Chapter 5

It happened one morning in early spring, just after the ice had gone out. Our friend was still a trifle sleepy and lazy after the long, dull winter, though he had an eye open, as always, for anything particularly good to eat. I doubt if he would have jumped at any kind of a fly, for it was not the right time of year for flies, and he did not believe in eating them out of season; but almost anything else was welcome. He was faring very well that morning, as it chanced, for the stream was running high, and many a delicious grub and earthworm had been swept into it by the melting snow. And presently, what should come drifting down with the current but a poor little field-mouse, struggling desperately in a vain effort to swim back to the shore. Once before our friend had swallowed a mouse whole, just as you would take an oyster from the half-shell, and he knew that they were very nice, indeed. He made a rush for the unlucky little animal, and in another second he would have had him; but just then the big bully came swaggering up with an air which seemed to say: "That's my meat. You get out of this!"

Our friend obeyed, the big fellow gave a leap and seized the mouse, and then--his time had come. He fought bravely, but he was fairly hooked, and in a few minutes he lay out on the bank, gasping for breath, flopping wildly about, and fouling his beautiful sides with sand and dirt. If he had understood English he might have overheard an argument which immediately took place between the angler and a girl, and which began something like this:

"There!" in a triumphant tone; "who says mice aren't good bait? This is the biggest trout that's been caught in this stream for years."

"Oh, George, don't kill him! He's so pretty! Put him back in the water."

"Put him back in the water? Well, I should say not! What do you take me for?"

Evidently the girl took him for one who could be easily influenced by the right person, for she kept up the argument, and in the end she won her case. The trout was tossed back into the stream, where he gave himself a shake or two, to get rid of the sand, and then swam away, apparently as well as ever. But girls don't always know what is good for trout. It would really have been kinder if the angler had hit him over the head with the butt of his fishing-rod, and then carried him home and put him in the frying-pan. In his struggles a part of the mucus had been rubbed from his body, and that always means trouble for a fish. A few days later our friend met him again, and noticed that a curious growth had appeared on his back and sides--a growth which bore a faint resemblance to the bloom on a peach, and which had taken the exact shape of the prints of the angler's fingers. The fungus had got him. He was dying, slowly but surely, and within a week he turned over on his back and drifted away down the stream. A black bear found him whirling round and round in a little eddy under the bank, and that was the end of him.

And so our friend became the King of the Trout Stream.

You are not to suppose, however, that he paid very much attention to his subjects, or that he was particularly fond of having them about him and giving them orders. On the contrary, he had become very hermit-like in his habits. In his youth he had been fond of society, and he and his companions had often roamed the stream in little schools and bands, but of late years his tastes seemed to have undergone a change, and he kept to himself and lurked in the shady, sunless places till his skin grew darker and darker, and he more and more resembled the shadows in which he lived. His great delight was to watch from the depths of some cave-like hollow under an overhanging bank until a star-gazer, or a herring, or a minnow, or some other baby-eater came in sight, and then to rush out and swallow him head first. He took ample revenge on all those pesky little fishes for all that they had done and tried to do to him and his brethren in the early days. The truth is that every brook trout is an Ishmaelite. The hand of every creature is against him, from that of the dragon-fly larva to that of the man with the latest invention in the way of patent fishing-tackle. It is no wonder if he turns the tables on his enemies whenever he has a chance, or even if he sometimes goes so far, in his general ruthlessness, as to eat his own offspring.

Yet, in spite of our friend's moroseness and solitary habits, there were certain times and seasons when he did come more or less in contact with his inferiors. In late spring and early summer he liked to sport for a while in the swift rapids--perhaps to stretch his muscles after the dull, quiet life of the winter-time, or possibly to free himself from certain little insects which sometimes fastened themselves to his body, and which, for lack of hands, it was rather difficult to get rid of. Here he often met some of his subjects, and later, when the hot weather came on, they all went to the spring-holes which formed their summer resorts. And at such times he never hesitated to take advantage of his superior size and strength. He always picked out the coolest and most comfortable places in the pools, and helped himself to the choicest morsels of food; and the others took what was left, without question. And when the summer was gone, and the water grew cold and invigorating, and once more he put on his wedding-garment and hurried away to the gravelly shallows, how different was his conduct from what it had been when he was a yearling! Then he was only a hanger-on; now he selected his nest and his mate to suit himself; and nobody ever dared to interfere. Whether he ever again chose that beautiful little fish from the hatchery, whom he had been so fond of when he was a three-year-old, is a question which I would rather not try to answer. Among all the vicissitudes, dangers, and rivalries of life in a trout stream, a permanent marriage seems to be almost an impossibility; and I fear that the affections of a fish are not remarkable for depth or constancy.

