Part 8

About this time it was that the young bull began to find the solitude more populous. Since the voice of the bronze bell was hushed, the wild creatures were no longer held aloof. Hitherto the red squirrels and the indifferent, arrogant porcupines were the only animals he had noticed. But now he saw an occasional slim and snaky mink at its fishing; or a red fox stealing down upon the duck asleep in the lily patch; or a weasel craftily trailing one of the brown hares which had of a sudden grown so numerous. All these strange little beasts excited his curiosity. At first he would sniff, and snort, and approach to investigate, which would lead, of course, to an immediate and discouraging disappearance. Only the fox was too haughty to disappear. He would maintain a judicious distance, but otherwise seemed to regard the inquisitive bull with utter unconcern. This unconcern, together with the musky smell of the bush-tailed red stranger, at last so aggravated the bull that he charged furiously again and again. But the fox eluded him with mocking ease, till the bull at last sulkily ignored him.

The bull's next important acquaintance was the lynx. He was lying under a scarlet maple, chewing his cud, and lazily watching a rabbit scratching its ears some dozen paces distant. Suddenly a soundless gray shadow shot from a thicket and dropped upon the rabbit. There was a squeak, a feeble scuffle; and then a big lynx, setting the claws of one paw into the prey, turned with a snarl and eyed venomously the still, dark form under the maple. This seemed like a challenge. With a mixture of curiosity and indignation, the young bull got up, grunted, pawed the earth once or twice by way of ceremony, and emerged to the encounter. But the lynx had no stomach to meet the charge of that sturdy front. He snatched up the rabbit in his jaws and bounded away into the underbrush.

A few days later, as the bull again lay under the scarlet maple and looked out contemplatively over his yellow autumn world, a large bear lumbered past, taking his own well-beaten trail to the waterside. The bull lurched to his feet, and stood on guard, for this was a formidable-looking stranger. But the bear, fed fat with autumn berries, was at peace with all the world. He gave the black bull a shrewd glance out of his little cunning eyes, and paid no further attention; and the bull, seeing no incentive to a quarrel, snorted doubtfully and lay down again. After this he saw several more bears, but, being well fed and lazy, they made no effort to molest him. Then, one unfortunate day, as he came up dripping from his favourite pool, he met one face to face.

The bear was surprised, and halted. He half-settled back upon his haunches, as if to turn aside and yield the path. Then he thought better of it and held his ground, being at the moment good-natured enough, but careful of his dignity, as a bear is apt to be. The young bull, however, was enraged at this obstinate intrusion upon his trail. He was unlucky enough to remember how often he had seen bears slink off to avoid his mother's charge. With an angry bellow, he lifted his tail, lowered his head, and launched himself upon the intruder.

The bear, poising himself upon three legs, gracefully and lightly avoided the attack, and at the same instant delivered a terrific buffet upon the young bull's neck. The blow struck low, where the muscles were corded and massive, or the neck would have been broken. As it was, the bull went staggering to his knees at one side of the trail, the blood spurting from his wounds. In that moment he realized that he was not yet a match for a full-grown bear. Smarting with pain and wrath, he rushed on up the trail, and hid himself in the old lair under the hemlock. When again, some days later, he met another bear, he made haste to yield the right of way.

In the wild, as in the world, to be once beaten is to invite the fist of fate. While the young bull's wounds were still red and raw, there came a big-antlered, high-shouldered bull-moose to the bluff overlooking the Quah-Davic. The moose was surprised at sight of the short-legged, black animal on the bluff. But it was rutting season, and his surprise soon gave way to indignation. The black bull, whose careless eyes had not yet noticed the visitor, began to bellow as was his evening wont. The moose responded with a hoarse, bleating roar, thrashed the bushes defiantly with his antlers, and shambled up to the attack. The bull, astonished and outraged, stood his ground boldly, and at the first charge got in a daunting blow between the enemy's antlers. But he was not yet strong enough or heavy enough to hold so tough an antagonist, and, after a very few minutes of fierce grunting and pushing, he was thrust clear over the bank and sent rolling down into the river. All next day he sulked, but when night came he returned to the bluff, his eyes red with rage. He found the moose before him, but not alone. A tall, dingy-coloured, antlerless cow was there, fondling her mate's neck and ears with her long, flexible muzzle. This sight gave the young bull a new and uncomprehended fury, under the impulse of which he would have attacked an elephant. But the moose, thus interrupted in his wooing, was far more dangerous than he had been the night before. Like a whirlwind of devastation he rushed to meet the intruder; and the young bull was hopelessly overmatched. Within five minutes he was gored, beaten down, pounded from the field, and driven bellowing through the bushes. For several weeks he hardly showed himself in the open meadows, but lurked all day in the thickets, nursing his wounds and his humiliation.

