Part 9

When the young birds came, the most interesting bit of Koskomenos' life was manifest. One morning as I sat watching, hidden away in the bushes, the mother kingfisher put her head out of her hole and looked about very anxiously. A big water-snake lay stretched along a stranded log on the shore. She pounced upon him instantly and drove him out of sight. Just above, at the foot of the trout pool, a brood of sheldrake were croaking and splashing about in the shallows. They were harmless, yet the kingfisher rushed upon them, clattering and scolding like a fishwife, and harried them all away into a quiet bogan.

On the way back she passed over a frog, a big, sober, sleepy fellow, waiting on a lily-pad for his sun-bath. Chigwooltz might catch young trout, and even little birds as they came to drink, but he would surely never molest a brood of kingfishers; yet the mother, like an irate housekeeper flourishing her broom at every corner of an unswept room, sounded her rattle loudly and dropped on the sleepy frog's head, sending him sputtering and scrambling away into the mud, as if Hawahak the hawk were after him. Then with another look all round to see that the stream was clear, and with a warning rattle to any Wood Folk that she might have overlooked, she darted into her nest, wiggling her tail like a satisfied duck as she disappeared.

After a moment a wild-eyed young kingfisher put his head out of the hole for his first look at the big world. A push from behind cut short his contemplation, and without any fuss whatever he sailed down to a dead branch on the other side of the stream. Another and another followed in the same way, as if each one had been told just what to do and where to go, till the whole family were sitting a-row, with the rippling stream below them and the deep blue heavens and the rustling world of woods above.

That was their first lesson, and their reward was near. The male bird had been fishing since daylight; now he began to bring minnows from an eddy where he had stored them, and to feed the hungry family and assure them, in his own way, that this big world, so different from the hole in the bank, was a good place to live in, and furnished no end of good things to eat.

The next lesson was more interesting, the lesson of catching fish. The school was a quiet, shallow pool with a muddy bottom against which the fish showed clearly, and with a convenient stub leaning over it from which to swoop. The old birds had caught a score of minnows, killed them, and dropped them here and there under the stub. Then they brought the young birds, showed them their game, and told them by repeated examples to dive and get it. The little fellows were hungry and took to the sport keenly; but one was timid, and only after the mother had twice dived and brought up a fish--which she showed to the timid one and then dropped back in a most tantalizing way--did he muster up resolution to take the plunge.

A few mornings later, as I prowled along the shore, I came upon a little pool quite shut off from the main stream, in which a dozen or more frightened minnows were darting about, as if in strange quarters. As I stood watching them and wondering how they got over the dry bar that separated the pool from the river, a kingfisher came sweeping up-stream with a fish in his bill. Seeing me, he whirled silently and disappeared round the point below.

The thought of the curious little wild kindergarten occurred to me suddenly as I turned to the minnows again, and I waded across the river and hid in the bushes. After an hour's wait Koskomenos came stealing back, looked carefully over the pool and the river, and swept down-stream with a rattling call. Presently he came back again with his mate and the whole family; and the little ones, after seeing their parents swoop, and tasting the fish they caught, began to swoop for themselves.

The first plunges were usually in vain, and when a minnow was caught it was undoubtedly one of the wounded fish that Koskomenos had placed there in the lively swarm to encourage his little ones. After a try or two, however, they seemed to get the knack of the thing and would drop like a plummet, bill first, or shoot down on a sharp incline and hit their fish squarely as it darted away into deeper water. The river was wild and difficult, suitable only for expert fishermen. The quietest pools had no fish, and where minnows were found the water or the banks were against the little kingfishers, who had not yet learned to hover and take their fish from the wing. So Koskomenos had found a suitable pool and stocked it himself to make his task of teaching more easy for his mate and more profitable for his little ones. The most interesting point in his method was that, in this case, he had brought the minnows alive to his kindergarten, instead of killing or wounding them, as in the first lesson. He knew that the fish could not get out of the pool, and that his little ones could take their own time in catching them.

When I saw the family again, weeks afterwards, their lessons were well learned; they needed no wounded or captive fish to satisfy their hunger. They were full of the joy of living, and showed me, one day, a curious game,--the only play that I have ever seen among the kingfishers.

There were three of them, when I first found them, perched on projecting stubs over the dancing riffles, which swarmed with chub and "minnies" and samlets and lively young red-fins. Suddenly, as if at the command go! they all dropped, bill first, into the river. In a moment they were out again and rushed back to their respective stubs, where they threw their heads back and wriggled their minnows down their throats with a haste to choke them all. That done, they began to dance about on their stubs, clattering and chuckling immoderately.

It was all blind to me at first, till the game was repeated two or three times, always starting at the same instant with a plunge into the riffles and a rush back to goal. Then their object was as clear as the stream below them. With plenty to eat and never a worry in the world, they were playing a game to see which could first get back to his perch and swallow his fish. Sometimes one or two of them failed to get a fish and glided back dejectedly; sometimes all three were so close together that it took a deal of jabber to straighten the matter out; and they always ended in the same way, by beginning all over again.

