Part 4

The man had come up to the Tobique in a canoe, partly for the fishing, partly to refresh his spirit with the clean airs of the wilderness. He left his guide frying bacon and trout for the midday meal, and strolled up the backwater to cast a fly and see if there were any big fish lurking in the shade of the lily-pads. He forgot about his fishing, however, when he caught sight of Quills, looking somewhat like a big dilapidated bird's nest, curled up asleep in the crotch of a young poplar. Being interested in all the kindred of the wild, the man reeled in his line, stood his rod carefully in a bush, and went and shook the tree as hard as he could, to see what Quills would do.

Quills woke up with a startled squeak, dug his claws into the bark to secure himself, and peered down to see what was the matter. At sight of this wanton disturber of his dreams he grew very angry. He chattered and grunted, and clashed his big yellow teeth loudly, and ruffled up his deadly spines as a clear warning to the intruder to keep off.

The man laughed, as if pleased at this bold defiance. He looked about for a long pole, thinking to poke Quills from his perch, so as to study him a little nearer at hand. But poles for poking porcupines do not lie about the Tobique wilderness, as he presently realised. He decided to climb the poplar, for a closer--but not too close--investigation. But the moment he began to climb, Quills, boiling with indignation, started down to meet the danger half-way. He came down backwards, with his tail lashing savagely. And he came down so astonishingly fast that the man had barely time to drop to the ground and jump out of the way, chuckling at the speedy success of his experiment.

"Half a jiffy, and the beggar would have made my face look like a pin-cushion," he muttered approvingly.

Reaching the ground, Quills stopped and stood chattering his defiance. The man, some paces distant, eyed him humorously for a few seconds, then went and got his fishing-rod out of the bush. With a bit of string from his jacket pocket he tied his cloth cap over the butt of the rod, and then, like a fencer with a button on his foil, with this weapon of courtesy he came and made a gentle thrust at Quills's blunt nose. Quick as a flash Quills whisked around and lashed at the impertinent weapon with his tail. The man at once withdrew it and examined his cap. It was stuck full, at that one slashing blow, with beautiful, polished, black-tipped white quills.

"Thanks awfully, old chap," said he. "They are lovely specimens, so I won't tease you any more." And, carrying his prize carefully before him, he turned back to the canoe. Quills glared after him, till his long form had vanished through the trees. Then his anger cooled, and exultation at this easy and signal triumph took its place. His spines went down till they were hidden beneath the dark fur and he seemed to have shrunk to half his size. The stress of his emotions having made him hungry--_anything_ will do to make a porcupine hungry--he crawled down to the edge of the water and fell to feasting in a patch of arrow-weed.

* * * * * *

Autumn on the Tobique passed swiftly in a blaze of colour. A few sudden touches of frost in the night, and then the maples stood glorious in scarlet and crimson, the birches and poplars shimmered in pale gold, the ash trees smouldered in dull purple, and the rowans flaunted their great bunches of waxy orange-vermilion berries against the solid dark-green background of hemlock and spruce. The partridge-coveys whirred on strong wing across the glowing corridors of the forest, under a sky of sharp cobalt. For a day or two every tree-top was elusively vocal with the thin-drawn single notes of the migrating cedar wax-wings--notes which were mere tiny beads of sound. The ice which formed each night along the edges of the shallow pools flitted away each morning before the unclouded sun was two hours high. And the air, stirred with light breezes, sparkling, and rich with earth-scents, was like wine in the veins of every creature alive. One night came a light sifting of snow, in gossamer flakes which vanished at the first touch of the sun. Then the breezes died away; the air, losing its crisp tang, grew balmy and languorous, the sharp blue of the sky veiled itself in a tender opaline haze; the wilderness seemed to fall asleep, its silence broken only by the whispers of the falling leaves and, once in a while, the startling _chirr-rr-rr_ of a red squirrel exulting over his hoard of beech-nuts. Life for the moment had taken on the tissue of a dream. It was the magic "Indian Summer." And folk in the scattered settlements, drinking in the beauty and the wonder of it, were sad because they knew how swiftly it must pass.

It passed, as it had come, in a night. Day broke steel-grey and menacing, with a bitter wind cutting down out of the North, and in a few hours everything was rigid with frost. Quills, though cold in reality had small terror for his hardy and well-clad frame, had been disturbed and annoyed by the sudden change. He didn't like the wind. It occurred to him that a warm and sheltered retreat, like his dimly-remembered nest in the heart of the old maple, would be a better sleeping-place than the draughty branches of a hemlock or a spruce. In this frame of mind he thought of a tempting-looking hole which he had noticed under a big boulder some fifty yards or so up the backwater. He knew, to be sure, that the hole belonged to an old dog-fox, but that fact did not trouble him. His brain had only room for one idea at a time. He set out straightway for that hole.

