Part 16
Out of the corner of an eye I saw these vanishing shapes, my whole heart and attention being fastened on one enormous wolf that jumped from under me and went whisking down the slope in astonishing-high bounds, as if he rode a witch’s broomstick. It was the loup-garou, the terrible, the enchanted beast! I could have laughed or yelled at his flight had I not wanted to bemoan my own blunder. After throwing me off his trail he had gone to sleep in the laurels under the ridge, where he was sure no enemy could approach unnoticed; and after trailing him uncounted miles with endless caution, I had tumbled down like a sack almost on top of him. It was such an ending as makes one a believer in luck, especially bad luck.
And speaking of luck, it was, after all, fairly distributed, with such waggish humor that no reasonable creature had any cause to grumble. The lucky thing for me was the panic that gets into a wild beast’s legs whenever a startling thing happens. I knew the power of a timber wolf, that he can throw a buck by a twist of the head, and paralyze him or open his throat by a snap of the terrible fangs; and I had roused a dozen such brutes, every one within springing distance. Had they whirled on me in the drift, my sky would have been no bigger than my hat; I would have had no more fighting chance than a rabbit. Yet they lost nerve and scattered like flushed quail when a snowball came blundering down into their day bed.
In the other scale of fortune’s balance, it was lucky for the wolves that I was as much surprised and generally stood-on-my-head as they were. After an all-day chase, here was one rewardful moment when a man needed just three things: solid footing, clear eyes, a steady hand. In that moment I was sprawling like an upset turtle, one hand brushing snow out of my face, the other tugging at a revolver, which took that particular occasion to jam in the holster. Somehow, with loss of the only precious second, I was on my feet to send one hasty shot at the loup-garou, flying off on his broomstick with trees flitting past him in dizzy procession, and another at a big dog wolf that, confused by the roaring echo, turned and came streaking past me up the ridge.
It was all over before there was time to pick a target or even to think. The dog wolf jumped high at the shot, showing he had no magic; but as I gazed ruefully after the loup-garou I had a last glimpse of his plume waving _au revoir_ as he sailed over a windfall. Whatever loup-garouishness that fellow ever had is still with him.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
FROM A BEAVER LODGE
To look into a house is one thing; to look out of it is another. The difference between the two views is the difference between strangeness and familiarity, between guessing and knowing. This is an attempt to look forth from a beaver’s house and see the world as a beaver sees it.
When you stand for the first time beside a beaver lodge you front a disappointment, then a doubt, finally a battery of questions. You are gliding down a wilderness stream, your senses joyously alert, in your heart a curious feeling that you are an intruder, when your eye catches a thing which is neither alive nor quite natural. It is a mass of sticks, gray, like all jetsam of the shore; but it stands in a circle of cut glass overlooking a bend where the stream broadens into a little pond. Quietly the canoe turns in, touching the bank as noiselessly as a floating leaf. As you step ashore, an odor of musk tells you that you are at last in beaver land.
All around you is beauty, quietude, immensity; upon you is the spell of the silent places. The wild meadow with its blossoming grass, over which the wind runs in waves of light and shadow; the big woods, which seem always to be listening; the everlasting hills with their sentinel pines,--all these remind you of a day when God looked upon a new creation, “and behold, it was very good.” Even the graceful canoe, which has borne you silently through a vast silence, seems part of a harmonious landscape. But that crude heap yonder, surely that is not the famous dwelling you have read about and longed to see! One look at the formless thing is enough to dispel all your illusions of beaver intelligence. You expected something rare, an abode finely or wonderfully wrought; you see a pile of sticks, big and scraggly, as if a huge hawk’s nest had tumbled out of a tree and landed upside down.
Such is your first impression of a beaver’s winter house, making you doubt whether the maker of such a poor abode has any more brains in his head than a delving woodchuck. But when you push the sticks aside and find that they conceal a careful work beneath; when you reflect that the beaver gave a cunning last touch to his handiwork in order to make it look like drift stuff cast up by the waters; when you slowly uncover dam, transportation canal, emergency burrows, storehouse, and other works of which this rude house was once the hopeful center,--then your illusions come back multiplied, and you ask questions of a different kind, no longer scornful, but truth-seeking. Your first view discloses only a formless heap of sticks, because you view it from without as a stranger; your last view, as you turn away regretfully, brings sympathetic understanding of the brave little pioneer who looks out from the sticks as from a familiar home, and is well content with what he sees because he has proved himself master of circumstance.
