Part 14

Now Cookee, though he had spent a good part of his days in the lumber woods, had never met a bear, and said he never wanted to. After hearing plenty of bear stories, he was mortally afraid of the brutes. One afternoon, just as he approached the tethered cow, he ran head-on to a bear, and had the shock of his life. His first bulgy-eyed glance told him that it was a big bear, a black bear, a ferocious bear with red eyes; his next, that the fearsome beast was creeping over a windfall in his direction. With a yell he turned and streaked for camp. At his first jump he lost his hat, and he maintains that it was no bush but his own rising hair that lifted it off. A few more jumps and he had ripped off most of his buttons, with some of his clothes, as he tore his way through fir or moosewood thickets.

The lucky man had compelling reason for his haste. Even as he turned he heard a loud, unearthly bawling; which sent him up in the air in a convulsive way, as if thrown by a spring. Then came a terrifying woof-woof! a cry with teeth and claws in it. On the heels of that sounded a furious crashing of brush, coming nearer and nearer.

Cookee never turned to look; he had no time. He had started to run, being light shod with moccasins; but now he flew. Great pine logs lay across his trail, with rows of little spruces growing out of their mossy tops; he sailed over them without touching a thing. Till that moment he had not dreamed how he could jump. Where the trail corkscrewed to avoid a thicket, he drove straight through with the directness of a startled grouse, leaving here a bit of skin or there a shred of raiment to mark his course. Every time he broke into open traveling he loosed another yell.

At first he felt himself going like the wind, and no deer ever took the jumps as he took them; but presently, though he was moving faster than ever, his heart sank, his spirit groaned, his legs became leaden legs, and his pace a snail’s pace. With all his striving, which was supermannish, he was not gaining an inch. However he jumped or however he ran, he could not shake off that ferocious thing at his heels. It stuck to him like a leech. No sooner did he hit the ground after one of his kangaroo springs than he heard behind him a thump and a grunt as the creature cleared the same log. Hardly was he out of a thicket with a despairing, “Save me, O Lord, from this bear!” on his lips, than there would follow a nerve-shattering crash as the pursuing beast plunged through the same bushes.

So, wild-eyed and hatless, but thrilling with a new hope, Cookee burst out of the woods, and just below him lay the camp, smoke curling out of its chimney most peacefully. Down the rough trail he came, hurdling stumps like a grasshopper, and almost scared the life out of the cook as he dove with a final yell of “Bear! Bear!” into the kitchen. Clear across the floor he slid, upsetting everything but the stove, and bringing a big dishpan down on the wreck with a mighty clatter. The scared cook had mind enough left to slam the door on the instant. Grabbing one the poker, the other a butcher knife, they rushed to the window to meet the enemy like men. And there, wheezing, stood the old cow with her nose against the door, trying to follow Cookee the rest of the way to safety. He had made that heart-bursting run with the notion that it was the bear making all the noise behind him.

So much of the story we heard from Cookee when we tumbled hastily out of tent or cabin at his wild yelling. The remainder I read from the trail or pieced together from my imagination.

That bear was a young bear, as the trail showed, and he had probably never seen a cow nor a man in his life before. Roaming with him were two others, a yearling and big she-bear; but they were luckily on the farther side of the beaver meadow, where Cookee could not see them. Had he met three bears, no one knows what miracle of jumping might have followed. He says that he would not have run any faster had he met a whole flock of bears, because no man could.

As Mooween came shuffling along, nosing about for grubs and other kickshaws that bears like, a new odor poured suddenly into his nostrils, a startling odor, rich and strong, which made him halt and sniff for possible trouble. Rising on his hind legs to peek over a windfall, he saw a strange beast, big and red and very smelly. Though its head was out of sight in the grass, two pointed horns were thrust about in alarming fashion; though its legs and most of its body were hidden, there was still bulk enough in sight to shame any bear, and it flirted a tail such as no bear ever dreamed of. A most astonishing beast, surely; but was it dangerous? Very cautiously, like any other suspicious bear, Mooween crept over the windfall for a better look and sniff at the monster.

