Part 11

I pulled the two quills with sharp jerks out of my hand, pushed all the others through my coat sleeve, and turned to Unk Wunk again, sucking my wounded hand, which pained me intensely. "All your own fault," I kept telling myself, to keep from whacking him across the nose, his one vulnerable point, with my stick.

Unk Wunk, on his part, seemed to have forgotten the incident. He unrolled himself slowly and loafed along the foot of the ridge, his quills spreading and rustling as he went, as if there were not such a thing as an enemy or an inquisitive man in all the woods.

He had an idea in his head by this time and was looking for something. As I followed close behind him, he would raise himself against a small tree, survey it solemnly for a moment or two, and go on unsatisfied. A breeze had come down from the mountain and was swaying all the tree-tops above him. He would look up steadily at the tossing branches, and then hurry on to survey the next little tree he met, with paws raised against the trunk and dull eyes following the motion overhead.

At last he found what he wanted,--two tall saplings growing close together and rubbing each other as the wind swayed them. He climbed one of these clumsily, higher and higher, till the slender top bent with his weight towards the other. Then he reached out to grasp the second top with his fore paws, hooked his hind claws firmly into the first, and lay there binding the tree-tops together, while the wind rose and began to rock him in his strange cradle.

Wider and wilder he swung, now stretched out thin, like a rubber string, his quills lying hard and flat against his sides as the tree-tops separated in the wind; now jammed up against himself as they came together again, pressing him into a flat ring with spines sticking straight out, like a chestnut bur that has been stepped upon. And there he swayed for a full hour, till it grew too dark to see him, stretching, contracting, stretching, contracting, as if he were an accordion and the wind were playing him. His only note, meanwhile, was an occasional squealing grunt of satisfaction after some particularly good stretch, or when the motion changed and both trees rocked together in a wide, wild, exhilarating swing. Now and then the note was answered, farther down the ridge, by another porcupine going to sleep in his lofty cradle. A storm was coming; and Unk Wunk, who is one of the wood's best barometers to foretell the changing weather, was crying it aloud where all might hear.

So my question was answered unexpectedly. Unk Wunk was out for fun that afternoon, and had rolled down the hill for the joy of the swift motion and the dizzy feeling afterwards, as other wood folk do. I have watched young foxes, whose den was on a steep hill side, rolling down one after the other, and sometime varying the programme by having one cub roll as fast as he could, while another capered alongside, snapping and worrying him in his brain-muddling tumble.

That is all very well for foxes. One expects to find such an idea in wise little heads. But who taught Unk Wunk to roll downhill and stick his spines full of dry leaves to scare the wood folk? And when did he learn to use the tree-tops for his swing and the wind for his motive power?

Perhaps--since most of what the wood folk know is a matter of learning, not of instinct--his mother teaches him some things that we have never yet seen. If so, Unk Wunk has more in his sleepy, stupid head than we have given him credit for, and there is a very interesting lesson awaiting him who shall first find and enter the porcupine school.

The Partridges' Roll Call

I was fishing, one September afternoon, in the pool at the foot of the lake, trying in twenty ways, as the dark evergreen shadows lengthened across the water, to beguile some wary old trout into taking my flies. They lived there, a score of them, in a dark well among the lily pads, where a cold spring bubbled up from the bottom; and their moods and humors were a perpetual source of worry or amusement, according to the humor of the fisherman himself.

For days at a time they would lie in the deep shade of the lily pads in stupid or sullen indifference. Then nothing tempted them. Flies, worms, crickets, redfins, bumblebees,--all at the end of dainty hair leaders, were drawn with crinkling wavelets over their heads, or dropped gently beside them; but they only swirled sullenly aside, grouty as King Ahab when he turned his face to the wall and would eat no bread.

