Part 10

Spreading some brush to distribute my weight, for the ice here is dangerous, I crumble a bit of bread from our lunch into the open water--this to attract any minnow that happily may dwell in the beavers’ playground. Suddenly a flash of silver flickers in the black water amid the sinking crumbs. It inspires hope, tingling and electric, like that which thrills one when the swirl of a noble salmon follows his cast. Then for an hour, it seems, or until I am almost frozen, I use all my fisherman’s art with a bent pin, a morsel of meat, a thread and a moosewood twig; after which I wriggle ashore proudly, holding up one minnow a good inch-and-a-half long. Letting him freeze in the snow while we kindle a fire and brew a dipper of tea for lunch, I carry him off in an outside pocket, where he will keep cold enough until we need him. Sport is a matter of sentiment, and is nine-tenths imagination; but real enjoyment is born of necessity. Never a big salmon, of all that I have taken on the fly, was so well angled for or gave so much solid satisfaction as that tiny minnow.

* * * * *

We shall cruise in strange woods for the rest of the day, taking a hint from Malsun the wolf when he left the otter’s spring-hole. Turning away from the lake, we head rapidly northeast through broken country, on a course which may bring us to the trail of the wolves we heard howling in the night. Malsun was heading this way when we left his trail, and a wolf always knows where to find his pack.

Over a hillock we go, and across a white-faced bog bordered by ghostly larches, so wild, so lonely, that it seems nothing ever breathed here since the world began. Nature seems dead, her form shrouded in snow, her lips sealed with ice; but she is only playing with us, having slipped on another of her many masks. Though nothing moves here, though your snowshoes glide on hour after hour and start no bird or beast, there is life near you at every instant, an eager, abundant life, which finds health and cheerfulness in these apparently desolate places. That you cannot see it is part of the winter game; wild life is too alert now, and much too secretive, to reveal itself to any careless eye.

Beyond the bog an immense ridge of hardwood sweeps upward to the sky line. As we climb it, we cross a succession of delicate trails that seem to move onward at a stealthy fox trot. No wonder that Indians call the maker of such a trail Eleemos the sly one! A dozen foxes have crossed the ridge this morning, probably between dawn and sunrise. That seems too many for one locality until you consult the snow, which says that most of the “sly ones” are heading the same way, and that they are no longer hunting, but moving to a definite goal. In the ledges yonder, which front the sunshine, are probably two or three dens that have been used by generations of foxes; and the cubs, after hunting far afield, come back every morning to pass the day near the familiar place or, it may be, near familiar companions, as young foxes commonly do in regions where they are not disturbed by hunting.

Would you like to see one of these wilderness foxes? Then come, follow this dainty trail. It was made by a young dog fox (his habits betray him), and we shall not be long in finding his day bed.

For a half-mile or more Eleemos holds steadily on his course, stopping once to listen and spring aside when he heard a wood mouse squeak under a fallen pine. See, there is a pinkish tinge in the snow where he dropped a morsel of his small game, and lapped it to the last smell. That does not mean necessarily that Eleemos was very hungry. A fox will stop to catch a mouse when his stomach is so full that you wonder how it can hold any more. One October day, when hunting with a gun, I called a fox by a mouselike squeaking. His stomach was tight as a drum; when I opened it I found that Eleemos had already eaten three or four mice, two birds, some stuff I could not name, and part of a young muskrat.

The fox we are following turns from his straight course and heads diagonally upward toward the ledges. Never mind the trail at your feet now; it will soon begin to twist, because a fox never goes straight to his day bed, and you should see the turn before you come to it. So look far ahead, and go carefully; don’t click the snowshoes or let your clothing scrape on a frozen twig. See, the trail turns sharp to the left, and beyond that to the right. There he is! a flash of ruddy color, as Eleemos slips away from the log on which he was curled up in the sun. He saw us before we saw him, though he was more or less asleep. Had he not waited to learn who was coming, you would not have caught even a glimpse of him. Now he half circles to get our wind, for like most animals he trusts his nose above all other senses. There are fleeting glimpses of fur as he passes an opening or halts behind a windfall that hides all but his ears; then he heads away in swift jumps, his brush quivering nervously, and disappears in thick cover. No use to follow; you will not see that fox again.

