Part 16

LXXIII.--"The Demon Rabbit"

I am almost convinced that there is, or was, a demon rabbit in this neighbourhood. You all know the stories that come from far countries about ghostly tigers and phantom lions that seem to bear charmed lives, and to be invulnerable to the bullets of the most skilled marksman. According to the talented liars who tell the stories they are the actual bodies of dead and gone lions and tigers that "revisit the glimpses of the moon" to torment hunters. The rabbit I have been having experiences with seems to be of this kind. He appears in the open with insulting indifference, and so far we have no evidence that he has been seriously injured by our attempts to get him. But before proceeding with my story perhaps I had better say a few words to put myself on the right side of the law. I have a hazy recollection that the game laws protect rabbits, but I make my appeal to an older code which asserts that "self-protection is the first law of Nature." I do not mean this in the sense in which it was used by the sheep thief, who, when caught red-handed, protested indignantly, "I'll kill every doggoned sheep that tries to bite me." I am not afraid that the rabbits will bite me, but, besides the young orchard, between two and three thousand seedling forest trees have been planted in the wood-lot and I do not want to have them all girdled. Game laws or no game laws, we have been obliged to begin a war of extermination against the rabbits on the place. Perhaps that is why we are being tormented by this unshootable rabbit.

* * * * *

For some weeks past a particularly large rabbit has been reported almost every day as crossing the road into the hedge and heading towards the orchard. At different times when I was driving to the post-office he squatted by the fence and stared at me. He seemed so tame that I thought we would have no trouble with him until the boys had missed him a few times. Then I took the rifle and went after him myself. Of course I do not claim to be an unerring marksman, but still my record for picking off such small game as English sparrows is fairly good and in trying for rabbits during the fall I did not make many misses and I never had such a chance as I have had at the demon. The first morning I went after him I spied him sitting up on his hind legs at the corner of a stack. It was as pretty a shot as a pot hunter could ask for, and as we were treating rabbits as vermin rather than as game, I felt no scruples about the lack of sportsmanship in shooting at him when standing still. As a matter of fact I am not sure but it is entirely sportsmanlike to shoot at a standing rabbit with the rifle. I never managed to stop but one with a bullet when it was on the run and the attempts I have made since have convinced me that that shot was an accident. Anyway, Mr. Rabbit was sitting up offering a provokingly good target when I drew a bead on him and fired. Zip! He whirled and disappeared around the stack in two jumps. As I approached the place where he had been standing I saw something floating in the air and grabbed it. It proved to be a bunch of rabbit fur and on the ground where he had been there was a lot more. Next day I found him squatted beside the trunk of an apple tree, took deliberate aim and fired. Just one jump and a little white tail flirted saucily under a rail fence and disappeared. On the ground where he had been standing I found enough rabbit fur to stuff a pin-cushion, evidently I had made another of those near-hits. Next day we were driving past the place where I had shot at him and one of the boys was carrying the rifle. Suddenly, I spied Mr. Rabbit among some tall grass under the roadside fence. Grabbing the gun I took careful aim and fired once more. He seemed to be badly frightened, but that was all, and this time there was enough fur where he had been sitting to stuff two pin-cushions. I couldn't have been more than a rod from him this time and it hardly seems possible that if he were a normal rabbit that I shouldn't have hit him fair and square. However, he hasn't been seen since and it is just possible that he decided that things were getting a little too hot for him. If he appears again I think I shall have to try him with a silver bullet for that is said to be the only thing that will kill a demon of this kind. But perhaps, instead of using the silver to shoot with I should offer a quarter to a boy who is a better shot than I am to get him for me. Anyway, I have no need to fear the game wardens about this rabbit for I did no more to him than the Western desperado did to the Tenderfoot. I just shot him through the thin places around the edges. And yet--and yet--it is just possible that it was not my bullets that knocked out the fur after all. This may be the season of the year when rabbits are changing their hair and he might have been merely attending to his toilet when I disturbed him by shooting at him. But demon or no demon, we must get him before he gets the little trees.

