Secret of the Woods
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William J. Long >> Secret of the Woods
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Almost instantly there was a snort and a rustle of bushes in the
thicket above me. Peeking out I saw the evergreens moving
nervously; a doe's head appeared, her ears set forward, her eyes
glistening. I waved the handkerchief more erratically. My rifle
lay across the stump's roots, pointing straight at her;
but she was not the game I was hunting. Some more waving and
dancing of the bright color, some more nervous twitchings and
rustlings in the evergreens, then a whistle and a rush; the doe
disappeared; the movement ceased; the thicket was silent as the
winter woods behind me.
"They are just inside," I thought, "pawing the snow to get their
courage up to come and see." So the handkerchief danced on--one,
two, five minutes passed in silence; then something made me turn
round. There in plain sight behind me, just this side the fringe
of evergreen that lined the old road, stood my three deer in a
row--the big buck on the right--like three beautiful statues,
their ears all forward, their eyes fixed with intensest curiosity
on the man lying at full length in the snow with the queer red
flag above his head.
My first motion broke up the pretty tableau. Before I could reach
for my rifle the deer whirled and vanished like three winks,
leaving the heavy evergreen tips nodding and blinking behind them
in a shower of snow.
Tired as I was, I took a last run to see from the trail how it
all happened. The deer had been standing just within the thicket
as I approached. All three had seen the handkerchief; the tracks
showed that they had pawed the snow and moved about nervously.
When the leader whistled they had bounded straightaway down the
steep on the other side. But the farms lay in that direction, so
they had skirted the base of the hill, keeping within the fringe
of woods and heading back for their morning trail, till the red
flag caught their eye again, and strong curiosity had halted them
for another look.
Thus the long hunt ended at twilight within sight of the spot
where it began in the gray morning stillness. With marvelous
cunning the deer circled into their old tracks and followed them
till night turned them aside into a thicket. This I discovered at
daylight next morning.
That day a change came; first a south wind, then in succession a
thaw, a mist, a rain turning to snow, a cold wind and a bitter
frost. Next day when I entered the woods a brittle crust made
silent traveling impossible, and over the rocks and bare places
was a sheet of ice covered thinly with snow.
I was out all day, less in hope of finding deer than of watching
the wild things; but at noon, as I sat eating my lunch, I heard a
rapid running, crunch, crunch, crunch, on the ridge above me. I
stole up, quietly as I could, to find the fresh trails of my
three deer. They were running from fright evidently, and
were very tired, as the short irregular jumps showed. Once, where
the two leaders cleared a fallen log, the third deer had fallen
heavily; and all three trails showed blood stains where the crust
had cut into their legs.
I waited there on the trail to see what was following--to give
right of way to any hunter, but with a good stout stick handy,
for dealing with dogs, which sometimes ran wild in the woods and
harried the deer. For a long quarter-hour the woods were all
still; then the jays, which had come whistling up on the trail,
flew back screaming and scolding, and a huge yellow mongrel,
showing hound's blood in his ears and nose, came slipping,
limping, whining over the crust. I waited behind a tree till he
was up with me, when I jumped out and caught him a resounding
thump on the ribs. As he ran yelping away I fired my rifle over
his head, and sent the good club with a vengeance to knock his
heels from under him. A fresh outburst of howls inspired me with
hope. Perhaps he would remember now to let deer alone for the
winter.
Above the noise of canine lamentation I caught the faint click of
snowshoes, and hid again to catch the cur's owner at his
contemptible work. But the sound stopped far back on the trail at
the sudden uproar.
Through the trees I caught glimpses of a fur cap and a long gun
and the hawk face of Old Wally, peeking, listening, creeping on
the trail, and stepping gingerly at last down the valley, ashamed
or afraid of being caught at his unlawful hunting. "An ill wind,
but it blows me good," I thought, as I took up the trail of the
deer, half ashamed myself to take advantage of them when tired by
the dog's chasing.
There was no need of commiseration, however; now that the dog was
out of the way they could take care of themselves very well. I
found them resting only a short distance ahead; but when I
attempted to stalk them from leeward the noise of my approach on
the crust sent them off with a rush before I caught even a
glimpse of them in their thicket.