At the entrance to the den the strong smell of fox seemed to him like a challenge, and his spines rose angrily. He had no idea whether the owner was at home or not, and he made no attempt to find out. By way of precaution, however, he turned round before entering and backed in, slashing vigorously with his armed tail as he did so. The fox was not at home. He found the retreat dry and warm--in fact, just what he wanted. So, having well breakfasted before leaving his tree, he settled himself down with his hind-quarters to the entrance, pretty well blocking it, and unconcernedly went to sleep.

Presently the fox came trotting home, intent on getting out of the wind and having a nap in his snug den. But just before the threshold he stopped short, the fur on his neck stood up, and his eyes went green. He had scented the trail of Quills, and it led straight into his lair. Stealthily he tiptoed forward, peered in, and saw confronting him that spiny tail and rump, just inside the doorway.

His blood boiled at the intruder's insolence. But he was a wise old beast, and in his rash youth he had once been lame for a month, with a steely quill burning and festering under his knee-joint, through having tried to interfere with a most insignificant-looking porcupine. Curbing his righteous wrath--as there was nothing else to do--he turned about and with his scratching hind paws insultingly sent a shower of soiled earth upon the slumbering Quills. Then he trotted off to seek another retreat. Quills, thus rudely awakened, crawled forth, chattering indignantly, and shook out the defilement from his long coat. But, as the fox was nowhere in sight, he promptly forgot his wrath and turned into the den again to resume his nap.

Gradually, but inexorably, winter now closed down upon the valley of the Tobique. And it was a hard winter--for all the hunting beasts and birds, a desperate winter. The rabbits that autumn had been smitten with one of their periodical epidemics, and died off like flies. This did not trouble Quills directly--a strict vegetarian, he was assured of plenty so long as the forest stood. But indirectly it made a vital difference to him. All the prowling and pouncing kindred--the great horned owls and the eagles, the lynxes, foxes, martens, and minks, and even certain surly old he-bears who were too restless to "hole-up" for the winter--soon found themselves goaded by such a hunger as might at any moment drive them to take unwonted risks. Quills little guessed how often, as he was gnawing complacently at his meal of hemlock bark, he would be watched longingly by savage and hungry eyes. But, had he guessed it, his indifference would have remained quite unruffled. He had all he could eat, and a warm hole to sleep in, and why should he borrow trouble?

But one biting December afternoon, when the straight shadows of the fir trees were stretching long and blue across the snow, Quills's complacency got something of a shock. Just as he was crawling luxuriously into his den, one of those great horned owls which are the feathered Apaches of the wilderness came winnowing low overhead on wings as silent as sleep. His round staring eyes caught sight of Quills's hind-quarters just vanishing into the hole. There was no time to note exactly what it was, and hunger had made the great bird rash even beyond his wont. He swooped instantly and struck his terrible talons into the tail and haunch.

With a loud hiss, like that of an angry cat, he let go precipitately and fairly bounced up into the air again, both murderous talons stuck deep with spines which seemed to burn into his sinews. He flew in haste to the nearest branch, steadied himself with difficulty on the perch, and set himself to the painful task of plucking out the torments with his beak, holding up first one claw and then the other. With some of the spines he was successful, but others he merely managed to nip off close to the skin. His feet began to swell immediately. For several weeks he could do no hunting, for the fiery anguish in them, but could only sit moping in his hollow tree, where he would soon have starved but for the food brought to him by his faithful mate.

As for Quills, this was his first experience of physical pain, and it was his first taste of fear. Whining and squealing and grunting all at once, he shrank into his den, and, carefully parting the spines and fur with his nose, strove to lick the wounds made by those steel-sharp talons. For a day or two he had no appetite, and stayed sulking in the den. But the healthy flesh, being unpoisoned, soon healed, and Quills was himself again, except for a certain unaccustomed watchfulness. He did not know what creature it was which had dared to attack him, so at sight of any strange beast whatsoever, up would go his spines and he would put himself on guard. Even a malevolent--but to him harmless--little weasel, or a scouting mink, he would honour with his suspicions; and one day, when a gigantic bull moose came and stood beneath the tree in which he was feeding, he chattered down at him furiously and arrayed all his defences as if expecting immediate attack. But as the huge black beast did not even trouble to look at him, his fears were soon allayed.