The first of your new questions deals with the height of the lodge, which is its most variable feature. One beaver builds a high lodge, another a low; or the same beaver may erect a six-foot house one season, and the next be content with a dwelling that will hardly be noticeable when the snow covers it. In your thought this varying height is associated with a strange weather prediction; for as in childhood you were told that a low or high muskrat’s house was sure sign of a mild or severe winter, so when you visit beaver land you shall hear that this relative of the muskrat is an unerring weather prophet. “When the beaver builds high and solid, look for deep snow and intense cold” runs the saying, and your proper state of mind is one of wonder at the mysterious instinct which enables the animal to know what kind of winter he is facing, and to build his house accordingly.
Now the beaver, like other wild creatures, is an excellent weather prophet. When you find him working leisurely by night, and sleeping from early dawn till the stars come out, you may confidently expect a continuation of Indian-summer weather; but when you find him rushing his work by day-and-night labor, it is time for you to head out of the woods (if you travel by canoe) before a freeze-up blocks all the waterways. From these and other signs, which woodsmen point out, one might judge that the beaver knows what kind of weather to expect for the next day or two; but there his foreknowledge stops, being sufficient for his needs. The weather of next winter cannot possibly concern him when he builds his house; the height or solidity of his walls is not determined by fear of cold or anticipation of a heavy snowfall. What should he care for cold who has the warmest of furs on his back, or for snow who has a weather-proof roof over his head?
No, the problem which a beaver faces is the single problem of rising or falling water. Therefore the height of his dwelling will never be determined by season, but always by locality. If he selects one place for a winter habitation, he will build a high lodge; if he decides that another place is better, he will be satisfied with a low lodge. In either place his house, whether high or low, will prove to be just the right height nine times out of ten, and perhaps oftener. Indians assert that a beaver never repeats a mistake. They seem to think of him as they think of themselves when they say, “If you fool-um Injun once, that’s your fault. If you fool-um twice, that’s Injun’s fault.”
To understand the problem as Hamoosabik faces it every autumn, we must remember that the lodge is to be his home during the winter, until streams are clear of ice and he can once more seek his food along the banks. He builds by choice on low ground, beside a quiet stream, because he finds there alders for building material, abundant mud for mortar, soft banks for refuge burrows, and broad levels through which to run his transportation canals. Such places are overflowed in the spring, some more, some less; and it is this varying overflow which the beaver anticipates by the height of his dwelling, as he provides against wolves or lynxes by thick walls that cannot be broken.
Near the top of the lodge is the living room, from which a tunnel leads down through lodge and bank to a store of food-wood under the ice. Since the water in this tunnel rises or falls with the level of the pond, it follows that the living room must be high enough to give assurance that the water will not enter and drown the beaver against his own roof. Once his living room is flooded, he must escape through the tunnel, find an opening in the ice of his pond, and take his chance with hungry enemies in the snow-filled woods. A beaver does that once in a lifetime, perhaps, when he builds a low lodge in a place which calls for a high one; but he will not do it a second time, or a first, if instinct can anticipate or industry prevent it.
We begin to understand now what is in the animal’s head while he speeds his work during the beautiful Indian-summer days, when a soft haze rests like a dream on the hills, and waters grow still as if to hold the reflection of tranquil skies, of russet meadows, of woods agleam with crimson and gold. He must abide here in a narrow room when all this beauty and tenderness have passed into the cold gray or gleaming white of winter; that the time is short he hears from the trumpets of wild geese wending southward over his head. Food for his growing family, a pond to store it in, a canal for transportation, a number of safety burrows,--all these must be provided not in haphazard fashion, but carefully and in order. If his food-wood be stored too early, it will hold enough sap to cause the bark to sour under water, which means calamity; or if it be gathered too late, a frost may close the canal through which it must be towed to the storehouse. Not till these preliminary works are finished does Hamoosabik rear his winter lodge, with its living room wherein his family may gather in comfort by day or sleep without fear at night, while trees crack under the intense cold, and the howl of a hungry wolf goes searching through the woods.
