Part 16

Could you follow an otter in such a place, you might see him rout out a fish, catch it after a breathless chase, and speed away to the nearest place for eating it. That place may be a den of his own in the bank, or a beaver’s tunnel under the lodge, or a cave under a hummock where the expanding ice crowds up over a half-submerged rock, making a roomy air-chamber in which otter, mink or muskrat may eat or rest in perfect security. The rock offers them a floor, and the roof of ice hides them from all prying eyes. It is in such places, I think, that Keeonekh sometimes meets the beaver and makes an enemy of him.

* * * * *

The winter comedy, as one follows it in imagination, may be something like this. Keeonekh enters a lake that the beavers are using for winter quarters, and glides like a shadow over the fishing grounds. In deep water beyond the inlet he jumps his game, and follows it hither and yon through the gloom under the ice. The chase may take him far from the opening; but for that he has no concern, feeling sure of himself and of his locality. It is his business to know every den and air hole in the lake, as it is a wolf’s business to know every rabbit swamp and deer yard within forty miles, since his life may at any moment depend on knowing just such things. Almost out of breath, he grips his fish and heads swiftly for the nearest breathing place, coming out above water in the beavers’ tunnel, and climbing instantly into the lower room.

The beavers, hearing something in their tunnel, something that comes with a rush, naturally scramble into their upper room to get away from it. They are not looking for trouble; like all other wood folk, they are keen to avoid it. After listening a moment, one big beaver comes cautiously down the passage; but before he can get into his hall Keeonekh has blocked the way.

Now an otter always eats where he lands his catch. He never carries a burden on land; and should you surprise him with a fish, he drops it and escapes, knowing that he can catch another. But he has no fear of the beaver, and so humps his back to eat in Hamoosabik’s hall, unmindful of angry muttering in the passageway above, or of beady eyes that glare down on this mannerless barbarian who brings smelly fish into a house that is very clean.

The smell is the worst feature of the outrage, I think, since it drowns the odor of musk, in which beavers delight. They are curious creatures in this respect; though they carry musk with them, and their lodge is at all times filled with its aroma, they will yet go out of their way for a fresh sniff of the delicacy. For most other odors they have strong aversion. You can drive them from their lodge, for example, or away from any dam they are building (a thing which must be done sometimes, when they flood a trail you are using), by scattering the contents of a carbide lamp or other strong-smelling stuff where they must pass over it or get it on their feet.

Here then is a lively situation, Keeonekh eating fish not only in the house, but under the very noses of beavers that cannot abide a fishy smell. Nor can they stop the nuisance, however angry they may be. A grown otter is a match for any single beaver; a downward rush of the whole family is impossible, because there is room in the passage for only one beaver at a time, and the passage is blocked by Keeonekh with a chip on his shoulder. Like other beasts, he is in fighting mood when his dinner is threatened. So he eats his fish where he lands it, leaving slime, scales, fragments of skin or flesh, an abominable mess, in the beavers’ hallway; and their first concern when he departs is to be rid of what he leaves behind him. Throw it out they cannot, there being no door or window to the lodge; their only way is to take the offensive stuff in their teeth and carry it through the underwater tunnel. One can imagine their emotions as they clean up the litter, and what they would like to do to the wretch who left it.

Keeonekh is far away by the time the lodge is again shipshape, and the beavers can never overtake him. He is faster at swimming than they are. Should they follow as far as the opening by which he entered the lake, there they must halt and turn back. They dare not venture afield in winter, while otters travel boldly in the open at any season.

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We have followed the little comedy imaginatively thus far, but not without certain signs or hints that give our fancy the right direction. One day, full twenty years after witnessing the beaver-otter fight, Simmo and I stood beside a beaver lodge that the owners had abandoned for their summer roving. The lake was a natural one, not an artificial pond made by a beaver dam, and in the deeper water fish were still fairly plentiful. The beavers had not yet driven them away. Peering curiously into the still water under the bank on which the lodge stood, I noticed some bones, gill covers and other fishy litter, which Simmo thought was the refuse left by an otter. At first that seemed very queer, since an otter always eats on land, and the refuse was scattered on the bottom of the lake near an outlet of the beavers’ tunnel. When we laid the lodge open to examine its interior arrangement, the Indian pointed to some dried fish scales in crevices of the beavers’ hallway.

“Look,” he said. “Oh, by cosh, look! Dat cheeky hotter come in here las’ winter, an’ eat-um fish in beaver’s house, right under hees nose.”

And that, if one were guessing at animal motives, may suggest a reason why one beaver, at least, will have a grudge to settle when he meets a certain otter in the open. As Simmo says, “By cosh, now, no wonder he mad w’en he meet-um!”