Koskomenos is a solitary fellow, with few pleasures, and fewer companions to share them with him. This is undoubtedly the result of his peculiar fishing regulations, which give to each kingfisher a certain piece of lake or stream for his own. Only the young of the same family go fishing together; and so I have no doubt that these were the same birds whose early training I had watched, and who were now enjoying themselves in their own way, as all the other Wood Folk do, in the fat, careless, happy autumn days.

PEKOMPF'S CUNNING

Pekompf the wildcat is one of the savage beasts that have not yet vanished from the haunts of men. Sometimes, as you clamber up the wooded hillside above the farm, you will come suddenly upon a fierce-looking, catlike creature stretched out on a rock sunning himself. At sight of you he leaps up with a snarl, and you have a swift instant in which to take his measure. He is twice as big as a house-cat, with round head and big expressionless eyes that glare straight into yours with a hard, greenish glitter. His reddish-brown sides are spotted here and there, and the white fur of his belly is blotched with black--the better to hide himself amid the lights and shadows. A cat, sure enough, but unlike anything of the kind you have ever seen before.

As you look and wonder there is a faint sound that you will do well to heed. The muscles of his long thick legs are working nervously, and under the motion is a warning purr, not the soft rumble in a contented tabby's throat, but the cut and rip of ugly big claws as they are unsheathed viciously upon the dry leaves. His stub tail is twitching--you had not noticed it before, but now it whips back and forth angrily, as if to call attention to the fact that Nature had not altogether forgotten that end of Pekompf. Whip, whip,--it is a tail--k'yaaaah! And you jump as the fierce creature screeches in your face.

If it is your first wildcat, you will hardly know what to do,--to stand perfectly quiet is always best, unless you have a stick or gun in your hand,--and if you have met Pekompf many times before, you are quite as uncertain what he will do this time. Most wild creatures, however fierce, prefer to mind their own business and will respect the same sentiment in you. But when you stumble upon a wildcat you are never sure of his next move. That is because he is a slinking, treacherous creature, like all cats, and never quite knows how best to meet you. He suspects you unreasonably because he knows you suspect him with reason. Generally he slinks away, or leaps suddenly for cover, according to the method of your approach. But though smaller he is naturally more savage than either the Canada lynx or the panther, and sometimes he crouches and snarls in your face, or even jumps for your chest at the first movement.

Once, to my knowledge, he fell like a fury upon the shoulders of a man who was hurrying homeward through the twilight, and who happened to stop unawares under the tree where Pekompf was watching the runways. The man had no idea that a wildcat was near, and he probably never would have known had he gone steadily on his way. As he told me afterwards, he felt a sudden alarm and stopped to listen. The moment he did so the savage creature above him thought himself discovered, and leaped to carry the war into Africa. There was a pounce, a screech, a ripping of cloth, a wild yell for help; then the answering shout and rush of two woodsmen with their axes. And that night Pekompf's skin was nailed to the barn-door to dry in the sun before being tanned and made up into a muff for the woodsman's little girl to warm her fingers withal in the bitter winter weather.

Where civilization has driven most of his fellows away, Pekompf is a shy, silent creature; but where the farms are scattered and the hillsides wild and wooded, he is bolder and more noisy than in the unpeopled wilderness. From the door of the charcoal-burner's hut in the Connecticut hills you may still hear him screeching and fighting with his fellows as the twilight falls, and the yowling uproar causes a colder chill in your back than anything you will ever hear in the wilderness. As you follow the trout stream, from which the charcoal man daily fills his kettle, you may find Pekompf stretched on a fallen log under the alders, glaring intently into the trout pool, waiting, waiting--for what?

It will take many seasons of watching to answer this natural question, which every one who is a follower of the wild things has asked himself a score of times. All the cats have but one form of patience, the patience of quiet waiting. Except when hunger-driven, their way of hunting is to watch beside the game paths or crouch upon a big limb above the place where their game comes down to drink. Sometimes they vary their programme by prowling blindly through the woods, singly or in pairs, trusting to luck to blunder upon their game; for they are wretched hunters. They rarely follow a trail, not simply because their noses are not keen--for in the snow, with a trail as plain as a deer path, they break away from it with reckless impatience, only to scare the game into a headlong dash for safety. Then they will crouch under a dwarf spruce and stare at the trail with round unblinking eyes, waiting for the frightened creatures to come back, or for other creatures to come by in the same footprints. Even in teaching her young a mother wildcat is full of snarling whims and tempers; but now let a turkey gobble far away in the woods, let Musquash dive into his den where she can see it, let but a woodmouse whisk out of sight into his hidden doorway,--and instantly patience returns to Pekompf. All the snarling ill-temper vanishes. She crouches and waits, and forgets all else. She may have just fed full on what she likes best, and so have no desire for food and no expectation of catching more; but she must still watch, as if to reassure herself that her eyes are not deceived and that Tookhees is really there under the mossy stone where she saw the scurry of his little legs and heard his frightened squeak as he disappeared.

