Part 17
For several minutes I held motionless, still flat to the ground, listening to the sleepy talk, admiring the mottled-brown plumage of a breast or the bar of brilliant color drawn athwart a sooty wing. All the while my nose was trying to get in a warning word, telling me to give heed that the ducky odor which flowed in waves over the whole point was different from this strong reek, as of a disturbed nest, in the near-by grass; but my eyes were so occupied that I paid no attention to other senses. As the duck on the tussock at last settled down to sleep and I worked my toes into the earth for a noiseless push forward, there was a slight but startling motion almost at my shoulder. A neck was raised and twisted sleepily, as if to get the kink out of it; and the thrill of success ran over me as I made out another and nearer group of ducks. They were under the bank and the bending grass, where I had completely overlooked them. Every one was within reach; and every one I could see had his head drawn in or tucked away under his wing.
Slowly my left hand stole toward them, creeping forward in the deliberate fashion of a measuring-worm, first the fingers stretched, then the knuckles raised, then out with the fingers again. It would have been very easy to stroke or to catch one of the birds by a swift motion; but that was not what I wanted, and would have instantly spoiled the whole comedy. For the right effect, the hand must rest upon a duck before he was aware of it, so quietly that at first he would give his attention to the hand itself, not to the thing it came from. Then he would probably give it a questioning peck, examine it curiously, and finally grow indifferent to it, as other birds had done when I touched them from hiding. But here my head was too close to the ground, and my body too cramped for easy action. As my hand reached the edge of the bank, just over an unconscious duck, it ran into a tuft of saw-grass, which cut my fingers and rustled dangerously. To clear this obstruction I drew back slightly, lifted up a grain; and in my other ear, which was turned away, a resonant voice cried Quock! with a challenge that broke the tension like a pistol-shot.
Involuntarily I turned my head, just when I should have held most still; and so I lost my chance. There, at arm’s-length on the other side of the point, a wild-eyed duck was looking over the bank, her neck stretched like a taut string, her olive-colored bill pointing straight at me. She never said another word, and had no need to repeat her challenge. All over the point and along the shore necks were stretched up from the grass; a dozen alert forms rose like sentinels from as many tussocks, and forty pairs of keen eyes were every one searching the spot at which the old hen-duck pointed her accusation.
For a small moment that tableau lasted, without a sound, without a motion; while one was conscious only of the tense necks, the pointing bills, the gleaming little eyes, each with its diamond-point of light; and then the old duck took wing. She did not even crouch to jump, so far as I could follow her motion; she simply went into the air like a rocket, shooting aloft as if hurled from a spring. As she rose, there was an answering rush of wings, whoosh! in my very ears, a surge as of smitten water in the distance; and in the same fraction of an instant every duck to the farthest ends of the pond was up and away in a wild tumult of quacking.
Only one of these birds had seen me, and that one probably had no notion of what she had glimpsed in the grass. It was a round thing with eyes, and it moved a second time—that was enough for the old hen-duck, and the others did not stop to ask any questions.
XIV
MEMORIES
Two full years passed before I returned to my pond on a sunny September day, in my mind’s eye seeing it smile a welcome, hearing it cry, “Lo here! Lo there!” and planning, as I came down the silent trail, how I would accept all its invitations. First, the salt-lick must be spied out from a distance; and the examination would tell me whether to keep on down my own trail or, if the lick were occupied, to branch off by a certain game-path, which would lead me to the blind where I had so often watched the deer unseen. Next, I would have a restful look at a mound of moss swelling above the bog near a certain tamarack, which always showed the first blush of crimson in midsummer, and which became in autumn like a gorgeous bed of Dutch tulips, only more wondrously colored. Then I would look into the doorway under the larches, where my bear had disappeared. I always picked that out from a hundred similar doorways to watch or question it a moment, as if at any time the green curtain might open to let the bear out. For a curious thing about all woodsmen is this: if they see a buck or a bear or even a fox enter a certain place, they must forever afterward stop to have another expectant look at it.
From the bear’s doorway my thoughts turned naturally to a little bogan of my pond, which was different from all the other bogans, because once a family of minks darted out of it and came dodging along the shore in my direction. Luckily I was close to the water at that moment. While the minks were out of sight under some bushes, I swung my feet over the bank and sat down in their path to wait for them.