It was at this psychological moment that Cookee appeared and fled. Startled by his yell, the cow threw up her head; and before her was a strange black beast, such as she had never encountered. It was a day of surprises for everybody. The cow was staring in heavy, bovine wonder when a wisp of wind eddied round the meadow; it brought to her nose the rank bear smell, which electrified her like a yelping dog and a swarm of hornets all at once. Though that powerful, wet-doggy odor had never before entered her nostrils, there were ages of memory behind it, dead but not lost ages, during which countless of her ancestors had always curled their tails and fled from unseen bears. Her nerves first and then her heels flew off in a panic. With a bawl that shocked even herself she surged away on her rope, heading straight for camp, giving no heed to obstacles. Suddenly she had the legs of deer, the strength of giants.

The rope was tied to an overturned stump, to which clung a tangle of weathered roots; and it proved light anchorage for heavy weather. For a dozen yards the crazy thing whirled through grass or bushes, waving all its crooked arms like a devilfish. Then it caught fast; the rope snapped, and the cow went tearing up the trail on the heels of Cookee, following her protector jump for jump, as close as she could get without stepping on him.

Meanwhile the bear was running for his life, going twice as fast as any cow or cookee ever went, in the opposite direction. The first human yell had scared him stiff; but the bovine bawl galvanized him into action. Then came the bounding root, whirling mad arms, tearing up the grass, and that petrified him once more. With a woof-woof! which sounded like an explosion, but which only said, “I’m a goner if I don’t light out of here!” he plunged headlong into the windfall over which he had just crept like a shadow, cracking a deal of dead branches as he went through. No more cat-footing for him; the world was too full of strange monsters. Across the meadow and into the big woods he rushed with great smashing of brush, making so much racket himself that he scarcely heard the sound of another flight. Behind him lay an amazing trail: here a hole in a wet spot with mud spattered all about; there a bunch of moss or a sliver of bark ripped from the top of a log; yonder, where the bear struck rising ground, a volley of dirt or chips flung out as he dug his toes into the hillside in frantic haste to get over the horizon.

WHEN BEAVER MEETS OTTER

One rainy day, while crossing a northern lake, I saw a commotion in the water and drove my canoe up to it, so quietly that I was alongside a pair of fighting beasts before they noticed me. And then, to my astonishment, they went on with their fighting.

They were a beaver and an otter, both uncommonly large, and therefore uncommonly shy by all familiar standards. Not by carelessness does any creature come to unwonted size or years in the wilderness. Ordinarily these alert beasts would have vanished before I had even a glimpse of them. Now they were intent on the business in hand, at times locked jowl to throat, again circling for an opening and watching each other so warily that they had eyes for nothing else.

The otter did most of the sparring; at times he made the water boil as he whirled with nervous strokes about his enemy or dove like a flash to get beneath him. The beaver, larger but more clumsy, seemed content with defensive tactics, turning within his own length so as to face the attack. His beady eyes showed a gleam of red; his great cutting teeth were bared in a ferocious grin. Every time the otter flashed under like a dipper duck, the beaver would go down with the oily roll of a porpoise to meet him under water. A violent swirling, a stream of bubbles gurgling and plopping; then the two animals would wabble up to the surface, their teeth fastened in each other’s neck. Down or up, they paid no attention to the huge object floating near them; if they were aware of the canoe, it was but vaguely, their senses being blunted by their battle fury.

As they went down for the third or fourth time I noticed the water reddening around them, showing that it was time for some blessed peacemaker to interfere. Not knowing who started the fight, I pushed the canoe over them impartially. When they came up I splashed them with the paddle, and they seemed to realize for the first time that a stranger, an enemy, was watching them. In a wink they were themselves once more; their native alertness returned; their lunacy was shed like a garment. The beaver sounded on the instant, giving the alarm signal of his tribe as he went down. He is a sociable creature, living by choice with a colony of his fellows, and in him the thought of his own safety is always associated with the safety of others. But the otter, accustomed to roaming alone, whirled without a sound and forged away on the surface, heading for the nearest shore. There I watched him twisting about uneasily, mewing over his wounds, dressing his rumpled fur like a sick cat.

