Part 9

The trapper's skiff invades all his pleasant waters; on every hand he hears the splash of its paddles, the clank of its setting pole, and he can scarcely show his head above water but a deadly shower of lead bursts upon it. He hears the simulated call of his beloved, and voyaging hot-hearted to the cheating tryst meets only death.

At last comes the summer truce and happy days of peace in the tangled jungle of the marsh, with the wild duck and bittern nesting beside his watery path, the marsh wren weaving her rushy bower above it.

So the days of his life go on, and the days of his race continue in the land of his unnumbered generations. Long may he endure to enliven the drear tameness of civilization with a memory of the world's old wildness.

XLII

NOVEMBER VOICES

With flowers and leaves, the bird songs have faded out, and the hum and chirp of insect life, the low and bleat of herds and flocks afield, and the busy sounds of husbandry have grown infrequent. There are lapses of such silence that the ear aches for some audible signal of life; and then to appease it there comes with the rising breeze the solemn murmur of the pines like the song of the sea on distant shores, the sibilant whisper of the dead herbage, the clatter of dry pods, and the fitful stir of fallen leaves, like a scurry of ghostly feet fleeing in affright at the sound of their own passage.

The breeze puffs itself into a fury of wind, and the writhing branches shriek and moan and clash as if the lances of phantom armies were crossed in wild melee.

The woods are full of unlipped voices speaking one with another in pleading, in anger, in soft tones of endearment; and one hears his name called so distinctly that he answers and calls again, but no answer is vouchsafed him, only moans and shrieks and mocking laughter, till one has enough of wild voices and longs for a relapse of silence.

More softly it is broken when through the still air comes the cheery note of the chickadee and the little trumpet of his comrade the nuthatch and far away the muffled beat of the grouse's drum, or from a distance the mellow baying of a hound and its answering echoes, swelling and dying on hilltop or glen, or mingling in melodious confusion.

From skyward comes the clangor of clarions, wild and musical, proclaiming the march of gray cohorts of geese advancing southward through the hills and dales of cloudland. There come, too, the quick whistling beat of wild ducks' pinions, the cry of a belated plover, and the creaking voice of a snipe. Then the bawling of a ploughman in a far-off field--and farther away the rumble and shriek of a railroad train--brings the listening ear to earth again and its plodding busy life.

XLIII

THANKSGIVING

Doubtless many a sportsman has bethought him that his Thanksgiving turkey will have a finer flavor if the feast is prefaced by a few hours in the woods, with dog and gun. Meaner fare than this day of bounty furnishes forth is made delicious by such an appetizer, and the Thanksgiving feast will be none the worse for it.

What can be sweeter than the wholesome fragrance of the fallen leaves? What more invigorating than the breath of the two seasons that we catch: here in the northward shade of a wooded hill the nipping air of winter, there where the southern slope meets the sun the genial warmth of an October day. Here one's footsteps crunch sharply the frozen herbage and the ice-bearded border of a spring's overflow; there splash in thawed pools and rustle softly among the dead leaves.

The flowers are gone, but they were not brighter than the winter berries and bittersweet that glow around one. The deciduous leaves are fallen and withered, but they were not more beautiful than the delicate tracery of their forsaken branches, and the steadfast foliage of the evergreens was never brighter. The song-birds are singing in southern woods, but chickadee, nuthatch, and woodpecker are chatty and companionable and keep the woods in heart with a stir of life.

Then from overhead or underfoot a ruffed grouse booms away into the gray haze of branches, and one hears the whirr and crash of his headlong flight long after he is lost to sight, perchance long after the echo of a futile shot has died away. Far off one hears the intermittent discharge of rifles where the shooters are burning powder for their Thanksgiving turkey, and faintly from far away comes the melancholy music of a hound. Then nearer and clearer, then a rustle of velvet-clad feet, and lo, reynard himself, the wildest spirit of the woods, materializes out of the russet indistinctness and flashes past, with every sense alert. Then the hound goes by, and footstep, voice, and echo sink into silence. For silence it is, though the silver tinkle of the brook is in it, and the stir of the last leaf shivering forsaken on its bough.