The next winter set in early and severe, driving the drowsy bears into their winter quarters and their long, snow-comforted sleep before they had time to get hungry and dangerous. The lynxes, no longer mystified by the voice of the bell, came prowling about the lair beneath the hemlock, but the sullen front and angry, lonely eyes of the black bull held them in awe. Not even in the worst of the cold, when they had taken to hunting together in a loosely organized pack, did they dare to trouble the bull. When spring came, it found him a big, burly three-year-old, his temper beginning to sour with an unhappiness which he did not understand; and by the time the bears came hungry from their winter sleep he was quite too formidable to be meddled with. Stung by humiliating memories, he attacked with fury every bear he saw; and they soon learned to give him a wide berth.

As the summer wore along, his loneliness grew more bitter and distracting. He would spend sometimes a full hour upon the bluff, when the yellow day was fading into dusk, bellowing his calls across the stillness, and waiting for he knew not what reply. He was now a huge and daunting figure. When, at last, came round again the full October moon, and the spirit of mating went abroad on the crisp air, he grew more restless than ever. Then, one night, on a clear white stretch of sand some distance down the shore, he saw a cow-moose standing close by the water. He was much interested, and half unconsciously began to move in her direction. When she stretched out her long, ungainly head and uttered her harsh call, he answered with a soft, caressing bellow. But at almost the same instant her call was answered by another and a very different voice; and a tall bull-moose strode out arrogantly upon the sand.

The black bull's heart swelled with wrath and longing. With a roar he charged down from the bluff; and the moose, diverted from his wooing, turned to meet the assault. But he was no match for this dreadful black bulk that descended upon him with the resistlessness of doom. He went down at the first crash, a pathetic sprawl of long limbs and long, ineffective, beautiful antlers; and barely escaping with his life, he fled away into the thickets. Then, satisfied with his victory, the black bull lifted his head and turned to the watching cow.

The cow, after the manner of her kind appreciating a conqueror, awaited somewhat doubtfully his approach. But when he was within a few feet of her, wonder and interest gave way to terror. His bulk, his blackness, his square, mighty head, his big, blazing eyes, and short, thick muzzle filled her with repulsion and amazement. His voice, too, though unmistakably caressing and persuasive, was too daunting in its strangeness. With a wild snort, she turned and fled into the woods with a speed that he could not hope to match.

After this experience the black bull's loneliness grew almost intolerable, and his temper so bad that he would go raging up and down the woods in search of bears to chase. The winter cooled him down somewhat, and in the spring his temper was not so raw. But he was now troubled with a spirit of wandering, and kept ranging the woods in every direction, only returning to the young green of the water-meadow once or twice a day.

One afternoon, however, there came a change. He was browsing irritably near the bank when he heard voices that made him look up sharply. A canoe was passing up-stream, poled by two men. It passed slowly, surging against the current. As he looked at the men, a dreadful memory stirred within him. He recalled the loud report which had driven him mad with fear on that day when the red cow disappeared. He remembered an appalling sight on the beach of that lower meadow which he had never visited since. His eyes went red. With a grunt of fury, he thundered down the bank and out knee-deep into the current.

The men in the canoe were astonished, and hastily pushed over toward the other shore. The one in the bow laid down his pole and reached back for his rifle. But the man in the stern intervened.

"What's the good o' shootin' him?" said he. "He can't git at us here, an' we ain't a-wantin' for grub. Let him be!"

"That's so!" said the other, picking up his pole again. "But ain't he handsome? An' mad, eh? How do you suppose he come here, anyways?"

"Strayed!" grunted the man in the stern, bending to his pole as the canoe met a heavier rush of the current.