A NIGHT BEWITCHED

Silence is the rule of the woods at night, of all woods and all proper nights, I think; but like other rules it has startling exceptions. Hidden in the voluminous records of Alexander von Humboldt is a picture of night in a tropical forest which stays in the memory like a bad dream. As I recall the matter, after many years, the scientist was awakened by a horrible uproar,--squeals, grunts of terror, a rumbling snarl which broke into the roar of a charging beast. Then came a violent crashing, as tapirs dashed away with a jaguar at their heels, and instantly the forest became pandemonium. Parrots screeched, monkeys gibbered and barked, a multitude of unnamed birds or beasts added each his scream or howl to the jungle chorus of fear.

To read of such nocturnal alarm was, for a certain small boy, at least, to dream and shiver over it afterward, as one dreamed in a cold sweat of Hugo’s man, in Toilers of the Sea, who went down to a gloomy wreck in which lurked a devilfish, and “just then he felt himself seized by one foot.” I did not know, and no truthful person thought to tell me, that the alleged savage jungle is in reality quite peaceful; that its killing is more strictly limited by the need of food than that of a modern packing house, or that women and children go nightly to sleep amid its fancied horrors with a greater sense of security than we enjoy behind bolted doors.

Humboldt’s description is undoubtedly true of some one night, or part of a night; but it gives a wrong impression that such a night is typical of the South American or any other forest. It errs also, and grievously, in the assumption that nocturnal cries are indicative of terror; for terror is an emotion which we carry with us into strange woods at night, and which we are apt to read into any sound we hear, even when the sound voices only anger or warning or animal excitement. Of the tropics I have no personal experience; but I have questioned men who have spent time enough in the jungle to become familiar with it, and they agree that in the early part of the night the forest often resounds to a thrilling outcry; and that this outcry, if one be not himself frightened by it, has a defiant or exultant ring, as when dogs voice challenge or applause at another dog’s barking. Then, as birds settle to sleep and beasts take up their roaming, the jungle becomes profoundly still, and remains so till the dawn, when full-fed brutes begin to grunt or bark as they seek their coverts, and birds call jubilantly from tree to tree as they welcome a new day.

That is certainly true of our northern forests, where a few wild creatures lift their voices, joyously, it seems to me, in the evening twilight, but where “the dead vast and middle of the night” passes in a silence that is almost painful to human ears. Yet even the silent North will sometimes be disturbed, and echoes that have long slept will rouse up to answer a wild calling from lake or ridge or lonely beaver meadow. Once in a while comes a night (in early autumn, as a rule, and at a time of full moon) when birds and beasts are strangely restless, when you meet them in unexpected places or hear them calling everywhere. No explanation of the phenomenon occurs to me, though I have observed it repeatedly, and have noticed that owls cry warning of it before sundown.

Owls have several distinct calls, by the way, and of all forest sounds their voices are perhaps the hardest to interpret. A week or a month may pass over your camp while the owls hold a league of silence, not a sound being heard from them by night or day. Then comes a subtle change in the air, a weather change it may be, and suddenly there are hootings, groanings, maniacal yellings in every direction. The uncanny creatures have their rumpus to themselves, one answering another, while other wood folk go their quiet ways through the dusk without a sign that they are touched by the disturbance. But at last comes an evening when something creeps into the owl’s voice that was not there before; no sooner does he begin to hoot than every bird or beast that hears must lift his head to cry answer. At such times even the taciturn bears will break their long silence, and go whooping through the woods in obedience to some weird impulse which the owl was first to feel.

Thus it befell on one occasion, when the owls of a countryside were calling, that a black bear suddenly began to whoop in the woods over against my tenting place; and the curious thing was that he was immediately answered by others, their wild cries sounding with clocklike regularity at about three-minute intervals. Till then I had not seen or heard a bear, though I had searched for them in places where their signs were plentiful; but that is precisely what one should expect, since Mooween is careful to keep out of your way, and is one of the least talkative creatures in the wilderness. When you stumble upon him at an unguarded moment he is apt to loose an explosive ough-woof! as he jumps for cover; or when you frighten a mother bear away from her cubs you may hear her circling at a distance, uttering a sharp wheeee-oo! again and again; but with these natural exceptions Mooween speaks so seldom that many woodsmen have never heard him. Others confuse his rare call with that of the barred owl, a bird that has half a dozen different cries besides his familiar Who-cooks-for-you? Who-cooks-for-you?

On this night, however, my taciturn bears became almost vociferous; in the space of an hour I heard more bear talk than one ordinarily hears in an entire season. They were bold, too, surprisingly bold, when I met three of them in a little opening not far from my tent. I had heard these bears coming and, as I hurried to head them off, had made more noise than I liked, not being able to see my footing. Far from being frightened by the disturbance, they seemed to be waiting in the opening to see what I was. The moment I appeared they rose on their hind legs, which stopped me in my tracks. Not quite satisfied, they shambled uneasily to and fro, occasionally sitting up for another look; and one of them, a little fellow, had a funny way of wagging his forepaws rapidly up and down in front of his chest. When they had enough of me, instead of rushing off headlong with crash of brush and bumping of logs, as bears commonly go when they meet a man, they melted into the woods like so many shadows.

