CHAPTER IX
LITTLE METACOMET'S BLUE ROBIN
The blue jay was the bird companion of the Indian.
He could laugh, mock, and pilfer, but he did the latter in such a comical way as to cause even a red-face to smile. Very wild by nature he could be made very tame, as tame as a kitten, if brought up from the nest. Moreover, he could be called. A blue jay brought up from the nest in the house would always live near a lodge or house, and return at the whistle of its mistress.
But the joy of the woods in the early spring was the blue robin, or bluebird. The wild winter passed, ending in tempests, through which spring broke; the cowslips began to line the still frozen streams and soon to bloom amid the breaking ice; the maple buds turned red and swelled. Then out of the woods came the blue robin, and notes as lovely as the changing air announced the coming of spring.
The blue pairs breasted some hard belated winds for a time. Then the air was bloom and song, and they began to make their nests in some hollow arm of a tree, near a lodge or house often, for the blue robin was a home bird.
Little Metacomet came up to the groves one day, and discovered on the way some blue robins flying about the hollow of an oak, as in great distress. He climbed up the tree, saw a hollow in a crotch, and ran his hand down into the hollow, the blue robins flying and crying around his head.
Suddenly he found his arm in a coil as if a rope had been wound around it. The coil was cold. It tightened. He drew his arm out of the hollow and found that a black snake had coiled itself around it. The snake had gone into the hollow probably to destroy the blue robins' nest.
The black snake is not poisonous, and Little Metacomet was not frightened. He was angered that the snake should have intruded upon the blue robins. He seized it by his free hand, leaped down to the ground, and ran for timid Susan's, saying--
"Now I will give her a surprise!"
He did.
He called--"Mother Susan, Mother Susan!" as he came to the door.
Timid Susan opened the door, and shrieked--
"Roger, Roger, a snake has got Little Metacomet!"
Little Metacomet rushed in to the cabin and shook off the snake, and Susan pounded the reptile's head, and threw its body outside the door.
"Where did it get you?" asked timid Susan.
"I tore it out of the blue robins' nest. He went into a hole of the tree to destroy the blue robins' eggs, or young."
"Oh, oh!" said Susan. "The beautiful blue robins that bring the sky on their wings."
"The blue robins that paint themselves in the sky," said Little Metacomet. "I am going to defend that nest."
He went back to the tree, the others following him. He put his arm into the hollow again, and took out a blue robin, the mother bird.
"She has young," he called to Susan.
"Take care," said Susan, "there may be another snake."
He let the bird fly away, but she circled near, crying.
"I will keep the bird from harm until her young have grown," said Little Metacomet.
"So you shall, and I will help you," said timid Susan. "And the bird shall be ours. How many things we do own--we folks who live in the forest."
"I will help you, too," said Roger.
Little Metacomet looked after the safety of the blue robin daily. The parent birds came to know him. He did not need any cage for them.