.

Here, at last, was the secret of Wally's boasted skill in
partridge hunting with a rifle. Spite of my indignation at the
snare line, the cruel death which gaped day and night for the
game as it ran about heedlessly in the fancied security of its
own coverts, a humorous, half shame-faced feeling of admiration
would creep in as I thought of the old sinner's cunning, and
remembered his look of disdain when he met me one day, with a
"scatter-gun" in my hands and old Don following obediently at
heel. Thinking that in his long life he must have learned many
things in the woods that I would be glad to know, I had invited
him cordially to join me. But he only withered me with the
contempt in his hawk eyes, and wiggled his toe as if holding back
a kick from my honest dog with difficulty.

"Go hunting with ye? Not much, Mister. Scarin' a pa'tridge to
death with a dum dog, and then turnin' a handful o' shot loose on
the critter, an' call it huntin'! That's the way to kill a
pa'tridge, the on'y decent way"--and he pulled a bird out of his
pocket, pointing to a clean hole through the head where the eyes
had been.

When he had gone I kicked the hedge to pieces quickly, cut the
twitch-ups at the butts and threw them with their wire nooses far
into the thickets, and posted a warning in a cleft stick on the
site of the last gibbet. Then I followed Wally to a second and
third line of snares, which were treated in the same rough way,
and watched him with curiously mingled feelings of detestation
and amusement as he sneaked down the dense hillside with tread
light as Leatherstocking, the old gun over his shoulder, his
pockets bulging enormously, and a string of hanged rabbits
swinging to and fro on his gun barrel, as if in death they had
caught the dizzy motion and could not quit it while the woods
they had loved and lived in threw their long sad shadows over
them. So they came to the meadow, into which they had so often
come limping down to play or feed among the twilight shadows,
and crossed it for the last time on Wally's gun barrel,
swinging, swinging.

The leaves were falling thickly now; they formed a dry, hard
carpet over which it was impossible to follow game accurately,
and they rustled a sharp warning underfoot if but a wood mouse
ran over them. It was of little use to still-hunt the wary old
buck till the rains should soften the carpet, or a snowfall make
tracking like boys' play. But I tried it once more; found the
quarry on a ridge deep in the woods, and followed--more by
good-luck than by good management--till, late in the afternoon, I
saw the buck with two smaller deer standing far away on a half-
cleared hillside, quietly watching a wide stretch of country
below. Beyond them the ridge narrowed gradually to a long neck,
ending in a high open bluff above the river.

There I tried my last hunter's dodge--manoeuvered craftily till
near the deer, which were hidden by dense thickets, and rushed
straight at them, thinking they would either break away down the
open hillside, and so give me a running shot, or else rush
straightaway at the sudden alarm and be caught on the bluff
beyond.

Was it simple instinct, I wonder, or did the buck that had grown
old in hunter's wiles feel what was passing in my mind, and like
a flash take the chance that would save, not only his own life,
but the lives of the two that followed him? At the first alarm
they separated; the two smaller deer broke away down the
hillside, giving me as pretty a shot as one could wish. But I
scarcely noticed them; my eyes were following eagerly a swift
waving of brush tops, which told me that the big buck was jumping
away, straight into the natural trap ahead.

I followed on the run till the ridge narrowed so that I could see
across it on either side, then slowly, carefully, steadying my
nerves for the shot. The river was all about him now, too wide to
jump, too steep-banked to climb down; the only way out was past
me. I gripped the rifle hard, holding it at a ready as I moved
forward, watching either side for a slinking form among the
scattered coverts. At last, at last! and how easy, how perfectly
I had trapped him! My heart was singing as I stole along.

The tracks moved straight on; first an easy run, then a swift,
hard rush as they approached the river. But what was this? The
whole end of the bluff was under my eye, and no buck standing at
bay or running wildly along the bank to escape. The tracks moved
straight on to the edge in great leaps; my heart quickened its
beat as if I were nerving myself for a supreme effort. Would he
do it? would he dare?

A foot this side the brink the lichens were torn away where the
sharp hoofs had cut down to solid earth. Thirty feet away, well
over the farther bank and ten feet below the level where I stood,
the fresh earth showed clearly among the hoof-torn moss. Far
below, the river fretted and roared in a white rush of rapids. He
had taken the jump, a jump that made one's nostrils spread and
his breath come hard as he measured it with his eye. Somewhere,
over in the spruces' shadow there, he was hiding, watching me no
doubt to see if I would dare follow.

That was the last of the autumn woods for me. If I had only seen
him--just one splendid glimpse as he shot over and poised in
mid-air, turning for the down plunge! That was my only regret as
I turned slowly away, the river singing beside me and the shadows
lengthening along the home trail.