I gave up caution then and there. I was fresh and the deer were
tired,--why not run them down and get a fair shot before the sun
went down and left the woods too dark to see a rifle sight? I had
heard that the Indians used sometimes to try running a deer down
afoot in the old days; here was the chance to try a new
experience. It was fearfully hard traveling without snowshoes, to
be sure; but that seemed only to even-up chances fairly with the
deer. At the thought I ran on, giving no heed when the quarry
jumped again just ahead of me, but pushing them steadily, mile
after mile, till I realized with a thrill that I was gaining
rapidly, that their pauses grew more and more frequent, and I had
constant glimpses of deer ahead among the trees--never of the big
buck, but of the two does, who were struggling desperately to
follow their leader as he kept well ahead of them breaking the
way. Then realizing, I think, that he was followed by strength
rather than by skill or cunning, the noble old fellow tried a
last trick, which came near being the end of my hunting
altogether.
The trail turned suddenly to a high open ridge with scattered
thickets here and there. As they labored up the slope I had the
does in plain sight. On top the snow was light, and they bounded
ahead with fresh strength. The trail led straight along the edge
of a cliff, beyond which the deer had vanished. They had stopped
running here; I noticed with amazement that they had walked with
quick short steps across the open. Eager for a sight of the buck
I saw only the thin powdering of snow; I forgot the glare ice
that covered the rock beneath. The deer's sharp hoofs had clung
to the very edge securely. My heedless feet had barely struck the
rock when they slipped and I shot over the cliff, thirty feet to
the rocks below. Even as I fell and the rifle flew from my grasp,
I heard the buck's loud whistle from the thicket where he was
watching me, and then the heavy plunge of the deer as they jumped
away.
A great drift at the foot of the cliff saved me. I picked myself
up, fearfully bruised but with nothing broken, found my rifle and
limped away four miles through the woods to the road, thinking as
I went that I was well served for having delivered the deer "from
the power of the dog," only to take advantage of their long run
to secure a head that my skill had failed to win. I wondered,
with an extra twinge in my limp, whether I had saved Old Wally by
taking the chase out of his hands unceremoniously. Above all, I
wondered--and here I would gladly follow another trail over the
same ground--whether the noble beast, grown weary with running,
his splendid strength failing for the first time, and his little,
long-tended flock ready to give in and have the tragedy over,
knew just what he was doing in mincing along the cliff's edge
with his heedless enemy close behind. What did he think and feel,
looking back from his hiding, and what did his loud whistle mean?
But that is always the despair of studying the wild things. When
your problem is almost solved, night comes and the trail ends.
When I could walk again easily vacation was over, the law was on,
and the deer were safe.
SNOW BOUND
March is a weary month for the wood folk. One who follows them
then has it borne in upon him continually that life is a
struggle,--a keen, hard, hunger-driven struggle to find enough to
keep a-going and sleep warm till the tardy sun comes north again
with his rich living. The fall abundance of stored food has all
been eaten, except in out-of-the-way corners that one stumbles
upon in a long day's wandering; the game also is wary and hard
to find from being constantly hunted by eager enemies.
It is then that the sparrow falleth. You find him on the snow, a
wind-blown feather guiding your eye to the open where he fell in
mid-flight; or under the tree, which shows that he lost his grip
in the night. His empty crop tells the whole pitiful story, and
why you find him there cold and dead, his toes curled up and his
body feather-light. You would find more but for the fact that
hunger-pointed eyes are keener than yours and earlier abroad, and
that crow and jay and mink and wildcat have greater interest than
you in finding where the sparrow fell.
It is then, also, that the owl, who hunts the sparrow o' nights,
grows so light from scant feeding that he cannot fly against the
wind. If he would go back to his starting point while the March
winds are out, he must needs come down close to the ground and
yewyaw towards his objective, making leeway like an old boat
without ballast or centerboard.
The grouse have taken to bud-eating from necessity--birch buds
mostly, with occasional trips to the orchards for variety. They
live much now in the trees, which they dislike; but with a score
of hungry enemies prowling for them day and night, what can a
poor grouse do?
When a belated snow falls, you follow their particular enemy, the
fox, where he wanders, wanders, wander's on his night's hunting.