The older foxes are mating now, and their trails are amazingly devious. Ordinarily Eleemos leaves a plain story in the snow; but if you attempt to read it at a time when he is cajoling a mate, or in a region where his enemies, the wolves, have just been hunting, you will be at your wits’ end to untangle the puzzle. Aside from his courting or hunting habits, every fox has times or moods when his actions are humanly incomprehensible. Last week, for example, I found the trail of a fox that had taken one of Bob’s wolf baits; but instead of eating it he carried it off in his mouth, taking a very erratic course, and setting the bait down here or there to have another look at it. Once he dropped it under a drooping fir tip, crept completely around the fir, and crouched to watch the thing from hiding, as a kitten plays with a paralyzed mouse. Then he carried it hither and yon over the crookedest trail I ever tried to follow, sometimes trotting quietly, again rushing away as if something were chasing him, now and then squatting to look at his prize as it lay immobile under his nose. Though I had a perfect tracking snow, which showed every footprint of the fox and every resting place of the bait, what with his crisscrosses and back-tracking I could not trace him a straight mile from the starting point, and I left him without the faintest notion of where he was heading or what he would do with his stolen morsel.

That bait, by the way, was an odd thing for any fox to uncover in his familiar woods. It was invented in an idle, lunatic moment after the wolves had refused to go near a variety of natural baits, and immediately it brought forth the fantastic fruits of lunacy by becoming excellent “medicine.” It was the size of a teacup; it was compounded of meat scraps held together by melted lard; just before it hardened, it was rolled in powdered fish skins; then the tail feather of a crow was stuck into it, as a marker on the snow. From beginning to end of the alchemy no human hand touched it to leave a suspicious odor. No doubt the queer but appetizing thing was enough to puzzle any fox, making him cut strange capers; but I was unable to generalize about its effect on a canny beast, because the next fox that took a similar bait not only ate it on the spot, but licked up every crumb and looked about for more.

As we resume our course after seeing Eleemos, we run into another trail, which confuses us by its odd appearance until we read that it was made by a pair of foxes, male and female, that were carefully stepping in each other’s tracks. They came over the ridge one behind the other, not heading for the den, but approaching the lake by endless roundabouts, stopping here or there to leave a tangle of tracks which record some little comedy. Instead of trying to read the puzzle, which is beyond all woodcraft, I sketch a portion of the trail just as the foxes left it,--so:

[Illustration: _A Pretty Crisscross_

Sketch of the trail of a pair of foxes coming from _a_, at the right, and going at _b_. Arrow points indicate the direction of the trail; opposite points where a fox went off at a tangent, and returned, stepping carefully in his own tracks. Single lines show where the foxes followed one behind the other; double lines Where they ran side by side. From _a_ to _b_ is about two hundred yards in a straight line. Note that, when the foxes end their crisscross, they head away in the direction they were holding when they first appeared.]

On the farther side of the ridge, as we turn downward to a cedar swamp, we begin to cross other trails, each with a tale to tell if one follows it far enough. But the winter day is too short; we must hurry if we are to learn what the wolves were doing. Here is where a solitary Canada lynx passed, leaving round pugs like enormous cat tracks. His trail gives a curious impression of mingled cunning and stupidity; it is wavering, sneaky, suspicious, like all cat trails. Since it is heading our way, we follow it through the swamp, to see how Upweekis stalks a hare, before climbing the next ridge. Here in a wind-swept spot a few wood mice have ventured up from their tunnels under the snow; and red squirrels--_’sh!_ there’s one now.

Meeko was hidden in a spruce as we approached, and we would never have seen him had he kept still. Being packed full of curiosity, he cannot be quiet, but must run down his tree to see a man, no doubt the first biped of that kind he has ever met. He begins to scold when we stand motionless, telling him nothing, and I answer him by talking squirrel talk between lips and teeth. Meeko listens in amazed silence; his eyes seem to enlarge, to snap fire; then, as if he had discovered something of vast importance, he leaps jabbering from the tree and scurries away in breakneck fashion. At his summons a second squirrel tumbles out from under a log; whereupon I talk more gibberish, and two more come rushing down the hill. From a sugar maple comes a volley of questions, protests, expostulations. A squirrel is up there who thinks he is being neglected; when he can stand his isolation no longer he comes down to join the crowd. That makes five in this small spot, and we hear more voices in the distance, shrill, querulous voices, demanding the news or scolding about it, whatever it may be.