At such times scores of little fish swarmed out of the pads and ran riot in the pool. Chub, shiners, "punkin-seeds," perch, boiled up at your flies, or chased each other in savage warfare through the forbidden water, which seemed to intoxicate them by its cool freshness. You had only to swing your canoe up near the shadowy edge of the pool and draw your cast once across the open water to know whether or not you would eat trout for breakfast. If the small fish chased your flies, then you might as well go home or study nature; you would certainly get no trout. But you could never tell when the change would come. With the smallest occasion sometimes--a coolness in the air, the run of a cat's-paw breeze, a cloud shadow drifting over--a transformation would sweep over the speckled Ahabs lying deep under the lily pads. Some blind, unknown warning would run through the pool before ever a trout had changed his position. Looking over the side of your canoe you would see the little fish darting helter-skelter away among the pads, seeking safety in shallow water, leaving the pool to its tyrant masters. Now is the time to begin casting; your trout are ready to rise.

A playful mood would often follow the testy humor. The plunge of a three-pound fish, the slap-dash of a dozen smaller ones would startle you into nervous casting. But again you might as well spare your efforts, which only served to acquaint the trout with the best frauds in your fly book. They would rush at Hackle or Coachman or Silver Doctor, swirl under it, jump over it, but never take it in. They played with floating leaves; their wonderful eyes caught the shadow of a passing mosquito across the silver mirror of their roof, and their broad tails flung them up to intercept it; but they wanted nothing more than play or exercise, and they would not touch your flies.

Once in a way there would come a day when your study and patience found their rich reward. The slish of a line, the flutter of a fly dropping softly on the farther edge of the pool--and then the shriek of your reel, buzzing up the quiet hillside, was answered by a loud snort, as the deer that lived there bounded away in alarm, calling her two fawns to follow. But you scarcely noticed; your head and hands were too full, trying to keep the big trout away from the lily pads, where you would certainly lose him with your light tackle.

On the afternoon of which I write the trout were neither playful nor sullen. No more were they hungry. The first cast of my midget flies across the pool brought no answer. That was good; the little fish had been ordered out, evidently. Larger flies followed; but the big trout neither played with them nor let them alone. They followed cautiously, a foot astern, to the near edge of the lily pads, till they saw me and swirled down again to their cool haunts. They were suspicious clearly; and with the lower orders, as with men, the best rule in such a case is to act naturally, with more quietness than usual, and give them time to get over their suspicion.

As I waited, my flies resting among the pads near the canoe, curious sounds came floating down the hillside--Prut, prut, pr-r-r-rt! Whit-kwit? whit-kwit? Pr-r-rt, pr-r-rt! Ooo-it, ooo-it? Pr-r-reeee! this last with a swift burr of wings. And the curious sounds, half questioning, half muffled in extreme caution, gave a fleeting impression of gliding in and out among the tangled underbrush. "A flock of partridges--ruffed grouse," I thought, and turned to listen more intently.

The shadows had grown long, with a suggestion of coming night; and other ears than mine had heard the sounds with interest. A swifter shadow fell on the water, and I looked up quickly to see a big owl sail silently out from the opposite hill and perch on a blasted stub overlooking the pool. Kookooskoos had been sleeping in a dark spruce when the sounds waked him, and he started out instantly, not to hunt--it was still too bright--but to locate his game and follow silently to the roosting place, near which he would hide and wait till the twilight fell darkly. I could see it all in his attitude as he poised forward, swinging his round head to and fro, like a dog on an air trail, locating the flock accurately before he should take another flight.

Up on the hillside the eager sounds had stopped for a moment, as if some strange sixth sense had warned the birds to be silent. The owl was puzzled; but I dared not move, because he was looking straight over me. Some faint sound, too faint for my ears, made him turn his head, and on the instant I reached for the tiny rifle lying before me in the canoe. Just as he spread his wings to investigate the new sound, the little rifle spoke, and he tumbled heavily to the shore.

"One robber the less," I was thinking, when the canoe swung slightly on the water. There was a heavy plunge, a vicious rush of my unheeded line, and I seized my rod to find myself fast to a big trout, which had been watching my flies from his hiding among the lily pads till his suspicions were quieted, and the first slight movement brought him up with a rush.

Ten minutes later he lay in my canoe, where I could see him plainly to my heart's content. I was waiting for the pool to grow quiet again, when a new sound came from the underbrush, a rapid plop, lop, lop, lop, lop, like the sound in a sunken bottle as water pours in and the air rushes out.