LXXIV.--The Fate of "The Demon Rabbit"

The demon rabbit is no more, and the manner of his passing is as mysterious as anything else in his enchanted life. As nearly I can determine he died of heart disease or from rupturing an artery through sudden fright. This is how it happened. A couple of days after my last futile shot at him I was driving to the village. After turning out of the lane I came to the spot haunted by the rabbit, and there he was "as big as life and twice as natural." He was sitting under a branch that had been blown from an apple tree about a rod from the road. The three younger children were with me, and as soon as they saw him they began to yell, but he never wiggled an ear. Pulling up the horse I looked at him carefully, and seeing that he showed no signs of moving I yelled at the top of my voice for a boy to come with the rifle. Still the rabbit did not stir. I had to yell four or five times before the boy heard me, and though I made a noise that roused the echoes over half the township the rabbit sat where he was. It took the boy fully five minutes to come with the rifle, and in the meantime the children and I were all talking at once while the demon sat and listened. Only when the boy was within a few rods of the buggy did he show any signs of nervousness. He slapped his hind feet on the snow a couple of times and I thought he was going to run, but he quieted down again. Then I drove on, for the horse is inclined to be gun-shy, and the boy dropped on one knee in the most approved Theodore Roosevelt fashion and took aim. When he fired the rabbit gave a jump that sent the snow flying and loped away across the orchard. The boy complained bitterly because I had not held the horse and allowed him to take a rest on the hind wheel of the buggy, and, while I watched the rabbit disappearing, I made a few restrained remarks appropriate to the occasion. But just as he was passing out of sight he suddenly jumped into the air, fell to the ground, kicked wildly and then lay still. I sent the boy running to where he was, and he picked up Mr. Rabbit stone dead. Then we proceeded to examine him. The first thing we noticed was a round bullet hole through his right ear that was partly healed. Across his back there was a furrow through his fur, and a long scab where a bullet had raked him. Under his chin there was a similar furrow and scab. Beyond a doubt he was the rabbit from which I had been knocking the fur. But what mystified us completely was the fact that we could not find a mark to show where the last bullet had hit him. Not a sign of blood or a wound could we find. After I got back from the village I held a post mortem on that rabbit, and though he was full of blood, having bled internally, the closest examination could not discover a trace of a wound. He must have ruptured a blood-vessel in his wild jumping. In no other way can I account for his sudden taking off. Of course the boy was anxious to prove that he had hit the rabbit, but he was unable to find a bullet mark any more than I was. And now there is something else to prove that he was not an ordinary rabbit. When I passed his haunts yesterday I saw two more rabbits. Isn't that the popular belief about evil things? If you kill one two more will come to take his place. Now I am going after the two new rabbits to see if four will come to take their place. I tried the rifle on some English sparrows at the granary and find that my shooting eye is just as good as ever. Surely if I can hit such little targets as sparrows I should not miss rabbits if they are of mortal breed. Altogether it is a great mystery, and, in a more superstitious age, the incident would have given rise to a myth, but in this sceptical age I suppose most people will explain the matter by insinuating that we are a family of poor shots. Yet the boy and I can both pick off sparrows just as easy as easy.

LXXV.--My Friends, the Trees

Near the house there is a sturdy oak tree that I always think of as one of the oldest of my friends. I grew up with it. Of course, that is not exactly true, for I stopped growing many years ago while it kept on growing, and it may keep on growing for centuries to come. But when I was a growing boy it was just the right kind of a tree for me to chum with. It was not too big to climb, and yet it was big enough to take me on its back and carry me into all the dreamlands of childhood. Among its whispering branches I found lands as wonderful as Jack climbed to on his beanstalk. And it had a stout right arm that was strong enough to hold up a swing on which I swung and dreamed for more hours than the teachers of to-day would consider right. When it whispered to me I whispered to it, and told it more secrets than I have ever told any one in the world. It became a part of my life, and no matter how far I wandered in later years my thoughts would always return to the tree in times of sickness and trouble. I always felt that I would be well and happy again if I could only get back to the tree and throw myself at full length on the grass that it shaded and listen to its never-ending gossip with the breezes that are forever visiting it. At last I came back from the outer world and made my home beside the tree. During my absence it had pushed up higher and had spread its branches wider, but it was still the same companionable tree. The grass still made a carpet over its roots, inviting me to sprawl at full length and renew our voiceless communion. While I was away I may have learned some things, but the tree had been in harmony with the universe from the moment it began to emerge from the acorn, and knew all that I so sorely needed to learn.