In advance came the mother, looking rusty in her sunburnt summer coat, and she was evidently in a great hurry about something. The little ones, trailing out behind, were hard put to it to keep up the pace. She was fairly under me before she noticed a new scent in the air, which made her halt to look about for the meaning of it. Her neck was lifted, weasel-fashion, to thrice its ordinary length; at the end of it her pointed head swung like a vane to the bank, to the pond, to the bank again; while her busy nose wiggled out its sharp questions. Probably she had no notion of man, never having met the creature; neither did she associate the motionless figure above her with life or danger. She passed directly over one of my shoes, halted with her paws raised against the other, and scampered on as if she had no use for such trifles.
Before the little ones arrived I half turned to meet them, spreading my feet so as to leave a narrow passageway between the heels; and over this, as a cover, rested my hand, making a shadowy runway such as minks like. When the kits entered it, sleek and glossy and half grown, I touched them lightly on the neck, feeling the soft brush of fur and the ripple of elastic muscles as one after another glided under my finger, with no more concern than if it had been one of the roots among which they were accustomed to creep. But when the last one came I blocked the runway by placing a hand squarely across it, stopping him short in great astonishment. He sniffed at the obstruction, and his nose was like a point of ice as it wandered over my palm. Then he tried a finger with his teeth, wriggled under it to follow his leader, and the whole family disappeared in a twisting, snakelike procession around the next bend. These were wild animals, remember; and ounce for ounce there is no more “savage” beast in the woods than Cheokhes the mink.
As with birds or beasts, so also with the trees about my pond: somehow they seemed different from all other trees, perhaps because of more intimate association; for though all the cedars or hemlocks of a forest look alike to a stranger, no sooner do you spend days alone among them than you begin to have a curious feeling of individuality, of comradeship, of understanding even, as if they were not wholly dumb or insensate. It was inevitable, therefore, as I came down the trail, recalling this or that tree under which I had often passed or rested, that certain of them stood forth in memory as having given me pleasure or greeting in the lonely woods, just as certain faces emerge from the sea of faces in a crowd or a great audience of strangers, and instantly make one feel his kinship to humanity.
Foremost among these memorable trees was a great white-pine, to me the noblest of all forest growths, which stood on a knoll to westward of my pond, on the way to camp, and which always seemed to cry hail or farewell as I came or went. It had a stem to make one wonder, almost to make one reverent. Massive, soft-colored, finely reticulated it was; wide as the span of a man’s arms, and rising near a hundred feet without knot or branch,—a glorious upspringing shaft, immensely strong, yet delicate in its poise as a lance in rest. From the top of the shaft rugged arms were stretched out above the tallest trees, and on these rested lightly as a cloud its crown of green. Like others that overtop their fellows, the old pine had paid the penalty of greatness. Whirlwinds that left lower trees untouched had stripped it of half its branches; lightning had leaped upon it from the clouds, leaving a spiral scar from crown to foot; but the wound which threatened its death was meanwhile its life, because the lumbermen, seeing the lightning’s mark, had passed on and left the pine in its solitary grandeur.
When I first saw that tree I changed the trail so as to pass beneath it; and thereafter it was like a living presence, benign and friendly, beside the way. To lay a hand on its mighty stem, as one passed eastward in the early morning, was to receive an impression of renewed power,—a power which the scornful might attribute to imagination, the chemist to electrons or radio-activity, and the simple man to his Mother Nature. At evening, as one followed the dim trail homeward in the fading light, one had only to look up for a guiding sign; and there, solemn and still against the twilight splendor, was the crown of the old pine to give direction. Its very silence at such an hour was like the Angelus ringing. To halt beneath it, as one often did unconsciously, was to feel the spell of its age, its serenity, its peace; while harmonious thoughts came or went attuned to the low melody of the winds, crooning their vesper song far up among its green leaves. And, morning or midday or evening, to look up at the pine’s lofty crown, which had tossed in the free winds that bore Pilgrim and Puritan westward with their immortal dream of freedom, was to be bound with stronger ties of loyalty to the fathers of my native state,—men of vision and imagination as well as of stern courage, who heard the pine booming out its psalm to the gale and instantly adopted it as their new symbol, stamping it on their coins or emblazoning it on their banners as an emblem of liberty. Never another symbol, whether dragon or eagle or lion, had so much majesty, or was so worthy of free men. The remembrance of it in any national crisis or call to duty sets the American heart beating to the rhythm of Whittier’s “Pine-Tree”:
Lift again the stately emblem on the Bay State’s rusted shield, Give to northern winds the Pine-Tree on our banner’s tattered field. Sons of men who sat in council with their Bibles round the board, Answering England’s royal missive with a firm “Thus saith the Lord,” Rise again for home and freedom! set the battle in array! What the fathers did of old time we their sons must do to-day.
