Part 7
Behind him, meanwhile, the flock went bounding by, headed for their high refuge. Last came the great ram, snorting with wrath and fear. Just as he was passing he saw that final rush of the wolf. He saw the young ewe penned in her corner. He heard her shrill, despairing bleat. The look of fear faded from his yellow eyes, leaving the rage only. It was not his wont to pit himself against the mighty timber wolf, because he had no morbid taste for suicide, but this young ewe was a favorite. Just as the gnashing jaws were about to snap upon the victim's neck something not unlike the stroke of a pile-driver caught the wolf fairly on the crupper. Aided by his own spring, it lifted him clean over the struggling ewe's back, doubled him together, and dashed him with stunning effect against a tree. Slowly he picked himself up, to see his quarry and the great ram just vanishing up the glade, far beyond any such pursuit as he was at the moment equal to. With a shamefaced air he glanced about him. There, across the glade, stood a tawny puma, eyeing his discomfiture through narrowed lids. This was too much. Tucking his tail between his legs, he slunk off into the underbrush.
Having gained what he considered a safe height among the rocks, the ram halted his followers upon a jutting buttress, where they stood huddled about him, and stared down resentfully upon the grassy glades. Such was their confidence in their lord, and in their own powers of flight, that they were none of them particularly frightened, except the young ewe who had had such a narrow escape. She, trembling and with panting sides, crowded close against her rescuer, who, for his part, kept scrutinizing the edges of the timber to see if the enemy were going to follow up the attack. He saw no more of that enemy, but he caught a glimpse of the tawny form of the puma gliding into a tree. Thereupon he decided that this part of the mountain was no place for his flock.
He turned and made off straight up the steep, till he had put a good mile between himself and the point of danger. Then, dropping into a ravine till their course was quite hidden from all hostile eyes in the timber, he led the way around the mountainside for several miles. On a high ledge, secure from any unseen approach, the flock rested for an hour or two, chewing the cud in peace in the vast silence of the bare and sun-bathed peaks. When once more they descended to the timber belt and its seductive pasturage there were three or four miles of tangled ridge and ravine between them and the scene of their morning's adventure.
In the meantime, Pete Allen, weary with climbing, sore with disappointment, tormented with as many flies as his own New Brunswick backwoods would have let loose upon him at the worst of the season, was beginning to wonder if the hunt of the mountain sheep was as simple an affair as he had fancied it. After climbing all the morning he had failed to gain another glimpse of the great brown ram. At last, however, about noon, he came upon their trail, leading down to the grass. With a long breath of relief, he stopped, drank at a bubbling icy spring, ate his cold bacon and crackers, and smoked a pipe. The trail was none too fresh, so he knew there was nothing to be gained by rash haste. After his pipe, he followed the trail down to the glades. His trained eyes soon told him what had happened. The encounter with the wolf was an open page to him. Having satisfied himself that there was nothing of interest left in that patch of timber--though all the while the puma was eyeing him with curious interest from a great branch not far overhead--he took up the trail of the flock's flight, and started once more up the mountain. Sweating heavily, and angrily brushing the flies from his eyes and nose and ears, he managed to distinguish the trail for a couple of miles along the difficult ravines, but at last, at the root of a precipice which, in his eastern judgment, was quite impassable to anything without wings, he lost it irretrievably.
Arguing that the flock must sooner or later return to their pasturage, he picked his way on a long diagonal down the mountainside, traversed a succession of grass patches, which showed never a trace of hoof print, and at length found himself in a bewildering maze of low, abrupt ridges, dense thickets, and narrow strips of green glade.
From all that Allen had been able to gather as to the habits of mountain sheep he concluded that this was about the last place in the world where he would be likely to find them. He began, after long self-restraint, to curse softly under his breath, as he glared about him for the most practical exit from the maze. All at once his face changed. The anger faded out from his shrewd light-blue eyes. There was the trail of the flock leading straight down the steepest and most uninviting of the glens. It was a fresh trail, too--so absolutely fresh that some of the trodden blades were still lifting their heads slowly from the hoof prints.