WINTER TRAILS

The snow had come, and with it a Christmas holiday. For weeks I
had looked longingly out of college windows as the first
tracking-snows came sifting down, my thoughts turning from books
and the problems of human wisdom to the winter woods, with their
wide white pages written all over by the feet of wild things.
Then the sun would shine again, and I knew that the records were
washed clean, and the hard-packed leaves as innocent of footmarks
as the beach where plover feed when a great wave has chased them
away. On the twentieth a change came. Outside the snow fell
heavily, two days and a night; inside, books were packed away,
professors said Merry Christmas, and students were scattering,
like a bevy of flushed quail, to all points of the compass for
the holidays. The afternoon of the twenty-first found me again in
my room under the eaves of the old farmhouse.

Before dark I had taken a wide run over the hills and through the
woods to the place of my summer camp. How wonderful it all was!
The great woods were covered deep with their pure white mantle;
not a fleck, not a track soiled its even whiteness; for the last
soft flakes were lingering in the air, and fox and grouse and
hare and lucivee were still keeping the storm truce, hidden deep
in their coverts. Every fir and spruce and hemlock had gone to
building fairy grottoes as the snow packed their lower branches,
under which all sorts of wonders and beauties might be hidden, to
say nothing of the wild things for whom Nature had been building
innumerable tents of white and green as they slept. The silence
was absolute, the forest's unconscious tribute to the Wonder
Worker. Even the trout brook, running black as night among its
white-capped boulders and delicate arches of frost and fern work,
between massive banks of feathery white and green, had stopped
its idle chatter and tinkled a low bell under the ice, as if only
the Angelus could express the wonder of the world.

As I came back softly in the twilight a movement in an evergreen
ahead caught my eye, and I stopped for one of the rare sights of
the woods,--a partridge going to sleep in a warm room of his own
making. He looked all about among the trees most carefully,
listened, kwit-kwitted in a low voice to himself, then, with a
sudden plunge, swooped downward head-first into the snow. I stole
to the spot where he had disappeared, noted the direction of his
tunnel, and fell forward with arms outstretched, thinking perhaps
to catch him under me and examine his feet to see how his natural
snowshoes (Nature's winter gift to every grouse) were developing,
before letting him go again. But the grouse was an old bird, not
to be caught napping, who had thought on the possibilities of
being followed ere he made his plunge. He had ploughed under the
snow for a couple of feet, then swerved sharply to the left and
made a little chamber for himself just under some snow-packed
spruce tips, with a foot of snow for a blanket over him. When I
fell forward, disturbing his rest most rudely ere he had time to
wink the snow out of his eyes, he burst out with a great whirr
and sputter between my left hand and my head, scattering snow all
over me, and thundered off through the startled woods, flicking a
branch here and there with his wings, and shaking down a great
white shower as he rushed away for deeper solitudes. There, no
doubt, he went to sleep in the evergreens, congratulating himself
on his escape and preferring to take his chances with the owl,
rather than with some other ground-prowler that might come nosing
into his hole before the light snow had time to fill it up
effectually behind him.

Next morning I was early afield, heading for a ridge where I
thought the deer of the neighborhood might congregate with the
intention of yarding for the winter. At the foot of a wild little
natural meadow, made centuries ago by the beavers, I found the
trail of two deer which had been helping themselves to some hay
that had been cut and stacked there the previous summer. My big
buck was not with them; so I left the trail in peace to push
through a belt of woods and across a pond to an old road that led
for a mile or two towards the ridge I was seeking.

Early as I was, the wood folk were ahead of me. Their tracks were
everywhere, eager, hungry tracks, that poked their noses into
every possible hiding place of food or game, showing how the
two-days' fast had whetted their appetites and set them to
running keenly the moment the last flakes were down and the storm
truce ended.

A suspicious-looking clump of evergreens, where something had
brushed the snow rudely from the feathery tips, stopped me as I
hurried down the old road. Under the evergreens was a hole in the
snow, and at the bottom of the hole hard inverted cups made by
deer's feet. I followed on to another hole in the snow (it could
scarcely be called a trail) and then to another, and another,
some twelve or fifteen feet apart, leading in swift bounds to
some big timber. There the curious track separated into three
deer trails, one of which might well be that of a ten-point buck.
Here was luck,--luck to find my quarry so early on the first day
out, and better luck that, during my long absence, the cunning
animal had kept himself and his consort clear of Old Wally and
his devices.

When I ran to examine the back trail more carefully, I found that
the deer had passed the night in a dense thicket of evergreen, on
a hilltop overlooking the road. They had come down the hill,
picking their way among the stumps of a burned clearing, stepping
carefully in each other's tracks so as to make but a single
trail. At the road they had leaped clear across from one thicket
to another, leaving never a trace on the bare even whiteness. One
might have passed along the road a score of times without
noticing that game had crossed. There was no doubt now that these
were deer that had been often hunted, and that had learned their
cunning from long experience.