In such quietude one may hold heartfelt thanksgiving, feasting full upon a crust and a draught from the icy rivulet, and leave rich viands and costly wines for the thankless surfeiting of poorer men.

XLIV

DECEMBER DAYS

Fewer and more chill have become the hours of sunlight, and longer stretch the noontide shadows of the desolate trees athwart the tawny fields and the dead leaves that mat the floor of the woods.

The brook braids its shrunken strands of brown water with a hushed murmur over a bed of sodden leaves between borders of spiny ice crystals, or in the pools swirl in slow circles the imprisoned fleets of bubbles beneath a steadfast roof of glass. Dark and sullen the river sulks its cheerless way, enlivened but by the sheldrake that still courses his prey in the icy water, and the mink that like a fleet black shadow steals along the silent banks. Gaudy wood duck and swift-winged teal have long since departed and left stream and shore to these marauders and to the trapper, who now gathers here his latest harvest.

The marshes are silent and make no sign of life, though beneath the domes of many a sedge-built roof the unseen muskrats are astir, and under the icy cover of the channels fare to and fro on their affairs of life, undisturbed by any turmoil of the upper world.

When the winds are asleep the lake bears on its placid breast the moveless images of its quiet shores, deserted now by the latest pleasure seekers among whose tenantless camps the wild wood-folk wander as fearlessly as if the foot of man had never trodden here. From the still midwaters far away a loon halloos to the winds to come forth from their caves, and yells out his mad laughter in anticipation of the coming storm. A herald breeze blackens the water with its advancing steps, and with a roar of its trumpets the angry wind sweeps down, driving the white-crested ranks of waves to assault the shores. Far up the long incline of pebbly beaches they rush, and leaping up the walls of rock hang fetters of ice upon the writhing trees. Out of the seething waters arise lofty columns of vapor, which like a host of gigantic phantoms stalk, silent and majestic, above the turmoil, till they fall in wind-tossed showers of frost flakes.

There are days when almost complete silence possesses the woods, yet listening intently one may hear the continual movement of myriads of snow fleas pattering on the fallen leaves like the soft purr of such showers as one might imagine would fall in Lilliput.

With footfall so light that he is seen close at hand sooner than heard, a hare limps past; too early clad in his white fur that shall make him inconspicuous amid the winter snow, his coming shines from afar through the gray underbrush and on the tawny leaves. Unseen amid his dun and gray environment, the ruffed grouse skulks unheard, till he bursts away in thunderous flight. Overhead, invisible in the lofty thicket of a hemlock's foliage, a squirrel drops a slow patter of cone chips, while undisturbed a nuthatch winds his spiral way down the smooth trunk. Faint and far away, yet clear, resound the axe strokes of a chopper, and at intervals the muffled roar of a tree's downfall.

Silent and moveless cascades of ice veil the rocky steeps where in more genial days tiny rivulets dripped down the ledges and mingled their musical tinkle with the songs of birds and the flutter of green leaves.

Winter berries and bittersweet still give here and there a fleck of bright color to the universal gray and dun of the trees, and the carpet of cast-off leaves and the dull hue of the evergreens but scarcely relieve the sombreness of the woodland landscape.

Spanning forest and field with a low flat arch of even gray, hangs a sky as cold as the landscape it domes and whose mountain borders lie hidden in its hazy foundations. Through this canopy of suspended snow the low noontide sun shows but a blotch of yellowish gray, rayless and giving forth no warmth, and, as it slants toward its brief decline, grows yet dimmer till it is quite blotted out in the gloom of the half-spent afternoon.

The expectant hush that broods over the forlorn and naked earth is broken only by the twitter of a flock of snow buntings which, like a straight-blown flurry of flakes, drift across the fields, and, sounding solemnly from the depths of the woods, the hollow hoot of a great owl. Then the first flakes come wavering down, then blurring all the landscape into vague unreality they fall faster, with a soft purr on frozen grass and leaves till it becomes unheard on the thickening noiseless mantle of snow. Deeper and deeper the snow infolds the earth, covering all its unsightliness of death and desolation.