But why should a cat watch at a trout pool, out of which nothing ever comes to reward his patience? That was a puzzling question for many years. I had seen Pekompf many times stretched on a log, or lying close to a great rock over the water, so intent on his watching that he heard not my cautious approach. Twice from my canoe I had seen Upweekis the lynx on the shore of a wilderness lake, crouched among the weather-worn roots of a stranded pine, his great paws almost touching the water, his eyes fixed with unblinking stare on the deep pool below. And once, when trout fishing on a wild river just opposite a great jam of logs and driftwood, I had stopped casting suddenly with an uncanny feeling of being watched by unseen eyes at my solitary sport.

It is always well to heed such a warning in the woods. I looked up and down quickly; but the river held no life above its hurrying flood. I searched the banks carefully and peered suspiciously into the woods behind me; but save for the dodging of a winter wren, who seems always to be looking for something that he has lost and that he does not want you to know about, the shores were wild and still as if just created. I whipped out my flies again. What was that, just beyond the little wavelet where my Silver Doctor had fallen? Something moved, curled, flipped and twisted nervously. It was a tail, the tip end that cannot be quiet. And there--an irrepressible chill trickled over me as I made out the outlines of a great gray beast stretched on a fallen log, and caught the gleam of his wild eyes fixed steadily upon me. Even as I saw the thing it vanished like a shadow of the woods. But what was the panther watching there before he watched me?

The answer came unexpectedly. It was in the Pemigewasset valley in midsummer. At daybreak I had come softly down the wood road to the trout pool and stopped to watch a mink dodging in and out along the shore. When he passed out of sight under some logs I waited quietly for other Wood Folk to show themselves. A slight movement on the end of a log--and there was Pekompf, so still that the eye could hardly find him, stretching a paw down cautiously and flipping it back with a peculiar inward sweep. Again he did it, and I saw the long curved claws, keen as fish-hooks, stretched wide out of their sheaths. He was fishing, spearing his prey with the patience of an Indian; and even as I made the discovery there was a flash of silver following the quick jerk of his paw, and Pekompf leaped to the shore and crouched over the fish that he had thrown out of the water.

So Pekompf watches the pools as he watches a squirrel's hole because he has seen game there and because he likes fish above everything else that the woods can furnish. But how often must he watch the big trout before he catches one? Sometimes, in the late twilight, the largest fish will move out of the pools and nose along the shore for food, their back fins showing out of the shallow water as they glide along. It may be that Pekompf sometimes catches them at this time, and so when he sees the gleam of a fish in the depths he crouches where he is for a while, following the irresistible impulse of all cats at the sight of game. Herein they differ from all other savage beasts, which, when not hungry, pay no attention whatever to smaller animals.

It may be, also, that Pekompf's cunning is deeper than this. Old Noel, a Micmac hunter, tells me that both wildcat and lynx, whose cunning is generally the cunning of stupidity, have discovered a remarkable way of catching fish. They will lie with their heads close to the water, their paws curved for a quick grab, their eyes half shut to deceive the fish, and their whiskers just touching and playing with the surface. Their general color blends with that of their surroundings and hides them perfectly. The trout, noticing the slight crinkling of the water where the long whiskers touch it, but not separating the crouching animal from the log or rock on which he rests, rise to the surface, as is their wont when feeding, and are snapped out by a lightning sweep of the paws.

Whether this be so or not I am not sure. The raccoon undoubtedly catches crabs and little fish in this way; and I have sometimes surprised cats--both wildcats and Canada lynxes, as well as domestic tabbies--with their heads down close to the water, so still that they seemed part of the log or rock on which they crouched. Once I tried for five minutes to make a guide see a big lynx that was lying on a root in plain sight within thirty yards of our canoe, while the guide assured me in a whisper that he could see perfectly and that it was only a stump. Then, hearing us, the lynx rose, stared, and leaped for the brush.

Such hiding would easily deceive even a trout, for I have often taken my position at the edge of a jam and after lying perfectly still for ten minutes have seen the wary fish rise from under the logs to investigate a straw or twig that I held in my fingers and with which I touched the water here and there, like an insect at play.

So Old Noel is probably right when he says that Pekompf fishes with his whiskers, for the habits of both fish and cats seem to carry out his observations.

But deeper than his cunning is Pekompf's inborn suspicion and his insane fury at being opposed or cornered. The trappers catch him, as they catch his big cousin the lucivee, by setting a snare in the rabbit paths that he nightly follows. Opposite the noose and attached to the other end of the cord is a pole, which jumps after the cat as he starts forward with the loop about his neck. Were it a fox, now, he would back away out of the snare, or lie still and cut the cord with his teeth and so escape. But, like all cats when trapped, Pekompf flies into a blind fury. He screeches at the unoffending stick, claws it, battles with it, and literally chokes himself in his rage. Or, if he be an old cat and his cunning a bit deeper, he will go off cautiously and climb the biggest tree he can find, with the uncomfortable thing that he is tied to dangling and clattering behind him. When near the top he will leave the stick hanging on one side of a limb while he cunningly climbs down the other, thinking thus to fool his dumb enemy and leave him behind. One of two things always happens. Either the stick catches in the crotch and Pekompf hangs himself on his own gibbet, or else it comes over with a sudden jerk and falls to the ground, pulling Pekompf with it and generally killing him in the fall.