The Trout had altered in many ways besides his relations to his fellows. The curving lines of his body were not quite as graceful as they had once been, and sometimes he wore a rather lean and dilapidated look, especially in the six months from November to May. His tail was not as handsomely forked as when he was young, but was nearly square across the end, and was beginning to be a little frayed at the corners. His lower jaw had grown out beyond the upper, and its extremity was turned up in a wicked-looking hook which was almost a disfigurement, but which he often found very useful in hustling a younger trout out of the way. Even his complexion had grown darker, as we have already seen. Altogether he was less prepossessing than of old, but of a much more formidable appearance, and the very look of him was enough to scare a minnow out of a year's growth.

But, notwithstanding all changes, the two great interests of his every-day life continued to be just what they had always been--namely, to get enough to eat, and to keep out of the way of his enemies; for enemies he still had, and would have as long as he lived. The fly-fishermen, with their feather-weight rods and their scientific tackle, came every spring and summer; and only the wisdom born of experience kept him from falling into their hands. Several times he met with an otter, and had to run for his life. Once, a black bear, fishing for suckers, came near catching a brook trout. And perhaps the very closest of all his close calls came one day when some river-drivers exploded a stick of dynamite in the water to break up a log-jam. The trout was some distance up the stream at the time, but the concussion stunned him so that he floated at the surface, wrong side up, for several minutes before his senses gradually came back. That is a fish's way of fainting.

His luck stayed by him, however, and none of these things ever did him any serious harm. His reign proved a long one, and as the years went by he came to exercise a more and more autocratic sway over the smaller fry. For in spite of his age he was still growing. A trout has an advantage over a land animal in this, that he is not obliged to use any of his food as fuel for keeping himself warm. He can't keep warm anyhow--not as long as he lives in the water--and so he doesn't try, but devotes everything he eats to enlarging his body and repairing wear and tear. If nothing happens to put a stop to the process, he seems to be able to keep it up almost indefinitely. But the size of the stream in which he lives appears to limit him to a certain extent. Probably the largest trout stream in the world is the Nepigon, and they say that seventeen-pounders were caught there in the early days. Our friend's native river was a rather small one. In the course of time, however, he attained a weight of very nearly three pounds, and I doubt if he would ever have been much larger. Perhaps it was fitting that his reign should end there.

But it seems a great pity that it could not have ended in a more imposing manner. The last act of the drama was so inglorious that I am almost ashamed to tell it. He was the King of the Trout Stream; over and over he had run Fate's gauntlet, and escaped with his body unharmed and his wits sharper than ever; he knew the wiles of the fly-fishermen better than any other trout in the river; and yet, alas! he fell a victim to a little Indian boy with a piece of edging for a rod, coarse string for a line, and salt pork for bait.

I'm sure it wouldn't have happened if he had stayed at home; but one spring he took it into his head to go on an exploring expedition out into Lake Superior. I understand that his cousins in the streams of eastern Canada sometimes visit salt water in somewhat the same manner, and that they thereupon lose the bright trimmings of their coats and become a plain silver-gray. Superior did not affect our friend in that way, but something worse happened to him--he lost his common-sense. Perhaps his interest in his new surroundings was so great that he forgot the lessons of wisdom and experience which it had cost him so much to learn.

In the course of his wanderings he came to where a school of perch were loafing in the shadow of a wharf; and just as he pushed his way in among them, that little white piece of fat pork sank slowly down through the green water. It was something new to the trout; he didn't quite know what to make of it. But the perch seemed to think it was good, and they would be sure to eat it if he didn't; and so, although the string was in plain sight and ought to have been a sufficient warning, he exercised his royal prerogative, shouldered those yellow-barred plebeians out of the way, and took the tid-bit for himself. It is too humiliating; let us draw a veil over that closing scene.

The King of the Trout Stream had gone the way of his fathers, and another reigned in his stead.