Now white-furred hare and white-feathered bunting are at one with the white-clad world wherein they move, and we, so lately accustomed to the greenness of summer and the gorgeousness of autumn, wondering at the ease wherewith we accept this marvel of transformation, welcome these white December days and in them still find content.

XLV

WINTER VOICES

Out of her sleep nature yet gives forth voices betokening that life abides beneath the semblance of death, that her warm heart still beats under the white shroud that infolds her rigid breast.

A smothered tinkle as of muffled bells comes up from the streams through their double roofing of snow and ice, and the frozen pulse of the trees complains of its thralldom with a resonant twang as of a strained cord snapped asunder.

Beneath their frozen plains, the lakes bewail their imprisonment with hollow moans awakening a wild and mournful chorus of echoes from sleeping shores that answer now no caress of ripples nor angry stroke of waves nor dip and splash of oar and paddle.

The breeze stirs leafless trees and shaggy evergreens to a murmur that is sweet, if sadder than they gave it in the leafy days of summer, when it bore the perfume of flowers and the odor of green fields, and one may imagine the spirit of springtime and summer lingers among the naked boughs, voicing memory and hope.

Amid all the desolation of their woodland haunts the squirrels chatter their delight in windless days of sunshine, and scoff at biting cold and wintry blasts. The nuthatch winds his tiny trumpet, the titmouse pipes his cheery note, the jay tries the innumerable tricks of his unmusical voice, and from their rollicking flight athwart the wavering slant of snowflakes drifts the creaking twitter of buntings.

The sharp, resonant strokes of the woodman's axe and the groaning downfall of the monarchs that it lays low, the shouts of teamsters, the occasional report of a gun, the various sounds of distant farmstead life, the jangle of sleigh bells on far-off highways, the rumbling roar of a railroad train rushing and panting along its iron path, and the bellowing of its far-echoed signals, all proclaim how busily affairs of life and pleasure still go on while the summer-wearied earth lies wrapped in her winter sleep.

Night, stealing upon her in dusky pallor, under cloudy skies, or silvering her face with moonbeams and starlight, brings other and wilder voices. Solemnly the unearthly trumpet of the owl resounds from his woodland hermitage, the fox's gasping bark, wild and uncanny, marks at intervals his wayward course across the frozen fields on some errand of love or freebooting, and, swelling and falling with puff and lapse of the night wind, as mournful and lonesome as the voice of a vagrant spirit, comes from the mountain ridges the baying of a hound, hunting alone and unheeded, while his master basks in the comfort of his fireside.

XLVI

THE VARYING HARE

It is wonderful that with such a host of enemies to maintain himself against, the varying hare may still be counted as one of our familiar acquaintances. Except in the depths of the great wildernesses, he has no longer to fear the wolf, the wolverine, the panther, and the lesser _felidae_, but where the younger woodlands have become his congenial home, they are also the home of a multitude of relentless enemies. The hawk, whose keen eyes pierce the leafy roof of the woods, wheels above him as he crouches in his form. When he goes abroad under the moon and stars, the terrible shadow of the horned owl falls upon his path, and the fox lurks beside it to waylay him, and the clumsy raccoon, waddling home from a cornfield revel, may blunder upon the timid wayfarer.

But of all his enemies none is more inveterate than man, though he is not, as are the others, impelled by necessity, but only by that savagery, the survival of barbarism, which we dignify by the name of the sporting instinct.

Against them all, how slight seem the defenses of such a weak and timid creature. Yet impartial nature, having compassed him about with foes, has shod his feet with swiftness and silence, and clad his body with an almost invisible garment. The vagrant zephyrs touch the fallen leaves more noisily than his soft pads press them. The first snow that whitens the fading gorgeousness of the forest carpet falls scarcely more silently.

Among the tender greens of early summer and the darker verdure of midsummer, the hare's brown form is as inconspicuous as a tuft of last year's leaves, and set in the brilliancy of autumnal tints, or the russet hue of their decay, it still eludes the eye. Then winter clothes him in her own whiteness so he may sit unseen upon her lap.