Across the meadow, to dine on the remembrance of field
mice--alas! safe now under the crust; along the brook, where he
once caught frogs; through the thicket, where the grouse were
hatched; past the bullbrier tangle, where the covey of quail once
rested nightly; into the farmyard, where the dog is loose and the
chickens are safe under lock and key, instead of roosting in
trees; across the highway, and through the swamp, and into the
big bare empty woods; till in the sad gray morning light he digs
under the wild apple tree and sits down on the snow to eat a
frozen apple, lest his stomach cry too loudly while he sleeps the
day away and tries to forget that he is hungry.
Everywhere it is the same story: hard times and poor hunting.
Even the chickadees are hard pressed to keep up appearances and
have their sweet love note ready at the first smell of spring in
the air.
This was the lesson that the great woods whispered sadly when a
few idle March days found me gliding on snowshoes over the old
familiar ground. Wild geese had honked an invitation from the
South Shore; but one can never study a wild goose; the only
satisfaction is to see him swing in on broad wings over the
decoys--one glorious moment ere the gun speaks and the dog jumps
and everything is spoiled. So I left gun and rifle behind, and
went off to the woods of happy memories to see how my deer were
faring.
The wonder of the snow was gone; there was left only its cold
bitterness and a vague sense that it ought no longer to cumber
the ground, but would better go away as soon as possible and
spare the wood folk any more suffering. The litter of a score of
storms covered its soiled rough surface; every shred of bark had
left its dark stain where the decaying sap had melted and spread
in the midday sun. The hard crust, which made such excellent
running for my snowshoes, seemed bitterly cruel when I thought of
the starving wild things and of the abundance of food on the
brown earth, just four feet below their hungry bills and noses.
The winter bad been unusually severe. Reports had come to me from
the North Woods of deep snows, and of deer dying of starvation
and cold in their yards. I confess that I was anxious as I
hurried along. Now that the hunt was over and the deer had won,
they belonged to me more than ever more even than if the stuffed
head of the buck looked down on my hall, instead of resting
proudly over his own strong shoulders. My snowshoes clicked a
rapid march through the sad gray woods, while the March wind
thrummed an accompaniment high up among the bare branches, and
the ground-spruce nodded briskly, beating time with their green
tips, as if glad of any sound or music that would break the chill
silence until the birds came back.
Here and there the snow told stories; gay stories, tragic
stories, sad, wandering, patient stories of the little
woods-people, which the frost had hardened into crust, as if
Nature would keep their memorials forever, like the records on
the sunhardened bricks of Babylon. But would the deer live? Would
the big buck's cunning provide a yard large enough for wide
wandering, with plenty of browse along the paths to carry his
flock safely through the winter's hunger? That was a story,
waiting somewhere ahead, which made me hurry away from the
foot-written records that otherwise would have kept me busy for
hours.
Crossbills called welcome to me, high overhead. Nothing can
starve them out. A red squirrel rushed headlong out of his hollow
tree at the first click of my snowshoes. Nothing can check his
curiosity or his scolding except his wife, whom he likes, and the
weasel, whom he is mortally afraid of. Chickadees followed me
shyly with their blandishments--tsic-a-deeee? with that gentle
up-slide of questioning. "Is the spring really coming? Are--are
you a harbinger?"
But the snowshoes clicked on, away from the sweet blarney,
Leaving behind the little flatterers who were honestly glad to
see me in the woods again, and who would fain have delayed me.
Other questions, stern ones, were calling ahead. Would the cur
dogs find the yard and exterminate the innocents? Would Old
Wally--but no; Wally had the "rheumatiz," and was out of the
running. Ill-wind blew the deer good that time; else he would
long ago have run them down on snowshoes and cut their throats,
as if they were indeed his "tarnal sheep" that had run wild in
the woods.
At the southern end of a great hardwood ridge I found the first
path of their yard. It was half filled with snow, unused since
the last two storms. A glance on either side, where everything
eatable within reach of a deer's neck had long ago been cropped
close, showed plainly why the path was abandoned. I followed it a
short distance before running into another path, and another,
then into a great tangle of deer ways spreading out crisscross
over the eastern and southern slopes of the ridge.
In some of the paths were fresh deer tracks and the signs of
recent feeding. My heart jumped at sight of one great hoof mark.
I had measured and studied it too often to fail to recognize its
owner. There was browse here still, to be had for the cropping. I
began to be hopeful for my little flock, and to feel a higher
regard for their leader, who could plan a yard, it seemed, as
well as a flight, and who could not be deceived by early
abundance into outlining a small yard, forgetting the late snows
and the spring hunger.