"Gee!" muttered Allen. "Seems I don't know's much about these here critters as I thought I did!" And he slipped noiselessly back into the cover of a thicket.
His problem now was to keep the trail in sight while himself remaining under cover. It was the hardest piece of tracking he had ever tackled. The cover was dense, the slope steep and tormentedly broken. He had to be noiseless as a mink, because he knew by hearsay that the ears of the mountain ram were almost as keen as an owl's. And he had to keep himself perfectly out of sight, which forced him to take the most difficult part of the underbrush for his path. But, for all this, he was no longer angry; he no longer heeded the flies or the heat, and when the sweat streamed down into his eyes he merely wiped them cheerfully on his sleeve. He felt sure now of winning the longed-for trophy of that magnificent head, and of winning it, moreover, by his own unaided woodcraft. Presently, through an opening in the leafy screen, he caught a glimpse of a tranquilly pasturing ewe, not much more than two hundred yards away. She moved slowly across his narrow line of vision and vanished. Keyed now to the highest pitch of anticipation, with every faculty concentrated on his purpose, he worked his silent way onward, expecting momently to gain a view of the great ram.
But there was an element in the situation which, had he known it, would have interfered with Allen's concentration of purpose. He was not the only hunter of mountain sheep in that particular corner of the mountains.
A shaggy and sly old "silver-tip," as it chanced, had had his eye for some time on that flock. He loved mutton, and he knew it was very hard to get, especially for a bear. He was making his approaches, therefore, with a stealthy craft surpassing that of Pete Allen himself. So it came about quite naturally that he saw Allen first. Thereupon he took every precaution that Allen should not see him.
In this remote district the grizzlies had not yet learned the vital lesson that man is by far the most formidable of all the animals. Yet a rumor had come to him, somehow, that the insignificant creature was not to be trifled with. There was something masterful in his bearing--as the grizzly had observed from safe ambush on several occasions--which suggested unknown powers, and hitherto the old silver-tip, being well fed and having no special grudge against man, had refrained from courting a quarrel. Now, however, he was angry. This was his own game which the man was stalking. This was a trespass upon his own preserves--a point in regard to which the grizzly is apt to be sensitive. His first impulse was to rush upon the intruder at once. Then a mixture of prudence and curiosity held him back, or, rather, delayed his purpose. He changed his course, and began to stalk Pete Allen even as Pete Allen was stalking the sheep. And high overhead, in the unclouded blue, a soaring eagle, catching brief glimpses of the drama through the openings in the leafage, gazed down upon it with unwinking, scornful eyes.
Huge and apparently clumsy as was the bulk of the bear, he nevertheless made his way through the tangle as soundlessly as the man, and more swiftly. He drew gradually nearer, and, as he approached, he began to forget the other game in a savage interest in this new and dangerous quarry. He was not directly behind the man, but now drawing nearly abreast of him, on the other side of the narrow steep of grass. He was just beginning, indeed, to stiffen his sinews instinctively for the final rush which should avenge the intrusion upon his range, when he saw the man stop abruptly and raise something that looked like a long brown stick to his shoulder. At this sight the bear stopped also, his wrath not being yet quite hot enough to consume his curiosity.
Pete Allen at last had caught a clear view of the great brown ram standing at guard not a hundred yards away. It was a beautiful, easy shot, the target isolated and framed in green. He raised his rifle steadily, bracing himself with knees and feet in a precarious position. Before he could draw a bead, however, to his amazement he saw the ram bound into the air and vanish from his narrow field of vision. Puzzled, he lowered the rifle from his shoulder. As he did so that unknown and quite incalculable sense which seems to have its seat in the fine hairs on the back of one's neck and in the skin of the cheeks commanded him to turn his head. He was just in time to see the giant form of the grizzly burst from the underbrush and come lunging across the strip of open.