Very different from the majestic pine was a little larch-tree, under which I often sat while watching the deer. As I came down the trail, after a year’s absence, it would seem to lift its head and step forth from all the other larches, calling out cheerily: “Welcome once more! And why so long away? See, here is your old place waiting.” And drawing aside the delicate branches, I would find the seat of dry moss and springy boughs, the back-rest, the open window with its drapery of lace,—everything just as I had left it.
Near this sociable young larch stood its dead ancestor, grim and silent, which the moths had killed; and this, too, seemed different from all other trees living or dead. On sunny days it threw a straight shaft of shadow over my blind; and the shadow moved along the ground from west to east, telling the creeping hours like a sun-dial. At the tip of the lofty stub a short branch thrust itself out at a right angle, and this served as the finger of my strange timepiece. When it rested on a bed of brimming pitcher-plants it pointed to the lunch in my pocket; when it touched the root of a water-maple it spoke of the home trail; and between, at irregular intervals, were a nanny-bush, a tuft of wild cotton and a shy orchid to mark the less important hours. Once, when I glanced at the slow-moving shadow, it was topped by a striking symbolic figure, and looking up quickly I found an eagle perched on the outstretched finger of my dial. After that the old tamarack had a new dignity in my eyes; it stood on an eagle’s line of flight, one of his regular ways in crossing from mountain to lake, and from it the kingly-looking bird was wont to survey this part of his silent domain, the sun gleaming on his snow-white crest.
A stone’s-throw behind my larch blind was a portly young fir, which I could never pass without a smile as it nodded to remind me that it was not like other firs. Thousands of these trees, crowding the northern forest, seem to be all grown on the same model, like peas in a pod; but this one had a character and a history to set it forever apart from its kind. And this is the tale which always passed silently between us when we met:
One day, as I watched some deer at the salt-lick, they suddenly became uneasy, looking and harking about as if for danger, and then vanished down the several game-trails. Not till they were gone did I notice that the air was ominously still, or understand the cause of the alarm: a tempest was coming, and the sensitive animals were away to cover before my dull senses had picked up the first warning sign. Soon the landscape darkened; the face of my pond became as I had never seen it before; thunder growled in the distance; coppery clouds with light flaming through them came rolling over the tree-tops; and all nature said, as plainly as a fire-bell, “Get to cover, and quickly!”
As I went back into the woods, seeking shelter, a few big drops hit the leaves like flails; then came a pause, still as death, and then the deluge. Ahead in the gloom I spied a young fir (never pick a tall tree, or a solitary tree, in a tempest of lightning) which thrust out a mass of feathery branches from a thicket of its fellows. “This for mine,” I said as I dived under it, accompanied by a blinding flare of light and an ear-splitting crack—and almost ran against the heels of a buck that jumped out on the other side. By an odd chance, one in ten thousand, he had picked the same fir for shelter, and was no doubt thinking he had picked well when I came blundering in with the thunderbolt and drove him out into the downpour. “Hold on, old sport! Come back; it’s your tree,” I called after him, feeling as if I had stolen a child’s umbrella; but he paid no attention.
Thinking he would not go far, and knowing he could hear or smell nothing in that rush of rain and crashing of thunder, I crept slowly after him. There he was, hunched up in the lee of a big hemlock, ears drooping, legs streaming, and little spurts of mist popping up from his pelted hide. Though woebegone enough, he had not forgotten caution; oh no! trust an old buck for that in any weather. His tail was to the tree, his head turned warily to the trail over which he had come. And there I left him, wishing as I turned back that he would let me stand under his hemlock, or else come and share my fir, just for a little company.