I was stooping to examine the more recent signs, when a sharp
snort made me raise my head quickly. In the path before me stood
a doe, all a-quiver, her feet still braced from the suddenness
with which she had stopped at sight of an unknown object blocking
the path ahead. Behind her two other deer checked themselves and
stood like statues, unable to see, but obeying their leader
promptly.
All three were frightened and excited, not simply curious, as
they would have been had they found me in their path
unexpectedly. The widespread nostrils and heaving sides showed
that they had been running hard. Those in the rear (I could see
them over the top of the scrub spruce, behind which I crouched in
the path) said in every muscle: "Go on! No matter what it is, the
danger behind is worse. Go on, go on!" Insistence was in the air.
The doe felt it and bounded aside. The crust had softened in the
sun, and she plunged through it when she struck, cr-r-runch,
cr-r-runch, up to her sides at every jump. The others followed,
just swinging their heads for a look and a sniff at me, springing
from hole to hole in the snow, and making but a single track. A
dozen jumps and they struck another path and turned into it,
running as before down the ridge. In the swift glimpses they gave
me I noticed with satisfaction that, though thin and a bit ragged
in appearance, they were by no means starved. The veteran leader
had provided well for his little family.
I followed their back track up the ridge for perhaps half a mile,
when another track made me turn aside. Two days before, a single
deer had been driven out of the yard at a point where three paths
met. She had been running down the ridge when something in front
met her and drove her headlong out of her course. The soft edges
of the path were cut and torn by suspicious claw marks.
I followed her flight anxiously, finding here and there, where
the snow had been softest, dog tracks big and little. The deer
was tired from long running, apparently; the deep holes in the
snow, where she had broken through the crust, were not half the
regular distance apart. A little way from the path I found her,
cold and stiff, her throat horribly torn by the pack which had
run her to death. Her hind feet were still doubled under her,
just as she had landed from her last despairing jump, when the
tired muscles could do no more, and she sank down without a
struggle to let the dogs do their cruel work.
I had barely read all this, and had not yet finished measuring
the largest tracks to see if it were her old enemy that, as dogs
frequently do, had gathered a pirate band about him and led them
forth to the slaughter of the innocents, when a far-away cry came
stealing down through the gray woods. Hark! the eager yelp of
curs and the leading hoot of a hound. I whipped out my knife to
cut a club, and was off for the sounds on a galloping run, which
is the swiftest possible gait on snowshoes.
There were no deer paths here; for the hardwood browse, upon
which deer depend for food, grew mostly on the other sides of the
ridge. That the chase should turn this way, out of the yard's
limits showed the dogs' cunning, and that they were not new at
their evil business. They had divided their forces again, as they
had undoubtedly done when hunting the poor doe whose body I had
just found. Part of the pack hunted down the ridge in full cry,
while the rest lay in wait to spring at the flying game as it
came on and drive it out of the paths into the deep snow, where
it would speedily be at their mercy. At the thought I gripped the
club hard, promising to stop that kind of hunting for good, if
only I could get half a chance.
Presently, above the scrape of my snowshoes, I heard the deer
coming, cr-r-runch! cr-r-runch! the heavy plunges growing shorter
and fainter, while behind the sounds an eager, whining trail-cry
grew into a fierce howl of canine exultation. Something was
telling me to hurry, hurry; that the big buck I had so often
hunted was in my power at last, and that, if I would square
accounts, I must beat the dogs, though they were nearer to him
now than I. The excitement of a new kind of hunt, a hunt to save,
not to kill, was tingling all over me when I circled a dense
thicket of firs with a rush, and there he lay, up to his
shoulders in the snow before me.
He had taken his last jump. The splendid strength which had
carried him so far was spent now to the last ounce. He lay
resting easily in the snow, his head outstretched on the crust
before him, awaiting the tragedy that had followed him for years,
by lake and clearing and winter yard, and that burst out behind
him now with a cry to make one's nerves shudder. The glory of his
antlers was gone; he had dropped them months before; but the
mighty shoulders and sinewy neck and perfect head showed how
well, how grandly he had deserved my hunting.