Confronted by such an emergency the New Brunswicker fired on the instant, and, being quite sure of himself and the bear above him, he took a difficult shot. He aimed at the middle of the beast's throat, trusting to sever the spinal column, for he had heard that a shot straight through the heart often fails to stop the rush of a grizzly.
There was nothing the matter with Pete Allen's shooting or with his nerve. But at the very fraction of a second when his finger started to pull the trigger the whimsical Fates of the wilderness took a hand in the game. They undermined Pete Allen's footing. As he fired he fell, and the long, soft-nosed, deadly bullet, instead of piercing the grizzly's spine, merely smashed through his right shoulder.
Pete Allen fell sprawling some eight or ten feet down the slope, losing hold of his rifle in the effort to stop himself. To his anxious indignation he saw the rifle strike a branch and bounce perversely a dozen feet away. He scrambled for it furiously; but, before he could quite get his grip upon it, it slipped through the branches and dropped another dozen feet or so. At the same time, with something more near cold terror than he had ever before experienced, he saw the dark bulk of the grizzly wallowing down upon him, huge as a mountain. Staggered for a few seconds by the shock of the bullet, the beast had hesitated and turned around on his tracks, biting at the wound. Then, on three legs, and grunting with rage, he had launched himself upon his adversary.
In the course of the next three seconds, as he struggled toward his gun, Pete Allen thought of a thousand things, mostly unimportant. But at the back of his brain was the cool conviction that this was the time when he was going to pass in his checks. Those brute paws would smash him before he could reach his rifle. But he was wrong, for again the whimsical Fates interfered, perceiving a chance for such a trick as they had probably never played before.
The great brown ram, his eyes nearly starting from his head, came leaping madly up the narrow incline, his flock at his heels, blind with fright. In the glade below one of the flock had just been pounced upon by a puma, and another puma had sprung out at them, but missed his kill. The ram saw the bear straight in his path, plunging across it. There was no time to change his direction, and in his panic the peril in front was nothing to compare with the peril behind. Had the bear been a mastodon or a megatherium it would have been all the same to the panic-stricken ram. With the madness of utter terror he lowered his mighty head and charged this dark mass that barred his flight.
The bear, blazing with vengeance, had no eyes in that moment for sheep. Suddenly something like a falling boulder crashed into his ribs, catching him with his forefeet off the ground and almost rolling him over. The breath belched out of his astonished lungs with a loud, coughing grunt, and the ram went over him, spurning him with sharp hoofs. The next moment the whole flock was passing over him, a bewildering bombardment of small, keen, battering hoofs and woolly bodies. Recovering from his amazement, he struck out with his unwounded forepaw, caught the last unhappy ewe as she went over him, and hurled her carcass, mangled and quivering, far down the slope. Then, a little dazed, but undeterred from his vengeance, he glared about him for his original antagonist.
Interesting and, indeed, unparalleled as the intervention of the brown ram had been, Pete Allen had not taken time to observe it with the minute care which so novel an incident was entitled to. He had been busy getting his gun. Now he had it he did not hurry. With this shot he was taking no chances. Just as the bear caught sight of him, and started at him open-mouthed, he fired, and the animal sprawled forward, a huge furry heap, with a ball through the base of his brain.
Back in New Brunswick Pete Allen had had the name of being a cool hand in a corner. In that land of tried woodsmen and daring stream-drivers he would not have gained that name without deserving it. Even as the grizzly was in the act of falling forward Allen raised his rifle again. He covered accurately the form of the brown ram leaping up the slope a hundred yards away. There was his trophy, the splendid horns which he had striven so hard to win, within his grasp at last. But something seemed to tug suddenly at his arm--or was it at his heart? Pete Allen had always prided himself on playing fair, in the spirit as well as in the letter. He dropped his rifle with a growl of vexation.