The five visible squirrels are running in erratic circles, drawing nearer to the strange creature that puzzles and irritates them, till one scurries up my leg almost to my waist, where he loses courage and leaps off, scared but chattering. At this they all scatter and climb different trees, stopping at the level of my eyes, where they jump up and down on the same spot, crying _kilch! kilch!_ as they jump. Then, for they are a rattle-headed folk, they forget curiosity and take to chasing or punishing one poor, squealing wretch who, they think, caused all this ado about nothing.

There is life here, you see, and in the snow at your feet is the record of it, more interesting by far than any book of natural history. So with senses all alert we move onward to the rhythmic swish and click of the snowshoes, mile after lonely mile, now over mighty hardwood ridges that probably never before were marked by a man’s footprints, again pushing through dense evergreen thickets to break out on the silent expanse of a caribou barren, a beaver pond, an unnamed lake; and hardly a rood of all this ground but offers a trail to follow and a story to read. Here is good hunting.

As we follow down a ridge in the late afternoon, we get one shock and meet with the only nerve-testing adventure which this big, lonely wilderness can furnish. There is no game in sight; the woods are still, the snow unmarked by any trail; but we are moving cautiously, lifting the snowshoes so as to avoid all noise. Somewhere on that densely wooded hillside across the valley is a deer yard; our eyes are searching far ahead, trying to pick up a moving shadow, when with startling suddenness comes a rumble, a roar, a violent upheaval of snow, and out from underfoot bursts a whirring, booming thing that scares us stiff. Through the flurry of snow the thing looks like a bomb and sounds like an explosion; but--we laugh at our fright--it is only a bird, a grouse, who is making all that commotion. Seksagadagee, Little Thunder-maker, the Indians call him, and now you know why: he has a thunderclap way of startling you at times, and in the spring his hollow drumming has a suggestion of distant thunder. This one, having eaten his fill of birch buds, had swooped into the snow for the night, as grouse often do before the big owls begin to hunt, and I had put one of the snowshoes fairly over him before seeing the hole he made when he went in.

That hole is scarcely noticeable even now, for no sooner was it made than the falling snow almost filled it again. Beneath it is a tunnel, cloven by the bird’s plunge, which slants downward and makes a sharp turn to the left. At the end is, or was, a little chamber where Seksagadagee intended to sleep warm, out of eyeshot of hunting owls, with a blanket of snow all around him.

There he is now, cuddled against the stem of a big spruce, where he is hard to find. He is motionless, like a knob of the tree, but he is looking back alertly to see what startled him. At sight of his plump breast the thought of food replaces natural history; my revolver comes up in line with his head. He will be a rare _bonne bouche_, and the wilderness must feed its wanderers--but wait! Grouse are scarce here, as they are at home this year, having gone through a wet breeding season which killed most of the chicks, after enduring a pest of goshawks that came down from the north and harried the old birds all winter. That is why we have crossed but one grouse track to-day, though we have traversed miles of good cover since sunrise.

It seems a pity to take this lonesome fellow. When you kill a bird he is dead, and makes no more trails. “Well, Little Thunder-maker, you and your poults have had a hard enough rub with hawks and foxes, and these big woods seem to need you. Good-by and good luck!” I call, and we break even. But I was more scared than he was. The bomb paralyzed me for a moment, exploding so suddenly; while his booming flight said that he was master of his own motions.

In the valley beyond, just before entering the deer yard, we cross the trail of the wolves we are seeking,--six powerful brutes that keep together at this point, traveling in single file till they reach the hillside with its tangle of deer paths, when they spread out to sweep the cover from end to end. The air was northerly last night; they are hunting upwind after their usual fashion. We must hurry now; it is growing late, and we have one more story to read from the trails, a story which I wish had not been written. Ah, see that!