When he has donned his winter suit too early and his white coat is dangerously conspicuous on the brown leaves and among the misty gray of naked undergrowth, he permits your near approach as confidently as if he were of a color with his surroundings. Is he not aware that his spotless raiment betrays him, or does he trust that he may be mistaken for a white stone or a scroll of bark sloughed from a white birch? That would hardly save him from the keener-sensed birds and beasts of prey, but may fool your dull eyes.

In summer wanderings in the woods you rarely catch sight of him, though coming upon many faintly traced paths where he and his wife and their brown babies make their nightly way among the ferns. Nor are you often favored with a sight of him in more frequent autumnal tramps, unless when he is fleeing before the hounds whose voices guide you to a point of observation. He has now no eyes nor ears for anything but the terrible clamor that pursues him wherever he turns, however he doubles. If a shot brings him down and does not kill him, you will hear a cry so piteous that it will spoil your pleasant dreams of sport for many a night.

After a snowfall a single hare will in one night make such a multitude of tracks as will persuade you that a dozen have been abroad. Perhaps the trail is so intricately tangled with a purpose of misleading pursuit, perhaps it is but the record of saunterings as idle as your own.

As thus you wander through the pearl-enameled arches, your roving glances are arrested by a rounded form which, as white and motionless as everything around it, yet seems in some way not so lifeless. You note that the broad footprints end there, and then become aware of two wide, bright eyes, unblinkingly regarding you from the fluffy tuft of whiteness. How perfectly assured he is of his invisibility, and if he had but closed his bright eyes you might not guess that he was anything but a snow-covered clump of moss. How still and breathless he sits till you almost touch him, and then the white clod suddenly flashes into life and impetuous motion, bounding away in a halo of feathery flakes as if he himself were dissolving into white vapor.

Happy he, if he might so elude all foes; but alas for him, if the swift-winged owl had been as close above him or the agile fox within leap. Then instead of this glimpse of beautiful wild life to treasure in your memory, you would only have read the story of a brief tragedy, briefly written, with a smirch of blood and a tuft of rumpled fur.

XLVII

THE WINTER CAMP-FIRE

The chief requisite of a winter camp-fire is volume. The feeble flame and meagre bed of embers that are a hot discomfort to the summer camper, while he hovers over coffee-pot and frying-pan, would be no more than the glow of a candle toward tempering this nipping air. This fire must be no dainty nibbler of chips and twigs that a boy's hatchet may furnish, but a roaring devourer of logs, for whose carving the axe must be long and stoutly wielded--a very glutton of solid fuel, continually demanding more and licking with its broad red tongues at the branches that sway and toss high above in its hot breath.

So fierce is it that you approach cautiously to feed it and the snow shrinks away from it and can quench of it only the tiny sparks that are spit out upon it. You must not be too familiar with it, yet it is your friend after its own manner, fighting away for you the creeping demon of cold, and holding at bay, on the rim of its glare, the wolf and the panther.

With its friendly offices are mingled many elfish tricks. It boils your pot just to the point you wish, then boils it over and licks up the fragrant brew of celestial leaf or Javanese berry. It roasts or broils your meat to a turn, then battles with you for it and sears your fingers when you strive to snatch the morsel from its jaws, and perhaps burns it to a crisp before your very eyes, vouchsafing but the tantalizing fragrance of the feast.

Then it may fall into the friendliest and most companionable of moods, lazily burning its great billets of ancient wood while you burn the Virginian weed, singing to you songs of summer, its tongues of flame murmuring like the south wind among green leaves, and mimicking the chirp of the crickets and the cicada's cry in the simmer of exuding sap and vent of gas, and out of its smoke blossom sparks, that drift away in its own currents like red petals of spent flowers.

It paints pictures, some weird or grotesque, some beautiful, now of ghosts and goblins, now of old men, now of fair women, now of lakes crinkled with golden waves and towers on pine-crowned crags ruddy with the glow of sunset, sunny meadows and pasture lands, with farmsteads and flocks and herds.