Near the lower end of my pond was still another tree which I must revisit; yes, surely, not only for its happy memories, but also in anticipation of some merry surprise, of which it seemed to have endless store. It stood on a bank overlooking a sunny dell in the woods, a wonderfully pleasant place where no wind entered, where the air was always fragrant, and a runlet of cool water sang a little tune to itself all day long. Its gnarled trunk was scarcely more than a shell, which boomed like a drum when a woodpecker sounded it; and above were hollow limbs with knot-hole entrances, offering hospitality to any wild creature in search of a weather-proof den or nesting-place.
The first time I passed this old tree a family of red squirrels were laying claim to it in a tiff with some larger beast or bird, which slipped away as I approached. The next time I saw it, a year later, it was silent and apparently deserted; but as I rose from drinking at the runlet the head of a little gray owl appeared at a knot-hole. For full ten minutes he remained there motionless, without word or sign or even a blink to say that he was watching me, though it was undoubtedly some noise or stir of mine which brought him up to his window.
After that I fell in the way of turning aside to loaf awhile under the inn-tree; and rarely could one loaf there very long without overhearing something not intended for a stranger’s ear, some low dialogue or hammering signal or petulant whining or cautious scratching, to remind one of the running comedy of the woods. It was evidently an exchange, a crossroad or meeting-place for the wood folk, calling in every passer-by as a certain store or corner of a sleepy town invites all idlers, boys and stray dogs, while other stores or corners are empty, save for women folk, and quite respectable.
Once in the late morning, as I sat with an ear to the resonant shell, listening to the talk of unseen creatures which I fancied were young ’coons, a big log-cock flashed into the old tree, drew himself up on a stub over my head, and seemed to cock his ear at the voices to which I had been listening.
Now the log-cock is naturally a wary bird, shy and difficult of approach; but this gorgeous fellow with the scarlet crest became almost sociable in his curiosity, perhaps because the place was so quiet, so friendly, with no motion or hint of danger to disturb its tranquillity. He saw me at once, as the change in his bright eye plainly said; but, deceived by my stillness or the sober coloring of my clothes, he set me down as a tree-fungus or mushroom that had grown since his last visit, and looked about for something more interesting. When I called his attention by a curt nod, telling him that this was no dull mushroom, he came down at once to light against the side of the tree, where he examined my head minutely. Learning nothing from my wink, he went around the tree in a series of side-jumps to have a look from the other side; then he hopped up and down, this side or that, all the while uttering a low surprised chatter. Even when I began to flip bits of wood at him (for he soon grew impatient, and interrupted the ’coon talk by an unseemly rapping), instead of rushing off in alarm, he twice followed a missile that rattled near him, as if to demand, “Well, what in the world sent you flying?” Presently he sent forth a call, not the loud, high, prolonged note which you hear from him at a distance, but a soft, wheedling ah-koo! ah-koo! only twice repeated. When his call was answered in a different strain, a questioning strain it seemed to me, he darted away and returned within the minute accompanied by another log-cock.
But enough of such pictures! They flash joyously upon the mental vision whenever one recalls a cherished spot in the woods, but fade quickly if one attempts to hold or describe them, saying as they vanish that the lure of solitary lakes, the companionship of trees, the fascination of wild creatures that hide and look forth with roundly curious eyes at a stranger’s approach,—these are matters that can never be set down in words: the best always escapes in the telling. I meant only to say (when my pine lifted its crown in the light of an evening sky, and then the mink family came dodging along the shore of memory, and the buck and the log-cock interrupted to urge me be sure and tell the happiest part of the story before I made an end) that many pleasant memories greeted me as I came down the silent trail after a long absence. In the distance sounded a lusty quacking; my imagination painted the mallards at the end of the alder run, with sunshiny water and crimson bog and misty-green larches around them, as a frame for the picture; and then the whole beautiful anticipation came tumbling in ruin about my ears.
Before I reached my pond, before I saw the welcoming gleam of it even, I was at every step going over my shoetops in water, where formerly I had always found dry footing. Something disastrous had happened in my absence; the whole bog was overflowed; around it was no mist of delicate foliage but only skeleton trees, stark and pitiful. In my heart I was berating the lumbermen, whose ugly works are the ruination of every place they visit, when at last I waded to an opening that gave outlook on my pond; and the first thing I noticed, as my eyes swept the familiar scene, was a beaver-house cocked up on the shore, like a warning sign of new ownership.