* * * * *

Although the oak is my particular friend among the trees on the farm, there are others with which I can claim at least an acquaintanceship. There is a maple at the edge of the wood-lot that always makes me feel uncomfortable, because I have a feeling that it has a joke on me. It stands on what would be called rising ground--which means an elevation that does not deserve to be called a hill--and while lying on the grass in its shade I can see over several farms to the south and east. It used to be a favourite of my boyhood, and once I composed a poem while lying in its shade. If you bear in mind the fact that I was seventeen years of age at the time you will understand why the tree has a joke on me. Here is the only stanza I can remember of the little poem I composed to express the "unmannerly sadness" of youth.

It long has been my cherished hope Upon my dying day To lie down on some sunny slope And dream my life away.

At that age I could not have cherished the hope so very long, and the old tree must have chuckled to its last twig at my absurdity. Anyway, I never see the tree without recalling that wretched stanza, and I immediately hurry away to some other part of the woods.

* * * * *

But there is one tree on the place with which I can never establish a feeling of intimacy. It is the one remaining specimen of the original forest--a giant maple over three feet in diameter, whose spreading top rises far above the other trees in the wood-lot. Even though it stands beside the public road, it seems to retain some touch of the shyness of the wilderness, and does not invite the fellowship of man. Its first branches are so high in the air that it has never been profaned by the most venturesome climbers, and its great roots start out from the trunk in a way that seems to thrust back all attempts at familiarity. The second growth maples by which it is surrounded appear to be domesticated by comparison with this wildling, and when they are tapped at sugar-making time they yield sap as lavishly as a dairy cow gives milk. But the giant gives grudgingly, as if it resented the wound it had received. Its companionship seems to be with the wildest winds and storms, that alone have the power to rouse its huge branches to motion.

* * * * *

I sometimes wonder that I should be fond of trees, for when I was a boy trees were regarded almost as enemies. The land had to be cleared of them before crops could be sown, and they multiplied the labour of the pioneers. I learned to swing an axe by cutting down saplings, and ran "amuck" among them just as my elders did among the larger trees. In those far days trees were things to be destroyed, and no one thought of sparing them. But when I came back to the farm and found that the noble forest had dwindled to a small wood-lot that had no young trees in it--because the cattle had nibbled down all seedlings for many years--I was seized by a rage for planting. Finding that the government was willing to supply seedlings to any one who would plant them out, I immediately began the work of reforestation and planted thousands so that when the present trees mature and are cut out there will be others to take their place. These little trees are now thriving lustily, but they seem to regard me with an air of aloofness, and I feel when among them as if they were looking at me furtively and trying to decide whether I am to be trusted. Perhaps there is still a tradition in the wood-lot of the havoc I wrought in my youth with just such tender saplings as these.

* * * * *

Yesterday while I was sitting at some distance from the home oak, admiring the curved spread of its branches, a bare-foot boy came out of the house. Without seeing me he walked straight to the tree and then looked up at its inviting branches. After a while he got a piece of a rail and placed it against the trunk. Then with clutching fingers and spreading toes he worked his way up to the lowest branch. Through the higher branches he clambered as if going up a ladder, and finally when he found one to his liking he bestrode it, with his back to the trunk, and looked away to the south. For a long time, with childish gravity, he gave himself up to the "long, long thoughts" of a boy. At last his eyes began to rove around and presently they rested on me, where I was watching him. He laughed in a shame-faced way as if he had been surprised in doing something that he would have kept secret, but I laughed back joyously and we understood. I am glad that there is another of my name who will love the old oak and the other trees and to whom they will perhaps give their friendship even more fully than they have given it to me.

+------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note:-- | | | | Punctuation errors have been corrected. | | | | The following suspected printer's errors have been addressed. | | | | Page 37. arived changed to arrived. | | (my neighbour had arrived) | | | | Page 108. combling changed to combing. | | (combing a particularly snarly head) | | | | Page 121. sucking changed to suckling. | | (suckling pig stage) | | | | Page 286. reforestration changed to reforestation. | | (the work of reforestation) | | | +------------------------------------------------------------------+