That was the first time I ever learned of the grudge which seems to stand unsettled between beaver and otter. Had it been the last, I would have thought no more of it than of any other odd incident; but several times in later years I found signs of the same incomprehensible feud. Once the evidence took the form of two dead bodies, beaver and otter, floating together in a cove at the mouth of a brook, where the water circled aimlessly round and round. They had killed each other, I judged, since both were badly bitten about the neck. In a grip that neither had the will to break they sank to the bottom and died. There they rested awhile, till with lightened bodies they rose to the surface and went bumping each other around the eddy, as if their quarrel were still on.

Whether the feud were general among all otters and beavers of that region, or whether it was a private animosity kindled by a personal grievance, I had no means of knowing. Occasionally I would hear of a similar quarrel in other places, and every new indication of it puzzled me afresh. Fights being rarely exceptional between animals of different species, I could imagine no reason why a beaver, most inoffensive of the wood folk, should go out of his way to force a quarrel on an animal with whom he has no dealing from one year’s end to another. The two are not what we call natural enemies, meaning by the thoughtless expression that one does not eat the other as food. They belong to different tribes that have nothing in common, not even a cause of enmity. They cannot interfere with each other in the matter of food, since the otter lives on fish, the beaver on bark or water plants, according to season. Moreover, every wild animal avoids meddling with creatures that do not appeal to him momentarily when he is looking for something to eat, and the beaver is exemplary in minding his own business. He lives a secluded kind of life, wandering up or down the wilderness streams with his family all summer, shutting himself up in a narrow prison all winter; and, aside from wolves or lynxes, which gladly eat beaver meat when they have a rare chance, he has not an enemy in his quiet world so long as man keeps out of it.

The otter, also, unlike most of his weasel tribe, is a peaceable and highly interesting beast. He is a fisherman, a very expert fisherman, and finds plenty to eat without interfering with any other. So he is always in good condition, and as full of capers as a kitten. Most animals are fat and playful when they are young, growing lean and sober as they grow old; but an otter is just the opposite, having leanness and sobriety as his portion in infancy. As a kit he spends an uncommonly long time in his dark den; when he comes out he passes many an hour asleep in the water, where he lies comfortably on his back with nose in the air and paws folded on his chest. As he grows older he plays more, thickens up till he is in perfect condition, and ends by becoming the most sportive of all wild creatures. He makes one of the most affectionate of pets; and what with his constant good fare and good humor he has no more reason to quarrel with a beaver than with the man in the moon. Remember that there are no “savage” beasts except in our yards and our imagination; that the wild or natural animal does not fight unless he has a compelling motive, and not even then if he can avoid it. Why then, one must ask, do these two peaceable beasts fall upon each other whenever their trails cross?

We know so little of an animal (the real animal which you meet in the woods, not the labeled skin-and-bones which you find in a book or a museum) that any answer must be guesswork, and the guess varies with the woodsman who makes it. When I put the question to a trapper I know, a silent, observant man who follows his solitary trap line every winter, he answered confidently that the otter carries a grudge around with him, and always begins the quarrel. An otter likes to have his fishing waters to himself; he is intolerant of trespassers, and in this he is like the loon, the kingfisher, the sheldrake, and other natural fishermen, all of whom seem to have definite portions of lake or river which they regard as their own.

Now the beaver is not a fisherman; but at times he interferes sadly with those who must follow that craft for a living. When he builds his dam on a trout stream, for example, it means an end of fishing in that neighborhood. The trout cannot stand his commotions, his towing of logs and alder brush, his perpetual digging of mud or roiling of water. So when an otter, coming to dine where he has caught many a good dinner, finds his favorite pool occupied or spoiled, he is in a mood to pick a bone with the offender. In a word, the otter fights because he has a grudge to settle, and the beaver fights to defend himself. Such is the trapper’s explanation.

When I asked Simmo the Indian about the matter, he said that beaver and otter both have grievances, and that when they meet unexpectedly (they avoid each other for the most part) one is quite as likely to begin hostilities as the other. An otter does not like a beaver because the latter may steal an otter kit and bring it up in his lodge as a drudge or slave. “Otter he mitcheego, very cross, ’cause beaver steal-um baby an’ make-um work,” was the way Simmo put it. The beaver is more mitcheego, because he often finds an otter monkeying with his dam or spillway. The dam is the danger-point in a beaver’s winter quarters. Any disturbance of it threatens calamity, and a break may be the herald of death; yet a roving otter can never pass a dam without raising a commotion, splashing about in a way to bring the whole beaver family rushing out of their lodge in wild alarm at the fancied danger.