While beavers are building their lodge, the water in all wilderness streams is low, as a rule, for it is the end of the summer season; but before spring comes the water will be high, and much higher in some places than in others. The important matter, therefore, is to plan a house suitable for the locality in which it stands; high enough, that is, to prevent rising water from flooding the living room, but not a handbreadth higher than the place demands for security. An overhigh house is too noticeable, too glaring; and Hamoosabik is like other wood folk in that he strives to be inconspicuous. The last thing any bird or beast cares to do is to draw attention to the place where he lives; that is as true of eagle or bear as of hummingbird or chipmunk.
Weighing these matters as we stand beside a beaver lodge, our question returns in another form. It is no longer a question of foretelling winter weather, but of anticipating early-spring conditions of land and water, and it reads, By what strange instinct does the beaver build now high, now low, and always just high enough to keep his living room above the crest of the coming floods? That is the rule in beaver land, with enough exceptions in the way of drowned lodges and homeless beavers to make it an interesting rule, not a mere “dead” certainty.
The answer is, probably, that instinct has nothing to do with the matter; so we may as well put that prejudice out of our heads and open our eyes. Instincts are fairly constant, so far as we know them, while floods and lodges are endlessly variable. The height of a beaver’s lodge is largely the result of observation, I think, and of very simple observation. It is noticeable that, when lodges are built by different beaver families on the lower part of a stream, they are all comparatively high; but when they appear on the head-waters of the same stream, they are uniformly low. This because the spring rise of water at the mouth of a brook is commonly much greater than at its source.
Take your stand now at either place, and look keenly about. See those frayed alders; see that level line of gray spots where living trees have been barked by floating logs; see that other line of jetsam on the shore. Here, plain as your nose, are the high-water marks of this particular locality. Every spring these marks are renewed, and the highest is ever the most conspicuous. If you can see such signs, so also can a beaver, who has excellent eyes, and who is accustomed to use them in the darkness as well as in the light. That he does see them and is guided by them is suggested by the fact that Hamoosabik’s lodge, wherever you find it, has a dome which rises just above the high-water mark of the surrounding country. Again and again I have laid a straight stick as a level on top of a beaver house, turning it in different directions and sighting along it; and almost invariably, in one direction or another, I found my glance passing just above some striking line of barked trees or drift stuff which showed where the floods had reached their height.
A beaver does not use an artificial level, to be sure; but it is doubtless as easy for him as for anyone else to know, when he sits on a hummock, whether he is above or below the level of a plain mark confronting him. Such is the probability, since all creatures have subconscious powers of coördination. The probability increases when you observe the beaver at his building operations.
One evening, just after sundown, I had the luck to watch a family of beavers at work on their winter lodge. The place was solitary; the animals had long been undisturbed, and they were hurrying the last part of their work by day as well as by night, as they do in lonely regions. As they are very shy in the light (at night they will come within reach of your paddle, if you sit motionless in your canoe), I dared not approach near enough to follow the details of their work; but this much I saw plainly, that while four or five animals were industriously gathering material and piling it up, one large beaver sat almost constantly on top of the lodge. Occasionally he moved as if to receive a troublesome stick or place it properly; but for the most part he seemed to be doing nothing. Even when it became too dark to distinguish more than moving shadows, the silhouette of that quiet beaver stood out like a watchman against the twilight.
Simmo and Tomah both tell me that such a scene is typical of beaver families at work, and that the quiet animal I had noticed, far from doing nothing, was directing the whole job. These Indians can tell at a glance whether a dam was built by young or old beavers; and they say that, if the older members of a family are trapped or killed, the young make blundering attempt at providing winter quarters. If the family is undisturbed (a beaver family is made up, commonly, of three generations), one of the parent animals takes his place on top of any dam or lodge they are building, in order to direct the work and bring it to the right level. At the same time he acts as a watchman, his elevated position giving him advantage over the working beavers, which have the habit every few minutes of dropping whatever they may be doing and sitting up on their tails for a look all around.
It is very likely, therefore, that Hamoosabik does not follow a “blind” instinct when he can use his seeing eyes. While his lodge is rising he looks forth from the top of it, seeking familiar signs to guide him, and he keeps on looking as well as building until he knows that he is above the high-water mark of the neighborhood. And then, having reared his walls to clear the flood level, he lays the floor of his upper room and puts on the roof. If waters are normal, he will have a dry nest as long as he cares to use it; but if deep snows are followed by an unprecedented rise of water, he will probably be drowned out.