He threw up his head as I burst out upon him from an utterly
unexpected quarter--the very thing that I had so often tried to
do, in vain, in the old glorious days. "Hast thou found me, O
mine enemy? Well, here am I." That is what his eyes, great, sad,
accusing eyes, were saying as he laid his head down on the snow
again, quiet as an Indian at the torture, too proud to struggle
where nothing was to be gained but pity or derision.
A strange, uncanny silence had settled over the woods. Wolves
cease their cry in the last swift burst of speed that will bring
the game in sight. Then the dogs broke out of the cover behind
him with a fiercer howl that was too much for even his nerves to
stand. Nothing on earth could have met such a death unmoved. No
ears, however trained, could hear that fierce cry for blood
without turning to meet it face to face. With a mighty effort the
buck. whirled in the snow and gathered himself for the tragedy.
Far ahead of the pack came a small, swift bulldog that, with no
nose of his own for hunting, had followed the pirate leader for
mere love of killing. As he jumped for the throat, the buck, with
his last strength, reared on his hind legs, so as to get his fore
feet clear of the snow, and plunged down again with a hard, swift
sabre-cut of his right hoof. It caught the dog on the neck as he
rose on the spring, and ripped him from ear to tail. Deer and dog
came down together. Then the buck rose swiftly for his last blow,
and the knife-edged hoofs shot down like lightning; one straight,
hard drive with the crushing force of a ten-ton hammer behind
it--and his first enemy was out of the hunt forever. Before he
had time to gather himself again the big yellow brindle, with the
hound's blood showing in nose and ears,--Old Wally's dog,--leaped
into sight. His whining trail-cry changed to a fierce growl as he
sprang for the buck's nose.
I had waited for just this moment in hiding, and jumped to meet
it. The club came down between the two heads; and there was no
reserve this time in the muscles that swung it. It caught the
brute fair on the head, where the nose begins to come up into the
skull,--and he too had harried his last deer.
Two other curs had leaped aside with quick instinct the moment
they saw me, and vanished into the thickets, as if conscious of
their evil doing and anxious to avoid detection. But the third, a
large collie,--a dog that, when he does go wrong, becomes the
most cunning and vicious of brutes,--flew straight at my throat
with a snarl like a gray wolf cheated of his killing. I have
faced bear and panther and bull moose when the red danger-light
blazed into their eyes; but never before or since have I seen
such awful fury in a brute's face. It swept over me in an instant
that it was his life or mine; there was no question or
alternative. A lucky cut of the club disabled him, and I finished
the job on the spot, for the good of the deer and the community.
The big buck had not moved, nor tried to, after his last great
effort. Now he only turned his head and lifted it wearily, as if
to get away from the intolerable smell of his dog enemies that
lay dying under his very nose. His great, sorrowful, questioning
eyes were turned on me continually, with a look that only
innocence could possibly meet. No man on earth, I think, could
have looked into them for a full moment and then raised his hand
to slay.
I approached very quietly, and dragged the dogs away from him,
one by one. His eyes followed me always. His nostrils spread, his
head came up with a start when I flung the first cur aside to
leeward. But he made no motion; only his eyes had a wonderful
light in them when I dragged his last enemy, the one he had
killed himself, from under his very head and threw it after the
others. Then I sat down quietly in the snow, and we were face to
face at last.
He feared me--I could hardly expect otherwise, while a deer has
memory--but he lay perfectly still, his head extended on the
snow, his sides heaving. After a little while he made a few
bounds forward, at right angles to the course he had been
running, with marvelous instinct remembering the nearest point in
the many paths out of which the pack had driven him. But he
stopped and lay quiet at the first sound of my snowshoes behind
him. "The chase law holds. You have caught me; I am yours,"--this
is what his sad eyes were saying. And sitting down quietly near
him again, I tried to reassure him. "You are safe. Take your own
time. No dog shall harm you now."--That is what I tried to make
him feel by the very power of my own feeling, never more strongly
roused than now for any wild creature.
I whistled a little tune softly, which always rouses the wood
folk's curiosity; but as he lay quiet, listening, his ears shot
back and forth nervously at a score of sounds that I could not
hear, as if above the music he caught faint echoes of the last
fearful chase. Then I brought out my lunch and, nibbling a bit
myself, pushed a slice of black bread over the crust towards him
with a long stick.
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