THE STRENUOUS LIFE OF A CANADA LYNX

THE Canada lynx came down the runway that follows the high bank along the northern shore of the Glimmerglass, his keen, silvery eyes watching the woods for foe or prey, and his big feet padding softly on the dead leaves. He was old, was the Canada lynx, and he had grown very tall and gaunt, but this afternoon his years sat lightly on him. And in a moment more they had vanished entirely, and he was as young as ever he was in his life, for, as he stepped cautiously around a little spruce, he came upon another lynx, nearly as tall as he, and quite as handsome in her early winter coat. They both stopped short and stared. And no wonder. Each of them was decidedly worth looking at, especially if the one who did the looking happened to be another lynx of the opposite sex.

He was some twenty-odd inches in height and about three and a half feet in length, and had a most villanous cast of countenance, a very wicked-looking set of teeth, and claws that were two inches long and so heavy and strong and sharp that you could sometimes hear them crunch into the bark when he climbed a tree. His long hind legs, heavy buttocks, thick fore-limbs, and big, clumsy-looking paws told of a magnificent set of muscles pulling and sliding and hauling under his cloak. She was nearly as large as he, and very much like him in general appearance. Both of them wore long, thick fur, of a lustrous steel-gray color, with paler shades underneath, and darker trimmings along their back-bones and up and down their legs. Their paws were big and broad and furry, their tails were stubby and short, and they wore heavy, grizzled whiskers on the sides of their jaws and mustachios under their noses, while from the tips of their ears rose tassels of stiff, dark hairs that had an uncommonly jaunty effect. Altogether they looked very fierce and imposing and war-like--perhaps rather more so than was justified by their actual prowess. So it was not surprising that they took to each other. Perhaps he wasn't really quite as heroic as he appeared, but that's not uncommon among other lovers besides those belonging to the lynx tribe, and what difference did it make, anyhow, as long as she didn't know it?

That winter was a hard one. The cold was intense, the snow was very deep, and the storms came often. Spruce hens and partridges were scarce, even rabbits were hard to find, and sometimes it seemed to the two lynxes as if they were the only animals left in the woods. Except the deer. There were always plenty of deer down in the cedar swamp, and their tracks were as plain as a lumberman's logging road. But although the lynxes sometimes killed and ate young fawns in the summertime, they seldom tasted venison in the winter. It was well for them that they had each other, for when one failed in the hunt the other sometimes succeeded, yet I cannot help thinking that the old male, especially, might perhaps have been of more use to his mate if he had not confined his hunting so entirely to the smaller animals. More than once he sat on a branch of a tree and watched a buck or doe go by, and his claws twitched and his eyes blazed, and he fairly trembled with eagerness and excitement as he saw the big gray creature pass, all unconscious, beneath his perch. Splendidly armed as he was, it would seem as though he must have succeeded if only he had jumped and risked a tussle. But he never tried it. I suppose he was afraid. And yet--such were the contradictions of his nature--one dark night he trotted half a mile after a shanty-boy who was going home with a haunch of venison over his shoulder, and was just gathering himself for a spring, intending to leap on him from behind, when another man appeared. Two against one was not fair, he thought, and he gave it up and beat a retreat without either of them seeing him. They found his footprints the next morning in their snow-shoe tracks, and wondered how far behind them he had been. I don't know whether it was a vein of real courage that nerved him up to doing such a foolhardy thing as to follow a man with the intention of attacking him, or whether it was simply a case of recklessness. The probability is, however, that he was hungrier than usual, and that the smell of the warm blood made him forget everything else. Anyhow, he had a pretty close call, for the shanty-boy had a revolver in his pocket.

Aside from any question of heroism, I am afraid that he was not really as wise and discriminating as he looked. I have an idea that when Nature manufactured him she thought he did not need as much wisdom or as many wits as some of the other people of the woods, inasmuch as he was larger and stronger and better armed than most of them. Except possibly the bear, who was altogether too easy-going to molest him, there was not one of the animals that could thrash him, and they all knew it and let him alone. You can often manage very well without brains if only you have the necessary teeth and muscle and claws; and the old lynx had them, without a doubt. But I fear that Nature, in adapting a wild animal to his environment, now and then forgets to allow for the human element in the problem. Brains are a good thing to have, after all. Even to a lynx the time is pretty sure to come, sooner or later, when he needs them in his business. Your fellow-citizens of the woods may treat you with all due respect, but the trapper won't, and he'll get you if you don't watch out.