I followed them rapidly till they began feeding in a little
valley, then with much caution, stealing from tree to thicket,
giving scant attention to the trail, but searching the woods
ahead; for the last "sign" showed that I was now but a few
minutes behind the deer. There they were at last, two graceful
forms gliding like gray shadows among the snow-laden branches.
But in vain I searched for a lordly head with wide rough antlers
sweeping proudly over the brow; my buck was not there. Scarcely
had I made the discovery when there was a whistle and a plunge up
on the hill on my left, and I had one swift glimpse of him, a
splendid creature, as he bounded away.

By way of general precaution, or else led by some strange sixth
sense of danger, he had left his companions feeding and mounted
the hill, where he could look back on his own track. There he had
been watching me for half an hour, till I approached too near,
when he sounded the alarm and was off. I read it all from the
trail a few moments later.

It was of no use to follow him, for he ran straight down wind.
The two others had gone quartering off at right angles to his
course, obeying his signal promptly, but having as yet no idea of
what danger followed them. When alarmed in this way, deer never
run far before halting to sniff and listen. Then, if not
disturbed, they run off again, circling back and down wind so
as to catch from a distance the scent of anything that follows on
their trail.

I sat still where I was for a good hour, watching the chickadees
and red squirrels that found me speedily, and refusing to move
for all the peekings and whistlings of a jay that would fain
satisfy his curiosity as to whether I meant harm to the deer, or
were just benumbed by the cold and incapable of further mischief.
When I went on I left some scattered bits of meat from my lunch
to keep him busy in case the deer were near; but there was no
need of the precaution. The two had learned the leader's lesson
of caution well, and ran for a mile, with many haltings and
circlings, before they began to feed again. Even then they moved
along at a good pace as they fed, till a mile farther on, when,
as I had forelayed, the buck came down from a hill to join them,
and all three moved off toward the big ridge, feeding as they
went.

Then began a long chase, a chase which for the deer meant a
straightaway game, and for me a series of wide circles--never
following the trail directly, but approaching it at intervals
from leeward, hoping to circle ahead of the deer and stalk them
at last from an unexpected quarter.

Once, when I looked down from a bare hilltop into a valley where
the trail ran, I had a most interesting glimpse of the big buck
doing the same thing from a hill farther on too far away for a
shot, but near enough to see plainly through my field glass. The
deer were farther ahead than I supposed. They had made a run for
it, intending to rest after first putting a good space between
them and anything that might follow. Now they were undoubtedly
lying down in some far-away thicket, their minds at rest, but
their four feet doubled under them for a jump at short notice.
Trust your nose, but keep your feet under you--that is deer
wisdom on going to sleep. Meanwhile, to take no chances, the wary
old leader had circled back, to wind the trail and watch it
awhile from a distance before joining them in their rest.

He stood stock-still in his hiding, so still that one might have
passed close by without noticing him. But his head was above the
low evergreens; eyes, ears, and nose were busy giving him perfect
report of everything that passed in the woods.

I started to stalk him promptly, creeping up the hill behind him,
chuckling to myself at the rare sport of catching a wild thing at
his own game. But before I sighted him again he grew uneasy (the
snow tells everything), trotted down hill to the trail, and put
his nose into it here and there to be sure it was not polluted.
Then--another of his endless devices to make the noonday siesta
full of contentment--he followed the back track a little way,
stepping carefully in his own footprints; branched off on the
other side of the trail, and so circled swiftly back to join his
little flock, leaving behind him a sad puzzle of disputing tracks
for any novice that might follow him.

So the interesting chase went on all day, skill against keener
cunning, instinct against finer instinct, through the white
wonder of the winter woods, till, late in the afternoon, it swung
back towards the starting point. The deer had undoubtedly
intended to begin their yard that day on the ridge I had
selected; for at noon I crossed the trail of the two from the
haystack, heading as if by mutual understanding in that
direction. But the big buck, feeling that he was followed,
cunningly led his charge away from the spot, so as to give no
hint of the proposed winter quarters to the enemy that was after
him. Just as the long shadows were stretching across all the
valleys from hill to hill, and the sun vanished into the last
gray bank of clouds on the horizon, my deer recrossed the old
road, leaping it, as in the morning, so as to leave no telltale
track, and climbed the hill to the dense thicket where they had
passed the previous night.

Here was my last chance, and I studied it deliberately. The deer
were there, safe within the evergreens, I had no doubt, using
their eyes for the open hillside in front and their noses for the
woods behind. It was useless to attempt stalking from any
direction, for the cover was so thick that a fox could hardly
creep through without alarming ears far less sensitive than a
deer's. Skill had failed; their cunning was too much for me. I
must now try an appeal to curiosity.

I crept up the hill flat on my face, keeping stump or scrub
spruce always between me and the thicket on the hilltop. The wind
was in my favor; I had only their eyes to consider. Somewhere,
just within the shadow, at least one pair were sweeping the back
track keenly; so I kept well away from it, creeping slowly up
till I rested behind a great burned stump within forty yards of
my game. There I fastened a red bandanna handkerchief to a stick
and waved it slowly above the stump.

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