Yonder are holes in the snow where two deer (probably a doe and her fawn of last spring) rested near one of the paths of their winter yard; and up the path comes a wolf, stealing along like a cat. That fellow is hunting keenly; but though near enough to smell his game under ordinary conditions, the trail shows that he has no inkling of the two animals only a few yards away. They are hidden by the snow a little to one side of his course, which will take him past them if he keeps on as he is going. Fortunately for the deer, they give out very little scent when resting; and since a wolf does not follow foot scent, he must run almost over them before he knows where they are. See, he has passed without smelling them; they will be safe in another minute if they hold still. There! too bad! too bad! The deer have caught the rank wolf smell, and a single whiff stampedes them. As they jump, the wolf catches the body scent and whirls toward them. Two great bounds bring him into their trail; he is after them in a terrific rush.

Poor deer! it is all up with them now; they have no chance with that grim brute at their heels. Luckily he will kill only one, leaving the other, for deer are not like crowding sheep; they scatter when a wolf attacks the herd. But what is this?

A short run, and the wolf leaves the hot trail and speeds to a distant part of the yard, hurling himself forward by extraordinary bounds, as if life depended on getting somewhere else on the instant.

That is just like a wolf. He has room for only one notion or impulse at a time; when a new notion or a stronger impulse comes into his head, it drives out the other. Chasing his game and gaining on it at every jump, this wolf received some new, imperative summons and rushed to answer it. Following him, we find where another wolf joins his headlong rush; others come sweeping in from either side; the whole pack goes leaping alongside a fresh trail left by a running buck and a single big wolf.

We understand now the uproar that shattered last night’s stillness. It was the trail-cry of a wolf, followed by the pack’s terrifying answer. As a rule, wolves hunt in silence; when they run a deer there is seldom a yelp from beginning to end of the chase. Occasionally, however, when a solitary wolf starts big game and wants help, he utters a peculiar cry; and that cry, coming from the mother wolf who leads the pack or from the old dog wolf who hunts by himself, rouses up a wild impulse, electric, irresistible. At the tingling summons every wolf in the pack leaves his own affairs, even the food he has just caught, and darts away to join the hunt. As the scattered brutes draw together, there is confused, uproarious howling. The running game, thinking only of the wolf behind him, hears a threatening clamor on all sides; he wavers, halts, turns, and the chase is over. Such is the psychology of a wolf’s hunting, as one hears it in the night or reads it from the snowy trail next morning.

The buck is heading for the nearest lake, where running is easier and he has the advantage, since his sharp hoofs cling to the ice where the wolves’ feet slip and slither; but the lake is half a mile away, and he will never reach it. I have followed a score of just such trails as this, and whether in woods or on open ice I have not yet found one which said that a buck could keep ahead of these fleet brutes more than a few minutes.

That is an odd thing, too, since wolves trust to stealth rather than to speed. Though they have tremendous power of running and leaping, they refuse (in their hunting, at least) to keep up a fast clip for any length of time; and in witnessing one of their hunts I had the impression that any buck should be able to get away from them. In deep snow he seems to have quite as much speed as they have; on the ice he has more, and he might win in any kind of footing if he would only put his mind into his running. Unhappily, that is precisely what a white-tailed deer will not or cannot do when a wolf is after him. When a caribou sniffs a wolf he racks away at a slashing pace, keeping it up until he is out of danger, and no wolf on earth can catch him in a fair run; but a deer, after a magnificent burst of speed which shows his power, always stops to look around, to stamp, to threaten, to fidget. At times he gives the impression that, in a dazed sort of way, he is puzzling his head to know what the brutes behind him are doing or why they do not go about their own affairs. It is not the wolf’s extra speed, I think, but the deer’s mental paralysis which makes the chase so short. But enough of psychology! Here is a plain trail to follow.

At this point the buck and the big wolf that jumped him are running evenly, one behind the other, with no great exertion on either side. Farther on the buck slows down, his jumps shorten; then the wolf closes in, the buck turns to fight. See, as he turns, how the pack rolls in behind him, cutting off his escape, while the big wolf holds him in front. Though they have the buck at their mercy, the powerful brutes do not spring upon the game at bay, for that is not a wolf’s way; he watches his chance to kill by stealth, as he hunts by stealth. Here are depressions which show where two wolves crouched within easy-springing distance; behind them is a hole where the buck came down from a jump. He must have leaped clean over the crouching wolves as he broke away for the lake.