There was a brook near the sounds, a lazy little stream that had lost itself among the alders and forgotten all its music; and my first thought was that some animal was standing in the water to drink, and waking the voice of the brook as the current rippled past his legs. The canoe glided over to find out what he was, when, in the midst of the sounds, came the unmistakable Whit-kwit? of partridges--and there they were, just vanishing glimpses of alert forms and keen eyes gliding among the tangled alder stems. When near the brook they had changed the soft, gossipy chatter, by which a flock holds itself together in the wild tangle of the burned lands, into a curious liquid sound, so like the gurgling of water by a mossy stone that it would have deceived me completely, had I not seen the birds. It was as if they tried to remind the little alder brook of the music it had lost far back among the hills.

Now I had been straitly charged, on leaving camp, to bring back three partridges for our Sunday dinner. My own little flock had grown a bit tired of trout and canned foods; and a taste of young broiled grouse, which I had recently given them, had left them hungry for more. So I left the pool and my fishing rod, just as the trout began to rise, to glide into the alders with my pocket rifle.

There were at least a dozen birds there, full-grown and strong of wing, that had not yet decided to scatter to the four winds, as had most of the coveys which one might meet on the burned lands. All summer long, while berries are plenty, the flocks hold together, finding ten pairs of quiet eyes much better protection against surprises than one frightened pair. Each flock is then under the absolute authority of the mother bird; and one who follows them gets some curious and intensely interesting glimpses of a partridge's education. If the mother bird is killed, by owl or hawk or weasel, the flock still holds together, while berries last, under the leadership of one of their own number, more bold or cunning than the others. But with the ripening autumn, when the birds have learned, or think they have learned, all the sights and sounds and dangers of the wilderness, the covey scatters; partly to cover a wider range in feeding as food grows scarcer; partly in natural revolt at maternal authority, which no bird or animal likes to endure after he has once learned to take care of himself.

I followed the flock rapidly, though cautiously, through an interminable tangle of alders that bordered the little stream, and learned some things about them; though they gave me no chance whatever for a rifle shot. The mother was gone; their leader was a foxy bird, the smallest of the lot, who kept them moving in dense cover, running, crouching, hiding, inquisitive about me and watching me, yet keeping themselves beyond reach of harm. All the while the leader talked to them, a curious language of cheepings and whistlings; and they answered back with questions or sharp exclamations as my head appeared in sight for a moment. Where the cover was densest they waited till I was almost upon them before they whisked out of sight; and where there was a bit of opening they whirred up noisily on strong wings, or sailed swiftly away from a fallen log with the noiseless flight that a grouse knows so well how to use when the occasion comes.

Already the instinct to scatter was at work among them. During the day they had probably been feeding separately along the great hillside; but with lengthening shadows they came together again to face the wilderness night in the peace and security of the old companionship. And I had fortunately been quiet enough at my fishing to hear when the leader began to call them together and they had answered, here and there, from their feeding.

I gave up following them after a while--they were too quick for me in the alder tangle--and came out of the swamp to the ridge. There I ran along a deer path and circled down ahead of them to a thicket of cedar, where I thought they might pass the night.

Presently I heard them coming--Whit-kwit? pr-r-r, pr-r-r, prut, prut!--and saw five or six of them running rapidly. The little leader saw me at the same instant and dodged back out of sight. Most of his flock followed him; but one bird, more inquisitive than the rest, jumped to a fallen log, drew himself up straight as a string, and eyed me steadily. The little rifle spoke at his head promptly; and I stowed him away comfortably, a fine plump bird, in a big pocket of my hunting shirt.

At the report another partridge, questioning the unknown sound, flew to a thick spruce, pressed close against the trunk to hide himself, and stood listening intently. Whether he was waiting to hear the sound again, or was frightened and listening for the call of the leader, I could not tell. I fired at his head quickly, and saw him sail down against the hillside, with a loud thump and a flutter of feathers behind him to tell me that he was hard hit.