The caribou is another silent beast that finds his voice only on rare occasions, in response to some urge that I do not yet understand. I had met scores of the animals in winter, a few also in summer; but, with the exception of one low call from a doe to her fawn, I had never heard a word of caribou talk till one early-autumn night, when a herd broke silence all together. On that night I lay broad awake in my tent, unable to sleep or to find a reason for my sleeplessness. Some subtle excitement was afoot; loons were crying it to the woods, owls crying it back to the lake; so presently I made my way to an old lumber road, thinking I would have a look at a chain of barrens under the moonlight. These barrens (flat, treeless bogs surrounded by dense forest) are lonely places at any time. By night, especially when the moon floods them with pale light, and mists wave over them, and little shrouded larches that stand on their edges seem to creep and quiver, they are the epitome of all solitude.

As I crossed the first barren, making no sound on the thick carpet of moss, a band of caribou filed out of the woods as if on a journey. The strange thing to me was, not the excitement of the band or the complete absence of fear, but that these silent brutes were now all talking, as wild geese talk to one another continually in flight. Though they must have seen me plainly, for I was very near, they passed without paying me the slightest attention; all but the big bull, who came at the end of the procession, and who evidently thought it was his business to challenge that motionless figure standing out on the empty bog. He stopped short, came a step toward me, stopped again, and I looked for a rare bit of bluffing. When you stand motionless near a band of caribou in a snowstorm, and they cannot tell what you are because they do not trust their eyes and you are to leeward of their keen noses, the bulls will sometimes rear up on their hind legs, looking enormously threatening as they paw the air with their broad forefeet. In this startling demonstration the woodland caribou differs, I think, from all other members of the deer family. But here the big bull was content to present his antlers, shaking them fiercely in my direction. Getting no answer to his challenge, not even a motion, he followed grunting after his band; and I had the impression that he was glad to go, having saved his face by doing what was expected of him.

I was on my way to the next barren when, from a point of woods on my left, a spikehorn bull came out on the trot, making me freeze in my tracks once more. Whether he mistook me for one of his tribe or was a bit moonstruck, as every other creature seemed to be that night, I could not tell. He ran up as if he had been expecting me, and thrust his nose within a yard of my face, so near that I saw his eyes glow like foxfire in the moonlight; then without a word he brushed past and ran away down the caribou trail.

I had taken only a few steps after the spikehorn left me, and was about to enter the woods to cross to the next barren, when a vixen squalled out loudly, as a cat squalls when you step on her tail. Instantly three or four young foxes, her cubs, undoubtedly, rushed out and scurried all over the trail at my feet. From the woods came a lively outcry, a petulant, bagpipey droning; but it was some time before the cubs paid enough attention to it to dive headlong for cover. And then I heard squalls of a different tenor, one angry, another protesting, as if some youngster were getting nipped for his heedlessness.

Such nights come very rarely, perhaps once in a long season of watching wild animals; and always they affect a man queerly, as if some lunacy were abroad, and he must share it with other natural creatures. I remember vividly one night, many years ago, so different from all others that it seemed to do violence to my experience of the quiet wilderness. The time was September, and the place a wild lake which is still, I am told, the best big-game region in New Brunswick. It was then an unhunted solitude.

During the day I had been ranging the woods, and had noticed that flocking birds were acting strangely, as chickens grow erratic when the barometer is rapidly falling. Yet no storm threatened; the weather, as I remember it, had been for some days unusually brilliant. Late in the afternoon, as I was catching a supper of trout at the inlet of the lake, Kook’skoos the horned owl suddenly started a racket; not his deep hunting call, but an uncanny hoo-hooing up and down the scale, as if he were possessed by some crazy notion. He was answered by others of his kind here or there; and when I stalked the nearest, to find out what was afoot, he upset all my notions of the solemn birds without giving me even a hint of answer to my question. Instead of perching on the top of a stub so as to look like a part of it, as horned owls habitually do, he was hopping up and down a horizontal branch, as if dancing a pas seul. Instead of holding perfectly still save for a vibration of the throat when he sent forth his call, as I had often seen him, he would swoop almost to the ground and whirl about in fantastic circles, at the same time uttering a rapid, guttural note, which ended in a wild yell as he sailed back to his perch.

When I reached camp after sundown, the excitement seemed to have spread widely to others. Kupkawis the barred owl was then going about demanding, Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all? and breaking out in wild clack-clacking before anybody could answer him.

By that time there was a tingle in the air, such as one feels before an electrical storm. Simmo, my smoky companion, was uneasy. I noticed that his eyes had no rest, that they were searching lake or sky or somber forest continually; but I did not question him, having learned to hold my tongue with an Indian; nor did I know enough about the woods to expect anything unusual. Besides, my thoughts were mostly on moose just then. I had found a pond hidden away among low hills and caribou bogs, its shores pitted with moose tracks, among which the slots of a monster bull appealed to my imagination. I intended to call him that night, and had carefully spotted the trail I must follow. When I told Simmo, who did not like my nocturnal rambles, he broke silence to advise me soberly.