Simmo is right in his facts, his observation of game or fur animals being microscopic in its accuracy; but whether he has the right explanation of the beaver-otter feud is another matter. It is true that occasionally you may find a young otter sharing the summer wanderings of a family of beaver, apparently content with the life and knowing no other. That he was brought up with the beaver kits is evident from his continued association with them; but whether the beavers stole him, as Simmo thinks; or whether he was left motherless and followed them, which is quite natural; or whether some mother beaver sought him out and suckled him, as many mother animals adopt a stranger when deprived of their young,--these are questions which no man can answer. One can observe with his eyes an otter in a beaver lodge; but only imagination can follow the trail by which he came there.

It is true also, on the other side of the feud, that the otter raises a terrible pother at a beaver dam in winter; but he does it unconsciously, I think, and for a natural reason. He is a lover of open water, and in summer he lives largely in the lakes and streams. In winter, the waters being sealed, he must wander over the vast, inhospitable expanse of ice, unable to enter his favorite pools save by some fortunate air hole. At such times he has the habit (which trappers know too well for his safety) of using every little runlet for his amusement. He may be hungry or on a journey or heading for a distant stream with a man on his trail; but he can never pass near a bit of open water without having a plunge in it. In trailing an otter I have repeatedly found where he went out of his way for no other purpose, apparently, than to play a moment in a spring or little brook that was clear of ice, after which he headed diagonally back to his former course and resumed his journey.

So it happens in winter, when an otter passes a beaver dam that has a run of water beneath it or through the spillway, that he always raises a whillilew there, splashing merrily about in the enjoyment of his own sensations. To the beaver, living in his lodge nearby, any sudden splashing of that kind means just one thing, and a fearful thing,--a break in the dam. In the autumn, or while waters are open, a broken dam is easily mended; but in midwinter even a small break may be hopeless, since the beavers cannot get through the ice of their pond to repair the damage. It means that the little opening will soon become a big opening with a flood pouring through it; that the precious store of food-wood will be frozen into a solid mass. Then the beaver family must die of starvation in their lodge, their tunnel and food pile being blocked by ice; or else, if perchance they can find or dig a way through the frozen pond, that they will probably be caught by wolves or lynxes when they forage in the snow-filled woods, where their short legs and heavy bodies make weary traveling.

One can understand, therefore, the beaver’s alarm at any disturbance of water in his spillway. Day after day he listens to its musical flow as to a quiet tune; when he falls asleep his ears drink in the melody as a sweet lullaby, telling him that all is well. Suddenly comes a pause, a break in the tune, and then a violent splashing. Down under the ice he comes, his family following at his heels, to go rushing up and down the length of the dam, peering about in the underwater gloom, trying to locate the danger. Remember that the beaver is on the upper or pond-side of the dam, while the splashing comes from the lower side, whither he cannot come because of the roof of ice over his head. And when, after much searching and tribulation, he learns that the alarm is needless, that the disturbance is caused by a careless otter amusing himself or monkeying with matters that may become dangerous--well, then he is as mad as anybody else would be; and he will remember his grievance when next he meets the cause of it.

Such is Simmo’s explanation of one little comedy of errors among the wood folk. A dog or an Indian never forgets an injury, and why should not a beaver be like a dog at least? So he reasons, and I cannot answer him. He knows more about wild animals than I shall ever learn.

I have a notion, however, that there may be a better reason for the standing quarrel, a reason suggested by one lucky find in a beaver lodge after I had searched for it many years. Briefly, the notion is (and it looks odd when one puts it in cold ink) that the otter sometimes makes mockery of the beaver’s housekeeping by leaving a smelly mess of fish in a lodge that is wonderfully clean, under the noses of animals that abominate all evil smells. To appreciate the humor of such an explanation we must know how the two animals live during the long northern winter.