"It'd be a dirty trick to put a ball into yeh," he muttered, "seein' what a hell of a hole you've just pulled me out of!"
The Pool
The current that went circling through its depths, keeping them always crystal pure and sweet, was so leisurely that the clear brown mirror of the surface was never broken, unless by some slow-wandering foam-cluster eddied in from the frothy little falls outside, or by the dropping of a leaf, or by the sluggish rise of a trout to some unwary skimming fly.
To the fish that dwelt in it the pool was an abiding place of perfection. It was deep; but the entrance to it was narrow and shoal, just spacious enough for the slow interchange of waters with the vivifying outer current. At the same time this entrance was so set that innumerable choice morsels, fly and beetle, grub and berry, having been battered down over the falls, were then persuasively swept into it. It was darkly overhung by great-limbed water-ash and maple; but when the sun was some two or three hours past noon its downpour reached and flooded the surface and made very wholesome basking. The bottom, moreover, offered a judicious variety of attraction. For some way in from the entrance it was of a clean bright sand, more or less broken with stones. While the inner portion, right up to the perpendicular banks and the jutting tree-roots, was floored with silted mud, fruitful in the small, ephemeral water-growths of herb and insect.
The fish inhabiting the delectable pool were all big ones, except for a few scattered young fry which dwelt precariously in the extremest shallows where the big ones could not come at them. And the fish were of just two kinds, the trout and the suckers. The suckers, lazy, pig-like, inoffensive beings, congregated over the stretch of mud, from whose fat surface their small, round, defenseless, downward-opening mouths sucked up their sustenance incessantly. Their bulk, and the power of their sinewy tails, alone protected them from the trout, whose wide, rapacious jaws and insatiable appetite were effective in keeping the size of all the pool-dwellers up to standard.
The trout, as a rule, had none of the reposefulness of the suckers. They ranged restlessly, now over the mud reaches, now over the sand and rocks, wherever quarry, large or small, might perhaps be encountered. Frequently one or another would flash out through the narrow exit, to hunt and test its strength in the bright turmoil of the rapids. And from time to time one would return lazily, perhaps with the tail of a smaller relation sticking out of its mouth, and settle down under the bank to digest its heavy meal.
To the pair of great fish-hawks, whose huge, untidy nest, like a cart-load of sticks and rubbish, filled the top of a tall dead pine-tree half a mile above the falls, the pool was a ceaseless aggravation. In the continual flight up and downstream their keen eyes were wont to search the pool enviously. But the big fish swimming so calmly in its depths were safe from them, because it was so overhung that they were unable to swoop down upon it with any effective speed. In the clear open they could drop like a wedge of steel, and flick up a darting trout from the very lip of the fall. But the pool they could reach only by a deliberate, flapping approach which gave even the drowsiest basker ample time to seek refuge in the safe depths.
But there was one wild fisherman whom the pool suited exactly. A big half-submerged root, jutting out for about three feet directly over that section of the pool where the suckers congregated, afforded the great lynx just the post of vantage which he loved. Here he would lie in wait for an hour at a time, patient and immobile as the root on which he crouched. His round, black, savage moon-face, with its pale eyes bright and hard, its stiff whiskers, and its tufted ears, would be held down so close to the glassy surface that the confused reflections of the overhanging branches were unable to interfere with his vision, and he could see with perfect clearness every detail of the transparent depths. He would stare with endless craving at the massive suckers which lay placidly mouthing the mud; but nothing could ever bring them near the surface, so he knew nothing of them but that they were fat and looked very desirable.