The ancient trees that rear themselves aloft like strong pillars set to hold up the narrow arch of darkness, exhale an atmosphere of the past, in which your thoughts, waking or sleeping, drift backward to the old days when men whose dust was long since mingled with the forest mould moved here in the rage of war and the ardor of the chase. Shadowy forms of dusky warriors, horribly marked in war paint, gather about the camp-fire and sit in its glare in voiceless council, or encircle it in the grotesquely terrible movement of the war dance.

Magically the warlike scene changes to one of peace. The red hunters steal silently in with burdens of game. The squaws sit in the ruddy light plying their various labors, while their impish children play around them in mimicry of battle and the chase.

All then vanish, and white-clad soldiers of France bivouac in their place--or red-coated Britons, or Provincial rangers, unsoldierly to look upon, in home-spun garb, but keen-eyed, alert, and the bravest of the brave.

These dissolve like wreaths of smoke, and a solitary white hunter, clothed all in buckskin, sits over against you. His long flint-lock rifle lying across his lap, he is looking with rapt gaze into the fire, dreaming as you are.

So, growing brighter as the daylight grows dim and the gloaming thickens to the mirk, and paling again as daylight creeps slowly back upon the world, but always bright in the diurnal twilight of the woods, the camp-fire weaves and breaks its magic spells, now leaping, now lapsing, as its own freaks move it. Then, perhaps, when it has charmed you far across the border of dreamland and locked your eyes in the blindness of sleep, it will startle you back to the cold reality of the wintry woods with a crash and roar of sudden revival.

XLVIII

JANUARY DAYS

In these midwinter days, how muffled is the earth in its immaculate raiment, so disguised in whiteness that familiar places are strange, rough hollows smoothed to mere undulations, deceitful to the eye and feet, and level fields so piled with heaps and ridges that their owners scarcely recognize them. The hovel is as regally roofed as the palace, the rudest fence is a hedge of pearl, finer than a wall of marble, and the meanest wayside weed is a white flower of fairyland.

The woods, which frost and November winds stripped of their leafy thatch, are roofed again, now with an arabesque of alabaster more delicate than the green canopy that summer unfolded, and all the floor is set in noiseless pavement, traced with a shifting pattern of blue shadows. In these silent aisles the echoes are smothered at their birth. There is no response of airy voices to the faint call of the winter birds. The sound of the axe-stroke flies no farther than the pungent fragrance of the smoke that drifts in a blue haze from the chopper's fire. The report of the gun awakes no answering report, and each mellow note of the hound comes separate to the ear, with no jangle of reverberations.

Fox and hound wallow through the snow a crumbling furrow that obliterates identity of either trail, yet there are tracks that tell as plain as written words who made them. Here have fallen, lightly as snowflakes, the broad pads of the hare, white as the snow he trod; there, the parallel tracks of another winter masker, the weasel, and those of the squirrel, linking tree to tree. The leaps of a tiny wood-mouse are lightly marked upon the feathery surface to where there is the imprint of a light, swift pinion on either side, and the little story of his wandering ends--one crimson blood drop the period that marks the finis.

In the blue shadow at the bottom of that winding furrow are the dainty footprints of a grouse, and you wonder why he, so strong of wing, should choose to wade laboriously the clogging snow even in his briefest trip, rather than make his easy way through the unresisting air, and the snow-written record of his wayward wanderings tells not why. Suddenly, as if a mine had been sprung where your next footstep should fall and with almost as startling, though harmless effect, another of his wild tribe bursts upward through the unmarked white floor and goes whirring and clattering away, scattering in powdery ruin the maze of delicate tracery the snowfall wrought; and vanishes, leaving only an aerial pathway of naked twigs to mark his impetuous passage.

In the twilight of an evergreen thicket sits a great horned owl like a hermit in his cell in pious contemplation of his own holiness and the world's wickedness. But this recluse hates not sin, only daylight and mankind. Out in the fields you may find the white-robed brother of this gray friar, a pilgrim from the far north, brooding in the very face of the sun, on some stack or outlying barn, but he will not suffer you to come so near to him as will this solemn anchorite who stares at you unmoved as a graven image till you come within the very shadows of his roof.