As the two voyagers pursued their strenuous way up-stream, rock and eddy and "rip" consuming all their attention, the furious bull kept abreast of them along the shore, splashing in the shallows and bellowing his challenge, till at length a deep insetting of the current compelled him to mount the bank, along which he continued his vain pursuit for several miles. At last a stretch of dense swamp headed him off, and the canoe vanished from his sight.

He was now in unknown territory, miles away from his meadows. His rage against the men had all died out, but some faint stirring of inherited instincts impelled him to follow for companionship. Had they suddenly reappeared, close at hand, doubtless his rage would have burst forth anew. But when they were gone, he had to follow. A dim intuition told him that where they were going dwelt some kind of relief for his loneliness. He skirted the swamp, rejoined the river, and kept slowly on his way up-stream, pasturing as he went. He had turned his back for ever on the water-meadows and the life of which he could not be a part, and was off on the quest for that unknown which he felt to be his own.

After two days of leisurely journeying he passed through a belt of burnt lands, and had his curiosity mildly excited by a blackened chimney rising from a heap of ruins near the water. Through this burnt land he travelled swiftly; and about dawn of the fourth day of his quest he came out upon the pasture-lands skirting the rear of the settlement.

Here he found a rude but strong snake fence, at which he sniffed with wonder. Then, beyond the fence, a creature shaped something like himself, but red and white in colour, got up from among the misty hillocks and stared at him. But for the colour, he might have thought it was the little red mother who had vanished two years before. This was what he had come for. This was the object of his quest. Two or three other cows, and some young steers, presently arose and fell to feeding. He lowed to them softly through the rails, and they eyed him with amiable interest. With a burst of joy, he reared his bulk against the fence, bore it down, trotted in confidently, and took command of the little herd. There was no protesting. Cows and steers alike recognized at once the right of this dominant black stranger to rule; and soon he fell to pasturing among them quietly, his heart healed at last of its loneliness.

The two canoemen, meanwhile, on their arrival at the settlement, had told of their encounter with the wild black bull. As they described the adventure to a little circle gathered in the back room of the grocery, the old woodsman whose cabin had been burned in the great fires was one of their most interested listeners.

"I'll bet he's mine! I'll bet he's out of the little red cow I bought just afore the fire!" he exclaimed at last. And his theory, duly expounded, met with general credence.

When, therefore, a couple of mornings later, the old woodsman, on going to the pasture to fetch in his cows for the milking, found a lordly black beast in command of the herd, he understood at once. Fortunately for him, he understood so well that he took certain precautions, instead of walking straight into the middle of the pasture as usual to get the cows. With judgment born of intuitive understanding, he let down the pasture bars unnoticed, then went over near the stable door and called. At the familiar summons the cows lifted their heads, and came filing lazily toward the open bars, which lay a little to one side of the direct way to the house. But the black bull was of another mind. He saw the man; and straight his eyes saw red. He pawed the earth, roared angrily, gave one uncertain glance at the cows sauntering away from him, and then charged straight for the unknown foe. The works of man might, indeed, have some strange inherited attraction for him; but man, the individual, he hated with destructive hate.

The woodsman noticed that the bull was not heading for the bars.

"The fence'll stop him!" he said to himself, confidently.

But not so. The wild bull had no conception of the sanctity and authority of fences. The stout rails went down before him like corn-stalks. The old woodsman shook his head deprecatingly, stepped into the stable, and latched the door.

The bull, much puzzled at the unaccountable disappearance of his foe, stopped for a moment, snorting, then dashed around the barn to see if the enemy were hiding on the other side. Twice he circled it, his rage increasing instead of diminishing; and then he caught sight of the man's face eyeing him calmly through the little square stable window.

He stopped again to paw the earth, bellowing his heavy challenge; and the old woodsman wondered what to do. He wanted the splendid black bull for his little herd, but he was beginning to have serious misgivings. Moreover, he wanted to get into the house. He threw open the stable door; and as the bull dashed in he scrambled through a manger, swung himself into the loft, dropped from the hay window, and darted for the house at top speed. He had had an idea of shutting the stable door, and imprisoning his unmanageable visitor; but the bull was too quick for him. He got the heavy kitchen door slammed to just in time. Thoughtfully he rubbed his grizzled chin as he glanced out and saw the black beast raging up and down before the window.