One day he found some more snow-shoe tracks, just like those that the shanty-boy had left, and instead of running away, as he ought to have done, and as most of the animals would have had sense enough to do, he followed them up to see where they led. He wasn't particularly hungry that day, and there was absolutely no excuse for what he did. It certainly wasn't bravery that inspired him, for he had not the least idea of attacking anyone. It was simply a case of foolish curiosity. He followed the trail a long way, not walking directly in it, but keeping just a little to one side, wallowing heavily as he went, for a foot and a half of light, fluffy snow had fallen the day before, and the walking was very bad. Presently he caught sight of a little piece of scarlet cloth fastened to a stick that stood upright in a drift. It ought to have been another warning to him, but it only roused his curiosity to a still higher pitch, as the trapper knew it would. He sat down in the snow and considered. The thing didn't really look as if it were good to eat, and yet it might be. The only way to find out would be to go up to it and taste it. But, eatable or not, such a bright bit of color was certainly very attractive to the eye. You would think so yourself if you hadn't seen anything scarlet since last summer's wild-flowers faded. Finally, he got up and walked slowly toward it, and the first thing he knew a steel trap had him by the right foreleg.

The way of the foolish is sometimes as hard as that of the transgressor. For a few minutes he was the very maddest cat in all the Great Tahquamenon Swamp, and he yelled and howled and caterwauled at the top of his voice, and jumped and tore around as if he was crazy. But, of course, that sort of thing did him no good, and after a while he quieted down and took things a little more calmly. Instead of being made fast to a tree, the trap was bound by a short chain to a heavy wooden clog, and he found that by pulling with all his might he could drag it at a snail's pace through the snow. So off he went on three legs, hauling the trap and clog by the fourth, with the blood oozing out around the steel jaws and leaving a line of bright crimson stains behind him. The strain on his foot hurt him cruelly, but a great fear was in his heart, and he knew that he must go away or die. So he pushed on, hour after hour, stopping now and then to rest for a few minutes in a thicket of cedar or hemlock, but soon gathering his strength for another effort. How he growled and snarled with rage and pain, and how his great eyes flamed as he looked ahead to see what was before him, or back along his trail to know if the trapper was coming!

It was a terrible journey that he made that night, and the hours dragged by slow as his pace and heavy as his clog. He was heading toward the hollow tree by the Glimmerglass that he and his mate called home, but he had not made more than half the distance, and his strength was nearly gone. Half-way between midnight and dawn he reached the edge of a steep and narrow gully that lay straight across his path. The moon had risen some time before, and the white slopes gleamed and shone in the frosty light, all the whiter by contrast with the few bushes and trees that were scattered up and down the little valley. The lynx stood on the brink and studied the proposition before him. It would be hard, hard work to climb the farther side, dragging that heavy clog, but at least it ought to be easy going down. He scrambled over the edge, hauling the clog after him till it began to roll of its own accord. The chain slackened, and he leaped forward. It was good to be able to jump again. But he jumped too far, or tried to, and the chain tightened with a jerk that brought him down head-first in the snow. Before he could recover himself the clog shot past him, and the chain jerked again and sent him heels over head. And then cat, trap, and clog all went rolling over and over down the slope, and landed in a heap at the bottom. All the breath and the spirit were knocked out of him, and for a long time he could do nothing but lie still in the snow, trembling with weakness and pain, and moaning miserably. It must have been half an hour before he could pull himself together again, and then, just as he was about to begin the climb up the far side of the gully, he suddenly discovered that he was no longer alone. Off to the left, among some thick bushes, he saw the lurking form of a timber-wolf. He looked to the right, and there was another. Behind him was a third, and he thought he saw several others still farther away, slinking from bush to bush, and gradually drawing nearer. Ordinarily they would hardly have dreamed of tackling him, and, if they had mustered up sufficient courage to attempt to overpower him by mere force of numbers, he would simply have climbed a tree and laughed at them. But now it was different.

The lynx cowered down in the snow and seemed to shrink to half his normal size; and then, as all the horror and the hopelessness of it came over him, he lifted up his voice in such a cry of abject fear, such a wail of utter agony and despair, as even the Great Tahquamenon Swamp had very seldom heard. I suppose that he had killed and eaten hundreds of smaller animals in his time, but I doubt if any of his victims ever suffered as he did. Most of them were taken unawares, and were killed and eaten almost before they knew what was coming; but he had to lie still and see his enemies slowly closing in upon him, knowing all the time that he could not fight to any advantage, and that to fly was utterly impossible. But when the last moment arrived he must have braced up and given a good account of himself. At least that was what the trapper decided when he came a few hours later to look for his trap. The lynx was gone--not even a broken bone of him was left--but there in the trodden and blood-stained snow was the record of an awful struggle. There must have been something heroic about him, after all.