A porcupine's memory, however, seems to be extraordinarily short, and Quills's was no exception to the rule. In the course of three or four weeks, when his wounds no longer pricked him to remembrance, he forgot all about the affair and recovered his old indifference. One day when he was returning to his den for a doze--and only a score of yards away from the entrance--right into his pathway, with a noiseless pounce, dropped a great, grey, furry beast with tufted ears, and long, white snarling teeth, and huge pads of paws. It crouched before him, its stub of a tail twitching, and glared upon him with pale, cruel, moon-like eyes. Up went Quills's spines at once, and he ducked his nose between his fore-paws; but he was determined to get to his den, so he came right on. Seeing, however, that the intruder showed no sign of getting out of the way, Quills suddenly turned round and came on backwards, lashing out fiercely with his tail. The lynx was wild with hunger, but not to the pitch of suicidal recklessness. He ached intolerably for the well-nourished flesh that he knew lay hidden beneath those bristling spines, but he knew the price that he would have to pay for it. With a screech of disappointed rage, he restrained himself and slipped from the path; and Quills, chattering noisily, disappeared into his hole.

As the long and bitter winter drew on, burying the wilderness under five or six feet of snow and scourging it with storm and iron frost, Quills had many more or less similar encounters with the lynxes, and twice with a surly old black-bear. Paradoxical as the statement may appear, he usually faced the foe with his tail. And the result was always the same. No prowler was prepared to pay the price which Quills would have exacted for his carcase. But along in March, when the snow had begun to settle heavily under a week of thaw, Quills was confronted by a new enemy before whom his indifference melted more swiftly than the snow.

Very early one morning, when the first ghost-grey light of dawn was beginning to glimmer through the windless forest, Quills had just come down out of an old hemlock, when he caught sight of a strange beast gliding over the snow some thirty or forty yards away. The stranger, dark brown in colour, with a bushy tail, long and low-set body, weasel-shaped head, and grizzly-grey face with black snout, was somewhat under three feet in length. It was distinctly smaller, and at first glance less dangerous-looking, than a lynx. But some inherited instinct told Quills at once that this was an enemy far more to be dreaded than the fiercest of lynxes. He had never seen a fisher before. Fortunately for the porcupine tribe, fishers were very scarce in the valley of the Tobique. But a chill of ancestral fear struck to Quills's heart.

The fisher, catching sight of him, whirled in his tracks and darted at him with a light swiftness and deadly intensity of purpose very different from the hesitating attitude of Quills's other foes. And Quills's tactics were now different. Jutting from the snow, near the trunk of the hemlock, was a heavy windfall, its top supported by the lower branches of a neighbouring beech tree. Under this protection Quills thrust his nose and head, clear to the shoulders, leaving only his armed back and fiercely-slashing tail exposed to the assault. He was no more than in position ere the enemy was upon him.

Now, in nine cases out of ten--perhaps even in ninety-nine out of a hundred--the fight between a porcupine and a fisher has but one result. The fisher eats the porcupine. He is incomparably the stronger. He is, taking it all in all, the most savage, swift, and crafty of all the marauders of the wilderness, and, above all else, for some reason as yet unexplained by the naturalists, the porcupine's quills, so deadly to others, have for him comparatively few terrors. They do not poison or inflame his flesh, which seems to possess the faculty of soon rejecting them and casting them forth again through the skin. All he has to do is to flip the victim over on its back--annexing as few spines as possible in the act--and he has the unprotected throat and belly at the mercy of his fangs.

In the present case, however, the too-confident fisher had an exceptional porcupine to deal with. Quills was not only unusually large and vigorous, but, _for a porcupine_, sagacious. He had settled himself down solidly into the snow, and when the fisher, dodging a blow of his tail, and accepting a sharp dose of spines in the shoulder, tried to turn him over with a twist of the paw, Quills resisted successfully, and, with a timely swing of his haunches, stabbed his assailant's whole flank full of spines.

The fisher had expected some resistance, some more or less futile defence, but this was attack. Always short in temper, he flew into a blind rage at the pain and the surprise of it. He drew back a few inches to gain impetus for the next effort, and this was his mistake--this, and underrating his opponent. At that very instant he got a full, flailing stroke across his face from Quills's tail. It filled his nose and mouth with spines--that was to be expected; but--for the blow had surely been guided by the patron spirit of all the porcupines--it also filled both his eyes.

With a screech of anguish he flung himself full on Quills's back and strove to bite down through the armour of spines. But he was now totally blind, and his jaws were stuck so full of spines as to be practically powerless. Meanwhile his mad struggles were simply driving deeper and deeper into all his tender underparts those terrible four-inch spikes which clothed the back of his intended victim. All at once the agony grew too appalling for even his indomitable spirit. He lurched off and dragged himself away, stumbling and staggering, and bumping into tree trunk and bush, till he reached a thicket which he felt to be dense enough to hide his defeat. And here death came to him, not too soon.

For some minutes after his defeated foe had gone, Quills remained with his head thrust under the branch, chattering fierce defiance and lashing wildly with his tail. Then very cautiously he backed off and looked about him. He had been roughly mauled. His spines and fur were dishevelled, and he was bleeding from some deep scratches where his assailant's claws had got home. But he was not seriously the worse from his terrible encounter, and he had beaten, fairly and overwhelmingly, the terrible killer of porcupines. His sombre and solitary spirit glowed with triumph. Rather hurriedly he crawled on to his lair, and there set himself to a much-needed toilet. And outside his retreat the first long, level rays of the sunrise crept across the snow, touching the trunks of the birches and the poplars to a mystical rose-pink and saffron.