But it was the trout that chiefly concerned him. They had none of the fat placidity of the suckers. One or another of them, with his gold and silver and vermilion glinting up through the pellucid gloom, would be forever on the move, quartering the bottom for caddis and beetle, and now and then sailing up toward the surface to investigate some floating atom that may chance to be a fly. Sometimes it _was_ a fly, or a moth, or a caterpillar or some edible berry. And sometimes, too, the slow circling of the current in the pool would bring it close to that still watcher on the root before it caught the eye of the feeding fish. Then the sinews of the watcher would grow rigid, his claws protrude from their sheaths, a little green flame flicker spectrally in his eyes. As the trout came slanting up on scarlet fin, shouldered the surface apart, and sucked down the morsel, out from the root above him would flash a wide-taloned paw, unerring, inescapable, scooping him from his element, and in half a second he would be flopping convulsively among the wintergreen leaves, far up the bank. In the next half of that fatal second the lynx would be upon him with an exultant pounce, holding down his slippery struggles with both forepaws, and biting through the back of his massive neck.
The lynx being so silent and discreet a fisherman, his fishing never disturbed the pool at all, or cast any shadow of doubt upon its reputation as a haven of security and repose. The victim simply vanished, without any fuss. Of the other dwellers in the pool not one knew how he had vanished; not one cared; not one was troubled with apprehension.
One hot morning as the great cat lay on the root, staring down into the depths with his fierce moon eyes, he was disappointed to observe that on this particular day even the trout were too indolent to stir. The heat seemed to have taken away their appetites. As motionless and indifferent as the suckers themselves, they hung on softly fanning fins, and took no notice when even the most tempting morsels traversed the glassy surface. They did not mingle with the suckers, but poised themselves superciliously a foot or so above them, or lurked singly under the shelter of the scattered rocks on the bottom. In vain did fly or moth, or the most seductive squirmer of a fat grub, come circling slowly over the surface above them. They would not so much as cock a scornful eye up at it. They were not feeding. And when a trout won't feed he just won't, and there's an end of it. Though just when the pangs of appetite may come back upon him with a rush no fisherman can say with certainty. It is such uncertainty that has taught fishermen the virtues of patience and hope. It has also taught them unveracity, by giving them abundant time for the weaving of tales wherewith to amuse the credulous.
The lynx, as a fisherman, was both hopeful and patient. But this morning his patience was being sorely tried; for he was hungrier than usual, and his hunger was particularly bent on fish. His ridiculous stump of a tail, which was quite hidden from the sight of the pool-dwellers, began to twitch angrily. He was almost on the point of giving up, and stealing away to hunt rabbits, when from the corner of his eye he caught sight of something which made his ruff bristle and every hair stand up in jealous wrath. An intruder, a stranger, a rival whose skill as a fisherman made his own attempts seem nothing worth, had arrived at the entrance of the pool and was peering down into it with keen eyes.
The lynx moved, for the first time in a half hour. He turned his head full round, and fixed his green, implacable stare upon the intruder.
The new arrival had come by way of the river, and, from his bearing, the pool was evidently new to him. His long, sinuous, dark body lay crouched in the middle of the entrance, hinder half in the water and head and shoulders out of it. Sleek and glistening, with his low-set supple form, heavy-jawed and almost dog-like face, inconspicuous ears, dark eyes, and long, powerful tail, he presented the sharpest possible contrast in type to the great, shadowy, moon-eyed cat, though in actual weight and bulk the two were not greatly dissimilar.
But it was not at the silent watcher on the tree-root across the pool that the other was looking. He was peering down, with exultant eyes, into the peopled depths. Hunting had been bad, and he was hungry. A moment more and he plunged downward with a heavy swirl, but smoothly, as if oiled. The eyes of the lynx followed, with savage intentness, his swift and fishlike dartings beneath the water.
The drowsing pool-dwellers awoke and scattered in a panic, even the dull suckers displaying a miraculous agility. But it was not the coarse-fleshed suckers that this discriminating fisherman was after.
As the frantic fugitives dashed this way and that, weaving strange patterns over the bottom, and half forgetful, in their terror, of the narrow way out to safety, the otter slashed at such as came in his way, biting through their backbones, so that they presently rolled to the surface, belly upward. But it was the biggest trout of the pool that he wanted.