[Illustration: “_The silhouette of that quiet beaver stood out like a watchman against the evening twilight._”]
Such observation seems remarkable in a mere beast; but what shall we say of the beaver’s dam, of his transportation canal, of his channels scooped out of the bottom of a shallow pond, and of other works that deal intelligently with land or water levels? All these seem to call for eyes as well as instinct; and it is no more remarkable that a beaver should know, sitting on top of his lodge, that he is above or below a visible mark than that he should run a winding canal half a mile, as he often does, and keep the water level right at every point.
Even the simplest of the beaver’s works, his felling of trees, seems to indicate a measure of observation. When he cuts a leaning tree he always gnaws first and deepest on the leaning side, to which the tree will fall. But if the tree is straight up and down, like a clever cat’s tail, he cannot judge its inclination, and often makes a mistake, throwing the tree to the wrong side or “lodging” it against another tree, as the best woodsman may do now and then. When a beaver tackles such a doubtful tree, he gnaws evenly around the whole butt, sinking the cut deepest in the middle, shaping it like an hourglass. As he works, he often stops cutting to look aloft, raising himself with forepaws against the trunk or sitting erect at a little distance, studying the tree with unblinking eyes as if to learn for his own safety which way it intends to go. One who has ever seen an old beaver thus sitting up on his tail, apparently to get the slant of a towering poplar before he fells it, has no difficulty in accepting the notion that the same beaver will recognize high-water mark when it lies directly under his nose.
At times Hamoosabik must be sadly puzzled by his primitive observation, especially where man interferes with nature, leaving strange marks to which animals are not accustomed. Twice have I found surprising lodges built on the shore of artificial ponds, where a new high-water mark showed above the old flood level. These ponds had been made by lumbermen, who raised the water five or six feet in order to have a “head” for driving their logs. When their work ended they opened the gates of their dam and went away, leaving the pond to return to its former size. Then beavers came back to the solitude, and used the pond for a winter home. When they examined the shores before building their lodge (it is their habit to explore a place thoroughly), they must have seen the dead trees, the barked trees, the line of jetsam high and dry, all plainly indicating where the flood had been. But there was nothing to tell the beavers why the water had risen so much higher here than in other lakes, and they were evidently guided by such signs as they could understand. In each case they built their lodge not on low swampy ground, as they habitually do, but on a dry bank, and the dome of the lodge rose just above the artificial water level.
* * * * *
Another question meets you when you examine Hamoosabik’s digging operations, especially his canals, which are the most intelligent of all his works. It is noticeable that beavers cut their food-wood above their storehouse whenever that is possible, and so make use of the current in transportation; but when the selected grove of poplars stands back from the shore, then the beavers dig a canal from their pond or stream to their source of supply. And a very remarkable canal it is, with clean-cut sides, about two feet wide and a little less in depth, in which the water stands quiet, showing a perfect level.
Such a canal goes straight as a string in one place, or winds around an obstruction in another, always following the most even ground; and it ends at the beaver’s grove, or as near as he can get and bring the water with him. He is a powerful worker, handling logs of astonishing size with the help of his mate; but you will not catch him rolling or dragging a thing if he can possibly float it. Even the stones which he uses in weighting his dam are moved under water, where they are much lighter than on land.
It is commonly assumed that Hamoosabik digs a canal in order to have an easy way of transporting his wood. He certainly uses it for that purpose; but he has another end in view, I think, when he begins his digging. It should be remembered that beavers, though tireless workers, like to loaf and play as well as other wood folk. They never work for the sake of working; yet one often sees a canal that represents an enormous amount of labor, so apparently superfluous that one wonders what the animals were thinking of. It is not merely the length of such a canal which puzzles one, but the roundabout course it must follow in order to keep on level ground. It sometimes happens, when food-wood stands on a hillock within a few rods of the pond, that the beavers will run their canal four or five times that distance, avoiding the rising ground and approaching the hill from the farther side. Your first thought, when you meet such a work, is that the animals could have hauled their wood down the easy slope in half the time they spent preparing for water transportation.