*STRIPES THE UNCONCERNED*

On the edge of evening, when the last of the light was gathered in the pale-green upper sky, and all the world of the quiet backwoods clearings was sunken in a soft violet dusk, a leisurely and self-possessed little animal came strolling among the ancient stumps and mossy hillocks of the open upland sheep-pasture. He was about the size of an average cat, but shorter of leg, with a long, sharp-muzzled head, and he carried his broad feathery tail very high in a graceful arch, like a squirrel in good humour. Unlike most other creatures of the wild, his colouring was such as to make him conspicuous rather than to conceal him. He was black, with a white stripe down his face, a white patch on the back of his neck, and a white stripe all the way along each side of his body. And, also unlike the rest of the furtive folk, he seemed quite unconcerned to hide his movements from observation. Neither was he for ever glancing this way and that, as if on the watch for enemies. Rather he had the air of being content that his enemies should do the watching--and avoid him.

The skunk--for such was the undignified appellation of this very dignified personality of the wilderness--was pleasantly engrossed in his own business. That business, at the moment, consisted in catching the big, fat, juicy, copper-brown "June-bugs" as they emerged from their holes in the sod, crawled up the bending grass-stems, and spread their wings for their heavy evening flight. It was easy hunting, and he had no need of haste. To snap up these great slow and clumsy beetles as they clung upon the grass-stems was as easy as picking strawberries, and, indeed, not altogether dissimilar, as he would nip off the hard, glossy wing-cases of the big beetles as one nips off the hull of the berry before munching the succulent morsel.

Having slept the day through in his snug burrow, in the underbrush which fringed the forest edge of the clearing, he had come forth into the dewy twilight equipped with a fine appetite. He had come with the definite purpose of hunting "June-bugs," this being the season, all too brief, for that highly-favoured delicacy. At first he had thought of nothing else; but when he had taken the edge off his hunger, he began to consider the chances of varying his diet. As he seized an unlucky beetle, close to the edge of a flat, spreading juniper bush, a brooding ground-sparrow flew up, with a startled _cheep_, from under his very nose. He dropped the beetle and made a lightning pounce at the bird. But her wing had flicked him across the eyes, confusingly, and he missed her. He knew well enough, however, what her presence there among the warm grass-tussocks meant. He went nosing eagerly under the juniper bush, and soon found a nest with four little brown-mottled eggs in it. Tiny though they were, they made a tit-bit very much to his taste, all the more so that they were very near hatching. Having licked his jaws and fastidiously polished the fur of his shrewd, keen face, he sauntered off to see what other delicacies the evening might have in store for him.

A little further on, toward the centre of the pasture, he came upon a flat slab of rock, its surface sloping toward the south, its southward edge slightly overhanging and fringed with soft grass. He knew the rock well--knew how its bare surface drank in the summer sun all day long, and held the warmth throughout the dew-chill nights. He knew, too, that other creatures besides himself might very well appreciate this genial warmth. Stealthily, and without the smallest disturbance of the grassy fringe, he sniffed along the overhanging edge of the rock. Suddenly he stiffened, and his sharp snout darted in under the rock. Then he jerked back, with the writhing tail of a snake between his jaws.

The prize was a big black-and-yellow garter snake, not far from three feet long--not venomous, but full of energy and fight. It tried to cling to its hiding-place; but the shrewd skunk, instead of attempting to pull it out straight, like a cork from a bottle-neck, ran forward a pace or two and, as it were, "peeled" it forth. It doubled out, struck him smartly in the face with its harmless fangs, and then coiled itself about his neck and fore-legs. There was a moment of confused rough-and-tumble, but the skunk knew just how to handle this kind of antagonist. Having bitten the reptile's tail clean through, he presently, with the help of his practised little jaws, succeeded in getting hold of it by the back, an inch or two behind the head. This ended the affair, as a struggle, and the victor proceeded to round off his supper on snake. He managed to put away almost all but the head and tail, and then, after a meticulous toilet to fur and paws--for he was as fastidiously cleanly as a cat--he sauntered back toward his burrow in the underbrush, to refresh himself with a nap before seeking further adventures.

Directly in his path stood three or four young seedling firs, about two feet high, in a dense cluster. Half a dozen paces beyond this tiny thicket a big red fox, belly to earth, was soundlessly stalking some quarry, perhaps a mouse, which could be heard ever so faintly rustling the grass-stems at the edge of the thicket. To the skunk, with his well-filled belly, the sound had no interest. He rounded the thicket and came face to face with the fox.